bewitched moon: notes on ficmix 2021

[deadwine]

fic: sunset troubling the sky
remix: spring at the moon
playlist: perihelion

i. new moon: extended citation list

1. Franny Choi, Perihelion: A History of Touch.
   
2. I wish your heart will be like mine, Then not in vain for you I pine. Li Zhiyi, Song of Divination.
3. They will bare their teeth and spring at the moon. Wanda Coleman, Obituary.
4. I’ll rewrite this whole life and this time there’ll be so much love, you won’t be able to see beyond it. Warsan Shire, Backwards.
5. What if I told u I’m incapable of tolerating my own heart? Virginia Woolf.
6. I have made this mistake in my life…not once but twice I have loved someone more than my heart would bear. Sebastian Faulks, Birdsong.
7. Here when I say "I never want to be without you," somewhere else I am saying "I never want to be without you again." ...When I don't touch you it's a mistake in any life, in each place and forever. Bob Hicok, Other lives and dimensions and finally a love poem.
8. Ocean Vuong, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous:

-Because the year is a distance

we’ve traveled in circles. Which is to say:

this is how we danced: alone in sleeping bodies.

-As if my finger, / tracing your collarbone / behind closed doors, / was enough / to erase myself. To forget / we built this house knowing / it won't last. How / does anyone stop / regret / without cutting / off his hands?

-And this is how we danced: with our mothers’

white dresses spilling from our feet, late August

turning our hands dark red. And this is how we loved:

a fifth of vodka and an afternoon in the attic, your fingers

sweeping though my hair—my hair a wildfire.

ii. waxing crescent: the outline

• wolf moon — return

Cold, the feeling of homecoming mixed with loneliness.

• snow moon — relics

The first breath of spring that breaks through a harsh winter.

• buck moon — reluctance

 

Inbetween weather, quick to bring sneezes and coughs. Neither warm, nor cold. Restlessness, uneasiness.

• strawberry moon — rehearsal

 

Summer. Warmth. Cool seaside breeze in the evenings.

• flower moon — recovery

 

Raining. Release.

• sturgeon moon — ripening

 

Autumn. Heat. Endings.

• harvest moon — renewal

 

Sunny by volition, a monsoon delayed.

iii. full moon: the commentary

It’s a little funny writing about the process of writing this fic because it involved a month of panicking that I have to write something for one of my favourite writers based off something they’ve written and then another month of closing my eyes to plot, characterisation and all those big things and running sprints every other week just to get the job done. Only thing worse than a lukewarm gift would be no gift at all, I surmised.

For a fic as long as this one turned out— especially in comparison to my usual pieces— there really isn’t a lot to say. Minghao’s character is so introspective and so self-aware but I can’t really say most of the process of making him think was intentional either. Like I mentioned, I ran sprints and kind of let the character and run away with it.

When I decided to write a prequel..ish, from Minghao’s POV, part of it was because it seemed like the easiest choice, taking the story and my own writing into perspective. I did briefly consider Jun or DK’s POV but ultimately Minghao seemed the most compelling because the conflict in klav’s story was really quite simple and its resolution even simpler and I don’t mean that in a way where the relationships klav wrote about were uncomplicated.

There’s a comment ao3 user pixiepower left on one of my fics last year that struck me hard and when I say

simple, I mean something not unlike that sentiment:

“and that’s something that feels so so so real, that people who love each other mess up and forgive each other both too readily and after too long”

And then there’s the conversation in klav’s fic which is basically the root from which my entire piece grew, which invariable always reminds me of the comment above, on my 9th, 10th, nth re-read:

“Minghao drains his glass of wine. “The worst thing I’ve ever done is give up on our relationship.” His voice breaks. “I regretted it as soon as I left. You didn’t… you deserved better.”

“Then why did you do it?”

“I think, in a really fucked up way, I was scared of losing you.”

Just like that, the clinging vines of Mingyu’s anger shrivel away. He’s less upset. Watching Minghao crumble is enough to invoke the deep well of affection within Mingyu, the one which never ran dry even after months of little contact. What he feels for this person has always defied logic, defied pain.

Mingyu reaches over to where Minghao’s hand is clenched into a fist and gently unfolds his fingers one by one.

“I forgive you,” he says.

Minghao’s expression fissures. He clearly wasn’t expecting that and he nods rapidly. “Okay,” he says, voice so quiet it almost isn’t there. “Okay. Thank you.”

Simple, isn’t it? All wedding long Mingyu runs away, hurt and then when it comes down to it he says ‘I forgive you’. Just like that.

Easily. Readily. Simply.

The question that I asked myself then, and the reason the Minghao POV became so compelling was what would it take for the process of jumping from fear to regret to guilt to acceptance, essentially a process of getting over himself— what would it take for this process to become simple for Minghao?

Friends. Obviously.

A character like this Minghao, carrying no uncertain amounts of self-projection I’m sure, cannot get out of his own head on his own. And yet despite his startling idealism and almost whimsical nature, he would also not be convinced by a ‘miracle’ or some freak sign from the universe. Specially when the problem itself is so...ordinary. It’s a big deal, yes, but it’s a really really undoably terrifying kind of big deal only in his head. And so the conversations with Jun and Seokmin.

I did spend a fair amount of time wondering if I’d made it too easy, or reduced all the internal angsting he does to meaningless filler when I wrote the scene with Junhui. But no matter which way I looked at it, I couldn’t see myself writing anything more dramatic or climatic to signal his change of heart. It just felt right for someone like him, who loves the few people who love him so wholly, to also, in a period of intense emotional turmoil, defer to their opinion— including their perception of him. (Lol what actually helped me was that I imagined writing Wonwoo in this exact situation and story instead of him and knew instantly these are not choices I would’ve let him make which meant I wasn’t just ending things for the sake of ending them.)

For Minghao, thus, deciding to hope for the best is really hard even after he’s made up his mind. But he’s been told it could be simple, as long as he takes initiative. He’s been told again and again. Plus of course, he’s in love. He wants Mingyu. As much as he’s introspective, he’s not passive. In the right company, he’s kind of an idiot. (In how I write certain characters, Minghao’s tendency to repress himself is...not too high. Again I made obvious comparisons to obvious characters who I deem as repressed and I was convinced whole-heartedly. Of course, all of this changes from au to au, scenario to scenario, but I know the things I lean towards.)

Besides the writing of it, this fic was so much fun because I got these random ideas that actually made the narrative look...prettier. That made the timeline and the jumps line up.

a. First thing was the scenes I chose to write. Initially, I was only sure about the marking scene as some sort of an emotional climax and the last scene being the same as gyuhao’s reunion scene from klav’s fic.

The scenes with Jun and Seokmin fell into place when I decided what the arc would be and who I felt would be the best to say the sort of things Minghao needed to hear. Seokmin as ex-friend was super fulfilling to write. Just something about him being angry and emotionally closed off...even envisioning his body language and how it would change as their meeting went on was interesting to think about.

Jeju-do because klav wrote the og fic inspired by gyuhao dancing and because of the many many many gyuhao beach pictures and interviews and just...the image of them twirling on a cruise as stupid college students who know no better.

The scene which was my favourite to write happened coincidentally. I needed a memory of Minghao moving in to echo the loneliness of him moving in to his new apartment in the present.

b. The next thing was mapping the fic and it was that flashback of gyuhao moving in together than kind of made this story stretch way past the 4/5k I was imagining because I couldn’t stop myself from researching more and more and wanting to include more and more of it. Because mapping was one thing—New York, Shanghai, Jeju, Bukhansan were all klav’s and I had to build around those— but once I put a scene somewhere I automatically wanted to add details that made that location feel real and then suddenly I was writing about the 7/11 in Sinchon and eating hallabong oranges in Seoraksan and the jumping fish in Hupo. And it was wonderful.

(pls imagine a prettier map while we're at it, thanks)

I’ve always said I enjoy the research more than the writing but it’s been very very long since I got to dive in like this. Plus mapping helped my brain make the leap to the weather reports which is an addition that pleased me so much personally— and klav too, so double the win. I can already see myself using this again somewhere.

Something about Minghao being powerful enough to stop a thunderstorm over an entire city in klav’s work really stuck with me and writing this fic was a very visual experience consequently. Mingyu’s back turned to Minghao just after sunset on the beach, Seokmin caught in a drizzle, Minghao shivering in the cold the minute he arrives in Seoul, Junhui waiting under the awning as it rained buckets..the post rain water drops on the lilies in Kibum’s garden….I saw these so clearly and I didn’t want to mess up the atmosphere by describing it over and over again in every scene.

Plus, I love weather reports. I check the weather fifteen times a day. Another thing to research, another detail to tuck in...I don’t think it builds the mood of a scene the same way writing the weather into the narrative would but I definitely enjoyed experimenting.

c. And the final oh moment where my story really seemed to align was the Franny Choi poem. I’ve shared it so many times on my twitter, even here on dreamwidth in the last year it felt like a sure shot giveaway of my identity but it’s also a poem I LOVE and it fit so well, from the title to every lunar subheading of the poem’s sections to the lines of poetry itself...and Mingyu is a wold ultimately, even if tying those together was a bit of an on-the-nose move, overall it helped me not nitpick the inconsistencies of how the scenes tied in and how they were arranged too much.

+1

The one thing I wish I could’ve expanded on: the magic. Imagining the magical world within the Seoul I wrote had so many possibilities as did the idea that Minghao was alienated from his romantic side, both in his personal life and at work, with his breakup on the one hand and studying spells, on the other. But his magic isn’t one or the other, it’s part of who he is and thus whenever he feels alien, alone, and inhuman, he’s actually being incredibly human.There’s this alienation at multiple levels that I hint at, which obviously breaks at the wedding— obsessed with him stopping a whole storm— but never really get to build on.

iv. waning crescent: extras from the con

Absolutely the best part of writing this. It was for a friend. It was for Klavier. Klavier had no idea.

These are just few of the many delightful lies that kept me afloat this summer. What a good time. Even aside from all this, I'm...sincerely beyond grateful that I got Klavier as my assignment. I love gifting fics, I find it very motivating as a writer and this experience was so much more special because of who it was that I found myself writing for.