sure! (this is re: what i said here in the second paragraph.) it's really more like, when i was 19-21 versus now though. it used to be a lot harder for me to listen to people. like if someone said something where i felt i was being misunderstood or that seemed to include me in some generalization that i didn't think described me, it was really important to me to assert my identity. this is still something that i have a kneejerk impulse to do, but i think i've gotten better at realizing that like, other people aren't always talking about me and picking my battles. also just like, understanding that i can't control everyone else's impression of me and being okay with that.

when i was younger i was somehow both less aware AND more aware of how people saw me? i was more concerned with seeming like an interesting person, but at the same time i was more oblivious to how other people might feel if i acted in certain ways. i also enjoyed intense emotions and dramatics a lot more. like even if i was full-on having a breakdown, i kind of treasured the intensity of that feeling because it felt like, cinematic and free to me. it made things feel important and i liked when wild or unexpected things happened, so if i acted in wild or unexpected or dramatic ways that was great too. i just really wanted things to be interesting all the time, and intense emotions are interesting, conflict is interesting, acting spontaneously is interesting. i was building my life almost like a story.

it was also important to me not to lose that! i thought a lot about my life becoming less interesting with a kind of dread. it felt like every moment was sort of slipping past me because things in my life were changing so fast and i had to clutch all of them close. i HATED being told what to do! i still hate it tbh, but i felt a kind of physical revulsion at being asked to conform or do things just because someone else thought i should. it's MY life, and i get to decide how it looks! in the stage of my life that i'm in now, all of that stuff has mellowed out a lot. i make more of an effort to consider others. maximizing my long-term daily happiness is more important to me. it's more important to me to find cheats or work-arounds that will minimize the unpleasantness of unpleasant situations. i'm more okay with compromise. i'm more willing to do things that i dislike because i know it'll make someone i love happy. i think more about what i need and try to ask for it clearly. i don't care as much about being interesting to others so long as i'm interesting to me. i feel more secure in myself, and less desperate about my flaws.

obviously all of this is like, my own very personal experience rather than universal, but in places where those observations are useful to building takedown namkook as characters i'll use them. jungkook always wants other people to know what he's feeling! sometimes he gets defensive or hurt by feeling like namjoon's not recognizing his emotions when namjoon's just trying to have a conversation. he has a lot of visions of how things should be, like his life is a movie that's playing out and he's writing it in the moment, so he's impatient when things don't conform to that. he wants things to be interesting and exciting! he doesn't mind if things hurt! his life changes very quickly, so he acts fast to hold good things close.

on the other hand, namjoon is more concerned with preserving the stability of the life he already has. he wants more of an even keel (even if intensity is obviously exciting and alluring to him.) he prioritizes others more, and has taken more of a back seat in his life, but he feels like in doing that he's lost some of his creativity. he misses the time in his life when he was able to be assertive and ambitious and chaotic. he wants to recapture some of that intensity and spontaneity, but he doesn't want to lose everything he has in the process. when other people express intense emotions, he's concerned with calming them down or bringing the situation back to center. when he does this to jungkook, jungkook often feels like namjoon is trying to control him or like he's not listening. it makes him feel invalidated or like he's doing something wrong that namjoon isn't matching his energy and meeting him at the same level of intensity. jungkook wants things to last, because he's scared of losing things and he wants the cinematic intensity of something Big and Fated, but he also doesn't want things to last because stability scares him, and he doesn't want to lose his own intensity.

anyway, i could probably go on but this answer is already too long and also i should probably save some of the character stuff for the fic lol! but jungkook's been doing a lot of things that are confusing to namjoon for the last few chapters. he's kind of returned to being a black box. and i think most of the explanations for why he's been acting like he has can be found above ✨