'every second counts' dvd commentary

[hyojungss]

every second counts
le sserafim chaewon/yunjin
motorsports au
13k

THE BACKSTORY

i have so much to say about this fic that i don't really want to say anything ("if i loved you less i might be able to talk about it more"), but i'm still going to make myself write this in order to preserve my own thoughts. like i said in the informational companion post, this was a labor of love, born out of my love for formula 1 and being a huh yunjin fan. also as i said in my commentary for 'the innocence of those in their youth' (mar 2023), i started writing this fic during the writing period for igff 2023 as a way of procrastinating, so an indirect thank you to that fest for nurturing this LOL. and to everyone who said they would read it... once i committed to writing this fic, i knew i had to pack every inch of it with canonical parallels and attempts at accuracy and that it'd mean more to me than anyone, but i still could not have done it if it was solely for myself.

i started this right after drive to survive season 5 came out, and of course dts is what got me into f1 so i have an attachment to it, and i like to think about what makes it such an effective gateway for non-fans to get into formula 1. without getting into all that, i think racing just has a very appealing sort of on & off track sophistication and drama to it. if you want to know just watch CARS (2006)!!! but f1 does have a lot of parallels to kpop and i thought about writing a post on this ever since i saw a post on r/kpopthoughts about this ("the overlap in f1 and kpop fans isn't a coincidence") where the comments were like 'you're reaching' and i was like op literally isn't. anyway...

this fic was supposed to be drive to survive inspired, which means it would have been fully epistolary, overdramatized (in a sort of unreliable narrator way except it'd be unreliable narrator, subjects, and selected clips to form a fake storyline), etc, but that concept made it hard for me to tell a story primarily about a relationship, because that would simply never be the subject of a netflix sport docuseries. i think this fic is about yunjin and her growth, but it's also about how chaewon impacted that growth, and the multitude of feelings yunjin had towards her (chaewon as a mentor, crush, rival, friend, teammate etc). also i have to say that getting sebchal'd influenced this fic but i will not speak any further



ON THE RELATIONSHIPS IN THE FIC

(RPS) speaking of 'real life' purinz, i really like them because they have odd moments of chemistry irl, but i don't truly believe they are romantically compatible, which is part of why they don't end up together in this fic, or why chaewon arguably doesn't reciprocate yunjin's feelings. i never spelled this out because i never explicitly thought about it lmao, but although i think chaewon was attracted to her and "wanted her" it was quite different and i can't see them filling the role of romantic partner towards each other. it's more about like... validation, temporary intimacy as a coping mechanism, a relationship born out of no one else being available. it's like how in iz*one chaewon wasn't close to sakura (relatively) but now in lsfm they have to be because there's less people. and i'm aware purinz call each other besties and get along well as friends.

also i really wanted to apologize for putting yeonjun in this fic. while i was writing this fic i did a bit of a trawl in the kcw/hyj tag just to see what was out there and there was a LOT of fic of them with him in it which makes sense kind of (his videos with chaewon, his bs rumor with yj) but it was a bit ridiculous, the level of it. i feel like i executed this poorly except for the banger lines. and anyway this was inspired by the fact that real life girls sometimes break up with one of the drivers and end up seen with others lmao so honestly, it makes sense that he was an afterthought. you know??? this is barbie levels of meta.
 


OTHER DIRECT INSPIRATIONS

• the first scene in the fic (chaewon/yunjin @ source hq pre-season) was inspired by the dts scene of daniel ricciardo going to renault. i didn't check but i still remember it.
• the scene of yunjin sitting on the floor drinking her water is inspired by this yuki :(
• i just think the sepang track (malaysia) is so cool and i'm so sad that f1 doesn't race there anymore...
• a lot of the source racing/social media content is either inspired by mclaren or f1 in general
• writing fuck cube was so cathartic as a charles/ferrari fan
• the tumblr post at the end of the 2021 season was inspired greatly by yukierre/the yuki-centric episode of dts s5.... that was sort of my way of putting in my thoughts about the dynamic without having to write more scenes
• last time dress moment was inspired of course by chaewon accidental intimacy 
• i said this in one of the comment replies but taengsic is brocedes.... it had absolutely no relevance to the plot but i still had to put it in.
• wondering if anyone caught the easter eggs of the lsfm trilogy (fearless/antifragile/unforgiven), namedropped in relation to yunjin <3 the title of this fic was FEARLESS for about five seconds. omg picking the title was so hard. bags saved my life...

END
i think what makes me saddest about writing longfic/exposition-based au is every word still has to be perfect but it means so much less than the big picture. like i don't even want to do a line by line on this because the weight of each line is so much less. it's just about how they add up... although to be fair, i think the only reason i made it to 13k when i usually don't is because exposition aside, i felt that i needed to say what was happening instead of leaving it as open as usual.

anyway i will paste some of my favorite lines here.

YUNJIN: It’s a mark of respect, I think, when someone doesn’t give you all the answers. It means they trust you to figure it out on your own.
→ so this wasn't just about racing but also about their relationship which i really liked. i think when i originally wrote this i didn't know how they actually felt about each other (was it romantic or obsessive or...) which makes it even better, i think (and less reliant on the actual end result to have meaning)

Her face turned red immediately. Yunjin had really thought she was sober.
→ i really liked the idea of yunjin always getting so flustered when it came to chaewon in anything that wasn't purely a racing context, while chaewon is so calm and collected except when she's only with yunjin and doesn't know what to do with her. you see this in the first hotel room scene too where she has to go work out to clear her head

Yunjin traced the stitching on the duvet. “I’m not asking for your reassurance.”
→ the praise is meaningless if directly solicited, so chaewon's words are ironically more meaningful if she cares less about yunjin

“Have you never wanted to at least be good enough in the eyes of one person?” / “A person can’t be so greedy, Yunjin.”
→ even though part of this scene WAS filler buildup... i think their whole relationship is contextualized by this world they live in where someone's worth is based on their performance (and even personality feeds into performance: you have to be unfazed and ruthless but not overconfident etc), and the insecurity of not getting what you want just because you want it because it's so hard to be "good enough", and their r/s would be completely different if they met in a stress-free environment. i would go so far as to say it wouldn't exist, but yeah...

Yunjin had spent all this time trying to decide if it was more meaningful to be respected by Chaewon or loved by her. But then when she was right in front of her, when Chaewon let her in, both of those desires were overwritten with another type of longing.
→ i feel like this is pretty self explanatory BECAUSE i decided to write it out... i feel like if you get it you get it, relationships contain multitudes etc

It was like she was calculating all the consequences of her potential actions. /  “Should I do something absolutely idiotic,” she said. It was how you’d speak if you knew exactly what you wanted to do and just needed someone to validate your bad, bad idea.
→ writing this scene was such a pain because repressed girls can't write intimacy but these lines had been written for a while 

Yunjin’s mind felt hazy still. The bouquet of flowers, crowned with lilies and roses in the softest shade of pink, had been transferred to a vase already. It filled the space next to her to the point where Yunjin couldn’t understand how she hadn’t noticed it before.
→ this is symbolic of chaewon being a constant support to her and more important to her than she realized

HUH YUNJIN: Oh, it was alright. People still haven’t forgiven me for crashing out Ryujin in Hanoi. 

→ thought this was the perfect level of cheek

Your first love is a primacy effect
→ this one... i thought a lot about how unlikely it was that chaewon was yunjin's first love, both in the sense that she had probably dated before cw and probably never truly considered her feelings for chaewon strong enough and pure enough to be "first love" worthy. but i think it's more about the concept than the strict definition. i think cw was the first time her feelings had been so deep and complex that the person became her entire world and that's why... she could be considered a first love.

“He’s an acquired taste,” Chaewon said, laughing.
→ me after watching multiple yeonjun videos on yt for research


the post-thai gp scene and the one with somi were i think the first scenes i wrote after converting from full dts to mixed, and i did go back and revise them later but the core essence of 'somewhat intimate time they didn't need to spend together and seeing each other in such a state and imagining etc' + 'somi seeing it and raising her eyebrows about it even though yunjin doesn't even know how to feel about the will they won't they' is still one of my fav parts of the fic. everything else is just filler, really!

also i like the scene where yunjin dodges around asking chaewon if she's dating anyone... and the last time scene... i think i did a good job on a lot of these scenes but it's very hard to pinpoint a particularly good line and i don't want to overweigh any... and some i liked at first but read so many times while writing this that i no longer want to see them.



well... next up on the docket is either origfic about love/conforming or inyyjh f1 wag au because despite everything i just said about not wanting to write this au again i went back to what i said about it and i want to read it so badly... thank you for reading or skimming my thoughts ♡

Comments

[sleepyshamrocks]

risa....i can tell that you really love the things you write about <3 taengsic as nicolewis is everything 2 me i love all the parallels. OP WAS RIGHT!

[hyojungss]

thank u flo ^^

[furniished]

idr if i responded to your twt comment (sorry D:) but reading your fic and the way you explore the dynamic/parallels between drivers and between the driver and their team (company) actually made so much click for me and i could really see the appeal of following f1... i'm sure you don't need anyone to tell you that the work and care you put in is really so impressive >w< and i totally get what you mean about writing longfic (not that i ever have tbh) and treating it the same as shorter fic but then realizing that so much inevitably kind of gets lost... anyway when i read "your first love is a primacy effect" i was immediately like oh yeah this is a signature tonyang (kurusui) line... and your note about whether it's even technically true or not (in context of the fic) adds another layer (eye emoji). even as a non-f1-fan i'm so happy this fic and world exists cuz of you!♡

[girlrock]

the fact that you invented all motorsport fic with this