![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
arundelsI often talk about doing extended author's notes for fics, and then overthink myself out of it. In an attempt to make a change I'm going to share my thoughts on No Man's Land, which is a fic I'm immensely proud of and in some ways one that I have been wanting to write for many years.
This fic was written for emo fic fest, inspired by Green Day's 21 Guns. I knew from the moment I claimed this song that I wanted it to be about the breakdown of a relationship, though I didn't have much more than that. There's a sense of hopeless and resignation in the song, but combined with an optimism. By the end the 'giving up' seems less like hopelessness and more like a freeing acceptance. And that was the journey that I wanted to convey in the fic - the shift from trying, struggling, fighting, to realising that there is freedom too in no longer resisting.
That meshed really well with the 'coming out' story that has been marinating inside me for years. Addressing internalised homophobia and characters struggling with their sexuality was intimidating, but I'm glad I let the ideas simmer because by the time I wrote this story I had a clearer idea of what I wanted to say about it.
I have also been wanting to write a longer cheolshua piece for a while. They're a really interesting couple to me - there's a subtlety but also contradiction to their interactions. Like their closeness comes with caveats, invisible barriers standing in the way of there being a true ease between them, and yet you can't say that they simply aren't close. That was the perfect backdrop for this story about a relationship breaking down due to a distance that cannot quite be quantified.
Also I made a fic-specific playlist, which is not something I usually do.
+
This fic starts at the point when Seungcheol finishes his military service and Joshua returns from LA. The story of their relationship, from getting together to breakdown, is told via flashbacks interspersed with news articles and emails in the 'present day'. I hadn't intended to tell the story this way - I wrote the opening news article and emails as a way of setting the scene for myself, but ended up keeping them in because I liked the way they set up a lot of complex history between cheolshua very quickly, while also giving very little by way of actual explanation.
A recurring motif in this fic is darkness - both external darkness and the darkness of keeping your own eyes closed. If seeing is believing, then is not seeing, not believing? (Fun fact, the photograph by Alasdair McLellan referenced in the very first paragraph of the fic, 'The Perfect Kiss', was the inspiration for a Byredo fragrance called 'Eyes Closed'. That's just a easter egg I snuck in for myself.) It's a sort of in-between space where you're still experiencing the world but in a much more limited way, and in a way where the narrative is much easier to reconstruct in your head.
Related to that is the idea of memory. I wanted to drop hints to the idea that Seungcheol is maybe rewriting history a little - not that he's an unreliable narrator, but maybe he's not the most reliable one. Except in the same way that all of us may not be the most reliable narrator of our own lives, yet we're all that we have. Like here, the contrast between all the details that Seungcheol does remember, against the way he keeps telling himself that he doesn't remember much of it, in an attempt to downplay the significance of that moment in his life. And then the closed eyes, of course - the wilful refusal to confront the truth:
So much of this fic is about the in-between spaces. The title, No Man's Land, was chosen in part because I wanted something that was a callback to '21 Guns' and its fairly overt war metaphor. But it also really sums up the story - in the fic I use it to describe the distance between Seungcheol and Joshua, and the way they are simultaneously close and yet not. But it's about more than just that. It's about all of those insurmountable in-betweens, the feeling of being trapped in a place where you are not one thing nor the other.
The space between truth and fiction is one that I've already talked about. Another is love and heartbreak - this is a story about a relationship that has broken down, but there is a real sense that all is not in the past. Both Seungcheol and Joshua are stuck in this limbo, a fundamental conflict in values keeping them apart, but their love for each other still holding them together. In Mandarin there's a phrase for this, 藕断丝连, which refers to the threads of silk (fibre) that remain connected even after a lotus root is broken. There's always something that lingers.
+
The summary borrows a line from the fic: None of this could ever count as a love story.
In the fic it refers to the narratively unsatisfying blip on the radar that is Seungcheol's relationship during his military service. This was one thing that I knew I wanted to include right from the start. Part of it was that I didn't want Joshua to 'represent' the idea of being gay in Seungcheol's mind, and so I wanted Seungcheol to have had romantic and sexual experiences with other men.
Another part of it was that I wanted this story to be about Seungcheol's journey rather than strictly a cheolshua love story. A lot of that journey overlaps with his relationship with Joshua, but there's more to it as well. That's also why I included the Jeonghan interlude. I wanted Seungcheol to have some idea of his sexuality even before anything happened with Joshua, even if he was repressing it to the best of his ability ("Jeonghan seemed to forget completely that it had ever happened. And Seungcheol never again thought about it, either.") - and who better to play that part that Jeonghan?
I think the summary lives up to its claim. This isn't a love story. There's no guarantee that cheolshua end up together at the end of the day - to be honest, I'm not sure what happens after the story ends. The cheolshua shipper in me wants the characters to be rekindle their romance to lifelong success, but I don't see that as a given. And yet I do think that the story has a happy ending. Seungcheol comes to some sort of acceptance of himself and the life he wants to lead - and he takes an active step towards that, instead of continuing to hover endlessly in limbo.
Seungcheol spends most of the fic letting things happen to him. Joshua comes to him the first time. Jeonghan kisses him first. Joshua is the one who initiates the break-up. The company pushes him to date Jihyo. Even Mr. Military Man Sang-hee is the one who comes on to Seungcheol, not the other way around. Releasing the 'coming out' song is the one thing that Seungcheol takes an active step towards. This story is one of reclaiming agency - and having the courage to exercise it.
+
There's a tension here with the idea of 'giving up' bringing freedom. But I think that tension lies at the heart of what this story is trying to say. Reclaiming agency over your own life can, counter-intuitively, be the thing that brings more ease into your life - if that agency is used to realign the version of yourself that you present to the world, with the version of yourself that lives inside. The cognitive dissonance of trying to juggle two vastly incompatible visions of yourself is an endless struggle. Taking the big leap to resolve that internal conflict can bring so much more peace.
So much of the conflict here is internal - as Billie Joe Armstrong sings, "when your mind breaks the spirit of your soul" - it's one part of Seungcheol hurting another part of himself. The story touches a little on societal pressures, and of course there's conflict inherent in the break-up be but I wanted to focus on the internal tension of discovering different aspects of yourself and having to reconcile them into a coherent picture of your own identity. And maybe the distance between all those aspects of who we are is the real no man's land.
This fic was written for emo fic fest, inspired by Green Day's 21 Guns. I knew from the moment I claimed this song that I wanted it to be about the breakdown of a relationship, though I didn't have much more than that. There's a sense of hopeless and resignation in the song, but combined with an optimism. By the end the 'giving up' seems less like hopelessness and more like a freeing acceptance. And that was the journey that I wanted to convey in the fic - the shift from trying, struggling, fighting, to realising that there is freedom too in no longer resisting.
That meshed really well with the 'coming out' story that has been marinating inside me for years. Addressing internalised homophobia and characters struggling with their sexuality was intimidating, but I'm glad I let the ideas simmer because by the time I wrote this story I had a clearer idea of what I wanted to say about it.
I have also been wanting to write a longer cheolshua piece for a while. They're a really interesting couple to me - there's a subtlety but also contradiction to their interactions. Like their closeness comes with caveats, invisible barriers standing in the way of there being a true ease between them, and yet you can't say that they simply aren't close. That was the perfect backdrop for this story about a relationship breaking down due to a distance that cannot quite be quantified.
Also I made a fic-specific playlist, which is not something I usually do.
+
This fic starts at the point when Seungcheol finishes his military service and Joshua returns from LA. The story of their relationship, from getting together to breakdown, is told via flashbacks interspersed with news articles and emails in the 'present day'. I hadn't intended to tell the story this way - I wrote the opening news article and emails as a way of setting the scene for myself, but ended up keeping them in because I liked the way they set up a lot of complex history between cheolshua very quickly, while also giving very little by way of actual explanation.
A recurring motif in this fic is darkness - both external darkness and the darkness of keeping your own eyes closed. If seeing is believing, then is not seeing, not believing? (Fun fact, the photograph by Alasdair McLellan referenced in the very first paragraph of the fic, 'The Perfect Kiss', was the inspiration for a Byredo fragrance called 'Eyes Closed'. That's just a easter egg I snuck in for myself.) It's a sort of in-between space where you're still experiencing the world but in a much more limited way, and in a way where the narrative is much easier to reconstruct in your head.
Related to that is the idea of memory. I wanted to drop hints to the idea that Seungcheol is maybe rewriting history a little - not that he's an unreliable narrator, but maybe he's not the most reliable one. Except in the same way that all of us may not be the most reliable narrator of our own lives, yet we're all that we have. Like here, the contrast between all the details that Seungcheol does remember, against the way he keeps telling himself that he doesn't remember much of it, in an attempt to downplay the significance of that moment in his life. And then the closed eyes, of course - the wilful refusal to confront the truth:
They touched lips so briefly. Seungcheol remembered very little of it. Just the soft dryness of Joshua's mouth, the gentle sigh he let out as they kissed. The solidity of Joshua's body, the width of his shoulders, the sweet slope to his waist. The tickle of his hair, the arch of his back. His skin, his fingertips, his nails. The rises and the falls, the openings and the closings, the pushes and the pulls.
He remembered very little of it, really.
He kept his eyes closed. It was dark.
So much of this fic is about the in-between spaces. The title, No Man's Land, was chosen in part because I wanted something that was a callback to '21 Guns' and its fairly overt war metaphor. But it also really sums up the story - in the fic I use it to describe the distance between Seungcheol and Joshua, and the way they are simultaneously close and yet not. But it's about more than just that. It's about all of those insurmountable in-betweens, the feeling of being trapped in a place where you are not one thing nor the other.
Perhaps it wasn’t that they weren’t close, and simply that closeness was not the same as comprehension, the distance between two parallel lines a vast and unending no man’s land.
The space between truth and fiction is one that I've already talked about. Another is love and heartbreak - this is a story about a relationship that has broken down, but there is a real sense that all is not in the past. Both Seungcheol and Joshua are stuck in this limbo, a fundamental conflict in values keeping them apart, but their love for each other still holding them together. In Mandarin there's a phrase for this, 藕断丝连, which refers to the threads of silk (fibre) that remain connected even after a lotus root is broken. There's always something that lingers.
+
The summary borrows a line from the fic: None of this could ever count as a love story.
In the fic it refers to the narratively unsatisfying blip on the radar that is Seungcheol's relationship during his military service. This was one thing that I knew I wanted to include right from the start. Part of it was that I didn't want Joshua to 'represent' the idea of being gay in Seungcheol's mind, and so I wanted Seungcheol to have had romantic and sexual experiences with other men.
Another part of it was that I wanted this story to be about Seungcheol's journey rather than strictly a cheolshua love story. A lot of that journey overlaps with his relationship with Joshua, but there's more to it as well. That's also why I included the Jeonghan interlude. I wanted Seungcheol to have some idea of his sexuality even before anything happened with Joshua, even if he was repressing it to the best of his ability ("Jeonghan seemed to forget completely that it had ever happened. And Seungcheol never again thought about it, either.") - and who better to play that part that Jeonghan?
I think the summary lives up to its claim. This isn't a love story. There's no guarantee that cheolshua end up together at the end of the day - to be honest, I'm not sure what happens after the story ends. The cheolshua shipper in me wants the characters to be rekindle their romance to lifelong success, but I don't see that as a given. And yet I do think that the story has a happy ending. Seungcheol comes to some sort of acceptance of himself and the life he wants to lead - and he takes an active step towards that, instead of continuing to hover endlessly in limbo.
Every future is possible and so is every past, until the act of observation collapses the wave into a particle.
Choices, Choi Seungcheol.
What you would look back and see, are choices.
Seungcheol spends most of the fic letting things happen to him. Joshua comes to him the first time. Jeonghan kisses him first. Joshua is the one who initiates the break-up. The company pushes him to date Jihyo. Even Mr. Military Man Sang-hee is the one who comes on to Seungcheol, not the other way around. Releasing the 'coming out' song is the one thing that Seungcheol takes an active step towards. This story is one of reclaiming agency - and having the courage to exercise it.
+
There's a tension here with the idea of 'giving up' bringing freedom. But I think that tension lies at the heart of what this story is trying to say. Reclaiming agency over your own life can, counter-intuitively, be the thing that brings more ease into your life - if that agency is used to realign the version of yourself that you present to the world, with the version of yourself that lives inside. The cognitive dissonance of trying to juggle two vastly incompatible visions of yourself is an endless struggle. Taking the big leap to resolve that internal conflict can bring so much more peace.
So much of the conflict here is internal - as Billie Joe Armstrong sings, "when your mind breaks the spirit of your soul" - it's one part of Seungcheol hurting another part of himself. The story touches a little on societal pressures, and of course there's conflict inherent in the break-up be but I wanted to focus on the internal tension of discovering different aspects of yourself and having to reconcile them into a coherent picture of your own identity. And maybe the distance between all those aspects of who we are is the real no man's land.
no subject
Date: 2024-02-05 03:31 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-03-05 07:21 pm (UTC)