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☼ the sun swallowed whole: author's commentary
I am a chronic overthinker. I overthink many things, and one of those things is fanfiction.
The majority of my October this year was spent thinking about and writing this fic, the sun swallowed whole, as something to mark Halloween by. It took a lot out of me to write, and although I'm still not entirely happy with it, I'd like to use it as an exercise in writing better. Maybe coming back to this in the future will let me see where I could've improved, where I could've made some better decisions.
Maybe this bit of commentary will help future-me understand past-me a little better, too. Maybe it'll even help you, if you're reading this, to learn a little more about this work (and the thought that went into it).
If you haven't read the fic yet—why are you here? Hi? Feel free to check out my fic rec list (that I still haven't updated for the second half of the year yet, oops). Read the fic and come back here, maybe.
Before we go any further, I'll warn you that this will probably cover quite a number of disturbing themes, so please take note of the following:
Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con, Emotional Manipulation, Gaslighting, Unhealthy Relationships, Non-Consensual Drug Use, Religious Cults, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, Blood and Gore, Suicide, Murder, Panic Attacks, Drugged Sex, and Emotional Infidelity
POINTS OF FIRST CONSIDERATION
This Fic? Really?
I've always wanted to do a director's cut/author's commentary type post for one of my works, and I figured that it would be perfect to do a bit of overexplaining for the work that I've (so far) overthought and shoved full of references the most out of all of them. That's not to say that I don't think as much about the others (I'm constantly consumed by the thought of the [daisies] series and several other things), but that this one would probably be the most worthy of a deep-dive for now.
But Why Midsommar (2019)?
I just really like the movie. That's it.
Also I watched this fantastic video by Acolytes of Horror on YouTube and just knew I had to explore the idea from a 3rd person, non-omniscient point-of-view.
I Needed the Practice Writing an AU
If you've talked to me even once before, you'll know that I love canon fic. Canon is my wheelhouse, AUs are most definitely not. Especially AUs driven by plot. So, yeah. I needed the practice.
Why'd You Make It So Asian Though, and Other Assorted Whinges
I really didn't want to do a 100% direct copy-paste of Midsommar, and I wanted to put a fresh spin on things. Breathe new life into the story, y'know? Also, I grew up surrounded by Chinese folk religion and have always wanted to incorporate it into a story. We'll get into more of that later.
Also please do note that I'll say 'Asian' a bunch of times and might mostly mean East Asian and South-East Asian. It's just easier to type.
Choosing to Main Seungmin In A Horror Piece
I spent a fair bit of time thinking about who I wanted as Dani in this. It would've been all too easy to have Felix be the one getting gaslit at each turn. It also would've been easy to have Jisung or Hyunjin fill that role, but I wanted to choose someone who would take much longer to break. Someone who would hold those emotions in until the final moment. Seungmin was the perfect option, especially when paired with Chan as Pelle, who's open and kind and a wonderful listener in comparison to closed-off, unkind, disdainful boyfriend Minho.
I'll admit, I only really made Minho awful in this because I needed someone to play Christian, and the 2min dynamic sort of already lent itself to the idea. Throw in enough friction and you had an unhealthy relationship waiting to pop.
Why is This Commentary So Long?
Yeah, I dunno, I just talk a lot.
THE FIRST DAY
1. The use of time as imagery:
When I was thinking about how to begin this, I kept thinking about this thing I'd read a while ago, about the true length of a second. About how a second becomes a second. I wanted to use this to set the scene and to show how fleeting everything can be.
When Seungmin closes his eyes just for those few moments, he loses himself in that one second. It's later reflected in how the commune that they come to visit is so lost in time that it feels like everything just stops there.
2. Familiarity in a strange location
It's really kind of great to have two members in a group come from the same country. You can set so many stories there. It's not explicitly stated in the text, but the commune is located somewhere in Tasmania, Australia. The trees are eucalyptus, and all the other plants described in the work are also local to the country (I took some creative liberties, but I tried).
I wanted somewhere that could feel like both an oasis and a place of no return. This place that seemed almost unreal to them.
3. Naming a commune and some mythological backstory
I decided to mix things up and make things a mix of a few different cultures because in this story, I imagined the commune as sort of a melting pot of people. The way they grow is through inviting outsiders in and making them feel like part of the family. It would only be natural for cultures/religion/lore to get all mixed up and combined into whatever they have in present day.
So: there are elements of Scandinavian culture for the original Midsommar story, some Korean considering the characters, and Chinese for something to ground it all in.
As for the most important bit—a name:
Nüwa (女娲), or Nügua, is a goddess found in Chinese mythology. She's detailed in many creation myths central to Chinese culture, and I found it fitting to name the commune after her. Part of her name is constructed by the word wa (咼), which can translate to a number of things, mainly 'spiral' or 'spin' depending on noun/verb.
From The Magic Square: Cities in Ancient China by Alfred Schinz: "Nüwa, in her own legend, had restored order between heaven and earth after a horrible catastrophe had caused heaven to tilt to the north so that it no longer covered all of the earth.
This may refer to the first observation of the oblique elliptic and the angle of the pole star. Nüwa found it necessary to reestablish the four cardinal points, which she did, thereby creating the prerequisites for further observations. In the oldest pictures of her she carries a compass, the instrument related to heavenly observations."
Creation, direction, observation. Three things I wanted to point to throughout the text (the life-death rituals, Seungmin finding his way, Chris' fascination with the stars).
The Huainanzi, an ancient Chinese text comprised of essays on debates concerning Taoist, Legalist and Confucianist concepts, details the destruction of the heavens and the earth. Nüwa took five stones to restore the skies and killed a black dragon to save a province.
Speaking of five stones and a dragon...
4. The very liberal sprinkling of dragon mentions all over the work
So... we're big on dragons in Asia. It's a lot to go into, and there are dozens of articles online that you can read up on to see just why dragons are so important in East Asian culture especially, but the down and dirty of it is that they're considered a symbol of good luck and fortune. They're bringers of rain for crops, they're protectors, they're just and intelligent and beautiful and fearsome and terrible.
Something you'll see at at Korean Buddhist temple is a painting called 반야 용선도, or "The Dragon Ship of Wisdom Mural" as some articles put it. This dragon ship brings Buddhist devotees across Samsara to the pure land. Think life, death, rebirth.
There's a lot more I could say about dragons, but you can have some visual aids instead.
As for the the five stones, they were seen to represent "the five elements — wood, fire, earth, metal, and water — are believed to be the fundamental elements of everything in the universe between which interactions occur."
Also, if you like horoscopes, check these out a bit more with regard to the zodiac.
5. Guardian spirits, oh my
A couple more visual aids here.
Guan Yu, or Guan Gong, is basically the patron saint of warriors/soldiers. He's described as a "Chinese god of war whose immense popularity with the common people rests on the firm belief that his control over evil spirits is so great that even actors who play his part in dramas share his power over demons." [src] He's popular to have as a statue on altars in homes here and in a lot of Asian countries.
We have one in our house. He's pretty terrifying at night when all the lights are off and the only thing you see down the long hallway is the altar lit up in a blood-red, and his face staring you down behind incense smoke.
These things were things that I grew up with. As a child, I went to temple and biked around the compound and stared at the stone dragons for hours. We stepped around the too-tall altars and avoided the dripping ash and watched the white tiles grey over years and years of visits. We played hide-and-seek behind the backs of idols and ran around large paper lanterns and pole-mounted cloth banners scrawled with the language of my own people that I never learnt to read.
It's some of my earliest memories of religion. Here, Seungmin's building off the knowledge of maybe a couple of temple or church visits, but it's all truly foreign to him. He'd be asking the same question I'd asked as a child: who do the protectors protect? And why?
6. The lake
The lake becomes a recurring location in this, mainly to tie in the element of water.
It's also where Seungmin has his first panic attack, and I found it incredibly fitting. He's remembering the way his family (his sister and parents) had suffocated due to carbon monoxide poisoning, and he's suffocating in turn from the breaths he can't take, and it just feels like he's drowning under it all. Air, water, it's all the same when you can't breathe.
7. How does it all come together?
At the heart of it, Seungmin is alone, lonely, frustrated, grieving, desperate for something more than he's getting. He doesn't really know what he wants at this point, torn between seeking assurance from the person he believes he should be seeking it from, and staying in the same place where he'd been the entire time before coming along on the trip. Stuck in the loss that he still hasn't been able to grieve properly.
And that brings us to the next day.
THE SECOND DAY
1. Did you know that Midsommar's entire script is available online?
No? Now you do.
A lot of the scenes from this day have been borrowed from the script. Not entirely, though—just plot, not dialogue or exact phrases or anything, don't worry. But if you've watched Midsommar, here on out is probably where you'll spot the most references to the actual movie. I won't really go into discussing those bits since they're the most obvious and you can really just watch like, any YouTube video that explains Midsommar for the full context of those things.
2. That's a lot of food
The way to a reader's brain is through their stomach. Kidding, but not really.
I've always really appreciated the thought that the way to get to know a culture is through their food. And I adore writing the visuals of meals a la GRRM. It's really fun, actually. There's more in Day 3, but I won't pull all the quotes. You get the idea.
3. The indifference of Lee Minho & the uwu of Lee Felix
Yeah. Let's get into it.
Seungmin and Minho are basically at the end of their relationship at this point. They're fraying at the seams and it's obvious to the both of them, but neither of them are in the right state to break it off. Minho had wanted to, but then Seungmin's entire family had just fucking died, and it would've been cruel. Seungmin just wants to retain some normalcy in his life, and Minho's the only one truly left. That is, until the trip.
Chris is Minho's friend first, but here's when you start to see who it is he's really gunning for. He's recognised Seungmin's vulnerability and believes that Seungmin can be primed to stay. It's a very cult thing, isn't it?
Also, if you read between the lines carefully enough, basically everything Chris says is just gaslighting Seungmin, but like. In a very earnest way. Because he believes everything he's saying. Also very cult-appropriate. Same with Felix, who takes a shine to Seungmin almost immediately. He makes Seungmin feel like he's got a friend. A real friend who cares, who asks about his family and means it.
It's the perfect Felix role, actually.
4. Oof, that's some dead dove content right there
Just in case you missed it, I guess:
That. Yeah, that's some tasty blood-infused lemonade. You know, those silly girls and their magic rituals involving menstrual blood in order to get a guy to fall in love with them so you can later drug them, rape them and have their baby in order to keep the commune going.
Yeah.
THE THIRD DAY
1. Digging up beets
This was probably my favourite scene to write in the entire fic. I just really enjoyed building up the dynamic between Seungmin and Chris. Seungmin seeing more of Chris, seeing more of the commune through him. Chris making Seungmin realise that he's more than what he thinks of himself.
Chris makes him smile, and that's more than he could've ever expected.
But, at this point in time, Seungmin's still hanging onto that thread connecting him to Minho:
He wants so badly for Minho to see him. But Minho doesn't.
And it's not entirely Minho's fault either, to be fair. He's distracted by the other commune members, he's drugged, he's also gaslit, and Seungmin just has no idea. We do, but Seungmin doesn't, and that's what really kills him.
Chris takes Minho's place so neatly and efficiently that Seungmin doesn't even realise.
THE FOURTH DAY
1. Why four days?
In the movie, they're only there for three days. I wanted to make it four to give the story more breathing room, and more chances for Seungmin to interact with the commune members.
The number 4 (四) in Chinese numerology is also considered incredibly unlucky because it sounds a lot like 'death'. In many Asian countries, if you go to a building with multiple floors, you're likely to see floors "3", "3A" and "5" and no "4" in sight.
And on the fourth day, life becomes death and death becomes life.
2. Becoming one of them
Seungmin, who'd been the most hesitant to come along, is being folded into the community without him even realising. They give him the same clothes that they wear, but they don't give Minho any. They ignore Minho and they shower Seungmin with sweet words.
He's almost theirs.
3. More dragons!
Dragon babies auspicious. Love our 00zs.
4. I guess I should talk about formatting
Here, in Day 4, as well as back in Day 2, I have a couple of sections that are broken up like this:
And those really help to make things feel a bit more expansive, I suppose. Line breaks that wide usually mean time skips, and you can see them that way here as well, except it's the way time is skipping for Seungmin from one line to the next. Everything is going so quickly that he can't keep up. Much like feeling a second for what it really is.
5. The ending
All of this, every single word, has led to this: Seungmin breaking down.
When his family died, he didn't cry. He hasn't been able to, has blamed himself and carried that guilt for so long that crying was never an option. But, when he sees what happened to Minho (or, in his mind, what Minho's doing), he finally breaks. And all of them, they all cry with him.
He feels heard. He feels like he belongs. He feels cared for, and loved.
And that's why it's so easy for him to make the decision after.
Being held. Feeling free. Both these things, Seungmin's craved for so long. He finally has them, he thinks. In reality, he's basically signed over his entire life to a commune he's only known for 4 days. But in his mind, grief no longer has control over him.
He'll be trapped in that one in thirty million uncertainty for the rest of his life. And he'd probably be happier for it.
LAST COMMENTS
I realise after typing all of this that I mostly wanted a place to put down all the references to religion/culture, but it was nice to go back and explore this story in detail again. I hope this doesn't come off entirely as rambling and that this was somewhat interesting to read at least, for anyone who's gotten this far!
Check out more fic here, drop me an ask here, or read more unhinged tweets here.
The majority of my October this year was spent thinking about and writing this fic, the sun swallowed whole, as something to mark Halloween by. It took a lot out of me to write, and although I'm still not entirely happy with it, I'd like to use it as an exercise in writing better. Maybe coming back to this in the future will let me see where I could've improved, where I could've made some better decisions.
Maybe this bit of commentary will help future-me understand past-me a little better, too. Maybe it'll even help you, if you're reading this, to learn a little more about this work (and the thought that went into it).
If you haven't read the fic yet—why are you here? Hi? Feel free to check out my fic rec list (that I still haven't updated for the second half of the year yet, oops). Read the fic and come back here, maybe.
Before we go any further, I'll warn you that this will probably cover quite a number of disturbing themes, so please take note of the following:
> Please Click to View Content Warnings
Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con, Emotional Manipulation, Gaslighting, Unhealthy Relationships, Non-Consensual Drug Use, Religious Cults, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, Blood and Gore, Suicide, Murder, Panic Attacks, Drugged Sex, and Emotional Infidelity
POINTS OF FIRST CONSIDERATION
This Fic? Really?
I've always wanted to do a director's cut/author's commentary type post for one of my works, and I figured that it would be perfect to do a bit of overexplaining for the work that I've (so far) overthought and shoved full of references the most out of all of them. That's not to say that I don't think as much about the others (I'm constantly consumed by the thought of the [daisies] series and several other things), but that this one would probably be the most worthy of a deep-dive for now.
But Why Midsommar (2019)?
I just really like the movie. That's it.
Also I watched this fantastic video by Acolytes of Horror on YouTube and just knew I had to explore the idea from a 3rd person, non-omniscient point-of-view.
I Needed the Practice Writing an AU
If you've talked to me even once before, you'll know that I love canon fic. Canon is my wheelhouse, AUs are most definitely not. Especially AUs driven by plot. So, yeah. I needed the practice.
Why'd You Make It So Asian Though, and Other Assorted Whinges
I really didn't want to do a 100% direct copy-paste of Midsommar, and I wanted to put a fresh spin on things. Breathe new life into the story, y'know? Also, I grew up surrounded by Chinese folk religion and have always wanted to incorporate it into a story. We'll get into more of that later.
Also please do note that I'll say 'Asian' a bunch of times and might mostly mean East Asian and South-East Asian. It's just easier to type.
Choosing to Main Seungmin In A Horror Piece
I spent a fair bit of time thinking about who I wanted as Dani in this. It would've been all too easy to have Felix be the one getting gaslit at each turn. It also would've been easy to have Jisung or Hyunjin fill that role, but I wanted to choose someone who would take much longer to break. Someone who would hold those emotions in until the final moment. Seungmin was the perfect option, especially when paired with Chan as Pelle, who's open and kind and a wonderful listener in comparison to closed-off, unkind, disdainful boyfriend Minho.
I'll admit, I only really made Minho awful in this because I needed someone to play Christian, and the 2min dynamic sort of already lent itself to the idea. Throw in enough friction and you had an unhealthy relationship waiting to pop.
Why is This Commentary So Long?
Yeah, I dunno, I just talk a lot.
THE FIRST DAY
1. The use of time as imagery:
How long is a second?
A briefness. Pull one’s eyelids apart and force them to become aware of their own blinking, the speed in which their vision shutters once you let go. One single second is 1/60th of a single minute, a 1/3600th of a single hour. We grasp at designations congruent with an old understanding of the way stars in the sky work and decide, almost arbitrarily, that this is a year, a month, a week, an hour, a minute—a second.
-
9,192,631,770 periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between the two hyperfine levels of the ground state of caesium 133. A second. The modern definition supplanting the historical. Some astronomer’s desire to make sense of the physics of it all.
The vibration of atoms. The shattering together of quarks to make time and space. A sentence that wouldn’t make anymore sense to the regular everyday man on the street than if you’d jumbled all the words together just like those bits of matter. The scientists that it had made sense to, well—they’d made a clock out of it. Something functioning at a level of uncertainty of one second in 30 million years.
When I was thinking about how to begin this, I kept thinking about this thing I'd read a while ago, about the true length of a second. About how a second becomes a second. I wanted to use this to set the scene and to show how fleeting everything can be.
1/60th of a minute. 1/3600th of an hour. Sometimes, if you don’t focus, if you just let time pass—twenty seconds can feel just like one.
When Seungmin closes his eyes just for those few moments, he loses himself in that one second. It's later reflected in how the commune that they come to visit is so lost in time that it feels like everything just stops there.
2. Familiarity in a strange location
His heels dig into the soil as he hangs back to look around at the mass of trees flanking them on all sides. Air, fresh and full of something that reminds him of the medicine he used to rub under his nose when he fell sick as a kid [...]
It's really kind of great to have two members in a group come from the same country. You can set so many stories there. It's not explicitly stated in the text, but the commune is located somewhere in Tasmania, Australia. The trees are eucalyptus, and all the other plants described in the work are also local to the country (I took some creative liberties, but I tried).
He hadn’t imagined it would look like this—this wide. This open. They’d passed so much desert and rock on their way outbound from the city that this feels like some sort of secret paradise tucked away for chosen eyes only.
I wanted somewhere that could feel like both an oasis and a place of no return. This place that seemed almost unreal to them.
3. Naming a commune and some mythological backstory
I decided to mix things up and make things a mix of a few different cultures because in this story, I imagined the commune as sort of a melting pot of people. The way they grow is through inviting outsiders in and making them feel like part of the family. It would only be natural for cultures/religion/lore to get all mixed up and combined into whatever they have in present day.
So: there are elements of Scandinavian culture for the original Midsommar story, some Korean considering the characters, and Chinese for something to ground it all in.
As for the most important bit—a name:
[...] and then the shade breaks on Nüwa [...]
Nüwa (女娲), or Nügua, is a goddess found in Chinese mythology. She's detailed in many creation myths central to Chinese culture, and I found it fitting to name the commune after her. Part of her name is constructed by the word wa (咼), which can translate to a number of things, mainly 'spiral' or 'spin' depending on noun/verb.
From The Magic Square: Cities in Ancient China by Alfred Schinz: "Nüwa, in her own legend, had restored order between heaven and earth after a horrible catastrophe had caused heaven to tilt to the north so that it no longer covered all of the earth.
This may refer to the first observation of the oblique elliptic and the angle of the pole star. Nüwa found it necessary to reestablish the four cardinal points, which she did, thereby creating the prerequisites for further observations. In the oldest pictures of her she carries a compass, the instrument related to heavenly observations."
Creation, direction, observation. Three things I wanted to point to throughout the text (the life-death rituals, Seungmin finding his way, Chris' fascination with the stars).
The Huainanzi, an ancient Chinese text comprised of essays on debates concerning Taoist, Legalist and Confucianist concepts, details the destruction of the heavens and the earth. Nüwa took five stones to restore the skies and killed a black dragon to save a province.
Speaking of five stones and a dragon...
4. The very liberal sprinkling of dragon mentions all over the work
Two large wooden poles form a tall gateway that they pass through as they enter the compound. There are strange carvings all the way down them that Seungmin can only catch a good glimpse of when he strains his eyes—twisted dragons with their claws curled around balls, strange men with large mouths and bulging eyes that seem to follow him as he walks, featureless turtles and small winding flowers and unmoving ocean waves.
-
Seungmin steps in carefully, mouth falling open at the way the ceiling is painted—dragons spinning around each other, petals for scales, the description of something otherworldly in the way they cling to each other.
So... we're big on dragons in Asia. It's a lot to go into, and there are dozens of articles online that you can read up on to see just why dragons are so important in East Asian culture especially, but the down and dirty of it is that they're considered a symbol of good luck and fortune. They're bringers of rain for crops, they're protectors, they're just and intelligent and beautiful and fearsome and terrible.
Something you'll see at at Korean Buddhist temple is a painting called 반야 용선도, or "The Dragon Ship of Wisdom Mural" as some articles put it. This dragon ship brings Buddhist devotees across Samsara to the pure land. Think life, death, rebirth.
There's a lot more I could say about dragons, but you can have some visual aids instead.
As for the the five stones, they were seen to represent "the five elements — wood, fire, earth, metal, and water — are believed to be the fundamental elements of everything in the universe between which interactions occur."
“It’s a traditional thing,” Chris says lightly. “The number three represents life, and the number five represents the five elements. Water, fire, earth, w—”
“—wood and metal,” Changbin finishes [...]
Also, if you like horoscopes, check these out a bit more with regard to the zodiac.
5. Guardian spirits, oh my
As his thoughts drift, the totem that he’s been looking at finally registers in Seungmin’s brain. It’s a man dressed in long robes, hair wild, eyes big and unseeing, mouth stretched open in a scream. In one hand, he holds a feather-ended spear. In the other, he holds a sword. His face has been painted a sharp, dark red. A contrast to the almost pastel sweetness of the sunshine-covered commune.
A guardian spirit, Brian had said.
What does it guard them from?
A couple more visual aids here.
Guan Yu, or Guan Gong, is basically the patron saint of warriors/soldiers. He's described as a "Chinese god of war whose immense popularity with the common people rests on the firm belief that his control over evil spirits is so great that even actors who play his part in dramas share his power over demons." [src] He's popular to have as a statue on altars in homes here and in a lot of Asian countries.
We have one in our house. He's pretty terrifying at night when all the lights are off and the only thing you see down the long hallway is the altar lit up in a blood-red, and his face staring you down behind incense smoke.
These things were things that I grew up with. As a child, I went to temple and biked around the compound and stared at the stone dragons for hours. We stepped around the too-tall altars and avoided the dripping ash and watched the white tiles grey over years and years of visits. We played hide-and-seek behind the backs of idols and ran around large paper lanterns and pole-mounted cloth banners scrawled with the language of my own people that I never learnt to read.
It's some of my earliest memories of religion. Here, Seungmin's building off the knowledge of maybe a couple of temple or church visits, but it's all truly foreign to him. He'd be asking the same question I'd asked as a child: who do the protectors protect? And why?
6. The lake
He drops to his hands right on the edge of the lake and splashes water onto his face, shaking so hard that he almost falls in.
The lake becomes a recurring location in this, mainly to tie in the element of water.
It's also where Seungmin has his first panic attack, and I found it incredibly fitting. He's remembering the way his family (his sister and parents) had suffocated due to carbon monoxide poisoning, and he's suffocating in turn from the breaths he can't take, and it just feels like he's drowning under it all. Air, water, it's all the same when you can't breathe.
7. How does it all come together?
No. Minho’s wrong. He hadn’t really wanted to come along.
(He had to.)
-
Maybe he should’ve stayed at home after all. There wouldn’t have been any difference. He still hears his ghosts anyway.
At the heart of it, Seungmin is alone, lonely, frustrated, grieving, desperate for something more than he's getting. He doesn't really know what he wants at this point, torn between seeking assurance from the person he believes he should be seeking it from, and staying in the same place where he'd been the entire time before coming along on the trip. Stuck in the loss that he still hasn't been able to grieve properly.
And that brings us to the next day.
THE SECOND DAY
1. Did you know that Midsommar's entire script is available online?
No? Now you do.
A lot of the scenes from this day have been borrowed from the script. Not entirely, though—just plot, not dialogue or exact phrases or anything, don't worry. But if you've watched Midsommar, here on out is probably where you'll spot the most references to the actual movie. I won't really go into discussing those bits since they're the most obvious and you can really just watch like, any YouTube video that explains Midsommar for the full context of those things.
2. That's a lot of food
He sets a bowl of something creamy in front of Seungmin—some sort of soup that smells of the wheat-fields close by—and a plate of fresh, still-steaming bread rolls next to it. Another girl comes up to neatly place glass goblets by their plates. They’re half-filled with juice. The tang of citrus fills Seungmin’s nostrils as he picks it up to inspect it. It’s fresh too.
-
He gets his buttered breadrolls, and in return he’s enlisted in kitchen duty for a couple of hours. One of the cooks directs him to a table where they’re rolling out dough and packing them into little oiled baking tins.
-
Seungmin’s not particularly hungry, but he forces himself to dig into the fish pie (that he’d had a hand in preparing, he recalls with some degree of satisfaction) set before him, along with a fresh salad of snap beans, corn, roasted squash and peppers—the last of which he notices Chris cautiously plucking out of his bowl and dropping onto Changbin’s plate, to Seungmin’s mild amusement.
The way to a reader's brain is through their stomach. Kidding, but not really.
I've always really appreciated the thought that the way to get to know a culture is through their food. And I adore writing the visuals of meals a la GRRM. It's really fun, actually. There's more in Day 3, but I won't pull all the quotes. You get the idea.
3. The indifference of Lee Minho & the uwu of Lee Felix
Yeah. Let's get into it.
“Seungmin,” Chris says, more carefully now. “I’ve seen… I’ve noticed the way that Minho’s been… speaking to you. He’s my friend, and I like him, but—do you feel held by him?”
Seungmin and Minho are basically at the end of their relationship at this point. They're fraying at the seams and it's obvious to the both of them, but neither of them are in the right state to break it off. Minho had wanted to, but then Seungmin's entire family had just fucking died, and it would've been cruel. Seungmin just wants to retain some normalcy in his life, and Minho's the only one truly left. That is, until the trip.
Chris is Minho's friend first, but here's when you start to see who it is he's really gunning for. He's recognised Seungmin's vulnerability and believes that Seungmin can be primed to stay. It's a very cult thing, isn't it?
Also, if you read between the lines carefully enough, basically everything Chris says is just gaslighting Seungmin, but like. In a very earnest way. Because he believes everything he's saying. Also very cult-appropriate. Same with Felix, who takes a shine to Seungmin almost immediately. He makes Seungmin feel like he's got a friend. A real friend who cares, who asks about his family and means it.
It's the perfect Felix role, actually.
4. Oof, that's some dead dove content right there
Just in case you missed it, I guess:
“It’s always nothing with you,” Minho says. He takes a sip from his drink. It’s a strange pale pink compared to everyone else’s chrysanthemum-yellow lemonades. “Whatever.”
That. Yeah, that's some tasty blood-infused lemonade. You know, those silly girls and their magic rituals involving menstrual blood in order to get a guy to fall in love with them so you can later drug them, rape them and have their baby in order to keep the commune going.
Yeah.
THE THIRD DAY
1. Digging up beets
The greenhouse is shuttered by long leafy canopies across the roof, protecting the crops inside from the oppressive sunshine. Seungmin pushes past the linen door covering and finds Chris midway through digging up a long line of carrots.
Chris spots him when he’s a few paces away, and sits back on his haunches with a welcoming smile. “Hey,” he says, ungloving his left hand to accept a bun from Seungmin, who sits down beside the basket of soil-dusted carrots. “The daisy suits you.”
This was probably my favourite scene to write in the entire fic. I just really enjoyed building up the dynamic between Seungmin and Chris. Seungmin seeing more of Chris, seeing more of the commune through him. Chris making Seungmin realise that he's more than what he thinks of himself.
Chris makes him smile, and that's more than he could've ever expected.
But, at this point in time, Seungmin's still hanging onto that thread connecting him to Minho:
And then, he turns to Minho and waits.
-
Please, Seungmin thinks, desperate. Please remember.
Please think of me.
He wants so badly for Minho to see him. But Minho doesn't.
And it's not entirely Minho's fault either, to be fair. He's distracted by the other commune members, he's drugged, he's also gaslit, and Seungmin just has no idea. We do, but Seungmin doesn't, and that's what really kills him.
Chris takes Minho's place so neatly and efficiently that Seungmin doesn't even realise.
THE FOURTH DAY
1. Why four days?
In the movie, they're only there for three days. I wanted to make it four to give the story more breathing room, and more chances for Seungmin to interact with the commune members.
The number 4 (四) in Chinese numerology is also considered incredibly unlucky because it sounds a lot like 'death'. In many Asian countries, if you go to a building with multiple floors, you're likely to see floors "3", "3A" and "5" and no "4" in sight.
And on the fourth day, life becomes death and death becomes life.
2. Becoming one of them
Felix had come by yesterday before lights out with a whisper of, “These are for you,” a bundle of clothes in his arms that he’d given to Seungmin with a big smile. “For tomorrow’s dance.”
Seungmin unties the flax hemp rope and unfolds the clothes. They’re just like what the villagers wear: a tunic embroidered in the same style and a pair of loose trousers. There’s a pretty symbol on the sleeves of the tunic that Seungmin spends a few moments running his fingers over, feeling the threadwork. It’s not like anything he’s seen before.
Seungmin, who'd been the most hesitant to come along, is being folded into the community without him even realising. They give him the same clothes that they wear, but they don't give Minho any. They ignore Minho and they shower Seungmin with sweet words.
He's almost theirs.
3. More dragons!
Another group is gathered around a woman with a brush in her hand. She’s painting the faces of the dancers, Seungmin surmises, and he’s brought to the front of the group as she finishes with someone else. “What year did the earth give you life, boy?” she asks, dabbing her brush into a pot of clay-red paint.
“2000,” Seungmin says, and there’s a couple of delighted murmurs. The woman blinks at him and then smiles. “Is that a good thing?”
“Oh yes,” the woman says, beckoning him close. “The gods love our dragon-born children. They are blessed. As are you.”
Dragon babies auspicious. Love our 00zs.
4. I guess I should talk about formatting
Here, in Day 4, as well as back in Day 2, I have a couple of sections that are broken up like this:
They keep going—
—and going—
And those really help to make things feel a bit more expansive, I suppose. Line breaks that wide usually mean time skips, and you can see them that way here as well, except it's the way time is skipping for Seungmin from one line to the next. Everything is going so quickly that he can't keep up. Much like feeling a second for what it really is.
5. The ending
All of this, every single word, has led to this: Seungmin breaking down.
When his family died, he didn't cry. He hasn't been able to, has blamed himself and carried that guilt for so long that crying was never an option. But, when he sees what happened to Minho (or, in his mind, what Minho's doing), he finally breaks. And all of them, they all cry with him.
He feels heard. He feels like he belongs. He feels cared for, and loved.
And that's why it's so easy for him to make the decision after.
Chris sits beside him and takes his hands. He brings them to his mouth, brushing his lips over them, and he whispers, “Do you feel held now?”
Does he?
Being held. Feeling free. Both these things, Seungmin's craved for so long. He finally has them, he thinks. In reality, he's basically signed over his entire life to a commune he's only known for 4 days. But in his mind, grief no longer has control over him.
How long is a single second?
Here, Seungmin discovers, is the uncertainty.
The clock stops and shatters, crushed atoms in the cold night.
He'll be trapped in that one in thirty million uncertainty for the rest of his life. And he'd probably be happier for it.
LAST COMMENTS
I realise after typing all of this that I mostly wanted a place to put down all the references to religion/culture, but it was nice to go back and explore this story in detail again. I hope this doesn't come off entirely as rambling and that this was somewhat interesting to read at least, for anyone who's gotten this far!
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