the world could be burning dark blue: DVD Commentary

[ceu]

the world could be burning dark blue | Super Junior, Kyuhyun/Yesung, kpop_bigbang | 11,000w

Kyuhyun dreams, he dreams of someone wanting him, waiting for him. And then he meets Jongwoon.

The thing about this story is that I hated it right after I finished writing it. Even though I really liked the concept and the plot and the idea and all, I usually place style before everything else (because I feel like the most important thing about communicating with readers is actually communicating with them) and the moment I finished the story I hated it and wanted to throw it into a pit of fire ugh.

So I'm rereading it right now as I write this, and I guess I don't dislike it as much as I used to. When I'd first finished I was having qualms about the beginning of the story but couldn't bring myself to delete any of it because I thought the scenes were pertinent, as small as they are. (Actually there are a crapload of scenes in this though and most of them are 100-200 words but we'll get to that later.) They still sort of bother me because they feel too--I dunno, insignificant?--but they're not as bad as I thought.

Although the first scene confuses me because I have no idea what real purpose it serves, sob. I think I wanted to add a supernatural element of sorts, that the figment of his imagination had been lurking in his brain for so long that it detected that he needed someone and just sort of became physical to him. Looking back, I think that's not the story at all--sure, yeah, Kyuhyun was lonely, so his brain did make up a person for him to be less lonely. But it was created more than 'always having been living there' which is what the first scene sort of implies--which I guess I should try to dissect and explain.

Kyuhyun wonders if there’s a wall there: a wall to keep the sound from escaping.

This, I think, is Kyuhyun's mind/imagination. I guess he sort of lives in his head and his imagination sort of also has control of his body too? idk but these are the implications I'm getting oh god it's been so long since I wrote this story.

Then something grabs him from behind, around his middle. (...) Then suddenly he’s being pulled back, farther and farther back...

This is his imagination, I think, and probably the beginnings of what formed Jongwoon. Again I'm sort of stuck with figuring out what was going on in my brain at the time, lol, if Jongwoon had always existed in his subconscious and suddenly became ~real to him, or had been created for Kyuhyun.

The other thing that I should have implicated in this fic is that dreams like this? have happened to Kyuhyun in the past before um. I get a little obsessive when things just happen to happen for no reason in stories, because I like a pattern--and this fainting sort of scene opens the story because even though it's happened before, this is one of the last time it happens before Jongwoon appears. Even though I still don't understand its purpose--just to open the fic up, I guess? I'm still trying to figure this out myself so we'll see where I get! n__n

I made Sungmin and Donghae Kyuhyun's friends because it's always Yesung and Ryeowook in most other stories--my own and other people's--and I wanted to switch things up (also Yesung is the ~love interest so.) To be honest I've always loved Kyuhyun and Sungmin's friendship even though I ship them the least in Super Junior, but as I've stated before, the more I dislike a ship, the more I like their friendship. I've also always thought that Donghae and Kyuhyun were good friends, so! I wanted Donghae to be the more, I dunno, friendly and familiar friend? while Sungmin's the ~bitchy friend who tells Kyuhyun like it is. Considering his characterization in this story, he needs both.

Also on that--yeah, I know, Kyuhyun thinks he's lonely but he has friends, so--? The type of loneliness I wanted to illustrate was just the sort--I can relate to it, that's why I wrote it. I mean, I do know I had friends in middle/high school, but even then I felt lonely. And we'll talk about this more when I talk about the title.

I'm aware that there are inconsistencies in this fic (although no one has pointed it out to me! Surprisingly) because Jongwoon's first appearance is when "the bush leaves bustle" but then the later things he does have no physical effect. Maybe the bush leaves bustle for a different reason and Jongwoon just happens to appear incidentally after that. He does emerge from behind a tree than from an actual bush.

They sit there and watch the water go by. This is Kyuhyun’s favorite spot on campus because it is the only place that reminds him that this is his new home. That this is not just a university, an institute, another place where people come and go. But that this is a part of nature, or at least, a part of his own nature.

Two things about this paragraph--a year prior to writing this story (roughly!) I'd written another story where two people on a college campus sat by a lake and watched the water a lot. I had this scene in mind for both stories because uh, there was this one time where I was picking my friend up from her university (she's several years older than me lmao) and a building was by this really big lake and there were benches and trees around it and I really liked how it looked, so I'd always been thinking of incorporating the scene into a story. Turns out I ended up putting it in two.

This was also supposed to be meta, ish, because a lot of stories take place in a college setting? And it usually feels contrived or "the same" or whatever so I wanted to note that even though this story takes place in a typical, commonplace area, it doesn't mean that the story will be typical and commonplace--this story was supposed to be "different" and experimental for me which, yeah, I guess it is. Because even in typical and common areas can extraordinary things happen! And the such. And also anything can happen in nature, so I wanted to tie that in.

There are things that I want to improve/omit, looking back at this, but at the same time--I don't. I'm mostly looking at:

Jongwoon smiles. It’s sincere. “Of course,” he says. “And I’m assuming you do, too.” His tone is light, teasing.

Because, yeah, this is telling ("It's sincere", "His tone is light, teasing") and not showing and I usually have beef with excessive telling. But at the same time--Kyuhyun's able to read into him so well that he can reach to his own conclusions without having to infer as typical humans do with other typical humans--because it's his brain that sort of ~created Jongwoon so he knows all these things about him already, and doesn't need to infer anything about Jongwoon to understand him.

... wow I want to change the wording in half of this, sobs

“I think everyone’s hated school at one point in their lives,” says Jongwoon, chuckling. “Why do you say so, though?” He picks at the grass beneath him. The grass strands don’t give way.

“I have an analysis paper. It’s annoying.” Kyuhyun rolls his eyes and tugs at the grass himself. They uproot easily.

~*~*~*~mysterious~*~*~*~

About Jongwoon's backstory: Yeah, he doesn't have one. And yeah, if it doesn't seem implicit, he'd been hiding everything about himself from Kyuhyun--because it's not like he didn't know that he was a figment of his imagination. A more concrete way of putting it, I guess, is that Jongwoon sort of manifested himself, that it was he who had been in Kyuhyun's subconscious, and created himself in Kyuhyun's eyes so that Kyuhyun would see him. He hid everything from Kyuhyun on purpose, because he wanted Kyuhyun to be happy, and also because he wanted to be there for Kyuhyun. A good parallel to this is Cartman in my more recent South Park fic, Placebo Effect, wherein Cartman had a psychological disorder with all his dolls and everything that they were him but they weren't him at the same time--sort of how Jongwoon is essentially Kyuhyun, but also not Kyuhyun, as well.

Also, the second time Kyuhyun 'dreams', that's him almost seeing Jongwoon, seeing that part of himself (Kyuhyun.) I feel like I should've been more subtle, I guess, with Jongwoon being a part of Kyuhyun's imagination (although some readers didn't get it, apparently) but I also wanted to drop--I guess now they're obvious--hints along te way that Jongwoon lives in Kyuhyun's head, not in real life.

“I can’t remember anything before the day we met,” says Jongwoon, shrugging.

hm hm HMMMM

The thing about Jongwoon being 'transparent' that other time, if I may describe Jongwoon's physical form--it's not that Kyuhyun is dense enough that even though Jongwoon looks like a freaking ghost, Kyuhyun still thinks he's a real person. Jongwoon looks as solid and as normal as any other human being, just with an ethereal and other worldly quality about him, like he catches the light different so in some angles he looks transparent. Uh, yeah, if that confused you.

I don't know why but I've always loved the idea of--people hurting themselves without meaning to? Not in real life, of course, just in entirely fictional worlds--the sort of thing you find in psychological horror/thriller stories. I was kind of trying to drag that into this story, that Kyuhyun sort of became anorexic (in that he skipped his classes and would have skipped lunch but just eats a piece of bread because Jongwoon doesn't want him hurting his body), and distances himself from the world. Jongwoon is like a drug, I guess? and Kyuhyun starts becoming attached, wants to be with him, would sacrifice sleep to stay with Jongwoon. They say that love is like an addiction, but personally I think addiction is like love. *shrug*

... also, for the record, yeah, most of what Kyuhyun and Jongwoon do when they sit by the lake is just sit there and not talk. The dialogue that I put into the fic is most of the dialogue that they actually speak.

And it has Jongwoon, who is calm as silent as the surface of the water.

~*~*~*~oooh symbolism ooh~*~*~*~

Wow Kyuhyun is a dick to his friends

And I didn't realize that I did this--I can't remember if it was on purpose or by accident, oops--but yeah Kyuhyun hates noise and mindless chatter which is why I suppose he and Jongwoon are quiet a lot and Kyuhyun really likes it. He always goes back to Jongwoon for the silence? Which is eerie, in a way. Because life is full of noise and he wants to get away from it and Jongwoon is the one who can do that. This entire fic, I think, was actually bursting of noise/silence parallels and themes and symbolism and I really don't know if that was intentional but I don't recall it being intentional so I guess it was accidental OOPS. It's a great pattern though and I never noticed it before! wah my brain is weird

In the depths of his mind, he can see a man. A man who is waiting, watching him. A man who knows him and feels him, a man who is always there with him. A man who has been called, a man who answers, a man who smiles and laughs at everything he says. A man who understands him.

A man who does not exist.

A subtlety there

OKAY so about the sex scene! Truthfully it took me an entire forty-five minutes to write even though it's less than a thousand words long and that's not my usual pacing (2k words per hour). It actually gave me a load of trouble and I was writing it on a school computer on MS Word during study hall, welp (while most of this was written at home, on Notepad) and I basically wanted to throw myself off a bridge during/after I'd written it. Anyways, though, rereading it--it's actually not that bad, as far as sex scenes go!

I think this is also the first time I wrote frottage? (Which is pronounced like the French word "fromage", which means cheese. o_O) Probably because at the time I'd been reading a lot of H/D and they were a bit newer sex scenes for me, lmao. Uh yeah but also about the ~sex that happens in this story, ah, it doesn't actually happen, that Kyuhyun's humping the air or something and moaning against nothing. It doesn't actually happen, it happens in his mind, it's a fantasy but he doesn't know it and Jongwoon knows/knows about it but pretends it happens because he's also a fantasy as well. I feel like I should've made it more obvious and there isn't really a start/stop where the sexual fantasy starts and ends--in reality he and Jongwoon had probably just been sitting there and saying nothing as usual, but he'd been thinking of ravishing Jongwoon's body, so. Every time anything remotely ~sexual happens between them it always takes place in Kyuhyun's mind, and they don't physically do anything (although, admittedly, they can't really do anything physical anyways.) His orgasms and the things he imagines about Jongwoon's body are all nonexistent, in real life! So.

A boy had once been lonely. The boy had nothing, nothing for him, except impossible dreams and endless nightmares. He had people and people had him, but they were nothing but small hand gestures and spoken words.

The boy didn’t have a heart.

And the boy wanted a heart. He wanted someone to care for him, someone to love. He wanted someone to be there for him, even if he couldn’t return the favor. He didn’t want to be alone anymore. He wanted someone to love him.

Yes, the boy was selfish. The boy was greedy. The boy went for anything he could. The boy wanted to make friends, and he made them—girls and boys alike. He just didn’t know if it was enough. If it could ever be enough.

He didn’t know anything about love, and when he was constantly met with nothing, he was sure that it would never come. And when he couldn’t take it anymore, he isolated himself. He was still the same on the outside, and same on the inside. But his heart was locked, cold and frozen inside his chest, nothing more than a stone.

And that was when his nightmares did something. Something that he could never forgive himself for, because there was nothing to be forgiven. His nightmares created a figure from themselves, the object of his dreams. And the boy, he was never aware of this, but when he saw who loved him, he loved him back, stretching his arms to the ends of water, embracing his own nightmare.

The boy was lonely no more.

I want to throw this scene out and burn in it in a thousand fires because a) not subtle not subtle NOT SUBTLE AT ALL THIS IS BASICALLY FREAKING EXPOSITION EVEN THOUGH IT'S SO DEEP INTO THE STORY ALREADY and yeah I guess I originally wanted this here to make the story less confusing? But I realize that I could've done it in a more subtle way and this was just telling everything and it irks me so much.

Also b) it sounds really pretentious and over the top poetic and ugh. I like the idea of him 'embracing his nightmare' because I guess Jongwoon is really terrible for him? But Jongwoon is an actual presence in his mind even though Kyuhyun's not aware of it and he's not intentionally terrible, even though he's every sense of the word "unhealthy" for Kyuhyun. As mentioned before, Kyuhyun's "nightmare" manifested itself into Jongwoon and Kyuhyun never realized but none of it was intentional, it just... was.

There's also the theme of drowning/breathing in this ahhh okay especially with

“Don’t worry about drowning.” Jongwoon looks up at him. His eyes are darkened, pupils dilated. “I won’t let you.”

Kyuhyun doesn’t think he would. Jongwoon is all the air he needs.

and the last scene. Because, I think, if Kyuhyun had never shoved Jongwoon away, he wouldn't have done something so drastic as to kill himself, in the end. If he'd never discovered that Jongwoon was imaginary, I feel like--and suddenly I want to write an alternate ending to this, wow--he would've gotten into an accident, or something--would have died early doing something like swimming in the lake with Jongwoon and Jongwoon promising to hold him up and Kyuhyun being incapable of swimming and ending up accidentally drowning, or walking across the street with him and seeing Jongwoon about to get hit by a car, or being so lost in staring at Jongwoon, that Kyuhyun gets hit by a car trying to save him/by accident, or walking around the city with Jongwoon and getting mugged except since Jongwoon doesn't exist, Kyuhyun's the only one who gets mugged. CAN SOMEONE WRITE A REMIX OF THIS WITH SOMETHING LIKE THIS? Someone should. Yeah.

oops I found a typo

I sort of wanted to remind readers--and myself--that this story still takes place in the 'real' world with winter break and all? Since I've always found time and tradition and worldly ~schedules to be pretty influential in stories and lives and sometimes they're forgotten about in fic so I wanted to bring them in for reasons of things happening.

Which is why I put in the thing about winter break, and Kyuhyun trying to figure out where Jongwoon's from, and his increasing suspicion!--because thank god for patterns, really. It helped me drive the story, which y'know, is great.

Also the thing about Jongwoon's body temperature--he's cold all the time because he's actually air of course, even though Kyuhyun doesn't realize it--but he's warm when they do raunchy things because Kyuhyun is warm too and Jongwoon is sort of like steam, like when you step out of the shower and your mirrors are all fogged up and the air is hot. Jongwoon's like that.

The scene right before winter break was actually handwritten! Uh I think it was the only handwritten scene and I wrote it on the bus. Originally I think it was shorter? But I wanted to expand on it, and make their argument more significant and angry and punctuated, so I rewrote it. I actually do enjoy the pacing of this story because I don't go into the details too much, just short little descriptors to add to imagery; but most of the story is based on action and dialogue. It makes for quicker reading and easier understanding! Aside from the annoying poetic areas :|

I'm... not sure if it's policy to let kids go through other students' records. Uh. Kyuhyun is remarkably charming?

(And I overused the word "troubled" in two scenes, welp.)

Strangely, Sungmin and Donghae do not question anything about Jongwoon.

Because Sungmin and Donghae are good friends :((( Also I'm really glad that I made Sungmin and Donghae ~make up with Kyuhyun because I usually find in stories that have friends breaking apart because someone is ~in love~ with someone else, that either the friends don't make up, or the friends breaking apart making up is this entire subplot that feels like it could potentially take over the story. Personally I like the way I put it to the side but kept it there as a reminder that the real world is still real and out there? Yeah.

I guess I sort of made the "asking the music teachers" the tipping point for Kyuhyun because when you ask people like a robot it just feels--well, it feels like you're asking for a robot, but then Sungmin brings up the idea of asking adults, like, actual administration and official people and Kyuhyun has the thought of oh yeah, that's so obvious and he gets his hopes up and that's what brings him crashing down. Like, on hindsight it's really not any more or less significant than asking other people, but it's the internal thing about Kyuhyun, that his emotions are brought up--only to send him crashing back down. idk

I like that I made Sungmin so down-to-earth and logical and blunt though. It feels right for me I guess? I usually dislike the way most people characterize Sungmin--like he's a cute bunny or a sensitive cupcake or something--I personally like Sungmin when he's harsher or angstier and even though he's only a side character in this fic, he's my favorite character in it ;w;

The thing about Kyuhyun though--is that even though he's so lost in Jongwoon, he is--canonically, and basically in every fic ever--smart and rational and reasonable and that's still pertinent in this story. Kyuhyun, in my head, is driven by logic, and doesn't let himself get overtaken by emotion too much. So even though he's still so attached to Jongwoon, the only way he's able to drag himself out of his infatuation and allow himself to believe Sungmin and see truth, is because of proof and evidence--because fuck feelings, really, if he can't find an actual reason to believe that Jongwoon exists. (Even though I'm a Christian, tbqh, I was a bit surprised when I first heard that Kyuhyun's a Christian as well :B)

... the italics by when he talks to the psychiatrist also sound excessively poetic and contrived and I don't like them. welp.

So anyways, Kyuhyun confronts Jongwoon about it because of that logical thing, he wants Jongwoon to know that he knows, because he does, and that Jongwoon can't fool him anymore. It's--Jongwoon tries to use his emotions against him (by kissing him) and using that as logic, but--as stated before, emotion doesn't technically 'prove' anything physical (and about the religion thing--the Christian god is physical but he's on a higher level and--sdkfjlkj it's hard to explain so I'm not going to get into that) but physical proof does so Kyuhyun's confused and a little bit hurt by him :( And Jongwoon's hurt too but for an obvious reason!

When they pull apart, panting slightly, he glances down at the bottle, still in Kyuhyun’s free hand.

“Why don’t you put that down?” he suggests, indicating a spot on the ground, down near his foot and at the edge of the lake.

This is obvious but I feel the need to say it--I really like this scene, as small and brief as it is--I really like the idea of Jongwoon wanting to get rid of his pills, to tip them in the lake and let them go off (and if that were to happen, it would actually be Kyuhyun unconsciously kicking them--since he is Jongwoon in a sense, he's just having a rather physical internal conflict, if we bring this up in general terms--and he wouldn't be able to bring himself to get them back, I think, because then Jongwoon would've taken over and infested his mind so much.)

I :( like :( the idea :( of :( fictional characters :( overdosing :( on prescribed pills. Uh. I think I've written that into three stories as of date, but this is the first fic that I've done it in. Kyuhyun takes them because he knows he's supposed to, obviously, but eventually he starts bringing everything back around--that when he first met Jongwoon and got caught up with him, he was hurting himself by not doing anything healthy for himself. Now he's trying so hard and so much that it contrasts drastically from before.

Also Jongwoon appears only by the lake--and I feel like this is obvious as well but I'm just going to explain it--because that's the place where Kyuhyun feels safest and the most comfortable and he wants/needs someone to be safe and comfortable with him. Around others Kyuhyun feels out of place but it's when he's alone--or rather, with Jongwoon--and staring out into the water that he feels at calm with himself. Jongwoon knows this, of course, because, well, being a part of him and all. Jongwoon does, actually, know basically everything about Kyuhyun.

"I’ve become a part of you, Kyuhyun, and there’s nothing you can do about it—”

Telling Kyuhyun the truth for once, hmmm. Although I do suppose that as Jongwoon is fading away, with all these intermittent scenes breaking through real life, Jongwoon is telling him more and more of the truth--that he doesn't come form anywhere, that he knows Kyuhyun, that he's here to "rescue" him--in a sort of desperate attempt to let him be kept, or just to hurt him for the last time, I think. --But anyways, even though Kyuhyun's taking the pills, Jongwoon is still there, like the idea of an old friend you used to have when you were younger and miss them, even though you don't see them anymore.

“You love me!” Jongwoon shrieks. The birds above them remain in their nests.

Just like that grass thing n__n

I actually do like the parenthetical/italic recalls to previous quotes that start ending these scenes toward the end of the fic. Um. They just feel very pertinent and like, ~nostalgic~ or shock value or something of the sort.

“I don’t love you,” lies Kyuhyun. “I never did. How could I fall in love with something that isn’t real?”

This ^^^ I think is a perfect representation/synopsis of this fic. AND IT FEELS NATURAL IN THE SCENE, which is great! How. But anyways I just really like this ):

So going into the psychiatrist's office for the first time (this isn't chronological, I'm aware, sorry for that) is sort of like breaking out of a dream and rubbing your eyes and waking up and just being shocked at being awake, right. But then after that, when he's taking the pills and Jongwoon fades away, Kyuhyun sort of feels like he's in a dream again, watching from a distance--which is what I was trying to do with the style, tbqh. Uh I can't really tell if that was successful or not so I'm just describing it here! :>

Overdosaaaaaaage and then he drowns himself and we are done. (I was trying to think of a more creative way for him to kill himself, but honestly the lake sort of brings the fic to a close--it starts there, it takes place (mostly) there, and it ends there--it's Kyuhyun's entire life, really, and it's only fitting. He's loved it so much that he ends up dying in it. The lake is only a setting and doesn't really have any human/person-qualities, but it's. Yeah.)

But, right. So this was the fic and it was a bitch to write but I wanted to get it in time for my kpop_bigbang due date (even though the comm/challenge is basically dead now, oop) even though it gave me trouble and WRITER'S BLOCK, sobs. But sometimes I do think my writer's block allows me to be more sparing with words (despite all the annoying poetry-type things in this fic) and allows for more effective and appealing writing, which, great!

This story is told in short vignettes--because at the time (as it happens), I'd been on writer's block and was trying to cram and write this story. I think I wrote in forty-eight hours? I'd started it after, I think, writing "remorse", but it was just a vague idea and I didn't know what direction it was going in, anyways. I let it stew over in my brain, and I was also having trouble for ideas of scenes, so that night (I remember this shockingly clearly o_o) I stayed up for like an hour and outlined the entire story, scene by scene--I wrote what would happen in each scene, and added some the next morning, and it came out as thirty-three scenes to go? Aish. I did the outline probably after around the fifteenth scene-ish because from then I didn't know where to go.

Since I wrote it I can't really detect the emotion behind it, but I've gotten comments that it's made people feel, which--hooray I guess! And also I'll talk about the title. Uh. When I was writing the second half of the story (just when Kyuhyun starts questioning and then everything after that) I had Jack's Mannequin's "Dark Blue" playing in the back of my head, which is what the title is named after. I think originally I didn't want to take a lyric from "Dark Blue" to make it the story's title, I think maybe because--actually I can't remember, maybe I've already done that and I don't like repetition? But then I actually looked at the lyrics and the lyrics really do fit with the story well a lot, like:

Have you ever been alone in a crowded room
Well, I'm here with you
I said the world could be burning
'til there's nothing but dark blue
Just dark blue

This flood is slowly rising up
Swallowing the ground
Beneath my feet
Tell me how anybody thinks under this condition so
I'll swim as the water rises up
The sun is sinking down

If you've ever been alone in the dark blue

The water imagery and being alone and everything. And the song is a great song I so I suggest you go listen to it on Youtube or something :B

And so... I think that's all I have to say! Also much thanks to Christie for betaing this for me :3 And I do plan on revising it on some point, but, yeah. I do reckon I'm pretty proud of this fic.