LOL yes cfic tends to be really 狗血/dramatic and extreme a majority of the time 😭 i think it’s a combination of how there doesn’t really exist a culture of comprehensive tagging in cfandom + general preference among cfans for these more 狗血/makjang/melodramatic cliche trope-y plot elements. like chinese writers will definitely tag for top bottom and perhaps au/genre/setting, but specificities beyond that are generally left untagged, sometimes even things that would count as trigger warnings/dead dove content… i’ve mentioned the random grab-bag roulette wheel nature of cfic (and kfic) briefly before here https://curiouscat.live/lachrymal/post/1297858157 but it really is like ummm Suprise Main Character Death! Suprise He Got Committed To The Psych Ward! Surprise He’s Pregnan- ok i haven’t come across the last one yet but i’m sure it exists. my one singular insane ao3 jmjn cfic rec definitely made me go through this process as well -> https://curiouscat.live/lachrymal/post/1231805849 but yeah the only thing chinese writers fear besides government censorship is probably incorrectly tagged t/b lol

YEAH gay ass gym buddies...the best part is i think it could go either way i could see hc being an absolute menace trying to "spot" jm from in his lap accidentally on purpose grinding down a little while jm calculates 39483904 different ways to get him back later in the locker room.. or it could be jm torturing hc by blithely ignoring his protests and convincing him that he's just helping him like a good friend/personal trainer would... he's just helping him with his gains bro... there's nothing weird about this haechan-ah don't worry about it... you can add another 5kg on both sides don't you think? sorry. i've read too much pt yaoi i think i've just been mentally greenscreening nahyuck into them. my bad.

oh interesting, i feel like there's an intersection of reasons as to why unique ship/chemi names have become more and more popular 1) companies leaning into ship marketing in an increasingly meta, self-aware way 2) eastern/western fandom cultural differences. i think nowadays new kpop idols are extremely aware of the effect their individual friendship dynamics have on their fans, and undoubtedly they're encouraged to come up with unique "___ line" or "___z" for chemi/pairing names. some of that is definitely due to oversaturation of names/syllables/you can only rearrange them in so many ways as we are all the way in 5th gen now. the 4th wall barely exists anymore at this point LOL. however i think you'll find that when it comes to actual k-rps circles (especially on ktwt and postype) kfans will still use ordered ship names to indicate positioning and dynamics as that's nonetheless a big part of how east asian shipping fandom works. western fans on the other hand don't tend to have the same culture of rigid separation with regards to order preferences, so i feel like they adopt the unique non-ordered names more avidly, or at least use it in an all encompassing sense (ship/friendship/fic/either dynamic) because order doesn't matter to them, and the ship is the ship no matter what. a lot of the time ifans will just go with "what sounds better" to them. sometimes kfans will still use a ship's unique (non-ordered) chemi name when referring to the pairing in general; it’s just that if it's fic or a specific agenda, i find that they still do prefer to use ship names that have order indicated already (especially in their bios or in fanart captions).

haha wrt jmjn specifically… i mean i have seen some fans call them both, i think it really just comes down to personal preference and the fan culture you've adopted. i don’t know if this is entirely accurate but i do get the feeling that in eng speaking fandom and among ifans jmjnists are more rigid in their preferences, and there’s more of a general switch ok vibe with nominists/the term nomin in general… if you’re really strict about it in the opposite way then you’d probably call them jenjaem. i myself do call them jmjn out of preference and habit but since nomin still refers to the ship in general among ifans, i have used it for seo when ficposting 😭 i hope this helped clarify the shift/divide a bit!

crying the way i went to watch the full video on youtube just so i could answer this!! i think had only seen clips on the tl previously but wow… nearly everything in this interview was like Haha… That’s Exactly What I Thought You’d Say. talking about czennies💚? check. talking about needing to repay their love? check. the “beyond being our fans, just as person-to-person, it’s so meaningful to have such sincere people” made me 🥹🥹 i know idols commonly wax poetic about their fans but idc i literally believe fans mean more to jaemin than normal idols i’ll take the bait…when i got to the “jaemin, try harder” part at the end i almost died too lmfao he’s so funny. the peek into his window of self-awareness but also jaemin’s fixation with having to repay love is so reminiscent of the concept of giri / duty / obligation to me. like he genuinely believes it’s his responsibility to return the love he’s received, to pay it back tenfold… the fans will always be and have always been his greatest source of motivation ༼;´༎ຶ ۝ ༎ຶ༽

also the amount of times he mentioned working out and enjoying to work out and needing to work out in this interview was ungodly WE GET IT YOU WORK OUT. WE KNOW. we can hardly miss it. built like a tank. 🫠🫠🫠

not understanding the concept of TSUNDERES has killed… like yes jeno is comparatively more receptive to skinship than most but one of his defining characteristics is that he likes to pretend he doesn’t like it! and this behavior is not exclusive to jaemin, just yesterday we saw him shirk away from chenle’s hand on the nape of his neck, like sometimes he just likes to play around/has to be coaxed like a cat. that’s part of the game. if jeno had really “had enough” i fully believe he is capable of making that clear to jaemin lmao. and jaemin has been more comfortable with blatant skinship fanservice as of late literally because he is the one initiating—he loves to maintain control of the power dynamic in all aspects so jeno’s “attempts” to escape and evade are all within the usual scope of their relationship dynamic. jaemin starting something on stage that incites a fear response is actually very normal he is simply just hunting 🙂🫶 lol i’m not sure what background og anon is coming from but i sincerely hope they find peace and curate their tl accordingly 🙏🙏🙏

hi!! i have to admit i don’t really have much on them aside from a few protag energy comparisons / why jisung will never have mark disease ccs: https://curiouscat.me/lachrymal/post/1225427104 + https://curiouscat.me/lachrymal/post/1225486258 i think theoretically they’re much more interesting to me within the context of js -> cl -> mk triangulation but even that stems from jisung’s chenle disease first and foremost + cl’s kind of cooled down on his thing for mark to a degree + jichen are in the depths of their telenovela betrayal 10 installment saga… so unfortunately it’s just not really a dynamic that’s been on my radar anon 😭 i’d love to hear any thoughts you have to share tho!

haha well i can hardly claim to be the most unbiased person in the room as i clearly have my main agendas but i will try to answer this as objectively as possible. while op and i seem to have quite fundamentally different interpretations of the dynamic this is definitely not the first time i’ve seen this take! i suppose i can attempt to reverse engineer how they might’ve come to that conclusion. it’s kind of like, socially jeno can play well with anyone and has a wide range of options to entertain while jaemin largely sticks to the people he knows he already likes, and perhaps this seeming disparity makes it seem like jeno could be with anyone while jaemin only has his faves and therefore jeno must not like him as much as he likes jeno..? perhaps it’s also the comparative lack of skinship initiated toward jm by jeno in comparison to his other ships (markno, jenle etc); however, more than a lack of interest on jeno’s part i believe that this reflects jaemin’s aversion to touch/initiation that’s not on his terms, like the perceived relative “lack” of skinship/visible cues is the result of jeno accommodating jaemin’s control freak tendencies perfectly. and tbh what could be more romantic than that.

i’ve also answered the question of “why jaemin” for jeno a few times in the past so i’m loathe to repeat myself too much, but like you’ve mentioned, jeno has constantly and consistently time and time again chosen to be with jaemin and do things with just him out of everyone else. i feel like comparing jaemjen’s relationship to any of jeno’s other relationships to use as a metric for how “into” the other person he is falls short in that it fails to consider how 1) jeno is the type to meet people where they’re at, every relationship is going to look different in terms of outward expression/skinship because jeno generally accomodates the other person 2) it follows that the nature of jaemjen’s relationship would constitute a more subdued outward appearance despite all the egregious social media couple posting—jaemin is SoFuckingComplicated after all, so jeno is not going to be pushing his boundaries full throttle 24/7 even if he technically does have the privilege to.

im also admittedly amused by this interpretation of their dynamic because oftentimes i actually get completely opposite vibes from them. like i know and trust that jmjn is mutual, but jaemin is so blasé about things sometimes i feel like they come across as jeno being the one who’s constantly initiating while jaemin spaces out/retreats to the hidden mountain lake in his mind palace, and i think this was particularly obvious and true during like 2020-2021, when jeno was doing a lot of the hard carrying in terms of outwards signs of cp fanservice and interax for jmjn. but i digress, and jaemins certainly been a lot more active as of late.

markno as a point of contrast is also interesting to me because the obsession is mutual to me, not different in magnitude, just different in method/understanding. like mark is just as obsessed with jeno as jeno is with him, but because they are fundamentally different people and mark is sooo boy of the world protag, he can’t fully get the nature and scope of jeno’s infatuation with him and that’s not anyone’s fault. i don’t particularly see the reverse of this dynamic reflected in jmjn; markno is a type of psychosis that manifests when you put a boy and his dog together but the boy doesn’t even know that he’s not a dog he just thinks that they’re two dogs together. jmjn is that one crazy codependent couple that everyone knows has been together since middle school.

haha anyway sorry for the months long wait, those are about the extent of my thoughts on the matter! please excuse the egregious rambling anon i hope this answer suffices 😭💖🫶