WIPs and the inherent humiliation of learning something new

[unsospiro]

i missed my first daily journal entry yesterday ahhhhhhhh. well. here's my penance i suppose.

life updates: the semester has started and life is kind of crazy! a ballroom competition is coming up in a couple of weeks and it feels like there’s so much to manage right now ugh.

writing updates: uh oh i started a new fic. i think i just need to finish something rough just to finish something. it's hard because the more i write, the more i learn what i don't know how to do (as with any skill) and i get stuck feeling incapable of executing the ideas i have.

that aside, i am happy with some of the progress i've made; writing my first draft felt like trying to speak a foreign language: slow, stilted, and with an unnecessary amount of embarrassment involved.

i'm still not quite past the point where i can read things i've written without flinching every other sentence but well. we persevere.


i have no idea when i'm going to make my ao3 debut so here's some scrapped ideas and snippets that i need to toss into the void before i go insane.

so my first fic draft ever was an nmixx sullyoon/jiwoo sci-fi, time-loop fic loosely based on their blue valentine webtoon and lore. i quickly realized that it was way too ambitious for where i'm at right now. i’m glad i started it and i’m glad i abandoned it🙏.

i’ve gone through quite a few other ideas since then including a jiwoo/yubin pre-debut epistolary, a seoyeon/chaeyeon the blacklist au (i honestly don’t know a single thing about the blacklist but i watched half an episode and felt inspired i guess), a sohyun/jiyeon dancesport au (there’s something delicious here and i will flesh this out one day trust), and a renjun/haechan debate x theater rivals to lovers au (i lowkey don’t know anything about nct dream but this was kind of fun to brainstorm).

the first triples fic i started writing was a 1311 canon compliant fic that i have since abandoned, but reading it now, it’s honestly not as bad as i thought. i started writing this pre-kotone hiatus and well. i just don’t know. maybe i’ll go back to it.

In the park itself there isn’t much to see besides the sidewalk in front of them, cast in a warm glow from the streetlamps. Kotone looks beyond the river to the hazy outlines of skyscrapers, LED lights glittering in the distance. Even on a Sunday morning there is no rest for the city.

Her mind drifts towards her schedule for the week.

Dance practice for Fly Up. Review for upcoming Hatchi promotions. Christmas Alone recording. Kotone methodically outlines her mental to-do list squaring away each item into neat little boxes.

Music video in Korea. Promotions in Japan. Preparation for the next comeback, back in Korea.

Kotone pushes out a harsh exhale. The start of an ache creeps into her calves.

Here’s the thing. Kotone is no stranger to endurance challenges. She’s survived three Badge Wars, memorized a couple hundred formations for Girls Never Die alone, and don’t even get her started on the human rights violations of Girls Planet 999. Sprinting back and forth between countries and subunits with no end in sight is just the nature of the job.

It would be difficult for anyone in her position.

Kotone blinks and realizes that the gap between her and Nien has widened to a couple of meters. She pulls her shoulders back and clenches her fists. Lifts her knees up and picks up the pace.

If anyone could handle Kotone’s workload though it would probably be Nien. Former track competitor and winner. ISAC 2025 Women’s 60m gold medalist. Their group’s athletic pride and joy.

Kotone looks down to Nien’s obnoxiously pink Nikes reaching forward in long strides, striking the sidewalk at a steady tempo. Even as they jog casually her legs form neat, consistent angles.

Kotone has spent endless hours in practice rooms working on lines and footwork and groove. Moulding her body into something capable of keeping up with any beat necessary.

Right now though, Kotone doesn’t feel graceful or coordinated in the slightest. She thinks back to over a year ago, all twenty-four of them racing at a mudflat in Taean.

With her heavy breathing and sweat beginning to form in uncomfortable places Kotone can’t help but feel like Kim Chaeyeon: dead last, embarrassment incarnate, shrieking for help as she sinks further into the mud.

Staring at Nien’s back as she takes first place.

the second tS fic i’ve been working on is a 348 fic. so this originally started with the purpose of just being smut with no plot whatsoever but then I wrote 3k of not smut and now I truly have no idea what the fuck i’m doing. i’ve learned a lot from writing this fic but at this point i feel like i’ve edited it beyond recognition and i think i just need a break.

They order room service, once again ordering the shine muscat bingsu, something Chaeyeon has been anticipating for over a year.

Jiwoo maneuvers a camera around the small table to capture the light reflecting off of the gold flakes dusted on top.

“And then they called me just to show what I was missing out on,” Chaeyeon complains into a second camera.

Jiwoo’s heard this rant in a dozen different conversations. She shares an amused look with Yubin, barely holding back a laugh when Yubin makes a face that says that she’s also heard this story too many times.

“You guys, they’re truly evil and sadistic people,” Chaeyeon insists.

Yubin plucks a grape from atop the shaved ice and holds it out in Chaeyeon’s direction.

“Unnie stop talking and just try it already,” Yubin says, interrupting her rambling.

Chaeyeon side-eyes the camera as if to say, “see what I mean?”

But then her eyes are fluttering shut as she leans in towards Yubin and the round fruit delicately pinched between Yubin’s thumb and pointer finger.

Jiwoo watches, enraptured, as glossy pink lips part around the grape, the expensive delicacy sitting between her teeth.

Then she’s biting into it, slowly breaking through the shiny surface, skin rupturing under the pressure as juice spurts out from the impact.

Jiwoo flinches at the cold sensation of it landing on her face, sharply inhaling at the impact.

Teeth continue to cleave through the succulent flesh of the grape, now split in half. Unwillingly, Jiwoo follows the way Chaeyeon’s lips close around the tips of Yubin’s fingers before pulling away. Fuck. What is even happening right now?

She tears her gaze away from Chaeyeon to look at Yubin instead.

Lips slightly parted, eyes filled with something unreadable, Jiwoo wonders if Yubin is also carefully taking in Chaeyeon’s blissful expression as she slowly chews.

And as Chaeyeon swallows, eyes still closed, she wonders if Yubin feels as unsteady as she does, knees threatening to give out at the edge of a roof one hundred and twenty-three floors above the city.

Jiwoo startles as Yubin turns to meet her gaze.

The corners of her lips lift into a smirk and Jiwoo knows that Yubin can see the tips of her ears turning bright red.

Yubin’s expression turns curious, glancing at the half bitten fruit balanced between the tips of her fingers, shiny with spit, considering Jiwoo like she wants to try something.

Like a dog, Jiwoo salivates for it, imagining dainty fingers pushing past her lips. Or maybe it’s her own fingers and Chaeyeon’s lips, perfect and pink, or maybe it’s Yubin and it’s Chaeyeon and it’s her, lips and fingers and thighs, all wrapped up in each other, sticky and sweet and–

Chaeyeon sighs dreamily. “That was the best thing I’ve ever tasted in my life.”

As if everything that just happened was completely normal, Yubin just laughs, popping the other half of the grape in her mouth.

Chaeyeon holds up a spoon to the camera, cooing and offering some of the bingsu with a shine muscat on top, dangling an unattainable treat to the fans.

Right. The fans. Chaeyeon moves to hover the spoon in front of Yubin instead, all teasing and overplayed fanservice. Yubin smiles and accepts the bite, playing her role in perfect melodic resolution, like– well like they perform together for a living.

Jiwoo feels like her stomach lining is cannibalizing itself, acid dissolving overpriced fruit into bile. All that remains is an overwhelming sense of emptiness and hunger, desire clawing up her esophagus.

Yubin quietly moans at the taste and it takes everything in Jiwoo not to shove a fork in their direction and demand that they eat their food like normal people.

Ignoring them in favor of cutting her steak, Jiwoo saws at the tender meat with a little more aggression than necessary.

“Can you guys not be weird at the dinner table,” she mutters, focusing intently on slicing thin, even pieces.

“Aww, is Jiwoo feeling jealous?” Yubin grins. “Do you want us to feed you too?”

Pushing down the desperate “yes” caught in her throat Jiwoo just shoots her a glare, shoving a piece of steak in her mouth that she barely remembers to taste.

and now, i’m working on a sohyun/yubin fic. i intend for this to be short. and maybe, kind of bad and thoroughly imperfect. i need to finish something before i go insane.

right now i’m mostly just struggling with writing literally any kind of dialogue and fighting the urge to spend an unnecessary amount of time trying to make everything consistently canon-compliant which is both time consuming (i get sucked into just watching signals lol) and also maybe missing the point of writing fiction in the first place.

i would love to do a post with actual rps thoughts in the future because i have a bunch of them, i just need to organize them into something coherent. until next time!

Comments

[shyshyshiloh]

this is such an intriguing peek behind the curtain and also so, so real (the part about getting sucked into watching signals under the guise of research... 😭)

but please. this sohyun/jiyeon dancesport au 👀(!!). i absolutely mean no pressure but consider me nothing if not excited!

[unsospiro]

so i've been trying to brainstorm a triples x dancesport AU for a while now but i haven't really settled on any specifics until recently! and really this is mostly just vibes, the netflix movie 10dance which i watched super recently, and haorua's 1424 fic metronome swirling around in my brain, but i feel like i'm kind of forming some actual ideas. maybe.

so after initially writing this i actually decided that rather than a dancesport AU which would specifically focus on competition, in the case of jiyeon, i think it might be equally exciting to put her in a ballroom social dance setting. i also recently watched jiyeon's ballet class signal (which i really loved and have so many unrelated thoughts about) and i get the sense that she (like many ballet dancers) would really thrive in a dancesport setting. she's incredibly technique focused, disciplined, and clearly takes a lot of pride in her ballet training. given that background, i think it would somewhat throw her off balance to have to social dance: it’s a setting that welcomes people of a wide range of skill levels and physical capabilities that totally de-emphasizes technique in favor of the fun and growth that takes place from connecting with different people. i think it would be a great narrative way to challenge her as a dancer and as a person.

with sohyun, i get the sense that she has the most “artistic vision” as many of the members like to say. she’s good at seeing the bigger goal or mood that her songwriting or photography is trying to accomplish. i think that could contrast nicely with jiyeon’s nitty-gritty focus on technique/detail. also, in my head, sohyun is just a perfect lead. besides the obvious sense that she likes to present as very masculine sometimes (which the lead traditionally performs/embodies in partner dancing) she’s also very mature, considerate, and patient– traits that would make her a great lead and a great social dancer. perfect gentlewoman/gentleman(!) sohyun inviting jiyeon to dance… fish out of water jiyeon who has only ever known how to trust her own technique and body learning how to relax and feel safe in sohyun’s arms, leading her around the dance floor… i’m seeing the vision. i also think that ballet’s emphasis on traditional gender roles (something that is also very much reflected in most ballroom spaces!) would be something that sohyun, in taking on a traditionally masculine role could come in and disrupt jiyeon’s notions of (i’m very much inspired by pas de deux ).

with social dancing, since it’s dancing with a bunch of people you might be meeting for the first time or simply don’t spend extensive time practicing with there is so much nonverbal communication involved. of course, depending on skill level you might have to verbally communicate what steps you’re familiar with, but oftentimes it’s the lead guiding the follow into something and seeing what works and what doesn’t. it’s dance as a conversation at its most literal and i think it would be so fun to explore how characters who have different approaches or disfunction when it comes to communication deal and grow from it. problems that could be brushed aside in verbal conversation are made physical, obvious, and unavoidable when the ability to literally move at all on a dance floor relies on proper communication.

all this aside, i totally headcanon sohyun as an international waltz or maybe international foxtrot main and jiyeon as a samba or paso doble lover. something about the storytelling of ballet lending itself to the theatricality of paso.

uh omg this is way longer than i intended it to be 😭 sorry this is really just a brain dump oops i could actually talk about ballroom forever. all this is to say that i actually think about pas de deux so often so thanks for like changing my life. and uh will i actually write this. yes. maybe. one day. thanks for replying and like i'm so sorry this is so long 💀.

[shyshyshiloh]

just reading this and nodding and cheering -- totally agree on all your thoughts wrt characterization and the narrative functionality of dancesport vs. social ballroom dance!! like everything you've said about how social dance both has both seemingly less formality (varying skill levels + predominantly a social instead of performance setting) and still plenty of it (heavily codified [gender] roles and conventions) and how that's in dialogue with ballet and therefore plays into the potential jiyeon/sohyun of it all is. absolutelyyyy. i'm there.

now i wish i knew more about specific ballroom dance styles because it feels like there's so much to mine character-wise in your assignment headcanons! perhaps some research is in order... anyway thank you SO much for this, love dance love talking about dance. again no pressure and whether or not anything comes from this it was so cool to discuss!

(also i've heard of but haven't yet watched 10dance, do you recommend it?)

[unsospiro]

yesssss would recommend 10dance! it’s a pretty good introduction to the different international ballroom/latin dances as well as the professional/competitive ballroom landscape. i actually watched it with my ballroom team and everyone was generally pretty impressed with the accuracy of the depiction of ballroom/technique. some parts of the BL of it all are little unserious lol but i was having a great time. lmk if you end up watching itttt