thatfeelinwhenyou ෆ

Previous part of your ask

1.1 THEMES

This is such a rich and thoughtful reflection—you’re not only engaging with the themes at a surface level, but pulling it apart through various philosophical, literary, and emotional lenses, and that’s exactly where the depth lies. Like you didn't even have to mention, I can literally TELL you’re a literature student from your first paragraph alone.

a. Sanity vs insanity, control vs loss of it, rationality vs irrationality

You brought up something incredibly important—perspective. Jay believed he was rational. He believed he was in control. But an outsider might view his choices as being driven by rage, grief, and a thirst for vengeance—not reason.

So the question is: Is rationality about intention, or about outcome? If you believe your reasoning is sound, but others don’t agree, does that make you irrational? Does "sanity" depend on your self-perception, or does it require external validation?

In Safe & Sound, the apocalyptic setting amplifies this dilemma. The usual boundaries of morality and rationality blur where sometimes, survival requires cruelty. And here’s the thing: cruelty can be rational in a world where resources are scarce and death is everywhere. So what looks "insane" from a moral lens might actually be logical. In this context, sanity isn’t a fixed state, but a moving target—a sliding scale defined by environment, intention, and societal norms (which, in a post-apocalyptic world, barely exist anymore).

So to give you my perspective to your question: “How, then, does one grapple w the moral implications of it all - knowing that you've caused someone else's death, whether directly or indirectly?” FIrstly, that's such a raw, honest reflection—and you’re absolutely right. It’s not an easy question to answer. In fact, I’d argue that the very act of grappling with it is what makes someone human. The discomfort, the guilt, the shame, the confusion—those emotions aren’t signs of weakness or moral failure. They’re signs that your conscience is still intact.

The apocalypse doesn’t just strip away the world—it strips away the excuses. In normal life, we have systems, laws, social contracts to contain us. But in a world like Safe & Sound, survival becomes the only rule. And suddenly, every choice you make is entirely your own. There’s no law to hide behind when you kill someone to protect yourself. No one to judge you but yourself. And when death is constant and survival often means making impossible choices, there may not be a right answer. If you kill someone who threatened your group, or if you leave someone behind because helping them would’ve endangered your own people—you live with that. The world doesn’t stop to give you moral clarity. It just keeps going. And you’re left behind, trying to reconcile your choices with the person you used to be.

And that’s where your point about moral compromise and emotional volatility becomes razor-sharp. Humans are flawed because we feel too deeply. Grief, rage, fear—those emotions can push us to the edge, especially when loss becomes a daily reality. But it’s what we do in that moment of emotional collapse that defines whether we stay human or slip into something monstrous. It’s that struggle—that internal moral reckoning—that matters most. It’s not whether you made the right or wrong choice in the moment. It’s whether you can look at that choice afterward and say: “Did I do what I had to do?” “Was I just justifying my actions?” “Do I still recognise myself after what I did?” Some people, like Jay, might torment themselves with those questions. Others might shut them out completely. And the longer you survive, the more death you're likely responsible for—whether directly or not. And that’s where the horror sits. Not in the violence itself, but in how it erodes your sense of self over time. And you’re absolutely right—it’s not a question with a clean answer. Not now, not ever.

But maybe the question isn’t: "How do you live with it?" but "Can you keep choosing to be someone who cares, even when it would be easier not to?" Because the day you stop asking, stop caring, stop wrestling with the weight of it all—that’s when you’ve lost something you might never get back. It’s not about never breaking but about whether you come back from it. Because monsters don’t look back. Humans do. So if it feels hard to answer now, that’s okay. That means you’re still human.

b. Emotion vs reason

Following that, your invocation of the Great Chain of Being adds such an elegant classical framework. I think your takeaway is spot-on: “humans aren’t just defined by having emotion and reason—but by the tension between the two.”

It’s easy to think, “Oh, the key is balance.” But like you said—balance is not static. It's fragile. It's situational. What feels like balance in one moment can tip in another. A person who acts rationally 99% of the time might completely fall apart when grief hits—and suddenly, their emotion takes the wheel. And yet, is that wrong? Isn't grief human? Does losing control in the face of loss make you less rational—or just more vulnerable? And is vulnerability truly a sign of insanity?

This is where we must complicate the binary: Emotion is not inherently irrational. Reason is not inherently correct. The most monstrous decisions in history—genocide, war crimes, cruelty—have often been made calmly, coldly, rationally. That’s the horror: pure reason without emotion can be more terrifying than emotion without reason. So perhaps it’s not emotion vs reason, but the refusal to reckon with either side that makes someone dangerous.

“How do you know if you’ve lost control?” The terrifying answer is: you don’t always know. And that’s why characters like Y/N, Jay and Jungwon are so compelling—they walk that razor-thin line between righteous action and moral collapse. They believe they are sane, but their belief doesn’t absolve them.

Here’s a thought: Maybe sanity is not about always being in control, but about being aware of that control slipping. Maybe humanity is not found in perfect balance, but in the struggle to balance. And maybe reason, when separated from emotion, loses its humanity—just like emotion without reason loses its grounding.

c. Emotion and reason in context with the characters

Going back to Y/N and Jungwon’s dynamics in your first ask: Y/N is ruled by her emotions—not in a reckless or impulsive way, but because her past has conditioned her to trust her gut. She’s had to survive alone, make snap decisions, and protect herself at all costs. Her emotions are honest, even when they’re messy. They guide her, even when they lead her into conflict. And that’s what makes her so human.

Jungwon, on the other hand, constantly represses his emotions in favour of reason. He doesn’t feel like he has the luxury of emotion. Every decision he makes has weight. Lives are at stake. So he clings to rationality like armour. But underneath that calm surface, there’s so much suppressed feeling and the fact that he won’t express it openly only makes it build.

They’re both just trying to survive in the only ways they know how—but their internal philosophies keep colliding. And the more the story progresses, the more they’re forced to reckon with the idea that neither emotion nor reason is enough on its own. Y/N can’t just follow her heart without thinking about consequences—especially when her choices impact others. Jungwon can’t just rationalise everything away without acknowledging the emotional toll it takes on him and everyone else. So, what emerges from that tension is this core idea: being human isn’t about choosing one over the other—it’s about learning when to listen to each.

Throughout Safe & Sound, Y/N becomes the clearest example of someone who’s constantly trying to suppress her emotions in favour of reason—but failing. And that failure? It’s not weakness. It’s what makes her human. She wants to make logical decisions. She tries to detach herself emotionally, because she knows how dangerous it is to feel too much in a world like this. You see her trying to distance herself from the group at first, keeping things transactional, shutting down when emotions get too overwhelming. It's her way of protecting herself. 

But the truth is—she does care. And no matter how hard she tries to compartmentalise, her emotions break through. When she sacrifices herself to save someone else and ends up getting bitten, it’s not because she made a cold, rational calculation. It’s because she let herself feel—fear, compassion, instinct—and in that split second, her emotions overrode her logic. But Y/N failing to "stay rational" doesn’t mean she was weak or wrong—it means she was still human. And in a way, that bite becomes symbolic. It’s the cost of caring in a world that punishes vulnerability. But it’s also a turning point. From there, her arc becomes less about suppressing her feelings and more about learning to live through them—accepting that emotion and reason aren’t enemies, but parts of the same survival instinct.

So much of Safe & Sound is about asking: what’s the price of staying human? Y/N tries to survive with reason alone, and it nearly kills her. But after that, when she’s healing—when she’s leaning on others, letting herself be seen, grappling with the weight of what’s happened—that’s when you see her humanity most clearly. Not in her perfection, but in her struggle.

If Y/N represents someone who tries to lead with reason but is ultimately ruled by emotion, then Jungwon is the opposite—someone who clings so tightly to reason that he forgets to feel. His leadership is a big reason the group survives as long as they do. But what makes Jungwon’s character so compelling is that underneath that calm, logical exterior, he is deeply emotional. He just doesn’t let himself show it.

Where Y/N is emotionally reactive but later learns to temper it with thought, Jungwon is emotionally repressed and has to learn how to feel again. His need to stay rational isn’t just about making good decisions—it’s about control. Because if he lets one crack show, if he lets even a sliver of grief or fear in, he’s terrified it’ll break him open. So instead, he suppresses. There are moments where you can tell he wants to reach out, to connect, to feel—but he stops himself, because he thinks being emotional would make him a weaker leader (this is something I feel the real life Jungwon probably experiences but that's assumption and observation on my part).

The beauty of his arc is that Y/N becomes the person who challenges that. She confronts him—not directly at first, but simply by being. Her raw emotion, her willingness to break down, to feel anger and grief and love—that shakes him. Because deep down, he recognises those same emotions in himself. She becomes a mirror for all the things he’s tried to bury. And when Y/N gets bitten—because she let herself feel—it completely unravels him. Because in that moment, he realises: emotion is not weakness. It’s the reason they’re still fighting. Logic and reason might keep you alive, but it’s emotion that makes survival mean something. 

Like Y/N, Jungwon’s arc isn’t about choosing emotion over reason, or vice versa. It’s about integration. He learns that being a good leader doesn’t mean shutting off his heart. It means knowing when to lead with it.

And maybe that’s why they’re drawn to each other in the first place. Y/N forces Jungwon to feel. Jungwon forces Y/N to think. They are the emotional and rational parts of humanity in constant conversation—sometimes in conflict, sometimes in harmony. And that mutual push-pull is what helps both of them grow—what keeps them from falling too far into either extreme. Too much emotion gets you killed. Too much reason makes you a monster. And their relationship is proof that you don’t need to be perfectly balanced to be human—you just have to find a way to feel and think, to survive and still care—you just need to keep trying.

At the heart of Safe & Sound lies a question that refuses to be answered easily: what does it mean to be human in a world that punishes humanity? Through characters like Y/N and Jungwon, we see how the tension between emotion and reason isn’t just a thematic thread—it’s a constant, internal war. A push and pull between surviving and deserving to survive. They’re both flawed. They both fail. But they also both try. They stumble through choices that have no “right” answer, and in doing so, they reflect the truth of what it means to be human.

Like you said: “having both emotion and reason isn’t enough—the balance between them is what makes us human.” I’d push that even further: it's the effort to maintain that balance, the self-reflection, the internal reckoning—that’s what makes us human.

Jay choosing revenge might feel rational to him, but it's his later questioning of whether he was right that redeems his humanity. Jungwon’s cold decisions might be logical, but his eventual grief, guilt, or regret reminds us he's still human. And you—wondering if you're expressing yourself clearly, worrying that you haven’t reached a conclusion—that is the most human thing of all. Not knowing is part of the answer. We’re all just trying to stay safe and sound in our own ways.

Now I am the one that has to apologise for yapping… I’m sorry if I went too deep into this, but you really brought out a part of me I thought I buried in secondary school LOL who knew I’d be doing PEEL analysis and drawing out hypotheses of my own fic on tumblr. But please, don’t apologise. If anything you can send in a hundred asks and I’d read and respond to each and every one of them. 

Thank you once again! Feel free to challenge my views. That’s the beauty of literature! Also excuse my lack of emoji in this. I actually pulled out my laptop just to answer this ask >.<

xoxo, nat <3

Hello!!! I’m so sorry it took me a while to get to this—I really wanted to post Part 7 before I replied to this because you touched on so many topics that I wanted to discuss but cannot do so without spoilers. And I also wanted to take the time to internalise your views and articulate my response as clearly as I could. Because what the actual fuck?! First of all, I’m in awe of your level of emotional intelligence and the way you’ve analysed this fanfiction down to details I didn’t think anyone would ever bother dissecting.

Secondly, the way you broke things into paragraphs, expressed your appreciation, and offered your own perspectives on the themes… I was genuinely shocked (in the best way) when I saw your ask come in. Like someone actually took the time out of their day to write this for me??? Thank you so, so, so much. I saw in your next ask that you mentioned being a lit student, and as a literature girlie myself, I feel honour-bound to respond in a way that scratches that exact part of your brain.

1. CHARACTERISATION & PLOT

I feel like it’s important to say that the roles each member plays in this story took a long time to plan—especially when it came to plotting the crucial story beats. I’d often find myself wondering, Would this specific member actually do this? And then I’d have to remind myself: I’m literally writing a fictional story. I can do whatever I want.

Still, it was challenging to write Y/N into a group that already functions like a well-oiled machine. But I think that’s what makes her character so powerful—her individualism, her impostor syndrome, the way she unintentionally disrupts the group dynamic. That friction forces everyone out of their comfort zones. I tried really hard to preserve her individualistic and slightly stubborn nature throughout, because without that, the plot wouldn’t have made sense—especially when she ultimately justifies her decision to leave. Bottom line, I just thought it didn’t make sense to dumb down a female character who supposedly managed to survive almost a year in the apocalypse alone. Which brings me to the next point. 

There were so many moments while writing where I’d scrap entire scenes because they contradicted something earlier. I don’t know if it’s because I’m a painfully realistic person, but I hate when the media I consume doesn’t align with logic. (Like characters waking up in bed with perfect hair and makeup—terrible example, but you get what I mean.) That kind of stuff breaks the immersion for me. So I’m really grateful that you picked up on the effort I put into keeping things consistent and believable. Then again Jungwon is supposed to be blonde in this, but that’s for my own guilty pleasure 🤭

And this part of your message: “while none of us have gone through an apocalypse before, most of us try our best to be a morally upright person, and as flawed humans, obviously sometimes we slip and we fail to do so, and we have to grapple w the consequences of that. y/n mirrors us in real-life in how she also grapples w her own morally grey decisions, it's just that her circumstances are different: it's about survival - her literal own life - for her, and so every decision she makes is magnified.” Yes. Yes. And YES. That right there encapsulates something I’ve been trying to get across but couldn’t quite articulate: it’s not just about survival—it’s about how survival complicates morality. The desire to stay morally upright is still there, but when the stakes are your actual life, every decision gets filtered through a different lens. I think what's human isn’t perfection, but the struggle to still do right by others, even when it costs you. And Y/N stumbling through that messiness—falling short, doubling back, trying again—that's what makes her so relatable. So thank you for saying that so beautifully! <3

I also think Jungwon and Y/N are equal but opposites in a really interesting way. Y/N doesn’t know how to function within a group—she acts on instinct, often alone. Jungwon, on the other hand, is constantly factoring in others—he’s always thinking of the potential consequences, trying to protect those around him. I’d describe them as 互补不足—mutually compensating for each other’s weaknesses.

But what makes their dynamic so rich (and honestly, heartbreaking at times) is that they’re both trying to do the right thing—they just have entirely different methods of getting there. Y/N is reactionary, emotionally driven, and shaped by isolation. Her independence isn’t just a character trait, it’s a survival mechanism. Meanwhile, Jungwon has leadership ingrained into his very being—he’s strategic, deliberate, and bears the burden of decision-making for the entire group. Where Y/N acts from the gut, Jungwon acts from the mind. And that creates tension, especially when they're forced into situations where neither instinct nor logic alone is enough.

They also mirror each other in their loneliness. Y/N is physically alone for much of her backstory—she’s used to depending on herself. Jungwon, despite being surrounded by others, is emotionally isolated because of the weight he carries as a leader. In a weird way, they understand each other not through similarity, but through shared pressure—just manifesting in different forms.

That’s what makes their chemistry so quietly powerful. They frustrate the hell out of each other, challenge one another, and yet, there’s this slow-burn recognition that they see each other. Not the roles they play, but the people underneath. And it’s through each other that they both start to change—Y/N learns how to trust others, and Jungwon learns to put himself first sometimes, to act with feeling rather than just calculation.

And thematically, they represent that core tension you talked about in your following ask—emotion vs reason (which I will touch on in much more detail later). Y/N and Jungwon are that dichotomy brought to life. But instead of one triumphing over the other, their dynamic asks if it’s possible for both to coexist, even when the world demands they choose.

So yeah… their relationship might not always be tender in the conventional sense, but it’s incredibly intimate in the way they unravel each other’s defenses, layer by layer. No grand declarations, just a slow accumulation of understanding. Which in a world like this? Feels even more intimate than love.

Next part to your ask

withdrawals is crazy. thank you so much for waiting so patiently!! i'm so sorry i took this long to get it done 😭 hope you have a wonderful day too!! 🩷

awwww thank you so much for this ask anon! IM flabbergasted that people actually like my word vomits and willingly come into my inbox to tell me that 😭 safe & sound has been a hell of a journey for me (and for you guys too i'm sure) and you are absolutely right to say i enjoyed writing this. why you may ask? i actually write on wattpad before coming onto tumblr (don't search) and i actually never finish writing ANYTHING. so yes milestone! thank you for your patience rlly and happy safe & sound eve(?) !!!! much love ❤️

atp im in love with you what 😳

i respect your self control because personally i could never 🫡 and because of that thank you so much for waiting so patiently for updates 😭 all the best for your midterms!! <3

stop this is so sweet 🥹🥹🥹 baby 2025 is only just starting, i hope only good things come to you because ain't no way i'm going to let finding me on tumblr one of your favourite things that happened. again, thank you so much for waiting around for me to update i know the waiting time in between parts were abysmal 😭 so now i'll be the one waiting patiently for your ask after you finish reading! love you ❤️

Naddi!! yes, I did see the post and i'm very excited to read it! honestly, i don't think i'm in any position to give any advice... but just know that nothing is ever good enough for everybody. being self critical is okay but don't let that discourage you from expressing your creativity! your abilities are not measured by how many clicks you have on the post, so i hope you don't pressure yourself or think you're not good enough. if anything you're learning, i'm learning, we are all learning. if anyone's got a problem with that then they're static. be confident! i'll be supporting you!!! love you nads 🩷