hello! i’m not opposed to writing them, but… nothing planned (with them as the main/sole pairing) for the foreseeable future unfortunately. the problem is that i don’t really have any thoughts about them?

in theory i see the appeal of their dynamic and i’m happy reading seolbo fics, but when it comes to thinking my own thoughts, i feel kind of indifferent(?) towards them. i don’t think it’s fair for me to say they’re not a compelling pairing because they do have some interesting dynamics from what i know (and i’m creating relationship tags like nobody’s business for people who have probably spent no more than five minutes in the same frame together anyway), but my head is genuinely empty when it comes to seolbo. i actually have some implied seolbos hidden around and i think it would be fun to write them as a main pairing, but i just don’t have ideas at the moment where i think “omg i need to write seolbo as xxx right now or i will die”

i do think there’s some things that i’ve written where the pairing could very well have been anyone else and the fic only exists because i wanted to write that concept, if that makes any sense. for example, my seolwon fic didn’t have to be seolwon. i really wanted to write a fic based on those two songs and happened to be prompted for seolwon so it happened like that. that’s not to say you can start converting my fics and realise that characterisation does not matter, because there are going to be details or ways in which a character acts that makes more sense for who i wrote it to be. i could as easily give the premise to another pairing, but the way that the details play out, how characters react to situations, those are all going to be different.

all of this being said, anyone is welcome to bait me to write main and non-poly seolbo if that’s what you want to see from me(?) (there’s some vv skilled seolbo-ers already, please give them love instead of mining my empty brain). anyway, if anyone succeeds, i’ll gift the fic to them

(side note: i struggled so much writing that one exlu drabble earlier this year, but tonight i see the vision they’re so cute)

[25/08/24] wow, i’m surprised that you clocked me because the continuity errors in worldbuilding between the first and second posted snippet are so bad hjdkflgsa

but yeah! it’s from the same universe that i am haphazardly piecing together as inspiration hits. it’s csj-focused i would say, i don’t know if you can call it ebs* if khj and kjy never technically meet (at least, as of my current plan for the fic -- if i can wrangle a way for the three of them to feasibly meet up, maybe i’ll implement it) and i haven’t decided yet what either of their relationships with csj is. i don’t want to spoil too much (unless anyone wants to come into my dms and help me get this into a semblance of coherence), but it’s a high fantasy, sci-fi setting and i’ll split it up into two parts to make it a little easier:

csj and khj: i’m going back and forth between the idea of having them be two kids from a closed institution in one of the last habitable parts of the world they come from or kids living on a generation ship/space station. it’s pretty dystopian (they don’t know about the current state of the world/anything outside of what the academy shares with them, and they don’t know what awaits them after graduation). their current life consists of a lot of ambiguous lessons, physical and skills training, and it’s also highly controlled and surveilled. despite all of that, they manage to grow up pretty well** and, to borrow pacrim terms, are basically drift compatible (no drifting involved here, but [redacted for spoilers]).

csj and kjy: it’s actually kind of hard to talk about this without spoiling much, but when csj and kjy are together (as in, in the same location), it’s on this planet that is entirely covered by oceans. the planet was colonized by human settlers (if you’ve ever read the waves by ken liu, it might help with the understanding the complications of the timelines with the planet and also csj’s childhood with khj), and kjy is the descendant of one of them (ie. she was born on this planet). i’m still working out the details because as much as i love underwater settings, the logistics makes my head hurt, but just assume that a bunch of technological advancements has made it possible for humans to live underwater (not only in closed, dry underwater environments but actually live as aquatic animals for most part) and also that kjy also has some adaptations that csj does not have that makes her more suitable for her living environment. time and age is harder to place at this point, but they meet after csj and khj are no longer together (again, physically) and are both adults. csj joins kjy’s colony, but csj doesn’t really get close to anyone else because she’s an ‘outsider’ here, so she mainly just hangs out with kjy and be emo over khj.

* this is somewhat of a lie because i absolutely do not have a brain worm for a scene where csj and kjy are making out and fantasizing about khj (it sounds fucked up but trust me on this, there’s no other conceivable way to make this work at the moment) but i just don’t know if i want to make that ‘canon’ since i’m not actually settled on the nature of anyone’s relationship right now ** this is somewhat of a lie as well because years down the line csj actually starts to process what growing up with an absolute lack of privacy did to her (“even the things we thought were our secrets, i think they knew about it [...] they let us think we were so smart, when they were always two steps ahead.”)

[04/08/24] thank you so much!!!!!!!!! rest assured, yeoreum will figure it out... soon. i want to dwell in this ambiguity a while longer. to have yeoreum go oh. oh. and realize that she’s jealous of dayoung and yeonjung because she also wants to be with them romantically wouldn’t do justice to gay friend group messy ambiguous friend(?)ships. not even fully sure if yeoreum knows she’s gay here, but she knows that dayoung and yeonjung are both ineffably important to her and maybe labeling the shape of that importance isn’t what’s most urgent here. i’m shaking trying not to spoil too much here (although i don’t think there are going to be any plot twists with this fic, it’s the journey that matters), but while yeoreum is puzzling over her feelings, i will say that yeonjung knows (something. specifically what, it’s not that clear). she’s going to wait for yeoreum to figure herself out though. as for dayoung? maybe she’s not as patient...

again thank you so much for this ahjdskfgdhjlk this fic means so much to me and i’m glad that you like it

[24/06/24] aaa glad you liked it, i was nervous about the reception for this one ahldskjfd i do think that while lld seems to view gender in a very logical way, that’s because like khj says most of the battle is in her head. she has her own struggles, she just doesn’t show them very obviously and when she talks about it, it’s only when she’s already figured out how to put what she feels into a logical sequence of words, whereas we’re really trying to get into khj’s head with all the mess. from lld’s perspective, she’s also not seeing the struggle, other than those moments where khj is suddenly acting off. i wanted to try to tackle how, esp in the age where we’re trying to break down gender roles, there’s kind of a contradiction? with social dysphoria and all of that, how can you explain the discomfort of being perceived as certain way without tying it intrinsically to gender roles? and you kinda can’t separate it here, but i think the root here really isn’t about what they do but rather how they’re perceived / how they think they’re perceived, if that makes any sense? like w how khj treats lld, really nothing changes. even if lld had not come out to her, she still would’ve made the according observations and adjustments but what mattered to lld is how khj thinks about her in her head.

for their designations, i normally default to a/b!khj, b!csj, o!kjy, o!psb, b/o!lld, a/b!ndw, a!sjy, b!lyr, o!idy, a!uyj but i’m honestly curious to know what others might have in mind. it would cool to see people explore a/b/o wuju more tbh!

i don’t think i have specific standout lines in this fic that i particularly like but one thing i think is sort of important is this line towards the start: they’re both woefully aware of hyunjung’s inadequacy, she guesses, and luda must’ve known what she signed up for. i wanted to establish khj’s feeling of inadequacy from there very start. she likes lld a lot and is very happy to be with her but quite frankly has no idea how she pulled. lld likes her ofc and thinks it’s cute, but khj is still insecure not so much about losing her but about failing to be enough. i have a bunch of thoughts on various things that i wanted to include in this fic but honestly i’m still sorting through my thoughts on it. in a way, i think it’s a messy fic because it tries to tackle so many interwoven things, but that’s also the nature of this subject matter - you can’t really isolate elements to study them because they all affect each other.

also the part where khj is trying to tell lld and it’s distressing to her that lld is crying. it’s not a question at all if lld supports khj, but it’s still gonna suck to be broken up with (or to put their rs on a break, esp w her impending heat come up (i have a drafted scene for that, but it didn’t make the cut)). all around the situation sucks for both of them, but i don’t want to frame it in a way where being trans is the problem. it’s really not at all, but it does change things and sorting out who she is is stressful for khj. but it’s also just how things are and when she figures it out, it’ll get better. it’s a journey and this is just the start.

also! some songs i was listening to while working through this: where i took the title from, the text on the graphic, “i’m fighting in the dark trying not to break your heart” and “trust it’s not your fault can’t expect you to understand”

[17/04/24] before i got into wjsn properly, i saw a mutual reply to a cc that said “seolbo rip” with “bona is [STRAIGHT]” and i think about that every time i think about seolbo which makes all serious thought leave my brain, it’s unfortunate. i don’t have any wips or ideas for them right now, but i do want to write them someday (or at the very least i plan to write triple a in the foreseeable future). i think you can’t go wrong with two pretty girls and they’re interesting, just that i don’t fully have their dynamic down because it feels like their genuine interactions happen where fans can’t see. if anyone would like to crash course me on them, i would appreciate it greatly

[15/04/24] hii :o i went through the day6 wtts setlist yesterday and i’ve been looping healer recently. i’ve also been listening to a weird amount of 5SOS (the 5SOS5 album is good, i like carousel/take my hand/easy for you to say/bad omens the most) and i’ve also been listening to illenium’s awake album a lot !!

[10/04/24] a thousand words of polyenypnion that’s actually the definition of self-indulgent because it’s also an idolverse furry au (non-omgverse but wolf hybrid wujupack) where khj, kjy and ndw are simps for lld and competing for her attention. none of these words are in the bible.

[10/04/24]

sorry for taking so long to get back to you! not too sure what you mean by meta here but i find evg fascinating to explore because they’ve (unfortunately) been through so much as a group -- leader change, (chinese) member hiatus and uh... misogyny. i don’t know why people are so obsessed with the thought that evg members secretly hate each other because even early on they were describing each other as family. i’m sure there are tensions from time to time (compared to other groups, the causes for tension may be more apparent to fans) but i think it’s part of their dynamic to be able to work through it. in a way, their bond is probably both due to and in spite of how they’ve been treated by the company and passersby -- unequal treatment is also a basis for resentment to build, but there’s solidarity in their shared experiences that brings them together.

miscellaneous evg thoughts: it’s cute how introverted they are (yiren went to china and took all their extroversion with them, rip) and while i refrain from commenting on idols’ sexualities generally, mia is probably sapphic (good for her), yuehua please stop screaming at her for picking up pride flags. their blindfolded first challenge is probably my favorite blindfolded challenge by any idol group, i can’t get over mia laughing at them struggling and onda trying to manhandle yiren into the correct positions. i haven’t actually watched that much content of them so i don’t have a lot to say but they’re very precious to me. (i’m yiren-biased, mia and onda are my wreckers)

[31/03/24] i was re-reading qaisal’s fansite seolbo fic last night. i remember when i read it for the first time and finished around 3am and i remember thinking: oh, i understand why this is the most kudo-ed english work for wjsn. i also really like wherever you stray a lot (i’m a big canonverse fan). my mutuals write so well :] i feel awkward listing out all of them or listing some of them and then not remembering to list others, but i hope you guys know that i kinda still go very insane to receive kudos from authors that i think are super good and i recommend literally anything by them !! go through my following !!

also anything by manusinistra drives me insane, i think somewhere only we know was the first thing i read by them. other wjsn stuff, non-exhaustive at all: collision theory (and also other stuff by redexo !! my surprise when i clicked on their account and realized that i had read them before !!), in search of silver linings, degrees of grey, morning star. these aren’t wjsn but some stuff i found in my bookmarks: idol x actress 2kim, hogwarts loonacatcher found family, trust me on this, ongoing soccer au petalz

[31/03/24] i started playing jpsekai during april 2021 and tiered on ensekai for a bit when it first came out. i don’t have time to play anymore now though :( i haven’t played enough that i think the new ui is still ugly because i’ve probably spent less than an hour total looking at it. i logged in yesterday to claim the free pulls and fes saki came home! sekai cards are so pretty, i use them as wallpapers on my devices sometimes. personally, leo/need > niigo >> vbs > mmj >> wxs (i like ichikana the most)

[31/03/24] the one i’m work on right now is for fth. i don’t want to say too much in case i end up changing it drastically by the time i post but here’s the gist: angsty t4t idolverse but also a/b/o established relationship hyunlu that focuses on khj’s gender problems. i don’t think the idolverse part is very important tbh but i just wanted to have all the wujus living in roughly the same spaces and as a pack because that’s relevant for some parts. based on the one scene so far that and my current outline, it is indeed just khj being cockblocked by dysphoria (rip)

other than this, i think i need to write fluffy hyunlu, even though that’s not my strength. we’re in severe shortage of hyunlu fluff in this economy, something must be done about that

[25/03/24] oh !! most of my fics on my old ao3 account were genfic, i’m a sucker for found family. a good number of my fics right now could technically be gen, it’s really up to interpretation whether they’re just friends or they could’ve been something more. idk, i’m arospec so i don’t know what is just people being really close and people with romantic chemistry (i have dating allegations with my close friends apparently). for things that are cleanly in the genfic category though, i currently have the following wips (that may never see the light): harin character study, kjy identity crisis, flamechaser au wjsn found family, canon compliant yaobao

some fics i’ve written that could be classified as gen, if you wanted: this yaozhou, roommates sleeping together (literally), domesticity doesn’t have to be romantic and technically all we know is that they were friends.

(edited some of the links because they did end up seeing the light)

🦋: my original answer was a little too personal, so let’s change that to something tangentially related: something i’ve been thinking about a lot is art, what it means to me and the artists that i know. being able to talk to someone with similar views on what art means is really special. it doesn’t have to be an identical view too; i’m friends with artists, writers, composers, performers and everyone’s art form gives them a differing outlook on things that’s eye-opening to find out about. not everyone holds the art they do to such a high regard and that’s fine, but it really is a privilege and an honor to be able to interact with/witness a piece that means a lot to the creator/performer.

🍅: this is going to be harsh, but it is constructive and something i probably need to hear: “because it’s not for an assignment” is not a valid reason for sloppy work. not editing work is lazy for one thing, but more importantly it’s hindering my growth as a writer. editing should be a significant amount of my writing process and shying away from it is cutting corners and there’s no honor in that. when something is a first draft and unedited, it really shows. people can tell when there was an artistic vision but the execution ends up being too rough to live up to the potential. honestly, it’s really. fucking. wasted. to have a good concept but not put in enough effort to do it justice. and by doing this, i’m only ever going to sell myself short, because let’s be real: literally nothing i’ve posted lives up the actual standard that i’m able to hit. the things i’ve written for commissions? zines? i knew i could do better if i just reached out and asked for harsh but useful feedback, but i was willing to accept work that wasn’t as good as it could’ve been just because others said it was fine. i’m literally making up excuses right now about how for fests and zines, the mods/betas weren’t willing/able to give actual good feedback, but then what i should’ve done was be hard on myself and critiqued my own work as if i wasn’t the author rather than skimming through it for bare-minimum SPG and coherence and calling it a day. okay, so maybe self-indulgent fanfic doesn’t have to meet publishing standards, but it’s still self-sabotage if i’m never willing to push myself to get better. it doesn’t need to be at that high of a level, but omg i need to start flagging all my problematic paragraphs for fixing, rather than glossing over them...

🔪: hmm but i feel like most of the things i’ve researched are relevant enough to the fic they were for for them not be weird? i have bookmarks on chinese mourning poems, but that makes sense if you’re writing about specific funeral customs. i did a deep dive on a fictional flower (looking into the flowers it was based on, their significance, the care for them and also some etymological details) but it was for a hanahaki au, so it’s again very logical. the weirdest i can think of is maybe the time i was doing a bird hybrid au for someone, so i sort of ended up finding out more about birds than non-bird owners would like to know i think...

[18/03/24] ^^;

that’s not to say i don’t value research though. if i’m working with something i know i’m unfamiliar with, i promise i’ll put in the effort to research it well. it’s an ego thing as well, so if i’m tasked to write about something i don’t know, i will put in as much effort as it takes to have it written to some semblance of quality. why is there so much fromis_9 on my youtube for you right now. in one of my previous fandoms, i had a tendency to write about really minor things that a character did/said/experienced that most people forget about just because i would challenge myself to write them, do the research and then find that undeveloped detail fascinating. you know what, talking so much about the amount of research i am willing to do (and enthusiastically!) is clearly also an ego thing for me. i have issues.

this is less true for my casual writing but editing is sometimes the bulk of my writing process. writing multiple versions of the intro, moving scenes around and changing them in their entirety. it’s very obvious when something is polished and when it was written in one sitting. unfortunately, basically all of the fic i write currently fall into the latter category. more on that here. but in terms of putting out actual publication-quality work, editing has to be most of the writing process. if you can, ask fellow writers for feedback, tell them to be as brutal as possible about it. get your feelings hurt, cry, and then start reworking your piece because it sucks to be told that you suck but that’s how you get better. unfortunately i have enough shame to not ask my irls to workshop fanfic, but trust me i do recognize when i write something entirely incoherent. i just close one eye about it. people on the internet are generally too nice to tell you that your attempts to cook may result in food poisoning, unless you ask them for that sort of critique.

okay, that was utterly incoherent. tl;dr:

1. have an image/concept in mind
2. build around it -- how do we get there? how do we resolve what happens after? 2.1. open wikipedia or youtube and go down a rabbit hole for a little while
3. open gdocs and go crazy for a few hours
4. edit? 4.1 and then go insane on gdocs. and edit again. repeat until satisfactory
5. post 5.1. fix the 32437859 typos that suddenly appear

hope this didn’t make me sound either insane or incompetent. everyone has a different writing process, i don’t know how other people do the things they do but this has worked for me thus far. sometimes i loop songs really hard and they drive me insane enough to write (sometimes the image/concept in mind comes from a song lyric - for example, dance by fly by midnight), my last.fm looks horrible. anyway, hope you enjoyed this! maybe!

[13/03/24] (part one) good question! it’s honestly just vibes but there’s probably some subconscious pattern in the way that i write, so let’s try to unpack that today.

a lot of the things i write start with an image and i try to build a scene around it, and then we need to get to that scene right? so i have to write the events leading up to it, and then i have to resolve the events. that’s mostly how it goes.

i’m not big on planning, because i suffer from this issue where i excitedly scribble down my ideas and the moment they exist, my brain decides i’m done with them even if they only exist in bullet points at the moment. i have fully outlined multichapter fics where i am in love with the concept but can’t bring myself to write because my brain just decided that it exists in enough detail for me to enjoy. or when i get around to writing a scene outlined in detail, honestly i sometimes just clean up whatever i said in the outline and called it a day. it probably has to do with writing based on momentum, which means that once an idea stews on the page rather than bouncing around inside my mind, i start to lose steam. so, i don’t really plan. i usually know where i want to go with my idea, the plot exists in my head and the scenes just flow as i write, but detailed planning is like self-sabotage (so please pray for that 99z fic).

and i’m definitely someone who writes based off momentum. it doesn’t matter how long you give me to work on something, i can guarantee you that most of it will be written in a handful of several hour long hallucinations. i can’t do those write 200 words a day for your main wip type of things, i’m more of a write 2000 words today and not touch the document until a week later type of person.

i am, as a teacher has kindly told me before, ‘set up differently’ which apparently means that my unfiltered thought process is indecipherable for most people. i make connections between things that don’t have connections and jump around in a way that makes me seem fragmented and incoherent. it probably shows a little in the way i tweet and maybe in my retrospring answers as well. i’m probably only ever (somewhat) coherent in the things i post on ao3 because those get read through from start to finish at least once before i click post (if i remember to). you can probably see me bouncing around ideas even now.

for example: research as part of the writing process. research and procrastination are sometimes the same thing to me, because most of my research doesn’t make it into the final work. or even the drafted work with deleted scenes. i do research when it occurs to me that it might be necessary, such as when i’m working with a pairing/group i’m unfamiliar with or writing an au for media i haven’t watched (you sort of have to do research in that case, now i know some stuff about pacific rim) but overall i feel like i don’t do that much research. part of it might be because i kind of only write what i know. if i don’t know something, it just won’t occur in my brain. basically, i don’t know what i don’t know. or, if i want to write about something, i probably think i know enough about it to just write it as is. does that make me sound like someone who opens gdocs and expects to be a god? yes. am i working on it? maybe. i was doing research last night on trans omegaverse stuff, but honestly maybe i’m just looking in the wrong places but everything i found was very unhelpful. so we’re just going to have to trust what i’m cooking in my brain.

[28/02/24]

my active wip right now is a 99z high school au that is. weirdly inspired by life experiences. which makes me think i shouldn’t post it, lest someone get the wrong idea. but it’ll probably be the next thing i post, once i figure out where i want to cut my chapters. lots of other long-term wips though! hopefully those will see the light of day.

currently, my main goal is to keep writing consistently throughout the year. i was discussing this with a friend the other day how most forms of art involve an element of consistent practice and repetition, but for whatever reason i expect to open google docs once in a while and be a god. but i can definitely tell that the quality of my writing and how pleased i am with it increases the more i write, so it is apparent that that is not how it works. i honestly think that the last few fics i wrote for previous fandoms some years ago are of higher standard than what i’m putting out now. so i’m just going to try to keep writing, experimenting with new things, actively identifying what i’m weaker at and practicing that. of course, i could stay in my comfort zone and just keep honing what i’m good at, but i want to work up to being able to open writing commissions someday which means i need to have a wider skillset. and if i’m going to be egotistical about my writing (/nsrs), then i’m going to have to put in the work for it first.

the main thing i’m challenging myself with right now is writing from different points of view, working with understanding different types of motivation and thought process. not sure if i’ll accomplish this by the end of the year, but i aim to have at least one fic that focuses on each wuju’s perspective. currently, including wips, i have: 8x luda, 4x seola, 3x dawon and eunseo, 2x exy and yeoreum, 1x bona and xuanyi. i should just bite the bullet and challenge myself to write a soobin pov right now (or even just work up to writing soobin, none of my wips include her at the moment?) but instead i will start another luda-centric fic.

[27/02/24] i used to read a lot of gl manga, but currently i’m only keeping up with a couple. not sure what your definition of short is but sasayaku you ni koi o utau/sasakoi has 47 chapters (ongoing). i’ve been reading this since 2020/21 and i really like how everything is presented. some typical wholesome stuff, bloom into you, can’t say no to the lonely girl, adachi to shimamura (this is still being updated?? i remember watching the anime). i really read a lot, including my fair share of toxic yuri, and i can’t remember if some things are actually good or i was just reading it because it’s gay. i remember liking this, but it’s not short. (the more i think about this, i really don’t have short recommendations.)

[22/02/24] that depends on whether people want to read it. if people aren’t cool with furry wjsn then i probably won’t post. but, i’m offering two fics for fth so consider bidding if you want to request something ^^

i have a couple of vague ideas, but no real motivation to write them right now. one is this really fluffy eunreum wip that i’ve been sitting on since last year (“in which juyeon and yeoreum are together, even if they don’t know it yet”) and the other is trans hyunlu

i’m not currently engaged in any fandoms with anthropomorphic characters (actually, the only fanfic i’ve been writing recently is kpop rpf). the furry wips are just omegaverse and hybrid aus referred to as such because i have been told that i’m not beating the furry allegations but look- i can explain. i know most people aren’t that keen on those aus, but i’m a bit of a nerd with regards to biology and sociology. i think that hybrid aus shouldn’t stop at ears and a tail, there’s so much room to explore animal-like behaviors in people (or, well, technically people exhibit some of these behaviors too but to a lesser extent or suppressed in anybody who isn’t a baby due to societal norms - eg. mouthing affection in dogs). omegaverse also has fascinating societal implications that i feel most writers don’t consider (because very few people write omegaverse for the worldbuilding, i suppose) and i’ve mentioned this elsewhere but it is “an additional dimension of complexity to gender and its many, many issues [and] a good opportunity to also have discussions about gender and sexuality that stray away from the usual”. also, it’s fun to use biological explanations for things (eg. positive feedback loops during heat/rut - which i’m pretty sure occurs during mammals’ estrus periods but i didn’t read a scientific journal for that, i just made some assumptions). my interest in these aus isn’t a sex thing but an autism and gender thing really.

but as a side note, i have (at some point in my life) engage in roleplay groups with hybrid ocs and written fanfic about anthropomorphic characters - so yeah, not beating the furry allegations. maybe.

at first, i was thinking about writing a second chapter to show dawon’s side of things, but maybe some things are better left unsaid. dawon herself has to grapple with her own struggles and regrets, because she is the one who chose to leave after all (even if it was “the only choice to make”) and watching hyunjung achieve everything they wanted to without her is going to hurt. whether or not dawon actually showed up for the earlier performances but khj didn’t see her is up to interpretation, but i would think that she didn’t - it hurt too much at that point. did dawon actually sit at the seat khj reserved for her but left early? also up to interpretation, i don’t have an answer for that. i think even attending the concert would’ve been a difficult decision to make and accepting khj’s ticket means accepting certain social obligations. i don’t know if she can look at khj shine on stage from that close distance either. but, mainly i wanted to have the idea of the back row (which was originally in the fic title) from this lyric: well the years pass but the time slows and i still look for you in the back row, oh i wish i could see you now.

[this post is how i found out that neospring doesn’t actually let you send answers close to but not exceeding the 4096 character limit because it was about 10 characters under originally but they forced me to split it up]

[20/02/24] (part one) oh !! i’m so glad you noticed, there is a significance behind it. on one hand, it is a seolwon fic about hyunjung trying to make sense of debuting without dawon. but on the other, it also follows khj’s debut journey and how she’s trying to navigate who she is as a person (hyunjung) and the idol she needs to be (seola).

as hyunjung, she’s half stuck in the past, stuck on dawon and everything she wishes they could’ve done even though it was never her fault that dawon dropped out - there’s this part in the second song i referenced for the fic that basically summarizes hyunjung’s feelings here: i’m still sorry even though i know it’s not my fault [...] even if you thought that leaving was the only choice to make, i can’t help but wish that you chose to stay.

however, khj also needs to learn how to be seola - an idol who is part of wjsn, the oldest among her members. she has responsibilities, which you can catch glimpses of here and there with how she can’t be the “weakest link” as the oldest, how she comforts dayoung etc.. she might not be the leader, but there is a burden that she bears, especially when the youngest members are not even adults yet. additionally, while there is guilt to achieving the dream she shared with dawon alone, seola recognizes how she can’t just be stuck on the past like this. while she might’ve wanted to debut with dawon, that ultimately didn’t happen and she can’t change that. it’s unfair on her members for her to be unhappy just because they aren’t dawon - it’s not their fault. it’s not that khj’s love is finite and she has to be split between dawon and the rest - even as she learns to perform with wjsn as a group, she doesn’t and will not love dawon any less. but, as the fic says, “this is who she has now, her team to conquer the stage with, and she can [learn to] be happy with that.”

that’s why in all the interwoven flashbacks and when she’s checking her phone for dawon’s text back, khj is only ever referred to as hyunjung. but when she’s on stage, being an idol, she’s seola (aside from the first section, where she’s still getting used to the idea of it). that’s why the other members are referred to by their stage names as well - although i imagine that as they grow closer over time, hyunjung will rever to thinking of them as their real names, at least off camera.

as a side note, the other members would know about dawon’s existence, but they don’t feel her absence as keenly as khj. they did all train together, since dawon dropped out very close to debut, but in this universe none of them were as close to her as hyunjung - trainees come and go, not everyone makes the cut. but hyunjung and dawon dreamed of debuting together. and at the end of the day, hyunjung is the only one who is shining on stage. i’m not sure if this was clear, but the final image attachment from dawon was a photo taken from the back row of khj on stage.

[20/02/24] anything about them in particular you want to see? they’ve been on my mind but i have no ideas

[11/02/24] hmm, i don’t go looking for them but i’m ok reading them especially if it’s just a background setting and the emphasis isn’t on worldbuilding the apocalyptic aspects (plague/virus-type apocalypse shit freaks me out, so i might not read something that goes into too much detail). au-wise, i feel like i’m pretty willing to read anything? even if it’s based on a media i don’t consume. but i think historical aus can get pretty confusing, especially if it involves royalty etc.. i think hanahaki and soulmate aus are cool tbh, but sometimes handled horribly so i’m a little picky about that. but at the end of the day, beggars can’t be choosers and i absolutely will read most fics for groups/pairings i like, just that i might be raising my eyebrow and proceeding with suspicion

[11/02/24] not sure about my main bias but my most recent biasline in age order: seola, luda, dawon, yeoreum. does that say anything about me?