I know I owe you thousand of comments on fics but in particular, I love photography; when I was in college, I ended up taking a photography class that made us use 4x4s, and up until then I'd never developed a photo by hand before, and rarely dealt with film, and it just completely blew my mind how different, how strangely freeing it is to use film like that. I thought I was just going to glance over the first part of this story and save it for another day, to read slowly and savor it, but then before I knew it I was rushing my way to the end because I just loved everything so much, the exploration of artistry and desire and pursuit of something perfect and the way we expose human interactions through those concepts and now I'm just rambling.
I have always first and foremost loved your group dynamics, and they're so perfect in this story: Kris the geese herder with his flock, Minseok always detached and wryly bemused, Lu Han who is unfathomably precious and supportive and an utter troll, Jongdae's terrible cooking, the way this EXO works together, A BAND FULL OF MAKNAES. I love the scenes where little things are happening and you just catch the jokes and smiles and banter as they pass by: the conversation with the salted rice, the first time you show us Tao in person, the first time you meet Chanyeol, and the way you describe the little things: Kris with lines like a New York building, Chanyeol always thinking everyone is his friend, they just stuck with me so much I know I'll be thinking of them often.
You've written a lot about Jongin/Kai in your fics already but every time I feel like I'm turning over a new stone with his character in your stories. I love just how close he is to the real Jongin, the EXO-K Jongin we know, the way his smile bursts out of him, his longing, the way he looks unreal and unlike himself in still shots, compared to the way we sometimes see him when he scratches his head and turns away in embarrassment. I love how your Jongin latches on to Yixing, but because you put us so much in Yixing's head, for a while we're almost led astray, and we only see him as object for Yixing's journey, but in the end it's the human Jongin, the one whose afraid of letting things go too far, of ruining Yixing's life, that emerges.
AND OF COURSE YIXING. I love how you've translated his past, his child star history, his own songwriting, into something perfectly in line with your story. And how we can imagine the real Yixing finding some spark of himself in his dancing with Jongin, how that feeds into the Yixing of your story, finding some spark of the photographer he thought he left behind (or maybe never truly achieved) with Jongin. I love his attachment to his grandparents, his grandfather's camera and his grandmother teaching him how to take pictures, that deference Yixing shows to the elders and mentor figures of his life. I love the way he still manages to throw Kris under the bus, that he and Lu Han share a kind of tenuous, opaque friendship that mostly consists of teasing and worrying Kris. You really draw attention to the, hmm, the construct? of the story, that it's kind of a guide to photography as well as Yixing's journey, and it really works. The little tips and quotes draw the reader's eye to the way the relationships develop, and build on each other like Yixing's understanding of Jongin. We get all these random snatches of Jongin's personality (his constant movement, the way he keeps himself under wraps because of his fame, his concern for others, his moments of unadulterated pleasure) and I think I was overwhelmed with them, just like Yixing, and I too had to take this step back from it in the middle of part six and think, wow, what does not being done with Jongin mean for Yixing?
AHHHHH in the end I guess all I mean to say is, you always immerse your audience so deeply into the theme you want us to discover, your characters are always charming, so charming, and your writing is so easy to read that it's almost criminal. I didn't even realize i had finished 40k, on a pairing I don't even ship...! I don't know how to do it, you are a machine.
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timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2012-09-17 07:21 am (UTC)I have always first and foremost loved your group dynamics, and they're so perfect in this story: Kris the geese herder with his flock, Minseok always detached and wryly bemused, Lu Han who is unfathomably precious and supportive and an utter troll, Jongdae's terrible cooking, the way this EXO works together, A BAND FULL OF MAKNAES. I love the scenes where little things are happening and you just catch the jokes and smiles and banter as they pass by: the conversation with the salted rice, the first time you show us Tao in person, the first time you meet Chanyeol, and the way you describe the little things: Kris with lines like a New York building, Chanyeol always thinking everyone is his friend, they just stuck with me so much I know I'll be thinking of them often.
You've written a lot about Jongin/Kai in your fics already but every time I feel like I'm turning over a new stone with his character in your stories. I love just how close he is to the real Jongin, the EXO-K Jongin we know, the way his smile bursts out of him, his longing, the way he looks unreal and unlike himself in still shots, compared to the way we sometimes see him when he scratches his head and turns away in embarrassment. I love how your Jongin latches on to Yixing, but because you put us so much in Yixing's head, for a while we're almost led astray, and we only see him as object for Yixing's journey, but in the end it's the human Jongin, the one whose afraid of letting things go too far, of ruining Yixing's life, that emerges.
AND OF COURSE YIXING. I love how you've translated his past, his child star history, his own songwriting, into something perfectly in line with your story. And how we can imagine the real Yixing finding some spark of himself in his dancing with Jongin, how that feeds into the Yixing of your story, finding some spark of the photographer he thought he left behind (or maybe never truly achieved) with Jongin. I love his attachment to his grandparents, his grandfather's camera and his grandmother teaching him how to take pictures, that deference Yixing shows to the elders and mentor figures of his life. I love the way he still manages to throw Kris under the bus, that he and Lu Han share a kind of tenuous, opaque friendship that mostly consists of teasing and worrying Kris. You really draw attention to the, hmm, the construct? of the story, that it's kind of a guide to photography as well as Yixing's journey, and it really works. The little tips and quotes draw the reader's eye to the way the relationships develop, and build on each other like Yixing's understanding of Jongin. We get all these random snatches of Jongin's personality (his constant movement, the way he keeps himself under wraps because of his fame, his concern for others, his moments of unadulterated pleasure) and I think I was overwhelmed with them, just like Yixing, and I too had to take this step back from it in the middle of part six and think, wow, what does not being done with Jongin mean for Yixing?
AHHHHH in the end I guess all I mean to say is, you always immerse your audience so deeply into the theme you want us to discover, your characters are always charming, so charming, and your writing is so easy to read that it's almost criminal. I didn't even realize i had finished 40k, on a pairing I don't even ship...! I don't know how to do it, you are a machine.