i am trying to find where i said this oh my god sldghdkgfhds first of all wherever you found me saying this thank you i do in fact say shit like this because i do want people to ask me about it and then i get to evaluate my intent and i don't think i did it well here but. we move!

there are... a lot of ways to approach this and i have been typing for what feels like an hour but i think that the important things are this:

• i, infrequency, do not believe that monogamy is practical in an idolverse setting. so i don't write it. there are versions of jeongcheol i have written where something close to it exists, but i don't think it's "smart" or "practical" to tie yourself down to one person for any of your relationship needs, least of all one of your coworkers. it's also a plausible deniability thing, because if you're that way with everyone in some way, then who's gonna notice. moving on.

• but seungcheol does play favorites, and he's been pretty vocal about how if he was a carat, he'd gravitate towards jeonghan initially for looks, then mingyu. guy who will not let you forget that he likes boys.

• both versions of jeongcheol are in some sort of vague, undefined relationship that other members know is Their Thing (canon, to me) and give them a wide berth. mingyu does cross that line, though, because he's been there since day one (real, canon) and Gets them. also like, whatever the hell mingyu and jeonghan have going on is so weird. please look up the live where gyuhan roleplay a breakup. and jeonghan is out to dinner with his family. it's so weird. no one asked them to do all that.

• young gods is very specifically about approaching a FinDom relationship. pavlove is general D/s but also an extended dog joke. (more on that here: https://infrequencies.dreamwidth.org/68590.html)

the first bedroom scene in pavlove is the same bedroom scene in young gods, but the approach, dialogue, and intention are different. the base occurrence is the same. there's a line about jeonghan taking his wallet that gets skimmed over in pavlove, but it's not the focal point of the fic.

in my worm brain, they're the same because both fics start after that insane gyuhancheol live where mingyu and jeonghan perv out over scoups being shirtless. as a non-carat, i'm throwing a lot of "this is a thing that happened btw" at you and sorry but like. they're literally Unwell about each other. choose a pairing for this group and you can probably find something deranged about them.

so like tl;dr is it an "au" technically yes, is it more of a remix or self-reference, also yes. did i actually just take one scene from a fic and use it as a base for another while blocked to see where it goes. maybe so