fic commentary: you, in the grass

[dayflies]

ok im actually so annoyed with myself. i said i was going to start incorporating fic commentaries as part of my writing process and then didn’t do it. but i’m going to write this stupid commentary and i will see it through because i’m an adult who knows how to do things, and also this commentary should be easy to write because i literally dreamt up most of this fic in my head and that was like 80% of the writing process. i’m afraid this commentary won’t be very enlightening but here goes

 

title: you, in the grass

fandom: ENHYPEN

pairing: heeseung/jongseong

words: 8,573
time it took to write this: two days!!
drafts: two!!

 

writing process and structure:

i woke super early and hallucinated this fic. there is no other, or less embarrassing way to say it. and then i wrote it. and i actually wrote the opening paragraph and the almost-closing paragraph in my head (the part where they die):

And so, when they’ve made their decision, knowing fully well that there will be nothing left but everything that already was before them, and everything that will stay after them: the dry Earth, the acid water, the red sky and the big burning ball about to emerge from the horizon, Jongseong will think about how he can no longer remember the warmth of the sun on his eyelids, or the way light reflects off snow or still water in a million little fractions, the vivid color of the sky when it sets, the soft pastels of when it rises, Heeseung’s back in the sun under a sky that had once been blue, honey skin, warm eyes, green grass, morning dew, his boyish cadence, it’s so warm, I feel like I’m going to die. He no longer remembers any of it until now, moments before it’s all about to wash over him.

When the sun rises, Jongseong doesn’t look at it. He turns to Heeseung to watch his eyes change color, to watch the light deliver his skin the kiss of death, and finds Heeseung already looking at him in return. His eyes soften, his lips curve. Jongseong has missed this, most of all. 

 

and probably a few other lines as well. no one wants to be awake at 5am but by then i’d given up on falling asleep again, and i just tried my best to remember what i’d written so by the time i could drag myself out of bed (i have to climb awkwardly because i sleep in a loft bed like a 10 year old) i could knock it down in a google doc. and my doc title was just “lines i made up while half-asleep” at first.

 

i struggled a lot with the structure, because i wanted it to be nonchronological and fragmented but i just couldn’t figure out the order of sections in a way that would still make the story somewhat easy to follow. in general, a lot of my writing leans towards the experimental (especially as of late), but i still didn't want it to be too confusing to read. when i’d pretty much finished my first draft, i just had a lot of random sections of varying length and differing perspectives, and i knew exactly how i wanted the ending to flow, but apart from that it was. just not good. lol. i think in general, whenever i write something, i tend to know where i start and where i end, but have no idea how to get there.

 

often when i write things that are larger puzzles, i tend to have a moment during the writing process where things just click into place because i realize i need to change like two things to make it work out lol. in this case!! i realized that 1) non chronology works best if there is a “main” timeline that can function as a reference point and anchor the story. and 2) i needed to make the setting in each point of time drastically different from each other, or at least indicate where/when we are in time to help the reader piece the puzzle together. 

 

i achieved 1) by making every other section take place in the same timeline, and i achieved 2) by setting the ending in a post-apocalyptic world and then tying it in with the story by using the plum imagery

 

what i ended up with was thirty sections, where every other section took place in the timeline where heejay become vampires (which is the main timeline), and every other section takes place some time in the future. there are four-ish points in time in total:

 

heejay become vampires: almost all even numbers

the hunt: 5, 9, 21

their fight: (13), 17, 23, 17

their death: 3, 7, 11, 15, 19, 25, 28, 29

 

so all the plum sections were added relatively late in the process to make that timeline more distinguishable from the rest. which is funny because it’s p integral to the thematics and the general vibe of the story. anyway. from there it was smooth sailing :> 

 

 

language/writing style

 

the writing style in this is p distinct from a lot of my other writing. i really want to avoid sounding too purple prosey (and i think it’s one of my pitfalls :< ) and i want to avoid overused phrases etc etc. unfort that isn’t entirely possible <3 but i tried my best to use words i wouldn’t normally use whenever i remembered to do it lol

 

a few examples of what i mean:

 

• the word “skin hunger” (it’s a heading for one of the sections). i think its a neat word. i like it better than touch starved. i dont think its an actual word but i really like it

• the phrase “his hunger scrubs his skin raw” — does this actually make sense? well idk. i have certainly never felt like that. but in relation to the skin being hungry for touch then yeah, it makes sense in a roundabout way

• the word “brittle”. i know its a common word, i just think this is the first time i have ever used it in a sentence. but it’s a good word!! i used it twice (2)!!

 

apart from that, my writing style throughout this was also characterized by me trying to achieve some kind of cadence in my sentences by shifting between long sentences and extremely short ones. idk if i succeeded but. here are some more examples: 

 

• Still, he and Jongseong like to leave them around the apartment when they’re in season, when the air is heavy with their sweetness. They even like when they start to rot, and they can watch the soft growth of mold, the way their shapes, initially bursting with roundness, begin to sag. Their hollowness. Their wrinkles. The slow passing of time.

• Night. Maroon sky. Heeseung stirs awake to an empty bed, pats blindly around for Jongseong.

 

etc etc. i think you get the point.

 

also!! i’ve been very into just eliminating dialogue tags and making the dialogue blend in with the prose, and i think it worked really well in this fic in particular because there wasn’t that much dialogue to begin with, and it sort of added to the dreamlike quality of it all. at first, the dialogue wasn’t even written in cursive, but then i thought maybe that would make it too hard to distinguish from the actual prose - which can be a cool effect in itself, but not one i wanted to utilize

 

why this mcd is actually happy

 

i think this is my first ever mcd fic…. technically people died in my fe3h claudevain, but none of the main characters. i’ve never particularly enjoyed mcd myself so i guess this makes me a hypocrite but i really dont think this story could have ended in any other way, and!! i wrote in my notes that at the end of all things, there is always sunlight and love which is basically the crux of this story. because i am me. and i cant ever not write about love idk

 

i already knew that they unfortunately had to die by the end, but i also knew that it didn’t have to be this big, tragic thing. i think, by the end, they’re both very settled with their decision (it quite literally opens with And so, when they’ve made their decision), and well. 

 

parkjay in this is very driven by his instincts, and his instincts have always revolved around his love for heeseung — at nineteen he plans to run away with heeseung with no plans whatsoever, as a vampire he returns to heeseung and turns him against heeseung’s will, and his death is also motivated by missing the sun – particularly missing seeing heeseung in the sun (obv combined with a general weariness at having been alive for so long, and the fear of losing his memories). heeseung feels the same way — when the sun comes up, he’s watching jay. i think elements of summer and the sun are so intrinsic to their shared childhood and their life together before they became vampires and you know. they had a good run together. if you’ve lived for centuries and the only constant in your very long life has been your love for one guy, i think maybe you’d be willing to give it all up just to see this guy’s eyes in the sun one last time. 

 

i’m thinking about how when jay first turned heeseung, he was driven by his love for him, yes, but he’s mostly driven by his out-of-control predatory vampire instincts. heeseung does obviously not want this, and to turn heeseung would be to hurt him, not just temporarily, but also by dooming him to a life isolated from all of his loved ones. but when they die, jay is motivated by his human instincts - arguably. imo there’s something very human about giving up immortality for something as earthly and humble as seeing someone’s hair change in the sun. 

 

favorite bits

not to sound like a self-obsessed asshole but there were a lot of bits in this i really liked. which is great. it feels nice to be happy with something you've written and i'm going to allow myself that because i've been feeling pretty shitty at writing lately. we'll see how long it lasts. but for now!! i think i managed to portray these elements well: jongseong's desperation, the scene where he turns heeseung, heeseung's despair at also having been turned into a vampire, their unhinged obsession with one another. i like these lines:

They’re in the grass and a drop of sweat marks a wet line down Heeseung’s neck, disappearing under the collar of his shirt. He’s beautiful in the sun. Jongseong follows its trajectory, aching. Longs to put his mouth there, longs to taste it. Is it as salty as he imagines? Maybe it’s sweet, from all the stolen plums and strawberries they’ve gorged on. Heeseung’s mouth is so red. If he was the type of boy who spat on the ground, like some of the other village boys, it’d be slightly pink, bits of chewed fruit in the grass. 

The distance between them is wide, the air so thick it's impenetrable. Not even Heeseung’s wooden practice sword would be able to pierce through it.

Heeseung, he says. His throat is unbearably dry. Heeseung looks at him, brows raised. Jongseong turns his gaze to stare directly at the sun. Looking at the sun is easier than looking at Heeseung right now.

Yes? says Heeseung, waiting.

One night, Jongseong, eighteen, a marriage he never asked for looming in front of him, asks, on his knees, his hands folded on his bed in prayer, head bowed: What do I do when I’ve run out of time?

And God replies: You outrun it. Faster, faster, let your legs carry you, the way they were meant to, come on, you’re almost there, he’s right ahead of you, come on, you’re alive, feel it, feel it, feel it, he’s right there around the bend, chase his back the way he’s chasing the sun, you’re almost there, almost, keep going, keep going.

During the recent months (or is it years?), Jongseong has been keeping his own ever-expanding dictionary of obsolete words, so he won't forget. Edelweiss (n): European mountain plant which has woolly white bracts around its small flowers and downy grey-green leaves. Often associated with eternal love and fidelity. Smultronställe (n): a place where wild strawberries grow. Swedish term. 木漏れ日 (n): sunlight filtering through trees. Compound of 木 (tree), 漏れ (coming through, leaking), 日 (sunlight). Japanese term. Often associated with you you you–

 

There was no rhyme or reason to his entries, one page leading to the next through a game of association, up until a few months ago (or is it years?), when Heeseung took it upon himself to sort all his entries in alphabetical order, letter by letter, notebook by notebook.

 

They head East as snow comes down in big flakes. When they stumble upon a wild expanse of serene, white, snowy field; field, field field as far as the eye can see, Jongseong grabs his hand, eyes sparkling like they’d done before it all, flakes resting in his hair like birds perched in a tree, and they sprint across the snow, leap out of something and into something new, their steps breaking blank canvas, the night air whipping against his face, he feels every step reverberate from the balls of his feet up through his calves, knees, thighs, Jongseong’s laugh in his ears, they run as fast as their legs can carry them, like how wild geese fly across town in the fall, like they’ve never been anything but how they’re feeling right now, alive, and in this moment, Heeseung can convince himself that maybe the two of them will be okay.

tbh there were more things i really liked in this. looking back i'm kind of surprised i pulled it off. anyway.

and last and also least (i made this maybe the day after posting it lol): the playlist!!!