poppyseed

 Happy holiday love meme season! The best time of the year.

Here is my post <3 please do sound off if you have one too! I try to go through everything periodically but I def miss them sometimes.

It's time!!! Happy day 2! Yesterday I wrote 2.3k in a tea shop with gf and it was very lovely, I made good use of Scrivener's full screen writing mode and it was an extremely cozy aspirational vibe honestly. I've been thinking lately about how many parts of my life younger me would go Hell Yeah about and it's kind of a lot! Which is really bolstering during times when I'm stressed out. Like, life is good. Chill out!

I wrote most of my words yesterday on my big bang (sorely needed) and the remaining ~700 on what's mine is yours chapter three. I will drag this fic across the finish line if it kills me. I'd love to finish it this week or next so I can revise and POST! Did you know chapter two came out this month last year. God. It's fine!! We're not giving up.

I feel pretty chill about nano this year, honestly. I have a fairly calm month ahead of me in terms of work and social interactions, with a writing retreat planned on the weekend of week three (yay!! absolute highlight of last year so I'm excited to do it again), and though I was in a massive writing rut for a lot of September and October, the words have been coming fairly quickly this last week. We'll see how it goes, but I'm hoping it's another solid nano win. 

Are y'all doing nano? Or other things going on this month?

World cold, words hard.

I had typed a whole intro to this entry but it was so unnecessarily long! Mostly I just want to wave at the title a bunch and have it somehow sprout into a fully formed post on its own.

2023 hasn't been my most prolific writing year to date, but it certainly hasn't been as fallow or drudging as my brain keeps trying to convince me of. It doesn't help that I haven't posted anything in over two months now — that's uncharacteristic for me, and definitely challenging me to locate new and exciting levels of chill considering how few WIPs I have close to finished right now.

There's a parallel here between my internal unease and the post I keep threatening to write about the many many impacts of late stage capitalism and advertisement-centric state of the modern internet on fandom culture. I think I sound very old when I say that it didn't use to feel like this, but I don't really mean that fandom was "better" when I first joined. Mostly I just mean that I was 13. When I was 13 I was just really excited to be making stuff. I'm glad I'm a better writer than I was then, and I have a lot more feelings about craft and growth and my trajectory, but I sometimes miss how easy it felt to sit down with a blank document and only feel a rush of pure excitement.

These days writing is a bane and a lifeline. I am, for once in my life, trying to ease up on committing to deadlines. I'm not participating in Yuletide! I'm not looking for new things to join! I'm writing my big bang and that's more or less it for things I'm actively on the hook for. It makes me antsy but I'm trying to get better with stillness. & I think it's a good choice and a good change but it really has felt like 2023 is just lesson after lesson and I am getting tired of learning.

So maybe I'll make some old mistakes, just for fun. Maybe I'll set myself some deadlines, or start another event, or stay up late late late into the night recapturing the magic that always brings me back to this endeavor in the first place.

I keep threatening to walk into a bog and never emerge when I struggle to get into a good flow. I overthink and underplan and write myself into weird corners. I let my brain get weird about what it says about me if I'm not accomplishing as much as I'd like to. Even opening an old doc and being really pleased with what's in it can be demoralizing if I feel far enough away from it, like someone else did that work and now I'm burnt out and confused trying to figure out why I can't reach that magic again. It's not easy to remind myself that it always comes back.

Writing is hard! But not writing is harder. So we keep trucking on.

This is a post about turning my public twitter account into a fic feed.

I have been functionally off of that account since June, so to me this decision doesn't feel like a surprise at all from my end. I've been consistently on that account for 4 years!

Twitter has always been a challenging website for me. I pride myself on my ability to make friends fast, but sometimes that bites me in the not-friends-anymore process. I love creating community and events and holding space for fun, and also I have deleted many anonymous messages calling me fake/an attention seeker/overcompensating/etc for doing so. I joked once that of course I seek attention, I'm an air sign. I'll give them that. It doesn't bother me that people think these things so much as it makes me a little sad. Twitter is the high high of a successful sleepover and it's the low low of creeping dread around people trying to find my personal information or intentionally crafting messages meant to hurt my feelings. I'm an adult now, which helps. I'm pretty stable in many arenas of life, and that helps too. But at a certain point I realized I don't need to do this to myself anymore.

A few months ago, a whole lot happened in my personal life all at once. If you're close to me, you know a lot of (if not all of) the details. If not, that's okay, because you really don't need them. Just know that a lot of stuff blew up in my life all at once, particularly in the family sphere, and that things are generally better now. I'm feeling better about it at least. The confluence of stuff, though, resulted in me more or less kicking myself off of Twitter (and a lot of other social media platforms too) entirely for about a month. I turned off all of my notifications. I shoved ZB1 YouTube content into my brain at a frankly absurd rate. I practiced a lot of coping skills.

And then when I felt better, I didn't really feel inclined to be On Twitter TM the way I had been for the last [checks notes, is horrified] a lot of years.

This feels like such a ridiculous post to be making — it's presuming that people care about my life a lot more than I think most people do or should! also it's literally twitter this is not a big deal! — but I'd gotten quite a few questions on Retrospring about this decision and in some ways I do often find that writing about something helps me process it too.

If we're mostly friends on here and not so much other places online, the only change you'll probably notice is I'll post here more often (hell yeah). Despite the dramatic title of this post, the point I actually wanted to make is that I'm not going away! I'm not really going anywhere. I'm just restructuring in a way my brain is really liking.

Dropping the twigsona a little is a bonus perk, but that's probably a different post.

If you read this, thank you for indulging me! I hope you're doing well. If you've made your own little changes lately, or plan to, to feel better online and in this world, I'd love to hear about them.

[guitar riff] It's the final author's note!

Chapter Eleven

— I tried to work intentionally around what Hyunjin is feeling when, and how he describes those feelings. Early on in the chapter, he's really stuck in his own head and the preoccupation about the letter in his pocket keeps popping up in the narration. Interactions with other characters are largely on autopilot.

— Felix pressing a kiss to Chan's cheek "like a stamp" is intentional imagery mirroring Chan's letter to him.

— The Minsung situation is legally VERY flimsy and handwave-y, but this is a romcom! And an Austen adaptation at that! I needed the focus to be on what they did to cover up their relationship, not on the ins and outs of why they needed to do it in the first place.

— Hyunjin makes a lot of mistakes in this story. His relationship with Minho is not necessarily one of them. He didn't know, and the sense of betrayal and fury is meant to be real and justified. It's MESSY. And I think anyone in his position would be acting rashly. It's a catalyst for a lot of feelings to come out and he doesn't always express them all well but there is a "fairness" to Hyunjin's feelings and that made the scene both intimidating and fun to write.

— In my outline, the scene of Hyunjin just firing off frustrations left and right is merely: "Hyunjin explodes."

— I wrote and rewrote and rewrote this rant, but the part I knew needed to be there from the start and the part that I didn't have to redo at all was the bit directed at Felix. Hyunjin is sort of right, here, but only sort of, and I like the tension between knowing that Felix is his own person who didn't have to take Hyunjin's advice AND Felix's position as the Harriet of the story who was only ever going to take the advice and want to please Hyunjin.

— "Sorry for making a scene. Sorry for acting like this." is pulled pretty directly from "Sorry I'm crying in public this way / Sorry for causing a scene on the plane" from the aptly named song Crying in Public by Chairlift, which got a lot of listens while I drafted this chapter.

— I had to rewrite the scene where they get back to Seungmin's apartment so many times!! It was actually the very first scene I wrote for this entire story, if you can believe it, back in 2021. In that version of the scene, the blowup before had gone differently, and Seungmin came across a lot angrier as a result. I ended up gentling it in part because Hyunjin feels bad enough already, and in part because it's closer to the end of the story/their getting together than I'd originally anticipated.

— The "ask me how I know" refrain/motif was a late addition that I wish I'd flagged earlier rather than having a few instances all toward the end, but I'm still happy with it! I guess that's just one of the perils of posting a WIP, even if the draft is almost entirely finished by the time you start posting.

— "Maybe the thing he’s been carrying this long is just pure, heavy shame." you know you're in a poppyseedheartfic when the layers all get peeled back and it's shame sitting at the bottom.

— I'm honestly proud of this whole scene where Hyunjin reflects on himself and what he wants. I think he stays in character but grows in a really clear way that tracks with his development over the course of the story. I tend to be hesitant to do a scene like that where it's just a character thinking (this is partly due to creative writing workshops I've done where that is a Sin lol) but I think I pulled it off and it felt like it had the emotional weight I needed it to. Which is a relief!

— Hyunjin assuming Felix is confessing to Seungmin is so tragicomedy. What a mess. Hyunjin you beautiful fool (the remix)

— The confession!!!! This was also an early drafted scene that got a little touch up upon revision. Hyunjin's confession to Seungmin remained pretty much untouched. And of course the iconic Knightley to Emma line, which is the most famous line from the whole book probably and which many readers picked up on. It was a little tricky to get it in without feeling corny but I think it worked and it was just a very fun nod to include. My little guys who fell in love <33 I'm so proud of them.

— This is a reminder to go read the Chanlix Airport Confession Missing Scene, written by underwaternow (who also betaed this story!), if you haven't already. It is PERFECT and charming and delightful in every way.

— Random detail, but Felix calls Chan his "favourite" happy ending in his insta post. I may be American ("favorite") but I will not sacrifice authenticity!

— I've said before in conversation that if I were to ever write a sequel or companion piece to this story, it would be Minsung in the immediate aftermath of the party in this chapter. I find their relationship really fascinating and tenuous and I'd love to look at the events of this fic from their perspectives.

— "always the tacky social media influencer in a room of supermodels, always the disappointment to his parents in a room of old money" I just love this cadence. Good job past me.

— Award for most last minute addition to this chapter goes to the Hyunchan scene towards the end here! This scene didn't exist at all until I think the night before this chapter went up. Bang Chan you are my favorite values-driven determined martyr boy. Him showing up to apologize felt really necessary, not because he needs to apologize as such but because these two really needed this talk! And language-wise, this scene is by far the one where Hyunjin is most able to see Chan as he is in the narration, and not as a summation of things Hyunjin failed in himself. Chan as foil becomes Chan as friend! Good for them.

— The beach scene at the end was actually my original epilogue! But I liked it better as part of the chapter, and I wanted the epilogue to be more lighthearted overall, and a little further out from the events of the party. Seungmin's birthday is only a week after the twins!

— "Seungmin knows him. Seungmin tells him the truth." me on a chair with a megaphone yelling the greatest measure of love is trust!!!!!

— "and thinks that he must be the type of person who, upon falling in love, stays in it forever" this was a much less iconic/obvious Emma quote, but it is one! I wanted another for the ending since it felt like a nice bookend to the story.

— Ahhhh my guys. I love them so much. I miss them! It's so weird to not be writing this story anymore. Agh. Okay onto the epilogue!

Epilogue

— I chewed on this epilogue for a long time! I hadn't written any of it when I posted chapter eleven, which was certainly a choice I made.

— Hehe my Seungjin. I loved writing them established in a relationship here. I love their banter and I think it's really nice to get to see them being so deeply themselves without the agony of pining that was propelling our story weighing on them.

— Also fashion week was such a big deal for Emma Hyunjin in the story! I wanted to get a chance to at least acknowledge and see him there for a bit. And let them dance. And work? I guess. Is any of this realistic, who cares.

— Hyunjin sighing happily about his boyfriend out loud to himself is so him. He's a little goofball and a total romantic! He's happy and in love!

— Obviously the dance here is a parallel to a scene in god chapter 3 I think, where they slow dance at Hyunjin's birthday party. Letting them joke about it felt healing for Hyunjin especially because that night, among many in this story, was so hard for him emotionally.

— Hyunjin paboracha leader in this universe and every other <3

— I gave Seungmin in this fic my Capricorn in Venus, which is to say that he seduces Hyunjin mostly by being emotionally intelligent and very responsible and serious about things. Hell yeah. In case you were wondering why Hyunjin keeps going oh Seungmin is so responsible <3 he takes care of me <3 all the time.

— “The best parts of me exist because I met you,” Hyunjin admits very quietly. - sorry I'm just making myself hurgle with this line. I looked over the epilogue many fewer times than any other chapter because I wrote it and threw it up in such a short span of time, so it feels fresher to me. Oh Seungjin you are so Seungjin! I tried so hard in this story to capture the dynamic in their 2kr episode which flattened me, and this line felt like a very clear connection to that.

— I really let myself go wild in these last few paragraphs on the metaphors/descriptions/figurative language, and I don't regret it! It felt like the time to wax poetic and pull out all the stops, especially since I've known from the beginning that this fic would end with social media posts.

— The Wooyoung/Changbin easter egg was for commenters who were hoping for it! I hadn't planned it but they crack me up so why not let them have a flirty moment.

— butch_sasuke_ and partylikejackson (on Jisung's post) are returning commenters!

— I did not know that the last word of this epic that I poured my heart and soul into for over a year would be DONATELLA???? but somehow, somehow it fits. Thank you to Hyunjin @ Versace for giving me this image and the last bit of inspiration to chuck myself over the finish line.

What a ride, eh? I still can't believe it's over!

It's time for my last little set of thank yous, and then I promise I will put this story to rest for real. First and foremost and forever, thank you to underwaternow and hollowcene. My betas! My legends! Who left me comments on every chapter, who sat with me over the phone and in text threads working out issues, who put up with my dorky little responses in the google docs, who said "get up queen" (paraphrasing) when I complained that I had fallen to the floor in despair and could never finish this story. Bonus shoutout to underwaternow, whose evil alter ago "abovelandthen" got a couple of cameos as a social media account, including the last line of the whole fic.

A big thank you as well to cryptonomica, averytree, and doongi for hearing out some of the earliest versions of this story, when it was still an idea and some duct tape, and for encouraging with such enthusiasm and grace. They all have also spent literal hours talking me through things, including some memorable phone calls and text threads where some of the stickiest ideas of this fic were untangled and the plot finally started to lay flat enough for me to start sewing.

There are so many other people who I am going to put into a pile in this paragraph. Forgive me and I love you. Kfic writing server you saw so many little wip posts and did so many writing and editing sprints with me! Twitter followers you sure did put up with so much whining and yelling! Friends in DMs your thoughts and encouragement kept me moving forward! Commenters who left their thoughts in some of the most generous feedback I have ever received in over a decade of posting fic, you nearly made me cry on several occasions!

This fic was a challenge to myself to write a novel length story about a messy person doing his best and falling in love. I learned so much about myself as a writer and a person along the way.

Thank you thank you thank you.

The end <3

Voiceteam 2023 is happening and I may or may not make a big masterpost of things I made/participated in at the end, but here are two things from this week that were a lot of fun and could not be more drastically different lengths. I don't think either will end up on ao3 so they can live here in posterity!

First, a podcast episode on fan events with deepestbluesky and minnabird — we had a ton of fun goofing around and talking about big bangs and podfic events and fic exchanges and yuletide etc etc. This one is an hour and forty-five minutes long.

Second, a deeply ridiculous little audio work for a challenge where we couldn't include any spoken language. This is modern AU hamlet trying to decide whether to be or not to be. Cover art also by me below bc I was feeling inspired. This is less than a minute long.



Voiceteam is so fun and so tiring! I'll have more to say about the experience once it closes but I wanted to take a moment along the way to pause and celebrate some things I made and participated in. <3

Helloooooo we are nearly to the end of this journey! Can you believe it! Here are some extended notes for chapters 9 and 10, which I affectionately referred to as my "problem children" while writing. Joke's on me because the actually problem child is chapter 11, but that's fine. Neither of these ended up being too brutal or nightmarish to edit and for that I'm grateful! I also think I'm just getting better and more efficient at revising, which was a huge goal of taking on a fic this long and having undergo such intensive revision, so I'm really happy about that.

Here are some specific notes for each chapter!

Chapter 9:

• finally we get to see the oak bar at millennium hilton seoul! this is a running joke with friends as i've been writing because i did so much unhinged research about what it's like to work as a bartender in korea and also about this specific bar and thought i wouldn't be able to use it (minho is not a main character!) but THEN! i added this scene in the eleventh hour. i knew i needed something else for hyunho to do together to keep their pretty flimsy relationship at least alive on paper, and hyunjin visiting minho at work felt like the perfect glamorous but ultimately uncomfortable setting. weird power dynamics while minho is working, hyunjin having internal crises left and right... yeah
• i added 2k total to this chapter before releasing it! some of that was the first scene, and the bulk of it was in the conversation with changbin. oh changbin <3 i really struggled with his arc with hyunjin! it was maybe the hardest one to pull together out of the relationship dynamics. but i'm really happy with how this one came out and how many story themes it really emphasizes: what it means to be good, the way our past can follow us around, missing the point over and over, beauty/ugliness/perceptions, etc
• for a while the changbin/hyunjin scene was literally only the line "hyung, i'm afraid i'm a really bad person" so the whole conversation was built around that moment in conjunction with what else we've gotten of them so far
• this chapter also let me plant more seunglix seeds! hyunjin is so sure they are falling in love and having a beautiful romance story together... but are they really? hmmm
• okay last interesting thing, bear with me bc this will be a long bullet point. i realized as i was going that i've been kind of writing hyunjin somewhere on the ace spectrum! i'm not tagging for it bc i feel like it's a really small part of this story (p much only acknowledged in this convo with felix and one other point later) and because i didn't do it intentionally really, but i was thinking about how he's young and beautiful and his relationship with minho is really chaste. they don't even kiss! and when he daydreams about seungmin so often it's about emotional intimacy. this is a very personal depiction of relationship and sexuality and not one i wanted to delve all the way into in this story, but it has shaped the way i revised the chapters up to this point and the way i think of hyunjin as a character. i think it also meshes well with the idea of his grandstanding. he needs to portray a perfect version of himself as much as possible, but in reality is quite shy and nervous and frightened of true intimacy. what if someone sees the real him? (what if they already have??) maybe someday i'll return to this theme in a different story with a different point, but for now this is kind of an underscore on his character and it's been really interesting for me to explore.

Chapter 10:

• a lot of scenes in here are ones i wrote very early on in the story and had to overhaul—except for chan's letter, which has remained more or less in this exact form since about 18 months ago! wow! it really guided their romantic arc, which is absent for a lot of this story because hyunjin isn't watching for it, but is certainly there. i love them
• this chapter is also where hyunjin works on making amends, more than any other chapter
• he's trying! he's doing his best!
• by this point in the story a lot of his influencer friends and activities have fallen out of the forefront. he's busier than ever with work, but his story is extremely focused on his non-famous friends and family and his relaitonships with them. i wanted to do this because it shows hyunjin's character growth on a more subconscious level.
• like, the guy is emma. if you were reading this story hoping that he'd finish it a capital G Good Person who knows what he's done wrong completely and fully repents and redeems himself to everyone he's ever hurt... then i'm sorry if i set up unrealistic expectations! he's gonna be imperfect. he's gonna be selfish. he's gonna learn the wrong lessons over and over. this story is about growth but it's not about getting to a Healed place necessarily. more than anything it's about bringing the ugly stuff to the light and really looking at it for the first time. 
• anyway that's my spiel because my readers have been so amazing (thank you truly i love u). i was so nervous people would dislike hyunjin or be sick of him by nearly 100k in, but he's my little guy who's a hot mess and is trying to do better, and that's the most we can ask of him
• i mean i guess i could ask more as the literal author but u know what i mean
• other notable edits: hyunjin getting a new outfit in the olympic park photoshoot scene to match the picture i wanted to use, hyunjin finishing the chapter by shoving the card in his pocket (are u out of your mind king) (yes he is)

One more and then an epilogue! We're doing great. Thank you thank you for reading, whether you are looking at this the week this chapter came out or far in the future. It means a lot. <3333

 We're back with some recs! Minsung ficathon dropped a TON of fics on us and I've been voraciously reading my way through those and others. This is a bite-sized reclist of (mostly) not-so-bite-sized recs! Most of these are over 50k words long. I feel like I often see people asking for recs for longer fics so I hope this can get some of you hyped! 

First up, a couple of shorter works:

that escalated quickly (anonymous) - 5k, social media (reddit), est relationship & outsider pov

• genuinely hilarious
• very clever and creative, brilliantly formatted, pitch-perfect accuracy of the r/relationships forum
• jisung doubling down just made it all twice as funny

quasar (anonymous) - 19k, sci-fi/space, dark themes

• i am always a fan of a fic that does something unexpected! this reads a lot like an original novella in a way i loved
• high stakes, imperfect characters, messy choices
• poetic, clean prose
• grappling with the idea of home and right/wrong and what it takes to make the choices you wish you could make

And onto the longer ones:

in silence (anonymous) - 55k, famous/non-famous, coming of age

• this could have been shorter and i am SO GLAD it wasn't, we get so much of minho's character development on the page
• yes i cried a bit (themes of grief but also just super well done angst that i loved) (don't worry it's a happy ending)
• i always appreciate a story grappling with societal homophobia and this one i thought did a super good job of it
• the cheesecakes ;___________; and jisung's solo songs were integrated brilliantly

reputation (hanville) - 66k, actors/set of a drama, fake relationship

• oh baby!! i will say immediately if you actively don't like taylor swift or her music the ending will catch you off guard. thankfully i do so i was vibing haha
• overall this was just such a satisfying read! i loved the setting, i loved the choices of scenes, i loved the parallel storylines happening
• i found the minsung connection SO convincing and got really attached to their characters and many friendships in this story
• and the fake dating felt really fresh and tailored to the setting! not formulaic at all and kept me guessing even as it hit a lot of fun beats of the trope

All right, that's me signing off for now! Back soon with more recs as ever. Love u mwah.

We are back and better than ever! Let's do some extended a/n for chapter five which I am literally about to post. Things go down in this one! As ever this contains spoilers for the chapter so I'd recommend going to read that first if you haven't yet.

( Read more... )

Thank you for reading!! Hope you enjoy chapter 6. Hope I also enjoy chapter 6. What is even in there... off to revisions I return!

I'm back with another simply spectacular list of fic recommendations! I read a lot of things as you may know and I like a lot of different kinds of stories. Chan and Felix are what the kids call "absolute freaks about each other in public" and as a result there is a lot of fic about them but perhaps less than we all might hope! Or at least less that I am obsessed with in terms of their relationship. That's fine though bc there's still a lot I've loved.

Someone asked me for "less popular" chanlix fics and while I def know what they meant I also know that I might have a different idea of what's popular than other people! So I'm gonna start with what I think are some heavy hitters and then move into nicher stuff.

As always, this is not a conclusive or complete list! It's just a cross between stories I loved and stories I think meet the request of the asker. Many of these authors have written more than one Chanlix btw so feel free to check their page if you liked the one I recced here!

( Read more... )Hopefully this gives you something new to read <3 I am all over the place in terms of genre and vibe bc I will admit chanlix isn't a ship I tend to actively seek out very much on ao3! If the premise looks interesting and/or I'm in the right mood I love to think and read about them but they're a ship I almost enjoy more in content than in fic. (Almost. Some of these fics transcend my own preferences and are just perfect.) Regardless please enjoy some fun and/or devastating stories courtesy of your friend twig.