heedo, yurim, and sexuality vs. canon

Dec 05, 2024

Over on tumblr, Anonymous asked:

hi! i've read all your heerim fics recently (new fan of them i know it's late) and i want to ask, have you always interpreted heedo as bi/pan? do you hc yurim as lesbian with comphet? bc i noticed you seem open to the possibility of heedo dating a man, her having a husband etc.

also you brought up threesomes with heedo and her husband plus yurim, but not the other way around of yurim with jiwoong and heedo haha is there any reason for that? or is because you see jiwoong and heedo as exclusively best friends slash rivals competing for yurim's heart.

sorry if this is a long ask! i love your fics thank you so much for writing them. honestly would love to hear more headcanons and any type of heerim content only because i feel like i missed out on them (●'◡'●)

Hi there!

You’re not late at all—we’re still here, they’re still there, and I’m glad you’ve found your way to join us! Thanks for reading my stories and for your interest. Your ask isn’t long at all, but my answer is about to be… LOL

So, to be honest, my interpretation of canon for Twenty-Five Twenty-One was actually the other way around: Hee Do as a lesbian that goes through compulsory heterosexuality, and Yu Rim as possibly bisexual/pansexual. I was actually pretty fond of Hee Do's crush on Yi Jin originally as precisely that - in a sense, it used to remind me a little bit of one of my favourite shows, My Mister: Ji Ahn's 'crush' on Dong Hoon, the reasons why it was never romantic (canonically as well), and why I loved it.

That’s different from what I’ve written (or at least published) most, as you’ve pointed out. The reason why I've often portrayed Hee Do as bi/pan instead is moreso a storytelling decision for each story. (And also my true main motivator, spite¹).

When you're sitting down to write for a 'non-canon' ship, you're always going to have to choose how you'll treat the canon relationships 'in the way' of that: do you make it so the canon couple you aren’t writing about actually never got together in this universe? Do you ignore the relationship entirely and don't even address the other character's existence? Do you acknowledge it, but break it off out of view and just pick the story up as if/once it's no longer a relevant factor? Or maybe you address it explicitly, both the relationship having existed and when it breaks off?

On top of that, when you're writing characters with a sexuality that is supposedly not addressed or portrayed in canon, you have to decide the answer for more of those questions. Not just ‘are they gay in this story’, but also ‘do they know they are’, ‘when did they find out’, ‘how do they feel about it’, etc.

There's no one right answer on how one ‘should’ handle a canon relationship or sexuality in fanfic, of course, and that’s part of the fun. For me, there are two main decisive factors for how the story I’m writing will go about it:

1. Time — how much of the story’s time would be taken up to handle the question to (my) satisfaction?

2. Theme — what is the story about?

So let’s take préparation, which I started writing basically as soon as Episode 15 ended, as an example. I always intended that story to be canon-compliant to the max because I love the show to bits. Being canon-compliant meant that Yi Jin and Hee Do would absolutely have been together.

But I also intended it to be a story 1) about Hee Do's first Olympics experience, 2) that is set in Madrid 2001, and 3) is about Heerim getting together there, a la ‘what we didn’t see’. In order for me to achieve all of those goals without dedicating a bunch of time to explaining Hee Do and Yi Jin's relationship under the framing of comphet, the best choice was to let them happen per canon, break them up 'off-screen' prior to the story, and consider it a matter already resolved in Hee Do's mind. Préparation isn't a story about Hee Do and Yu Rim falling in love, because they were already in love — and so defining Hee Do's sexuality 'against' canon is mostly needless and irrelevant; no matter of how much interest my headcannoned Hee Do comphet might be to me personally, it was largely irrelevant to the story I was actually trying to tell.

OK, but how about Yu Rim in préparation? Her portrayal also goes against what I said at the start of this post. And if I’d meant for the story to be canon-compliant to the max, why make her a lesbian with comphet?

Well, again it was a storytelling decision. For can you read my mind, I'd decided basically immediately that Yu Rim-in-Madrid was already in love, in big part because of the scene in Episode 15 where she goes to visit Hee Do before their match. Yu Rim would not be falling for Hee Do, because that already happened in the show; and so for this story, Yu Rim would be the one in love and aware, and Hee Do would be in love and as of yet unaware (which was a delightful dynamic to write).

Then ship to oblivion was born to answer the question of, OK… but how did she get to Madrid like that? I'd already had to decide this, at least partly, while writing the first story — ship to oblivion was just putting it to paper. It was meant to be an interlude to make Yu Rim's feelings explicit and give readers more insight into her experience of Madrid beyond the glimpses we had in Hee Do's POV. (Besides, pointing out how clueless Hee Do really was, was extremely fun.)

Mind, the sequel itself was (is) going to be an actual sequel of them being together from 2002 onwards.

Of course, ship to oblivion ended up digivolving into the sequel it was supposed to preclude, because my starting point for it in the draft kept going further and further back and becoming a monster of its own as I was allowed space to get into my favorite scene of the show and why I loved it so much.

And so those questions from before became relevant again: how will I choose to tackle Yu Rim and Ji Woong's relationship? I’d already decided the series was a canon-compliant story, so that was one thing done. I also disagree with the takes that claim Ji Woong and Yu Rim don't make sense as a couple (be it as themselves or when compared to Baekdo), so that was another. So how do I not discount the love Yu Rim held for Ji Woong, while also having her absolutely head over heels in love with Hee Do by the time Madrid rolls around, aware and ready to go the second Hee Do gave her the green light? Well, the answer to that is of course the story itself, bahah, and it's definitely at least comphet-adjacent because now I had the time to actually delve into her dealing with her own sexuality with as much insight as it merited.

Once we hit 2002 proper in the series from Hee Do’s POV there will be a bit more time to revisit some of the questions for her, though. :)

When it comes to my other published story that tackles the topic of their sexualities proper, the ladder, I had a very simple motivation: I just wanted to write them as adults. And, again, since I'm a fan of canon-compliance for this show, we were going with that once again, only starting off from further along in the timeline. So we know that, in canon, Ji Woong proposes, and Yu Ri accepts; we also know that by then Hee Do had already gotten married to a man who wasn't Yi Jin. (It’s… arguably debatable whether Hee Do’d had Min Chae by the time Yu Rim got engaged because the show basically doesn’t address when she has her besides the somewhat wonky establishing of MC’s age).

So then, how do Yu Rim and Hee Do get together after 2007 while staying canon-compliant? The scene that gave birth to the story in my mind was the two of them making out in the car while still being #besties, and it being news to Yu Rim to kiss a woman. As I started writing it out from there, I knew a couple more guiding bits, those being that I didn’t feel like writing cheating storylines, and I didn’t feel like switching POVs throughout. So that already starts answering what the story is about, and it also answers that there's no time to tackle Hee Do’s sexuality beyond canon since Yu Rim was the winner of the POV draw.

As the story evolved further, the contrast of Hee Do being perfectly happy with ending up with a man (if not for the whole 'madly in love with her best friend since they were young' detail that the story is at least half about) while Yu Rim feels the absolute opposite, all while loving Ji Woong, was very interesting to write. So I just went with that, which I suppose is the short answer to all of this: regardless of headcanon, when it comes to writing I just go with what is interesting to write, even if it might not be my choice pick for taking canon in.

Beyond that, though, all of this is a lot about the characters and how I see them. Hee Do is much less likely to settle for something that doesn't make her happy; she is much more likely to work her own feelings out; she's so much more about action in face of her feelings. So whenever I decide to write Hee Do in compliance to canon events, I have at least two choices: 1) make her a lesbian and have to answer why she'd stay in a relationship that doesn't make her happy (is she unaware of her unhappiness? How/why? Is she aware? Then why is she there?), how she gets out (is it a by-product of finding out? A fortunate accident?), etc etc, or 2) defer to canon proper and accept that she was happy with men. Mind, all of those questions are interesting and very fun to explore, but if they don't fit into the story’s theme in their alloted time, then I'm going with the latter.

Yu Rim, in the meantime, is... much more about duty, and much more likely to do something that doesn't make her happy if it's for the sake of what she considers her obligation (and, for Yu Rim, love = obligation). So out of the two of them, she's arguably more prone to the trappings of something like compulsory heterosexuality.

For the second part of your question:

When it comes to threesomes with Hee Do and her husband + Yu Rim, that was basically born out of me workshopping stuff for the ladder, where Hee Do's marriage had already been established. She was married and in love with Yu Rim at the same time, her husband knew it... and what did that mean for her experience while married? And, importantly, how much of any of that was relevant, needed, or wanted in the story proper?

I'd started writing out Hee Do talking about her feelings to Yu Rim just to feel things out and see if anything I could use came out (which is where a lot of what she tells Yu Rim in the last chapter comes from), and once she said she'd thought "maybe a threesome..." in her passionate little mind, it basically spiraled off from there into a draft of its own to explore it actually happening.

I've definitely written other types of threesomes or polycules for the show, though! That includes Hee Do/Yu Rim/Ji Woong and Hee Do/Yi Jin/Yu Rim both, because in my heart of hearts I've always been an OT3 lover. Heerim is actually the real surprise in that they end up winning out over everyone even when I'm not intending them to, lol. I had the recent realization that they are apparently my OTP when I saw my drafts always become about them anyway, goddang it.

The thing is that the dynamics between each of those trios is quite different - Hee Do and Ji Woong have always been competitive for Yu Rim's love and attention, especially so between each other, and that would be a hard thing to get over (unless, like we discussed earlier, investing time to make it happen and feel believable). Meanwhile, Yi Jin, Yu Rim, and Hee Do... phew; Hee Do is a jealous nugget of both Yi Jin and of Yu Rim, Yi Jin is not jealous of Yu Rim, and isn't jealous of Hee Do once with her, and Yu Rim isn't jealous of either but is but isn't but is. Yu Rim and Yi Jin get along, Yu Rim and Hee Do don't, except once they do, and and and- gkjdhgj. It's great and a whole ball of possible dynamics.

I do have a few things written out about both those trios in some of those possible dynamics, it's just that the majority of things I've written I haven't published. I'm trying to clean some stuff out to share, I just haven't been able to do it.

Overall, personally, I've always been a character-driven person as well as a multishipper and a crackshipper at heart; if I am fond of a character then I'm up for exploring anything. While I don't see Ji Woong and Hee Do likely to evolve into a romantic relationship, I'd be willing to see someone give it a shot (or to give it a shot myself, although I have at least a couple thousand words written of just Hee Do and Ji Woong hooking up but it basically being entirely about Yu Rim for both of them lmfao.) And we still have my good ol' motivator, spite².

When it comes to 2521, Ji Woong is my fandom bicycle, Yu Rim is my wrecking ball, and Hee Do is my eager retriever; so a lot of my thoughts or stories will come from that.

One of the best things to make the process of writing really interesting is having constraints - how to make something work under X limitation will always be more interesting to me than boundless freedom, and the easiest limitation to use sometimes is canon itself.

I know your question was about my interpretation of canon, and my answer was moreso about my writing, but that's because as you might see I'm less interested in decisive answers and more interested in exploring possibilities. :) Not every show activates that desire in me, so I'm very happy that 2521 did and does!

Thank you for your message, feel free to ask anything - and do let me know any of your thoughts! I'm always interested in hearing what people think, be it about my things or just the show itself.

#2521 #préparation #the ladder