Going Your Way - Meta

[outstretched]

(Read the fic here!)

When I read aronnax's Complaint Department and realized it was set in NYC, I had this moment where I went "Oh, duh, why hadn't I thought of that?" I was born and raised in New York City, and they always say to write what you know, and the longer I thought about it the more I realized I had so much to say about New York City and all the places and things I love about it. I stuffed as much as I could into this fic, but there's still a lot left unsaid, so I wanted to explain all of my thoughts and reasons for including tiny details here and there?

Also, this is probably going to turn into a whole AU verse of fics, oh God.

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How the fic came to be:

This was a request from misura for the qldfloodauction, but she was a darling and gave me tons of room to play with. This was her initial request:

I lean more towards romantic comedy and fluff than angst. [...]

- characters declaring their love in unexpected ways
- possibly to an oblivious object of their affection
- characters being ridiculously in love with each other
- characters needing to have their feelings pointed out to them by friends
- domestic adventures (grocery shopping, clothes shopping, cooking, renting a movie)

My first attempt at this prompt, considering that I really wanted to write about NYC, was one where Zhou Mi was an international exchange fashion student studying at NYU, and Kyuhyun was a comp sci major at NYU who, through a stroke of (good) fortune, ran into Zhou Mi being completely lost in the middle of Penn Station and helped him navigate to NYU's international dorms. (You can read the bones of that first attempt here.) I wanted to play with the idea of being separated somewhat by language and moreso by culture, and I wanted to write about NYC adventures, and I wanted to write about NYU (I didn't go there, but I have a lot of friends who did). But then those ideas split into three different fics (one of which is this one), so.

In particular, Going Your Way came into existence because I read evaporate's Icing on the Cake and was really charmed by the concept of a roommate AU. I'd also been kicking around the idea of of QMi being buskers for a few months, because I love the music that crowds the NYC subways. After reading Icing I just sort of...opened gedit and started writing, and three hours later I realized I was further on this fic than I had ever been on the international student AU, so I decided to just finish this one instead.

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Meta/notes:

I'm just going to ramble sort-of in the chronology of the fic, and we'll see how this plays out.

• I have a lot of headcanon for this fic that will, hopefully, get turned into fics in their own right, so I'm not going to go into them here. But in particular, I imagined that Kyuhyun graduates from a CUNY, went to a specialized high school, and (as a high schooler) worked at a pet shop where he spent most of his time surrounded by adorable bunnies.


• Astoria is an amazing neighborhood in Queens. I used to visit my friend (who lived in Astoria) just so I could wander around and eat at every restaurant on Broadway, not even kidding. It's got such a lovely charm and energy to it, and everyone is actually pretty friendly. I imagine Zhou Mi befriended every shopkeeper by the end of the first week.


• Kyuhyun in this fic has a tendency to pick up soul-destroying jobs that (by virtue of their soul-destroying nature) also happen to pay pretty well. To be honest, reading audio books for the blind is usually a volunteer position—my same Astoria friend did it for a few years—but this is a work of fiction, after all. You'd think it'd be an interesting job, but it isn't. It mostly consists of reading textbooks whose topics you find completely uninteresting. But if Kyuhyun's voice was reading said textbook, I'd probably find it mesmerizing, sigh.


• You really can get free tickets to Carnegie Hall—some organization gives them out. I get free tickets every now and then myself. Mostly the tickets are to recitals. If I could remember anything about said organization, I would tell you more, but I don't.


• I also happen to have a soft spot for Impressionist classical music.


• Central Park at night is really bad idea, btw. Don't go into Central Park at night alone! The crazy jogging serial killers will get you! (It's pretty creepy at night, js; also, I am only mostly serious.)


• I like to imagine that the four people who give Zhou Mi money (when Kyuhyun first discovers him) all leave him twenties.


• Did you notice that Zhou Mi's equipment gradually upgrades as the fic goes on?


• Astor Court in the Met is more popular than it used to be, but when I first discovered it in middle school, it was the perfect place to be completely alone. Going to Astor Court seriously feels like stepping into another place and time. It's still my favorite place in the Met.


• With that said: misura, I'm sorry that QMi only go on "real dates" in this fic, and that there is no real domesticity. I screwed up this initial prompt so hard. When I was writing this, I was like "Oh drat, this isn't a comedy, I just hope to god it counts as a romance fic..." The jury's probably still out on that one, but oh well.


• Zhou Mi's previous roommate was Henry, who moves in with Amber (because I want to play with this pairing one day, maybe).


• The green copper roofs across the street from the Met belong to Marymount School. I notice it every time I'm walking out of the Met.


• Ahra runs into busking!QMi at the Lexington ave / 51-53 st station, where the 6 and E lines connect, because for some reason this station always has spectacular performers. QMi would fit right in. It's also close to midtown, where Ahra works because she is a hotshot lawyer (although I never got a chance to mention it in the fic).


• One of my betas mentioned that they spent the whole fic waiting for Kyuhyun to ~realize his dream~ and try to break into the singing world. Kyuhyun is actually pretty happy where he is, though? One of the points of the fic for Kyuhyun is that he's settling into adulthood and discovering that he loves the life he lives, because he forged it himself.


• Yes, you need a busking license in NYC. The downside is that it costs money; the upside is that sometimes it gets you a snazzy sign!


• Each borough in NYC is rather an island to itself (usually literally, lol). I've been to all the other boroughs combined less than twenty times. Inversely, some Brooklynites live their whole lives without ever setting foot in Manhattan.


• The other guilty pleasure aspect of this fic was that it gave me an excuse to make Kyuhyun and Zhou Mi sing all the songs I wish they would sing but know they never will. chrysa told me to make them sing Vienna Teng's Stray Italian Greyhound, which is a very QMi song, but I couldn't find a way to sneak it in. I also really wanted to write a scene where the two of them rock out to Boys of Summer in Kyuhyun's bedroom, but that also didn't fit anywhere, so it got cut.


• Just imagine kid!Ahra torturing her baby brother by making him watch Disney movies over. and over. and over. He still knows all the Disney songs by heart (and, when he's trapped out at Coney Island, he sings them).


• Bartender!Leeteuk and bouncer!Kangin is something I desperately want more fic of. (This is TJ's fault.) I'm so happy I found a place to fit it into my own writing, and I'll probably write a fic about Kangin and Leeteuk's backstory in this universe one day. (It involves childhood friendship and a lot of blood.)


• Kyuhyun got the interview (in part) through Ahra pulling some strings because, despite how much she likes Zhou Mi and QMi, she doesn't really want her brother to busk for the rest of his life.


• I imagine that Kyuhyun listening to trance when he programs is a habit he picked up in high school and hasn't yet been able to break. (Maybe he graduates to dubstep one day if he's lucky, idk.) Pandora really does have an odd habit of playing "Satellite" a lot, at least on the trance station I listen to. I also think that Satellite is a really interesting song in the context of k-pop; "you're half a world away, but in my mind I whisper every word you say" sounds a lot like fandom, doesn't it?


• The Kinsey scale scene is my favorite scene in this whole fic.


• Kyuhyun's dramatic (second) confession was my last-ditch attempt to swing the fic somewhat closer to the romantic comedy genre. Romcoms have dramatic confessions, right...? Oh god I'm such a fail


• Zhou Mi meeting Kyuhyun's parents was going to be a whole scene (or three), but the fic was getting too long so I skipped it ;_; maybe I'll write it for real at some point.

...I think that's everything I was thinking as I wrote this (except for the million offshoot ideas that are going to be their own fics eventually). Um, I hope that was at least slightly interesting, and thanks for reading this far /o\