feeling the sun from both sides: the notes

[hardfeelings]

so i published a new fic recently!

it’s my redebut piece on a new ao3 account (after a lengthy period of inner turmoil over whether or not i should move to a new account) and i think it was the best fic i could’ve gone with for this new start. while there are several aspects of the fic that i feel like i could’ve done better e.g. imagery, symbols, motifs, i’m still really happy with how it turned out!

anyway,

this is how the idea of the fic was conceived:

> izz started listening to the black skirts
> “omg did you know that soobin likes the black skirts too? and his favorite songs by them are who do you love and everything… which are also my favorites….”
> [loops who do you love for 3 days]
> [muses about the lyrics and how they describe love in an everyday way but it’s still so beautiful]
> [gets reminded of when nao talked about songs that sing about love in the same way that you perceive it]
> “this is literally how i see love”
> [remembers that soobin and i are the same person]
> what if this is how soobin sees love?
> [regularly scheduled period of looping you are in love by taylor swift for a day]
> [realizes that it also talks about finding love in mundane things and still having it be beautiful]
> “i want a soogyu fic about a love like this and i’m the best person to do it”

the key scene that i envisioned for this fic was one of soobin and beomgyu walking the streets together, on their way home, and they’re a little tipsy and a little in love, and they’re talking about the things that scare them and the things that they love about each other, and they know that they’ll always have each other. this came from the lyrics of who do you love as a whole, especially the first verse, and it was just something i Knew i had to include in the fic.

in true alfa fashion, i went into this fic without an outline, so i wasn’t entirely sure of most of the other scenes and details that i wanted to write about, but i did know that i wanted to include these:

☆ person a waking up before person b and choosing to study person b’s features instead of waking them up (+ sleepy/lazy kisses after person b wakes up)
☆ person a drying person b’s hair for them at night (i’m not sure when it started but i’ve been dying to write a scene like this because it’s such a tender and intimate thing and regrettably, i am a romantic)
☆ eating together + feeding each other (my love language and top personality trait since april 2020)

i also decided on a few key themes for the fic:

☆ the idea of two people being so in love with each other that they’re all they really need, to the point that it’s suffocating and it blurs the line between a healthy relationship and an unhealthy one
☆ acts of service or taking care of each other as a main love language
☆ love being stored in all the little and everyday things, and it should be mundane, but it isn’t

since the overall concept of the fic came from a song and was supported by another song, it was only natural for me to construct a playlist for it. i take playlist-making Very seriously, so each song that i included in the playlist has a significance to the story - here’s a rundown on all of that:

i’m using way too many words and long ass sentences here just to talk about one (1) playlist...

1. who do you love - the black skirts
the song that started it all. obsessed with the chorus and final verse of

when you are not with me, who will you be able to love?
when you are not with me, where will you be able to brag?
when you are not with me
you told me softly
i know that you would die and kill for me
i would do the same thing, baby
we'll probably be together forever

and how it pushes this whole thing about how they can only love each other and how they’d do anything for each other and it’s almost frightening how devoted they are to each other.

2. you are in love - taylor swift
please expect more of this song in future fic playlists, because this is my #1 soogyu song. i love love love that it’s a best friends to lovers type of song,

one night he wakes
strange look on his face
pauses, then says
“you’re my best friend”
and you knew what it was
he is in love

and i love that it’s literally just seeing love in everything. because you’re so in love. i think it applies to soogyu very well in general, but even more so for this fic.

3. around - niki
this is another soogyu-in-general song tbh, but here i meant for it to emphasize these specific aspects of their relationship: the number of years they’ve spent together, the way they take care of each other, the way they’re scared of the things to come but they know that at the very least they’ll always have each other, and of course, this:

‘least i know my hope is
that you stick around ’til the end
'cause you’re my best friend

4. pink in the night - mitski
this song!! one of my favorite love songs!!

according to mitski, the visual of the song is someone glowing pink (blushing) because of how infatuated they are, and the heartbreak mentioned in the lyrics is a good kind of heartbreak - the one that comes because you’re so infatuated that you feel yourself crumbling, but it’s nothing bad.

5. lovelovelove - yerin baek
at this point i should say that a lot of these songs reiterate the same thing, which is basically just how they’ve been together for so long, they’ve been through so much together, and they love each other so much that they can’t picture a life without the other, and this song is no different! (+ there’s an extra bit in the song about how they make each other better here too and i think that’s really what love is - making each other better).

6. lover - taylor swift
another song about loving someone so much you want to be with them forever! also another song that i think of as a soogyu song because of ‘with every guitar string scar on my hand’ choi beomgyu and his ‘magnetic force of a man’ choi soobin<3

7. when you love someone - day6
loving someone so much that it overflows!! wanting to help them in every way you can, wanting to protect them, being willing to let yourself hurt just so they wouldn’t be hurt!!

i really wanted to emphasize this overwhelming kind of love that vaguely borders unhealthy but it also makes you kinda long for a love like that, because it’s the kind of love where you’re utterly devoted to each other.

8. full of you - so soo bin
the first line of the chorus translates to i’m happy when i walk with you which is literally just .. the main premise of the fic lmao other than that it’s just a really cute song about being in love and being happy just from being with the one you love<3

9. in the time spent you - heize
another one of my favorite love songs! mostly about how things have changed in the time spent with someone - there’s a part that mentions previous hurdles in the relationship too, but you know that it’s all in the past and now you’re together. pretty much fits the fic as a whole!

10. swim - adoy
something so romantic about thinking of someone in any given situation, whether it’s when you’re feeling sad or when things are finally going your way, and simply falling back into them... very lovely and very lovey-dovey absolutely perfect for the fic.

11. in other words - stella jang
this. another one of my favorite love songs as well as one of my soogyu-in-general songs. it’s a very pretty song, quiet and calm and soft, and the lyrics are equally as pretty!

as i hold your hand tightly
and watch you, who is fast asleep
i think, “i’ll protect you,
i’ll protect your happiness”
in other words
i love you

every time i think about the lyrics i [screams] it’s just so lovely and perfect and if i were in love, this is the kind of song i’d send to my s/o as a way of telling them that i love them.

12. free love - dream edit - honne
while the fic started with me thinking of who do you love being a song that describes love in the way that soobin perceives it, free love is a song that i think describes love the way beomgyu perceives it!

in the context of the fic, it’s just that kind of beautiful love. you want to give them everything, and you might not be able to do that realistically, but you have all the love in the world to give them. there’s also the fact that the lyrics describe picturing a future with your s/o, and although i didn’t write it explicitly in a similar way, i’d like to think that i successfully implied that beomgyu has always imagined a future with soobin.

13. i will - mitski
at this point i’ve finally realized that this playlist is just a collection of my favorite love songs, including this one… anyway, i think about this song a lot because

mitski wrote this to be a love song, but didn’t have anyone to write it about, so she wrote the lyrics based on what she wanted to hear from someone else, and
it’s all about taking care of someone, seeing all the parts of them that they hide and still choosing to love them, letting them know it’s okay to be vulnerable and to let yourself be taken care of by others, reassuring them that things will be okay, being brave for someone else even though you feel scared too …

it’s a very tender song and it matches the vibe i was going for with the fic Perfectly + i will wash your hair at night and dry it off with care … one of the key points in the fic!!

14. everything - the black skirts
this song is literally just someone calling their lover their everything for almost 5 minutes. the only other lyrics in the song describe a scene where they’re in their room on a rainy day and it’s just them. and it’s always going to be them, and their love is always going to be their everything… and the last line goes i’ll take you as you are which is just full of utter devotion … i think it could fit as a wedding song, or maybe the kind of song in a film soundtrack that plays in a montage of the main characters being in love through all the mundane things in life - which (again) is the overall theme of the fic! plus it also fits the idea of a love that’s so strong it feels suffocating, it just consumes everything.

15. daylight - taylor swift
and finally, we have this, another song that i love til the ends of the earth. on top of being a song about love, it’s also a song about growth, and while it wasn’t the main focus of the fic, i wanted to try showing the growth between soobin and beomgyu as teens and as adults? and i love the i once believed love would be black and white/burning red - but it’s golden and that’s also another part of the growth, of growing up and getting older and learning to love in a way that’s beautiful and right.

i finished putting together most of the playlist before i started writing the actual fic, but i added a few songs somewhere in the middle of the writing process - specifically full of you and in the time spent you - but it was really only because kakao m took their artists off of spotify and that meant in other words was missing, even though it was one of the crucial songs in the playlist (hence why i replaced it with two songs).

now onto my many, horrible, goblin-brain thoughts throughout the writing process:

> i came up with the first three paragraphs in a daze - one of my half-asleep then suddenly thinks of a line i could use in a fic dazes, and i wrote it down immediately. i like talking about the concept of home as a person, and i like making soobin be that home, in fiction and on twt (or wherever else i happen to end up talking about soobin). with beomgyu being someone who holds his home and hometown very close to his heart, i wish i had explored this more and i could’ve, if i had been more patient and spent more time on the fic. unfortunately, i lack patience and self-control.
> the fictional images of soobin being surrounded by falling cherry blossoms and autumn leaves are really just from this picture of ugetsu from given LOL
> tbh i don’t know what soobin’s major is supposed to be in this fic, i just wanted to make him a writer because i love making him a writer (i know that beomgyu is a music major tho, and yeonjun is a fashion major)
> writing the bit about beomgyu watching soobin as he sleeps was … a challenge. i was deathly afraid of it coming off as that weird, creepy, red-flag type of thing, so at first i wrote this stupid thing that went something like beomgyu is no edward cullen because i think trying to be funny and mentioning someone who definitely did the creepy version of the thing is a good way to make it less creepy. it would’ve been fine, except the whole thing didn’t match the tone of the fic at all, and it was also more stupid than funny, but i didn’t go back and fix it until i was done writing the rest of the fic… i still worry that it’s more creepy than lovely, but it iz what it iz.
> the rest of the first section is one of my most favorite scenes i’ve ever written??? i think i did a good job with it - to me it feels like a cozy and warm scene, something so personal and intimate. not to mention i’m the worst at writing kisses, which is pretty evident in the few other times i included kisses in the fic, but this first one is probably the only time i’ve written a kiss in a way that i like.
> another scene i really like is the one where cbg feigns disappointment and goes i thought what we had was special and csb corrects him saying what they have is special. present tense. and to cbg it’s like the most incredible confession of love ever. honestly this is just because i love when writers use past vs present tense in a way that immediately reflects the nature of a relationship in a subtle way? things that are just like, “i love you” “i loved you too” and such… a lot of times when i read something using this, it’s painful, present tense followed by past tense because things aren’t like that anymore, but i wanted to use it to highlight the fact that they are still very much in love. soobin’s correction of beomgyu’s joke is the reason why beomgyu realizes it’s the only way he wants to know love.
> i didn’t really like how i wrote their first meeting. i was 3/4 done with the fic when i realized this, and when i realized i probably should’ve written it as beomgyu moving to seoul and soobin being the one to approach him. not happy with this part, and it’s not bad, but i think i could’ve done a lot better if i had given myself the time to rewrite the parts about soobin being the new kid.
> the koi no yokan bit also came to me in sort of a daze? i saw one of my friends talking about it on the tl and i scrolled past it but then later at night i started thinking about it while i was half-asleep and somehow ended up inserting it in the fic - i also wanted to expand on this more, and i did add very minor and subtle references to it, but i only mentioned it outright in the part where beomgyu and tyun talk about it. could’ve done more with it, but i also didn’t exactly want to make it a central element of the fic because i didn’t want to push it into soulmate au territory, because it’s not about them being soulmates? it’s just about them being two romantics who are unconditionally and irrevocably in love with each other.
> csb and his use of both past and present tense in single piece of dialogue because he wants to emphasize that he is madly in love with cbg
> beomgyu’s hand-squeeze to say i love you right before he actually says i love you… it’s very important to him that he gets his point across and i feel like he would do this kind of thing therefore i will be using this as a recurring element in my upcoming fics and no one can stop me
> jaeyun the ex.. i wanted to explore more of his and cbg’s relationship in the past because it would’ve added more depth? ig to the fic but alas…
> trying to remember the food that beomgyu likes was another obstacle. i can name 5 food that he doesn’t like for every 1 food that he does like but that’s okay because my love for cbg easily overcomes any and all food-related obstacles.
> i liked the part where beomgyu writes i love you on soobin’s hand and soobin does the same. it’s part of the key theme of love being stored in the little things, and this is one of those little things that i wanted to use to illustrate that? basically.
> also the tteokbokki scene is just the. i love you i want us both to eat well thing. soobin giving beomgyu lots of fishcakes, beomgyu feeding soobin a heart-shaped rice cakes - again, the little things that show how much you love and care for someone.
> the teenage soogyu break-up wasn’t a planned thing. at no point in the initial idea conception stage did i even consider writing anything remotely angsty in the fic, but i feel like i was possessed and somehow i ended up writing that whole chunk of text anyway despite me being pretty bad at writing arguments and breakups-as-they-happen and not the aftermath of them
> did i plagiarize both the fault in our stars and given for the break-up? yes. i did. the first line of the break-up scene is very much the fault in our stars (the opening line of tfios is late in the winter of my seventeenth year, my mother decided i was depressed…) and also

given spoilers

the thing about beomgyu prioritizing music is pretty much just yuki doing the same? not because they don’t care about soobin/mafuyu but because they love music so much, and they went into music with the belief that it would be fine and nothing would change, especially not their relationships. it leads to beomgyu and soobin’s fight, like how it led to yuki and mafuyu’s fight - the scene taking place in winter is also a reference to given, since the decline of yuki and mafuyu’s relationship also takes place in winter! sorry for being given obsess fan this won’t be the last time i include given references in my fics

> tyunning being engaged also wasn’t part of the initial idea conception stage! i think i was seeing a lot of tyunning on the tl courtesy of anri thee tyunningprint and i thought tyunning married and had another Vision and decided to roll with it
> i was really torn on whether or not i should include the gift-shopping scene because the one wedding gift custom in korea is gifting money in an envelope… i’m still not entirely sure if korean couples have things like a wedding registry for gifts [one source says they do thanks to recent western influences, but most say they don’t], but from what i gathered, non-monetary gifts are more common if they come from family, which is why soobin mentions that they’re like family!
> my next problem with the gift-shopping scene was the gift in itself. i had no clue what kind of wedding gifts are common, nor the usual price range for wedding gifts, but i randomly thought of those heart-shaped dutch ovens??? and then i spent some time being confused over dutch oven vs french oven vs casserole dish vs cocotte ??? the only thing i know for sure is that a french oven is just a dutch oven with an enamel coating, and that it’s the kind of thing i can picture beomgyu wanting and tyunning having. and also that i want my own heart-shaped dutch oven.
> originally, soobin’s main concern was supposed to be about how:

tyunning are getting married at a pretty young age, and how he wonders if it’s okay to get married that young? and beomgyu tells him it doesn’t matter as long as you know it’s someone you want to spend the rest of your life with. soobin was then supposed to ask him how do you know something like that for sure, and beomgyu says you can feel it. and then beomgyu was supposed to hold soobin’s hand against his chest, above his heart, so he would feel the way his heart was beating quickly, something like his way of telling soobin that he felt it, and then soobin does the same and beomgyu gets caught off-guard by it.

i didn’t mean to scrap it, but i couldn’t quite get the scene right for it, so the scene in the final version is something that came more naturally.
> i feel like i could’ve expanded more on soobin’s fear of growing up and getting older too, but i also think there wasn’t really a point to it since it wasn’t one of the central themes of the fic from the start? the general ~thing~ is that soobin is more afraid of these kinds of things than he lets on - like when he and beomgyu broke up in high school, and he thought he had lost beomgyu forever, and in the present, it’s this - but beomgyu is there to reassure him.
> the bit about them leaving the dutch oven they picked out was me being stupid lmao i forgot that they’re walking… at that point i considered adding a) a train scene or b) a car scene but then it still wouldn’t be right because c) a set of dutch ovens is heavy and d) that would take away the whole essence of the fic where it’s them walking around and being in love.
> i quite enjoy the idea of soogyu being the type of couple to have casual conversations about getting married… i kinda wrote it hoping it would illustrate how comfortable they are in their relationship? like, getting married is just something they know they’re going to end up doing because they can’t picture it any other way? or like, it doesn’t matter whether or not they get married because it already feels like they are.
> the fish conversation is also me being stupid. i just didn’t want to write their food arriving, and somehow it turned into that? it was a great chance for me to build on their love being a painful-and-suffocating-yet-pretty type of love from a joke tho
> speaking of jokes: in the first part soobin corrected beomgyu’s joke about what they had vs what they have, even though it was just a joke. soobin took it seriously enough to correct the tense, because it’s important to him, and he does this again with the fish conversation because anything about his and beomgyu’s relationship is important to him.
> more of csb’s worries about the future … was this really just me projecting? yes. has the Real Actual CSB also spoken about how quickly time passes by and how he wishes it would slow down? also yes. it’s something that a lot of people fear in general and since the fic contrasts them at 14-17 vs. them at 22-23, i figured it was something i could include that would also add maybe a teeny tiny bit to csb’s characterization.
> i actually wanted to make them talk more about yeonjun’s work but i .. also… didn’t know how to make them do that …. but he’s supposed to be a junior editor at a fashion magazine
> the key scene!! them being a little tipsy and promptly saying things they wouldn’t say otherwise. i put this at the end on purpose - this was where i was supposed to include another trip to the past, detailing beomgyu and jaeyun’s relationship. it was meant to go like:

beomgyu leaning on jaeyun, his band member, after the break-up, because jaeyun is sweet and kind, and he didn’t mean for it to be a rebound but he found himself growing fond of jaeyun, and they just naturally started dating. and there was supposed to be this thing about beomgyu and soobin still being friends, and how the dynamics of their social circle including taejunkai were mostly the same except for how beomgyu and soobin weren’t as close as they were before. insert conversation between beomgyu and hueningkai where beomgyu says he’s scared of losing soobin completely and that he can feel the distance growing between them, and that he feels like he can’t talk to soobin about anything anymore, and hueningkai asks if he’s even tried, and beomgyu gets defensive asking how is he supposed to talk to his ex about his current boyfriend, and hueningkai points out that it wouldn’t really matter if he’s really happier with jaeyun than he was with soobin. a moment of frightening clarity for beomgyu as he thinks of how happy jaeyun makes him, but realizes he was happier with soobin.

it was in the original plan, and i would’ve written it if not for the fact that it would’ve taken at least another 2k words and i didn’t feel like i could stand working on a single scene for that long anymore T__T

> it was my first time writing a proposal scene so i kinda struggled with it T__T the way i had set up the scene stumped me the most, considering it was supposed to tinged with emotion after beomgyu was vulnerable, i didn’t want to immediately switch gears from that to a classic proposal. i tried to make it as close to what i imagine a soogyu proposal would be like - soobin rambling and beomgyu interrupting him, because he’s been waiting for it long enough.
> the hair-drying scene… probably should’ve used a hairdryer but let’s pretend i made soobin use a towel on purpose as a way of showing how gentle he is
> the final bits of conversation between them where i tried to show how terribly in love they are that it’s almost concerning, with the way beomgyu says soobin has ruined love for him and how he only wants to be loved by soobin, soobin saying he might die for beomgyu [beomgyu asking if soobin would die for him is another given reference haha i’m sorry]
> an attempt to wrap things up with a nod to the quote that inspired the title
> speaking of the title: i never know what to title my fics until after i’m done with them, so i had to dig around my mountain of quotes i saved from the #parallels and #web weaving tags on tumblr and various #darkacademia accounts on instagram… i think the title and the quote fit the theme of the fic, which i’m really thankful for because otherwise i’d be frustrated about the title forever.

that was a lot of words. here are more words about my main grievances about this fic:

> the whole point of me writing this fic was to make it as long as i possibly could, and even though 12.7k of mostly fluff is a decent length compared to my previous works, i still could’ve make it longer and explored more of the things i inserted into the fic if i had just been more patient :[
> i need to work on writing kisses because if i use tender one more time .
> details about the surroundings! please try harder to describe the place they’re in instead of setting it up at the start of the scene and leaving it at that…

all in all, i did enjoy writing this and it’s my proudest work yet… mostly because it’s a truly self-indulgent piece, but also because i feel like this shows my progress and growth as a writer compared to march 2020? i still have a long way to go before i’ll be really content with my writing style and techniques but any progress at all is better than no progress so i’m happy :]

Comments

[girasoles]

oh man, i randomly found this fic commentary by looking up cbg's name and i'm really happy about it!! ^___^ (i really love hearing people's thoughts behind what they write / how they intended to do it vs. the actual outcome & the entire planning for it... tfw)
it's been in my to read list for a while now, and this just makes me want to read it even more TT___TT i can #relate to lots of things here too, like: whats an outline for? i simply must write some scenes and smash them together with a bit of SIMILAR IMAGERY or SYMBOLISM. that'll work! [narrator voice: it didn't really work, did it? time to put even more effort into it!] & the playlist is so lovely to me TT___TT i am a #fan
some points of this commentary that also #resonated with me
>> i like talking about the concept of home as a person, and i like making soobin be that home, in fiction and on twt (or wherever else i happen to end up talking about soobin). with beomgyu being someone who holds his home and hometown very close to his heart [...]
this is soooo . op i'm genuinely so sad about this in the best possible way because a. you're right & you should say it, about cbg & b. i'm so sad
>> beomgyu’s hand-squeeze to say i love you right before he actually says i love you [...]
not the soogyu wrist holding / wrist squeezing Love Language of it all.
>> engaged tyunning?! NEED I SAY MORE..,,.. no
>> [...] soobin took it seriously enough to correct the tense, because it’s important to him [...]
soobin voice: nothing is 100% a joke. it can be 1% serious.
thank you so much for writing this! ^__^

[hardfeelings]

HELLO ... this is 3 months late because honestly i forgot dw existed ahaha

i was very very happy when i saw your comment on the fic!! i think you're one of the few people? possibly the only person who noticed some of the details that i didn't even explicitly mention *here* e.g. kimi no nawa, the various canon refs, etc. and it's like Wow You Get Me ...

thank you so much for your comments both here and on ao3 i cannot find the right words to express my thanks ... especially as a fan of ao3 user trinitarias' works ...... basically it's like something out of a dream T__T