Weekly Fic Discussion

[arundels]

Weekly Fic Discussion

Welcome back to our Weekly Fic Discussion post!

This post can be used for any kind of fic discussion you want, but there are also a few prompt questions each week. You can reply to all of them, one of them, or none of them if you have something else you want to talk about!

Feel free to post WIP snippets, ask others' opinion on characterization, share a clip that has broken your brain, etc.!

This week's prompt questions:

• What is the most recent/most memorable/funniest thing that a fic made you google when you were writing it?


• Pitch your current favorite ship (or any ship you want!) and give a rec or two?

We are also considering moving to fortnightly discussion posts. Let us know if you have a preference!

Comments

[bookishdagger]

I did a lot of research about musical theater in SK for my seoksoo fic including scheduling, trying to figure out how double casting works etc and then chose not to use a lot of it because I hate retooling timelines. I also had to research what character Aaron Tveit played in Les Mis because I had the brainwave of Joshua’s having a teenage crush on Aaron Tveit (it makes sense in context, but it is no less funny in context). The Aaron Tveit thing was not important at all and I honestly figured out that beat more with the help of my friend who knows more about Les Mis than me but everything about the fact that I wrote Joshua having a crush on Aaron Tveit into my fic cracks me up and that includes the research.

SPEAKING of seoksoo….they are tied for #1 alongside jihancheol but I don’t think I really need to make The Case For Jihancheol lol so allow me to get on my seoksoo pedestal!!! The thing that really gets me about them is the Sweetness and the Care of it all. They are soooooo touchy and so soft with each other, and there’s sort of indulgence joshua has with seokmin that I don’t think he has with any other member…..like the constant selfies and going along with antics etc….also, I think seokmin is attentive to Joshua just as much as joshua is attentive to seokmin as his hyung and it makes me ill. I saw this tweet once about how joshua is seokmin’s little guy and like, that’s a very meme-y way of putting it but it’s also a very succinct way of putting it. The moment that launched me to Being Like This, fully, was the infamous fingers-in-mouth moment on Youngji’s No Prepare, and I mean yes it also speaks for itself but in ADDITION to being deeply sexually charged it’s ALSO seokmin being like “ah, hyung is busy making a bracelet, but he should have this chocolate so I will feed it to him!”. it’s about the reciprocal care!!!!

There’s something very interesting to me also about heart on his sleeve Lee Seokmin x You Only Know What I Tell You Hong Joshua. Learning to be vulnerable is kind of my kryptonite and doubly so when it involves one Joshua Hong so!!!

I mentioned the selfies earlier and in addition to the indulgence of it all I just have to say that pretty much every selfie they’ve ever taken looks like an instagram relationship hardlaunch and I feel really normal about it as you can tell.

So anyways! Seoksoo! I’ll come back with recs in the morning when I (hopefully) have Wi-Fi—pasting links on my phone is a pain and I would rather use my computer haha

[celli]

I am deeply in love with the crush on Aaron Tveit! And I wrote a fic set in an arts university in Seoul, which led to some random theatre research, so much fun.

[nagi_schwarz]

Oooh, what resources/sources did you use for musical theater research in SK? Since occasionally I like to have characters as musical actors.

[bookishdagger]

honestly i don’t remember the specifics….i know i went to a website to “buy” tickets for a musical in sk so i could see what the scheduling for shows looks like, and i think i found the information about double casting on….Reddit? or when I was looking at a poster for a production of phantom of the opera? There is a Korean musical theater subreddit I believe, and I read an article about the Korean theater industry but I have no idea what the article actually was…I think it was in the NYT? I could try to find it if you’re interested though!

[nagi_schwarz]

Oooh, thank you for giving me a place to start! I will find what I can but possibly come crawling back for help when I get hopelessly lost lol.

[lachrymosy]

"heart on his sleeve Lee Seokmin x You Only Know What I Tell You Hong Joshua" // ugh such a good dynamic! Plus with Joshua's general weirdness that sort of reserved nature has an interesting extra layer and yes, I can see the appeal! The musical theater research sounds super interesting also!

[caramarie]

I posted my most recent fic project 🎉 It's nice to have that done with.

The randomest thing I have googled for a fic is probably water filtration systems ... I needed something someone could do maintenance on on a spaceship! Not the most interesting topic, but it did help me to read about :P

[celli]

I love that google search, stuff like that is so weirdly satisfying!

[nagi_schwarz]

Congrats on getting the fic posted!

I feel you on random research. It helps get the work done.

[lachrymosy]

Congrats on getting your fic posted!! And lol isn't it funny how internally as a writer you know that your scifi or whatever doesn't necessarily have to be realistic but you're just like... nope, must read about water filtration! Love that!

[celli]

I've been googling head injuries a lot for a fic - like, I have myself had them, which cut down on it, but it's a lot of "if [gross thing] happens what do I do?" which...amuses me?

My current fave ship is BTS namkook. One of my faves is we're lucky too tomorrow, in there's magic and dimples and maybe magic dimples!

[nagi_schwarz]

Sometimes you just have to google a head injury, it's true. Hope your fic is going well!

[celli]

The head injury part I have down. The emotional part, ennnnnnh, I'm working on it. :)

[lachrymosy]

Okay honestly I am really grateful for all the writers out there who have compiled information on fighting and injuries. I do feel like that's something where you want to be realistically informed but, at least for me, I don't necessarily want to look at the actual gruesome pictures! Any interesting info you've found out?

[celli]

Mostly when you can take a shower after you have stitches, which is not super interesting but led to a nice little scene! And yes, being able to research things without getting TOO icked out.

[lachrymosy]

That is really important and relevant to a scene like that though!! Honestly just caring for wounds and injuries is such an ordeal in general.

[hitokage]

I haven't been writing much lately, so my search history is a bit sparse, the only really interesting thing was googling abura soba to make sure I was remembering what it was correctly (I wasn't XD). The bad thing there being it's for a drawer fic that I'm writing because I need it for the sake of nailing down bits of series canon, but no one else is ever going to be allowed to read it. Which is unfortunate, because it's got some great lines, but oh well. XD

I've been slowly re-reading aambass's Draw & Draw series (ATEEZ OT8 idolverse), which has some of my favorite bits of flavoring - a lamp ghost mystery, non-sexual kink, and the 99z being gremlins to the hyungline. XD

[andersenmom]

Drawer fics are where I figure everything out. I have a lot of those, and they're weirdly satisfying.

Also, when aren't the 99z being gremlins to MATZ?

P.S. thank you so much for the link! I missed this one!

[hitokage]

I didn't used to write them as much, but sometimes I just need to write something to work out how Character A and Character B would actually interact with each other given X, Y, and Z, but nothing about it really needs to be seen by anyone else (either because it's ultimately not a story or because I'm hording info for later surprises. Or both XD)

when aren't the 99z being gremlins to MATZ?
When they're asleep, of course. XD Although now I'm having thinky thoughts about how things might have changed with the new dorm arrangements.

It's a long read, but so satisfying with the mix of angsty and silliness and romance. I really enjoy the way aambass crafts a story, so there's more where that came from, too. ;)

[nagi_schwarz]

I have never heard of a lamp ghost mystery, so I am curious! I hope you'll be able to find words soon.

[nagi_schwarz]

I think the last thing I looked up for a fic that was interesting was neural implants that allow spine injury patients to walk again, by reading electrical impulses in the brain that signify walking, bypassing damaged areas/nerves in the spine, and connecting to the parts that do work so the person can walk. I'm writing a cyberpunk fic, and wetwear is fairly common in the genre, and I wanted to see what was currently available technology and build from there.

As for my favorite ship, it's probably Minhyuk/Myungjun (Astro, always). A bit of opposites attract, with the quiet one and the loud one, but they both have high energy in their own ways, and they're both excellent singers, and also low-key very sweet to each other, looking out for each other when they kind of get bowled over by the collective energy of the rest of the team. Sadly, it's a bit of a rarepair. My favorite fic for it is semi-god by vonseal (AO3-T, 24k words, angst with a happy ending). I love the fic so much that I did a podfic for it (2.5 hours long).

[lachrymosy]

Ooh the neural implants research sounds super interesting! The medical applications of different technologies are quite fascinating, as well as the different kinds of say mobility tools that could be possible. How did you end up applying it in your fic?

[nagi_schwarz]

I'm writing a cyberpunk fic, and wetwear and neural implants and patches are typical features of the genre, so I was really fascinated to see that the system didn't require too much in the way of surgery, and external patches were effective at making the tech work. Also it was good to see some of the current drawbacks, like battery life on the system, to know how the tech might improve in the future.

[lachrymosy]

I am very very late but here are my answers:

I'll try to keep this vague but I recently needed to Google outcomes of a kind of accident and it was funny to me because what I primarily found was pages and pages of lawyer websites for litigating responsibility. They were at least somewhat helpful as far as describing injuries, but I did eventually end up on an academic article which had some truly confusing diagrams. No one does incomprehensibility quite like academics! (/is an academic)

Not really a rec or anything but I really love seeing crackships, especially between different groups? Even if they don't appeal to me, when I see a writer who is posting a total crackship I'm like, yes. Bring that back!