"unsent letters" reflection

[thirteenone]

cross-posted to tumblr

title: unsent letters

word count: 28,769

pairings: hsu nientzu/yoon seoyeon

link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/77610381/chapters/203262946

background

 

it's jan13 (0113), aka sunnyz day! this idea came to me much earlier, though, because of this clip of sunnyz in the 251103 signal. and then, just as i was on the brink of finishing this, they dropped the best couple gravity and used their fcos for their pictures which just filled me with so much cuteness aggression for babies!131 and spurred me further to finish this. blame them for being so cutieful

plot

when this plot was in its very seed stages all i knew was that i wanted to see them as babies together, which led to them growing up together, which led me to a high school au (again). specifically, tapping on the concept of a (vaguely toxic) codependent friendship (although not Really that toxic)(i feel like if i ever wanted to go for an Actual toxic codependent friendship it'd be 1921 idk). just, the way seoyeon is nien's first friend when she moves from taiwan and nien, in turn, is seoyeon's first friend In General and the two of them have this lasting best friendship that teeters into a relationship before they even realize.. well yes!

in regards to the making friends without nien's help scheme, that was done completely on the fly—it wasn't in the outline at all. but, as i was writing it, i felt like seoyeon's totally the type of person to assignment-ify something like social interaction, to make it a goal for herself. i also ended up really appreciating dahyun and yooyeon for their help of seoyeon (they were also not in the outline). i felt it was especially moving that seoyeon could observe yooyeon and mayu's relationship and kind of realize what she needs to do with her own relationship with nien. a word about pairings: my last longfic had twotenz so i wanted to let nadaz have their moment, and tokkiz came along naturally after that. im so glad i did, though, because both pairings are so cute 😭 and, soxinz canon.

also, i didn't realize i made seoyeon cry so often (does anyone else hear cry baby playing...) and i do feel kind of bad for that. but she is happy in the end! which is another thing—i didn't really expect this to go into a character introspection (was supposed to be self-indulgent once again) but i think it's quite interesting.. it's also funny because the clip that inspired all of this is seoyeon asking nien if she's a baby. which segues into the references i put into here!

references

before we get into the tripleS references, something else that's interesting is that, upon proofreading, i realized that seoyeon's character may have drawn some elements from yeon sieun from weak hero class, which is funny because i've never watched the show nor read the novel—it'd have all been from my irl getting Really into it and telling me all about it. it's funny to see that influence here, if it is noticeable.

another thing that was inspired by an outside media was the exchange of letters. in the original outline, it was supposed to stay as written letters and mail, but then i thought that fax machines might have been cool. if this sounds familiar, that's because i drew some inspiration from twinkling watermelon, which i did watch a while ago (and the same irl got into it too alongside weak hero At the Same Time i was writing this, so again, it infiltrated this work).

back to the character introspection bit, i did not expect to incorporate all of unnie line into this. it was only supposed to be xinyu with mentions of sohyun, max. that's not to say i didn't like it, though—i actually think it's very heartwarming that they all take seoyeon under their wing/she brings the group together while she struggles with nien being away, which ultimately strengthens her character in the end (from my limited knowledge of whc, i believe sieun goes through something similar).

now, for tripleS references

• of course, seoyeon asking nien "are you a baby?" in the 251103 signal ✅
• in her 251204 fromm, seoyeon's said that she likes the snow, and always wished for it to snow on her birthday ✅ this also led me to think that, being that she was born in august, the summer heat takes the snow away, which parallels nien also leaving in the summers
• in her 250804 fromm, nien said she went out to eat with seoyeon after landing in korea and they got bungeoppang ice cream afterwards, which is seoyeon's favorite ✅
• seoyeon's fax number is 84-502-1321. the 84 comes from korea's area code, while 502 is may 2, chaewon's birthday. likewise, the 1321 is nien and chaewon! i can't resist 13121 strawberry family sorry..
• the ppeongtwigi is in reference to the fact that nien's called the "rice puff designer" inspired by this assemble24 behind video and this assemble25 behind video ✅
• when seoyeon says "don't talk to me about nien" that is a Direct Reference to seoyeon's 251026 cosmo live where she talked about the fight she had with nien ✅
• a minor one, but at the end when nien grabs seoyeon's wrist because the gang was putting their hands together for a chant, it parallels this reel of them during the come true tour (although their roles are switched) ✅

evidently, this fic was another opportunity for me to play the game How Many References Can I Put In This? because i can't help inserting real events in the things i write

misc

i also could not resist the various jokes i put in here, and it's kind of a real shame because some of them are extra funny(corny) if you understand korean

“I think the popularity’s gotten to your head.”

“What popularity? The only popularity I care about is from you,” Nien says, head propped on her hand as she winks at Seoyeon.

the original was A: "너 인기 좀 많이 있는데?" | B: "나 인기 너만이 있는데~" where 좀 많이("a bit of") rhymes with 너만이("only you") and means roughly the same as the english translation

“Well, Cooligans isn’t bad, but I was thinking of something a little bit more… creative?” She pauses. “Maybe something like… FIGHTINGZ (화이팅즈)?”

now, this one.. 😭 this was definitely a bit more of a stretch, but in my defense i was running out of ideas. i mean, i was trying to think of a vaguely corny squad name for unnie line and was drawing blanks until i looked at their names, and suddenly 화이팅 was the only thing that i came to mind. and, it makes for a slightly cheesy but still nice ending to seoyeon's character development, so ultimately im not too mad about it

final thoughts

lowkey this timeline was hard to keep up 😭😭😭 which shouldn't have been the case because it's a linear timeline but still, making sure the dates aligned/were realistic was surprisingly difficult. also, i started this under the impression that korea follows the same academic calendar as the rest of the world by having summer breaks between years. this is not the case 😭😭😭 luckily this didn't change anything major, i just had to rewrite some things to make it clear that it's a mid-year break rather than a break between years. i'll just say im glad i don't have to keep thinking about it!

for the parts in mandarin i used papago so my apologies if it came out stiff 🙏 this was definitely a hefty one (28k words!) and Much longer than i intended. unfortunately, i didn't realize this until i was already in too deep (and i wouldn't abandon a wip anyway, so i saw it through).

initially, i was intending to have this be a multi-chapter work but then i started getting in my head about the chapters being the same size (preferably 3k words+) and it kind of became a pain in the butt, so i decided to keep it all as one continuous work.

also, a more minor detail, the datestamps are written dd.mm.yyyy, and if you look at their letters you'll see that that's how seoyeon writes her dates, while nien does dd-mm-yyyy. perhaps indicating that seoyeon may be writing this Whole thing? or, at least i hope it comes across that way.

songs i listened to while writing this

• heart raider
• friend zone
• detective soseol
• love soseol (heavy on this)

finally, follow my twitter! that's where i talk about my wips and other 131 happenings.. and let's all love sunnyz 🙏