bluerthanbluets | Entries tagged with fic extended

while fan fiction is definitely just a fun hobby for all of us, i want to kind of insist it can also be a serious and genuine place of figuring out... maybe breaking down? or putting together? real events and feelings and memories. writing does that, and fan fiction is a form of writing practice, so what i'm trying to say is, i've written two fics recently that were, in the most simple terms, about bringing a dead person back (via a game, via a configuration of a humanoid-android) and there's something being said here.

i have been thinking about writing about writing about these two fics even while i was still writing and finishing them. but even now i find it hard to put into words what lies deep beneath the heart of these stories. i treasure the very personal and intimate space i have built around this fun hobby and i think there is something absolutely joyful about the fact that one can simply write whatever, and also attempt to phenomenologize the deep, colossal, softest parts of being a person with a transient, crooked body in this tragic, beautiful world.

like idk whatever the fuck happens when one crosses the border of the living to the dead, but i do know what it's like to stay alive. i do know what happens after you bury a loved one. daddy loves you is a story that reckons with this unique pain of the living that you only ever truly really feel after you get so close to it, after it happens to you without it happening to you yet. when someone passes in the same room as you, isnt that its own kind of death? i know so.

then it is also about the stages of grief: the bargaining, the guilt, the denial, the complicated order and re-ordering of the hurt: which comes first? mine or others' or that of the one who passed? or the world: how do you grieve in a collapsing world? then it is also a story about warmth, the lack of it, the person who brings it, how we labor to find it; or get lucky to be given it. about forgiveness.

also, it is a story about possibilities. it happens in the near (?) future, twenty years forward to 2043, where androids ("solutions for everything") can be purchased to assume the form of our loved ones ("even tragedies"). this element of my fic is based on isabel yap's short story titled "sink", set in the philippines, where one can buy anything in greenhills. it also asks the same questions: what happens then when we can do this? when there is an endlessness to life? fiction makes the argument for us. it strives to enact the shared humanness we collectively experience: to want to bring back the dead; and affirms our imagination: that a future like this could exist, if we are patient, or are daring; and our grief: there is a form of inimitable and honest love when one writes about the dead. when one writes about death, the one incomprehensible thing: it humbles and then expands us, and transforms the burden into the singular, unbreakable task of living.

whatever happens then within the words on the page is one of the very true and very sacred place made by our hands where the dead continue to persist. we could say then that reading about it is a form of keeping them alive. and who would not want that? who wouldn't want to give and be given that kind of grace? the world is so brutal. this year has been so brutal. so keep writing. even if no one is reading it but yourself: you are writing to yourself as well. you are writing to those beyond. that is honest work. a hand is a hand is a hand.

title from heaven's coast by mark doty: Imagine illness as this light; demanding, torturous, punitive, it nonetheless reveals more of what things are. A certain glow of being appears. I think this is what is meant when we speculate that death is what makes love possible.

i havent been writing fic for long actually. i started 2020 and my first published work on ao3 was a story inspired by the song heartbeat by carly rae jepsen. 18 out of my 26 fics are inspired by an existing text (the works of Rob Sheffield and Nick Hornby, the movie The Old Guard, Lost in Translation, the comic 25 lives, the viral story of Cat Person, etc...) which is a lot, isnt it? and i guess a little bit strange. when i think of fic, im always thinking like this: okay, what other texts i love and find compelling and am interested with can i pull together to build a sturdy and new and interesting universe for these guys so i can talk about [grief/intimacy/disillusionment/the joy of sharing music/being loved is being eternal]?

thats the kit formula: the atmosphere or setting of a good movie [visual] + a line from a good poem [textual] + a strong feeling [emotional/metaphorical] = a good fic

in this formula, it hardly matters that it's jihoon's pov or that its a jicheol pairing. u dont even know that its jeonghan until the end! of course its... a means of enlarging the feeling and the fic if you know why - that jihoon does like to talk about music, that jeonghan in his blonde hair kinda does resemble seungcheol. i guess this is also why i dont rly have a favorite ship to write? i dont approach fic writing that way. the dynamics of the characters sometimes comes first and then i think about who i can write in those shoes. or the situation and the setup and then think about the pairing. sometimes its easy. of course its chancheol for a manager actor au. sometimes i need to be compelled by something to choose them, like when i did jihan for the transit love au, it was mostly to fill in the bingo boxes. its quite boring actually lol, when u think abt it. but in the end, it pushes me to be more creative with my choices and its also more generative for me this way.

ack basta. tldr; im always thinking of fic writing practice as a radical recontextualization of an existing work. this means there needs to be several texts or works or situations interacting and overlapping that almost renders, lets say, my jeonghan and chan into characters and a premise that feel new bec its quite far from what we know of them: as idols.

but then. ok heres where i rly talk about the fic u read haha...

well all i want to say is that. writing yearsafter, a canonverse/idolverse/future canon fic felt so challenging to me. bec i was thinking of them as idols and not anyone else. major learning moment. and this felt the most fannish work i ever did! i wrote about their concerts, which ive been through; the renewal last 2021, which i saw transpire online; i referenced to the talk shows they went to, soop filmings, TTT, to kkuma, etc. all of which im familiar with as a fan. i have access to as a carat. ive watched them, ive seen them live, ive heard them talk about their future, their thoughts as a group, about each other, etc. so really, its like, all the material is there. theres so much actually. it was more of a process of omission - what can i do away with so i can arrive more effectively to the story that i wanted? what was the story?

canon svt

writing in the canon mode used to be not very compelling to me bec it was like, dudeee what else is there to write? we watch them, we see their posts on weverse, what else? but then its like: you lift a veil and theres so much story there! esp when u think about how everything we have access to, is already edited for our consumption. their personas, the details we know about their personal life, and sometimes we get view of things we shouldnt see, which is a story in itself as well. so although the "present" canon svt doesnt figure much in the fic, it was still fun to creatively imagine how it went down from the inside. for ex. the hidden protagonist term being coined by their consultant lol, i had a blast realizing that could have been a thing and adding it in the first part of the story. of course that probably didnt happen, but its also like, it could have though. we dont know. maybe not specifically like that, but, something like that.

the allure then of canon writing for me is that exactly: the idea that you could be hitting the nail on the head as you render solid the details behind the veil. and if you don't, well, that's fiction for you.

but also, that then necessitates more care. when i wrote abt scoups meeting with a therapist in one of the chapters, of course, that was something i took time to write. and of course its not perfect, and who knows if therapy speak in 2027 was still going to sound like that, right. but in writing that i was mostly just gearing for the emotional truth of the moment. to portray how better they've gotten. how its gotten better for them.

so while there's that allure of getting it right, theres also that personal fannish disruption there too: writing it in the way you hoped it would go for the idols you love. writing them into a version of the canon thats... kinder? much softer.

the nonfiction in fan fiction

i realized literally just now, wait... in some specific but still limited ways then, since rpf is all about writing about (not for) real people albeit idols/celebrities, it kinda feels a little bit like creative nonfiction doesnt it? esp when theres talk abt care in portraying these people as they are/as idols in their world. i mean theres parts of cnf thats also fictionalized to some extent, except there's that contract between the writer and the reader that what they're encountering in the text is real. anyway yeah i just wanted to write that down, ill still have more thoughts about this later on.

but for now here is a quote from this wonderful interview that im always thinking about in whatever mode im writing in ["you can write what you want, but let us live a little more beautifully the second time": Jihyun Yun in conversation with Nicole Lachat]:

When I first asked my grandma if I could write and publish about her, she gave me an instruction that has stuck with me over the years and I try to always keep it in mind when I write about family. She said, roughly translated from Korean: “you can write what you want, but let us live a little more beautifully the second time.” I took this as permission with a condition that I would fictionalize where necessary, to protect them and myself.

but even if its not in the context of writing about a real though fictionalized guy, i think we still have to protect them in a way. and most importantly, the readers too. i mentioned this to a friend while i was deep in some fic writing feelings: someone out there might read your fic and see themselves in the seungcheols or jeonghans you're writing and... we laugh a lot about how fic is silly and stupid (true) but: it can also be a formative experience to some. so i think care will always be necessary whenever we approach writing, esp when u know its going to be posted on a public platform. anyone can read it.

future svt

this was what made writing this so hard lol. i kept telling lui as i wrote how heartbreaking it is writing them five+ years from now, writing about enlistment and disbandment etc. my carat heart almost couldnt take it! but its also like, we have to be brave. we have to be prepared haha. its not like they would do it forever. my only wish is for them to stay together as the family that they are even after all of this, vague hand gestures, unfolds you know.

writing the whole story really made me love being a fan more too. ack, its like, you hope they would go together forever. but in this world when they dont, you gotta still find it in you to be happy at least you encountered them at all.

CYOA format

idk if this is even a legit Choose Your Own Adventure bec the ending is the same. of course its the same! i guess the whole idea was... no matter what paths sc choose/you choose, they're always going to end up being together. if you didnt follow my instructions and didnt click through the SKIP PROMPTS and read everything, you'll read how almost all the "paths" all follow the same arc. in the paths that show him onstage as scoups, they still sing and do aju nice and bow and say the name. in the ones where they dont make it and scoups locks himself in seoul or goes to daegu, mingyu still ends up visiting him. proposing the same thing. that he's going to gather everyone together again. which circles back to the first part, the request sc asks mg. not explicit there but he was asking him to be the hidden protagonist again. in a sense then, its still just one big story.

my fic for scoups this year was supposed to be based on slam dunk the movie. i had a messy bare bones outline of the scores and the lines i picked up from watching the movie twice in the theaters. i even had the casting (choi minho was going to be ryota's brother, scoups was ryota) and the title (the body is a blade) all down and ready. but once i started it, damn, i didnt know how to write a basketball game. so anyway, pivot. idk how i arrived at this idea but i guess ive had in my head the format of a CYOA long before. just not idolverse. and then its like. well why not. idk i forgot why i decided on idolverse haha but it wasnt something ive written before, and i am unable to write the same thing twice so this.

but yeah tldr; this format rly made my view (and experience) of writing idolverse so much more expansive.

and gave me space to really write all the different scenarios i had in my head when i think about scoups as idol as leader as seventeen member. and made me deeper of a carat. of a couprang. goodness...

i rly thought this wasnt going to be this long, but if you read until this part, thanks. sorry i took up so much of your time! but if anyone has any thoughts abt whatever i wrote here, it would be fun to talk. please say happy birthday scoups and drop my little guy one big wish for his day. he's lovely, isn't he?

I thought my longest work ever was going to be SPRING OF RADIANT SORROW, at a whopping 27,500 posted as a single chapter. I thought that was also the most hardworking fic I'll ever do in terms of research and prep... but it's fun to surprise myself sometimes.

HAPPIEST MOMENT ended up at 49,405 words. Four chapters, posted irregularly starting from February to June. I started this fic in October 2022 with this self-prompt for svtrarepair:

( Read more... )

It's getting dusty in here... I started this thread on twt but let me finish the whole thing here, and expand a bit more.

Before anything else, funny thing, I found my tweet where I listed my 2022 goals and I really said, my writing goals for 2022 is just 3 things:

2022 writing goals:

- write more fics in filipino

- finish my youth of may au aka not drop out from redacted fest......

- collab w someone

+ tentatively: coupzi manifesto (if I find the courage and the heart) ((I WILL))

in a nutshell, I did:

— write MORE fics in filipino: I wrote four fics in filipino!
— I also did finish my youth of may/no happy ending fest entry, and its the longest fic I have this year!
— I also did finish my coupzi fic, which was my scoups bday fic!

...so that's everything except the collab!! Not bad. Good job, Kit. You actually even got more done!

Check this out.

( Complete wrapped below the cut... )

ive always wanted to write a love story set against the debilitating despair and impact of the revoln--a consistent preoccupation of my writing irl. its super hard, and there are 2 stories in my thesis that attempted this, tho in the end it segued into something else, such as motherhood, such as solidarity. not sure what sort of demon got into me, or maybe i just ended up listening to my friends who kept telling me to write something similar to my work in the academe into my rpf. at first i was like, no thats gonna be so weird!! and then this sort of just happened and it kept unfolding and unspooling in my gdoc and it wasnt until i was writing the fifth section, the actual uprising, that i realized the challenge in finishing it... we know how it ends irl. but for chanyeol and kyungsoo here. how does it end for them?

in writing that, i held onto just one thing. the premise of the fic fest: no happy ending. i knew from the start ofc, and i think that was the /appeal/ of this set-up and the fest's demand: that the no happy ending, the tragedy, the angst is the truth of this fic, as it is the truth of life. that this was the painful payoff of the victory of this specific and very real period of time. that this was also how it ended for the character in youth of may, the au parts of this fic and some of the characters are based on (the opening scene, for ex is lifted off the first ep of the drama)

there's so much more to unpack, but for now i think what i rly want to think about is fiction's imaginative power to always be inherently in the business of raising political consciousness in some shape or form. im very 😐 about stories having a moral lesson or whatever, but i do believe there is something to take away from this story: that this kind of bravery is never not for nothing. that being understood and seen is love itself, that love for your friends and for your nation is just as meaningful as your love for someone who makes your heart sing, that love persists. even then... i cldnt help but plagiarize the, grief is love with nowhere to go, because it really is. especially when its a grief that is so deeply rooted and collective: it stays with you.

this fic is about the gwangju uprisings, but it is also about the life of kyungsoo's character here. how he grew up, how he got to know himself better, how he fell in love. how he loved. how there could pretty much be very real people with very real history and pains and joys behind this kind of tragedy. and in the end, how those who loved them grieved for them. wc also leads to how those people, who aren't here anymore, will always be here with us. in the drift.

there is something so contradictory and beautiful about this kind of grief. this i hope in no way romanticizes something so real and tragic. but when pain and trauma is collective, which is the promise of being in a union or part of a movement grounded upon solidarity and shared belief, the weight of the hurt is also collective, is also shared. my pain is yours, as yours is mine. my grief, my loss... we carry it with each other. forever. and that is the mark of a true revolutionary.

this fic isn't perfect. it's actually kinda difficult to read, and not just bc of the length or the subject matter. i wish i had more time to work on it, to make each braiding of the many stories more graceful but working on it gave me such a hard time, like, writing-wise and just, emotionally lol. but im proud of getting it out there. im always so in awe of the space fan fiction offers fans and writers like myself to create something like this. i think out of all my fics, this one strikes the closest to my heart, and is also the closest to reality, despite the many layers that fan fiction, particularly kr rpf lends it.

this a/n was meant to be SHORT, damn i even meant to just post this on twitter hehe but as always, i have so much more to say. i guess to end, i'd like to offer a small, tiny, little moment of silence to all the lives lost in the pursuit for democracy in sokor, and in the same fights we have fought/are fighting here in my country; pinakamataas na pagpupugay sa inyong lahat.