#SUNJAY_KINDA_REAL: a revised thesis

[lackingdaze]

(source)

table of contents
⭐️the set-up
⭐️i-land acquaintances
⭐️co-workers
⭐️what hanlim can do for a relationship
⭐️the tinted optics

ok, so i actually have posted a previous primer for sunjay which can be viewed here, but as enhypen is a pretty new group with evolving dynamics, quite a bit has changed since my post. so i thought it would be good to revise my thesis with new updates and elaborate more on my previous thoughts. i'll also try to update this as time goes on, if i remember/care to.

disclaimer: i am literally just a person on the internet with questionable takes. formatting inspired by permutative's beautiful jaywon primer and as always, all of my meager html/css knowledge is gleaned from girlock's generous contributions to greater dw society. all vlive quotes are taken directly from the english subtitle transcripts—i tried to trim down quotes and group them together for clarity + added time-stamps, but lmk if it's confusing!

⭐️ the set-up▲

🦊 kim sunoo (김선우)
dob: june 24, 2003
height: 176 cm (source)
zodiac sign: cancer
mbti: enfp

🦅 park jongseong (박종성) / jay (제이)
dob: april 20, 2002
height: 176 cm (source)
zodiac sign: aries
mbti: entp

so as far as backgrounds go, sunoo and jay are pretty different. jay lived in the us for a good chunk of his early childhood and also travelled around quite a bit (he's mentioned going to japan multiple times, and also there's the infamous brunei trip). i think most fans are already familiar with the "jay park rich" rhetoric, so i won't regurgitate it. but also despite being from "seattle", jay isn't as "american"/"westernized" as say, australian jake shim. on the other hand, sunoo was pretty much your everyday kid who went to school in korea and was part of student council and did gg cover dances, etc etc.

their training stories also differ, in that jay is one of the members who trained the longest and in big hit, alongside heeseung. meanwhile, sunoo only trained for ten months, under belift lab.

⭐️ i-land acquaintances▲

it's been a while since i've watched i-land, so my memory is a little spotty and this might not be comprehensive. but also like do i want to remember things from i-land....we digress.

anyways, sunoo and jay were like. well they were on i-land together? i don't think they were particularly close. jay is a man of favorites, so he obviously gravitated toward his "#lifeline" yang jungwon and also heeseung + big hit trainees who was he familiar with.

unlike jay, sunoo spent a solid chunk of the early episodes being in ground and getting close to the grounders. umm thinking about it now, what i recall from my second watch of i-land (don't inbox) was that he was really close to jaebeom and hanbin. so they occupied pretty different social circles.

i think the most sunoo/jay interaction we got was on episode 9, with the chemistry test for "dive into you". as a park jay fan, this was a pretty formative episode for me, because we get a good glimpse into jay's #character_development per the i-land editing team's story arc. jay is chosen as the leader of dive into you team, and this is basically how it happens:

🦊: you should be leader ^^
🦅: okay
🦊: i’ll do my best to support you ^^
🦅: okay good

which, lol. another part of them being on dive into you together is how jay made everyone do push-ups because sunoo struggled with pulling off the scorpion dance. which is kind of heartwarming to me and illustrates how considerate park jay is? yeah i'm biased.

there are also these random instances of sunoo hugging jay / jay hugging sunoo. um at first when i saw these, it was through a very low quality screenshot and i was like 😀 ⁉️ is this real? but it is! which is interesting to me because i don't think sunoo is a very touchy person (and jay is, but selectively). here is a reddit post where op speculates the nuances of jay picking up on sunoo's hesitance towards physical affection. personally this isn't a big point of interest for me, but i'll put it out there anyways, for the science.

⭐️ co-workers▲

freshly after debut...well yeah they weren't very close either.

i mention this in my previous iteration of this post, but my initial of impression sunjay (i got into enhypen around february) were two people who kind of just orbit around each other and don't interact that much—so coworkers, basically. here are these selfies [1][2] for a visual.

to be fair, enhypen's culmination from a brutal survival show and the fact that belift trainees were not allowed to talk to each other or whatever makes this dynamic not exclusive to sunjay. also i enjoy co-worker dynamics and think it's perfectly compelling.

anyways, the standout early debut content for sunjay is their first unit vlive together. as far as lives go, this was pretty subdued, and when i watched it for the first time, i kind of got the impression that jay wasn't very into it? but i think knowing more about jay now...well he's just like that. but more on this later when we dive into recent developments.

at one point during the live, sunoo asks jay to compliment him (lol):

🦅 [7:14]: i'm the type that thinks way too much, and also the type that obsesses a lot. so there are a lot of times where I want to get a load off my mind. and at times like that...
🦅 [7:33]: someone who can think positively? i feel a lot more relaxed when there are people who are like that next to me.
🦊 [8:01]: you're saying that you want to thank me for that?
🦅: yes.

sunoo then mentions he tends to go to jay with his concerns (he also mentions this during the campfire scene in enha & hi 2), which launches a discussion of how they're both overthinkers—albeit in different ways—and bonded over that. jay identifies himself as someone who takes an excruciatingly long time to make any kind of decision, whereas based on their convo, sunoo seems to do things first and agonize about the results later.

🦊 [8:50]: jay and i both think way too much. we have too much to on our minds.
🦅: it takes me 3 hours to think of a game ID.

another highlight of this vlive is when sunoo is asked to give his first impression of jay:

🦊 [20:39]: when i met jay for the first time, i thought he was a scary guy...and competent guy.
🦅 [20:52]: i was depressed during the trainee years...i had no expression on my face.

$%^&%$&^. yeah that's jay park for you. anyways nothing actually happens in this live (this actually can also be said about sunjay in general but here i am writing a post on it), but i think it establishes a good baseline of sunjay's dynamic: that they have pretty different energies that seem at odds, that they're comfortable with each other but not particularly affectionate, that they have potential for HIDDEN DEPTHS. or not.

⭐️ what hanlim can do for a relationship▲

one of the biggest confusions to me when i first encountered sunjay was how differently jay treats sunoo and jungwon, despite jay being '02, sunoo being '03 and jungwon being '04. to be fair, jaywon is Just Like That, but also, sunoo is kind of in an awkward position in enhypen. he isn't part of hyungline, but he also isn't doted on like the rest of maknaeline—i think mainly because he's pretty self-sufficient and also relaxed his personality after escaping i-land.

but then i found out that jay and sunoo go to school together and then the dynamics made more sense to me. basically, jay repeated his first at hanlim, so he'd been attending school with '03 students. which explains why he doesn't dote on sunoo as much as he does on jungwon or ni-ki (aside from park jay being Like That towards jungwon and ni-ki being the youngest and therefore in need of doting).

recently, sunoo transferred to hanlim (along with jungwon) and now sunjay are classmate, which has been a big turning point in their relationship. for example, sunoo mentioned that he was very nervous on his first day at hanlim, but jay helped him feel more comfortable. on jay's birthday, sunoo wrote him a heartfelt tweet, where he basically called jay "someone he can't live without", complete with several really cute selfies which was....? HOW DID WE GET HERE? the power of being classmates at hanlim?

since then, they've had a few more moments, namely jay comforting sunoo when they won on music bank, and also jay doing an "imitation" of sunoo at a fan meeting while jake sim screams in the bg. you can make of that what you will.

what prompted me to write up this revision was their curiosity lab vlive. if you're not familiar, curiosity lab is a vlive segment where sunoo basically interviews the members/asks them questions he's curious about. so far he's done ones with jake, sunghoon, ni-ki, and most recently, jay. out of all the curiosity labs sunoo has done so far, this one really surprised me because.....???

so sunoo is like. really energetic in this. and generally he's pretty upbeat in lives (except when he's not), but he seemed particularly hyper around jay. and there are moments where he just goes off on random tangents and the most surprising thing to me was....jay just kind of goes along with it? a part of this live was sunoo quizzing jay on greek knowledge (literally why but idk it was kind of fun) and despite the questions being incredibly specific, jay still entertained sunoo and actually tried to answer the questions. again, it's about like [pointing at air] the nuances, but i think they seem much closer than they did in their initial vlive together 🥰

we also get a little more insight in the way sunoo views jay, if it wasn't already clear from his public jay park tenderhearting:

🦊 [18:09]: first, jay when he was a trainee...i thought he was a cool-headed, but talented person. you know, that's called a cool person. i thought he was cool person. it was the first time we talked to each other, at that training center. before that, i haven't met jay and jake.
🦊 [18:36]: i thought he was a nice person [...] a warm-hearted person. after our debut, my thought about him became bigger, meaning that i became sure that he was a nice person. that's jay for me.

also not quite related, but did any one else literally lose it at jay saying:

🦅 [19:23]: i'm an honest person, honesty is an important part of myself. [...] i get stressed out when i cannot say something i want to say.
🦅 [20:15]: i'm not that kind of person, you know, a herolike person. [..] i'm not that perfect kind of person. [...] when i meet people to whom i want to be nice, whom i like... well, for those people, i try to take care of them. i'm that kind of person.
🦊: i think you know much about yourself.
🦅: i'm not the kind of a person, who embraces every person—a person who's like a mom.
🦊: well, but you have a bit of that characteristic in you.

like yeah we can tell u have favorites jay....

this is kind of it in terms of content right now—unless i missed out on something? side note, i highly recommend watching this sunjay vlive if you haven't already because it's literally perfect and highly entertaining, which cannot be said for many vlives.

⭐️ the tinted optics▲

to get the obvious out of the way, jay is my favorite enha and sunoo is sort of my second favorite (well there's also yangjungwon—but we don't need to get into the specifics). so i'm not immune to 2pick vision ♡

but i think the reason sunjay are compelling to me is inherently tied to the way they individually interact with the other members and how that contrast plays out in sunjay's dynamics. are sunjay really that close in the greater scheme of the enha ecosystem? not really. does jay pay the same amount of embarrassing fondness to sunoo as he does to jungwon? no. but dare i say jay is the person sunoo is closest to in enha? yeah!

this imbalance in levels of importance and emotional distance is super compelling to me, because i think reciprocation and mutual feelings are overrated. just kidding ♡ not really ♡ like anyone else a fan of the uncomfortable layers of considering someone your closest friend but knowing you're not their closest friend??? just me?? also because enha is a new group getting to know each other with good feelings, it's fun to see relationships develop in real-time, and in the case of sunjay, this progress is pretty clearly reflected in the differences between their very first vlive together and their most recent vlive together.

um aside from that, here is genuinely something so heartwarming about the fact that sunoo and jay appear to be polar opposites (of the kinsey scale) and yet jay is the person who sunoo goes to for emotional support and claims he "can't live without". like #OPPOSITES_ATTRACT? #ALLYSHIP? as i've mentioned extensively, jay is very obvious about having favorites and being selective with his affection, so there are not so hidden depths to the fact that he tends to look out for sunoo ;-;

at this point, you might be wondering if i view sunjay as strictly platonic or i ship them romantically or whatever. i'm not particularly interested in shipping sunoo with enhypen members [<--person who has written sunjake multiple times] + i think that sunjay aren't as romantically compelling as say, jaywon or heejay. but i welcome any kind of content we can get? when i was initially trying to think about sunjay in a romantic context, i thought the dynamics would be 80% jay doing the pursuing and 20% sunoo entertaining him. but now i think it'd be fun to see a fic where sunoo develops a crush on jay bc of how nice jay is to him but knowing that jay is actually nicer to other people and finding it mortifying because that's literally jay park. like i'm sorry for doing that to sunoo but I WANT TO SEE IT!

along those veins of #unsoulmatery, i tend towards seeing them as [copied verbatim from my previous post] "people who vaguely dislike each other upon first impression but are eventually stockholm syndrome’d into tolerating each other and end up forming oddly deep bonds from random connections".

otherwise, i'm pretty content with them being besties bc romance is actually overrated and sometimes complicated platonic feelings towards your 4th gen boygroup survival show-mate turned coworker who you share a bedroom with turned classmate who you copy homework off of can actually be compelling enough that someone on the internet writes 1.5 haphazardly organized essays about it.

and yeah! that's all i have to say for now, which is really just saying a lot about nothing. feel free to reach out to me on twitter or drop a cc or comment below or send telepathic mail for any questions that i may or may not be able to answer.