i really like this thread esp regarding how khun and bam love each other differently but it does get me thinking if khun's 'love' is self-sacrifice and single minded devotion then how does bam express his love and what's it like compared to khun's https://twitter.com/khunviolegrace/status/1309817318399258624

i feel like bam's ability to express love conventionally is already kind of fucked from the very beginning since his upbringing was the way it was so he doesn't have the same sort of experience and outlook on people like others would so he wouldn't know how to

act in regards to them and then referencing spooky's excellent reply to this thread (which people should read. read it right now) https://twitter.com/euludey/status/1309877449283588096

"bam doesn't know how to love beyond being in a life of death situation where he has to fight for them." which is sadly very accurate when you consider how he proved his care and love for his friends for 6 years was to keep fighting and killing for fug so they'd stay safe

then when you factor that in w/ the fact he's got little-to-no exposure to how to care for other people cuz of his upbringing you get this guy who's got no idea how to really show his care for people and it only starts to become obvious when you see how hard he fights for them

but despite not being familiar w conventionally loving he definitely cares about people. (kind of) (maybe to an unhealthy degree) referencing the cave again but bam got used to putting 'x' above all others, himself and his wellbeing because of how he got used to his world

revolving around rachel. this is pretty much summed up in the quote "i have something that i fear more than death"

1. what he fears is losing 'x'
2. he is willing to sacrifice his wellbeing to keep that 'x' intact
3. reflection of his fear of loneliness

to elaborate more on 3, it's because 'x' is always a person or a group of people. in s1, it was rachel. in s2, it was his friends overall but mainly khun and rak and s1 crew. he cares so much about people that he literally regards them more important than his life

but it's important to note this isn't something completely selfless on his part. he's just trying to ward away his loneliness because loneliness is painful for him. in a way, he's protecting others because he wants to protect himself.

onto the next point which i swear is connected to my tangent, bam forms a sort of tunnel vision on this 'x' where he starts to not care about the other people around him as long as he could fulfill protecting 'x'. not as a result of cruelty but that's just how his brain works

i said 'x' was rachel in s1, 'x' was khun, rak and s1 crew in s2. i think the discussion here is based around s3 so i'm gonna theorize the current line up of 'x' in terms of priority is this. probably

1: khun, jinsung, hwaryun
2: rak
5: other friends
10: other people

okay so to finally connect fully back, i think i can conclude that bam's "love" is sort of hard to define because some of it is an output of him trying to ward off his loneliness and the ambiguity of how bam perceives anything because of his lack of exposure to people

but it IS real and it DOES exist and it's not a 100% selfish thing where he's just trying to protect himself because there's definite proof (and current development) wherein he protects people and cares for them simply because he does. also his lack of exposure to people

makes him clumsy in terms of expressing it. but you can definitely see it in how he fights for people. (see: end of workshop battle him going ape shit nuts trying to protect hwaryun) (see: end of data arc him going ape shit nuts attacking rachel because of what she did to khun)

(see: the entirety of s3 so far and his attempts to save jinsung) BUT my examples do prove the fact that khun isn't an exception. kind of. khun's "love" so far is complete 100% devotion to just bam, but bam definitely has a set group of people hes loves in mind that he'd die for

and the top people on that tier list is definitely khun, jinsung, hwaryun and rak (according to what i've picked up anyways) but like. now it comes down to the question "is khun a LITTLE higher on this tier list, just a smidge, or a lot, compared to jinsung and hwaryun?"

well i wanna say yes but trying to compare the gravity between "fighting off super strong fug guy when he may die any second now for hwaryun" vs "literally threatening to kill the woman his life revolved around because she messed w khun" vs "starting a war for jinsung"

makes my head spin. but if we consider 'amount of time spent w/ character' and all and other small gestures i DO think khun edges a wee bit further than hwaryun and jinsung. but is bam aware of this and the weight of this importance? probably not no

i'm still a hardliner on the idea bam does not register romance/nor think about it often. but anyways i do think the mental tier list gets muddled in his head a bit and it's not as strict as i make it out to be it's really just like a Group Of People He Cares About A Lot.

khun's likelihood on being on top of bam's list is high though and khun's tier list of who's important to him probably goes like "1: bam 10: whoever keeps bam alive 100: everyone else" so. well. in conclusion.

1. bam's perception of love is weird
2. bam's ability to express love is limited
3. bam definitely loves people though and cares about them and his favorite (note: only) way of expressing that is fighting to the death for them
4. if we pray hard enough he will learn other ways