2023 Fic Review

hi everyone!!!! i wrote 5 fics last year but also had one anonymous work that i forgot about and do need to finish jksafhkjf

journey - yveseul - 743

so this was a part of moonlight party 2022 as a gift to valinors and im rereading this shit again and now remembering the seven different versions i wrote for this askjfhd. they had asked for either sci-fi or college au and since i wrote a college au for my last moonlight party gift i decided to go for scifi! a few attempts were bounty hunter hyunjin who does not know how to fly a ship but wants so desperately to leave her post and did. i also had an attempt with heejin as the mc with loona in an academy about to graduate and be shipped off to random parts of the universe. i then moved on to yveseul.

my fav part of the attempts that didn't make it was:

Hyeju takes a wrench to the hydraulics system and taps a pipe. The pipe falls with ease and makes a dent on the floor. Haseul's shoulders slump.

“You’re a shitty pilot.” Hyeju deadpans.

“She doesn’t mean that,” Yerim supplies as she frowns at a collection of fried wires from Haseul’s cockpit.

“I do.” Hyeju taps another pipe and it clangs against the pipe already rolling on the floor.

“You just need some practice!”

“She needs to go back to the academy.”

okay now onto the fic itself! the here i am, here you are ending dialogue was what kickstarted this final attempt. i tried these lines with three different ships but i finally settled with yveseul sdhfskjdfh. i also apparently did try to incorporate arrival (2016) into this fic but i did not remember that until i went back into the doc. evidently those parts did not make it to the final product. this fic had 3 different starting points but i decided to just set this fic at the end of the story. this was mostly bc i was running out of time due to my several attempts at writing something good sdjkfhsd lovers to enemies wasn't really what i thought i would be writing but for this fic it made the most sense to me. something about your lover seeing you struggle and deciding to hold the burden for you and making herself a very wanted criminal. granted she did make five billion people homeless but it was an inevitability at that point anyways.

i once again use heartbeats in this fic which is funny to me bc i personally hate the sound of my heartbeat despite it being a reoccuring theme in most of my fics. i think i just like that the heart never lies, its how you truly feel and what i like to reflect on in my writing. that aside ao3 user valinors left me a wonderful comment on this fic that i will think about forever and ever. overall, on my reread, i do indeed like it enough so theres that.

fav line:

“I’m here, aren’t I?” Haseul resigns, the whispers of a heartbeat flickers in her chest.

Sooyoung shifts, finally. She’s looking at Haseul in a way that shouldn’t matter anymore but Haseul feels it all the same. Sooyoung swallows, tightens her hands into fists, and looks back out to green skies and pure silence. It’s the calm before the storm, Haseul knows this. Sooyoung is aware, Haseul knows this too. Despite it, Haseul leans back onto the palms of her hands, anchoring herself to the growing thrum of her heart.

“Here you are,” Sooyoung breathes out.

i say, i loved you, i loved you - dahyun - 3770

i have a fic commentary here if you also want to read thoughts on the fic that were closer to the time that i wrote it. looking back at this fic now im quite amazed i was able to write it. i think that is mostly bc of my current inability to write but that is a discussion for another time. this was my first attempt at songfic and it worked out quite well i think! in the fic commentary i talked a lot more about dahyun's relationships with the members and not that much on dahyun herself.

dahyun in this fic hides and runs away a lot. she keeps her true feelings close to her chest, especially from nayeon who has the power to break through her guard bc she refuses to give up on her even if dahyun herself has. she's so jaded from what she went through that she doesn't want her presence to ever affect the members again :( dahyun is very sincere in her love for twice and her fans and thus something like a black ocean where the world is showing her they dont want her just for being herself makes her want to disappear and so she does. dahyun's transformation into chill the songwriter/producer is her way of being able to stay in the industry while also keeping herself away from the cameras and twice.

dahyun by nature is very secretive about anything to do with her private life so in turn leads to her decision to leave twice bc she doesnt want anything else taken from her. she has a very strong idol persona (which often leads to her being embarrased by her own actions) and even the members themselves say that dahyun keeps to herself a lot when shes not on camera. someone once described her as someone thats easy to know what her feelings are but not her thoughts. i think its a pretty accurate representation of her! sidenote: everyone says she would be doing a lot more variety shows if/when twice activities slow down but i can see her just disappearing from the limelight. she does love twice and her fans though so if they ask for something she'll probs come back dkjfshkfs. another sidenote: the mv teaser for one spark got her crying very convincingly and there are thoughts being thunk rn!!! um i think this is turning into more of a dahyun character study which was not what i intended but WHATEVER.

i apparently did not talk about dahyun and gahyeon's relationship at all which is a tragedy!!! the thought of them makes me feel a little insane and so thats why i made them a thing in this fic! a lot of their relationship is implied here and what i didnt say is that the public did not know dahyun had a thing with gahyeon. here is a little sneak peek into them from a prequel chapter i now realise i dont think i will ever finish or post:

Dahyun leans up and presses a kiss onto the warmth of Gahyeon’s forehead. She lets it linger more so for herself than Gahyeon. The weight of Gahyeon’s resignation seeps into her bones. 

It isn’t how a first love should end, Dahyun thinks, but she realises this is just what she has to live with.

anyways rereading this fic again i think cemented my thoughts on writing songfic and its not for me ksajhfdjf i just dont think of lyrics as a thing that inspires me to write but i really do admire everyone elses ability to do it so wonderfully!

one last thing i am supeeerrrrrr grateful for the reception this fic got especially since it is a gen fic. im really proud of writing this and im glad all of you read and enjoyed it too T__T

my fav line for this one though is:

"I won't ask you to come back but I just wanted to know, are you happy? I hope you are, you deserve to be happy,"

delivery: christmas edition - twice - 1753

i have spoken about writing a christmas edition for delivery for like three years on mostly my priv account and to my biggest fan ao3 user itotoro! and i finally did! well kinda i still need to write a second chapter and i also find it funny that i posted this in september for some reason but anyways i did have fun writing this one!

i wrote this bc as a courier service one of the busiest times of the year would be christmas and thus i thought i should make them suffer with endless christmas :D imagine having christmas songs being played for years and years on end as you struggle to finish every single christmas delivery there is. what makes this one worse is that the company decided to make a sale out of it sjfhskjfshdj

the summary of delivery was my fav part of writing it and for this christmas edition it was one of my fav parts too!! i love writing this type of worldbuilding bc i get to put in the strangest things and then make them make sense within the universe! although in this au literally anythnig i write would probably make sense either way so :D

anyways there is more fun to be had in the second chapter which will involve plants, explosions, and a singular painting <3 though i will admit that i have not worked on it at all sdjfhskj there is currently three lines of dialogue in the doc for it but it will be done eventually (hopefully).

fav line:

And here in all of its glory is the most beautifully detailed painting of a grape that the Endless Universes has ever seen. Shades of purple highlight the piece and on top of the glistening grape is a singular santa hat.

departure - yveseul - 1486

so this was a remix of ao3 user valinors' burned my heart in the sky as a part of ficmix 2023! yes i did indeed get to write valinors two fics in 2023 sfkjsfhksjdfh valinors had many wonderful fics to choose from but i ultimately settled for this one bc i like end of the world aus! i liked the complicated relationship that 2jin had and liked the comparison of their relationship to yveseuls so i decided to write the in-between scenes of the fic in the pov of haseul!

2jin and yveseul provide a nice contrast to each other and how they both end up. sooyoung who waited and waited and still loves haseul despite her departure vs hyunjin who settles for heejin being by her side bc its the end of the world. theres literally nothing else to lose so why not? the end of the world scenario provides an interesting dynamic to the fic i feel bc if it wasnt happening would haseul have come back? would heejin? in the end it doesnt really matter bc for them the world was indeed ending and their decisions are haunted by it.

god for the longest time i simply avoided rereading this fic bc i did not think i wrote very well at all but doing this review did force me to and it isnt as bad as i told myself it was who would have thought? i think a part of this feeling was due to the fact i was forcing myself to write and trying to keep to the deadline. another part of it is that despite me being a pre-debut orbit (LMFAO) i am not fully confident in any characterisation of them. i havent read much loona fics in a long while and only from the ones my friends have either written or recommended. ultimately it isnt my best work but i did enjoy the end product and i hope valinors did too even though it was quite obvious that it was indeed another work from me skjdfhdsjkf anyways i have now sworn off fic fests unless it is being run by a friend. i am participating in fth though but i feel like that is quite different from fic fests.

fav line:

It feels wrong. The words don’t fit right in her mouth anymore. No. That’s not what Haseul wants to tell Sooyoung. Haseul can’t even count the mountain of apologies she’s whispered over the years. How many apologies have she whispered into the night, written out into letters, yelled into the phone and sobbed out?

“Thank you.” Haseul presses a hand to Sooyoung’s cheek, feeling the tension melting away. “For waiting, for loving me then and loving me now,” Haseul whispers, tears in her eyes.

Haseul watches Sooyoung’s eyebrows melt into warm understanding, her eyes gentler than she ever deserves but gentle nevertheless.

remember me - dahyun - 1000

i had a lot of fun with this one, so much so that i wrote a fic commentary for it too!!!

a lot of the things i write are inspired by the things i have read or watched. most of the time its a mash of all sorts of inspirations that i dont quite remember when or where i had gotten them from. this one though was inspired by chapter 22 of the children of the whales! i really like that chapter, i love the man's dedication, love the realisation and relief that someone will finally remember him, his loved ones, and his kingdom. i wanted to pour that desire into something that couldnt control it like a ghost and then make dahyun help them control that desire and pursue it.

it is probs my fav fic i wrote last year bc it contains everything i love to write. slice of life that delves into fantasy is such a fun thing to write for me. most of my thoughts from the fic commentary are the same as they are now considering i did post in in dec so i wont say much more here.

ao3 user deadwine wrote me a lovely remix of this fic if you would like to read. it expands on the world of my fic in such wonderful ways and gave me datzu too t__T

fav line:

There are a few things a person could do when there’s someone living in the walls.

A normal person would probably call the police and get it checked out but Dahyun feels the  weight of the hammer in her hand before she swings. The hammer thuds against the drywall. It’s a flimsy thing and it crumbles under her half-hearted swings and the stained wallpaper can only fall along with it. 

Dahyun pops her head in, her eyes already on the black mass slumped next to the skeleton of someone who once was remembered. The mass shrieks, forming back into something vaguely human. 

final thoughts and future plans

well that was a lot of rambling that i do hope made sense in the slightest. i am trying to be kinder to myself so i wont be self-depreciating about my writing and try to focus on the good things that i liked about these fics! i tried out song fic and it went well! i wrote two fics in a fandom im still not that confident in, wrote fantasy slice of life which i love, and i went back to an au that i absolutely adored!

my plans for this year is to participate in fth which i have already signed up for and have already been lovingly threatened with an idea that may cause me to explode if they win the bid! writing wise i have no concrete plans but theres one project that i want to write but i know its going to take quite a while due to the nature of it and so i dont think it will be complete this year at all. my current wips however include a toxic dayeon and intersellar-ish nahyo. i do have quite a few more wips but these are the only two active ones at this current second. i do want to write more action fics which i have not done in a while tbh. in extension of this, i am yet to write a wuxia au despite the fact i have read so many wuxia novels, and webtoons over the years. i think it would be fun! also more weapons, i've basically only written about swords and thats not fun at all.

anyways im not going to promise anything at all this year bc i am already having motivation issues with writing but hopefully something inspires me to actually write soon. for now thanks for reading this long-winded post skjsdfjhsd