the water at your feet - commentary

[pomellion]

sometimes i'll be writing a passage in a chapter or a drabble and i'll reread it and think 'wow hey that really hurt. idk why i do this to myself'. like i really had to dig deep into the amygdala-shaped trenches and chip away at the repressed memories to fish that one out huh.

so this fic was that feeling, but magnify it tenfold then stretch it out across the whole thing. which is probably why it took me so long to write 🧍
 

chaeyeon
the whole reason i wrote this was because i wanted to do a character study around her. i just wanted to have a better grasp on how to characterise her, because i feel like she's such a fun character to play with, but she's also so very complicated. obviously it quickly spiralled into something else entirely like i truly don't know what happened here. i don't think i've ever struggled with writing a protagonist as much as i have when writing her? she has a lot of nuance and depth given how long she's been in the industry (and her many redebuts) and she comes off as sort of a walking oxymoron at times, which really was so hard to capture.

for all her complexities, i think my main focus for her was this idea of transience, and particularly how that is contrasted (or challenged, really) by her past. i remember reading some of her fromm messages and she's mentioned that one of her favourite phrases is that 'nothing lasts forever', so i sort of just took that idea and ran with it lol. there were definitely other aspects of her characterisation that i thought were just too integral to her character/history to ignore (i.e. being a public figure for so long) that managed to manifest itself in other ways in her backstory here, but this was my 'anchor' for her character. oh, and i guess her addiction to situationships. (she really needs to put those situationship pills down.) though in retrospect, i guess that does follow from the whole transience thing. in any case, everything else for her personality just followed after that. namely, her key points being that she is both charming and frustrating simultaneously. frustratingly charming, charmingly frustrating. tomato tomato.

i did initially think about writing this fic from yubin's perspective, because her story's the one that's easier to tell: 'local girl gets bewitched by enigmatic girl from her past and catches a severe case of down-badism. unfortunately, enigmatic girl is enigmatic. woe is her.' and let us not get it twisted; i enjoy a hopeless romantic pining (hopelessly) as much as the next person. but i think i've grown too comfortable with writing/reading that story and i wanted to challenge myself to explore the perspective of enigma – well, with as much as she's willing to reveal, anyway.
 

yubin
when i first started writing yubin as a character, i actually didn't really put much thought into her initially (which is strange... considering she is the deuteragonist...). she sort of started off as just a foil to chaeyeon, and i thought it would be easier to write her since i've already written her character a bit before (oh how naive). then i developed that baseline premise of 'things that kim chaeyeon has observed about present-day gong yubin' and i realised Oh. i actually have to properly develop her character. Great. so if yubin feels a little ooc this is why LOL.

i think yubin's inner conflict, which we only really get a glimpse of, revolves around being torn by her need for validation (or more appropriately, assurance) whilst also being too afraid to fully afraid to confront chaeyeon about anything directly for fear of losing her. she's held hostage by her own desire, but not enough to jeopardise what she has with chaeyeon now – she's already lost her once before, and she can't risk having to let go again. did that translate over? i have no idea. idk her story was definitely one i contemplated and thought about writing a lot because it is largely centred on her relationship with chaeyeon in the past and reconciling that with her current image of her. while both characters are actively defined by their past, chaeyeon's story def focuses more on how her time in the industry impacts her now.

(im realising that in both of their respective sections i just ended up talking about the other character. such wisdom.)

other characters
at first i wrote most of them with the impression that i was going to keep them flat; serve their purpose or their narrative function and have that be that. and then i said to myself 'okay but what if you didn't do that' and i fleshed them out because i am incapable of keeping things focused or concise. sorry (not really). case in point, it was fun writing whatever kind of yuri nien was running in the background. did it make the fic a bit congested? yeah. would i do it again? hell yeah.

speaking of, if yubin was meant to serve as a foil to chaeyeon, nien serves as a bit more of a parallel to her. i think they're really interesting in the way they treat their idolsonas: both seem to actively try to be more entertaining/unserious than they might be offscreen – or at least, that's the impression I've gotten from their fromm messages. nien also seemed to flit between pairings with other members for a while (chaeyeon included lol) before she settled down with the sunnyz of it all (although she lowkey still flirts with half the group anyway). but they also come from such different backgrounds that there are definitely nuances in the way they handle being onscreen/their relationships with the members, and it was fun to bounce them off each other.

it lowkey felt like i was hoseok-bus-driver-ing it for a bit but i think i managed to distil everyone else into one role and/or function: sohyun's gentle, quiet sort of prodding; xinyu's brash (and slightly self-absorbed), but ultimately still well-meaning honesty; kotone serving as sort of a secondary, complementary parallel to yubin; jiwoo's overwhelming thoughtfulness, felt even from a distance. admittedly, i did consider removing the seoyeon scene entirely. the only reason i chose to keep it in is because i think that scene demonstrates people like chaeyeon who are so intricately multifaceted can be vulnerable in some ways, but that trust exists on a spectrum; just because they're comfortable with revealing some parts of themselves doesn't grant/entitle you to every aspect of their life. and that shouldn't detract from the friendship/relationship in general – patience really is just key when handling situations like that.

y'know there's all this world building and i'm realising i never gave the band nor chaeyeon's ex-group a name. such is life? also most of this was written before the flirting live and all consequent fansign interactions okay SORRY 415 I was not familiar with your game like that 🤚
 

sidebar: the struggle
this truly was such a difficult thing to write. like i got into a flow state for a while (when i was still telling myself i'd release this in march) but about ~2/3 of the way through i hit the big ole W.B. as in. writers' block. like this fic just held me hostage for 2-3 months and for what really.

pretty much everything else i've ever written publicly (which amounts to... like one thing haha) was basically just the first draft; plan it out, write, post it into the abyss, but i got so paralysed over this one that i basically halted every other major writing task in my life for this. Which Is Crazy. and i really could edit this for another month or so but i won't do it because i need to move on with my life i really do.

the pacing was also a mess, because i just kept extending it and extending it (this is what i get for going into these things without a solid plan?). but i also didn't have it in me to delete more than like 2 scenes so it just got really bloated. i know having drafts of different scenes and deleting them and rewriting entirely new ones is a part of the process, but i get really attached to some of them and i can't bring myself to get rid of them (see: the legion of people coming after chaeyeon for being an idiot). so. call me gong yubin the way i just can't let go AYYYYEE

i also had to learn how to use dreamwidth to post this (basically just enough to get this functional). and i switched to ellipsus because. Google Docs. and uni started again which means i immediately started drowning in work and i got DESTROYED by my subjects.
all of which to say, things were just not going well for this fic, and it's sort of a miracle that i ended up posting it at all.
 

wrapping it up
anyway! sorry if this commentary sucked ass – i'm not used to explaining my behaviours to anyone at all ever. at the very least, it was nice to ramble for a little bit. i didnt want to be toooooo explanatory here bc i feel like i should just let the fic speak for itself. derive what meaning you will, death of the author and all that.

i do have a few ideas bouncing around, competing for real estate with my last two remaining brain cells, so i'll probably do a oneshot/smaller multi-chapter fic at some point in the future (if the power of yuri compels me). but if it sucks the soul out of me the way that this one did, well. you probably won't see one for at least a while. also i haven't touched my drafting page for my longfic wip in like 3 months LOLLL