fey

i thought i'd do one of these, to celebrate both the end of the year and my almost one year anniversary of starting to write fic for seventeen.

this past year was a meaningful one for me. i had to think a lot; about how i see myself, how others see me and what that means for me, what i want to be doing in the future, the kind of person i want to be. i am now at a point where i'm about to go through major life changes, and for this past year i am grateful. i like to think i grew, up and out and in.

and a lot of that had to do with my writing and the way i interacted with stories in general. i read many pieces of literature this year that i believe will continue to have their effect on me for a long time. i wrote more in these past twelve months than i ever have in my life, and for that i'm proud of myself. all of this started with seeing a thing called 17hols while lurking on twitter from my private account, and coming back to check every single day for almost a week, asking to myself: what is this 17hols thing? what are people writing? how can i be a part of this? so 17hols was my first dive into svt ficdom, and the two very short entries i wrote on a whim were what helped me be brave enough to start writing again in the first place. it is once again 17hols season as i type this. funny how time works.

so, here's what i wrote in 2022:

works 10
words 62.6k
pairings seokwoo (3), seokgyu (3), verkyeom, seokhoon, seokcheolhao, junshua


in orbit

seokgyu, 8.7k
dystopia au, enemies to lovers, seokgyuisms

this fic was my first time posting on ao3 again after over two years. it was also the first time i'd written something longer than 5k, and even months later i vividly remember the excitement i felt during the whole process.

i was losing my mind over seokgyu during this period, and with this fic i tried to capture what the experts call seokgyuisms. looking back, there are many things i'd change about this story, and i haven't re-read it in a long time in fear of finding 'faults' in it. yet, it still has a very special in my heart. it reminds me of new beginnings.


if you feel it, it's not missing

seokgyu, 8.9k
meet-cute, ski instructor seokmin and romcom protagonist mingyu

i got the idea for this fic while i was on a ski trip myself, after seeing how nice the instructors were to the little kids bundled up in their winter jackets that they basically drowned in. the kindness there reminded me of seokmin, of course, and i spent the next almost two months working on this. again, like the previous fic, i haven't re-read it in a while, and once again like the previous fic, it has a very special place for me. winter is my favorite season, and that applies when is comes to writing as well. also: depicting seokmin as the hot boy-next-door archetype was an important moment for me as a cuties gathering. lee seokmin hot guy!


love in motion

verkyeom, 1.3k
canon compliant, swimming pools

i wrote this one in less than four hours, i think. i got out of a calc exam i did not care about, started typing on my laptop about swimming pools and 218 bros and did not stop until the sun had long set and the light coming from my laptop had started to hurt my eyes. it's one of my more descriptive fics, and i'm very satisfied with it still. if you've ever been in a swimming pool at night, especially if it was an outdoor pool, i think you'd understand what i'm trying to get at with this fic. i was on a short trip with family & friends a year ago (as you can see, traveling does inspire me to write a lot), and had the chance to swim way past sunset on a summer night. jumping on the soles of your feet, taking a deep breath, and letting go. watching limbs flail around in the water, in this blue box of silence. quite the spot to think about your group member whom you're in love with, especially when you're chwe hansol with his fluid identity and silence, don't you think?


toothache

seokgyu, 3k
established relationship, cannibalism but tenderly

this fic was a result of me being crazy.

at some point around the beginning of spring i started to read and think about cannibalism. not the real thing, but the idea of biting, eating, swallowing the ones you love (happened to mention this to a friend who is not as insane as me- do not try it at home!). and i was also thinking about seokmin, because that's just what i do. and he has so much teeth, and in that one ttt episode mingyu offers him his arm when seokmin asks for something to chew on, and kim mingyu and his acts of service, and and and and!!! the end result is much more tender than what i was going for. i started writing, and my man-eater jennifer's body-esque seokmin had turned into a scared person trying to understand the changes they were going through. another surprise was mingyu: the way he was so caring, the way he kept track of the changes seokmin was going through so carefully. i love this fic because it was me trying my hand at a concept completely foreign to me. but i do hope i can write horror that's more scary this year. and man-eaters. always yes to man-eaters. 


myriad lights

seokhoon, 1.8k
star wars / the mandalorian au with mando! jihoon and jedi! seokmin

i had a lot of time and a new disney+ subscription in my hands this summer, so i did what my 13 year old self planned to but never did the summer of 7th grade: i watched every single star war.

and i loved it, of course. to be fair, i started watching the mandalorian because i'd kind of lost my mind the first time i saw grogu a few years ago, because who doesn't love cute things? and then i watched the show, and then i actually lost my mind (seriously, i really recommend it). i won't get too into the details of why i think jihoon works well as mando or how seokmin would be a really interesting jedi here- for that, you can dm me if you like! 

this is the only fic of mine that i've re-read at least ten times. possibly fifteen. i'm very satisfied with the descriptions and my prose in general here. it also got some feedback that really meant a lot to me, for some reason. maybe because it was a fic i wrote completely for myself and i did not expect anyone else to even care about it. i'm hoping to write another star wars au in the upcoming year, though i think i'll leave these two as they are. 


matching my footsteps to yours

seokwoo, 16k
fwb to lovers, actorkyeom and his idiot hyung (wonwoo)
written for 7stars fest

how do i even begin talking about this fic? let's start with this: i had a different prompt claimed for this fest for many, many months. around two weeks before the deadline i realised that wasn't happening, so i switched to this (i'm very glad i did). it was my first time writing seokwoo. it was my first time writing wonwoo at all- let alone writing wonwoo pov. this was a daunting task for me, one i didn't even begin to try for about six months, because i was afraid of messing it up, of finding it to be impossible (this was my worst nightmare as a wonwoorideul of 5 years). 

i wrote the whole fic in about a week, maybe two. i abandoned all distractions, all my responsibilities (of which there were many, considering i was supposed to be working on uni applications), and just wrote all day. the first scene that i thought of was the one near the end, with seokmin's musical; with arthurkyeom, with wonwoo realising: this person is a beacon of light, and this is love.

once i was done writing and had submitted the fic, i kept refreshing the fest's twitter account every night to see if my fic had been posted yet, and after that i did the same thing again for reveals. it's not super long, but it was my longest fic so far, and it still is, at 16k. it's about wanting. letting yourself want, letting yourself be wanted. reaching out, speaking up. as someone who struggles to understand what they feel, and often feels uncertain when it comes to their own feelings, getting to project all of that onto wonwoo was very fun. i was also very scared of how i'd depict seokwoo's dynamic, especially since it's one not often spoken about and they're my favorite boys. i think i did an alright job, in the end. 


the one thing i've got (is a strength nobody can ever beat)

seokwoo, 10.4k
rule 63, highschool rock band au
written for emo fic fest

this fic came from a mess of things, and in some way, it's the story that is me the most, you know? here's what happened: i am a girl who is about to finish high school. i have been thinking a lot about girlhood, and the unique nature of teen girl friendships. i have loved pop punk, pop rock, and punk rock since i was twelve. i love indie japanese movies. i came across linda linda linda (2005) while browsing letterboxd, watched it, and fell in love.

what's better than a bunch of girls coming together to make some loud, rebellious music together? exactly, nothing!

i knew i wanted to write about high school girl seokmin, with her awkwardness and her unbridled joy, her sheer enthusiasm, her heartbreaking insecurities. i also knew i wanted to write about high school senior wonwoo, who is cool and mysterious, not because she's a cold person but because she's rather reserved and prefers her music and books compared to most stuff. i set the tune to linda linda by blue hearts (not the original, but the cover in the movie), and started writing. i managed to write this one also in one week, somehow while i still had school everyday (this was mostly due to kai being a wonderful sprint partner). many things felt wrong- everything felt wrong, at some point. it just didn't click: it was too sweet, it wasn't sweet enough, there wasn't enough development, i explained everything too much. still not feeling very satisfied, i uploaded it, then in no time i began to love it again.

this fic is very, very dear to me, because in a way, it's me writing about what i know best. i put a lot of myself here, and seokmin and wonwoo ended up being parts of me stripped bare: a little bit of the person i was in high school, a little bit of the kind of person i sometimes wish i was in high school. i'm also happy with the 'cinematography' of this fic, because i ultimately wanted it to be my retelling of one of my favorite movies, and i think that translated well into my prose.


strike thee down with every care that i have for thee

seokcheolhao, 6.7k
green knight au with wet and patchetic lee seokmin

this fic was a culmination of two things: me watching the green knight (2021) earlier in the year and becoming obsessed with it, and me being obsessed with arthurkyeom 24/7. i'd tamed some of the arthurkyeom demons through my seokwoo fwb fic by making seokmin an actor who played arthur, but i still had not slain the real dragon: the green knight au that had been sitting in my drafts for about half a year now. i don't remember how i decided to pick this fic up again, i think i was just looking for something to write after my two seokwoo longfics that left me very satisfied but also a little empty. so one day i started working on this draft, and about three days later i had it.

i was very, very nervous posting this fic, for multiple reasons. first, because it was something i'd thought about for so many months, and somehow i had written it all in a few days. was it enough? was i rushing it? second, because arthurkyeom is something i, like many cuties gatherings, take very seriously. i was afraid that everyone would hate this story- that they'd secretly think i'd ruined arthurkyeom once and for all, taken the green knight au spot from someone else who was more deserving of it. i still feel like that, a little. but despite that, i'm very happy with this fic. it was a very intimidating project for me to start, and i like to think i slayed the dragon. it was a careful process, with the film open on one tab, the film's script on another, and goggle docs on the next. i mulled over some lines of dialogue for hours, thinking: should i add this to my story? should it mean something else here? what if x said this instead of y? and so on. it was a fun exercise. i finally got to do something about this... this ball of energy in me that had built up after watching the movie, which is what happens with all good movies (see: the fic listed right above this).

i was very worried about the ending of this one, and wondered what i should do about it for quite some time: to kill seokmin, to spare him, to have him reunite with cheolhao, to have him survive his quest alone. i'm happy with the ending i have now, and i'm happy as a whole with what i picked up and left off from the original movie. less of gawain's young, perhaps selfish ambitions, and more of seokmin's desperate need to serve and be good. also, wonwoo is the green knight. i think he'd be hot as a tall man made of a tree, god-like facial features and all.


silk chiffon

junshua, 3.4k
early relationship, joshua hong and his silly boyfriend

i was absolutely stuck in the two months between posting the green knight fic and this one. couldn't write anything. nothing at all. once every few days, i'd open google docs and read through the 7-8 wips i have going on, add two words, delete about five, and close the tab. i got into the whole "i'll never write again!" mood,

(i think this was because i've been reading a lot of scifi/fantasy lately, and those genres tend to have a lot of plot and world building. so, after reading i, robot, or watching 2001: a space odyssey, your silly junshua fic might seem a little... silly. and it takes a minute to realise that that's fine.)

though fortunately, like all storms, droughts, and other things, it passed. i had one scene written for this wip, and then i wrote the rest. it's a short piece, but it was very new to me. it's my first non-seokmin centric fic!!! that's crazy! i didn't melt into a puddle or vanish into thin air!! it was also my first time writing jun or joshua, so it was a little hard. i don't think i did a very good job, but that's fine. i think it's cute. there's time to learn and write more and better.


how do i be your baby

seokwoo, 1.8k
canon compliant, inkigayo sandwiches
17hols fill

i wrote this one on the same day i finished writing and posted the junshua fic above. technically not the first day, though, because it was already 4am when i started working on this piece and almost 7am when i was done. i posted it and immediately went to sleep. it's already gotten way more attention than i expected it to, and for that i'm grateful.

this little fill had me realizing, oh. i think i'm really, really a seokwooist now. i just absolutely love writing about them, and only while writing this entry did i remember how intimidated i was by this pairing only a few months ago. they're my boys!!!

it's once again a fic about wanting, letting yourself want and be wanted (though i guess all stories have that, right in the core). it's also my second time writing a direct - indirect jww confession to lee seokmin, and i only realized this a day after posting. i'm starting to feel more confident about my seokmin voice, my descriptions of wonwoo, and my seokwoo in general. it's only been a day or two since i posted this one, but i think it'll grow to be one of my favorites.



some of my favorite fics of the year were: i miss you, come closer, visit me anywhere by notspring, your night dances by heartspound, i'm a mess (but i'm the mess that you wanted) by checkyeshoshi, a doom that will never be done with by seokmin_liker, my heart dissolves away to the rhythm of you by 97babys, the truth is the starts are falling by chatsdelune, letters from medea by allwyf.


the year ahead:
i don't want to be too specific in fear of jinxing stuff and/or feeling disappointed when they're not done by next year, so here are a few, somewhat vague, writing goals:

— try different formatting styles
— write a gift for a friend
— a real creepy unsettling horror fic
— that one ot3 fic i have been thinking about for months now... you know the one

if you've made it this far, thank you. for reading, and for keeping up with the messy, somewhat unsightly formatting of this page. thank you for reading and writing with me. i hope you have a wonderful 2023.

much love,
fey <3