![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Entry tags:
A/N: blue sky (sunhak, canon compliant)
this week marks exactly one year since I posted blue sky. and just this week it reached 400 kudos too! (!!?!?) so I think it's only fair if I give it a bit of a revision and go over it here! :D let's do this.
some initial thoughts: I never thought any of my kpop fics would ever reach that mark, so I'm just really, really grateful. genuinely!! to put things in perspective, my second most kudoed kpop fic has half the kudos of "blue sky" (batbsof sits at 235 kudos right now). so it's not an exaggeration to say it's my most kudoed kpop fic by far.
the idea was born out of witnessing the sunhak divorce in real time and discussing it with jenny. we kept wondering like, if we were to write this, what would be the cause for it? what would lead these two to drift apart? who would hurt who and why? it's some incredible fodder for angst because it's friends to enemies to lovers, which is just so painful. and I do love pain in fic!
I actually started this from sunwoo's pov because his pov was (still is?) the easiest pov for me. so I wrote the first scene, the fight scene, with sunwoo as the narrator, but it didn't quite work until I decided to switch povs a couple months later. it was my third? attempt at a hak pov (berry like cherry was the first, batbsof the second), but now it really felt like a hak pov. canon!hak is a lot more tricky to get right imo, so it was hard! I was so scared I'd butcher his characterization and give him the wrong voice... but man, did I have fun trying :')
also, I was a little mad when I wrote that authors note. I don't even remember why! but I sound so dry in it in comparison to my other a/ns T_T
-
some observations:
“What do you want, Haknyeon?” Sunwoo asks, tone vicious, cutting.
sunwoo is really inconsistent with his honorifics and the way he calls hak. that was on purpose! even though as a reader I would've been peeved by that sort of inconsistency lol but the way I meant it was, sunwoo doesn't care much about honorifics and hierarchy with the people he's closest with, and hak is the epitome of that. he goes back and forth between hak, haknyeon, and hyung most of the time. hak doesn't mind it either, because they're close enough that he got used to it. but here in particular, where he's hurt and lashing out, the "haknyeon" comes to highlight that anger - he's not bothering with honorifics on purpose. he's being rude.
•
"How many times did he share his fears that he was too harsh, too blunt, generally bad at expressing affection, to the point where he feared he was empty, incapable of loving people as they deserved to be loved?"
not to go full jusadan-in-training here, but hak irl really does keep repeating himself about not being able to express himself, especially with fans. it doesn't come as easy to him as it does to the others. I extrapolated from that here and only later, when I was rereading the fic, did I realize that the hak I wrote here resonates a lot more with me than I expected it to. I thought I'd be writing from a pov completely different from my personal experiences, but turns out that's super relatable. fictional hak [handshake emoji] real hak [handshake emoji] me = awful at expressing feelings.
•
"Even though they’re not the closest they could be, they’re still friends, and close enough that Haknyeon knows this is way too much to be asking of Kevin."
sunwoo had jacob to help him through that night, but hak and kevin are not as close as suncob. kevin was as much of a neutral party as anyone could possibly be in this context - and he's levelheaded enough that he didn't try to sugarcoat anything. it didn't make things easier for hak that the person who witnessed all that wasn't one of his closest friends, but maybe that's a good thing? I just loved working through this scene and figuring out how these two would deal with the situation.
•
"They hear Hyunjae calling for Haknyeon from the hallway outside their apartment."
I think this is the only fic so far where I use "hyunjae" and not "jaehyun"? LOL I was just so in the headspace of canon compliant that I didn't think twice about it. they do call each other by their stage names a lot, so!
•
"They reach the small conference room Haknyeon usually chooses to eat in; it’s out of the way, so people don’t usually come here, and the Wi-Fi signal is strong, which means he usually eats while catching up on whatever he’s watching at the moment. It’s a recent habit of his. He usually shared a meal with whoever was available at the dorm, or went out to eat at one of the nearby places, but since everything closed down due to quarantine, and since he started to feel more alone than happy at the dorm, he switched to this room. It’s not that bad, really."
it is that bad. he's been isolating himself and doesn't really realize it. it's amazing what a busy schedule and a workaholic mentality can achieve in terms of denial!
•
"His voice is low, only for Haknyeon and the choreographer to hear—especially since the others are making a lot of noise, playing with the plastic swords around them."
ah... the dreaded rtk experience. I wanted to leave small hints of what they were doing - in this case, practicting for sword of victory - without outright mentioning rtk. mostly because I was so done with the show when I wrote this (I hate survivals so much!!!) but also because the point wasn't rtk itself; this kind of tense, awkward interaction would happen regardless. it just so happened, unluckily for them, that the fight was around rtk time. it's an easter egg for those who figure out what they're doing, which makes everything worse because gdi, imagine going through that in the midst of rtk, but that can be read as just usual idol things too if you choose to believe road to helldom wasn't a thing.
•
"hkn221 [23:49]:
tf?? you should’ve called me"
their lol usernames!!!
"hkn221" - the 221 comes from sherlock because hak said in a vlive in early 2020 that he was watching bbc sherlock LOL and he does like spy/action stuff, I figured making him a canon sherlock holmes fan wouldn't be too much of a stretch.
"KING DARK7" - the "dark seven" comes from his trump card for the danger stage! the king is just because he knows he's a king. #hyunjaefacts
"tjsdnㅋㅋ" - "sunwooㅋㅋ" but you type the korean letters using the latin alphabet keyboard.
•
"But at the first mention of cherry, he hesitated."
[...]
"Even if the lyrics talked of red hair that spells sunset, and shared cakes, and of company that is as sweet as it is citrus [...]"
this fic was so self-indulgent that some stuff might be way too subtle to make sense, but the vlive where sunwoo first sang berry was on september 2019. hak had cherry hair for bloom bloom, a few months before that. that's why he makes the connection right away! because he used cherry to refer to himself too.
and the small snippet sunwoo sang on vlive did mention cakes, I believe? the rest was made up for #angst purposes. sorry for the creative liberties I took with your song, sunwoo!!!
•
“I can do it,” Sunwoo says against his shirt, and at first Haknyeon thinks he’s just repeating his words, but then he pulls back, wiping the tears from his cheeks, and says, “You can do it.”
He looks up, meets Haknyeon’s eyes. Haknyeon is smiling when he finishes it:
“We can do it.”
I quote this line all the time. when I find myself in times of trouble, haknyeon comes to me speaking words of wisdom..... I can do it, you can do it, we can do it.
•
"Haknyeon shakes his head, but doesn’t explain. He feels so exhausted, he pictures himself as a toy with dying batteries, no energy left in him to use his voice."
this is one of my favorite lines. and one of my favorite scenes, too. the 2ju friendship here is so important. hak mentions this thing, climbing into juyeon's bed, is an old habit - it dates back to his broduce days, basically. back when he was much more fragile than he is now at the time of the fic, and back when he relied heavily on the members for support. there are a few nods to this throughout the fic, about how hak saw some hard days in the past, because that experience really marked him. (and I mean, how could it not...)
•
“You need to eat,” Haknyeon says, out of reflex, because old habits die hard.
“And you need to do some soul searching.”
“Like shit I do.”
I really love this scene as well, because I love the hakhwall friendship. in the context of the fic, it makes sense that hak would confide in him, because they're really close and hyunjun is 100% on his side. and writing hyunjun is fun!! even if I know for a fact I don't do a good job of it. this scene, and hyunjun's character, helped hak understand so much - and it helped *me* understand where I wanted to take the story too. lol I always love it when characters just help me figure out things I'd otherwise be stuck in. [sends kiss to the sky] thank you, hyunjun!
•
“Oh, we could watch that thing. You know the thing? With the swords. I’m so behind on the episodes.”
the untamed, but for some reason it's on a weekly release schedule in this universe. hak calls it by the chinese title though so eric only calls it the thing with the swords. :')
•
"Realizing that when people talk about falling in love, the choice of words isn’t a coincidence. It’s not about losing your footing, nor is about hitting the ground. It’s about falling, slowly but surely, a continuous, sequential thing that happens overtime, unstoppable. It doesn’t happen overnight."
I really like these lines too, and I think it's a good representation of the things I write? I have a hard time writing love-at-first-sight type stories because I always return to the falling in love over time motif. the whole finding out you can't live without someone only when it's too late to do something about it, loving the good and the bad and everything in between, etc.
•
"They turn their attention back to the TV, where Jacob and Juyeon’s characters are in a stand-off with enemy players, and Jacob is surprisingly amped up about it, trying to get Juyeon to use his shield at the right time."
completely irrelevant piece of info, but I pictured them playing apex legends (with juyeon playing gibraltar) before I realized there's no split screen mode for apex... </3 so what game are they playing? who knows! maybe apex came out with a split screen mode in this universe. maybe jacob is playing on his laptop. maybe it's [insert here any other game in the history of games]
•
"Haknyeon’s own emotions shift a little, too, towards the most tender parts of his heart."
I like this line too! and this scene as a whole. it was so interesting to write, because they're *still* struggling to communicate up until here. they're still so afraid of hurting/getting hurt... but honesty comes through to save the day! (and I liked adding protective!chanhee too, because he so would. and all of the people involved are so terrible at holding their liquor... bless.)
•
"Juyeon is so grateful that Haknyeon remembered that was his favorite bakery, and Haknyeon is so grateful that Juyeon is there to help the whole survival thing be a bit more bearable, that they forget for a moment why they were even stressed in the first place."
this was a reference to kingdom, technically. I was super optmistic thinking kingdom could've happened somewhere around september 2020 LOL that's also why hak mentions them being in a good place around november - the survival was over, they had had good results, and all was well :')
•
some final thoughts: I've come to really love this fic. I've always been a fan of angst and canon compliant, and I love sunhak as a ship, so this was all a lot of fun to write. I think I reread this fic the most out of my fics (I'm always rereading my stuff because I write for myself first and foremost T_T BE YOUR OWN #FICWRITER), and it just hits hard every time.
oversharing ahead - as someone who struggles a whole damn lot with self-esteem, I may never be entirely satisfied with my writing, but positive feedback helps me see my things with kinder eyes. and the overwhelmingly positive feedback this fic got makes me INCREDIBLY happy :c and so grateful, too. I'm never, ever taking this for granted.
so to every single one of those 400 kudos, thank you! <3
some initial thoughts: I never thought any of my kpop fics would ever reach that mark, so I'm just really, really grateful. genuinely!! to put things in perspective, my second most kudoed kpop fic has half the kudos of "blue sky" (batbsof sits at 235 kudos right now). so it's not an exaggeration to say it's my most kudoed kpop fic by far.
the idea was born out of witnessing the sunhak divorce in real time and discussing it with jenny. we kept wondering like, if we were to write this, what would be the cause for it? what would lead these two to drift apart? who would hurt who and why? it's some incredible fodder for angst because it's friends to enemies to lovers, which is just so painful. and I do love pain in fic!
I actually started this from sunwoo's pov because his pov was (still is?) the easiest pov for me. so I wrote the first scene, the fight scene, with sunwoo as the narrator, but it didn't quite work until I decided to switch povs a couple months later. it was my third? attempt at a hak pov (berry like cherry was the first, batbsof the second), but now it really felt like a hak pov. canon!hak is a lot more tricky to get right imo, so it was hard! I was so scared I'd butcher his characterization and give him the wrong voice... but man, did I have fun trying :')
also, I was a little mad when I wrote that authors note. I don't even remember why! but I sound so dry in it in comparison to my other a/ns T_T
-
some observations:
“What do you want, Haknyeon?” Sunwoo asks, tone vicious, cutting.
sunwoo is really inconsistent with his honorifics and the way he calls hak. that was on purpose! even though as a reader I would've been peeved by that sort of inconsistency lol but the way I meant it was, sunwoo doesn't care much about honorifics and hierarchy with the people he's closest with, and hak is the epitome of that. he goes back and forth between hak, haknyeon, and hyung most of the time. hak doesn't mind it either, because they're close enough that he got used to it. but here in particular, where he's hurt and lashing out, the "haknyeon" comes to highlight that anger - he's not bothering with honorifics on purpose. he's being rude.
•
"How many times did he share his fears that he was too harsh, too blunt, generally bad at expressing affection, to the point where he feared he was empty, incapable of loving people as they deserved to be loved?"
not to go full jusadan-in-training here, but hak irl really does keep repeating himself about not being able to express himself, especially with fans. it doesn't come as easy to him as it does to the others. I extrapolated from that here and only later, when I was rereading the fic, did I realize that the hak I wrote here resonates a lot more with me than I expected it to. I thought I'd be writing from a pov completely different from my personal experiences, but turns out that's super relatable. fictional hak [handshake emoji] real hak [handshake emoji] me = awful at expressing feelings.
•
"Even though they’re not the closest they could be, they’re still friends, and close enough that Haknyeon knows this is way too much to be asking of Kevin."
sunwoo had jacob to help him through that night, but hak and kevin are not as close as suncob. kevin was as much of a neutral party as anyone could possibly be in this context - and he's levelheaded enough that he didn't try to sugarcoat anything. it didn't make things easier for hak that the person who witnessed all that wasn't one of his closest friends, but maybe that's a good thing? I just loved working through this scene and figuring out how these two would deal with the situation.
•
"They hear Hyunjae calling for Haknyeon from the hallway outside their apartment."
I think this is the only fic so far where I use "hyunjae" and not "jaehyun"? LOL I was just so in the headspace of canon compliant that I didn't think twice about it. they do call each other by their stage names a lot, so!
•
"They reach the small conference room Haknyeon usually chooses to eat in; it’s out of the way, so people don’t usually come here, and the Wi-Fi signal is strong, which means he usually eats while catching up on whatever he’s watching at the moment. It’s a recent habit of his. He usually shared a meal with whoever was available at the dorm, or went out to eat at one of the nearby places, but since everything closed down due to quarantine, and since he started to feel more alone than happy at the dorm, he switched to this room. It’s not that bad, really."
it is that bad. he's been isolating himself and doesn't really realize it. it's amazing what a busy schedule and a workaholic mentality can achieve in terms of denial!
•
"His voice is low, only for Haknyeon and the choreographer to hear—especially since the others are making a lot of noise, playing with the plastic swords around them."
ah... the dreaded rtk experience. I wanted to leave small hints of what they were doing - in this case, practicting for sword of victory - without outright mentioning rtk. mostly because I was so done with the show when I wrote this (I hate survivals so much!!!) but also because the point wasn't rtk itself; this kind of tense, awkward interaction would happen regardless. it just so happened, unluckily for them, that the fight was around rtk time. it's an easter egg for those who figure out what they're doing, which makes everything worse because gdi, imagine going through that in the midst of rtk, but that can be read as just usual idol things too if you choose to believe road to helldom wasn't a thing.
•
"hkn221 [23:49]:
tf?? you should’ve called me"
their lol usernames!!!
"hkn221" - the 221 comes from sherlock because hak said in a vlive in early 2020 that he was watching bbc sherlock LOL and he does like spy/action stuff, I figured making him a canon sherlock holmes fan wouldn't be too much of a stretch.
"KING DARK7" - the "dark seven" comes from his trump card for the danger stage! the king is just because he knows he's a king. #hyunjaefacts
"tjsdnㅋㅋ" - "sunwooㅋㅋ" but you type the korean letters using the latin alphabet keyboard.
•
"But at the first mention of cherry, he hesitated."
[...]
"Even if the lyrics talked of red hair that spells sunset, and shared cakes, and of company that is as sweet as it is citrus [...]"
this fic was so self-indulgent that some stuff might be way too subtle to make sense, but the vlive where sunwoo first sang berry was on september 2019. hak had cherry hair for bloom bloom, a few months before that. that's why he makes the connection right away! because he used cherry to refer to himself too.
and the small snippet sunwoo sang on vlive did mention cakes, I believe? the rest was made up for #angst purposes. sorry for the creative liberties I took with your song, sunwoo!!!
•
“I can do it,” Sunwoo says against his shirt, and at first Haknyeon thinks he’s just repeating his words, but then he pulls back, wiping the tears from his cheeks, and says, “You can do it.”
He looks up, meets Haknyeon’s eyes. Haknyeon is smiling when he finishes it:
“We can do it.”
I quote this line all the time. when I find myself in times of trouble, haknyeon comes to me speaking words of wisdom..... I can do it, you can do it, we can do it.
•
"Haknyeon shakes his head, but doesn’t explain. He feels so exhausted, he pictures himself as a toy with dying batteries, no energy left in him to use his voice."
this is one of my favorite lines. and one of my favorite scenes, too. the 2ju friendship here is so important. hak mentions this thing, climbing into juyeon's bed, is an old habit - it dates back to his broduce days, basically. back when he was much more fragile than he is now at the time of the fic, and back when he relied heavily on the members for support. there are a few nods to this throughout the fic, about how hak saw some hard days in the past, because that experience really marked him. (and I mean, how could it not...)
•
“You need to eat,” Haknyeon says, out of reflex, because old habits die hard.
“And you need to do some soul searching.”
“Like shit I do.”
I really love this scene as well, because I love the hakhwall friendship. in the context of the fic, it makes sense that hak would confide in him, because they're really close and hyunjun is 100% on his side. and writing hyunjun is fun!! even if I know for a fact I don't do a good job of it. this scene, and hyunjun's character, helped hak understand so much - and it helped *me* understand where I wanted to take the story too. lol I always love it when characters just help me figure out things I'd otherwise be stuck in. [sends kiss to the sky] thank you, hyunjun!
•
“Oh, we could watch that thing. You know the thing? With the swords. I’m so behind on the episodes.”
the untamed, but for some reason it's on a weekly release schedule in this universe. hak calls it by the chinese title though so eric only calls it the thing with the swords. :')
•
"Realizing that when people talk about falling in love, the choice of words isn’t a coincidence. It’s not about losing your footing, nor is about hitting the ground. It’s about falling, slowly but surely, a continuous, sequential thing that happens overtime, unstoppable. It doesn’t happen overnight."
I really like these lines too, and I think it's a good representation of the things I write? I have a hard time writing love-at-first-sight type stories because I always return to the falling in love over time motif. the whole finding out you can't live without someone only when it's too late to do something about it, loving the good and the bad and everything in between, etc.
•
"They turn their attention back to the TV, where Jacob and Juyeon’s characters are in a stand-off with enemy players, and Jacob is surprisingly amped up about it, trying to get Juyeon to use his shield at the right time."
completely irrelevant piece of info, but I pictured them playing apex legends (with juyeon playing gibraltar) before I realized there's no split screen mode for apex... </3 so what game are they playing? who knows! maybe apex came out with a split screen mode in this universe. maybe jacob is playing on his laptop. maybe it's [insert here any other game in the history of games]
•
"Haknyeon’s own emotions shift a little, too, towards the most tender parts of his heart."
I like this line too! and this scene as a whole. it was so interesting to write, because they're *still* struggling to communicate up until here. they're still so afraid of hurting/getting hurt... but honesty comes through to save the day! (and I liked adding protective!chanhee too, because he so would. and all of the people involved are so terrible at holding their liquor... bless.)
•
"Juyeon is so grateful that Haknyeon remembered that was his favorite bakery, and Haknyeon is so grateful that Juyeon is there to help the whole survival thing be a bit more bearable, that they forget for a moment why they were even stressed in the first place."
this was a reference to kingdom, technically. I was super optmistic thinking kingdom could've happened somewhere around september 2020 LOL that's also why hak mentions them being in a good place around november - the survival was over, they had had good results, and all was well :')
•
some final thoughts: I've come to really love this fic. I've always been a fan of angst and canon compliant, and I love sunhak as a ship, so this was all a lot of fun to write. I think I reread this fic the most out of my fics (I'm always rereading my stuff because I write for myself first and foremost T_T BE YOUR OWN #FICWRITER), and it just hits hard every time.
oversharing ahead - as someone who struggles a whole damn lot with self-esteem, I may never be entirely satisfied with my writing, but positive feedback helps me see my things with kinder eyes. and the overwhelmingly positive feedback this fic got makes me INCREDIBLY happy :c and so grateful, too. I'm never, ever taking this for granted.
so to every single one of those 400 kudos, thank you! <3