convergent lines - the meizini manifesto

[onetenths]

originally when i started tossing out the idea of writing a meizini primer of sorts i had the plan to do it in a much more structured way - a girlrock-esque style of meta analysis. unfortunately i really don't have the sort of time to do that, so instead you'll have to live with this more cokerant adjacent exploration. my baddddd :3 take any complaints up with my university and the degree of architecture for stealing all my free time. regardless, i'll try to keep it coherent and with some sort of form, but if i lose the plot then, well. what can you do.

anyway without further ado: the meizini manifesto, by yours truly.

D: megan knows me so well.
M: no, because i'm such an observer.
D: you're so nosy.
M: i'm so nosy!

so, okay. where do i begin?

meizini, or megan/daniela from katseye, if you for some reason are here without knowing who they are, are an interesting pairing. they're popular in a way that will perhaps confuse you if you joined the katseye fandom, say, post touch era, and will definitely leave you wondering if it was beautiful chaos era that introduced you to the group. they don't seem to interact. they don't really talk to each other, or mention each other, or even really look in each other's direction during content. they like each other's instagram post at a rate of about once a month, and whether or not they comment depends on, like, nebulous vibes we as fans aren't privy to. and yet.

recently megan and dani were spotted going out to eat dinner together; megan and dani have never breathed a word about this.

for a while meizini had the largest number of ao3 fics by a substantial margin, essentially up until the maphinz/sodani fic surge post-gnarly era, and even on a surface level reading, it's not hard to understand why. dani is the group's chronic nonchalant straight girl: she wears the tiniest crop tops imaginable with jeans that sag low enough for her to force her underwear to peak out and she thinks drew starkey is, like, hot, for some reason. she's an ex-cheerleader. she used to straighten her hair and kept it blonde for all of high school and is, on the surface, the perfect normiecore hype house mean girl. megan is the opposite of all that. she's dorky, and candid, and does things like make a new candance dance tiktok every comeback and post drafts of her wearing tshirts that say shit like I PUT THE GAY IN DYSLEXIC and talk in a baby voice on live in front of fifteen thousand people. even without thinking about it too hard, they're fun. they're different. this is the popular girl x nerdy loser. this is sorority girl daniela avanzini who probably has a boyfriend named brad and, like, has two friends and eats her lunch in the library alone megan skiendiel. it's a time honoured dynamic. every group has one in some way or another.

except, well. they're kinda not any of that.

to clarify, i don't think there's anything necessarily wrong with this sort of interpretation. i think that everyone's allowed to extrapolate their own meaning from what we're given. this is the nature of rps, after all - content informs perceived dynamics and in turn our own lives and experiences inform what exactly it is we want to infer. this isn't a disingenuous reading, and i think it's valid and fun and i enjoy having a little giggle at these concepts, i just think that there's more to it.

so let's circle back. where do we begin?

i think the fundamental ethos of meizini is this: they're not as different as they seem. it's not as if they're not not anything i mentioned earlier: daniela does try to be miss nonchalant vamp queen and megan is a homeschooled dork, and they do clash in some ways because of that, but also, like, they weren't the original twins of katseye for no reason. for all of dani's attempts at coming across as cool she's still endlessly kind, and the type of girl who laughs at peepee and poopoo jokes, and in any given katseye live there's half a chance she's up from her chair buzzing around the room because something someone's said has gone and set her off. she's impulsive, she's silly, she has adhd, and yoonchae listed her as one of the loudest for a reason. she likes her privacy and protecting her peace and yet has zero critical thinking skills about whether or not she should keep her spotify account's username as her full name. and in the same vein, megan is not just the quirky ginger-turned-pink-haired homeschooled bisexual. megan has garnered a reputation for being loud when she's not, really - if anything she's one of the quietest alongside manon and yoonchae. she likes to think, and watch, and just observe what's happening around her. she's contemplative to the point of overthinking. she reacts rather than instigates. she's a rule follower (most of the time), chronically early to everything, and is the staff's go to for script segues because she tries to be professional above everything, really. she doesn't like abrupt change and is the type of person who really needs to sit with things to be able to cope and process. it's - yeah. i'm losing track.

M: actually a lot of people stopped me and dani on the street before we debuted and thought we were - siblings.
D: yeah, when we had the same colored hair.
M: but now it's different.
D: but now it's different.
L: [mockingly] but now it's different, now you can't tell.
D: she's a ginger! a chinese gingah!

i think the thing is that meizini grew up parallel to each other. when so much of their childhoods mimic the other's i think its inevitable they have so many fundamental similarities. but at the same time, of course there are differences - when one has learnt to compartmentalize, to ignore, to try and force herself into boxes that don't fit, the other has had the support systems in place to, well. not have to do any of that.

daniela is really interesting to me. i think often of the moment in poo star academy where they'd sat her down for an interview and she'd said, i didn't have a lot of girl friends before this. my lovely friends online often give her flack for this which, well, yeah, she probably deserves a little of, but mostly i just think it's sad. because, okay. picture this. first you're three, and being put into these tights and leotards and frilly skirts for the first time and your mom is teaching you to dance. this is the first thing you really internalize. you're born in atlanta and you spend the first seven years there before you're packed up and moved just a little further down south, down to miami. here is where so many of your extended family live. this is where you can speak spanish with the people down the road, and your mom sits you down on the edge of the bathtub and combs through your hair while lecturing you on how to take care of your curls, because every time you go out to play fútbol with the cousins, or the boys, or whatever, you keep getting the worst tangles she's ever seen. sometimes your family goes on trips to cuba, and these you remember fondly: here is havana, here is your family, here is where your mom grew up. here is where you are from. but it's not your home, not really, because that's atlanta. and while all this is happening there's still the leotards; the frills become a little more elegant the older you get. your mom is really serious about this dancing thing, and so before long, even before miami, you're learning how to stand in front of cameras, you're learning what eyeshadow and eyeliner are, how to make the right faces for the judges. as quick as you internalize dancing you're growing around the shape of stage lights baked into your skin and camera wires taped along the ground, video view counts on youtube. at some point you move back to atlanta. you move schools again, and then again, and then again. in middle school someone tells you, have you ever thought of blonde?, in freshman year someone turns their nose up at some food your mom packed. you straighten your hair. you bleach it blonde. your abuela hates it and purses her lips whenever she sees it, but, like, there's this boy at school, and he said it looked nice the other day, so whatever. you go on some music videos, you make some tiktoks, with middling reception. and through all this: you dance. at school you can't be cuban, not really. on stage you can, though. on stage you can.

i really love dani. i think she sucks, sometimes, and i think she suffers from straight politically ignorant white girl syndrome, but also i know what it was like to grow up at the same time as her. sure, lara and megan are not that much younger, but i don't know, there's something kindred about 2004. the thing about dani is that she's really the most emotionally constipated of all the members. megan has been going to therapy since, like, probably the first time she set foot on a disney set; manon and sophia are old, and have lived actual normal lives, and are just generally well adjusted, mature human beings; lara is a self-appointed "old soul", woke as fuck, and actually spends time thinking about her emotions. she, like, genuinely probably sits and tries to self-actualize. she is the exception to the rule. and yoonchae is - well. you know what, dani can go emotional immaturity for emotional immaturity with her groups 17-year-old-maknae, who would probably still win that battle. because yoonchae is zen as fuck, and has sophia and lara.

daniela has spent a long time shaping herself into being what other people want from her. her parents, her friends, people on the internet. the whole lot. i think her family loves her, and i think she loves her family. i don't doubt that. but she also had the most stereotypical second-generation american middle class girl upbringing of them all. she went to highschool, she was going to go to college. she cares. she had expectations to meet. she wants to be seen as being as normal as possible, and in her predominately white highschool, that was by chipping away at her identity so she could fit in. she wanted to be the white blonde cheerleader with the quarterback boyfriend, and to be, like, friends with charli d'amelio. and in turn i think she's still catching up to the rest of the members in the being yourself battle. i think she doesn't quite know how to be open with others, or how to navigate not having to be the stereotypical popular girl. i'm not sure she even really had proper friends before dream academy, the same way lara has bestie drew and bestie harry, or megan has kylie, and her friends from hawaii.

i've always wondered what it was that compelled dani to audition for dream academy. before all this she didn't even care about kpop, so it's not like she did it because she knew what hybe and bts were, and while she obviously knows her western girl group history, there's nothing really about her that screams i auditioned for this because i wanted to be nicole sherzinger. the girl's idol is playboi carti for god's sake. she's ATL down. but, like, for all her efforts to be the normal white girl from atlanta who also happens to dance, she did anyway. she auditioned. because she wanted to be on stage, to perform, because she wanted something more. and there's something cosmic about that, i think.

some miscellaneous daniela character notes

to touch back on daniela's preoccupation with 'normalness' i think dani is the type of person to be like. yeah i have adhd. idk what being "neurodivergent" is. like idk it's a little mean but to me it's just, like, i think she's averse to things that people would've turned their nose up in 2019-pre-covid high school. she'll like a haha funny instagram meme about adhd but she probably won't engage in public complex discussions about neurodivergence. she's getting there though.

she really is adhdpilled but like, in ways i don't think people realise. i think on the hyperactive - inattentive scale she leans heavy into the physically hyperactive side - during lives and such she's prone to moving around a lot, and she tends towards classic adhd moments such as accidentally talking too loud without realising, impulsivity, getting distracted easily, etc. dani is LOUD. like she is. it's funny to me.

she's a neat freak with time blindness. do not get crumbs on her car. she will file her nails on your bed without thinking, though.

she likes to read but it won't be anything good. girl likes her romance hetslop and i respect that

i think dani sometimes rubs people the wrong way with her personality. the moment during dream academy where missy was, like, dani's great but her attitude is a real problem, changed my life a little the first time i watched. i mean first of all we don't ever get to see what exactly it was that dani did to spark such a reaction from all the mentors, but also i wonder if it was just not that bad. i think she can be a bit too abrasive sometimes, and can speak without thinking. where sophia is great at sympathizing with someone and knowing the right things to say, dani is the type to flounder a little. to go, like, um, i'm not sure what you want me to say. it'll be okay? i think she struggles with authority, re: missy and the DA mentors.

i think she is learning. this is my most important takeaway. so much of daniela is shaped by her high school experience, but i think it's obvious that dream academy was life changing for her, as well. in the way she interacts with the world, with other people, with the way she views herself. the daniela at the start of dream academy is so so so different to the daniela we have now.

she tends towards compartmentalizing and ignoring rather than overthinking and shutting down

dani is a perfectionist DOWN. on the katseye neurosis scale she's not quite as neurotic as megan and sophia but she's still deeply obsessive over little details. if a performance isn't perfect from start to finish it'll bother her, like when she was injured while preparing for MAMA, apparently made a mistake, and thought it was the most abhorrent performance from her ever until she, like, opened the youtube comment section and realised that no one noticed no one cared and everyone thought she was amazing.

also like not to beat a dead horse but dani is really quite good at being exactly what the girls need from her. i think that daniela's prior obsession with trying to fit in and assimilate into the culture of her heterosexual white peers has led her to being able to take note of and adapt to the personalities of her members: manon and lara match her freak the most in various ways but dani also knows they like when people play off their jokes. yoonchae and megan are the opposite of this. dani knows they're quieter, and she knows they need patience. so she's patient. sophia is her heterosexual sister

she's a zero on the kinsey scale

M: Happy birthday to one of my fav people ever 😍 @/daniela_avanzini
literally both watched each other grow up 🥹❤️

on the other hand, megan is so fun to me. if we've known daniela for nearly two years now and still aren't completely sure why it is she decided she wanted to be in a girlgroup, megan's motivations are clear as day.

i said meizini's childhoods are parallel to each other, and i stand by this: they both started dancing as children, they both moved as young kids, they're both proud of where they come from, their families. megan and dani grew up surrounding themselves with the concept of fame, just a few inches out of reach. megan on disney. dani on sytycd. the twelve billion different ads they'd filmed. all the modelling. in some ways dream academy was the last resort for both of them to finally get what they'd both been chasing like dogs all their lives.

but this sort of life impacts a person. dani turned towards making herself palatable, even though she kinda sucked at it, and megan turned away from normalcy entirely.

it's difficult to put megan's personality down onto paper. she's just so so nuanced as a person, like, she's seen that dual cherry epithet and is determined to live up to it as much as possible. but i think out of all the members she's the one that people get... not wrong, but maybe misunderstand, the most. people often see her as this, like, loud, bumbling dork, who's emotionally immature and a little dumb. and like i said, there's nuance. she IS a dork. and she is a little pathetic. but i think she's also one of the most grounded members in the sense that she understands herself really well. she's someone whose identity is changing every day and she's aware of that, she's not afraid of it.

i remember her saying once, during a live, maybe, i'm not entirely sure where, that she doesn't talk to a lot of the people she hung around with growing up. and i think a lot about this. megan moved to LA when she was ten years old and dropped out of middle school to focus on chasing a dream. you see the people she used to hang around and it's like, these are the sort of people daniela would've frothed at the mouth to be seen around, all these white influencers who post their little dances on tiktok and then are seen at, like, the kids choice awards or whatever because of their little dances on tiktok. and you see megan, who is not addison rae or charli d'amelio. megan who is essentially still a child, she's like thirteen, trying to stuff herself into a box that's not quite her. and where her and dani split is that, well. she grew tired of it. she's not these people. she's a little weird, and little off kilter, and she knows this. she knows. she's been going to therapy since she was like five years old, she's probably internalized just how much she's not like these people.

i think people see clips of megan out of context, like the clip of her making that face during her solo live, or the ones of her telling stories like how she ate a dog treat once, or clips of her doing math and getting it wrong, or whatever, and they get this idea in their head that this is all that she is. but then you sit with her for just a little longer, and you get this girl who has spent the last nineteen years of her life growing up on camera. who is so open about her struggles and so eloquent about just the reality of being alive. you watch her work and you see a girl who is so so dedicated to her job. who is a perfectionist. who won't stop until she gets it right.

various megan character notes that are less coherent idk nothing's really been coherent but like ygwim

she's obsessed with coffee and has like four a day. she doesn't like milk alternatives even though she tried. she's SO picky about food, like it's really interesting to watch. and she makes this one specific face whenever she doesn't like something she eats and it makes me laugh. she's also very particular about textures, see: the fourty soggy vs crispy fries debates.

she struggles a lot with reading the room and picking up on the vibe, and i think this translates into her social awkwardness. we know she has anxiety and that she takes meds for it. she's mentioned she goes through phases where her mental health drops, and during these phases she tends towards shutting herself in, bedrotting, the likes. but she's also so self-aware that she can acknowledge all this, and she has the coping mechanisms to deal with them.

megan really is, like, so much calmer than people give her credit for. i bring this up so often because it just really bothers me that this idea people have gotten of her that is really more applicable to someone like dani, or lara, or manon even. but the thing is that this is from an external view. i think internally she is really all go. like her brain is in overdrive.

re: dani's compartmentalising and ignoring, megan's the flipside to this. she's overthinks and shuts down.

she has the WORST CASE of momagership i have seen, ever. her mom is her number one fan and also megan is the world's first adult popstar with a helicopter parent. it's to the point where sometimes even i feel the need to like shake her shoulders and say that she doesn't need to listen to everything her mom tells her. at the same time, though, i really appreciate it. i think how close she is with her family is helping her stay grounded at such a. what. perilous? time of her life to be so suddenly famous. like yesssss ground her and take her car mama!

it's interesting to compare the sort of interview responses megan gives between debut era and now. back during touch era i remember her saying she's the type of person who is bad at listening to advice sometimes because when she gets the idea to do something, she wants to commit. like she needs to experience it for herself. nowadays she admits to finding stepping outside of her comfort zone scary, and she's less likely to try something if she finds it grates on her too much. i wonder if this is a post-fame impact sort of thing, or if she was just trying to convey a different aspect of her personality when they were much more green. both are really very megan so. idk

MEGAN DRIVES A BMW M440i GRAN COUPE. SHE DOES NOT DRIVE AN M3. PLEASE STOP WITH THIS MISINFORMATION. YOONCHAE DOES NOT KNOW THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN CAR MODELS SHE IS YOUNG AND INNOCENT AND JUST A GIRL SHE WAS REFERENCING THEIR SONG. PLEASE

D: so the first person i met was - megan, actually.
M: really?
D: it was you!

as for how this all relates back to meizini. well.

i think their upbringing is so intrinsic to how their dynamic works. because on one hand you have daniela, who tries her best to be this cool, nonchalant girl, because she thinks this is what people will like, and want from her - and then you have megan. megan who has no desire nowadays to really be anyone except herself. who is not going to go out of her way to curate a specific, palatable personality for the audience. so at first glance you get these two girls who, on the surface, seem completely different to each other. you give them a passing look and you assume you'll get this opposites attract sort of dynamic.

but then you peer a little closer, and realise these are two people who understand each other in a way very few other people can.

i like meizini because you have to pay attention, i think. from dream academy to now they've undergone so much growth, both as individual people and together, that the way they interact with each other has morphed into something else a little more quiet. i don't think that they're the type to be publicly intimate with each other anymore, because i think they know that it isn't something they need from each other. when it comes to being, like, fun, and an idol, it's not each other they're going to go to. dani's first choice is always going to be manon, and megan's will always be lara. and it's fine. everyone is always so convinced that two members hate each other just because they're not attached at the hip.

megan and dani have never been overly effusive with each other, but this isn't something that matters when they have always, obviously, been fond of each other. they like each other. for them, intimacy lies in dani never leaving megan out of discussions about dancing, about who the best dancer is, about making sure people remember it's them, together. it's dani laughing at megan's stupid jokes when no one else does. it's dani choosing megan's sandwich as her favourite, dani deciding in the middle of a live she wants to go hang out with megan. it's megan being a quiet, steady presence, someone dani can team up with for games, someone she can sit next to on a couch and spend thirty minutes with, in their own little world, giggling at comments together. it's me and megan // megan is the person i'm most comfortable with, like that // i think five danis because i can never get enough of her.

it's wearing the same necklace for a month straight. it's choosing to lend a necklace with one person's initial on it. it's agreeing to wear that initial around a neck, for everyone to see. it's buying matching clothes and never mentioning it. it's going out for dinner together and never sharing it with the world. it's leaning on each other after getting blasted in the face with green slime, and the implied shared trailer after. it's knowing each other's coffee orders, the breakfasts they eat, all the stories before anyone else. it's being the person she runs to on stage after she gets her name called. it's being the person she can look up to, still, after all these years.

the thing is that megan and dani haven't gone anywhere. maybe they don't post photos of each other in their instagram dumps anymore, and it's like, okay. who cares. all it takes is paying a little more attention to realise they have always been there for each other.

D: i love megan. she's always there for me whenever i need someone to talk to, she's the sweetest.
M: she is the most thoughtful and giving person ever. i love her so much 🍒🖤

the other thing about meizini is that, like, i don't think they would be very good in a relationship. oh my GOD do i think megan would drive dani crazy, like, realistically. megan leaves old soda cups on her desk and has clothes all over the floor of her room. and megan would get so irritated at dani's inability to get anywhere on time. but, really, if you think about it, it's why they're good. they're not perfect. and they're for sure not soulmates.

it's like this. weirdly enough, they balance each other out. dani is leashed so tightly by the burdens of day to day performance that megan can be someone she lets go around, a little more. i mean, megan's seen everything, already. she's been there. she knows what it's like to have the sort of upbringing they've both had. and dani is someone megan can rely on, in a way she doesn't with, say, lara or sophia. dani isn't going to make her have to self-analyse, to talk about her emotions. manon is megan's cool older sister, someone she can aspire to and admire. sophia is the leader. lara is her best friend. dani is - dani is the in-between, and megan's equal, in a way.

also they look really good together. megan's tall, lanky, boyish broad shouldered ass vs. dani's 5'5 skinny waist body tea charm. i just like that.

in the end what it comes down to is easiness. it's easy for them to be around each other, to be with each other. there's no expectations there. with each other they can hang out outside of the cameras and the phones and the fans just to gossip like classmates, and never feel the need to have to share that they did. it's the easiness of having matching tastes, in clothes and food and music. it's the easiness of being able to meet each other on stage.

they're not best friends. i can admit that. but when what they have is just a little different from everything else, it becomes hard for me to not be obsessed with everything about them. and maybe in the end this will mean nothing. maybe megan and dani will continue like this for the rest of their career, operating in this amorphous, nothing-space, where the biggest reminder that they're, like, still friends, will come in the form of them high fiving in an interview. but also, like, i kind of don't care. i'm in too deep. i want everything they'll give me, and more importantly, everything they don't.

2022 // 2025 ♡

Comments

[maybonne]

you know, dani has always been the girl i've found the least interesting on a personal level--she was one of my favorites to watch in the doc (i will never be over that scene where karlee is breaking down, feeling like her elimination is imminent, and dani basically goes wow i get it...i would hate to be in your situation...But I'm Not) and i like writing her in moderation, but i've never felt any desire to, like, delve into what makes her tick. i feel like this has (a) made me understand better why that is and (b) given me a lot more to think about when it comes to her, so thank you so much for that, truly!

honestly i think one of my favorite things about katz shipping is that really none of them strike me as soulmates. okay maybe maybe maybe i would buy meichae soulmark a.u. but even then i don't know. but with maphinz + meizini especially to me it's not, like (no idea if this will land) a 2yeon or taeny situation where these people are each other's perfect other halves. but they complement each other in some ways and clash in others and it's clear that they love each other enough to work through it. which is always more interesting and even more meaningful to me at the end of the day

thank you again for writing this, i feel spoiled w brilliant katz meta recently!!