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lachrymosyGetting more in the habit of doing these fic commentaries... On the one hand it's nice for fics to stand by themselves, but on the other hand it's really fun to write about the thought process behind a story and the influences on it coming into being!
Fic commentary on empty vessel, crooked teeth
!! content warnings for discussion of eating disorders, dieting, fatphobia, and industry-typical manifestations of these things !!
This fic started out as a question of whether or not I could write about eating disorders and diet culture in the Kpop industry in a way that was neither sensationalized nor voyeuristic. I do find many examples of media on anorexia in particular to be kind of voyeuristic, glorifying thinness and illness while also holding a level of kind of grotesque interest in the bodies of people suffering from it. There's a sense I get from media that there's a line which famous people are expected to toe, as thin as possible without people feeling uncomfortable looking at them (and if they do get to the point of making people uncomfortable, then people feel a right to ogle them). But especially on camera, that line is I think a longer reach than in real life, because of both the distortion produced by the camera lens and because it's become so normalized that I think much of the time we aren't aware of how those same people would appear in real life.
I think it's also a very touchy topic for people because of the way the discourse usually plays out. On the one hand, people should not be shamed for their bodily appearance, full stop. On the other, we're living in a world of distorted images. I think it can become disturbing as well when a celebrity is exhibiting many signs of an eating disorder, even broadcasting those signs, and the fan response is to try to suppress and criticize any acknowledgement of that in the name of protecting that celebrity. I do think that going to a celebrity's post and commenting something about their weight is bad, but at the same time, celebrities are not merely private people—the image of them is being held up as aspirational, it's commodified to sell to appeal to the masses, it's sort of separate and beyond that individual experience. There's got to be a respectful, reasonable way to acknowledge that entertainment industries around the world glorify bodies which can only be achieved through disordered eating, without that also turning into shame for people with eating disorders, or assumptions about people who are naturally thin but healthy.
Because of this, I feel that fiction in particular is a good potential genre to try to process some of these things because we don't have the image right in front of our faces. A movie always has to deal with the convergence of image and story, but in writing we can emphasize different aspects in different ways. It's still extremely tricky to get right, but it's definitely the medium I felt had the most potential. I've also written a lot of idolverse that acknowledges both dieting culture and cosmetic procedures while still kind of dancing around it as the main topic. In some ways, I think it can't be the main topic anyway. Writing a fic about anorexia too often ignores the contextual factors that impact it. Writing about dieting and body image also has to take into account the context that glorifies some bodies and demeans others. So the question then became—as a celebrity, your body is commodified as part of this system. How does that feel?
I thought a lot about commodification of bodies while I was writing—it's been a long time since I read Marx but I always thought the concept of the commodity fetish was fascinating to apply to the world of celebrities and entertainment. (I'll say here also that I really don't have a thorough knowledge of Marxist theory, which is also fairly distinct from the implementation of Marxism as an economic model, but I think it's obvious how this little piece of it is useful for analyzing things.) Basically, the idea that we only focus on the celebrity, and we are only supposed to SEE the celebrity, in spite of the whole system that creates the celebrity. In Kpop more of the production side is obvious just because it's so institutionalized and there's a stronger sense that Kpop idols have less control over what they do than, say, their Hollywood counterparts. (I'm not sure this is true, but I think a lot of people believe it.)
In thinking through this, I really wanted to emphasize what it might feel like to be caught up in this. This really framed the fic because thinness isn't so much the goal in and of itself but thinness becomes a responsibility in this context. This is connected to some of my own experiences in some complicated ways but essentially I've been in situations where I felt that my unhappiness was problematic for people around me, who wanted me to perform the person they imagined me to be. Who I was, what I experienced, what hurt me—all of these things felt like intrusions when I imagined they thought I should simply keep quiet and dispense what they were looking for. I'm not even sure saying that is totally fair to those people I was around, but it shaped my thinking on how it might feel to be in this kind of system. You (the Kpop idol) have a responsibility to this whole system to be what they need you to be—marketable. Sellable. Anything less is a personal failure. And your body is part of that product.
I don't have any particular opinion as to whether Seungcheol or Jeonghan irl are affected by these industry pressures in the way I portrayed in this story, but I chose them to tell this story both because of how I read them as "characters" and because of how they're marketed. For Jeonghan, thinness is so clearly part of his public persona. He really embodies the whole beauty ideal in Kpop as well: trying to be absolutely as thin as possible with an egg-shaped face, something I think points to the glorification of youth. Seungcheol, as both the leader and the face of the HHU has a rather different image—I've said in the past that Seungcheol is in bold and Jeonghan is in italics.
I drew a lot of the characterization from this Weverse live specifically and wove it into their interactions in the story. I thought it was interesting here the way Seungcheol (the real one) attempts to walk a very fine line as he talks about needing to lose weight. In comparison with the live from Jun (which I think I have saved somewhere but I'll add it in here if I ever find it) Seungcheol doesn't then turn to the camera and say, but YOU don't need to lose weight. It's quite an interesting situation to me in this difference, where Jun chose to articulate this kind of meta-level analysis of his job requirements where for Seungcheol it's truly just, "you [Jeonghan] made me wrongly believe that I looked good like that." And like... of course many, many people would think he did look good! But I think it points to those expectations of the body which are already pervasive in most places but are so concentrated for an entertainer.
I didn't set out to create symbolism with the two smoking by pools scenes, so I'll leave that up to interpretation... I think there is symbolism in that but it's more organic to me, same with having them both be cigarette smokers here. A little bit more planned was the repeated references to mirrors, screens, and reflections. If I did get a chance to film this, I would refract the image of them through other things frequently and then use some other filming techniques to create a sense of intimacy with the subject rather than outside view of them—but of course, we're always on the outside, it's inevitable. This is the issue of the whole thing.
I also initially thought that the ending of the fic would be a bit different, but after having several people reading it like it ending where it does, I decided to keep it that way and now I feel like it was the right decision. Because to me, the options Jeonghan lays out there really are the point. As a celebrity, they're trapped in a particular system. One thing I remember from stumbling across pro-ana forums probably a decade ago now is how intentional and meticulous the people on there were about protecting their eating disorder. To me that's conflated with fame in this fic; they come together. The eating disorder provides a mechanism for coping with the pressure of fame. In this way it is, as many people have pointed out, a means of control amidst chaos. If you've been commodified into a product, what do you have control over? You have control over your own body—you can modify it, starve it, and numb it in pursuit of the goal set in front of you. And to some degree, as consumers of the image of a celebrity, we aren't really able to remove that pressure with what we say or do to these celebrities. Our collective gaze is the main pressure, because we are the audience they need to sell their performance to.
With all this said, I also didn't want it to feel pointlessly bleak (and, truly, I don't even think it's a bad thing to appreciate their excellent performances irl and enjoy entertainment, even if I think it comes along with a lot of unexpected consequences). Even if the only option for healing is in the form of something neither will do—quit—I think it's important that they have a real connection with each other. I'm not totally sure they should be in the pseudo-relationship they're in, but that's kind of the point too. I find myself really interested in writing distance within intimacy, which I felt I captured well here. The other thing I do find challenging at times is how to write them all in such a way that you feel like these people have known each other since they were eighteen or younger, and I felt like there was a decent sense of the depth of those relationships here. But very much you've got two people trying to save each other from drowning and neither one has a life jacket. I did worry, though, about it feeling too depressing and the thing is that that can get voyeuristic too. Here their pain is simply not part of the show, it is a means to put on the show. Jeonghan really was the vehicle for delivering a lot of the thematic points because as he says, “We do what we have to do. And then we lie about it.”
I don't know what else I want to say about this except thank you to the friends who helped me out along the way—you know who you are and you're all incredible and really helped me navigate the choppy waters I needed to get through to arrive at the end point. I'm really grateful for their support through the process as well as the kind comments I've received on the fic. It is such a relief to read how people experienced this fic. I'm sure there are people who might read it who still think this is a topic that shouldn't be touched in RPF, and that's okay. For me, I think I found a way to write about it that felt authentic and empathetic. And I owe so much to the friends who helped me make sure I got the story to that point!
Finally, the title came from the Of Monsters and Men song "I of the Storm." I've been re-listening to this song after deciding to use it for the title and I think the refrain of "Are you really going to love me when I'm gone?" stuck out to me. In a way, I think this fic also ended up being about significance. What is one's value beyond the image of yourself in the world? If you are not beautiful (in a narrowly defined way) do you still deserve love? If you are not able to satisfy everyone's expectations, will they still love you?
If you got this far, thanks so much for reading these fic notes <3
Fic commentary on empty vessel, crooked teeth
!! content warnings for discussion of eating disorders, dieting, fatphobia, and industry-typical manifestations of these things !!
This fic started out as a question of whether or not I could write about eating disorders and diet culture in the Kpop industry in a way that was neither sensationalized nor voyeuristic. I do find many examples of media on anorexia in particular to be kind of voyeuristic, glorifying thinness and illness while also holding a level of kind of grotesque interest in the bodies of people suffering from it. There's a sense I get from media that there's a line which famous people are expected to toe, as thin as possible without people feeling uncomfortable looking at them (and if they do get to the point of making people uncomfortable, then people feel a right to ogle them). But especially on camera, that line is I think a longer reach than in real life, because of both the distortion produced by the camera lens and because it's become so normalized that I think much of the time we aren't aware of how those same people would appear in real life.
I think it's also a very touchy topic for people because of the way the discourse usually plays out. On the one hand, people should not be shamed for their bodily appearance, full stop. On the other, we're living in a world of distorted images. I think it can become disturbing as well when a celebrity is exhibiting many signs of an eating disorder, even broadcasting those signs, and the fan response is to try to suppress and criticize any acknowledgement of that in the name of protecting that celebrity. I do think that going to a celebrity's post and commenting something about their weight is bad, but at the same time, celebrities are not merely private people—the image of them is being held up as aspirational, it's commodified to sell to appeal to the masses, it's sort of separate and beyond that individual experience. There's got to be a respectful, reasonable way to acknowledge that entertainment industries around the world glorify bodies which can only be achieved through disordered eating, without that also turning into shame for people with eating disorders, or assumptions about people who are naturally thin but healthy.
Because of this, I feel that fiction in particular is a good potential genre to try to process some of these things because we don't have the image right in front of our faces. A movie always has to deal with the convergence of image and story, but in writing we can emphasize different aspects in different ways. It's still extremely tricky to get right, but it's definitely the medium I felt had the most potential. I've also written a lot of idolverse that acknowledges both dieting culture and cosmetic procedures while still kind of dancing around it as the main topic. In some ways, I think it can't be the main topic anyway. Writing a fic about anorexia too often ignores the contextual factors that impact it. Writing about dieting and body image also has to take into account the context that glorifies some bodies and demeans others. So the question then became—as a celebrity, your body is commodified as part of this system. How does that feel?
I thought a lot about commodification of bodies while I was writing—it's been a long time since I read Marx but I always thought the concept of the commodity fetish was fascinating to apply to the world of celebrities and entertainment. (I'll say here also that I really don't have a thorough knowledge of Marxist theory, which is also fairly distinct from the implementation of Marxism as an economic model, but I think it's obvious how this little piece of it is useful for analyzing things.) Basically, the idea that we only focus on the celebrity, and we are only supposed to SEE the celebrity, in spite of the whole system that creates the celebrity. In Kpop more of the production side is obvious just because it's so institutionalized and there's a stronger sense that Kpop idols have less control over what they do than, say, their Hollywood counterparts. (I'm not sure this is true, but I think a lot of people believe it.)
In thinking through this, I really wanted to emphasize what it might feel like to be caught up in this. This really framed the fic because thinness isn't so much the goal in and of itself but thinness becomes a responsibility in this context. This is connected to some of my own experiences in some complicated ways but essentially I've been in situations where I felt that my unhappiness was problematic for people around me, who wanted me to perform the person they imagined me to be. Who I was, what I experienced, what hurt me—all of these things felt like intrusions when I imagined they thought I should simply keep quiet and dispense what they were looking for. I'm not even sure saying that is totally fair to those people I was around, but it shaped my thinking on how it might feel to be in this kind of system. You (the Kpop idol) have a responsibility to this whole system to be what they need you to be—marketable. Sellable. Anything less is a personal failure. And your body is part of that product.
I don't have any particular opinion as to whether Seungcheol or Jeonghan irl are affected by these industry pressures in the way I portrayed in this story, but I chose them to tell this story both because of how I read them as "characters" and because of how they're marketed. For Jeonghan, thinness is so clearly part of his public persona. He really embodies the whole beauty ideal in Kpop as well: trying to be absolutely as thin as possible with an egg-shaped face, something I think points to the glorification of youth. Seungcheol, as both the leader and the face of the HHU has a rather different image—I've said in the past that Seungcheol is in bold and Jeonghan is in italics.
I drew a lot of the characterization from this Weverse live specifically and wove it into their interactions in the story. I thought it was interesting here the way Seungcheol (the real one) attempts to walk a very fine line as he talks about needing to lose weight. In comparison with the live from Jun (which I think I have saved somewhere but I'll add it in here if I ever find it) Seungcheol doesn't then turn to the camera and say, but YOU don't need to lose weight. It's quite an interesting situation to me in this difference, where Jun chose to articulate this kind of meta-level analysis of his job requirements where for Seungcheol it's truly just, "you [Jeonghan] made me wrongly believe that I looked good like that." And like... of course many, many people would think he did look good! But I think it points to those expectations of the body which are already pervasive in most places but are so concentrated for an entertainer.
I didn't set out to create symbolism with the two smoking by pools scenes, so I'll leave that up to interpretation... I think there is symbolism in that but it's more organic to me, same with having them both be cigarette smokers here. A little bit more planned was the repeated references to mirrors, screens, and reflections. If I did get a chance to film this, I would refract the image of them through other things frequently and then use some other filming techniques to create a sense of intimacy with the subject rather than outside view of them—but of course, we're always on the outside, it's inevitable. This is the issue of the whole thing.
I also initially thought that the ending of the fic would be a bit different, but after having several people reading it like it ending where it does, I decided to keep it that way and now I feel like it was the right decision. Because to me, the options Jeonghan lays out there really are the point. As a celebrity, they're trapped in a particular system. One thing I remember from stumbling across pro-ana forums probably a decade ago now is how intentional and meticulous the people on there were about protecting their eating disorder. To me that's conflated with fame in this fic; they come together. The eating disorder provides a mechanism for coping with the pressure of fame. In this way it is, as many people have pointed out, a means of control amidst chaos. If you've been commodified into a product, what do you have control over? You have control over your own body—you can modify it, starve it, and numb it in pursuit of the goal set in front of you. And to some degree, as consumers of the image of a celebrity, we aren't really able to remove that pressure with what we say or do to these celebrities. Our collective gaze is the main pressure, because we are the audience they need to sell their performance to.
With all this said, I also didn't want it to feel pointlessly bleak (and, truly, I don't even think it's a bad thing to appreciate their excellent performances irl and enjoy entertainment, even if I think it comes along with a lot of unexpected consequences). Even if the only option for healing is in the form of something neither will do—quit—I think it's important that they have a real connection with each other. I'm not totally sure they should be in the pseudo-relationship they're in, but that's kind of the point too. I find myself really interested in writing distance within intimacy, which I felt I captured well here. The other thing I do find challenging at times is how to write them all in such a way that you feel like these people have known each other since they were eighteen or younger, and I felt like there was a decent sense of the depth of those relationships here. But very much you've got two people trying to save each other from drowning and neither one has a life jacket. I did worry, though, about it feeling too depressing and the thing is that that can get voyeuristic too. Here their pain is simply not part of the show, it is a means to put on the show. Jeonghan really was the vehicle for delivering a lot of the thematic points because as he says, “We do what we have to do. And then we lie about it.”
I don't know what else I want to say about this except thank you to the friends who helped me out along the way—you know who you are and you're all incredible and really helped me navigate the choppy waters I needed to get through to arrive at the end point. I'm really grateful for their support through the process as well as the kind comments I've received on the fic. It is such a relief to read how people experienced this fic. I'm sure there are people who might read it who still think this is a topic that shouldn't be touched in RPF, and that's okay. For me, I think I found a way to write about it that felt authentic and empathetic. And I owe so much to the friends who helped me make sure I got the story to that point!
Finally, the title came from the Of Monsters and Men song "I of the Storm." I've been re-listening to this song after deciding to use it for the title and I think the refrain of "Are you really going to love me when I'm gone?" stuck out to me. In a way, I think this fic also ended up being about significance. What is one's value beyond the image of yourself in the world? If you are not beautiful (in a narrowly defined way) do you still deserve love? If you are not able to satisfy everyone's expectations, will they still love you?
If you got this far, thanks so much for reading these fic notes <3
