i have been aware of THE KILLER since birth

[rhodochrosite]

my life has not been the same ever since i saw <THIS VIDEO> and then <THIS TWEET> so in this post i will go through some of my favourite Killers per my personal use of the term as it has evolved. not all people who kill are The Killer, it has a very specific set of connotations to me including: wealth, charm, beauty, severe psychological issues, beauty, generosity, manipulativeness, reliance on persona, association with predator animals, being a top, general sociopathy, and also beauty. it's also a gender neutral term but since i exclusively read trashy supernatural het romance young adult fiction i lack examples of girls who are The Killer (suggestions welcome). i AM basically using The Killer as shorthand for a general type of ya love interest which you will probably recognise instantly if you have even a passing familiarity with the genre.

anyway here are The Killers in question, i thought this would be a list of fictional characters who remind me of jaemin but not all of them ended up on here:


NA JAEMIN (NCT)
you know what he looks like

• clearly rich as hell considering his rotation of fuckoff expensive and exclusive luxury watches (collecting watches is inherently a rich person trait imo) and his habit of generously showering other members with $$$ gifts, though he claims not to be which is just such a blatant LIE it is only further proof of Killerism
• bermuda triangle face so handsome it's unreal he doesn't need to clock in because his face does it for him. his face is effortlessly hitting every kpi on its own his face has won employee of the month for like 3 years running. even if i wanted to be mad i couldn't be because every time i see him i instantly forget whatever just happened due to the dark sorcery powering his appearance. gets kinda unnerving sometimes
• extremely You Are Not Coming In, incredible ability to say a lot while divulging literally nothing about himself, these days doesn't even bother to dress up the fact that he is deflecting
• obsessively possessive over his inner circle, gets sulky and jealous when he perceives that he's being neglected but also gets uncomfortable when people are emotionally sincere at him, because he has serious control issues and dislikes not being able to dictate his own image. he doesn't want to react he only wants to initiate
• i've talked about jaemin idolsona 5000 times but the Conceal Everything persona stuff is all basically visible from space. another manifestation of his control issues
• fansign boyfriendisms impeccable, diverting every interview into Love For Czennies treatise #54984845 impeccable
• conscious habit of staring people in the mouth instead of the eyes is definitely a sign of Killerism as well
• seems to have daddy issues (never mentions him, only ever speaks warmly about his mother) which i didn't initially think was a trait of The Killer but for some reason pops up repeatedly in this list? so i guess it is
• happy baby snake face and also unhinges jaw to eat prey whole
• 1.0
• mansplain manipulate malewife

YOO JUNG (CHEESE IN THE TRAP)

• megarich chaebol heir, also happens to have a watch-collecting hobby
• SOOOOOOO SO SO HANDSOME and fashionable, extremely popular with boys and girls alike but especially girls it seems
• straight up a sociopath, near-flawlessly models social courtesy and generosity in order to evade suspicion and stay well-liked so he can orchestrate his schemes when he wants to, but has no actual moral compass (until he meets seol and decides to set her as his new moral compass)
• cold and manipulative as fuckkkkkk you never know whether he says/does something because he means it or because it's what he thinks the other person wants to hear or because he's setting someone up to do his dirty work for him but without ever lifting a finger or saying anything that could outright be traced back to him
• possessive, only likes the people he likes and will go to great lengths to secure their affection, hates the people he hates so much he will ruin their lives over the smallest things via indirect manipulation of others. no remorse whatsoever for actions causing severe physical and psychological harm to others even if it turns out he was wrong
• mostly uses other people to enact his revenge plans but one time he personally beat the shit out of a guy who was stalking seol and nearly killed him, then promptly flipped into caring attentive boyfriend mode when he saw seol, and did not realise this was disturbing behaviour at all. he is so The Killer it's unreal
• strong association in-story with predator animals, particularly snakes: "he will eat me up whole," anyone?
• can get childish and sulky especially when his favourite people (it's really just seol) aren't paying attention to him
• a really really good boyfriend after the toxicity between him and seol starts clearing up (and honestly even when they were at their peak toxicity)
• loves his mother, hates his father
• 1.0
• LITERALLY A BUSINESS MAJOR can i make it any more obvious

ECHIZEN RYOGA (PRINCE OF TENNIS)

• doesn't come from old money like most of the rest of this list but is clearly involved in shady criminal dealings that fund his international wanderer lifestyle, even outside of the gambling fraud he was committing in cruise the movie. the echizens obviously aren't poor by any stretch of the term either
• echizen ryoga is a very handsome young man. super charming and flirty also. 2021 tenirabi valentine's event has killed more people than all the volcanoes on earth combined
• hasn't explicitly committed any murders that we know of but i wouldn't be surprised, considering that in cruise he was working for a guy who didn't hesitate to shoot real actual bullets at middleschoolers and didn't bat an eye the whole time. i think in terms of literal crime he's more of a con artist type, but in terms of tennis he has probably the most indiscriminately destructive superpower ever because he eats other people's superpowers, causing them to permanently lose the ability to play. relatedly(?) his presence in any team causes it to begin destabilising because his existence is inherently corrosive or something. he doesn't even need to TRY in order to be The Killer. not that he displays any remorse over his actions, intended or not
• inner circle consists of one person (his brother) and his complex in that direction is insane, he truly doesn't care about anything else. he sabotaged his own gambling operation for ryoma, he saved seigaku for ryoma, he came to u17 for ryoma, he defected to team usa and then to team spain for ryoma
• in fact has like 2 personality traits outside of his obsession with ryoma (liking oranges, liking naps). The Killerism...
• serious serious daddy issues... nanjiro took him in because he had tennis talent but only if he promised not to play ryoma at full strength until ryoma had finished developing as a player, because nanjiro didn't want ryoga to eat ryoma. and yet ryoga doesn't bear any resentment towards ryoma for being the favourite, he's just totally devoted to him
• i think he has a bit of a fixation on not owing things / reciprocating? eg 2021 tenirabi valentine's event "don't worry, i'll repay you sixfold on white day," leaving team usa for spain to prevent their team from disintegrating and only eating his ex-captain instead of the whole team out of gratitude for their care for ryoma. in that sense he's really generous but he's generous in a way that's like, umm... dubcon... if you know you know
• speaking of 2021 tenirabi valentine's event the manipulationskdfjsgkjfgkjsfdgdfkhjgf Again if you know you know
• a shark... TO ME
• 1.0 though i think he might be open to pegging since he seems pretty adventurous. but like, seriously megachad megatop

ATOBE KEIGO (PRINCE OF TENNIS)

• horrifically rich heir to the Atobe Conglomerate. basically runs hyotei academy, has a private helicopter, literally owns a castle in england, styles himself King of Hyotei and actually pulls it off with his leadership and tennis skills, every exaggerated rich person trope ever applies to him
• i think using oresama 1pp is a Killer trait
• very handsome and arrogant, has a large fanclub in-universe and still regularly ranks very highly in yumejoshi lists irl despite being from a franchise over 2 decades old
• control issues manifest in ostentatious displays of generosity and magnanimity eg: helping seigaku train and mentoring ryoma as a favour to tezuka (and then just becoming obsessed with ryoma anyway), multiple gifts of training equipment to fudomine, all the luxury renovations to hyotei for the benefit of the entire school, the whole movie atobe's gift, etc etc
• being a highranker on the tenipuri competitive circuit automatically makes you a killer even if not a capital K killer and definitely means there are a lot of things wrong with you psychologically speaking, but atobe also likes to fuck with his opponents by forcing them into drawn-out stamina competitions intended to destroy their physical health potentially permanently, so he's especially Killeristic. see: pushing tezuka into a near career-ending injury in his first onscreen match in the funniest and deadliest manifestation of pulling your crush's pigtails on the school playground ever
• as the atobecorp heir he's been media image trained since birth probably and he has a very tight grip on his projected persona of faultless dominating king
• hyotei is cliquey as hell, the most private school girls team out of the entirety of tenipuri imo, though atobe is a pretty fair king and still allocates attention to his other subjects. it's pretty obvious he has tennis team favouritism tho
• 1.0
• being a libra man is inherently Killeristic

KIRYU KYOSUKE (YUGIOH 5DS)

• not rich, is in fact actively seeking to kill the rich
• still handsome though
• super charismatic leader who steadily grew more and more unhinged until he went totally off the rails, killed a guy for real, got murdered by police, came back to life as the vessel of an omnicidal god in order to enact revenge with a side of genocide and apocalypse wreaking. the psychological issues speak for themselves. also one of the few Killers who did actually kill someone onscreen
• overwhelming desire for control and power is what led to the splintering of team satisfaction, who were happy to go along with his vision and leadership until he got too obsessive and pushed too hard and crow and jack were no longer willing to follow (yusei too martyr complexed and head over heels in love to leave at this point)
• loved his team so so much until he perceived that they had betrayed him and then hated them so so much it fuelled his resurrection
• since we only ever see his flawless persona control era in flashback and in the current timeline he's either fully vengeance-blinded maniac or despairingly stricken with guilt and ptsd, he doesn't come off as persona savvy as some other Killers on this list but i do think he always had the murderousness he just used to be better at hiding it. i also think that post second resurrection the sadism is still there even tho he's "reformed"
• we literally know NOTHING about his past before he showed up in satellite one day and was like Hey wanna form a vigilante team and change the world with me? to yusei/crow/jack, so people are definitely Not Coming In
• around a 0.9 though i don't think anyone in 5ds is topping him since it's a bit of a Whoops All Bottoms cast
• being a scorpio man is also inherently Killeristic

ALEC (TWILIGHT)

• this is my list so i will put whoever i want on it including random minor characters from vampire romance ya fiction. as if it's my fault alec from the volturi was classically The Killer in all the reneslec fic i read on ffn when i was 11
• in canon his two personality traits are that he's a member of the volturi (so a literal cold blooded killer) and super super beautiful
• probably really rich since vampires are all rich and since he's part of the vampire royalty cabal that doubly applies. probably really arrogant for the same reasons
• his superpower is sensory deprivation so i think it is not a stretch to read control issues into that
• this passage from my sacred reneslec text 'dusk' by seph meadowes: Even though I was already quite comfortable with him, that lightheaded feeling always seemed to be there when in his presence and that feeling of danger and fear I knew was never going to go away. Everything about Alec just seemed to scream predator. He wasn't the type of predator that charged at you with fangs and claws out ready to draw blood. He was like a snake, just coiled and ready to spring at the right time.
• unknown if daddy issues but like, probably
• 1.0 WHATEVER

JOHN QUINN (NIGHT WORLD)

• probably rich since he is vampire royalty
• really handsome, uses physical attractiveness and somewhat unhinged charm to lure human prey in so he can run a slave trade for vampires
• known for being particularly ruthless, uptight and cold even among other vampires
• obviously kills people for real, no moral qualms about it
• his dad killed his vampire fiancee back in the 1600s but also like father-in-law issues since said fiancee's dad was the one who turned him into a vampire and has been his boss/king ever since then. until he illegally falls in love with a human lol
• 1.0 why not

well that was long as fuck but thanks for reading... if you know of any other killers feel free to let me know ^__^

pt 2 now here!!

Comments

[leeseokmin]

thank you for a list of people to look out for. avoiding all kjllers and kjller traits from now on

SO MANY KILLERS

[sarcoline]

- first off the "u know what he looks like" ok true but also damn. not even one (1) picture? (just kidding ik it's probably because again his memory wipe so handsome beautiful face would've been detrimental to the process of actually completing this post—at least it would be for me but also im njmfcker69 so like. ummm. anyway)
- LOL when i clicked on a link and it turned out to be my own tweet ctfu i really be 1picking killers out here most notably ummmm na jaemin...idek if i have anything to add on jemmin because as we know my njm chaebol theory is quite literally not just a "theory" anymore but also we basically agree on everything and have both also talked about njm idolsona 100000x on tl and to each other and to cc anons at large, like conclusion is he is a beautiful killer!!
- business student snake habitat things but the kpi bit made me laugh like its true... jaemin face carrying the sm stock prices rn it's true!
- how funny that i do also have a few njm daddy issues ccs pending in my inbox rn can't wait to dissect that... 😭like we've said so much of him is just. so open to speculation. again has to do with how he never tells us anything but even then it's like Oh? So It's Like That... the weird-ass pithy "family might not always be there" statement like. i know i'm on my 3rd business day but i still am not done processing that.
>obsessively possessive over his inner circle, gets sulky and jealous when he perceives that he's being neglected but also gets uncomfortable when people are emotionally sincere at him, because he has serious control issues and dislikes not being able to dictate his own image. he doesn't want to react he only wants to initiate
- this is rly the crux of it tbh if u understand this u understand jaemin lmao and it gives such a solid basis/reasoning of why he is so performative/is so Jaemin... ash to give jaemsona 101 crashcourse when!
- also "happy baby snake face and also unhinges jaw to eat prey whole" is quite possibly my favorite description of him. i know i have been proselytizing jaemin reptile agenda on the tl all day everyday but like. he rly is snake gijinka (kind of the killer in this one too)... it's true... and u know who is also snake gijinka?

- jung. you already know the lengths i have gone to ummm psychoanalyze this man (at the tender age of *teen on tumblr ctfu embarrassing asf) but this rly only proves that i have been consistent since ever!! jung really is the killer so much.
- ctfu at the watch collecting hobby i didn't even notice/forgot but now that u mention it... esp the fact he broke it in an altercation while being the killer (iirc)?? hmmm.
- um not to be comparing every single man in this post to jaemin but "he will eat me up whole" is so very jaemin vibes too when he gives people that LOOK, you know the one. like they are both apex predators. and the gets childish and sulky IS THAT NOT JAEMIN IN EVERY DVD EVER... esp the r^nmin one jesus christ.
- and the last point jung business major jaemin fanon businessmajorsona like is that a coincidence? i think not.

ok now headed into completely unfamiliar territory: tennis...

>he eats other people's superpowers, causing them to permanently lose the ability to play. relatedly(?) his presence in any team causes it to begin destabilising because his existence is inherently corrosive or something.
- ok holy shit what are they putting in the tennis?? bc this sounds like the most hardcore shit i've ever heard like if i had any doubt he was the killer this would squash it he's literally toxic to his own teammates, that's powerful.
>LIKING ORANGES LIKING NAPS
- how is he real. well he's not but u know. how.
>only if he promised not to play ryoma at full strength until ryoma had finished developing as a player, because nanjiro didn't want ryoga to eat ryoma.
- the BROTHER COMPLEX i cant believe.... wow... incredible this is so incredibly delicious i might have to start consuming tennis for it wtf.
>in that sense he's really generous but he's generous in a way that's like, umm... dubcon... if you know you know
- this is the sexiest thing i have ever heard... like. um. ok. not saying im taking this and rotating it for au (is it au at this point tho) jaemin but like. not NOT saying that either.
>1.0 though i think he might be open to pegging since he seems pretty adventurous. but like, seriously megachad megatop
- unrelated to anything at all but this killed me

- I HAVE HEARD ABOUT ATOBE being jaemin or whatever but wow i did not know it was Like This.
>likes to fuck with his opponents by forcing them into drawn-out stamina competitions intended to destroy their physical health potentially permanently,
- ummmm this is scary but also PREDATOR THINGS... planning the long con except its not a con it's just slowly painfully delaying the inevitable?? so scary. and to think this is all in combination with his beautiful rich handsome face... and the yumejoshi-isms.....ok tennis jaemin
- ok after reading both of these tennis killers this might be off-base and completely stupid question but is ryoma protag like mark lee is protag? in that everybody seems to have an obsession or complex re: his general existence???

- [knows nothing about yugioh] i love how kiryu subverts some of the basic killerisms while also still being charismatic killer nonetheless...
>super charismatic leader who steadily grew more and more unhinged until he went totally off the rails, killed a guy for real, got murdered by police, came back to life as the vessel of an omnicidal god in order to enact revenge with a side of genocide and apocalypse wreaking
- i just wanted u to know at no point in time while i was reading this did i have any idea of where this bullet point was going to go. but also i will say this added to my impression of u given that yugioh is something u clearly enjoy a lot like ah. i understand completely. ummmm it's positive i promise.
- to be honest the yugioh one was the most ~incomprehensible~ one to me (not the fault of anyone but me like this is purely on a "i need context for these things to make sense" basis) but to be fair i am already familiar with sportsani and i suppose yugioh IS also sports/game ish but it's not. like. the same degree of adjacent to haikyuu that tennis is. u know? its difference.

- ok i barely have comment on ummm alec except so true

- another vampire related media i also have no other comment but like vampires are killers its true. statistically speaking u will find more Killers in vampire media that's how the math works. I think.

- actually haibara being the killer is saur true, although my kneejerk reaction was nooo not her!!! but. i get it. when girls are killers its different. its most special thing in the world.
- haibara being beautifullest cool hauty morally grey kuudere of the world is so important to me... like she is so cool and obviously protective over her real feelings but does it in a way that is so ummmm endearing to me. the tell me kudo-kun kills me she's like "what would u do if i was the killer? which i am but not in the way that currently matters to u. but i am the killer tho. but also u need me the killer to help u find ur killers so what are you gonna do, kudo-kun?" sorry for not making sense but this is what haibara sounds like in my head.

- im trying to think of other killer traits but i think u really have them covered like trying to hold back my scorpio monkey brain that seeks out toxicity like a coke addict but truly "wealth, charm, beauty, severe psychological issues, beauty, generosity, manipulativeness, reliance on persona, association with predator animals, general sociopathy, and also beauty" is like a checklist of sorts for me i hope for everyone sake but most importantly my own i get well soon but also i know that i will never change never improve so <\3 it is like that... i know there are a subset of a few people who are Killer-adjacent but not quite killers tho...like maybe if they tick off 4-7 of the 9 traits listed above they could be considered killer-adjacent?? killer-lite, if u will?? almost-killers?? potential killers??? i would say ummm oikawa has a few of the traits (charm, beauty, manipulativeness, reliance on persona) as does ummm kaito even tho one of the main points in the series is that kaito is Not A Killer but um. he Could be. is the thing. ok i think that's it for killer adjacents for now.

onto more Killers — gojo satoru from jujukai is the killer as well (charm beauty severe psychological issues, generosity, manipulativeness, reliance on persona, apex predator) but i think he especially embodies the trait of like persona in a very specific idgaf way, like keeping his enemies and friends alike on guard bc he is so wildly unpredictable and overpowered that he doesn't have to care about the consequences? and so when he is Serious, it catches everybody off guard and he ends up being the Winner. omg this comment has no semblance of structure but now that i think about it Winning is a very important aspect of being the killer like i guess that is self-evident, but they are always trying to maximize their potential to win, whether that is through the art of normalperson disguise or gaslight gatekeep manipulations or blinding other people via so handsome so beauty face. life to them is usually like a zerosum game where if they do not win they are losing and so it makes sense that other people have to be losing for them to win. but of course they are the only ones who can know this and think about it like this so they spend the entire time pretending that it is Not Like That to them even tho it clearly is.

racking my brain for other killers or even killer-adjacents but like i have not consumed enough ummm anime/fictional character content in the past few months to retain anymore relevant meta lmao!! conclusion is i would not trust these men (not ai tho ai has rights) within an inch of my life to be anything but perfect conmen but even with this awareness i would still willingly get conned bc um i know myself and know that my estimated wait-time to falling victim to stockholm syndrome (as per tiktoks we have talked about) is ummmmm perhaps a week a best. sometimes you are diseased and thats okay. thank u for the Killer scholarship dearest ash! and apologies in advance for the meandering drivel 😭

[prizefig]

i'm trying to come up with any other killers i'm aware of but i may not be susceptible enough to this type and also i can't remember any media property i've ever consumed in my life so forgive me for hypmicing in your inbox but i must:

- oresama 1pp as a killer trait doesn't hold true for samatoki, despite being beautiful and unhinged and likely having committed multiple actual homicides, because he doesn't really have a charming persona and is not really manipulative since he can achieve most of his goals with physical violence. and his assigned animal association is a horse.
- you could argue ramuda is the killer since he meets most of the criteria, except for predator animal association, but the persona in question isn't really the suave and chic type so it feels more like a trope subversion than played straight.
- rei is a classic killer with 30 years more mileage on him, the beauty point is debatable if dilfs are not your visual type but he's checking every other box in spades
- i want to argue for honobono as an example of a female killer but she's such a minor character that it's hard to tell, she literally doesn't even have a canon design yet. she is definitely violently sociopathic, manipulative, a top, and affects an over the top sweet persona while doing her violently sociopathic manipulative top activities.

[permutative]

this post was sooo fun and interesting thank you for sharing T___T also this made me want to think of female killers but ngl the only one i can think of at the moment is from a KDRAMA... it's called run on and the character in question is seo danah (played by snsd sooyoung), she's kind of insane but in the ways you articulated in the beginning i.e. she's a chaebol heir and manipulative and beautiful and kind of a psychopath but like in a good way (?? or at least an entertaining way...) and she definitely has daddy issues LMFAO T__T (tfw ur dad fakes the birthday of your younger step-brother in order to make him get the inheritance??? like what). the female lead in run on is kind of scared of her which you can see in this gifset. idk though!! ty as always for the interesting dw content i'm rhodochrosite fan <3

[braintransplant]

ash your mind is so beautiful

[latespring]

ohhhhh this is what the killer means!!! thank you for the explanation