lol i stumbled into this post totally on accident -- on search for chenle journals -- and i'm so glad i did!!! i've been in the process of overcoming my ningz 1pick tunnel vision-slash-borderline-solo-stanning and get more into the aes as a whole bc i'm very slow and unwilling to warm up to ppl and even idols at that, and your descriptions on them were damn hilarious. as a hag sm group enjoyer i wheezed at that one bit about winrina being the sm-assigned cp and why, despite that very obvious push, they still manage to work with that with no awkwardness and are interesting! tbh i'm a huge cp rebel and lean more towards rarepair dynamics and in the aes' case, win/ning, ningrina and gi/win are SO interesting and funny together, so i've got my sights on their interactions most... since ningz is my 1pick i mostly pay attention to who she touches/interacts frequently and i think you perfectly captured ningrina's dynamic and their potential (all the babying and lapsitting and your implications on them 👀 got me very very interested)... but anyways, back to winrina meta-ing, in a sense, i can see them being like a wilder and more compelling, almost romcom-like version of what sm tried to do with seulrene? like seulrene if both of them weren't so repressed with affection lmao. actually, now that i think about sm ggs fanservice history, i do get some strong early taengsic vibes from these two 😭

but yeah, sorry for the long and random comment from a complete stranger! these days it's rare to see gg tinhat rants bc kpop stan spaces have deemed shipping problematic so aside from your resourceful and super funny tour on their inner workings it also warmed my gay gg stan heart hhehe thank you for this post, i'm def bookmarking this to watch all the videos you linked when i have the time!