madsummer @hometown-angel - Tumblr Blog

new site :3

hihi! in honour of the 8th anniversary of the toto and buda's first meeting, i've finally published the new mad summer website. i'll slowly keep updating it with new sections, but for now just the 'locations' section is public. i hope you enjoy looking around the site ~

CubaSouth KoreaHawaiʻi, United StatesMexicoCalifornia, United States cuba south korea the americas california hawaii mexico

with love,

angel <3

long time no see <3

i've decided to move all my posts on this tumblr blog, as well as other mad summer things i've found but haven't posted here, over to a wordpress site instead - it's more accessible and much easier to manage and organise haha

it'll be a massive site - it's a project i've been working on since september last year, and i'm still nowhere near finished

i'll still keep this tumblr up, i won't be deleting anything, but i likely won't be posting anything new here, other than to update about the new site

hopefully i'll have the [locations] section posted by the 25th of march, the anniversary of the first chapter of miyeo ever being posted :)

with love,

angel <3

i'm sorry for being so horrendously inactive on my tumblr page - i'm currently trying to figure out whether this is still the most effective way to archive all my mad summer content ? i've spent the past few months trialling out different websites and platform, but i think after all , i might as well take what i've learned and reincorporate it back into my tumblr after all ...

so look forward to more freuquent uploads, and potentially a reformatting of this entire site ;-;

can't believe there are only 10 more days until buda and toto pass away ... it'll always break my heart that they only loved for a season , but isn't it beautiful that even after all this time they still get resurrected every year ?

kyrie's corpus

welcome! kyrie's corpus is what i have titled the body of official media that is in any way related to the kyrie's mad summer - essentially a masterpost of content that i feel is relevant. the kyrie corpus primarily consists of works of fanfiction written by kyrie, but also includes media and accounts officially associated with kyrie's.

given the copyright nature of some of kyrie's work as well as her that she clearly wants privacy and has not uploaded under any of her main channels since 2013, there are some links i have found during my research that i will not be sharing publicly. do not try and track kyrie down. i, maybe more than anyone, would love to talk to her (i have so many things i want to ask her and tell her and thank her for) but i will respect the fact that she has departed from the internet and i want everybody to do so, too.

please read my disclaimers (by now you know where to find them ;) ) - for this post in particular, i'll emphasise that i own none of the content down below. this list is free of analysis or commentary and is simply a means of organising content

let's begin!

(i will update this corpus once act iii has been uploaded)

(at a later point, i'll update this corpus to also include content related to kyrie's diss series, which is also yj+bg)

mad summer

online initial edition

♱ part 1 (top) ××× openingnote ××× story ××× bôa - duvet ××× footnote ♱ part 2 (middle) ××× story ××× theresa andersson ft ane brun - innan du gar ××× footnote ♱ part 3 (bottom) ××× story ××× definition ××× footnote ♱ a statement

playlist

(when i quote madsummer in the posts in this section i am quoting my own adaptation.)

♱ nick jonas - find you ♱ 볼빨간사춘기 - 나의 사춘기에게 ♱ gabriela robin - green bird ♱ boa - duvet ♱ the cardigans - lovefool ♱ billie eilish - ocean eyes ♱ 마피아 - 구름 ♱ theresa andersson, ane brun - innan du gar ♱ madonna - like a virgin ♱ nao - orbit ♱ 박혜경 - 동화 ♱ lana del ray ♱ anan ryoko - refrain ♱ libera - sanctus ♱ 라이프앤타임 - 빛 (life and time - light) ♱ lea michele - mama who bore me

explicit in-text references

♱ luhrmann's 1996 romeo and juliet ♱ the cardigan's - lovefool ♱ madonna - like a virgin ♱ 문학동네시인선 038 - 오은시 집 우리는 분위기를 사랑해 (Literature Village Poet Selection 038 - Oh Eun-si's House We Love the Atmosphere) ♱ shakespeare - macbeth (scarcity of tears) ♱ hemingway - islands in the stream ♱ story of the red thread ♱ the bible

first printed edition

♱ front and back cover ♱ title page ♱ table of contents ♱ story ××× part 0 - prologue ××× part 1 - hello, stranger ××× part 2 - kill me gently ××× part 3 - mad summer ××× part 4 - sweet holiday ××× part 00 - epilogue ♱ side stories (가이덴) ××× side story 1 - shopping scene ××× side story 2 - four photos ××× side story 3 - bingo game ××× side story 4 - driving lesson ♱ commissioned fanart ××× toto poster ××× buda poster ××× ocean postcard ××× embrace postcard

reprinted edition

♱ front cover ♱ back cover ♱ title page ♱ table of contents ♱ story ××× part 0 - prologue ××× part 1 - hello, stranger ××× part 2 - kill me gently ××× part 3 - mad summer ××× part 4 - sweet holiday ××× part 00 - epilogue ♱ side stories (가이덴) ××× side story 1 - shopping scene ××× side story 2 - four photos ××× side story 3 - bingo game ××× side story 4 - driving lesson ♱ commissioned fanart ××× mary postcard ××× ending spread ××× author's note

madsummer fanart pt 04 - act ii

not much fanart for act ii either - most of the fanart is for act iii

jude_uwu

diaakkkkkk

act ii - timeline updated

dw i put in the hard work for you and spent a day or two during my research process sifting through the text obsessively to construct a comprehensive chronology of madsummer. this act involves a heavyheavyheavy flashback and so ik it can be quite confusing at times. hope this helps tho ;))

(this timeline uses international age)

shit's about to get even sadder - keep an eye out for the sixth of may

☀︎ with love - hometown.angel ☀︎

madsummer fanart pt 03 - act i

can't find too much act i fanart :///

eternalLight_9

toto waiting on buda's steps

madsummer fanart pt 02 - general

these are fanarts that don't apply to specific points of the text. where i could find their artists, works have been credited (if these user's names have changed since then then i'm sorry lol)

D1_txt

summeris6to9

_ssoya_yb

thislovehas_

kimJOOmm

txttkfkd

uushea

lissom_0313

blueocea_n

hae0990

shower_txt

barm313

B_Beyond_lights

madsummer fanart pt 01 - collaged quotes

i cannot for the life of me figure out who posted these on twitter, but a kneitzen uploaded these posts in the days leading up to madsummer's yearly release. if anyone knows who these posts belong to pls let me know :)

(i've used the translations from my own adaptation below each piece)

beware - spoilers ahead!

ACT I

The beach was hot. Lazy waves lapped intermittently at the shoreline. Swallowing footprints as it washed back to the horizon, the lukewarm ocean water offered the soles of beachgoers fleeting comfort from the noon sun. The fine white sand was almost unbearable.

Could you please kill me? What? These were the first words we would ever exchange, the first words I had ever heard him speak.

Just kill me. [...] Kill me, and I’ll help you live the life you’ve always dreamed of. [...] Name a price and I’ll meet it.

I opened my eyes…if I kill you, do you think I’ll go to heaven? The boy said nothing. He wrapped his fingers around mine, his palms pressing lightly against the backs of my hands. When he spoke, his voice was low. If I say yes, will you kill me?

He finished the film over three days. Romeo shot and and he smoked and he kissed the angel Juliet as she lay dead, before turning the gun on himself. A double suicide. A violent end.

Tonight was the first time in a while that Toto had fallen asleep after me. Closing his eyes, he offered the Lord a silent and selfish prayer. Don’t let Buda die before I do. A soft and strange lullaby, his breath fell gentle on my neck.

ACT II

I hope your lover likes your shirt. He smirked. I’ll lend it to you next time you meet your own lover. Toto rolled his eyes. But he was smiling. Buda waved a hand. I’ll leave soon. I’ll be back before you know it.

I let out a sound that hovered halfway in between a sigh and a groan. Shit. I should do something, shouldn't I? As though compelled by a higher power, I moved to the door and through the green gate and down the alley.

When would be a good time? With the knowledge that this would all be over in October at the front of my mind - twisting the fringes of the blanket around my finger, cutting off my circulation - I opened my mouth - When you’re all better…I couldn’t meet his eyes. I had lost…do you want to go to the beach?

What are you so curious about!? I scrunched up my eyes before proclaiming - You!

We were sinking together. Everything was absurdly hilarious. Our souls were laughing uncontrollably, like we were actually losing our minds, like we weren't afraid to die, touching, hugging, holding, deep enough to make the ocean blush.

Hurling the can in the direction of the hawker back on the boardwalk I screamed - Leave him the fuck alone! A cluster of nearby beggars, those who hadn’t startled at the beer can I’d just pitched at them, dispersed at my strange and violent harmony of Korean and Spanish cursing. Though Beomgyu had asked me to kill him I would put myself in harm’s way before I let him get hurt.

A smile melted across his face when he saw me. I didn’t want to let him out of my sight. I didn’t want to let go of him. I didn't want to let him die.

His voice was soft as a sudden lullaby. The pastor left me for Hawaii.

Don’t go back to that guy, okay, honey? He tossed his cigarette into the ocean. That bastard’s no pastor, no father. He’s a viper.

Maybe because I cried so much that day I can’t cry now, no matter what I do. … I guess all my tears have dried up. He laughed.

Knowing all I knew now, I would have done as he’d begged even if all he had to offer was a fistful of ceremonial money. Even if all he had to offer was his sincerity, his shameless desperation. Can I still go to heaven? I pinched my eyelids tightly together. I couldn’t say the words out loud, but I had to ask him, even if only in my dreams. Can I still kill you?

ACT III

If he’d never told me what happened to him, then it never would have mattered because I’d never have known. What I knew now saddened me deeply but I didn’t regret having learned what I had.

...I leaned in a second time - returning not to his lobe, but to his lips.

I whispered my own creed into his ear. Live everlastingly…don’t ever die…please…?

I spoke secrets into his scalp as he settled against my chest. Do you want to keep living? With me? His words lingered in my heart like alcohol the morning after. I don’t want to die anymore.

My hands were shaking. Even if you want to, you can’t die now. Buda? You have to live. With me. The other night when I had begged him to continue being my housemate I hadn’t been able to look him in the eyes - now I was speaking as seriously and head-on as a man making a marriage proposal.

What is life It’s okay if it’s taken away It’s okay if everything is taken away If you’re the one who’s doing the taking

I paled as the pieces fell into place. I looked into his eyes, into his soul. Don’t follow me. You musn't follow me, okay? With that I ran outside. I left him alone in our bedroom with those eight words.

I’m sorry for following you. Your eyes were dry. I only left because I missed you.

How ironic, what an unfortunate turn of fate - I had made my living selling drugs and now you could not live without them. And now you were dying endlessly Like an infinite sunset Like an everlasting summer

Okay, let’s do just that then. … Let’s just go to heaven. Irregardless of our strange prayers the night came and went.

...They say people are born with a red thread attached to their little finger. … Those who are lucky meet the person tied to the other end of their own red thread. The sterile smell of disinfectant hung around your automated words. I took in your skinny wrist, your bruising arm, the thorns resting on your shoulder. You stroked my pinky finger. That’s why even when we die, we’ll be together in the end.

The morning that seemed like it would never be born dawned at last. It was the last Sunday in September. A celebration was soon to start at the cathedral. A German missionary who had spent the summer teaching hymns to the local children would finally be ordained. He would be baptised as Peter.

You clutched onto the ends of your fading consciousness. What time is the boat? Two o’clock. You reached up and tugged at my hair. Don’t be late. The don’t wasn’t a request or a command. It was a hopeful prayer. Promise?

It was still summer, and it would always be so.

#fanart

001x456

people who don't experience hyperfixation don't know what it feels like to hyperfixate so much on something that it becomes not only your subject of obsession but also your source of happiness and literally the main reason why you still keep going; literal source of strength and life.

shoutout to my favorite fictional characters, favorite people, favorite ships, favorite movies, favorite tv shows, fanfics and archive of our own

madsummer groupchat

stolen from my twitter but yeah interact with those post either here or on twitter n i'll incldue you in the group chat :)))

act i playlist + quotes from the adaptation

after much deliberation (i randomly became super isncure an convinced myself that i have the world's worst taste in music?) here is the act i playlist, avaliable both on youtube/youtubemusic and spotify

it follows the act's narrative beats, and i've associated a quote with each song so you can see kind of whereabouts each would fall in the narrative

most of the songs have lyrics linked on yt music but since not all of them do, i'll made a post here with all the lyrics at some point haha

ik this is a long playlist (around 2 hours, the lngth of a film) but every song is solid and contributes towards the narrative - put this plylist on while you're cooking or cleaning or smth if not while you're reading

let's begin!

lovefool (cover) - cammie ja

He at last found the solitary figure he had been looking for - a young man in the distance who was walking out of the sea. No oversized hat. No coconut. Instead he held firmly under one arm a surfboard. Beomgyu watched as the man adjusted his grip on the board, realised in an instance that it was slipping out of his grasp and grabbed back at it with such swagger that this whole sequence seemed deliberate - a well-rehearsed performance, a pantomime of the capacity to err, of mortality. Something about the strength of his hand, something about the casual certainty that was shamelessly evident in such a menial, mundane action reawakened in turn something in the cavity of Beomgyu's chest. The man was cocky, sure - but he looked so cool.

summer madness - kool & the gang, lauryn hill, youssou n'dour

Could you please kill me? What? These were the first words we would ever exchange, the first words I had ever heard him speak. It was the blue time of year, that odd liminal period where it was neither the dry nor the rainy season. We were stood on the boardwalk. A childish stranger perhaps only a year or two younger than me, the boy who had just asked me to assist in his suicide cleared his throat and repeated his bizarre request - Will you please kill me?

local god (live) - everclear

And so, as a reminder that he was not the kind of madman to be crossed, the bastard became a Buddha.

chan chan - buena vista social club

The boy was never more than a corner away. He kept tripping over curbs trying to keep up with me. Silhouettes wore white polo shirts and lurked in doorways and shouted from balconies. Fitted with thin metal bars, open windows offered slitted glimpses of domestic scenes. I called out greetings as I went. Noise polluted the streets surrounding the marketplace. The boy heard only Spanish. He smelled unknown dried fruits. He passed a butcher who was hacking at pork, whose hands were bare and knife was dirty.

too much time in my house alone

Hey. I lowered my voice slightly, tried to sound a little more gentle. Hey. Brat. Though it was dark outside, the day wasn’t over yet. Come inside. Raindrops reverberated against the corrugated awning, ringing out into the twilight like gunshots.

i always wanna die (sometimes) - the 1975

Wind blew in from somewhere distant. Choking still, he struggled to breathe. The phantom pressure of the rope, the weight of the life he was being forced to endure just as before - these suffocated him equally.

last words of a shooting star - mitski

And if I fall asleep like this? Will I wake up tomorrow? [...] His consciousness ebbed and flowed. A deep-sea sleep. That of someone who didn’t care whether or not they’d wake to see the morning sun.

mexico - penelope scott

Each thick as a brick, each containing around a thousand pesos, around a million Korean won. In Seoul this could be around enough for a deposit on a three-room apartment. Here a man could devote his whole life peeling mangoes and still he wouldn’t have the luxury to even dream of possessing this much money.

talk show host (cover) - over

I spent my days striving not to live as my father had. Trying not to die as he had, either. My life was as dense as those stone mountains that I had buried my him in. I was starting to get tired.

exit music (for a film) - radiohead

We lay that way for a while, just staring. A ceaseless void, the abysm in his eyes was profoundly alarmed by the anarchy in mine. I was the first of the two of us to fall asleep first. My breathing was a slow, easy-going tide. Its consistency, its inevitability, provided him with an unexplainable comfort. Whilst I slept his gaze remained fixed on me. He realised now, as I lay placid and harmless, how young I really was. He was much slighter than me, though we were around the same height. I must have only been two or three years older than him. When I was awake, I seemed much more weathered, more worldly. It was a pity, really. That someone so young had ended up so troubled. He smiled faintly. Ridiculous - who was supposed to be worried about who? Soon enough, his eyes closed, too. The blanket was rough against his skin. The sound of rain grew louder.

forgiven - alanis morissette

His lashes fluttered as his vision focused. The boy's eyes intrigued me. I couldn’t for the life of me determine why this was - there was nothing particularly special about the colour of his irises. Still, the longer I stared the more I sensed that, hidden deep behind his perpetually expanding pupils, was buried an unknowable and unnameable something. An endless abysm. He opened and closed his mouth, shying out of my sight. Even though he feared me, or perhaps because he feared me, he was hungry for the gentle undertones that swam occasionally underneath the blatant irony of my speech…I’m sorry...his voice sounded like a sputtering schoolyard water fountain…can’t I stay here for one more day?

saviour complex (copycat killer version) - phoebe bridgers & rob moose

With his chin raised, I noticed for the first time the discoloured impression of a line as thick as my ring finger that twisted around itself and ran under his jaw, stretching from just below one earlobe to the other - a symmetrical ligature mark that, though faint, had been burned into his skin. The injury certainly wasn’t too recent. How had I not seen this scar before? Perhaps because he was always looking down? There was so much about him that I didn't know. That I would never know.

death letter blues - son house

I spoke without looking at him. Still not gone? I thought I told you to leave? He was watching me attentively. The situation was dire. He’d made up his mind. There are other ways to make a living.

thepath - facesoul

Neither of us spoke. After a few minutes he stepped up onto the raised ledge that spanned the length of the boardwalk, now standing a full head taller than me, and he walked toe-to-heel with his arms outstretched like an airplane, like an angel. [...] I tilted my head up to look at him. If I didn’t know better, I might have thought he was happy. He couldn’t be human. He didn’t look mortal. He didn't look like he wanted to die.

readings from 'on the road' - jack kerouac

I’d wandered the country for many years but I’d never seen anything like this before. The place he had led me to was a world away from the Cuba I had come to know. I felt like a tourist.

no one loves you - ryan wright

Lounging out on the folded-out sofa, I took a long drag and drew out my exhale. He had never met anyone who smoked as tenderly as I did - my lips met my cigarette with the gentle affection of a man kissing his wife in the morning before heading out to his blue-collar job.

bad religion (cover) - cat powers

If God ever places my fate in your hands, please just throw me into the abysm. While most children had imaginary friends, in his youth the boy had privately named the space that thresholded heaven from hell and life from death the abysm, and though he would never confess it to a single soul, the thought of the abysm still comforted him more than Christ ever had. Yes, master. A strange request. A strange prayer.

swim good - frank ocean

We were paving the path towards our brave new world. We needed each other. We belonged to the same realm - though I yearned for heaven and salvation and him for the oblivion of the abysm, we were both hungry for a world that wasn’t this one. He had nowhere to sleep…but he did have money. I decided to let him live out his last few days in my house. Despite the unavoidable fact that our souls had bonded overnight, in the light of morning the brat was quick to get back on my nerves.

dustbowl - ethel cain

He hadn’t meant to sound demanding or ungrateful. He just really didn’t want to walk. From inside the old converse I’d lent him, his broken toenail shot pain up his leg every time he took a step. The Bureau de Change was only a twenty minute walk away - a breeze for me, but potentially agonising for the brat. The journey by car took only three minutes.

quien es el - mision divina

pagafantas - el klanka

KNSL? [...] Pagafantas.

duvet - boa

When I thought of pink I thought of sunsets - the ones that tourists went crazy over despite being well aware that they were witnessing an event that would occur identically tomorrow and had occurred identically every yesterday since the beginning of time. Even in my childhood, sunsets had suffocated me. They represented endings. Infinite compounded endings. How many times could one thing end? It made me glad to be human, the thought that I would only have to die once. Driving back along the road by the boardwalk I took note of the glowing hue the sunset was casting intimately across the slopes and valleys of his face - a flushing aphroditean pink.

smithereens - boyish

The brat was aggravatingly persistent and equipped with infinite and highly questionable methods of fighting for my attention. Excuse me. His voice was strangely affectionate. He put his hand on my knee and leaned in close to me. Does your car really not play music? I pulled the car over and shifted into neutral.

how i get myself killed

Dongjae laughed hollowly. All people’s eyes turn the same.

rugged country - japanese breakfast

The national broadcasting station ran all day. A pant-suited lady in a newsroom set explained every hour that we were in the middle of an unprecedentedly dry rainy season. Around this time each year the grey sky would usually be bucketing down nonstop, but this summer’s sun was shining so uncompromisingly bright that the shrimps in the rice fields were dying in droves because they had no water left to swim in. The boy knew none of this. He couldn’t figure out how to work my television.

rugged country - japanese breakfast

mama, you been on my mind (studio outtake - 1993) - jeff buckley

His mother’s faith had been one of her most beautiful qualities, a reverence that was the colour of whispered hymns and stained glass windows in the early morning. Back then the boy had loved the Lord as fervently as her. Now, sneezing as he accidentally breathed in a noseful of stray cigarette ash, he cursed at the same God his mother had praised until her dying breath. To the boy my house was situated at the furthest corner on earth from the cathedral in his hometown. These four walls contained an absurd communist island nation - unmapped, unclaimed, ungoverned.

you know i'm no good (live from shepherd's bush empire) - amy winehouse

He didn’t turn around. Who else? Fair enough. Why did you do it? For your own good. Also fair enough.

the calender (live from itunes sessions) panic! at the disco

So when are you planning on killing me? The blunt numbness of his words took me aback momentarily. We’d broached this topic before - perhaps a thousand years ago? - though he'd never raised it this directly or seriously.

winterwind - jennifer kothe

Caterpillars would rear their heads. Brown birds would eat bugs out the gutter. Children would return to school. The street dogs would go into labour. Before spring could be reborn next May, summer, then autumn, then winter would all have to die. No matter how slowly, though, spring would come again. Irrefutably. By then October 27th would probably be nothing but a strange and distant dream.

i'm kissing you (full length version) - des'ree

The boy put the tape into the videoplayer underneath the television. He more than suspected it might be hardcore, obscure porn. He pressed the play button on the remote.

love theme from 'romeo & juliet' (a time for us) - johnny mathis

He finished the film over three days. Romeo shot and and he smoked and he kissed the angel Juliet as she lay dead, before turning the gun on himself. A double suicide. A violent end. The credits began rolling.

different water - honey gentry

Are you happier these days? Toto retorted - Having fun and being happy are very different. I should have guessed as much.

exit music (for a film) - scala & kolacny brothers

the reason thsi playlist has so mayn views already is becaus eo fhow obssessively i edited it haha

i promise i'll format this post better at a later point but for now i just gotta get over myself and put my madsummer posts out there lol

much love - hometown.angel

ACT II PROLOGUE

y'all know the drill - pls read my disclaimers n content warnings

this act is about to get sad, but here is your sunday sneakpeek of act ii (which will be out this thursday :P )

MADSUMMER - AN ADAPTATION BY HOMETOWN.ANGEL

ACT I

The dew evaporated before the garish sun rose. The land along the equator had been hot long before dawn had broken. Through the window Beomgyu watched an oblong of sky change colours as morning bloomed. It was the second time he had been awake early enough to do so. His hair was a magpie’s mess. A draft eased through the curtains and fell cool on his face.

Buda lit up a cigarette and set about collecting the dirty clothes on the floor. Beomgyu followed the man’s every action with half-closed eyes. Buda shaved and washed his face in the bathroom basin before eating breakfast - cubes of dried mango, not much of a meal. He offered Beomgyu one, but he shook his head, clutching Buda’s pillow to his chest and burrowing deeper into Buda’s blanket. How could a person sleep so frequently, so fiercely? He shook Beomgyu’s body gently but the boy was already asleep again. Beomgyu only opened his eyes an hour or so later, well past nine o’clock. He was humming as he came to.

I like that song. Buda sat cross legged on the floor, using the mirror on the inside of the closet to style his hair. He swivelled around to look at Beomgyu.

Hugging the pillow, Beomgyu hummed the tune louder. Buda added the words to his melody.

Love me, love me

Say that you love me

Fool me, fool me

Go on and fool me

This was the song that had played when an enamoured Juliet ventured to the beach in pursuit of her Romeo. The first time that he’d watched that movie, Buda had wept silently for the entirety of that scene. Beomgyu struggled to imagine this. It was hard enough to process the poetry book and the condoms.

A while later the boy asked - What’s with you? Beomgyu wasn’t used to the man so explicitly or so attentively caring about appearances. Buda was in ironed slacks and a button-up shirt. He was even wearing a belt.

Hmm?

Are you on the way to meet your lover?

Which one? Buda tucked his shirt into his trousers. I’m in high demand, you know.

Beomgyu laughed at this unexpected response.

But the mysterious answer Buda provided next piqued his curiosity further. I’m headed to the police station.

Beomgyu wondered what kind of crime Buda intended to commit with the police force present. Today the man was too stylish for your average delinquent. While day to day he wore short sleeve t-shirts and oversized jeans or tracksuit pants, he seemed to know how to dress up when style mattered - his heirloom watch fit perfectly into this ensemble, for once unpretentious. Beomgyu feigned disinterest, stealing glimpses of Buda in the closet mirror. As always, the glass crucifix hung around his neck. His shirt looked expensive. It was hand-sewn and tailor-made from a billowy silk material with cream and indigo arabesque patternings. Where did you get that shirt?

The boy’s never ending barrage of questions was annoying Buda. My lover gave it to me. Buda’s linguistic quirk of sarcastically drawing out the ends of words was annoying the boy. In fact, Buda had not received this shirt as a gift from a doting sweetheart - he had instead stolen it from an unfortunate Italian tourist who had left her belongings unattended while she was surfing. When Buda nicked the item from the women’s open tote bag he’d simply hung it over his surfboard as though it had always belonged to him and nonchalantly made his way to his car. The man had come into possession of watches, belts and necklaces through this tried-and-true method. Many of these items, little to Buda’s knowledge, were in fact highly-sought-after items from luxury brands overseas - Valentino, Panerai, Ferragamo. He might not have a clean conscience, but at least he was self-sufficient.

Which one?

…which what?

Which lover?

Wouldn’t you like to know. Buda’s makeover was just about done. His ringtone sounded - love’s-greetings. Ola? He flipped open his phone. Ola? Yes, it's Buda. It had been half a year since Beomgyu had landed in Cuba, half a year since he’d failed to end his own life, but he still had no grasp on the country’s primary dialect. He hadn't felt the need to study the region’s lingua franca before arriving - after all, he hadn’t intended on staying in Cuba longer than a day or two. He noted attentively the way Buda’s mouth melodically moved around unfamiliar syllables, the way Buda’s pitch was significantly deeper when he wasn’t speaking Korean. Beomgyu desperately wanted to understand what he was saying. On the floor with one leg tucked underneath him Buda pressed the phone between his ear and his raised shoulder, listening and talking as he fetched various items from the closet and shoved them into a brown paper packet - a bunch of syringes, baggies of flakka prepacked.

Beomgyu wondered what kind of shovel Buda would use to bury him. He said nothing as he watched the man work. Buda looked too sophisticated to be a gangster but also too young to be a member of the local mafia. Surprising how drastically someone’s clothes could change how you viewed them. It looks good on you.

Hanging up on Dongjae, Buda hadn’t heard him. Hmmm?

Beomgyu pressed his face back into the pillow. No.

Dubious Buda approached him. No?

…I just said that that outfit doesn’t look bad on you.

It doesn't look bad? The ringtone started up again. When Buda didn’t pick up, it rang out a second time.

Go answer it.

Buda stepped outside to take the call.

I hope your lover likes your shirt.

He smirked. I’ll lend it to you next time you meet your own lover.

Toto rolled his eyes. But he was smiling.

Buda waved a hand. I’ll leave soon. I’ll be back before you know it.

queencards i have been so vocal about this everywhere but i'm so genuinely appreciative of every single kind comment y'all have left. i wish i could heart all of them, but ao3 and tumblr don't allow that so i'm replying where i can. just know that i have read every response and they have all made me smile.

ever since i was a child i knew that the only thing i wanted to do was to write. i didn't know what i wanted to say, i just knew that more than anything i wanted to be someone who wrote beautiful stories. this project has been so unbelievably healing in so mayn ways - as a queer person, as a religiously traumatised person, as someone who who is absurdly mentally ill, as someone who enjoys indulging in angst, and also just as an artist who has never had the courage to complete any project that i began. this is not the place to get into it too deep, just know that recent academic failure have made me more inscure about my art (fine art and writing) and that i have never finished any of the art i have made. madsummer is the first artistic project that i have ever seen to its end (i finished the final workable draft around december/jan and then reedited it in early march i think). i am so insanely proud of myself. i don't know if this makes sense - it's like i am proud of my own growth and capacity for just finishing this work, and then when i receive positive comments from y'all (whether its on my casual external-to-the-narrative posts or on ao3) it makes me proud that not only did i finish it but also bc i i did a really good job with it too? so now i'm proud of both the fact that madsummer and the fact that i did i good job with it too, n then that i'm able to acknowledge that i did a good job? idk i'm just really proud of myself for once (unfamiliar to me, feels great) and so happy with the small community i've fostered. love y'all lots n lots <333

☀︎ with love - hometown.angel ☀︎

act i - notes from hometown.angel

here is some extra information on the story. these are not super analytical and don't contain much of my own interpretation - i do have other posts like that, but this is more just providing footnotes - some clarifications to alleviate potential confusions but also just some fun little facts.

some reminders:

i refer to the protagonists by buda (yj) and toto (bg) in all my posts to emphasise that all i say is fiction and not at all about any real people

msaahba stands for madsummer - an adaptation by hometown.angel. when i quote other shit i will reference it directly below (not using formal academic conventions tho, not sorry)

i've uploaded a timeline of act i here just bc i know that it can be hard to stay on top of chronology sometimes, especially as the story goes on (there were times i rearranged the story a little in order to provide clarity on the order in which things occured - i'll state when these points happened)

also just want to warn you that the actual story of my madsummer adaptation is like the only space in this whole project where i'm going to be eloquent. on my tumblr (including this post lol) n on twitter i will probably be very stream of consciousness n longwinded n unconcise n informal n laidback, but still coherent. pls don't let any of my casual posts deter you from reading the story itself - i promise how i type on my tumblr is not a good example of the writing i'm really capable of. in real life i am incredibly unfunny and cringe and while i hope that doesn't pollute my madsummer adaptation it most certainly will contaminate this page. i also cannot spell.

as always i have so much admiration for kyrie and the amount of detail and nuance and symbolism she packed into this story. there are things she very clearly researched in great depth and only alluded to in the narrative itself so that only people who are mad enough (i.e. me n the other sweet summer children who are madsummer fanatics) to look further into the most seemingly mundane will be rewarded by the finding of deeper meaning (pretentious but i'm typing this late at night)

buckle up!

♱ bôa's duvet is the song that kyrie linked with the first part of mad summer. as i've mentioned ni other places, i've titled all three of my acts after the songs that kyrie linked at the end of each chapter.

♱ one aspect that contributes towards any raw translation of madsummer so unreadable is that the pronouns of the protagonists and whether the story is being told from a firstperson or thirdperson perspective kept changing - further confused by the linguistic issue of how in many third-person queer narratives, the fact that both protagonists often use the same pronouns makes it difficult to tell which of the charactesr is being referred to when the author says 'she', 'he', or 'them' (here is a youtube short that explains this more eloquently than i ever could). my adaptation is told primarily through buda's firstperson perspective as a semi-omniscient narrator, and then each act begins with a prologue from toto told in thirdperson. this decision helps make the narrative intelligible, makes the most sense and also serves the symbolic purpose of letting you to see how both characters change or grow up - buda's internal monologue gradually becomes less cocky and more vulnerable and toto learns to open up and be honest about what he's experienced

♱ i was very deliberate about the names and nicknames that toto is addressed by throughout this story - pay attention to how this changes :)

♱ according to kyrie the beach that buda and toto meet is malecón, cuba (check out the locations in the navigation panel)

♱ the story starts on the 29.09.2019, meaning that toto's first day on the beach was 20.09.2019.

♱ in my mind toto is wearing large ripped jeans, a holey shirt n a jacket (he's also barefoot)

♱ while coconuts are served to tourists in cuba, i honestly couldn't find much info on them being sold by children. (as someone who lives in a developing country, the petty bitch in me loves kyrie for presenting the american tourists as cringe and generally incompetent)

♱ i added this little bit about the pretending-to-drop-the-surfboard. we don't see the first meeting between buda and toto. i loved the image of toto daily pursuing something so out of reach (buda) purely because it is the only familiar thing to him and because it is the only thing that gives him any hope (keep track of hope and promise)

♱ the first person who read my translation (who i'll from hereon out refer to as parsley (i will be referring to parsley a lott)) started laughing when she read the line this was how it was when you were raised by the streets - she jsut said it felt very lego batman smh (parsley also sent me a seven minute voicenote crying as soon as she was finished reading the whole of madsummer haha)

♱ i'll talk about this more at a later time because it'll be much more relevant then, but cuba used to have two currencies - one used by locals/for local products and the other by foreigners/for foreign products (a gross simplification but again i'll go into more detail be patient)

♱ in a few chapters i mention that buda had previously sworn and screamed at toto to try and get him to go tf away. the reason that i count the could you please kill me?/what? discussion as their first interaction is because i specifically state that [these are the first words that they ever exchanged because these are the first words that buda has ever heard toto speak]

♱ many knetizens have created their own version of the wanted posters (click here to see a full list)

♱ let the dogxcat dynamic begin 🗣️❗ (feel like cinderella naega byeonhae)

♱ over the course of madsummer, buda will come to own two pistols, but the gun buda uses in this scene is his browning.

♱ TINNITUS MENTIONED 🗣️❗

♱ it was an eternal june/this was our first encounter - gagged when i first read that line (i fear i ate)

ii.

♱ hope that it's obvious enough, but this scene is buda retelling his own story, the things that have happened to him over the past few years.

♱ the hangul for yj's name (연준) directly translates to the fed. this led to so much confusion when i was reading the raw translation - at first i thought that buda was also nicknamed the fed and was waiting for this epithet to also be explained

♱ the maths in this story was also so confusing - i'm quite mathmatically challenged and so i struggled to calculate and keep track of these numbers lol, but i wanted to write them out in letter form for the vibes

♱ mojitos are the national drink of cuba, where alcoholism is quite prevalent (my country also has high rates of alcoholism and substance abuse rip)

♱ i had to do so much research on illicit substances for this story - to first understand the drugs this story speaks about in order to be able to translate passages on them appropriately. hopefully i've not done an awful job or made any mistakes that would be obvious to people knowledgable about drugs because i'm amusingly inexperienced when it comes to those things haha - the most out-there substance i've ever consumed (excluding prescribed antipsychotics/antidepressants and the egregious amount of caffeine i consume on a daily basis) was the one time i smoked weed on a holiday when i was eighteen, coughed for five minutes straight because i inhaled so deeply that i physically could not breathe, and didn't even get high.

♱ so irrelevant but trying to get the pronouns of the dog/bitch/bastard paragraph make it clear who said what and who beat up who had me losing my mind. it flows alright now, at least

♱ since buda lives in the backstreets santiago de cuba, the mountains where his father was buried are most likely the sierra maestra? but given that the geography for this story is kind of all over the place sometimes (that isn't a read, i promise) perhaps these mountains are more of a hypothetical or liminal (the friends we made along the way)

♱ diego maradona was a real football player (soccer not american football). however, i can't find any information about him declaring down with cocaine/abajo con cocaína. in one interview in 2018 he did denounce cocaine (the first link below), but the exact phrasing was never used. here's more information about the football player:

Diego Maradona opens up on cocaine hell when daughter woke him from coma as he’s unveiled as new manager of Mexican side Dorados | The Sun

Diego Maradona dead: 2018 World Cup, cocaine collapse

Diego Maradona says wine binge caused his collapse as picture sparks social media cocaine conspiracy theory following Argentina's dramatic World Cup 2018 win over Nigeria | The Sun

Maradona news: 'I was wasting away' - Argentina legend talks about cocaine addiction in Dorados introduction | Goal.com South Africa

iii.

♱ i like using words that linguistically make sense but aren't technically words - case in point - uncreasing and airplaning. many more curious words to come

♱ cuba's rainy season is from may-november, while its summer is from june-august

Cuba is rainiest in late spring and summer (May to November). It rarely rains all day long, however – you’re more likely to encounter heavy downpours in the hot, humid afternoons when travelling during the rainy season. June, July and August are usually the hottest months in Cuba. Although the temperature averages don’t look too high at first glance – Havana sits at 32°C all summer – the humidity can make it feel much, much hotter. Spend your mornings and evenings exploring and the hottest part of the day crashed out on a cooler coast. - Best time to visit Cuba

♱ buda owns an old red ford. there were little things that i changed throughout the story to make contemporary references to txt music or lore, and one of these was that i had at first decided i wanted buda's car to be a grey volvo like in the 0x1=lovesong era mvs. after a lot of research on knetizens posts i realised that there was a lot of sentimentality around the red lil car, so i changed it back. the car is featured on the front cover of mad summer's second edition

♱ i know nothing about cars or how they work (i failed my learner's test 7 times and my drivers test 3 times)

iv.

♱ okay logistically speaking this is one point where you need to suspend your disbelief in terms of geography. buda's house is located in the backstreets of santiago de cuba while malecón is in havana (for more info on both these places pls check out the locations tab in the navigation panel)

oh hold on let me scroll up a little...

yeah there's next to no way that buda and toto could walk 875km before the sun sets (that's around 545 miles for any americans who happen to be reading this (get on board with the metric system guys wtf))

♱ parsley (my friend, remember?) is also uncapable of smelling weed smh

♱ so the cigarettes mentioned in the quote below

A few years back a state-run tobacco company had started producing thin paper-white cigars marketed at women who didn’t normally smoke, which many men started purchasing under the claim that they were doing so to wean themselves off of nicotine. All of the seated men smoked languorously these very cigars. Some of the smokers rose to welcome me. - msaabha

these cigarettes are a reference to a real campaign where a tobacco manufacturers habanos launched cigarettes called julieta...the brand, who ha previously primarily produced cigars for men, is called romeo y julieta. boom. another romeo and juliet reference let's go

There are two different cigar brands called “Romeo y Julieta.” Originally, it was produced in Havana, Cuba, by Rodríguez, Argüelles y Cia. However, at the time of the Cuban revolution, the company and its brand moved to the Dominican Republic, and is now under the ownership of the Spanish firm, Altadis S.A. After the communists took over in Cuba, the Cuban government began producing a cigar using the same name – “Romeo y Julieta.” However, the U.S. copyright of the “Romeo y Julieta” cigar brand, which was originally owned by Rodriguez, Argüelles y Cia, now belongs to Altadis S.A. So, you cannot buy the Cuban knock-off in the U.S. - Where is the Romeo Y. Julieta cigar made in Cuba or Dominican?

The world of Habano smokers is predominantly male, but the island's largest cigar manufacturer has now set its sights on the other half of the world's population - women. Last year, the company Habanos - an arm of Cubatabaco, the country's national tobacco company - announced a mission to overcome perceptions among women that Cuban cigars are made up of "only strong tobacco for men". The result is the Julieta, a milder version of the renowned, strong-flavoured Romeo Y Julieta brand, which was founded in 1873. Until now, cigars marketed specifically at women have tended to be flavoured or extremely mild cigarellos - a short, narrow cigar. The Julieta is bigger, 4.75 inches (12cm) long, 0.5 inches (13mm) wide, and far more pungent. - BBCCaribbean.com | Cigar makers target Cuban women

^from wikipedia (guys your high school teachers lied to yo wikipedia really is a decent resource (perhaps not for work produced within higher academic instutions but its perfectly fine in causal contexts)). i'll explain the symbolism in the essay i'll eventuall write on madsummer and romeo snd juliet but argh it's crazy the attention to detail kyrie has, good lord - i mean even the fact that the julieta cigarettes were (re)released the year that buda was born

♱ kyrie's layout of buda's house looks like this:

^ however, i imagined buda's house to look different (learn more about buda's house under the locations tab in my navigation panel)

♱ buda smokes cloud 9 cigarettes. i'll speak more about this at a later stage when it's more relevant, but yeh for now just know cloud 9 is a korean brand of cigarettes.

♱ bingle bongle keep an eye out on park dongjae

♱ okay so the quote below describes buda's phone

In an era where people daily used smartphones that had fourty million pixels, I had bought the cheapest flip-phone available at the first corner store I’d walked into the day I arrived in Cuba. I’d never changed its preprogrammed ringtone - a greetingly genial tune, the first sixteen bars of an old lovesong.

this phone is talked about more specifically in a bonus scene that takes place in later reprints of the physical book (that i don't have access to ripp) so

One of the Fed's ancient relics, following the red Ford and the video tape. It was a feature phone with no Wi-Fi, and the model name was unknown. It was a Cyon, and the onyl specs were a 16-note phone and a 400,000-pixel camera. I don't know about the other two, but I heard that Xiaomi released a 100 million-pixel smartphone a while ago. It was exactly 250 times different from the Fed's. Beomgyu opened the Buddha's cell phone, which was 250 light years behind the lives of his peers in advanced countries. The small LCD was black and white, and even that was digital. -extract from a bonus scene in kyrie's mad summer reprint

♱ woah infodump get ready - buda's ringtone is said to be love greetings/salut d'amor.

i searched for "love greetings" and it turned out that the composer wrote this song for his fiancee. its about two people with completely different backgrounds who met and got engaged. -anonymous chatter on a madsummer public chat forum

2 old samsung phone models come with this ringtone built in - this phone is confirmed by kyrie to be a cyon. (source for video below here)

here is the story behind the tune:

Edward Elgar (1857-1934) composed Salut d’Amour as a love song to his future bride, Alice Roberts. In the summer of 1888 (age 31), Elgar decided to take a holiday with his dear friend Dr. Charles Buck. As Elgar departed Worcester for Dr. Buck’s Settle, Yorkshire estate, Alice gave him a poem she had written entitled Love’s Grace. While at Settle, Elgar, much taken with Alice’s poem, decided to reciprocate with a short piece of music especially for Alice. He titled the piece Liebesgruss (Love’s Greeting), dedicated “To Carice”, a mashup of Alice’s forenames Caroline Alice. Elgar presented the musical love poem to his future bride on his return from Settle. They were married the following year. At the birth of their daughter two years later, they named her Carice. - Salut d’amour, Op 12 – Program Notes – Clinton Symphony Orchestra

alice's poem sent in response to love's greeting, love's grace (initially entitled the wind at dawn, alice changed the name of her poem upon receiving the musical piece elgar dedicated to her), goes as follows -

And the wind, the wind went out to meet with the sun At the dawn when the night was done, And he racked the clouds in lofty disdain As they flocked in his airy train. And the earth was grey, and grey was the sky, In the hour when the stars must die; And the moon had fled with her sad, wan light, For her kingdom was gone with night. Then the sun upleapt in might and in power, And the worlds woke to hail the hour, And the sea stream’d red from the kiss of his brow, There was glory and light enow. To his tawny mane and tangle of flush Leapt the wind with a blast and a rush In his strength unseen, in triumph upborne Rode he out to meet with the morn! - The Wind at Dawn (Elgar, Edward) - IMSLP

alice roberts also wrote another poem about elgar, named love alone will stay -

Closely cling, for winds drive fast, Blossoms perish in the blast, Love alone will last. Closely let me hold thy hand, Storms are sweeping sea and land, Love alone will stand. Kiss my lips, and softly say, Joy may go and sunlit day, Love alone will stay. - Between Worlds: Lady Alice Elgar's poems

one article on the couple, their love and their artistry ends -

After Alice died in Elgar's arms in 1920, he wrote to a friend: "Bless her! You, who like some of my work, must thank her for all of it, not me. I should have destroyed it all and joined Job's wife in the congenial task of cursing God". - Between Worlds: Lady Alice Elgar's poems

anyway, very long winded but i think the kyrie's meticulousness is unmatched, good lord - buda's literal ringtone being a reference to timeless, profound, ineffable love? ingenious

♱ pay attention to the use of home/house

♱ most nights the streetlights blinked intermittently - -- --- … - / -. .. --. …. - … / - …. . / … - .-. . . - .-.. .. --. …. - … / -… .-.. .. -. -.- . -.. / .. -. - . .-. -- .. - - . -. - .-.. -.--

♱ pay attention to the use of okay ;)

vi.

♱ i've already made a massive point of emphasising this story's content warnings but i bet you weren't expecting the story to get so sad so quickly

♱ bananas are a massive part of the cuban agricultural output (i won't be sourcing this bc i know you don't care)

♱ was toto humming the salut d'amor or the lovesong at the center of this narrative? the world will never know

♱ argh okay so my adaptation says a good tree cannot bear bad fruit and that is obviously a reference to matthew 7:18 in the bible, but this was the result of so much trial and error around trying to find a proper way to translate the original thing. the raw translation says

They say that dead trees don’t bear fruit. Superstitions that would come out of a Joseon shaman’s mouth were believed even on the other side of the world. - raw translation a Dead trees are not open to fruit. On the other side of the world, the superstition that might come out of the mouth of a Joseon shaman was also believed. - raw translation b

so i had no clue at first how to make this make sense. it seemed like asaying or an idiom or a proveb, n the only one i could thtinko f was matthew 7:18 bc that's so close to what is beign said excpt that it says nothing about dead trees. it may have been a proverb from the joseon dynasty, but because i was also struggling with finding more context on that i went with matthew 7:18 n added more context n surroudign sentences.

A good tree cannot bear bad fruit. On the other side of the world, a lifetime ago, he had heard a pastor utter this sentiment. The banana tree hadn’t been able to hold him. Could a blameless tree bear dead fruit? - msaabha

♱ an excellent line from the raw translations:

I liked hanging myself to death, but I didn’t want to be beaten to death. I wanted to die, but I didn’t want to die even if they killed me. -raw translation a I liked to hang myself, but I didn't want to be beaten to death. I want to die, but I can't believe I don't want to kill you. -raw translation b

which i translated as

He had intended to kill himself, sure, but he hadn’t planned on being beaten to death. He wanted to die. He didn’t want to hurt. - msaabha

guys i enfdured so much translating this story but it was worth every second of it

vii.

♱ forgot to say earlier - a little chagne i made was turning the single bed with a pink bedspread (say that fast ten times in a row) into a pink fold-out-couch. there is an intended symbolism behind this that i'll explore during my act iii notes but i hope somebody picks up on the kind of metaphorical function this change serves

viii.

♱ woah it's time for the evident fact that i know nothing about drugs to be made even glaringly-ier evident. the things i had to google to even attempt to understand some of these passsages- if anybody without context opened my search history they'd probably be very concerned as to why i have been googling so much about cocaine - tbf tho, the actual context (that i have spent six months adapting a fanfiction in a language i don't actually speak that well about a gay pairing i don't actually romantically ship just bc i'm nosy) isn't much better

♱ argh guys ok so buda speaks korean with dongjae and toto only. i really tried to make the vibes come across through tone bc english doens't do honorifics

♱ getting into more semi-omniscent narration...

ix.

♱ so just to clarify, the list of things i know nothing about includes numbers, drugs and cars. luckily only one of these features as a massive plot point. unluckily that happens to be the same one i know the most nothing about

♱ flakka is a real drug. in the country where i'm from, it is a substance that concerningly is becoming increasingly more prevalent. there is a drug used in this story that kyrie invented for this story, which i'll acknowledge when we get there. from what i understand, kyrie has a fairly extensive interest and understanding of illicit substances.

lastly, let me talk about materials and research. although i am an engineering student with a minor in chemistry, i have always been interest in drugs, even if it was not my major. i like related documentaries and research a lot of materials. so i have never had a hard time or had any trouble finding materials. - kyrie responding to an anonymous user in a public chatroom, raw translation

she then recommended the following pieces of media in public chatrooms n anonymous ask forums -

약국에 없는 약 이야기 박성규 저자 - Park Sungkyu - Talking about drugs that aren't in the pharmacy - ISBN 9791190116121

Roberto Sabiano - Gamorrah - ISBN 978-0374165277

Qiu Miaojin - The Last Words of Montemarte - ISBN 9781590177259

Breaking Bad - a 2008-2013 tv show

Narcos - a 2015-2017 tv show

zerozerozero - a 2012 tv show

♱ on abysm - eyes are the windows to the soul oop

♱ guys i promise i'll write the whole post on the abysm soon bc that rabbithole goes deep but just know that the image of a bottomless pit lowkey is a massive point of contension when it comes to mad summer inspiring 0x1=lovesong

xi.

♱ recurring-nightmares parallel lets go

♱ okay so kyrie put this sickfic passage a little bit later (i'll say when) as a flashback that happens when toto and buda are driving to retrieve the suitcase. however i wanted tokeep the chronology of this story as linear as possible n there had already been two recent flashback scenes (buda explaining his past, then toto's nightmare) and flashbacks are one of my least favourite narrative tropes

♱ okay also i added the little bit about the rope scar myself. i wanted to create in buda more intruige/concern around what happened in toto's past, but also just bc realistically if toto had attempted to hang himself a only a few months back and also bc he had very almost succeeded and then fallen to the ground from the branch the rope was hanging from (good lord that was incoherent) he most certainly would have at least some kind of scar

♱ ooh i love talk about cleanliness in relation to love, beauty, morality and the religiously traumatised (pls allow me to feel proud of instances when my writing ate)

xii.

♱ in my timeline i use dj to refer to dongjae if that wasn't clear eek

xiii.

♱ guess which private new purpose buda will dedicate his life to?

♱ i also added this bit where buda attempts to feed toto when toto was sick. (justification for this retrospective passage - it feels more reflective than it feels like a flashback :P )

♱ chocolate is a large import in cuba. i also added this point in bc very rarely in the original text does it ever actually talk about eating food? i saw one knetizen ask if buda and toto ever ate anything at all because kyrie barely mentions food in the story which made me laugh

♱ this was categorically untrue - buda biting lore unlocked❗❗

♱ added in the detail about the dragon kites - guess which movie i'm talking about?

♱ such quirks made me more of a loser - a lover with a dollar sign❗❗

♱ i spent ages trying to figure out which kind of paper can be used to store coke (the fbi agent on the other side of my computer was probably judging me very hard)

♱ y'all the raw translations kept trying to tell me that the policemen snorted drugs using the syringes. which. um. even i know that that isn't really how things are done

xiii.

♱ so this is round about where the sickfic flashback occured in kyrie's version of mad summer, aroud about somewhere in between the first three paragraphs of this scene

♱ woah guys its anther point of similaritiy between madsummer and 0x1=lovesong - that the protagonist constantly compares his lvoer to an angel

♱ parsley had asked when she was reading madsummer the first time - butterfly jasmine, more commonly known as white mariposa flowers are the official national flower of cuba

♱ no clue which beach this takes place on. it might be omehwere near the sierra maestra mountain range where buda buried his dad, or it could be on one of the three main beaches that kyrie spoke of in that earlier menitoned anonmyous ask forum - malecón, varadero or playa ancon (if i can find the screenshot where this last beach is mentioned i'll put it in)

♱ i had rewrite some parts of this story when i did more research on the locations (look at rabbithole research spiral notes 1 and 2). the current description of the cave is different than it was at first. initially, i had pictured the cave as a large space that both buda and toto could sit in:

He finally stopped walking, turning to face me. The waves were more violent so far out from the beach. They tore at him, spat at him. He remained unfazed. I watched his lips move, but I couldn't hear a word over the roaring waves. He pointed at the cave and I nodded. In close enough pursuit, I came to see that this cave was much smaller than it appeared. I stepped through the cove's mouth and into the hollow in the cliffside, ducking down under the hanging lip just like he did, sitting next with my back against the cave’s wall while he foraged around purposefully in the stalagmites. The cave looked at the horizon from a slant and as it was around midday our surroundings were relatively well lit. Of course, the deeper you got into the cave, like where the he was crawling, visibility was low. I thought of Plato. I watched the boy emerge from the shadow struggling with a large rectangle-shaped shadow. A carrier bag, made from synthetic aluminum. He wrestled it to the ground. It hit the floor with a thunderous bang. - msaabha

♱ when i rewrote the passage above i put an insane amount of effort into trying to find synoynms for the word cave

♱ i still have no clue what 0313 symbolises i spent an embarrasingly long amount of time trying to figure out what 0313 represented only to realise that is toto's (n bg's) brithday

♱ toto is lying - there is only one suitcase

♱ the case still rattled each time its aluminium base hit the concrete of the boardwalk - he fought to meet my pace, fumbling over himself like a clumsy puppy. another instance of me tooting my own horn but the phonetic implciations? the onomatopoeiac imagery? i fear i cooked once more

xv.

♱ as someone from a developing country where the government is corrupt and constantly cutting our access to electricity? i feel that. (granted, within that devloping country i am considerably welloff given the centuriesold and racialised structures of abject poverty that still hold my country back in the present day and so on and so on)

♱ any guesses as to where toto got all that money?

♱ ik everyone has different versions of it but i learned this version of lord's prayer when i was five or six - glad it finally came in handy haha

♱ also pay attention to the word strange

xvi.

♱ 50000 korean won notes have the porrtrait of shin saimdang on them - more of shin saimdang here

there's another thing about the money that comes into play later - this revelation confused me a lot upon first reading and so i had to do so much research n feverish googling to understand, but lucky for you dear reader, i shall share with you what i have learned soon as the time is right

xvii.

♱ bureau de change's are also known as currency or money exchanges. curiously txt lore references a money exchange in the loser=lover music video, which contains footage also used in an alternative 0x1=lovesong...will be discussing this in the post i'll eventually make on 0x1 and madsummer

♱ i'm assuming yk who jesus christ is. an asura tho is a mythical creature from hinduism, buddhism, as well as other religions that emerged in close proxemity to these.

Asuras have been featured in many cosmological theories and legends in Hinduism and Buddhism. In the oldest verses of the Samhita layer of Vedic texts, the Asuras are any spiritual, divine beings including those with good or bad intentions, and constructive or destructive inclinations or nature. In later verses of the Samhita layer of Vedic texts, Monier Williams states the Asuras are "evil spirits, demons and opponents of the gods". Asuras connote the chaos-creating evil, in Indo-Iranian mythology about the battle between good and evil. Scholars have disagreed on the nature and evolution of the Asura concept in ancient Indian literature. Kuiper calls Asuras a special group of gods in one of major Vedic theories of creation of the universe. Their role changes only during and after the earth, sky and living beings have been created. The sky world becomes that of Devas, the underworld becomes that of Asuras. The god Indra is the embodiment of good and represents the Devas, while the dragon Vrtra is the embodiment of evil and an Asura. During this battle between good and evil, creation and destruction, some powerful Asuras side with the good and are called Devas, other powerful Asuras side with the evil and thereafter called Asuras. This is the first major dualism to emerge in the nature of everything in the Universe. Many scholars describe Asuras to be "lords" with different specialized knowledge, magical powers and special abilities, which only later choose to deploy these for good, constructive reasons or for evil, destructive reasons. The former become known as Asura in the sense of Devas, the later as Asura in the sense of demons...Asuras are non-believers of God and can believe in their own powers. Asuras...are a type of supernatural beings (antigods, demigods, or titans) in traditional Buddhist cosmology and a realm of rebirth based on one's karma in current or past lives. They are described in Buddhist texts as creatures who live in lower levels of mount Sumeru, obsessed with sensuous aspects of existence, living with jealousy, and endlessly engaged in wars against the creatures who are Devas (gods). - extracts from -> Asura - Wikipedia

♱ knsl - i won't tell you what this means yet, as there is a more pivotal moment in the narrative where i want to reveal it. however, i have hidden a clue somewhere in the information i've put out around the first act - it shouldn't be too hard for you to find out ;) (i, however, spent literally two hours straight trying to figure out what this word meant - scoured dozens of posts from knetizens, obbsessively google translated) just know that it is a question

♱ pagafantas - literally meaning the guy who pays for fanta (pagar+fanta), this term has several meanings

a guy who buys things (like drinks) or goes to great lengths for their crush because of an ulterior motive - often in order to sleep with them. similarly, a boy who has reluctantly and bitterly been friendzoned (there's a famous spanish movie called pagafantas that has this premise) a boy who is willing to overextend himself and be the second option for a girl he likes - buying her things and treating her kindly, only for her to turn and get with another man in other words, the closest english translation would be simp or a nice guy however, it also has another less obvious or common meanings that comes from how the word translates over to korean. pagafantas -> 빨판 (ppalpan) -> sucker/loser 빠가판따스가 it's so hot tonto útil -> useful idiot/fool 호구 -> someone who is easily fooled or scammed, often someone is gets friendzoned / a pushover / danger extracts from the links below: pagafanta / pagafantas | WordReference Forums Spanish New Words Explored #02 Hokou : Naver Post 스페인어 신조어 탐구생활 #02 호구 : 네이버 포스트

xviii.

♱ tom and jerry type shit

xix.

♱ i added most of the things on this list ha - i think the original ones were teh tearoff calender, broom and dustpan only.

♱ the worker named k is a reference to the original madsummer's author kyrie

♱ when writing i really like inventing words that are linguistically and etymologically sound/plausible but don't really exist - aphroditean (a-fro-di-ee-shun) being one such word

♱ the paragraph that feaures the word aphroditean is the one i associate with bôa's duvet

♱ remember - buda left korea before graduating middle school, and so he would never have used melon

♱ this was a small detail i changed, but i loved the connotations n implications of buda's crucifix being made of glass - i was thinking of something like this (i am so aware that there are next to no similarities between these reference photos but pls humour me)-

xx.

♱ the cojimar pier is one of the most important locations in the story. located in havana, it stands close to the hemingway monument. (go to the locations tab whoopdoop)

xxi.

♱ boom. the beginnings of toto lore.

♱ i added in and emphasised the details around strawberries and the colours pink and red throughout madsummer, especially in relation to toto. in one thread a knetizen (if i find it i'll link it here) asked what colour best represents madsummer and a user responded with the colours pink and red. i'll talk about this inits own post, but the juxstaposed yet coexistent implications of love, danger, flesh, tenderness, blood, rage etc

♱ kyrie revealed that the book of korean poems that toto finds is called 문학동네시인선 038 - 오은시 집 우리는 분위기를 사랑해 (Literature Village Poet Selection 038 - Oh Eun-si's House We Love the Atmosphere).

^ a raw translation of one poem in the book

here is a poem from the book (all quotes from this book are from publically accessible samples). though they don't translate over well i still love the sentiment of them. the link to other translated samples from this collection is found here.

dopamine* (012-015) the mirror breaks i can't stand being alone because i'm not alone i can't stand it i need to tear this scene apart i need to scour this moment element breaks through the set i start building a black castle on a white piece of paper. too low to collapse. too thin to tumble. creation gives birth to another creation. the more you talk about it, the more you have to say. the complementary set penetrates the entire set. outside the black castle you are away from the scene away from the moment i drink coffee with you, you exchange glances with me, I sneak out and smoke a cigarette, and in the meantime you drop a drop of whiskey into your mug you help me, i pretend to help you, you imagine being helped by me, i think i helped you, and we feel good about eachother my heart is racing riding a sports car and sharing chocolate love your enemies! love your elements more! far-sighted and thin-eared people are startled we need a bigger stimulus to get closer, to get thicker to become a solid element to become a large set to become alone to become not only alone to be, come alone if you can't stand it, you can't stand the scene and the moment, you can't stand to tear the assembly apart, you can't stand to break the mirror hurry! more cheers, more applause my head hurts as if i've poured out too many words and have been rereading them one by one in the broken mirror my pieces shine sharply and shout, arthur! * it is a neurotransmitter that plays a role in transmitting the excitement of brain nerve cells. it affects movement, attention, learning, cognition, and motivation, and it is known that a deficiency can cause parkinson's disease, and an excess can cause bipolar disorder or schizophrenia

♱ another moment of artistic liscence, it wasn't mentioned in kyrie's ms but this is the colour i was imagining for the condom wrappers

xxii.

♱ similarly i just decided to make the pen look like a surfboard - i was thinking of smth kitsch like this, made of wood or like pseudo wood idk

♱ 토토 refers to mostly sports betting that occurs mostly over the internet

♱ toto - from this point on, this is mostly what buda calls the brat. toto is the real name of a parrot bg had (which most moa should know)

♱ at first i was trying to figure out whether purple was a reference to lean or to heroin, but the chatrooms came though for me - purple is a drug that kyrie inventing, describing it only as a narcotic (below is the raw translation of a discussion between two knetizens on a public forum)

♱ toto starting to curse - the more you know someone the more they become you

♱ in the standard edition of mad summer, the items on the bucket list are not revealed in this moment (two are mentioned at later points in the story though). however, from scouring knetizens chatrooms, i was able to find information about toto's full bucket list (more raw translation extracts yikes) which is featured in the reprints on mad summer

♱ i chose october 27th as toto's d-day because it was the day that baz luhrmann's 1996 film romeo and juliet first premiered (kyrie only mentioned a random date in ocotber)

xxiii.

♱ had to change this to be relevant to the avctual seasons of cuba lol

xxiv.

♱ the blue aloha shirt is another reference to romeo and juliet. i do love the cockiness and kitsch of buda loving this shirt so much

the official madsummer fanart that came with the physical copies of eacg book features buda in his blue hawaiin shirt and toto wearing the shirt in the photo abvoe the fanart photo

♱ to show how deranged i am, i spent literal hours trying to figure out which church kyrie had taken inspiration from, since all other landmark locations in the story were based off of real places - i learnt though that this chapel in particular is not a real location and more an amalgamation of several chapels, including the iglesia de santa ana. (said it once i'll say it again - check out my locations folder whoopdoop.) the church depicted below is from the official fanart that came with physical copies of the book - it's of a scene from act iii where buda visits the temple and hugs the statue of mother mary. again, he's wearing his hawaiin shirt here.

xxv.

♱ here are the stories i imagined to be on buda's shelf - Peter Pan, The Alchemaster’s Apprentice, The Little Prince, Coraline, The Time of the Fireflies, Through the Looking Glass, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone. at some point i'll make a goodreads list of books to read if you liked madsummer, as well as all the media refernced in the story (clarifying whether it was me or kyrie who firt alluded to thst piece of media in our rendition)

♱ if it isn't obvious enough, the film toto watches is baz lurhman's 1996 romeo and juliet movie. this fiim is at thte centre of madsummer - narratively, thematically and symbolically

♱ i added a reference to shakespeare's romeo and juliet here.

A double suicide. A violent end. -msaabha

These violent delights have violent ends And in their triumph die, like fire and powder, Which as they kiss consume. The sweetest honey Is loathsome in his own deliciousness And in the taste confounds the appetite. Therefore love moderately; long love doth so; Too swift arrives as tardy as too slow. -william shakespeare romeo and juliet

woah is that foreshadowing?

♱ the song that played at the end of the movie is radiohead - exit music for a film

♱ there were times in the original narrative where kyrie refers to buda and toto as other animals, but i wanted to do my best not to mix metaphors - instead of ending the thoguht about the cocaine dog wehre kyrie did (toto laughing at the thoguht of buda being a cocaine dog) i made toto laugh at teh thoguht of buda being a cocaine sniffing cat (i would die for buda+toto's cat+dog dynamic)

♱ staring yearningly at your homie's back while you're sharing a bed at a sleepover is a core part of the queer experience i don't make the rules sorry

in closing

i will update this if i remember to add anything, if anybody has any questions or needs clarification on anything. at some point maybe i'll spellcheck this but maybe i won't. we'll have to see lol. here are three final points

♱ shit is about to ut

♱ the below fanart was comissioned for madsummer's printing, n postcards and postcards came with each purchase. i'll make a post on each of these fanarts maybe, going into more detail abbout each, as wel as the book covers

♱ remember that madsummer was set in 2019

this is what the person toto was based off looked like in 2019

this is what the person buda was based off of looked like in 2019

these are literal babies.

and i will leave you with that thought.

☀︎ with love - hometown.angel ☀︎

act i - timeline

hopefully more accurate than it isn't (don't cancel me if i've miscalculated some of these dates) here is a timeline of the main events that either occur or are recounted during act i of madsummer. i made this chart at first for myself just so i could keep track of the things but i thought it could be helpful for others to have access to as well

i hope the way i've formatted this is easy enough to understand? i'm awful at numbers and so i've always used colours to help me understand maths things. the chunk of dates where the cell colours are the brightest is the period over which act i takes place - i'll update the timelines as i go in order to avoid spoilers

but yeahh

☀︎ with love - hometown.angel ☀︎

#tomorrow x together #txt #moa #txtmoa #fanfiction #fanfic #ao3 #ao3 fanfic #미친 여름 #madsummer #mad summer #msaabha #hometown.angel #madsummer - an adaptation by hometown.angel

just posted act i posted onto ao3!!!

mad summer - an adaptation by hometown.angel - act i

eekk! the day has come! happy six years of madsummer y'all - i really hope y'all like my adaptation i'm so nervous haha <333333333333

all i need is six people to read my madsummer adaptation and then i can die happy 😌

hoping fervently that the c0pyright gods don't strike me down too soon amen - art is for the people

na but for real - i've been working on this project for over six months all by myself, and i cannot wait to share all that i've found out with the world. once the story's all done, ig this blog will kind of turn into a madsummer-centric page, kind of like the account <@ madsummer_1313> on twitter (vvv helpful page) (should i make a post on all the online sources i used? that would be fun even if nobody reads it lol)

in other queer news tho shoutout to my katseye bias ms lara raj for publically embracing her bi-hood even if the closet was glass- feeling very validated rn as a brown bi girl ;)

also i am such a menace and the act i playlists (lyricless and lyrical) will be up later this week (coursework has been heavy recently argh bear with me)

i'm also working on a tumblr post about the similarities between madsummer and 0x1=lovesong, hopefully to spark more traction around my adaptation but also just bc i like deep-dives on my special interest haha - i'll write a properly strucutred formal essay on m.s, 0x1 and romeo and juliet once act iii of my madsummer adaptation has been uploaded. (also i just recently started banana fish n i feel like kyrie was v much inspired by it - potential essay topic? maybe, who knows)

but yeah! hope y'all are doing greatttt, and vv excited for bg's solo debut ooop (raise your hand if bg is ur ult bias 🙋)

☀︎ with love - hometown.angel ☀︎

#tomorrow x together #txt #moa #txtmoa #fanfiction #fanfic #ao3 #ao3 fanfic #미친 여름 #madsummer #msaabha #hometown.angel #madsummer - an adaptation by hometown.angel

like always, please check out my disclaimers here. otherwise, happy reading!

ACT I - PROLOGUE

MADSUMMER - AN ADAPTATION BY HOMETOWN.ANGEL

ACT I

Beomgyu lay on the damp cardboard box he'd flattened out and fashioned into a makeshift mat. After ten days spent in direct sunlight the exposed skin of his cheeks, his neck and the back of his hands had ripened a scowling red.

Since it was the middle of the day, and still a few weeks before the schools let out, the shoreline was less busy than it would otherwise be. Sightseers wandered aimlessly across the promenade, the sands, the low waves. Some tourists wore large brimmed hats of woven straw-coloured polyester. Most tourists held a coconut in one hand. Local children gathered coconuts, hacked off their tops and rested plastic straws against their white slimy interior walls - a gimmick that enchanted only foreigners, these fruits were sold all along the boardwalks. Anyone who drank from such coconuts unknowingly indexed themselves as a tourist. Only tourists would pay to drink barely flavoured water.

Is this yours?

As he was finally starting to doze off again, Beomgyu was awoken by a voice behind him and a sudden tap on his shoulder, and he raised his head to meet the commiseratory gaze of an elderly man. The man's wan blue eyes were deep set in wrinkled, liverspotted skin, and upon his head he wore a straw hat. Beomgyu adopted a polite smile. In one hand the man held a coconut. With his other hand he pointed at the ground, repeating the same series of unintelligible syllables - English. Beomgyu couldn’t understand. His brow furrowed with confusion. This only made the elderly man gesture more emphatically. Gradually it dawned on Beomgyu that the man had been trying to draw his attention to the bills and coins scattered around the sand. He rifled urgently around in his baggy jeans for the pocket that he habitually kept cash in and groaned internally as his fingers found that the seam must have given when he'd fallen briefly, and fitfully, asleep.

Beomgyu couldn't muster up the strength for more than feeble exasperation. He was unbelievably tired. He just kneeled and picked up the notes nearest to him, shaking the sand off of each as he went. Seemingly satisfied that he had at last been understood, the elderly man resumed his senseless babbling, calling over a group of people standing a little ways off. The top of Beomgyu's head tingled in the midday sun.

The party who was with the old man, all adorned in garish Hawaiian shirts, hurried over to help rummage in the sand. They spoke among themselves. The boys who sold coconuts along the boardwalk also joined in the effort - Beomgyu pretended not to notice some of the oldest among them pocketing the coins. The foreign words spoken around him - English and Spanish - jumbled together, garbled and nonsensical. The wind raged like television static in his ears.

Unable to kneel with his younger counterparts, the old man stood silent and dumb. His companions seemed embarrassed on Beomgyu’s behalf - the young vagrant wouldn’t respond to the tourists’ charity with plaintive indebtedness. Of course, they weren’t to know that the boy had long since abandoned shame, and that all that would once have brought him gratitude had abandoned him even longer ago.

His fingers fiddled with the fraying denim fabric at his knees. Beomgyu shielded his eyes from the sun with his free hand and scanned his surroundings. Small gatherings of other foreigners, those who'd flown in on the tourist season’s precipice, drank from coconuts and took photos on their cellphones and scratched their initials into the sand with their manicured fingernails.

Struggling against a thick brain fog that likely induced by a dangerous mixture of hunger and dehydration and sunstroke, Beomgyu at last found the solitary figure he had been looking for - a young man in the distance who was walking out of the sea. No oversized hat. No coconut. Instead he held firmly under one arm a surfboard. Beomgyu watched as the man adjusted his grip on the board, realised in an instance that it was slipping out of his grasp and grabbed back at it with such swagger that this whole sequence seemed deliberate - a well-rehearsed performance, a pantomime of the capacity to err, of mortality. Something about the strength of his hand, something about the casual certainty that was shamelessly evident in such a menial, mundane action reawakened in turn something in the cavity of Beomgyu's chest. The man was cocky, sure - but he looked so cool.

Beomgyu grabbed the money that the tourists and the coconut boys had gathered and mumbled subdued and insincere gratitude before turning from their startled sympathy and hurrying off, forging in the sand his own desire path parallel to the skyline. But a tug at the hem of Beomgyu’s jeans caused him to stumble and trip in a manner that was ridiculously comic. He turned to see a coconut boy clasping at his foot, one of the younger ones who hadn’t taken a cut of the change for themselves. The boy - more of a baby than a boy - clung to Beomgyu’s ankle. Beomgyu frowned and tried without much success to push the child away. The baby’s vice-like latch was surprisingly relentless, as was the unwavering hunger in his young glare. Without breaking eye contact the baby opened and closed his free fist. In a different world, an infant would use this gesture to request their mother’s milk, but here in the poverty of the beach Beomgyu realised that the baby was begging for money - a child who couldn’t read the words or the numbers printed on the notes in Beomgyu’s hand but had learnt already, at such a young age, to understand what they represented. This was how it was when you were raised by the streets. No adults to feed you. No adults to fight for you. You figured out how to snatch before you did to speak. In one decisive push Beomgyu detached himself from the child’s grip, and slipped a handful of notes into the baby’s hand as he left.

With his every step bringing him closer to the man, he felt the unnamed something swell inside him - curiosity? desperation? - and forced its way up his windpipe. Only once he began to hyperventilate was he aware he was sprinting along the boundary where the sand blurred into the sea. He was flying. The coconut boys screamed warnings from somewhere far behind him - the wind tore up their cries and tossed their caution across the sands. In spite of the rising swell that pulled at his feet, begging him to return to the shore, Beomgyu pushed forward. He held the notes in his left and the coins in his right. Salt was heavy in the sea breeze and it scratched at his nostrils as he inhaled raspingly.

He stumbled. The ocean had sucked him in - he had been so fixated on the man that he hadn't noticed the water around him getting deeper and deeper, reaching now just below his waist. He watched the man striding away, towards the pier. Again, he felt his feet give from under him, but though he let all his change fall from his fingers, he fought to keep his head above the shallow waves. He needed more than anything to reach the man. This was the last day he would try.

The coins - a collection accumulated over the past ten days, all convertible pesos that almsgiving tourists had placed at his feet - sank to the seafloor but the bills floated carefree, bobbing like gulls on the surface of the water. So much Korean currency in the Caribbean ocean? It was a strange landscape.

that's the prologue of madsummer act i! a lil sneak peak of what's to come (later in the week i'll probably work a bit more on cleaning up my tumblr n making it easier to navigate haha) - tomorrow i'll upload the act i playlist, and then the rest of act i on tuesday.

if you enjoyed reading le prologue, i would be vvv appreciative if you could share this post. i'm absurdly grateful to the four people who have already reached out to me to let me know how keen they are for my english adaptation of madsummer to at last be uploaded - it means the world to know that people are looking forward to reading it as much as i'm looking forward to having it read by y'all. i've always said that i'd be content if at least six people read my madsummer adaptation - only two more people to go!

i hope that you're as excited for this project as i am eeeeeeeeekk :))))))

☀︎ with love - hometown.angel ☀︎

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