KLAV YOU'RE CRAZY FOR THIS. while I can barely hang on to 2022 17hols you went back to 2021 and dared to face this 'science fiction' 'major character death' prompt, chose Jeongcheol and CHOSE TO START WITH A CARSON EPIGRAPH. A CARSON EROS EPIGRAPH!
- I wrote the top part before I even started reading and kept the notepad app open to copy quotes but now I'm back 30 minutes later because the breath has been knocked out of me, I had no idea it was going to go this way. Rug pulled under my feet, thrown overboard into ice water, told I have 2 weeks to live.
The premise blew my mind - I've read a lot of sci fi and felt a myriad of feelings from what I've read but this was completely new to me. Sci Fi stories has always felt thrilling in a calculated and safe way, like fantasy. Man is in control of the universe, and if not, at least the narrative. Even if we don't win, disasters and alien invasions and meteorite impacts are foreseen.
But this story starts with an accident, where everything was okay one moment, but then the dread and the realisation descends, and everything real becomes true (My husband. My husband, I left him." // "seeing hundreds of missed messages and calls that slowly trickle into silence, irrefutable proof that time marched along without him in tow") -- this is crazy, you're crazy. Seungcheol meeting Lee Chan as an old man when he remembers him as a baby boy, onto to habe the table flipped (He feels, olddly, like a child"). And then gearing up to meet Jeonghan again. Seeing a life lived without him, dreams realised without his support, and people moving on. Like you were displaced and now you're misplaced. When you know that everyone you met had already grieved you and moved on, and the world no longer has a space for you. ;____; my feelings about this are overgrowing.
There were so many lines that hurt, but my favourite is the moment when Seungcheol meets Jeonghan again and they're sitting together on the back porch but Seungcheol can't bare to look at Jeonghan directly, "like you're looking at a dead thing before it's dead. This is so powerful, one for the fact you're making similes out of abstract science and the wonky time lag of lightspeed, and two, because it's so painfully resonant the more I let myself think about it. Exactly seeing something beautiful knowing that you are seeing it 2 billion years later. The paradox of knowing something is true but you can't still bear to see it with your eyes because it will make it more true in a different way. It makes me think of the feeling when you see an old photo of your grandparents, or the 'before photos' when urban areas get developed. Understanding that there's a piece of history beyond your reach forever is ;_____; heartwrenching and so powerful because it all reflects back onto the moment when Seungcheol sees Jeonghan again, because then he will truly understand that time has passed and what it cost.
(tangent, not sure if you have read lj user cantakeabreath's exo fic on time dilation [through the years and far away]. It's 2012 Sehun/Luhan and Sehun goes on a mission while Luhan stays on earth. So it would be akin to Jeonghan's perspective. I just thought of the moment where jongin tells lu han "You're in love with a memory" and then later "Lu Han wonders whether he's spent over two decades on a memory, on a shadow, on an illusion. He wonders if Sehun's even ever had to shave. Whether he's still growing. If he'll go to college when he gets back.. Reading these themes again from the traveller's perspective hit differently, because I can imagine what Jeonghan went through, but even worse because it was an /accident/ and they were treated as deceased) - btw I want to ask why you chose Jeongcheol? because they are so infamously tragic? or it just came into your head as jeongcheol. (or were you out to get me)
I think a reason why the premise resonates so hard is because the tragedy is unforeseen and I can't help but think this goes back to your themes of nature and climate change. The disaster narrative where catastrophe descends without warning and the characters wade through the after, the consequences. I can see that here even though it's science fiction. Having tangential thoughts about plot shapes but I will pause that haha it's 1am now and I started reading at midnight (I guess no fills tonight :'D).
I usually feel fear with disaster stories, but rarely with science fiction. And to feel that piercing terror, to know that your life could change in an instant. That's a feeling I will ponder over -- will definitely revisit this fill in the future to feel that again. Thank so so much klav, this was insane to read and the little story generator in your brain is something I want a lifetime subscription to.
(17hols is forever) (also cool star trek references!)
Re: [FILL] part of me (gone)
- I wrote the top part before I even started reading and kept the notepad app open to copy quotes but now I'm back 30 minutes later because the breath has been knocked out of me, I had no idea it was going to go this way. Rug pulled under my feet, thrown overboard into ice water, told I have 2 weeks to live.
The premise blew my mind - I've read a lot of sci fi and felt a myriad of feelings from what I've read but this was completely new to me. Sci Fi stories has always felt thrilling in a calculated and safe way, like fantasy. Man is in control of the universe, and if not, at least the narrative. Even if we don't win, disasters and alien invasions and meteorite impacts are foreseen.
But this story starts with an accident, where everything was okay one moment, but then the dread and the realisation descends, and everything real becomes true (My husband. My husband, I left him." // "seeing hundreds of missed messages and calls that slowly trickle into silence, irrefutable proof that time marched along without him in tow") -- this is crazy, you're crazy. Seungcheol meeting Lee Chan as an old man when he remembers him as a baby boy, onto to habe the table flipped (He feels, olddly, like a child"). And then gearing up to meet Jeonghan again. Seeing a life lived without him, dreams realised without his support, and people moving on. Like you were displaced and now you're misplaced. When you know that everyone you met had already grieved you and moved on, and the world no longer has a space for you. ;____; my feelings about this are overgrowing.
There were so many lines that hurt, but my favourite is the moment when Seungcheol meets Jeonghan again and they're sitting together on the back porch but Seungcheol can't bare to look at Jeonghan directly, "like you're looking at a dead thing before it's dead. This is so powerful, one for the fact you're making similes out of abstract science and the wonky time lag of lightspeed, and two, because it's so painfully resonant the more I let myself think about it. Exactly seeing something beautiful knowing that you are seeing it 2 billion years later. The paradox of knowing something is true but you can't still bear to see it with your eyes because it will make it more true in a different way. It makes me think of the feeling when you see an old photo of your grandparents, or the 'before photos' when urban areas get developed. Understanding that there's a piece of history beyond your reach forever is ;_____; heartwrenching and so powerful because it all reflects back onto the moment when Seungcheol sees Jeonghan again, because then he will truly understand that time has passed and what it cost.
(tangent, not sure if you have read lj user cantakeabreath's exo fic on time dilation [through the years and far away]. It's 2012 Sehun/Luhan and Sehun goes on a mission while Luhan stays on earth. So it would be akin to Jeonghan's perspective. I just thought of the moment where jongin tells lu han "You're in love with a memory" and then later "Lu Han wonders whether he's spent over two decades on a memory, on a shadow, on an illusion. He wonders if Sehun's even ever had to shave. Whether he's still growing. If he'll go to college when he gets back.. Reading these themes again from the traveller's perspective hit differently, because I can imagine what Jeonghan went through, but even worse because it was an /accident/ and they were treated as deceased) - btw I want to ask why you chose Jeongcheol? because they are so infamously tragic? or it just came into your head as jeongcheol. (or were you out to get me)
I think a reason why the premise resonates so hard is because the tragedy is unforeseen and I can't help but think this goes back to your themes of nature and climate change. The disaster narrative where catastrophe descends without warning and the characters wade through the after, the consequences. I can see that here even though it's science fiction. Having tangential thoughts about plot shapes but I will pause that haha it's 1am now and I started reading at midnight (I guess no fills tonight :'D).
I usually feel fear with disaster stories, but rarely with science fiction. And to feel that piercing terror, to know that your life could change in an instant. That's a feeling I will ponder over -- will definitely revisit this fill in the future to feel that again. Thank so so much klav, this was insane to read and the little story generator in your brain is something I want a lifetime subscription to.
(17hols is forever)
(also cool star trek references!)