[commentary] soul weighed down by gravity
Mar. 7th, 2023 06:46 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rhodochrosite[fic] soul weighed down by gravity
haechan/renjun + jaemin/renjun | t | 16k | gundam au
dvd commentary below ๐
CONCEPT
smashing the things i like together is my passion so naturally i’d been thinking about writing a gundam au for dream since last year. jaemin is literally a char!!! originally the premise was more influenced by yugioh arc v with military academy vibes where 00z all go to war crimes school for baby war criminals together until jaemin jumps ship to become an even worse war criminal on the enemy side but renjun is convinced he can still be brought back. so it would have been a much tighter focus on renjun / the ghosts of jmrn past present and future, but the more i wrote the more it became Not That lmao. then i felt too Do Not Separate about jaemjen to have them on opposite sides so it became dongren on one side vs jaemjen on the other side.
the gundam setting is a combination of 0079 + zeta + seed, i was just throwing any random gundam element i liked in there. relationships-wise, jmrn are modelled on kira/athrun fused with elements of char and sayla, and dongren are modelled on kamille/fa except haechan is also the fraw bow to mark’s amuro (and renjun is sayla) but if fraw bow were quattro. jeno is lalah and marknomin are basically charamulalah directly, they’re having crazy psychosexual triangulation offscreen. plot beats borrowed from gundam are: the gold bar gift scene (p much taken directly from 0079), the mirae spaceport bomb (inspired by sarah’s bomb planting mission in zeta), and the nominhyuck grocery shopping meeting scene (inspired by the scene where char and lalah help amuro get his vehicle unstuck from the mud in 0079). also took vibes inspiration from char and sayla’s various reunion scenes in 0079 and a scene in zz where judau forgets he’s not in zero-g and is about to step off a platform in the hangar and someone has to grab his shirt from behind to stop him from falling to his death.
also just like char i don't think jaemin died, he is literally guy who does not die when killed. the climactic jaemin vs renjun battle taking place offscreen is the equivalent of not seeing a body. in a few years i expect sunglasses-wearing ace pilot lieutenant naemin ja will mysteriously show up out of nowhere as a protag ally. i haven’t decided jeno’s fate though, i know lalah dies in canon but also lives on forever as a newtype ghost due to the strength of her powers, but i feel like i always kill jeno off so maybe it’s time he lived for once.
the title ofc is from the sentiment char expresses about the people on earth having their souls weighed down by gravity (neg) in zeta and then in cca, but per kamille's response to amuro saying something similar (see epigraph quote) it might still be (pos) so ultimately who could say if gravity is good or bad. that's the real takeaway from this fic i think.
WRITING PROCESS
i created wow_cool_robot_dream.doc in january mostly to make a Celebrities Shop Too joke except it’s War Criminals Shop Too but then the grocery shopping scene in question ended up being โ of the length of the entire fic for some reason? i did hack my brain into managing 1k a day until i started baby’s first full time job and my productivity instantly died but luckily at that point i was already at 10k so it just took me another month to finish the last 5k. the secret is to lean really hard into sunk cost fallacy btw, this is my thought process:
start typing some words → might as well finish off this hundred for a nice round number it’s only a hundred → type some more words → i don’t land on the exact x00 → might as well finish off this hundred for a nice round number it’s only a hundred → type some more words → etc
really praying that this strategy continues to work for me, i have a few wips i want to clear (DREAMPURI……..).
i decided on doing dual pov for the first time to test my abilities, i think i have a really severe case of writing equivalent of sameface syndrome and with dream in particular i struggle with any pov other than jaemin’s. so picking dongren as narrators was a bit of a stretch for me but i really did want to challenge myself properly.
to facilitate this i was unusually methodical about writing this fic i even made an outline... i usually hate doing outlines bc i seriously hate noting down what i’m going to do for some inexplicable reason, like i do firmly believe that nobody (myself included) should know what i’m about to write until i’ve written it, but there was just no way i could keep the timelines and povs straight without an outline lmao. the way i outline on the rare occasions that i do so is that i type a bunch of emdashes as scene breaks and attach a brief gdoc comment to each emdash noting the main point of the scene and resolve the comments as i finish each scene like a to-do list. this is helpful for me because i love to tick things off a list and also i like having the scene breaks already in place so i can work on whichever scene i feel like or move lines around to a scene they work better in. also my initial plot summary was "when your evil ex blows up your mech so your boyfriend has to space chauffeur you to go kill him" which is really not reflective of what happens in the fic at all but at the very least it made me laugh.
did a lotttt of deleting in this fic especially towards the end. i was deadset on cutting the fic down until what was left was more or less strung into some kind of readable order and then called it a day, if it sucks hit da bricks. every day it’s more and more true that writing is about not writing, thank you lina for these timeless words of wisdom.
THEMATIC CONSTRUCTION, HAPTICS AND PROXEMICS
feeling like at this point ndr might as well be my main brand. i’ll be honest i do still think of this as a jmrn fic even though it is literally like… the opposite of a jmrn fic. but to me jmrn is about the absence of jmrn… it’s like that interview about yuri. jmrn is an empty uninhabited landscape… jmrn is nothing where there should be something… jmrn is differentials… jmrn is limits to infinity…
basically the overarching image in my mind is that jmrn are chasing each other around a mobius loop (as reflected by the circular hallway they first meet face-to-face in) and haechan is holding a big pair of scissors preparing to cut the loop open. i did mean to make mobius loops the main motif but i couldn't really figure out how to do it in the end so umm accidentally left out the entire central metaphor of the fic. although This Too Is Jaemren. anyway dongren is presentgame, jmrn is ambiguously up in the air running in circles for the rest of time. which is the nature of jmrn real in the text to me! they aren’t exes because they weren’t in a relationship previously but also because nothing actually concretely “ended” or is capable of “ending”. i’ve said this before but jmrn being premised on their stronger attachments to other people but simultaneously attempting to exist in some space beyond the claims of others on them even though this is obviously unsustainable is literally fundamental to my vision of them.
mark is there too… i struggled so much to keep his presence minimal in order to not overcomplicate the story, anytime i introduce mark in a fic he instantly takes over so much narrative space bc i feel the need to start detailing everyone’s past or present mark complexes and also i can’t help being markren first love truther. but i had to force myself to get a grip and keep things focused on ndr lol.
meta-wise this fic is literally just desire path redux but in space so everything i said in the <commentary for that fic> applies here as well, except in this case jaemin did manage to push renjun far enough that renjun at least tried to stop believing and to let go, though not totally successfully.
my mental keywords for scenes with haechan: presence, immediacy, physical proximity and tactility. every time they interact dongren are very clingy with each other and almost always touching, i paid a lot of attention to the details of physicality. haechan’s scenes are in present tense and chronological order to emphasise the feeling of immediacy and presentgameness and like… the path that renjun has chosen and is moving towards.
my mental keywords for scenes with jaemin: absence, distance, memory, almost touching but never getting there. jaemin only actually meets renjun in person once and they have no skin to skin contact, the bulk of their interaction takes place via the proxy of their mechs or in memory or otherwise with something interpolated in between (a glove, a gift, a screen, etc). jaemin is introduced (and primarily present) via renjun’s past tense reverse chronological order narration to emphasise the way he exists in relation to renjun as a memory so powerful it extended / extends beyond the grave and beyond the limits of spacetime to pull renjun back.
haechan is also associated heavily with lack of gravity, while jaemin is associated heavily with gravity: the dr scenes all take place in low or zero gravity environments + haechan is from a space colony vs the jmrn scenes primarily take place in places with gravity + jaemin is from earth. this was derived primarily from the idea of jaemin being a figure who carries so much figurative weight in renjun’s history he has his own gravitational pull. since this is a scifi au i figured i might as well take the opportunity to finally indulge in space metaphors, which i have always found very difficult to execute in an interesting and nonmelodramatic fashion. i hope the gravity-related extended metaphor is not too stupid, i remembered from physics classes that gravity affects spacetime in the way that a heavy object placed in the middle of a tablecloth will drag the fabric down (???), so i started digging out my uni notes to revise how general relativity works wrt gravity slowing down time but i decided who even cares if my vague metaphor isn’t totally scientifically accurate, renjun isn’t a physicist and neither am i. but i do care. but it's ok.
anyway i wanted the idea of jmrn being separate from time and place and almost floating freely in isolation from the rest of the universe as the only space in which they can exist at all, unlike the way dr are extremely grounded in the here and now. dongren joke about love powered by gravity vs gravity powered by love but actually that is the main theme in complete earnestness. it’s a bit of a chicken/egg thing but to extremely simplify it, renjun conflates the remaining gravity of jaemin’s presence as love but there surely was love there in the first place… but Who Could Say. whereas dongren are clearly in love despite their whole relationship occurring where there is no gravity which is why haechan’s position is that love generates gravity. but again Who Could Say. guys i love ambiguity and not committing to a stance. it may also be true that i love clarity and hardline committing to stances but these can coexist.
jaemin is also associated with fate/doom and haechan with luck/coincidence/chance, which goes back to jmrn’s feeling of an inescapable past that keeps on returning vs dr’s feeling of an actively created and chosen present, including haechan specifically rejecting the characterisation of his relationship with renjun as doom. several times during scenes involving jaemin, renjun references movie sets / dollhouses / haunting / possession, which are all things that are being put in place or into action by some external entity that renjun has no control over. conversely jaemin is associated with abrupt flipping between polarised states of being/unbeing or motion/rest, and haechan with gradual change from one state to another, to convey a sense of unnatural vs natural. i was watching alice in borderland during the time that i was writing this fic so i was imagining that one jumpscare leitmotif from the ost (i think it plays when the king of spades appears and sometimes for chishiya) every time jaemin suddenly shows up.
+ more basic connotations: jaemin as (un/)death vs haechan as life, jaemin as ice vs haechan as warmth.
also wanted to point out that renjun tends to use very romantic and natural imagery to describe the violence of war: flowerlike wreaths of smoke unfurling as the Apep exploded // violent burst of swansong power // From this far away, the explosions almost looked like stars.
CHRONOLOGY
i love nonlinearity and i love a fucked up timeline but i think i might have pushed it a bit too far this time because it’s kind of confusing even to me, the guy who wrote the fic, so ummm i have no idea how i’m expecting anyone else to understand. like despite literally listing out the scenes in order before arranging them into the forward/backward alternating chronology i still managed to fuck up the timeline and got halfway through the fic before i realised i was missing three scenes in chronological sequence.
chronologically the scenes go:
13→2→11→4→9→6→7→8→5→10→3→12→1
which is split into renjun pov scenes (odd numbered scenes, moving backwards) and haechan pov scenes (even numbered scenes, moving forwards). actually i was thinking about doing something similar to the chronological structure in <this flimsy thing - transversely> where scenes alternate between before and after some event that changes everything, with each scene moving closer and closer to the watershed moment (3 years before / 3 years after → 3 months before / 3 months after → 3 weeks before / 3 weeks after etc). but i couldn’t decide what the event should be so i came up with my own structure.
however i did write this fic with the intent that the scenes would be read in the order they appear (not in chronological order) so that information/backstory is revealed as you go and images/motifs/running jokes take on increasing significance. for example, jaemin is intentionally not named in the first scene, and the fact that the ms renjun pilots in the third scene is full sun is also not mentioned until the end of the scene.
the opening and ending scenes bookend the fic with the image of something split down the middle: the faceplate of jaemin's helmet, renjun's heart. the surface layer is that it's "good" that jaemin’s faceplate cracked (since he’s been defeated) and it's "bad" that renjun is experiencing heartbreak, which is a positive progression in chronological order even if it ends sadly in the fic order. but if the helmet is the insignia of jaemin’s red comet / villain identity then it takes on a more hopeful tone, because then it’s about unmasking and revealing truth and i’m not going to rehash everything i always say about jmrn and visibility of sincerity because this post will be 5x longer than it already is but you can fill it in mentally. i mean it’s probably still bad because the unmasking involved renjun killing jaemin but also that’s because jaemin was the mask so there was nothing to unmask and renjun does eventually recognise that. or does he. after all… jaemin didn’t die! so once again who could say if it was good or bad.
other misc callbacks/callforwards: coincidence of design, haechan stealing the axiom, head trauma, axiom / full sun space taxis, nice conversation in a nice supermarket, that was the thing about [x], home being the citizen or side 7 or earth, “the last time”, mark/haechan/renjun facing the same way literally and figuratively, salmon comet, jaemin the steel wall.
LINES I WANTED TO POINT OUT
And yet. The entirety of space and the force of the blast had sent that helmet sailing right into Renjun’s hands. Surely it was some kind of serendipity.
the exquisite fateful arc of the cracked helmet harpooning towards him like the inverse of a lifeline
But the maw of the launch bay opened out into empty darkness. Everything was so much further away than Renjun had thought.
When your best friend, seemingly possessed by the metaphysical spirit of justice, jumps in a giant robotic state secret, stomps around the city flattening hapless parkland, and somehow wipes out a whole squadron of enemy pilots in the process, that basically spells out automatic enlistment. // It’s not like he was going to leave Mark at the mercy of the NEO brass, to be steamrolled underfoot like so much unlucky municipal greenery of Side 7. After all, that's Donghyuck’s job.
They were hurtling towards a fixed and inevitable future. Fate dovetailing into doom. It was only the past, now, that seemed mutable, prismatic split of possibilities.
You’d only be able to see a sight like this if you were leaving.
No barrier between him and Renjun, except then Renjun remembered the fact of distance. Separation and spaces. Things only ever moved further apart.
He hadn’t meant to end it here, not like this, not when he hadn't said what he’d really wanted to say, though he still didn’t know what that was.
He could drain his weapon reserves firing everything he had at Jaemin and nothing would change. Some part of him wanted to, just for the sake of trying. Throwing himself against that steel wall in futility, in hope.
Jaemin studied him, except that there were no cameras in the Xianhe’s cockpit, so that wasn’t even possible, but Jaemin was so good at looking. Looking at. Looking like. The illusion of a conversation, only Jaemin wasn’t seeing him at all.
As he watched, a ribbon of pure light pierced through the darkness like an arrow directly into the Xianhe’s heart. For an infinitely long moment it felt as if they were both floating there in stasis, Apep with her arm outstretched, Xianhe with her hatch open and empty, the brilliant blue-white line bridging them. Then the line broke, and Apep lowered her arm, and Xianhe went supernova.
Both of Renjun’s palms are laid flat against the sill again, the stillness at the epicentre of the forces pulling him in so many directions. But the real question is this: once all of the forces resolve, once there is nothing else with a hold on Renjun left, which way will he turn?
Renjun says, quietly, “Will you come to the hangar with me?”
Not that it was even gravity, properly; it only felt that way.
He knows who the message is for.
It skidded along the ground, metallic shriek, friction eating up momentum, and came to a rest.
DELETED SCENES
as i was once again trying to be in my tomino era of not explaining anything (which is extremely antithetical to my natural inclination to explain everything in painstaking detail) i started a lot of sections and gave up on them partway because i thought they were giving too much away. the major deletions:
There was something eerily ritualistic about the idea of his blood on the shell of the perfect red helmet that really was pink, no matter how he looked at it. Like a promise sealed, though it was a little late for that; he’d already executed his side of it, after all.
Actually Renjun had not liked Donghyuck very much, that first month.
Mark, however, had only ever been kind
and so sure even when Renjun had no idea what he was talking about that it emanated out of him like a tangible shield from
But being in love with Mark was like being in love with the Axiom. In his mind’s eye Mark was always something not quite in view, a laugh heard from the next room, a warm hand dropped on the back of his neck in passing, the stark white star of the Axiom seen from behind or in periphery, a little too bright to look at directly. Still, there was something comforting about the knowledge that Mark was somewhere securely beyond reach no matter how close their bodies were. There was honesty in that, just as there was honesty in how Donghyuck kept pulling him off-balance
Plus Xianhe doesn't handle g-forces as well as the newer models and Donghyuck had to spend a solid day or two fixing up her stabilisers so that they actually stabilised. Xianhe had been a marvel of engineering at the time of her manufacture, but technology marches on, and now Renjun goes into every battle with the built-in disadvantage of encroaching obsolescence.
The unspoken premise: that Renjun will return. But it's hardly something that needs to be said in order to be true.
But something more powerful than gravity kept him rooted in place
“Excellent news,” Donghyuck says. “Yangyang owes me money.
Do you have a photo?
Um, they were all on my old phone
I think I have a
Well? Let’s go
You want to see it right now?
Why not?
Are you trying to
That’s just a fun bonus
hands him a creased
“Wow,” Donghyuck says, after a moment. “He must have a really good personality. Except he’s the Red Comet, so he clearly doesn’t.”
he looks different in person
He looks like a tadpole
Really it’s Jaemin who is the comedian; Donghyuck hasn’t been so entertained since he and Mark joined the Citizen and met Renjun.
Even Jeno's apparent openness is only the flipped-coin counterpart of it, a corollary of the
total certainty
“He doesn’t care. He isn’t sorry about any of it. I don’t think he even thinks it’s the right thing to do, or anything like that. He just—he doesn’t care.”
NAMES
one of the hardest things about au fic that involves any amount of worldbuilding is having to come up with names for things… and scifi is the worst taskmaster in the naming mines. here’s the background to my choices:
mechs
organisations
toiled soooo long in the naming mines for these ones in particular, like i guess i could’ve just used the original 0079 federation vs zeon but i always feel like i should take the opportunity to name things with canon specificity/meaningfulness. but my ass is just not creative enough for that. anyway NEO stands for Natural Earth Organisation (I DID MY BEST) and they are the federation equivalent. dream = zeon i just couldn’t come up with anything better than that. i mean i don’t think it’s much more whimsical of a “villain” org name than titans so it’s realistic To Meee.
ships
locations
MUSIC
primary inspiration for this fic was ofc moriguchi hiroko’s iconic legendary showstopping cover of <beyond the time>. lyrics of note:
PERSONAL FEELINGS
i had fun!!! even towards the end when i was starting to get really sick of my own writing style and annoyed about how long it was taking me to write the last few sentences and also through the phase of writing where you suddenly start doubting your entire grip on characterisation/prose/the english language generally. i’m pretty happy with the result rn, though that could just be the Finished Fic euphoria, but also this was an extremely ambitious project for me, due to being 1) over 10k 2) dual pov 3) scifi au 4) sort of plotty instead of aimless character study 5) really convoluted structure-wise. so i’m really proud of myself for pulling it off!! i think this is also the fastest i’ve ever written what i personally consider a longfic ie over 10k, i do think you can tell where i rushed to the finish line but it’s not even that bad tbh. could i have spent more time perfecting this fic? yes. but the marginal costs outweigh the marginal benefits i think.
i think this is probably one of the bigger demands i’ve made of my readers just out of sheer volume of like… It’s Worth It Just Trust Me Bro re: relatively obscure premise and difficult-to-follow structure, so i really don’t know what the reception will be like. but it was a labour of love for me and i’m happy that i successfully tested my abilities in a way that didn’t involve landmining myself.
finally thank you to my miches for listening to me make extremely poor and incomprehensible attempts to explain this fic or otherwise whinge about writing over the span of several weeks and then still agreeing to look over it for me at the end <3
haechan/renjun + jaemin/renjun | t | 16k | gundam au
dvd commentary below ๐
CONCEPT
smashing the things i like together is my passion so naturally i’d been thinking about writing a gundam au for dream since last year. jaemin is literally a char!!! originally the premise was more influenced by yugioh arc v with military academy vibes where 00z all go to war crimes school for baby war criminals together until jaemin jumps ship to become an even worse war criminal on the enemy side but renjun is convinced he can still be brought back. so it would have been a much tighter focus on renjun / the ghosts of jmrn past present and future, but the more i wrote the more it became Not That lmao. then i felt too Do Not Separate about jaemjen to have them on opposite sides so it became dongren on one side vs jaemjen on the other side.
the gundam setting is a combination of 0079 + zeta + seed, i was just throwing any random gundam element i liked in there. relationships-wise, jmrn are modelled on kira/athrun fused with elements of char and sayla, and dongren are modelled on kamille/fa except haechan is also the fraw bow to mark’s amuro (and renjun is sayla) but if fraw bow were quattro. jeno is lalah and marknomin are basically charamulalah directly, they’re having crazy psychosexual triangulation offscreen. plot beats borrowed from gundam are: the gold bar gift scene (p much taken directly from 0079), the mirae spaceport bomb (inspired by sarah’s bomb planting mission in zeta), and the nominhyuck grocery shopping meeting scene (inspired by the scene where char and lalah help amuro get his vehicle unstuck from the mud in 0079). also took vibes inspiration from char and sayla’s various reunion scenes in 0079 and a scene in zz where judau forgets he’s not in zero-g and is about to step off a platform in the hangar and someone has to grab his shirt from behind to stop him from falling to his death.
also just like char i don't think jaemin died, he is literally guy who does not die when killed. the climactic jaemin vs renjun battle taking place offscreen is the equivalent of not seeing a body. in a few years i expect sunglasses-wearing ace pilot lieutenant naemin ja will mysteriously show up out of nowhere as a protag ally. i haven’t decided jeno’s fate though, i know lalah dies in canon but also lives on forever as a newtype ghost due to the strength of her powers, but i feel like i always kill jeno off so maybe it’s time he lived for once.
the title ofc is from the sentiment char expresses about the people on earth having their souls weighed down by gravity (neg) in zeta and then in cca, but per kamille's response to amuro saying something similar (see epigraph quote) it might still be (pos) so ultimately who could say if gravity is good or bad. that's the real takeaway from this fic i think.
WRITING PROCESS
i created wow_cool_robot_dream.doc in january mostly to make a Celebrities Shop Too joke except it’s War Criminals Shop Too but then the grocery shopping scene in question ended up being โ of the length of the entire fic for some reason? i did hack my brain into managing 1k a day until i started baby’s first full time job and my productivity instantly died but luckily at that point i was already at 10k so it just took me another month to finish the last 5k. the secret is to lean really hard into sunk cost fallacy btw, this is my thought process:
start typing some words → might as well finish off this hundred for a nice round number it’s only a hundred → type some more words → i don’t land on the exact x00 → might as well finish off this hundred for a nice round number it’s only a hundred → type some more words → etc
really praying that this strategy continues to work for me, i have a few wips i want to clear (DREAMPURI……..).
i decided on doing dual pov for the first time to test my abilities, i think i have a really severe case of writing equivalent of sameface syndrome and with dream in particular i struggle with any pov other than jaemin’s. so picking dongren as narrators was a bit of a stretch for me but i really did want to challenge myself properly.
to facilitate this i was unusually methodical about writing this fic i even made an outline... i usually hate doing outlines bc i seriously hate noting down what i’m going to do for some inexplicable reason, like i do firmly believe that nobody (myself included) should know what i’m about to write until i’ve written it, but there was just no way i could keep the timelines and povs straight without an outline lmao. the way i outline on the rare occasions that i do so is that i type a bunch of emdashes as scene breaks and attach a brief gdoc comment to each emdash noting the main point of the scene and resolve the comments as i finish each scene like a to-do list. this is helpful for me because i love to tick things off a list and also i like having the scene breaks already in place so i can work on whichever scene i feel like or move lines around to a scene they work better in. also my initial plot summary was "when your evil ex blows up your mech so your boyfriend has to space chauffeur you to go kill him" which is really not reflective of what happens in the fic at all but at the very least it made me laugh.
did a lotttt of deleting in this fic especially towards the end. i was deadset on cutting the fic down until what was left was more or less strung into some kind of readable order and then called it a day, if it sucks hit da bricks. every day it’s more and more true that writing is about not writing, thank you lina for these timeless words of wisdom.
THEMATIC CONSTRUCTION, HAPTICS AND PROXEMICS
feeling like at this point ndr might as well be my main brand. i’ll be honest i do still think of this as a jmrn fic even though it is literally like… the opposite of a jmrn fic. but to me jmrn is about the absence of jmrn… it’s like that interview about yuri. jmrn is an empty uninhabited landscape… jmrn is nothing where there should be something… jmrn is differentials… jmrn is limits to infinity…
basically the overarching image in my mind is that jmrn are chasing each other around a mobius loop (as reflected by the circular hallway they first meet face-to-face in) and haechan is holding a big pair of scissors preparing to cut the loop open. i did mean to make mobius loops the main motif but i couldn't really figure out how to do it in the end so umm accidentally left out the entire central metaphor of the fic. although This Too Is Jaemren. anyway dongren is presentgame, jmrn is ambiguously up in the air running in circles for the rest of time. which is the nature of jmrn real in the text to me! they aren’t exes because they weren’t in a relationship previously but also because nothing actually concretely “ended” or is capable of “ending”. i’ve said this before but jmrn being premised on their stronger attachments to other people but simultaneously attempting to exist in some space beyond the claims of others on them even though this is obviously unsustainable is literally fundamental to my vision of them.
mark is there too… i struggled so much to keep his presence minimal in order to not overcomplicate the story, anytime i introduce mark in a fic he instantly takes over so much narrative space bc i feel the need to start detailing everyone’s past or present mark complexes and also i can’t help being markren first love truther. but i had to force myself to get a grip and keep things focused on ndr lol.
meta-wise this fic is literally just desire path redux but in space so everything i said in the <commentary for that fic> applies here as well, except in this case jaemin did manage to push renjun far enough that renjun at least tried to stop believing and to let go, though not totally successfully.
my mental keywords for scenes with haechan: presence, immediacy, physical proximity and tactility. every time they interact dongren are very clingy with each other and almost always touching, i paid a lot of attention to the details of physicality. haechan’s scenes are in present tense and chronological order to emphasise the feeling of immediacy and presentgameness and like… the path that renjun has chosen and is moving towards.
my mental keywords for scenes with jaemin: absence, distance, memory, almost touching but never getting there. jaemin only actually meets renjun in person once and they have no skin to skin contact, the bulk of their interaction takes place via the proxy of their mechs or in memory or otherwise with something interpolated in between (a glove, a gift, a screen, etc). jaemin is introduced (and primarily present) via renjun’s past tense reverse chronological order narration to emphasise the way he exists in relation to renjun as a memory so powerful it extended / extends beyond the grave and beyond the limits of spacetime to pull renjun back.
haechan is also associated heavily with lack of gravity, while jaemin is associated heavily with gravity: the dr scenes all take place in low or zero gravity environments + haechan is from a space colony vs the jmrn scenes primarily take place in places with gravity + jaemin is from earth. this was derived primarily from the idea of jaemin being a figure who carries so much figurative weight in renjun’s history he has his own gravitational pull. since this is a scifi au i figured i might as well take the opportunity to finally indulge in space metaphors, which i have always found very difficult to execute in an interesting and nonmelodramatic fashion. i hope the gravity-related extended metaphor is not too stupid, i remembered from physics classes that gravity affects spacetime in the way that a heavy object placed in the middle of a tablecloth will drag the fabric down (???), so i started digging out my uni notes to revise how general relativity works wrt gravity slowing down time but i decided who even cares if my vague metaphor isn’t totally scientifically accurate, renjun isn’t a physicist and neither am i. but i do care. but it's ok.
anyway i wanted the idea of jmrn being separate from time and place and almost floating freely in isolation from the rest of the universe as the only space in which they can exist at all, unlike the way dr are extremely grounded in the here and now. dongren joke about love powered by gravity vs gravity powered by love but actually that is the main theme in complete earnestness. it’s a bit of a chicken/egg thing but to extremely simplify it, renjun conflates the remaining gravity of jaemin’s presence as love but there surely was love there in the first place… but Who Could Say. whereas dongren are clearly in love despite their whole relationship occurring where there is no gravity which is why haechan’s position is that love generates gravity. but again Who Could Say. guys i love ambiguity and not committing to a stance. it may also be true that i love clarity and hardline committing to stances but these can coexist.
jaemin is also associated with fate/doom and haechan with luck/coincidence/chance, which goes back to jmrn’s feeling of an inescapable past that keeps on returning vs dr’s feeling of an actively created and chosen present, including haechan specifically rejecting the characterisation of his relationship with renjun as doom. several times during scenes involving jaemin, renjun references movie sets / dollhouses / haunting / possession, which are all things that are being put in place or into action by some external entity that renjun has no control over. conversely jaemin is associated with abrupt flipping between polarised states of being/unbeing or motion/rest, and haechan with gradual change from one state to another, to convey a sense of unnatural vs natural. i was watching alice in borderland during the time that i was writing this fic so i was imagining that one jumpscare leitmotif from the ost (i think it plays when the king of spades appears and sometimes for chishiya) every time jaemin suddenly shows up.
+ more basic connotations: jaemin as (un/)death vs haechan as life, jaemin as ice vs haechan as warmth.
also wanted to point out that renjun tends to use very romantic and natural imagery to describe the violence of war: flowerlike wreaths of smoke unfurling as the Apep exploded // violent burst of swansong power // From this far away, the explosions almost looked like stars.
CHRONOLOGY
i love nonlinearity and i love a fucked up timeline but i think i might have pushed it a bit too far this time because it’s kind of confusing even to me, the guy who wrote the fic, so ummm i have no idea how i’m expecting anyone else to understand. like despite literally listing out the scenes in order before arranging them into the forward/backward alternating chronology i still managed to fuck up the timeline and got halfway through the fic before i realised i was missing three scenes in chronological sequence.
chronologically the scenes go:
13→2→11→4→9→6→7→8→5→10→3→12→1
which is split into renjun pov scenes (odd numbered scenes, moving backwards) and haechan pov scenes (even numbered scenes, moving forwards). actually i was thinking about doing something similar to the chronological structure in <this flimsy thing - transversely> where scenes alternate between before and after some event that changes everything, with each scene moving closer and closer to the watershed moment (3 years before / 3 years after → 3 months before / 3 months after → 3 weeks before / 3 weeks after etc). but i couldn’t decide what the event should be so i came up with my own structure.
however i did write this fic with the intent that the scenes would be read in the order they appear (not in chronological order) so that information/backstory is revealed as you go and images/motifs/running jokes take on increasing significance. for example, jaemin is intentionally not named in the first scene, and the fact that the ms renjun pilots in the third scene is full sun is also not mentioned until the end of the scene.
the opening and ending scenes bookend the fic with the image of something split down the middle: the faceplate of jaemin's helmet, renjun's heart. the surface layer is that it's "good" that jaemin’s faceplate cracked (since he’s been defeated) and it's "bad" that renjun is experiencing heartbreak, which is a positive progression in chronological order even if it ends sadly in the fic order. but if the helmet is the insignia of jaemin’s red comet / villain identity then it takes on a more hopeful tone, because then it’s about unmasking and revealing truth and i’m not going to rehash everything i always say about jmrn and visibility of sincerity because this post will be 5x longer than it already is but you can fill it in mentally. i mean it’s probably still bad because the unmasking involved renjun killing jaemin but also that’s because jaemin was the mask so there was nothing to unmask and renjun does eventually recognise that. or does he. after all… jaemin didn’t die! so once again who could say if it was good or bad.
other misc callbacks/callforwards: coincidence of design, haechan stealing the axiom, head trauma, axiom / full sun space taxis, nice conversation in a nice supermarket, that was the thing about [x], home being the citizen or side 7 or earth, “the last time”, mark/haechan/renjun facing the same way literally and figuratively, salmon comet, jaemin the steel wall.
LINES I WANTED TO POINT OUT
And yet. The entirety of space and the force of the blast had sent that helmet sailing right into Renjun’s hands. Surely it was some kind of serendipity.
- imagine being me writing this line about renjun romanticising random chance re: jaemin into FATE and then days later renjun finds jaemin’s photocard in the ocean and posts about how it must have been FATE. pea helped me decide on this part for the summary quote bc it has a more hopeful tone which i think is ultimately more in line with renjun's Approaching The End Still Believing In Something ideology
the exquisite fateful arc of the cracked helmet harpooning towards him like the inverse of a lifeline
- i think this is nice… good verb good adjectives
But the maw of the launch bay opened out into empty darkness. Everything was so much further away than Renjun had thought.
- my other choice for summary quote but angsty ver
When your best friend, seemingly possessed by the metaphysical spirit of justice, jumps in a giant robotic state secret, stomps around the city flattening hapless parkland, and somehow wipes out a whole squadron of enemy pilots in the process, that basically spells out automatic enlistment. // It’s not like he was going to leave Mark at the mercy of the NEO brass, to be steamrolled underfoot like so much unlucky municipal greenery of Side 7. After all, that's Donghyuck’s job.
- i think this is funny :)
They were hurtling towards a fixed and inevitable future. Fate dovetailing into doom. It was only the past, now, that seemed mutable, prismatic split of possibilities.
- average fate enjoyer, average doom enjoyer, average historical revisionism enjoyer… i like the reversal of unchangeable future vs changeable past
You’d only be able to see a sight like this if you were leaving.
- change and worldview expansion can be a nice and healing and positive thing! this is what haechan represents
No barrier between him and Renjun, except then Renjun remembered the fact of distance. Separation and spaces. Things only ever moved further apart.
- the universe is expanding at approx 73km per megaparsec
He hadn’t meant to end it here, not like this, not when he hadn't said what he’d really wanted to say, though he still didn’t know what that was.
- (sakura nagashi vc) mada nani mo tsutaetenai... mada nani mo tsutaetenai...
He could drain his weapon reserves firing everything he had at Jaemin and nothing would change. Some part of him wanted to, just for the sake of trying. Throwing himself against that steel wall in futility, in hope.
- callback chronologically but callforward in fic order to Jaemin always gave and gave and gave and then you slammed into a wall as unforgiving as steel.
Jaemin studied him, except that there were no cameras in the Xianhe’s cockpit, so that wasn’t even possible, but Jaemin was so good at looking. Looking at. Looking like. The illusion of a conversation, only Jaemin wasn’t seeing him at all.
- it literally is true that jaemin is really good at looking and also really good looking
As he watched, a ribbon of pure light pierced through the darkness like an arrow directly into the Xianhe’s heart. For an infinitely long moment it felt as if they were both floating there in stasis, Apep with her arm outstretched, Xianhe with her hatch open and empty, the brilliant blue-white line bridging them. Then the line broke, and Apep lowered her arm, and Xianhe went supernova.
- jaemin(‘s mech) literally shoots renjun(‘s mech) through the heart (mechs are idealised proxy bodies ala magical girl transformations to me so they are directly identifiable as their pilots) → callback (callforward) to renjun’s perception in the last scene that his heart has split in half
- if you stopped time in the moment when the laser jaemin fires connects with renjun they literally would be connected. the very act of destruction is what is tying them together… but time keeps moving forward and they can’t exist separately from the outside world after all
- but in the end it’s still renjun’s mech that is destroyed and not renjun. he did escape…
Both of Renjun’s palms are laid flat against the sill again, the stillness at the epicentre of the forces pulling him in so many directions. But the real question is this: once all of the forces resolve, once there is nothing else with a hold on Renjun left, which way will he turn?
Renjun says, quietly, “Will you come to the hangar with me?”
- in re the theme of inertia vs forces. and also that’s the answer!!
Not that it was even gravity, properly; it only felt that way.
- things that look like but are not the things that you are familiar with
He knows who the message is for.
- left it ambiguous on purpose but it was for haechan not jaemin, per the opening scene where haechan comes to pick renjun up
It skidded along the ground, metallic shriek, friction eating up momentum, and came to a rest.
- this goes back to the ongoing tension between ideal and reality for jmrn… like jmrn are all about inertia-fuelled motion but inertia can only operate in the absence of other forces and unfortunately the real world is full of other forces. air resistance… surface friction… haechan…
DELETED SCENES
as i was once again trying to be in my tomino era of not explaining anything (which is extremely antithetical to my natural inclination to explain everything in painstaking detail) i started a lot of sections and gave up on them partway because i thought they were giving too much away. the major deletions:
There was something eerily ritualistic about the idea of his blood on the shell of the perfect red helmet that really was pink, no matter how he looked at it. Like a promise sealed, though it was a little late for that; he’d already executed his side of it, after all.
- originally at the end of the first paragraph in the opening scene but i thought it was too chuuni cringe
Actually Renjun had not liked Donghyuck very much, that first month.
Mark, however, had only ever been kind
and so sure even when Renjun had no idea what he was talking about that it emanated out of him like a tangible shield from
But being in love with Mark was like being in love with the Axiom. In his mind’s eye Mark was always something not quite in view, a laugh heard from the next room, a warm hand dropped on the back of his neck in passing, the stark white star of the Axiom seen from behind or in periphery, a little too bright to look at directly. Still, there was something comforting about the knowledge that Mark was somewhere securely beyond reach no matter how close their bodies were. There was honesty in that, just as there was honesty in how Donghyuck kept pulling him off-balance
- this was from renjun’s introspection interlude scene about jaemin and gravity, as you can see i was originally going in a pretty different direction with it and the point of the section would have been compare&contrast honesty from mh vs “honesty” from jaemin → renjun convincing himself that there must have been honesty in jaemin at some point. then i decided i needed to do more with the gravity extended metaphor and less with mark←renjun since the fic was already so cluttered with complicated romantic situations, so i rewrote the section
Plus Xianhe doesn't handle g-forces as well as the newer models and Donghyuck had to spend a solid day or two fixing up her stabilisers so that they actually stabilised. Xianhe had been a marvel of engineering at the time of her manufacture, but technology marches on, and now Renjun goes into every battle with the built-in disadvantage of encroaching obsolescence.
- originally from haechan’s first scene when he sees xianhe coming back to the citizen all fucked up but i thought it was adding nothing to further the story
The unspoken premise: that Renjun will return. But it's hardly something that needs to be said in order to be true.
- it really was something that didn’t need to be said
But something more powerful than gravity kept him rooted in place
- had this written in jmrn chewing gum confrontation scene but ended up axing it since i couldn’t find anywhere to put it. also i don’t think it’s good anyway
“Excellent news,” Donghyuck says. “Yangyang owes me money.
Do you have a photo?
Um, they were all on my old phone
I think I have a
Well? Let’s go
You want to see it right now?
Why not?
Are you trying to
That’s just a fun bonus
hands him a creased
“Wow,” Donghyuck says, after a moment. “He must have a really good personality. Except he’s the Red Comet, so he clearly doesn’t.”
he looks different in person
He looks like a tadpole
- probably the main victim of my Writing Is About Not Writing crusade. this was a continuation of the conversation between dr after renjun tells him he knows who the red comet is, but i decided i didn’t want to write it and also it was giving nothing. crazy to me that i mark out scenes dialogue-first now like how did i reach the point where i feel more comfortable doing dialogue than descriptions
Really it’s Jaemin who is the comedian; Donghyuck hasn’t been so entertained since he and Mark joined the Citizen and met Renjun.
- unnecessary telling and not showing
Even Jeno's apparent openness is only the flipped-coin counterpart of it, a corollary of the
total certainty
- literally just forgot what this was meant to be about so i took it out. the perils of writing random vaguely relevant sounding lines instead of doing a scene from start to finish
“He doesn’t care. He isn’t sorry about any of it. I don’t think he even thinks it’s the right thing to do, or anything like that. He just—he doesn’t care.”
- hoping this was conveyed without me directly explaining it via renjun as a mouthpiece
NAMES
one of the hardest things about au fic that involves any amount of worldbuilding is having to come up with names for things… and scifi is the worst taskmaster in the naming mines. here’s the background to my choices:
mechs
- axiom (mark) - i think this is a pretty good protag gundam name if i do say so myself, though that might just be because it sounds a bit like exia but in the vein of like, victory gundam or god gundam. i did consider a greek letter ala zeta/nu/xi but none of the options were really hitting. i like the certainty and background assumption nature of an axiom, i think mark performs a similar narrative function here
- full sun (haechan) - shoutout to HAECHAN for having the most perfect and slayful stage name that can be applied in any situation he makes my life so easy <3 the ms herself is based on the hyaku shiki
- xianhe (renjun) - ไป้นค/immortal crane (red-crowned crane), for my favourite final girl who is a bird. originally chang’e but doing possessives got confusing with the double apostrophe so i changed it, but chang’e being married to guy who shot down the suns would have been kinda thematically on point in a funnily misleading way too
- apep (jaemin) - snake god that eats the sun at dusk but ultimately is vanquished at dawn, i’m really happy with the narrative implications of this one. i thought about naming jaemin’s ms some variation on zorc aka the final boss villain evil snake demon monster possessing bakura from yugioh, which is even similar phonetically to canonical zeon mobile suits like char’s own zaku/z’ok/etc but it just looks kinda goofy written in english. i know there is also canonical zeon precedent for goofy ass names eg gelgoog but one of my most passionate hills to die on is that ya love interests need to have desirable names and that extends to ya love interests’ mechs
- qerbeross (jeno) - derived from kerberos / cerberus for obvious reasons. it’s the equivalent of lalah’s elmeth (derived from hermes), spelling twist inspired by qubeley (derived from cybele). all guys who were in love with char naturally
organisations
toiled soooo long in the naming mines for these ones in particular, like i guess i could’ve just used the original 0079 federation vs zeon but i always feel like i should take the opportunity to name things with canon specificity/meaningfulness. but my ass is just not creative enough for that. anyway NEO stands for Natural Earth Organisation (I DID MY BEST) and they are the federation equivalent. dream = zeon i just couldn’t come up with anything better than that. i mean i don’t think it’s much more whimsical of a “villain” org name than titans so it’s realistic To Meee.
ships
- citizen - obvious. was debating whether this was too uninspired and tossing up between citizen and civilian but i couldn’t pass up a citizen’s citizens joke
- tonyangi - also obvious. i wanted to make a joke about jaemin naming a warship extremely tonally inappropriately
locations
- CIG-PPT / Chewing Gum - probably obvious. CIG = chewing gum, PPT = paopaotang
- mirae - from hello future, kind of the equivalent of von braun
- qingchun - from we go up, kind of the equivalent of a baoa qu
MUSIC
primary inspiration for this fic was ofc moriguchi hiroko’s iconic legendary showstopping cover of <beyond the time>. lyrics of note:
- without escaping the mobius loop / we endlessly repeat our mistakes
- if we can keep on living / someday there will be a return
- more than hope, more than longing, more than ideals / i only believed in you
- if i meet you by serendipity one more time / i’ll cross the mobius’s universe / beyond the time
- <senkou - alexandros> (just take one deep breath / and hold still / until you see your enemy inside your scope // but after all i cast a shadow under light from my own sky / and i think that this is something that i want)
- <akatsuki no kuruma - moriguchi hiroko> (i saw a version of myself i didn't even recognise // a star falls in the grief of someone who'll never be seen again // branded into my memories, on the ever-turning earth / there is something sprouting in remembrance)
- <ego - kobayashi mika> (you can deeply hold your breath for loneliness / for the perfect smile i smell your ego on the way / it's long since i saw the snow / you've been told before / all these things have gone)
- <sabishii kihel - kanno yoko> (instrumental)
PERSONAL FEELINGS
i had fun!!! even towards the end when i was starting to get really sick of my own writing style and annoyed about how long it was taking me to write the last few sentences and also through the phase of writing where you suddenly start doubting your entire grip on characterisation/prose/the english language generally. i’m pretty happy with the result rn, though that could just be the Finished Fic euphoria, but also this was an extremely ambitious project for me, due to being 1) over 10k 2) dual pov 3) scifi au 4) sort of plotty instead of aimless character study 5) really convoluted structure-wise. so i’m really proud of myself for pulling it off!! i think this is also the fastest i’ve ever written what i personally consider a longfic ie over 10k, i do think you can tell where i rushed to the finish line but it’s not even that bad tbh. could i have spent more time perfecting this fic? yes. but the marginal costs outweigh the marginal benefits i think.
i think this is probably one of the bigger demands i’ve made of my readers just out of sheer volume of like… It’s Worth It Just Trust Me Bro re: relatively obscure premise and difficult-to-follow structure, so i really don’t know what the reception will be like. but it was a labour of love for me and i’m happy that i successfully tested my abilities in a way that didn’t involve landmining myself.
finally thank you to my miches for listening to me make extremely poor and incomprehensible attempts to explain this fic or otherwise whinge about writing over the span of several weeks and then still agreeing to look over it for me at the end <3
