[commentary] fractionation

[rhodochrosite]

omfg i just realised i forgot to switch out the placeholder title for a better one why am i always posting fic in like a crazed rush... this morning i started rereading it in the cold light of day and saw i used 'pointed'/'pointedly' like three times in a single paragraph that's honestly what i get for taking SIX FUCKING MONTHS to write this bitch. i cannot believe i thought i would be done in march and now it's AUGUST but at least i finally won 

anyway i started writing this as a relaxation activity post-rtfbt, i wanted to 1) write something completely angst-free 2) write something for markhyuck 3) write a microbiology internship au bc why even have life experiences if you can't inflict them on your idols 4) put the line 'the market's absolutely fully capable' in something. so naturally i decided to tackle all of these at once hoping to force myself to level up in humour/dialogue skills at the same time too. which i think i was kind of successful in at least??! some of the dialogue DOESN'T read like an alien badly trying to blend in with human customs so that's a big win for me. also i hope it was funny... icb /i/ wrote a fic that's legit just 12k of banter who even am i

here's a rundown of stuff i lifted directly from rl experience:

• obv the premise... the experiment is one i did in my internship but i simplified it heaps and cut out some stuff bc i didn't want to bore/confuse people with too much technical jargon. properly the buffers tested should have been mes bis tris (control), histidine, histidine mes bis tris, histidine acetate. the pure histidine buffer actually did turn pink too and i still don't know why. i straight up didn't include the qualitative analysis (bradford assay is quantitative) via gel doc bc i thought it might've been too much detail lol it's not meant to read like a lab report!!
• everything mark says about finance is things i've had to do too lol. swot / tbl bullshitting tysm buss1000... dumbass emotional intelligence unit tysm buss2000 do i look like someone who knows what ""feelings"" are. EXCEPT the line about inverted yield curves, none of the corp finance i've learned so far explains stock market index crashes so i had to look that one up #FAKE_FINANCE_MAJOR
• pipette touching thing happened to my (sag sun) friend lmao the lady from the other company who owned the pipettes was actually so scary yelling at her but it was also a very h03s m4d moment
• the word games... When You're Bored In The Lab. i have ethics so i didn't make any colours up but i was sorely tempted to
• the pinky/rainy/money thing actually happened to my mum's friend (formerly named winny) I PROMISE THE STORY IS MUCH FUNNIER IN THE ORIGINAL CHINESE i just could not figure out how to translate it properly </3
• the fuckening air bubble saga... i was sooooo bad at pipetting it was unreal. i was so good at everything else in the lab EXCEPT pipetting consistently lowest r^2 score out of my team and only one who had to use the centrifuge to get bubbles out of the diluted tubes. multipipettes are really cool tho
• credit where credit is due: 'when i get rabies i will spit in your mouth' - daniel boy who i teach from my tuesday maths class
• a gradiflow really did explode during my project </3 rip those 4 hours of data all gone

i think the weakest part of this fic is the opening... it just dragged on and on and on and it felt so infodumpy i am like. really bad at exposition LOL setup is so harddd. i feel like you can definitely also tell there were a lot of scenes i had no idea how to end so i just cut them off awkwardly. also bc i wrote this over such a long period of time there's like 3 different writing styles in there... i really wish i had transversely's ability to write humour w/o sacrificing style/depth/beauty of prose but ALSO like, i WANTED this fic to be an easy read off the back of rtfbt's emotional mess so [me yelling at myself] IT DOESN'T HAVE TO BE DEEP!! IT'S OK IF THERE AREN'T 50000 LAYERS OF MEANING!!

the ship seeding. i couldn't decide who to pair renjun with so i just decided to pair him with everyone. winren 2jun renhyuck markren (kind of) noren jaemren norenmin 2ren i think that's it but augdfhjgh this is why i should not be allowed to just write whatever i want. i think i was shipping renhyuck more than markhyuck in this fic too lmao... lovedays enemy anniversary funniest thing i've ever come up with. also jaemjen dubious back room activities / nahyuck flirty banter / general 00z mess / jaemsung and chenji cameos. what else. junzztwxy run the astrophysics lab pleiades (ie pledis + yuehua), the two colleagues who got engaged were zzt and xuanyi LMAO xuanyi is yiren's supervisor who is best friends with meiqi ofc. OH YEAH and chenji's supervisor who yelled at haechan was doyoung

as for deleted scenes / scenes i was planning to write but didn't end up doing... extended johnmark conversation at the start, generally more 95z-00zmark and 7dream interaction T__T sorry i was too lazy, markyong d&m where taeyong assures mark he's doing really well. wait i think i still have it saved in notes

 

“It’s cool, though,” Mark says. “I guess I was the only person who applied or something?

 

“There were other people who applied,” Taeyong says earnestly. “We chose you because we thought you were the best candidate for the position
 

and i literally stopped writing in the middle of the sentence bc idk how to write tyong. then i axed it bc i was sick of working on this fic. tbh i struggled SO much trying to write mark... simi once said smth along the lines of 'how do u even write mark pov like does he ever have a little thinky think' and like. DOES HE????? his narrative and dialogue voice was INCREDIBLY hard for me which i think is bc it's so?? unfiltered. and basically the opposite of my usual writing style

other fun facts etc:

• mark's line about the only way to learn something is by doing it calls back to johnny telling him to learn by doing at the start of the fic... originally there was dialogue that emphasised it more but i cut it out bc the first section is already SOOOOO badly paced
• haechan keeps throwing law related jargon into conversation (inadmissible evidence, etc) and that's bc he picked it up from renjun
• more obvious but mark saying neo biologics trusts uni students to not blow up their equipment -> the gradiflow blows up at the end lol
• i wrote jaemin talking about tax considerations BEFORE he said all that stuff about trying to save on tax so basically i'm characterisation genius
• also is this the third fic in a row i've posted that involves weddings/marriage in some way... this is a disease
• gratuitous wound care scene written on meg's suggestion hehe i was complaining about how nobody was dying/suffering mortal wounds in microbio au so it was boring to write and she was like what about a lab accident ::smirkmoji:: but then i chickened out of giving haechan anything more dangerous than a paper cut

overall i think this fic was an important experience for me to write something so far out of my comfort zone in every way... mentally i compared it a lot to teiits while writing but i think i actually like this more (excluding the opening section) bc it's at least better characterised and less cheesy haha. and possibly more enjoyable? i'm not sure what it says about my writing style tho... my "usual" style takes a lottt of work and this/teiits are closer to how i used to write origfic a few years ago so maybe this IS my style (too?), next time i want to challenge myself i'll try to blend the two for real ::thinking emoji:: i have the feeling this fic is, like teiits, gonna eclipse my stats for the rest of the fandom ctfu but i can't even be mad bc it BETTER have a high payoff for how much i suffered writing it

anyway the angst withdrawals i went through were unreal but i'm still proud of myself for making it out alive and getting over 10k again!! BUT EMOTIONAL ANGUISH ONLY FOR THE REST OF THE YEAR.