Firstly, thanks everyone who took the time to read this story and supported me ;-; It was actually such a new experience for me to write something like this because as a lot of you might know, I’m not a slice of life/realistic fiction kind of person and personally, I like writing fantasy a lot better, but this was definitely an enjoyable story to write.

I think a huge difference between this and what I normally write is that it depended a lot on the character development, and while that’s something I try to focus on in my other fics too, the plot was almost entirely character-driven and it was interesting fleshing out both Soyoung, Baekhyun, her friends and even her mother so that their actions and the effect of their actions would make sense. Actually taking time to analyze my characters like this was really just… new and tbh, I think it’s a huge aspect why I wrote this story so fast and why I enjoyed it so much.

A couple of things I wanted to say (but seemed too long to say in author notes because the chapters were already like 45 pages of eyesore, around 100 in all whoops sorry guys)—as I did mention in the foreword, I started writing this story because of seeing so many instances of ual abuse, assault, , possessiveness etc being romanticized on AFF, and while the other side of the argument is that “it’s just fiction”, I really do want to prove my point with this story that it just being fiction doesn’t cut glorifying something that would be traumatic and downright terrifying in real life and turning it into something attractive.

From what I’ve seen on AFF, there’s mostly two groups of people within this—those who romanticize these issues, know they’re doing so, and then brushing it off with the excuse that it’s just fiction and therefore they’re allowed to do what they want. The second group of people don’t know that they’re doing it, which isn’t quite surprising because normally it’s quite subtle and being exposed to these topics and seeing it normalized on platforms does desensitize people do it. And while I know that it’s probably improbable to change anybody’s perception on this when they don’t want to listen, these issues I’ve listed above should not be used as a plot device, thrown aside, and have the importance and the impact they have on a person stripped away until they’re nothing but something the author uses to their convenience to portray a character a certain way. A common defense I’ve seen from many people when confronted about romanticization is “what’s wrong about writing sensitive topics? Just because I write about it doesn’t mean I’m saying it’s good” followed by various analogies of violence being all over the media and movies and whatnot.

Please Subscribe to read the full chapter