take care: the notes

[hardfeelings]

so… it’s been a while (translation: i forgot that dw existed for many months)

here are fic notes for this absolute wreck of a fic that i posted 2 months ago

honestly, i wasn’t planning on writing any notes for this fic because there’s not much to really even note about it, but then i realized that Not posting notes for this and skipping ahead to the notes for my next fic is probably going to bother me so here we are.

anyway,

the whole process of writing this fic was honestly super cathartic… i was under a lot of stress and pretty much just wasn’t feeling it. or anything. mostly because of finals, but also because i think that was around the time a lot of friends were getting into relationships and as much as i hate to admit it, that sort of took a toll on me because i’m still in this place where i can’t and don’t feel anything at all, i was still carrying this grief without knowing where i could put it down—and that’s how i came up with the fic.

so really, i just wanted a place where i could put all that grief. i wanted to write a fic where i could say all the things i wanted to say without actually saying it to them directly. i wanted to be able to make something pretty out of all of it.

i started with the initial idea of the fic in the middle of april, and i wrote about 500 words for it? it was just something i desperately typed out in between my psych papers, and i didn’t come back to it until almost an exact month later. i wrote the next 3k words in a single sitting, when i was supposed to be sleeping because it was eid T___T

in this fic, i’m mostly beomgyu, but i’m also soobin, and this is kind of how that works:

> beomgyu intentionally leaving himself out vs soobin feeling left out … both because they know the dynamics of their friend group have changed now that the other isn’t part of their life anymore
> beomgyu who is sure (or at least tries to be sure) that their friendship is over vs soobin who Isn’t sure
> taejunkai are based on several different Actual friends and the different ways they’ve responded to? handled? the whole change in our (admittedly rather large) friend group, and some of the dialogues are also directly taken from real-life incidents
> soobin’s reaction to the letter (or like, before he reads the letter) is really just how i would react to it lmao
> the letter and everything in it is just me T__T

my favorite part of the fic is the letter but specifically:

Another truth is that I miss you. As my best friend.

I’ve been trying to find the words to say it. I kept typing it out in a text, thumb hovering over the ‘send’ button, and then deleting it all afterwards because I wasn’t sure if I should send it. I wanted to tell you that I missed you, everyday, that I still miss you, even now, even tomorrow, even in the years to come, when we’d have been strangers longer than we’ve been friends. Sometimes, I’d feel like the world is unfair to me, and I’d wish you were there to tell me you were on my side, that you were cheering me on. Some days, I’d feel so angry and hateful, at everyone and everything, and I’d wish I could be insufferable with you instead of by myself. There are times when things happen, to me or to other people, like a fight, or a crush, or a secret found out by accident, and the first person I think of telling is you. It’s ironic, because I stopped telling you things long before we stopped talking at all—but on those days, I miss you the most.

personally i think it’s one of the best things i’ve ever written, mostly because i can picture the underlined text being used in one of those tumblr parallels/web-weaving posts on something like friendship break-ups, and that’s good enough for me :]

all in all… the whole thing really was cathartic. i didn’t have any clear plan for the fic, no scenes that i could perfectly visualize, and even though i have a list of songs and quotes that align with the friend break-up theme of the fic, none of them were used as any direct inspiration this time. it was just me and my muddled head, and a partially-written letter that i didn’t know what to do with. i think this worked out fine as an outlet, and i didn’t worry as much about the flow of the fic or whether things actually made clear sense because i only really wrote it for myself… it was nice not worrying about whether or not people would like it. i can’t really say that i Enjoyed writing it because the amount of emotions i went through definitely weren’t enjoyable but it sure was an Experience™

+ i have a bad habit of letting all my fic comments pile up which leads to me feeling overwhelmed which leads to me not replying to any of the comments … but for the comments on this one in particular i was completely stunned because of course i appreciate all the feedback and praise i can get but i really didn’t know how to respond because it’s a very personal fic. someone said they’d love a part two, and i considered it for a while, but i wouldn’t even know where to begin with it because i genuinely have no idea what soobin would think of all of it
++ seeing my friends comments on this fic broke me a little (a lot) because i’m not usually so vulnerable (in fact i think this fic is the most vulnerable i’ve ever been in my entire 21 years of life) but it felt like a warm hug too ;_;
+++ and shoutout to annie aka ao3 user newhues thank you for reassuring me that this fic was proof of my growth as a writer and thank you for being one of my best friends i love you mwah