Something To Give Each Other - close(r) reading
the new historicists would love me the way I can't help but infuse everything with cultural context.....here are my Something To Give Each Other notes:
Home Sweet Home: Food as a Metaphor for Love, The Moon, and Love
Lee Minho, on the record: my love language is a) teasing and b) taking care of people.
which is why it was important to me to make food the heart of this narrative. preparing food is a process. it takes time and love. it nourishes, but it can also be a tool for survival. later in the fic, once minho's reunited with jisung, he makes jisung and ahra, his daughter, food as a means of taking care of them. he also teases jisung, going back and forth until jisung's mission to cook alone turns into minho and jisung's desire to cook together. cooking is infused throughout the story and that is my personal shoutout to Lee Minho <3
in the fic, minho's only ever seen paying attention to the process of making food when he's back home. he associates certain foods with home, and home with love. it's all one big circle.
the opening of this fic is my fav metaphor I've written recently
my goal was that once the fic is over the reader should feel like they just went on a circular journey. minho brings himself back home, right where he started. everything swirls into everything. there was never a beginning or an end—only a return.
you know what else goes on circular journeys and brings itself back where it started?
minho and jisung meet on the day of the solar eclipse, and it isn't a coincidence. the moment moon passes between the sun and the earth, their paths cross. this could mean several things, and I never intended it to have a single interpretation
is minho the moon, setting out on a journey away from home and back where he began, eclipsing his own life, rewriting what once was into something new? or is jisung the moon, appearing suddenly in between minho and the clear night sky, orbiting around minho, always close but never close enough until one day, years and years later, minho comes back home and witnesses how jisung can eclipse his life if he lets himself love and be loved? or is the moon something else entirely, watching over minho and jisung, keeping them company as they wait for their lover to return? there's a bunch of other things the moon could be. a witness, a ceremony, a timekeeper (lowkey also a voyeur).
I put on my best opening-monologue-from-a-movie voice to tap into the energy I wanted for the intro because the best uses of the second person 'you', in my opinion, are the ones that work to do more than just relate to the reader.
so if I was in a lit class, I'd probably say that my use of 'you' here is didactic. but I'm not in a lit class so I'd rather put it this way: I wanted the reader to know that minho comes from a loving, healthy, and beautiful family that is patient with him. a family that teaches him things. the hallmark of asian wisdom is advice. I've grown up with my parents giving me advice (especially when I didn't ask for any) and it's a love language in itself. What I'm doing through this opening scene is:
teaching the reader that family matters to minho, and that his family's values shape how he tells stories
teaching the reader that jisung is important to minho from the very very start
teaching minho (and foreshadowing) that if he wants to return to the soft, gooey centre of his memory, he has to return to more than just jisung. because even though jisung's the centre of minho's favourite memory, his favourite memory begins in his room. it features his town, the sea, the moon, the town storyteller. it features the traditions that make minho's hometown what it is.
and therefore the opening monologue of the fic implies that it's present day minho reciting the opening of the story.
even though "Minho remembers the day he met Jisung like it’s a taste he could never forget", he's an imperfect narrator. he's trading the "hardship of now for the romance of later" and forgetting that when things were hard with jisung, the people of the town kept him connected, that it's more than just jisung that'll go on to bring him back. that it'll be chan knocking on his door; changbin loving him enough to deliver a long lost letter; ahra, a daughter he doesn't know the existence of yet; his parent's decision to sell off a house—among other things. after all, home is where the heart is <3
Oral storytelling - Mani, Karva Chauth, and the lover who waits
a fun fact about me is that I'm indian, and I grew up on oral storytelling not as a religious practice, but as a cultural exchange that brings people together. much like my tradition, south korean folklore can be exchange orally. a key narrative structure of many (but not all) oral storytelling cultures is that they're cyclical. these oral stories often teach the main character a lesson, they rely heavily on parallels, and they're circular. they're not meant to have a definitive ending.
I tried to mirror that with the ending of the fic. it's not exactly an open ending because minho's making a promise to jisung, but it's up to them to figure out where they go from that point onwards. and minho's back to his own childhood home, but now it's jisung's. so it's a circle, but the process of moving through orbit changes things!
Another lovely element of oral storytelling that I brought into the fic was the knowledge keeper. the knowledge of minho's hometown is 'kept' by mani, who lights the torch to mark the beginning of the festival that celebrates the solar eclipse. oral storytellers are crucial to the continued passing down of knowledge between generations
also, the story that mani tells of the woman who waits on the shore is partly inspired by my heritage. in hinduism, we have a festival called Karva chauth, where married women fast for a day and then view the moon through a sieve. this was done to pray for the safety and health of the women's husbands.
when I was younger, I hated the idea of Karva Chauth. why the hell should women be the only ones to fast for their husbands? of course, there are still ways in which the festival's still used as a means for control. but now that I know I love women, I love the idea of redefining the festival outside of its typical origins. would I fast for my future wife? results inconclusive. but the idea of holding a sieve up to the moon to pray for her safety and health is romantic enough to make me view the festival with softer eyes.
Mani's story of the woman who looks up to the moon and waiting for your lover comes straight out of my culture. of course, me being who I am, I like to believe that the woman in the fic is waiting for her wife who went out to sea. but that's up to interpretation, too :)
a recurring motif in the fic. Minho and Jisung run away from their graduation ceremony together, they meet during a ceremony for the solar eclipse, Minho runs away from Jisung's wedding ceremony. and as the fic comes to a close, Minho and Jisung return to the shore for their own kind of ceremony
the garlands in the fic are based off of 'gajras', which are typically made up of a thread woven through jasmine flowers and worn in the hair for special occasions (and sometimes for no occasion in particular)
the painting that present-day Minho has up opposite his bed in his big city apartment is 'Rising Sun' by Gerrit Wijngaarden. From an 'About the Artist' blurb:
"The red thread in his work is formed by silence, together with some sort of threat or melancholy, on the background or foreground.
With his still lives the abstract values are important, like colour, form, composition, contrast and substance expression.
In the landscapes and interiors, you can find the sense of life of the artist."
I avoided writing the scene where Minho shows up to Jisung's door the day before his wedding and confesses his love to him and instead challenged myself to reveal as much as possible without keeping that actual moment a secret, meant just for Minho and Jisung.
so you first find out that Minho showed up to Jisung's door through Jisung's letter to Minho. Then, you read the scene of Minho sharing Jisung's first dance at his wedding, which is the day right after Minho confesses. You see the moments that punctuate that scene, but you don't actually read the scene.
it was fun to think of plot was an accessory to a scene rather than a way to actually spell out a scene!
This 7 year old child intimidated the shit out of me when I started writing this fic. here are a few of my google searches from when I was writing her
my personal fav was when I googled 'can 7 year olds read'. a good representation of how little I knew. let it be known that you can write anything you want as long as you let google teach you and learn as responsibly and in a culturally aware manner as possible!!
Ahra is thought to be an old Korean word for the sea. There's no definitive translation for this, so you can check me on it, but that's the knowledge I worked with when I chose Ahra as the name of Jisung's daughter.
And finally, this one's obvious, but my fav circular parallel of the story:
whew. long one because I remember wayyy more. I guess writing these right after I write a fic has some use, after all. thank you for reading if you did :)
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