thanku4urlove

Welcome to the final dreamwidth post!! I truly feel like that Paul Rudd Hot Ones meme right now. But we did it! We made it! We're here! The final chapter, and the final dreamwidth post. But this chapter is really long, and some stuff does genuinely happen, so I'll get sappy later.

First up is Seventeen's 300 day anniversary! I found the translation of that post on an inactive Facebook group, but nobody (including myself) uses Facebook anymore so I downloaded them and I'll just put them here.

Mingyu gets his driver's license (he talked recently about how he was the only member at the time that could drive!) and they record. There are a handful of vlives around this time (I recognized from bits from this one) but Jihoon never appears on camera and they talk about being busy, so I think he was probably working on music stuff. And... I just had to let Bumzu find out about jigyu haha. At first I thought that might be something that would happen after the timeline for this fic, but I really wanted to squeeze it in, so I did. I couldn't help having Mingyu call himself a fool, because of the jigyu cinematic universe and all that.

I can't remember if Seventeen actually got inspiration from High School Musical for Pretty U or if it was just comparisons that were being made (because people were making comparisons when Pretty U was released) but I couldn't resist the idea of Joshua introducing High School Musical to the other members. I also couldn't resist making Hoshi Team Sharpay.

The scene of Jihoon and Seungcheol talking was inspired by this story that Seungcheol told on vlive about the two of them looking at cherry blossoms and talking, right before Pretty U came out. The story of how Jihoon ended up joining Pledis is pretty well known by now I think, but he told the story most completely to Joshua In The Soop. (it's compiled nicely in this tweet lol). The stuff Seungcheol says about being insecure/the rings was something I made up, but I know that if I were in his position I'd be stressed. Also, I'm a firm believer that all of Seventeen will kiss each other regardless of any relationship any of them happen to be in, so of course Cheol is going to kiss him. Also I just love jicheol :(((((((

Mingyu talks about the lyric prank in his birthday vlive, to which Joshua says "It means we adore you!' I originally wasn't going to actually write jigyu's first date because I knew they'd be busy with Pretty U stuff, but as soon as I had Mingyu say the thing about the dragon, I knew I had to do something. I even made up a whole backstory for the family friend restaurant owner guy (in my head he's who taught Mingyu's cooking lessons lmao) but I was also at the very end of writing this and was kind of losing my mind a little bit. But hey! We deserve some fluffy jigyu, and they deserve to kiss as much as they want. So they went on a date.

And then they film the Pretty U music video! There are two (1, 2) behind the scenes videos for it, and I used the dates that I did because a staff member posted a video from the mv filming on... the 12th of April I think? I can't find the video anymore unfortunately. On the one hand that seems WAY too close to the release of the album to be filming the mv, but also they did say in a press release released on the 7th of the month that they hadn't filmed the mv yet, so they really just are Like That huh.

I think everybody knows about the Pretty U Showcase performance with the Joshua mistake. It's infamous!! He does a good job though. And the countdown vlive is cute!! It is a mess though lol. They're a little excited and scatterbrained the whole time, but they're excited, which is sweet. And then jigyu snuggle more, because like I said, they deserve to kiss as much as they want.

But then they're promoting Pretty U! And it's doing well! I don't have a ton to add about that fansign except for the fact that for some reason, Jihoon is thinking about marriage all of a sudden. I have Amy call Jihoon to set a bit of a precedent for this interview where she calls him during practice, and because he did help her with lyrics on this album! (It's a great album btw. Please listen to Home if you haven't) This is another scene that I added because I figured we needed some symmetry and closure, even if I didn't have space or time for the two of them to meet up in person.

And then, at the end, Seventeen have their first win on a music show. (There's a behind the scenes clip too.) I felt like this was a good place to end the fic, because it felt like a good resolution to Jihoon's story. I know I called this "the jigyu fic", and that's 100% what I intended it to be, but Jihoon really took over the longer I wrote and it really did become a character study too! Which I kind of don't like saying, because it feels so pretentious!!!!!!!!!! But I think it's true, at least a bit.

And there you have it!! The end of A Love That Won't Sit Still. Wow. GEEZ. All I wanted to do was a relationship study of the early years of jigyu's relationship, because as a jigyu enjoyer, the evolution of their interactions is something I find really interesting! But with me being the way I am, both as a person and about jigyu, I guess I can't be too surprised about where we've ended up. When I was starting to bounce this idea around in my head and the scope of just how much work it really was going to be started hitting me, I decided that I wasn't skilled enough for a project like that, and that it would just take too much time, so I couldn't do it. And continued to tell myself that for 4 whole months! But as they say, you won't know until you try, and time is going to pass anyway. I'm so glad that I wrote this. I'm proud of myself, and I'm proud of how it turned out, and I feel so lucky to have such wonderful readers. I really, really do!! If you've been here since I started posting, then I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart for going on such an unbelievable journey with me.

And, as my plotmap so eloquently puts it:

Hey friends! I'm back! I'm so glad it's the weekend. This fic is almost over!! Only 1 more chapter!!! I truly cannot believe it. It's a bit of a bummer that I'm not going to make it to Jihoon's birthday, but if this fic were any longer I think I'd just keel over, and I really want to share the ending with you guys! I have something else in mind that I can post on his bday (it will be ALTWSS related...) so I guess that'll have to be good enough.

I asked for questions for this dreamwidth post, and I did get a few! Which I proceeded to ramble about. For a while. I apologize. (Kind of. I think you guys should know what to expect at this point.) Before that though, let me present my singular piece of actual stuff that happens in this chapter: Scoups, Dino, Mingyu, Jun, and Wonwoo were seen at the Han river. Yeah. That's literally it LMAO. End of post!!

But now let's get to the questions! Huge thank you to everyone who sent me something, and while I probably won't do something like this again (because there are actual events to cover in the last chapter) people are still free to send me things on rs and twt and in comments and I'll answer! I love rambling about this AU, if that's not obvious already haha.

Starting with my dearest and loveliest Cyl:

(thank you so much for numbering these lmao)

1. I'll be honest, there wasn't really a shortcut for the research. For predebut stuff, content was one of 3 places, usually: YouTube (the 17TV episodes, which were usually either numbered (by season/episode) or had a date with them, which is how I found them); their official Twitter account, and translations of blog posts. The blog posts were definitely the most difficult, and I know that I missed some. Once the fic hit debut, stuff was a lot more widespread, so I just typed the date and "세븐틴" into the search bars for Google, YouTube, and Twitter, and saw what was out there to try to figure out what schedules they had (schedule lists on people's blogs did help!) I also had to keep track of hair and outfits so I could figure out when things were filmed vs when they were released, and all of that. Again, I'm positive that I missed some stuff.

I could only continue to write after I did the research and knew what to write about, so it was kind of a slow process; I did some research, wrote the info I had into a google doc, did that until I was burnt out and just wanted to write instead, tried to organize my new info into a plot, repeated that until I had an "arc" worked out (Jihoon’s crush on Cheol, 17 Project, etc) and then I actually got to writing. That sounds like a lot of work, and it was, but I love to research about things that I actually like, so it wasn't bad. I wish I could say all of this info was in a nice document or spreadsheet or something, but it's not. It's just interwoven with my plot map, and is completely jigyu focused, so it looks like this:

a MESS. the post-debut plot map is when messier.

Horrific, truly. How I managed to turn this into an actual fic is beyond me. Once scenes were over and crossed out it looked even worse.

I do want to someday surgically remove all of it from the plot map and make a nice document to refer to if I ever want to write something painstakingly canonverse again, but for now, this is all I have!

2. There are a few scenes that I changed! The big ones that come to mind are both in the final chapter, and since they don't happen, I don't think they count as spoilers? The first one was I planned on having jigyu getting hot and heavy in some kind of music show supply closet when Pretty U promotions start, just because that's a cliche that I think is fun (plus, we all waited so long for them to get together that I wanted them to be kissing as much as possible) but the more I wrote Jihoon, the more I realized that it would be a little too out of character for him to feel comfortable doing something like that. He has such a strong fear of being found out and such a strong need to protect the group that he wouldn't chance it—or, at least, wouldn't do it so early in their relationship. Maybe I can save that for some time in 2018, during his whole sexuality liberation journey (I have a lot of headcanons about the whole Ideal Cut tour era lol) but not right now. So I cut that out and rearranged it a little!

The other thing that I just completely removed was my plans for altwss to end during Aju Nice era, instead of Pretty U, which is what I ended up doing instead. I was basing my extremely loose/early plotmap on the progression of the early title tracks, and Aju Nice is about going on a first date, whereas the other songs were more about having a crush that wasn't even necessarily requited. But then I found out that Aju Nice was written before Pretty U, and jigyu act wayyyyyyyyyyy too boyfriend during Pretty U era for them not to actually be dating, so I cut it short. (am I even allowed to use the word "short" when talking about this fic? lol) But I feel like the ending really fits, and I'm happy with it!

Anon, you are so very cute!! I'll address the jeongcheol first. This sounds a little mean, but Jeonghan was a bit of a rebound for Seungcheol after Doyoon. Jeonghan didn't really mind, so it's not as bad as it sounds I guess?? Like they genuinely did start out on the same page, and in a really casual way. They start kissing a little bit before 17 Project begins filming, and the first time they properly sleep together is around chapter 22. Unfortunately, they're still being idiots. They're idiots for a long time. They're in denial about their own feelings at first, then about how the other person might feel, and Cheol has his duty to the group trauma and Jeonghan is afraid of vulnerability and commitment, as well as needing closure on the situation that is his farmboy ex. It's a mess, and so to me, jeongcheol don't properly get together until the break they both take in 2019. I have a few oneshots about their relationship planned, so keep an eye out!

And the gyuhan! I'm kinda bummed that Jihoon didn't find out about them until the end, because they're so important to me. This stuff is kind of addressed in the chapter, but Jeonghan finds out about jigyu pretty early on (like, pretty soon after that fight) and Mingyu doesn't talk about it until later. To me, chapter 22 is also around when Mingyu finally opens up to Jeonghan about it. He needed someone to talk to after kissing and almost getting caught by Wonwoo in the previous chapter, which is why Jeonghan knows about the glasses in Jihoon's studio (which some of you notice!) Jeonghan gets a bit of a biased look at their relationship, because Mingyu only really comes to him when he's Going Through It and needs help. He keeps it to himself, but he's still a little worried about jigyu and about how the relationship is going to go. (I also have a oneshot coming about some of this. Like I said, I cannot shut up about this AU.)

Oh! Well, when you think about one fic for a full 3 years, you start to lose your mind a little bit. The "other versions", while ranging in plausibility, weren't ever really going to exist. The least dramatic one was the idea what jigyu have just been together this whole time, which was sparked by this conversation with my sister and born from predebut jigyu just being so, so gay.

An idea that I did briefly entertain was maybe having Jihoon come out to Seungcheol during the Doyoon thing and the two of them having a sort of relationship before ultimately deciding that they're better as friends. I do still think that it's an idea that maybe could have worked, but I also didn't want to kind of... disrespect? Jihoon’s first love feelings by making him a Doyoon rebound for Seungcheol, and couldn't think of a plausible way for him to be okay with coming out to and being in a physical relationship with Seungcheol, but not okay with coming out to people he was arguably closer to at that time, like Soonyoung and Wonwoo and Mingyu.

The final "version" in my head is a wild one lmao. Basically... Jihoon does NOT get his shit together, gives up on his feelings for Mingyu, and in an attempt to move on, ends up hooking up with Kanto after their YOSM collab in 2016. Of course, jigyu were going to still be endgame and the Kanto relationship would end because Jihoon wasn’t going to be able to properly commit (I also had some Kanto characterization ideas that wouldn't make them fully compatible) and while I did find it interesting... Letting this fic carry on into 2017?? No chance. This was never considered seriously, just something I played out in my head to keep myself awake at work, but if you see YOSM on my top 25 Spotify Wrapped, don't say damn.

Ooooooh I actually really wanted to talk about them haha thank you!!! There are a few things, really. Mostly, his parents are okay with it pretty quickly because I didn't want to traumatize poor Jihoon too badly. (That's also why jigyu never got caught, when they were sneaking around.) From a character perspective though, Jihoon's parents just really, really love him. Queerness was something that I saw them as being relatively neutral on when it came to other people, but maybe didn't ever seriously consider in their own lives. I wrote the two of them having different reactions for a reason; with his mom, he told her himself in a very emotionally charged moment. She was quiet for a few minutes to digest it and stuff, it wasn't full-blown immediate acceptance, but if your son, who barely ever cries in front of you, begins crying when you tell him you love him, comes out to you, then begins to apologize, I think you're going to realize that he needs to hear that you still love him, you know? His dad hears it secondhand and we don't know how it was relayed to him. He gets over himself before actually talking to Jihoon, which is good, and then seeing him perform Simple at the concert is what flips his switch from "maybe we just won't talk about it" to "I love my gay son", if you know that I mean. They're not quite on the same level as Seungkwan's parents, but they'll get there!

Hello horangdan! Thank you!! I'm glad you've enjoyed the Hoshi Woozi relationship, because I really like them a lot! I do have a Hoshi pov oneshot that I want to write but unfortunately, it isn't super Hoshi focused in terms of him reflecting on things about himself; it's more about him helping Wonwoo and Seokmin on their own sexuality journeys (he's on one too, so that is going to be touched on, but Hoshi doesn't really strike me as someone that would be in crisis about discovering that they're not straight, so there's not a whole lot there lol).

One thing that I really would like to explore when it comes to Hoshi is gender and masculinity. While I was watching older content, I noticed that Hoshi really seemed to have a specific view on what it meant to "be a man" and was trying to uphold that, talking about needing to be manly and doing things because it's what a man needs to do, etc etc. His solo in their first concert is even him dancing around a woman that's like... tied to a chair? And it's supposed to be like, kinda rough and sexy and intimidating?? idk, it's weird. Anyway, fast forward and now Hoshi seems to be much more fluid with gender presentation. The difference in that old solo and his solo "Touch" for the Ideal Cut concert really exemplify it for me; he's definitely more demure and feminine, and has been a lot more flexible about it all since then. (I don't wanna say it was Taemin's influence, but Taemin is very outspoken and purposeful about how he fluctuates with gender presentation, and with how Move came out in 2017 and was a huge cultural icon, I do wonder....) I think that femininity (or at least, something more gender neutral) is an aspect that's always been there when it came to performance and expression for Hoshi, and I think somewhere along the way Hoshi has redefined what gender and masculinity needs to look like and how he wants to wear it. I don't know that I'm the right person to write a fic like that, but I would love for it to exist!! (I honestly have so many thoughts about Hoshi but I also prefer writing him from an outsider's pov instead of from his pov because then I can describe how cute and lovely he is. That's probably really silly but I am just so endeared by him and I love to channel it through my pov character lmao)

And those were all the questions! I hope that this was somehow interesting to at least one of you out there haha. Since circles is now dead on twt, I did want to at least share the saga of me overhauling 150k words of this thing, because oh man was I suffering.

(Also this because it makes me giggle.)

But that's officially it!! 30 whole chapters, wow. I really don't know what else to say except... see you next week for the end of it all!!!

Hehe. Hehehehe. Hehehehehe. Hi.

So, this chapter is a little later than the others! I think that this is around when I'll be posting these last few chapters (and then abandoning any posting schedule lol) due to work. There's actually not a whole lot to say in terms of links for this one; a lot of this chapter was "off-screen" so to speak, so lets get into it because I have a number of things I need to say at the end.

The first thing I guess I have is a few fan rumors that Seventeen were in Jeju in the second week of March. Seventeen were reported to be filming a mv, but there's a press release like a week later from the company saying that the mv hadn't been filmed yet, so I assumed it was the jacket photos instead. At the same time though, some of the mentioned hair colors/styles aren't correct, so who knows. Grain of salt. This is the first report of Jeonghan's shorter hair, though. Jeonghan's little thing in this fic about gender/presentation wasn't something that I was really able to touch on due to the pov of this fic, but it's definitely something that's changed in really interesting ways throughout the years that I'd love to delve into some other time. I think that the way it's expressed in this chapter isn't the way I would express it if talking about his feelings nowadays, but since it's set in 2016, I tried to come at it from a 2016 perspective.

And then they get Pretty U done! I posted a screenshot of it in the last chapter, but I took Jihoon saying "a lot of modifications were made" to Pretty U as they were making it and kinda ran with it. But Jihoon is out to Scoups and Bumzu now! I decided to have him say "Rain-sunbaenim exists" because I have a personal headcanon that his type is like. Buff and masculine hehe

And then he comes out to everyone else too! And they love him. Because of course they do. The Bumzu Adore U cover is something I found pretty late into writing this fic, and knew that I had to include it. The turnaround of Jihoon coming out and that vid being published is probably a little too close to be realistic, but it's my fic and I can do what I want. Bumzu being the one to go to the CEO about the song being (more) gender neutral was inspired by a segment of the interview that I linked in the last post where he says "And one thing about my songs are that I don’t really use “he,” “she,” “her” pronouns very much. I focus on lyrics, the message or the point that we’re trying to get across in the song." I thought that was pretty cool. Love and Letter is the last release that explicitly uses pronouns (I think? I'm too tired to check) and Aju Nice is the last mv that has a girl in it (again, I think? and not counting Ready to Love bc that mv was a bit of a mess lol). Scoups has even gone on record to explicitly say that making their lyrics gender neutral is an intentional choice that they've made, which is also very cool. I like these guys.

And then the confession scene!! I cannot describe to you how finally writing all of this felt. I'd been thinking about these scenes for like, literal years at this point. I reworked it all multiple times (and was still editing some of the conversations like, last week. I added a sentence yesterday while on my lunch break.) So... hopefully it was worth it! There's still a lot more talking that the two of them are going to do of course, there's like 30k of fic left, but it happened! It's real and it happened! I'm one of those people that uses thinking about fic as a way to drift off to sleep, and hilariously, I had a hard time sleeping for the first couple of weeks after finally getting these scenes written because this was the sequence I'd used to make myself sleepy, and once it was all written out I couldn't use it anymore. But also the relief of it finally being a scene that I could read was just so exciting!!! Because I truly do write fics because I wanna read them haha. I wanted to make it a bit sitcom-style with all of Seventeen following Woozi around, and hopefully that came across! (Also yes. I did use this fic as my NaNoWriMo project last year. It was maybe a terrible choice because I had to fact-check everything I wrote, which slowed things considerably, and time really is of the essence when trying to write 50k in one month!! I ended up having to edit pretty much everything lmao)

(it was... an interesting day lol)

Anyway. They are in love. And they're boyfriends. Boyfriends that are in love. Again, there's still a decent amount of fic left, but they're boyfriends that are in love!!! As they should be.

Now... Some other stuff. The first thing is that unfortunately, unexpected travel has come up and for personal reasons, I won't be able to post next weekend. Don't fret, the ending of the fic is written and the chapters are almost all ready to go (i always do a final read-through/edit the week before posting) but with all of the stuff going on with family, my new job, and my new kitten, it would be near impossible to get the chapter up and I just need to give myself some time. But, in that week, I have some homework for you guys!! I know that this dreamwidth post was pretty short, but aside from like two sentences, the entirety of the next chapter is all stuff that happens "off-screen", so I basically have nothing to write about. Instead of not having a dreamwidth post for that chapter, I thought that this might be a fun opportunity to answer any questions you guys might have! They can be left in the comments, sent through retrospring, or dm-ed to me on Twitter. Just make sure that you specify that they're for the dreamwidth post so I don't just answer them then and there lol. If an answer is a spoiler, I'll just say that, but I thought this could be a fun thing to do (if you even want to indulge me rambling even more than I already have about this fic lmao)

Another piece of homework is... Please do what you can to help Palestine. I haven't been able to even be online much for those aforementioned personal reasons that I'm not comfortable disclosing, but I have been donating and taken time to contact my country's representatives and I urge everyone to do the same, if possible. There are some resources that I've retweeted over the past few days that are a great place to start, which I am going to try to continue to do. It's hard to fight how hopeless things feel, but we have to try, and I promise that everything helps.

And that's it!! I'm beyond excited to finally have this chapter out in the world, and I can't wait to hear your thoughts and feelings!! See you in November <3

HAPPY FRIDAY!! First of all, please say hello to my new kitten. Second of all, please wish me luck for the first day of my new job on Monday. The job is completely flipping my schedule, so posting times for the last chapters will be affected! It'll still happen on Friday in my time zone, but I don't really think I'll know when during the day until I've actually started the job itself, so please be patient with me! I'll likely post updates for stuff like that on twitter while I get it figured out, but it's kind of up in the air at the time of writing this.

But lets get into the chapter! It starts with the last few episodes of OFD (again, playlist here). Minghao is sick, the members lose at foot volleyball, and have to cook a bunch of food. (Also, it's not mentioned in the chapter bc it has nothing to do with Jihoon but Hoshi, Dk, Minghao, and Seungkwan walk through a haunted house and there's a lot of screaming.) It's Jihoon's fault that the members are suspicious about the whole "cooking for the staff" thing, because he messes up at the beginning: he tries to frame it as an altruistic thing because the abalone group brought back so much food, but he had no way of knowing that the abalone group would be bringing back anything at all, so the reasoning makes no sense. They brush over it, but Jeonghan and Seungkwan are (rightfully lol) suspicious, and I'm pretty sure that they knew he was lying and just let it go, which is why Jeonghan brings it up again on the boat.

The ending of OFD Castaway is hilarious to me. In the canon of the show, half of Seventeen simply are stranded on the island for the rest of time. Like... what??? I don't know if they actually stayed there overnight or if they were able to get another same-day boat back, but I wanted to kind of nod to that canon by having them stay there an extra day. Also... The boys left behind do genuinely seem upset (Mingyu even confesses "our CEO tells us that we aren't allowed to say we won't do it, we can't do it, we don't want to do it, but now, I really don't want to do it.") so I had them stay.

And then Jihoon and Josh talk. The movie they watch is one that I made up! I also made up the stuff about Josh's dad obviously, because we don't know anything about him. That guy is COMPLETELY out of the picture (it's been talked about among fans, and he confirmed it this year). Paris is Burning is a real film though, and if you are able, I think you should definitely watch it. It's a documentary from 1990, and is a very genuine look at the drag scene (specifically ball culture) in New York City in the 80s, focused on the African American and Latino communities that participated in it. I can't say it's the most uplifting watch, but I do think it's an important part of queer history that's worth seeing.

The Yoon Jongshin collab happens! It is obviously Chocolate, and there's even a behind the scenes video where we can watch them all laugh at each other. Seungkwan is the least awkward when talking to the girl because of course he is, and for any fellow Belllie’ves out there, the girl in the mv is Suhyeon from Billlie!

Then they're at the Seoul Music Awards, where they perform and win their first Best New Artist award and have a vlive after to celebrate. Baby Seventeen's first award!!! The Idol Star Athletics Championship is pretty soon afterwards, and... We gotta talk about this Seyong guy for a second.

Now listen, I don't like the roman empire meme, but I do think about this particular moment a lot. This guy liked Woozi. Like, a lot. In public. On Twitter.

The guy was all over him. And I mean that literally.

Lucky dude even got some selfies!

Now, if you'll notice, Mingyu is there in the second picture. Mingyu is also mentioned in the second tweet, so he was clearly there when the two of them were interacting. We can assume that the two of them spent some time talking, but for some reason Seyong decides to (PUBLICLY, I CANNOT GET OVER THE FACT THAT HE JUST DID THIS ON BEYONCE'S INTERNET) ask Mingyu for Woozi's number. Why Mingyu? Why not ask Woozi himself? Why does Seyong feel the need to... what, see if Mingyu will do it? Try to get a feel for their relationship? I can assume nothing came of it because we never saw or heard anything about them ever again (that I know of) but like. What. What what what. Why. Huh.

(again, me to my beta reader. this single text was followed up by a conspiracy-theory level rant about this whole thing. at 5pm on a monday. bless her.)

Seventeen win another Rookie Award at the Golden Disc Awards (this is a fun performance, it opens with Vocal Unit doing an a capella version of Adore U with Woozi on the piano and the transition into Mansae sounds like it's an early version of Monday to Saturday), Mingyu, Dk, and Seokmin graduate high school, and Seungcheol wrestles Jungkook to the ground in 5 seconds flat. Idols just don't do stuff like this anymore.

It's Dino's birthday (this is where that clip of Jeonghan saying that Dino will be his baby until he's 30 comes from) and then the encore concerts happen! I have this concert and the behind the scenes content all uploaded to my Google Drive if anyone wants the link to it, though Woozi's Simple performance is on Youtube. In this one he's swaying to the music and smiling at the audience, and seeing that really highlighted for me how he was acting in that first one. It's a really big difference! Woozi's encore speech in this chapter is pulled directly from the translation on my copy of the concert DVD.

And last but not least, they start working on Love & Letter! Now, apparently, Pretty U was a nightmare of a song to put together.

Between this interview with Bumzu and the fact that the word "NICE" is visible in the Pretty U mv (i think Seungcheol even says that it's a spoiler in the making of the mv?), I decided to say that they wrote Aju Nice first. There was an interview with a producer that worked on Pretty U with Woozi (I can't find it right now, I'll link it later if I do) that said that Pretty U was really difficult to get approved. I just can't believe the way Seventeen work, honestly. They didn't finish the title track until one month before the whole album came out???? Woozi, Scoups, Vernon, Wonwoo and Dino are all spotted at Big Bang's concert, and then... The gyuhan talk!

Surprise! A lot of you were right about Jeonghan knowing things. He knows things. He knows a lot of things. Unfortunately, it's not Jihoon that he's talking to. I noticed that Mingyu and Jeonghan hung out a lot during the Mansae era, so I decided to use that to my advantage. This scene is another of those ones that I've had in my mind forever, and it's really wild to see it finally posted on the internet . Jihoon's made a resolution now, and everyone knows how stubborn he is!! Is it safe to say that we're in the home stretch?

And that's it! I genuinely can't wait for next week. See you then!

Another Friday is upon us friends! This chapter is SO long, but I wanted to get most of OFD Castaway taken care of in one fell swoop, so here we are. Like when 17 Project was happening, there aren't really too many separate links, because huge chunks of chapter are all pulled from the same videos. But lets get into it!

The first thing I really have a link for is the Q&A live stream that I mentioned in the previous post. It's a great video, especially if you're interested in hearing about the process of production and mv filming, which I always am (and the live performance at the end of course! They're cute.)

And Seventeen are yet again nominated for awards! Now, I will admit that I don't know how the nomination process works, so it might not actually have been a big deal, but my jaw did drop when I found out that Seventeen had actually been nominated for album bonsang at the 30th Golden Disc Awards. Hoshi wasn't just joking around.

Concert prep is happening, HHU are still trying to be cool rappers, Seventeen are invited to The Little Prince movie premiere (which. I still don't know why. It's a mystery.) I got a lot of the behind the scenes concert prep stuff from the bonus DVD that came with the Boys Wish concert DVD. I don't wanna put a direct link here, but I was able to find it pretty easily available with english subtitles. There's a great livejournal post (god bless lj) that's got links for all of Seventeen's concerts from 2018-2016. Would recommend. (I can send the link to anyone that dms privately to ask for it!) This is not me saying don't buy the concert DVDs, but like... things are expensive, the boys are plenty rich, etc etc. And I truly don't know where one would buy a debut era concert DVD in the year of our lord 2023, as well as if that DVD would have subtitles on it or not so like... yeah. I don't judge. Ask for the link if you want it!

All of that being said, while the behind the scenes footage is from both the first concerts and the encore concerts, the actual concert DVD is only for one of the two encore concerts that happen in February 2016, so I got my info about what happens at the 2015 concerts from the Seventeen Wiki page about it. Aside from a few (pretty rough, if we're being honest) fancams, there isn't a lot of info out there about the original 2015 concerts. Meaning... The only footage (that I could find, please let me know if there's more!!) of Woozi performing Simple for the first time is this 30 second video. And honestly... Maybe it's a good thing that I have anything else, because the first time I saw this clip it was like 3am and I started bawling.

Simple is a song that I have always loved (it was my most listened to Seventeen song in 2021... though my most listened to song overall was Kind by SHINee so I might have just been going through something) and the emotion on his face in that clip is something that honestly, I don't think I've ever seen in another Woozi performance. Like yeah, he always sings emotional ballads like he's going through his 16th divorce but there's an anxiety in that video that really makes me think about how much he's grown and just... Wow. Love this guy a lot!!

But before the concerts can even end, One Fine Day starts! All of the subbed episodes of One Fine Day are on Youtube, and have even been put into a beautiful playlist. I have watched this show like... 7 times maybe? 5 times for fun to show it to various friends (I am the opposite of a gatekeeper. If I like something I can and WILL make you enjoy it with me. I turned so many of my irl friends into carats that Pledis owes me a check) and then twice for the fic, once for note-taking/plot development purposes and once while I was actually writing so I got the scenes right. (Chocolate chip cookie dough is the perfect OFD watching snack, btw.) (Also, I just want to say that if you haven't watched OFD yet and decide to do so, there are scenes of fish being caught and prepared, so watch out if that's something you're sensitive to. And the end of episode 5 has a preview for ep 6 that's edited to make it look like Seventeen catch and slaughter a chicken, but that doesn't happen at all (my sister and I had to look it up before we watched ep 6 to make sure) they do cook a raw chicken, but it just looks like an already-prepped-from-the-store chicken, they don't actually go out and catch one or anything like that.)

This chapter covers episodes 1-6! This is another one of those shows like 17 Project where when you just watch it, you can view it through the lighthearted fun goggles that it's edited with, but then if you actually try to imagine what it would be like to be in that situation, it becomes a lot less fun really, really fast. I wrote Jeonghan as being suspicious from the start because when the production crew starts telling Seventeen to make a survival kit and abandon their suitcases, he does not look surprised in the slightest. I don't think he knew this would happen, but he knew something was going to happen. And in regular Jeonghan fashion, he was right. I don't know that Scoups actually said anything to anyone about the way they were being treated, but he's stood up to authority before when he felt that the members were being mistreated, so I wanted to give him a leader moment. I added the thing about taking the camera out of the bathroom because while it's remarked on in episode one by Jeonghan, after that one mention, no footage from it is ever used. Which, good! That is absolutely unhinged (and... extremely inappropriate and borderline illegal?) behavior. Half of Seventeen were still minors. What the fuck, man.

I don't cover OFD as extensively as I did with 17 Project because 1) I didn't have as much wiggle room (they're literally on camera 24/7, so I do play fast and loose with filming rules, please forgive me for that) and 2) it's just not as significant to any kind of development as 17 Project was. Woozi, unfortunately, was kinda the main character of 17 Project, when you think about everything he was involved in. For OFD, he occasionally goes fishing and mostly sits around in a cute pink hoodie getting handfed by Mingyu. Which, good for him, but that kinda just made this whole excursion something that, aside from some character moments, felt kind of time consuming. It was good to get Mingyu exhausted enough to say some stuff and admit some things though! Poor guy. It was difficult to have to write all of this and not have Mingyu tell the members "oh yeah I know how to cook because I've had professional lessons btw" lmao but!! It is what it is. He did such a good job.

And Jihoon is taking some slow steps forwards! I get more excited (and nervous, honestly) the closer we get to the end, but again, thank you all for reading!! Have a wonderful weekend, and I'll see you in the next one!

Omg! Here we are!! Only 5 more chapters to go, which is absolutely wild to me. This chapter is a pretty good mix of things I have links for and things I made up, so this entry probably won't be too long.

The first thing really available for mention is Jihoon going to the Brand New Music building to work with Lishbeats, which I only really added so I could have Kanto flirt with Jihoon. And I don't really have any links or reasoning for Kanto flirting with Jihoon aside from "I can and I want to", though I also did want to give a small nod to YOSM bc that is one of the best songs ever, but thanks to the timeline of this fic, doesn't actually ever show up!

(this is not the only time woozi gets flirted with. just btw.)

Seventeen being at Bumzu's concert comes from this vlive! It is a little cringey (they sometimes talk to the camera like it's a girlfriend, it's a concept that they tried for a solid two (2) vlives before deciding it was awful and stopping) but most of it is pretty cute. It takes place entirely backstage at the concert venue! They're trying to fit themselves on two couches, so some of the members are all squished up and sitting on each other, and booseok take it upon themselves to make jokes, and this video is where I got the whole "Jihoon using royalty money to buy the members meals and them calling him rich" came from; Woozi is asked what he would do on a date with this imaginary girl, and after trying to avoid the question ends up saying that he'll buy her a meal. The members then insist that he buy them a meal too, exclaiming that he's rich, which prompts Woozi to respond with "You're saying that like I don't!" The moment ends with Mingyu, completely unprompted, saying "Woozi looks so handsome on camera." Like. Okay. Thanks for the observation. They play mafia for a bit and then finally go onstage, and they keep filming, so we can also see the performance! It doesn't sound great bc of the livestream camera quality and proximity to the speakers and stuff, but they have Bumzu do some of the Mansae choreo, which is cute to see.

I mention that Seokmin is still hard of hearing after his surgeries simply because it's something that I've noticed over the years. I don't think he's ever officially said it anywhere (aside from mentioning that he had the surgeries in the first place and that he was deaf while healing), so grain of salt of course, but that guy always takes out one of his in-ears on stage. Always, and always the same one, which it makes me think that having it in probably isn't doing much for him, both in the "hearing the music cues" department and the "protecting the eardrum" department. The Two Yoo Project Sugarman thing was something I couldn't find much info about, so while I couldn't find/didn't watch the actual episode, Rania and Lizzy's performance is here and there are some shots of Woozi and Bumzu during it, so I could use Woozi's hairstyle to figure out when it was filmed lol. And then the boys get drunk and kiss!! Because I said so.

(did this fic get away from me? maybe. but also i think kissing your homies is very important, so it must be done. Also, if you don't know who Kim Jongkook is please listen to this song. It's gen 2 as hell and I love it. Jongkook himself is gen 1 though, he debuted in a duo called "Turbo", and here's him on a Music Show in 1996.) (.....I'm not a kpop historian I swear)

The Yoon Jongshin Monthly Project thing will come up later, so I'll expand on it then. I got the info about what happened on Jihoon's birthday from this short little vlive (they stick a rainbow party hat on the guy and he talks awkwardly to the camera for like 4 minutes). While it hasn't happened in the fic yet, the info about shooting the Q&A music video and stuff all came from this vlive! Seungkwan is the host and talks about the process with Jihoon, Cheol, and Vernon, and then Amy pops out at the end for a bit, and then they perform the song live. It's cute! I like them :)

...and then MAMA. Listen; jigyu shared a hotel room, alright? Stuff was gonna go down. A lot of their trip was filmed! They vlogged going to and being at the airport (they play a word game and Woozi declares that his heart is mayonnaise), then they vlog arriving and being sent to their hotel, then they vlog arriving at their hotel (this one has subs for some reason), then they have a vlive in the restaurant, but then there's other behind the scenes content of them from the same day, just different clips?? On day 2 they rehearse with Monsta X and have another vlive, and then they perform! And Scoups really does trip over Vernon's head. It doesn't look great. At the same time though, good on them for only having one mishap when the performance literally starts with Minghao sitting on a stack of desks! A lot of the desk stuff that they do is potentially dangerous, so really, one kick in the head isn't that bad. There was also a great amount of vindication in hearing that they remixed Sungsoo's "I think you all need more verification" from episode one of 17 Project into the Performance Unit dance break. It's so insolent and hilarious, I love them. I gave Mingyu a minor back injury here because he ends up fully spraining his back in 2016, so like... foreshadowing, or whatever. And also as an excuse for Woozi to give him a massage. And to mention the dimples on Mingyu's back. Y'know, the important stuff.

But that's it!! The confession scene was one of the first scenes I wrote in this fic (back when I was trying to convince myself not to commit to such a giant project) so it's super weird to finally be posting it. They are in love and making bad decisions about it!!! I know I said this already, but I can't believe how close to the end we are. I mean, we're not super close (each chapter is over 10k, the last one is nearly 20k) but still. We've come a long way!!! Sorry for all of the angst :') See you all next week!!

Happy Friday everybody!!! We survived the week. I'm so proud of us. Also happy 300k to ALTWSS!! I can't believe you people are still reading this thing. It's so damn long. A lot happened in this chapter, so here we go!

First, of course, is the Halloween costumes. There are plenty of pictures and fancams out there (151030 if you want it!) but someone has very kindly put all of the costume reveals from their Instagram into one Youtube video here (along with some commentary lol) which is a good little refresher!! The whole bit with Seungkwan, Seungcheol, Jeonghan, and Chan came from this video, and I just... Dino fully just admits to... what, watching porn??? in the middle of a fansign???? send help. (also. jeonghan just. completely unprompted telling everyone which hand seungcheol finds more comfortable to hold his neck/cradle his face with. why did we need to know that.)

Also! Completely unrelated but speaking of Jeonghan: I had someone ask in the comments about whether or not I made up the "got kicked out of a prestigious prep school thing" and I did not! He talked about it on a vlive with Seungkwan (the full vid is likely available somewhere but things are hard to locate after the death of vlive so here's a short clip from twt for easy viewing) I mean, the place sounds awful (the teachers were literally hitting the students with stuff) so I fully support his escape but also his poor sister...

And production for Q&A fully gets started! I completely made up the reasoning for the name (though I did allude to it from the first scene hehe) and the production schedule, just kinda picking days where they didn't have any public facing activities, so take it all with a grain of salt I suppose.

The secret Jeju trip was a short program called "Where's My Friend's Island", which was originally aired in eight ~5 minute clips, but has been compiled into one video here and it's genuinely pretty cute. The reason I had them think it was similar to 17 Project at first is because Scoups is clearly anxious when he steps in front of the camera and immediately asks "It's not another performance or mission, right?" (that show traumatized those poor kids lol) before fully equating it to 17 Project when Jeonghan walks up and sits next to him. This is also where I learned the tidbit of Seungcheol never having been on a plane before! While it would be impossible to fully relax with all of the cameras and stuff, the boys do genuinely seem to have a fun time, so it's nice to watch. They eat a ton of food and go to the beach and get to play around. The reason I call Mingyu a "suspiciously" good cook is that while we know now that Mingyu took culinary lessons in middle/high school, the first time he ever talks about it is during the burger battle videos, and Seventeen (Woozi especially) seem surprised to hear about it, which would mean that they didn't know I guess? So I had to go through all of this (and all of OFD Castaway) with Seventeen not knowing and Mingyu not telling them. Oh well.

Their heart to heart talk is pretty sweet, and as I alluded to in the previous post, this is where Vernon talks about his time on SMTM4 and we hear about him being stopped on the street by people recognizing him from the show. The group reassure him and talk lightly about it, but it seemed like something that was kind of tough for Vernon to talk about (there's a moment where he trails off and Mingyu reassured him, then the video cuts to him speaking again). They didn't show Woozi's turn, so I made that up, and had Seungcheol go last because he gives a bit of a speech while they're all gathered together when the clip ends. I also made up Mama Jwa still being there, because she really probably wasn't, but poor Jihoon needs someone to talk to before he explodes (which he kinda ends up doing in this chapter anyway) and I thought she would be a really great safe space/safe option for him to have. There's also a video of Seventeen waking up in the Jeju house that was included as special content on the Boys Wish DVD, and it's pretty cute. (Though. I have to say. I have never seen a group that has as much "wake up and be put immediately on camera" content as Seventeen has. Not completely sure how to feel about that but definitely leaning towards negative ksjdhflakdjfn)

The Kwangwoon Theater fanmeet got a little mention because SO many moments from it are fantastic, and I really recommend going on Youtube and watching some fancams (151108). Some of my favorites are: this jicheol duet, jeonghan's terrible cover of catallena and achoo, minwon's chaotic bo peep cover, a verkwan rap battle (with vernon singing some of 20 and being horrifically fond the entire time), hoshi's genuinely incredible eyes nose lips cover, and a full mansae part switch, but seriously there are playlists with hundreds of videos from this day so!!! Go watch some.

But also... That's all the links I have for today!! Everything else is. Ya know. The kiss and the resulting crisis. The "saying the quiet part out loud" bit.

(also i don't remember if that cry count is still accurate so don't quote me on it lol)

Hopefully I managed to build to it well; I rewrote most of those scenes a couple of times. I want to be careful about this stuff because while I know all queer experiences are different etc etc, this fictional Jihoon and me are very different people in very different surroundings and I wanna do it as much justice as I can. Which might be a fool's errand, but hey. I'm trying. Amy's mental health comment was something that I've gleaned from reading some articles (all of which from 2014 and earlier, bc of when this fic is set) and I figured that she would have a different view of the stigma around it than Jihoon, both as a woman and since she grew up in the US.

And last but not least, Jihoon coming out to his mom! I don't think that all coming outs need to be tearful messes, and I think that if Jihoon weren't so emotionally fraught and sleep deprived it wouldn't have been (likely he wouldn't have actually come out at all) but he was, so that's what happened. And his poor mom is just trying her best!! But yeah. That's the chapter!!! I don't wanna say "things are finally happening" because I don't wanna disparage past me and past hundreds of thousands of words of fic, but Mansae kinda felt like a lull (in the main jigyu story at least) and the Mansae era is coming to a close. This chapter always felt like a big one for a handful of reasons (*slaps altwss jihoon* this little guy can fit so much projection in him) and I hope you all liked it! See you next week!!!

I haven't had the most structured week, so I did actually, genuinely forget that it was Friday today. Whoops! But things are happening! Amy is here! A good amount of ground is covered in this chapter, so lets get into it.

First thing's first: Ailee's first album! The teaser she sends Jihoon is this, and the song is an absolute banger. And then I just had to mention Seventeen's Show Champion performance because genuinely. Is this Jeonghan fan okay? Having Jessi pop in wasn't based on any irl events, just because she was promoting at the same time, and she knew them predebut, so I thought it'd be a fun. (I also probably has Zoom stuck in my head bc that song is SUCH an earworm omg)

And then Chuseok! They have a cute photoshoot and perform Mansae in special outfits, though a break probably would have been nice. And then they're on Weekly Idol! As long as you kinda brace yourself/know what to expect with Doni and Coni, it's an enjoyable episode. Their paper kiss game rounds on this show are pretty iconic, tbh. I burst out laughing when they claimed to not have practiced playing the game before because excuse me??? We have you boys on video on two separate occasions??? And both times they did it, they claimed to be doing it as practice for when they would have to do it on variety shows and stuff. But sure, saying they've never practiced it is way less suspicious. They're just really good at kissing their homies.

(I didn't cover the second time bc it was during an Andromeda episode that Jihoon wasn't a part of, but yeah. Here you go. Dk might be actively trying to eat Hoshi. I have a theory that Seventeen are so much better at the paper kiss game than the pepero game because in the pepero game you're trying not to kiss your homies, whereas in the paper kiss game, making out is highly encouraged to succeed.)

But then Ailee is officially back in the fic for a bit!! With a completely busted foot. She was unable to walk for about 2 months afterwards, not even starting to use crutches until about halfway through the promos for her album. There is some cute footage of her zooming around backstage music shows in her wheelchair though! There is even some footage of her getting one of her friends to sit in her lap and "transporting" her around. I, like Jihoon, did not keep up with the news so I was very surprised to see her on music shows in a cast, but she still slayed because of course she did.

Unfortunately I couldn't find the original video of Jeonghan and Wonwoo being special MCs on Music Core, but it's the first clip in this video and I did still want to link it because there is a running joke of Jeonghan stuttering on "say the name", and this is where it originated from! Jeonghan's birthday was pretty busy. They have a performance and a fansign and a radio appearance, and the reason that I had Seungcheol say that thing about Jeonghan on this day is because this is a very iconic jeongcheol day. If you're a jeongcheol enjoyer, you'll recognize the outfits and setting (a fancam to jog the memory; jihoon sits down next to jeonghan at the end of that clip, and here's a continuation that includes jeonghan cutting his cake and stuff). The Kpop Planet radio thing is here (jeonghan cam, woozi cam, might be region locked?) and full disclosure: I did not watch this whole thing. I watched the first 10 minutes or so, but when people started calling in I got too much secondhand embarrassment and had to duck out (for some reason I have such a hard time with content like that, I can barely watch fancall videos and stuff lmao) but it let me know that they were really nervous about it (Jeonghan especially is very visibly nervous) and that Jeonghan hadn't had seaweed soup yet. So they go and get seaweed soup.

While Jeonghan has said a few times, even as early as 2013, that he doesn't consider his birthday to be very special, I'm not trying to say that I genuinely think that he hates his birthday. I hope that the conversation between he and Jihoon cleared up any jeongcheol confusion, when Seungcheol went and claimed that there wasn't anything going on between them in the previous chapter. And as some people have guessed, Jeonghan's ex is his farmer friend guy! I think he's great. He's in the final episode of SVT Club when the members are talking about a place/person that makes them feel at peace and Jeonghan spends a whole segment (with DK) on this guy's farm with him, talking to him and getting a meal together (Which means yes, some reconciliation between Jeonghan and this guy (Taewoo) happens between this scene and SVT Club, but SVT Club was filmed all the way in 2018, so we have time). The bit that really made me want to make them exes is this moment, where Taewoo tells a story about a time where Jeonghan asked him "is what's between us love, or just friendship?" Apparently Taewoo was too dumbfounded to respond quickly, and at his silence Jeonghan got flustered, slapped him in the face, and declared "To me, it's totally love." And during this whole story Jeonghan is very bashful and is all "did I really say that?" It's adorable.

And then there's more Ailee! The video of her win and the pictures from that day are both really cute. They're friends!! I had her and Joshua interacting and talking about Eric Nam because this cute video from Mama 2016 is one of my favorites.

I can't believe I'm only halfway through this chapter oh god ok speed round time!! The film the Mansae Part Switch video in Daegu (but still hit up Gwangalli Beach. Also that Baekhyun joke is one of my favorites in this entire fic lol), Scoups and Woozi are on Starry Night Radio together, the group is on Running Man (svt cut), and they have an extended segment on Show Champion. And then the beginnings of Q&A start to take shape! I got all of Ailee's insistences of wanting to collab (and how she and Jihoon interact during this scene) from this video! There's a livestream with Woozi, Vernon, Scoups, and Seungkwan where they talk about the early stages of Q&A (when Woozi wrote/completed it, the process, etc) that happens when the song is released, so I'll link it then, but that's where some of this scene came from and why it's these four.

Mingyu giving Jihoon a piggyback ride into Music Bank is a relatively well-known moment, and again, I apologize that they weren't kissing when this happened. We can pretend that they were. This moment is pretty cute because with everyone getting piggyback rides, it really highlights how well Mingyu treats Jihoon :( he holds him so well :((( he likes him :(((((

The Cheongryangri fansign is... a lot. I got most of my info from this fancam, though I didn't mention that they also made Woozi sing a cutesy song. Idk why it was torture Woozi day, but it was. And then the Gwangju fansign was even crazier!! Minghao's "We care about our male fans" truly made me scream, and the way Jeonghan reacted when Seungcheol asked him what his relationship to the member Scoups was was (plus Jeonghan's reaction and Seungcheol's attempt at placating him when he said his Seventeen bias was Woozi...) And then Mingyu trying to make Scoups stop hugging Woozi just to get glared at.... JESUS. And then what, I'm just supposed to feel normal about all of that??? Sure. Right. Of course. No absolutely insane implications here at all!! This video is really what cemented for me the idea of Mingyu being jealous of jicheol's relationship (though tbh, there's plenty of moments in 17tv that do the job well enough too, if you look at them through this specific lens)

And that's about it!! The Halloween costumes that are discussed and the moment of Hansol being accosted on the street by a SMTM4 watcher are both things that actually happen/ are officially talked about in the next chapter, so I'll expand on them next week. This was a long one!! Sorry it's so late; like I said at the beginning, normalcy has kinda flown the coop as of late in my personal life. I've been making steps towards getting it back on track, and if you all want to extend some well wishes for a job interview that I have next week, I'd really appreciate it!! I hope you're all well, I hope this chapter found you well, and... I don't wanna tease too much, but the next chapter is one that I worked really hard on and really can't wait to share with you. See you next week!!

It's Friday yet again, if you can believe it! There's actually not a whole bunch to link to in this chapter, surprisingly enough. The whole first like, 10 pages of it is all stuff I made up. (Except for Seventeen having the fastest comeback. I think I read that somewhere? And like, 38 days is pretty damn fast. But I can't remember where I read it, and I didn't actually look around and calculate the time throughout the history of comebacks, so take that with a grain of salt.) But overall, congrats to Mingyu!

The info about the music video filming came from this behind the scenes video and this mv commentary cut, but there aren't a whole lot of details overall. I found out from diary entries that they finished filming and Hoshi finished the Rock choreography on September 2nd, which... they comeback on the 10th. Wtf guys. They only had 1 week to learn it?? Why do Seventeen do this to themselves. It's also their 100 day anniversary, so each member wrote an entry! (You've gotta scroll a bit, look for 2015.09.02) Then all the usual stuff happens, like the previews on music shows and the mv teaser, and then the mv is released!! It really is a fun mv, and I think part of that is because Seventeen said that they had a lot of fun and played around a lot while filming, and that a lot of the shots of them just having fun ended up making it into the actual mv, which is cute.

The performances from the comeback showcase they had have since been deleted from Youtube (I have the strongest memories of the Fronting one, Hoshi is like... sitting on top of a table? and each HHU member comes onto the stage one by one when their lines start? and there's a quack sound effect on the video??? I can't find it anymore but I swear I've watched it a bunch of times, I know it was at the press event for the comeback bc the photos from it have the logo with the duck in them (hence the quack sound) but... I don't know.)

(see? there's a duck!! i promise i know what i'm talking about.)

They have diary entries about the release as well (again, search 2015.09.10) and while they're definitely busy and tired, they also seem really optimistic about the release, which is sweet to see. They even had a group meal at the end of the first week to celebrate where they all went out and ate meat together!! Seventeen really always have been Seventeen, huh. The Junho segment is super short, but I still wanted to mention it.

And then outdoor Music Core! They do Mansae and Sorry Sorry, and it does kinda crack me up that they augmented Sorry Sorry with adlibs and rap breaks and made the choreo more complex and fun, but they also completely devoured it and looked hot doing it, so good for them. Also I think I accidentally skipped over it the first time I mention it but the reason I say that Hyelim had fun helping them with the Sorry Sorry cover is because she used to be a backdancer for Super Junior! I am by no means a Super Junior expert but Oppa Oppa was very much a bop when I was in high school and she's in this official performance video! She's the woman with the shorter brown pigtails and straight across bangs (pushes Eunhyuk backwards at 1:15).

The Kiss the Radio appearance is the same one that I mentioned in the last post, and I think it's a good watch! They do a decent amount of talking about the process of putting the album together, which I always find really interesting, and their live performance of Mansae is good! They have to share mics and Dk is giving "person who never lets you forget he can sing" energy. As he should. Their talk about being awkward around each other is funny (It's in part 2. A lot of them are clearly lying, Scoups says he's awkward with Woozi because they've been friends for too long?? Hoshi and Wonu picked each other as a joke, and Mingyu and Vernon both picked Dino, Mingyu saying he chose Dino randomly and Vernon saying he decided to pick one of his favorite members instead. When Dino hears that someone feels awkward with him he assumed it was Wonwoo, so it's nice to know that Dino's obliviousness about how much Wonwoo loves him has been going on since debut lmao). They clearly all find it very funny, though I'm sure that it was hotly debated on the ride home haha (Dino earnestly picked Scoups, which I'm sure Scoups whined about, and Jeonghan picked Hoshi and the reason for it was not disclosed on the air)

Josh and Jihoon going to the movies together came from this interview! It was something that just the two of them did together "a long time ago", and none of the members even knew about it until Woozi talked about it in the interview. Apparently they didn't even pick what movies they wanted to see, they just went to the theater when they had a free day and chose something when they got there.

Last but not least, the Hallyu Dream Festival. I got their seat placements/the fact that they went by train from this tweet, and they have a good performance!!

I am yet again promoting my Shineteen agenda, because it's my fic and I want to. I am also completely projecting all of my shawolism through Hoshi but in my defense I wrote this scene at 3am and had just been stunned by Taemin's beauty so it is at least partially his fault.

The little bit with Jihoon and Chan was another self-indulgent moment of letting Jihoon be a big brother. Dino saying that he had the option of pulling out of Seventeen and debuting later is something that was revealed during Seventeen's Knowing Bros appearance during Home;Run era (here's the whole thing, it's at around 45mins in, I tried to find a clip of just the moment on twt but I couldn't, though I do think the ep is a fun good watch!!) At first I was a little hesitant to mention it bc Jihoon seemed like he didn't know it, and his mind is a steel trap when it comes to people he loves, but before the answer is guessed correctly he ends up saying "oh, I know this" after a couple of hints so I decided to go for it. (Vernon has a similar reaction which is why I also mention him).

(Also. If you are a boochan enjoyer I highly recommend you watch that ep because I am STILL thinking about Seungkwan's story about the fight that they had. Chan kneeling in front of him?? Seungkwan grabbing him by the collar??? The homoeroticism and sexual tension of it all. Dear god.)

And that's the chapter!! Mansae is already out, wow!! This chapter and the next feel like a bit of a quiet lull to me, but maybe that's just bc jigyu aren't kissing as much. But there will be exciting things soon!!! I hope everyone enjoyed and I'll see you all next week <3

It's Friday!!! Which... TGIF, I guess? I've never used that saying in my life. Anyway, as always there's a lot going on here, so let's dive in!

Seventeen have a full week of performances and appearances (again, if anyone ever wants links for specific days, do let me know and I'll scrounge them up! example: the Gu Youth Center fan meet had some fun! moments!) but the first thing I talk about that I got from some subbed content is Jihoon saying he works best at dawn. He mentions it during this Kiss The Radio appearance (part 1, part 2, part 3 was never subbed that I could find, unfortunately). This is a different appearance than the one mentioned at the start of this chapter, so it'll come up again when it actually happens during Mansae promos!

I call the Andromeda episode chaotic bc it's the one where they talk about wanting to have kids LMAO but in this one Scoups also outs himself as a ballad lover and we get a nice Seungkwan a capella moment. At the end of the Andromeda Scoups mentions the Hip Hop Unit schedule, which was very nice of him. There are fancams of A Midsummer Night's Sweetness, Ah Yeah, and Lotto, and they're so cute. They wanna be cool so bad. People say that Lotto is Vernon's response to his time on SMTM, but Vernon himself has never said that, so I didn't claim it either. There are also a few videos from people that saw other Seventeen members in the audience. The only ones I didn't see are Seungkwan, Josh, and Jihoon, but it's also possible that they were there so ya know. Grain of salt.

Okay next up is the butt shot thing lol. They talk about it in this interview and I just. Boys. Please. Why. I might not be breaking the news to anyone about this because a screenshot of this interview recently had some virality on twitter but dear god the way I laughed when I found out about this.

And another Andromeda! The full thing is here, Coups trying to undress Jeonghan starts here (he straight up says "lets unbutton all of them" hello??) and the part where Woozi brings out Wonwoo's bday cake is here. I know I'm here to overanalyze things to make fic plot out of it but the way Jihoon is clinging to Mingyu, then when he straightens up Mingyu goes to put an arm around his shoulders, stops himself, when puts an arm around Jun instead has always struck me as an odd series of events. And then the boozi moment! This was also inspired by that Kiss The Radio appearance, Seungkwan tells a story about falling asleep while Woozi is working and waking up to a finished song. I find Seungkwan and Woozi's relationship really really sweet, and as a haver of many little sisters that I love very much, that scene was one of my favorites to write.

But we have hit the end of Adore U promos!! Wow!!! Time is just flying by. The Inkigayo fanmeet is really interesting and kind of... confusing? Like... how did this happen? Why? Outside the Inkigayo building? I mean I am grateful, we get some cute moments, but still. Someone put together a whole cut of Woozi's aegyo moment (it's a full 5 minutes and he genuinely almost dies. It's amazing.) and I just. I just. Listen, I wrote the whole feelings realization scene in chapter 7 before seeing this clip, so I did not plan for Look At Me Now to really come back again, and the way my jaw DROPPED when Mingyu requested that Jihoon do some of the choreo for him. What kind of importance did that performance have for Mingyu for him to be thinking about it a full 2 years later??? I need to sit down. (Mingyu's turn has some jigyu too... Jihoon asks Mingyu to kiss his group ring, which already has implications that I could scream my head off about, then proceeds to watch him and be very smiley the entire time. It's cute.)

Next up is the Icheon Business Center fansign, and I would like to welcome everyone to one of my favorite Woozi fancams!! They're tickling and playing around and it is all just very quintessential baby jigyu to me. The way Jihoon very lightly strokes Mingyu's back with a finger after Mingyu has already turned away from him makes me want to cry a bit. It's just so goddamn fond. He's so fond!!! Which, of course, needed to lead to them making out. I said they would be bad at being broken up!! They're about to get better at it, unfortunately.

(so much planning of this fic was just me talking AT my beta reader lmao i am eternally grateful for her)

The process of plotting this fic was hard, because I had an overall idea of what I wanted to do and how I wanted to do it, but since it spans over 5 years of content, I often had to watch/read stuff, plan, do some writing, and then repeat that process in chunks before going through at the end of long arcs and making sure things flowed cohesively. Which meant I wasn't always 100% sure of what came next, and you have no idea how absolutely devastated I was when I found out that these pics happen after jigyu's whole "we need to actually be broken up now" talk. What do you mean they weren't kissing when those photos were taken???? A tragedy, truly, and I am sorry. We can just go to the timeline where they've simply been dating since 2013 for these ones.

The stuff about Scoups wanting them to work out in preparation for ISAC and Woozi falling asleep in his studio and stuff were stories that were told on Andromedas, and then Jeonghan goes bleach blond so they can shoot the Boys Be album photos! Where they actually took the photos is something that I don't know however, so I made the very bold claim that they're in Fukuoka, but I have my reasons ok!!! If it's actually mentioned in the diary entries PLEASE do tell me, because all I know is that one of the entries does say that they're in a foreign country, and in the behind the scenes video (that I could not find subbed) they go to a go kart place where the sign for it is in Japanese. They don't fly there (there's some content that the boys fly to Jeju for and Scoups says it's his first time being on a plane) but in a diary entry Josh talks about a 5 hour bus ride and then a boat ride he got seasick on to get to the photoshoot location, and a drive to Busan is ~4-5 hours, and then it's a 3 hour ferry ride from Busan to Fukuoka. Again, if I am wrong please tell me and I'll fix it, but that is my reasoning! The Boys Be photos are still one of Seventeen's best photoshoots and I stand by that. I bought both versions during the restock, so for that anon, I am now the proud owner of this jigyu polaroid! (it's just a scan on the Mingyu diary page of the photobook but still. I own it hehe)

I don't really mention it super explicitly, but then they do Bindaetteok Gentleman on Music Core!! It's such a fun performance. Obligatory theater kids of kpop etc etc lol but they're being a little goofy and having a good time! I truly think that the reason that Seventeen's "funnier" projects always do so well (this, Booseoksoon, unit switch performances, etc) is that they're just so goddamn good at what they do that yes, you can like the thing because it's amusing, but you can also enjoy it in a genuine, unironic way because there is clear talent behind it. Anyway, these guys are cool and I like them a lot.

And last but not least, Soonyoung. The Mansae choreo was apparently pretty difficult to throw together (there's a first draft of it that had to be scrapped because it was simply too difficult) and since I already knew about the struggle going on, I decided to add in the family stuff on top just to make it a bit more complex. Like with the rest of this stuff, I don't know if this is when this actually happened (I actually do think that I'm probably off with this one lol), but we do know that Hoshi has a niece and nephew (he posted pics with them in 2019!), and I think one was born in 2013-2014, and then the other is a few years younger? But I wanted to add it here, and I don't want to do too much speculation about Hoshi's family, so I just went with it.

And that's that! I'm rushing bc I am actually about to be late for work, so I apologize if there's anything I missed! I hope everyone enjoyed and I will see you all next week mwah <3

Hi hi happy Friday! It feels like it's been so long. The past week was so so fun but I am very glad to be back!!! And there's definitely a lot to talk about this week so lets goooooooooooooooooooo (i am on my pain meds rn so i apologize in advance for whatever may happen in this dw post lmao)

First up is the boys working on Fronting! Like I said in the last post, I had them put this song together this early on because they accidentally started playing it on the computer during the Andromeda that happens in this chapter (Minghao and Coups's faces.... lmao). I know that there's some ~controversy~ and all but I do really like Fronting. I will allow the feminism to leave my body for 3 minutes and 6 seconds in exchange for Woozi appearing in a balloon-covered swing to sing his verse during the Diamond Edge tour (the noise my little sister and I made the first time we watched this LMAO). Even though Mingyu's verse has caused me to lose my mind on multiple occasions. My poor beta reader. She went through so much while I was writing this fic. (if you ever wonder what it's like to be my friend, it's p much this lmao)

Then they start working on the part switch video! Them posting the video in exchange for the music video hitting 2 million views was something that Scoups actually advertised on an Andromeda to get people to watch the mv, so fans knew that it was coming. I don't know how the whole "PFU taking OMG" talk actually went, but since Dino was the one in group B, I thought it would be cute to have him be the one to ask.

The Andromeda that's mentioned is this one! It's a cute episode. The little star stickers on everyone's faces are really adorable. The whole thing with Scoups wanting Hoshi to kiss Seungkwan starts here, and it's so fucking cute. They act SO shocked, like they don't constantly swap spit with each other and haven't played the paper kiss game multiple times. Despite all of the Jeongcheol and Verkwan going on, 2Seung was actually a pretty popular ship around this time!! I also really love them together, and can't wait to write them as a main pairing in something.

BUT ANYWAY. sad jigyu talk, and then more homosexual svt shenanigans!

(unrelated, but i have pipe dreams about a whole hoshi sexuality/gender "character development" fic and i am desperately hoping that someone else will write it so i don't have to lmao)

Scenes like this truly were some of my absolute favorite to write!! I kinda see them as "filler episodes"; just some pure gay fun. It's what they deserve!! Hilariously, the bit where Scoups wrestles Hoshi to the floor in an attempt to kiss him plays out almost exactly like this scene from Seventeen's 2019 pajama vlive (a great watch btw, I highly recommend it), but when I wrote that scene, I hadn't watched that vlive yet. I feel like stuff like this happens to me all the time. Am I psychic? Are Seventeen psychic? Is my characterization just that good? We may never know. (also, I need everyone to see the "Dino's heart fluttered by Seungcheol" clip from the date that I reference. It is essential viewing to me. Poor baby gets SO flustered.)

And then the boys go to Busan!! The behind the scenes video is really cute, and "be a man and buy this for me" truly is one of the best things Jeonghan has ever said. The photos from the Busan fansign are also really cute!! If you scroll in that thread you will see that this is also the day of Jeonghan singing SHINee's View to Seungcheol, which is a Jeongcheol Moment Of All Time.

(me? wailing? it's more likely than you think. also yes, jihoon does wear those gold frames for the entirety of the rest of the fansign after they're given to him askjdhfalskd)

The part switch video is also really great, and since Jihoon doesn't appear in the behind the scenes video again after the part switch video is filmed, I decided to let him go home for a bit. (that I could see at least, if he is there then shhhhhhhh no he's not)

The music show circuit starts up again (i just had to mention that clip of Seungcheol getting spooked by fireworks, my notes for this literally just say "rip my dude") and last but not least, they have another Andromeda. This is the episode where they make kimbap with unusual ingredients (kimbap kidding, for those who know that reference) and it was a TRIAL trying to keep track of who and when ppl kept popping in and out of Jihoon's studio in the background lmao. Seungcheol does indeed handfeed Jeonghan a very spicy kimbap for seemingly no reason (he sneaks up to him on his knees and Jeonghan doesn't even realize he's there until Cheol literally pokes him in the chin with it lol. Also the whole bit about Seungcheol asking Jeonghan to sing for him and Jeonghan getting so flustered that he forgets his lines in 20 can be seen here. Watching content for this chapter was the point in the fic planning process where I was like "..............i'm actually going to have to make jeongcheol a thing in this fic, aren't i" because literally. these two. what is going on.) Mingyu popping up with the gold glasses on happens here, and while I can't genuinely say that they're the same bc of the video quality, they are the same bc it's my fic and I want them to be. And then jigyu start kissing again bc it's my fic and I want them to be. It is a good idea? Probably not. Alas.

And that's the chapter! A bit of a mixed bag, but hopefully it was worth the wait. I can't wait to see you guys again next week, take care!!

Hello!!! Happy Seventeen 3000th day since debut anniversary!! Absolutely wild timing on this one, I promise I didn't plan it haha. There's a lot going on in this chapter, so let's get into it.

The first is, of course, their debut! The showcase is 45 minutes and they do a good job! There are performances, and interview questions, and they even introduce Adore U with a skit, because they're Seventeen. Some fans in the audience are crying at the end and like. I get it girl, me too. There are diary entries for the night before (that's a compilation of a bunch of diary entries from different dates so some scrolling is needed) and the day of debut. The guy that's been their manager since they started at the company (Doogi PD) leaves a really really sweet message at the end.

The next day feels more official though, because they're on an actual music show instead of an extension of 17 Project; they're on Show Champion! They do Adore U and Shining Diamond, and I don't really know how music shows work, so sorry if things are incorrect. I had a lot of fun looking at the performances that day and seeing what other idols I could squeeze in. I mentioned Jun Hyosung bc I'm gay and I had to, Monsta X because I wanted to get started on setting their friendship up and, of course, SHINee! I knew who Hoshi was back in 2015 because of how much he liked SHINee, so I've always had a soft spot for him. He's clapping SO hard in the background during their View win and he is so right (the Joshua sign I mention is visible at 1:30 lmao). I got the detail about Hansol being unable to sleep from the Jeonghan segment from this diary entry, where he talks about his worries about it, which is also why he's the one to snuggle Hansol when they get home. This entry also includes Hansol talking about his worries about SMTM, which I expanded on by reading some writeups about the episodes because again, I didn't watch the show (self care, guys.) I got them from this blog (Ep 1, Ep 2, Ep 3).

Most of the stuff Hansol talks about in the fic was pulled from Episode 2. It's pretty obvious from the things I've read that Hansol should not have been on that show, and there was even a slight controversy because it seemed like San E and Verbal Jint allowed him to pass episode 2 when he shouldn't have because of their connections to Seventeen and not his talent which honestly, could be true. The Andup thing did seem extremely unnecessary though. He says a lot of shit about idol rappers and like I said in the fic, other idols are there too but Andup doesn't try to do anything to them (maybe because Ravi and Jooheon are adults? Ravi gets eliminated early on and Jooheon doesn't, so it didn't seem like a talent thing and idk what else it could be). He actively tries to start shit with Vernon, complains about him being on the show despite a lack of talent, and even says that he picked Vernon as a competitor to humiliate him ("I called him to embarrass him.") On the one hand, yeah, reality shows blow things out of proportion and other contestants from that season say that the beef was never as dramatic as it was made out to be, but also like... He's a kid? Leave him alone you weirdo. One good thing to come out of it was that people noticed how polite Vernon was through the whole thing and praised him for his attitude, so I guess it wasn't a complete waste of time.

Then they're on MCountdown! Adore U and Shining Diamond (I did genuinely think Seungkwan and Jeonghan were both in skirts at first but no, just Jeonghan) and SHINee win again! But then the Adore U mv is released! (I don't need to link that, do I? lol) Their walk into Music Bank is filmed (there are also a bunch of fantaken photos, 150529, it's those ones of Woozi in his "Grown Man" sweater lmao) and they perform! The only part of their Andromeda that has subs is the part where they react to the mv which features Woozi talking about the little corner bubble, which is why I mentioned it so much lol.

The Osen interview that I mention is really surface level and kind of funny (apparently Seventeen learned their facial expressions from watching Orange Caramel, the interviewer says that Mingyu's height makes him good at changing lightbulbs, Jeonghan says that his specialty is buying socks) and Hansol is eliminated on SMTM. They're on The SHOW, (also have a pre-performance interview) and while their Artist of the Week interview doesn't air until later, they're in the same clothes as this performance so I said they were filmed at the same time. It's really cute! Woozi really does laugh a lot, which leads into the conversation he and Mingyu have later, where he ends up kissing Mingyu on the cheek, and I've just gotta say...... these two are really, really bad at being broken up. Like really bad. It's so embarrassing for them and it's only gonna get worse LMAO

They're on MCountdown, Music Bank, Music Core, Inkigayo, Gyeonghwan’s Starry Night Radio, THE SHOW, and Show Champion. I'm not gonna link all of the performances because that is simply too many links!!! They are seriously doing so many things that the way I figured out their schedules around this time was just to type "Seventeen" and then the date (ex "seventeen 150602") into the search bar and just do that for every single day. Huge shoutout to my beta reader, because she helped with a lot of this!! I probably would have had this fic finished way faster if I didn't have to do all of this recon while I was writing, but I'm just too much of a perfectionist (not that it took that long!! 3 years for nearly 400k words makes me sound crazy, actually. the vice grip this wip had on me was unreal.) And the Billboard Chart thing! Only 1 week into debut. Seventeen really were super rookies.

I can't find it right now so I don't have a link for it, but the whole "met Key in the bathroom, he told me to put my face lotion in the fridge" thing is something that Hoshi has talked about before! (Hoshi is just a really sweaty guy okay. It's all that passion. That's why he wore so many headbands around debut lmao the sweat would run down and take his makeup off aksjdhfl) but I got the whole "SHINee like our song" thing from this moment at the 2016 Seoul Music awards, where SHINee are watching Seventeen perform and doing the choreo with them and generally having a blast. SHINee and Seventeen do interact a decent amount in this fic, partially because I'm biased and partially because I think they did get close relatively early on! They're friends now and everything, but they were already close enough in 2016 for Hoshi to hug Key on TV when Seventeen got a win during Boom Boom era (Key has said that Hoshi has hung out at his house) and for Mingyu and Key to become dog walking buddies in 2017! My Shineteen <3

And then they start having fansigns. Again, I'm not gonna link everything because that's simply too much but I do wanna show you Woozi and Coupsy in their flower crowns because they are very cute. The celebration of Hoshi's birthday the next day is very cute too, and the Instagram video is very stupid. If there is anything that you do want a link for though, do let me know!

The reason that I have HHU and Woozi start working on Fronting so early is because it was made pretty early! They have an Andromeda on June 26th where at the end, they're playing music from the computer and accidentally play some of it before they realize what's happening and turn it off. Wonwoo and Hansol writing each other's lines for Mansae was revealed in season 1 of the soop, and while I didn't suspect it before, now that I know it, Wonwoo's lines really do have a kind of Vernon-esque flow to them. I had Woozi say that thing about writing Hoshi's lines because Woozi is credited for the writing on Fronting but Hoshi isn't LMAO

The Show Champion reaction video thing is..... interesting.......... but the VIXX N KPOP interview is pretty cute!! The whole thing is subbed, though I would recommend skipping the individual talent section in the middle because it is very embarrassing. They talk a bit about meeting older groups that they really like and look up to, which they did a lot when they were just debuted. It is very distinctly other boy groups though, which was even asked about in this BNT interview. Gay little svt.

The throwaway line about Woozi bothering Mingyu is actually really cute. It's from this Show Champion backstage video and basically Mingyu's playing mini basketball for this challenge thing. He has to spin around first, and Woozi intentionally puts himself in the way so Mingyu will hit him, then acts dramatically wounded and giggles about it. He's so silly and cute :(

THEN THE BABY YOU ARE MY ANGEL THING. I cannot describe to you the noise I made when I found this out. These pictures are actually of that moment!

Here's a fancam and I just. Mingyu hadn't been talking to him or even looking at him or anything, then decided to do that. Ugh. What was the reason!!!!!!!!! It goes a little sour at the end bc angst but we can just ignore that. Pretend it didn't happen. I was not kidding when I say I don't like writing angst askjdfalk I just need them to be happy forever and ever!!! But we gotta wait for that unfortunately. Things gotta get worse before they get better.

But that's it!! I told you that these would get longer. The boys are busy little bees, but they're doing well!! Like I said in my end author's note, I'm taking next week off to go to LA, but I'll see you on the 25th!! Take care and stay cool everyone!!!

Hi. Please don't hate me. I think a lot of y'all saw this one coming, and even so, I was SO nervous to post this chapter. In my defense, "Getting Back Together" has been in the tags of this thing since Day 1. They got together in Chapter 11 of 31! Things were gonna happen!! If it makes anyone feel better, I am not one of those authors that do the evil cackle while writing angst lol. I was having an absolutely terrible time.

(first time writing a breakup scene and I've gotta say. 0/10 did NOT love it)

But let's actually get into the chapter!

The first thing that happens is the 17 Carat album jacket shooting! I don't have any subs, but they're pretty cute. And then, finally, the last half of the last episode of 17 Project! We made it everybody! Of course, Sungsoo had to use one last opprotunity to make the kids cry before it was over, but they did it. They've got their debut date and their rings. Success!!

And then it's pretty much immediately time to film the debut mv. There's a 3 minute behind the scenes video (again, no subs), and then. Uh. Well.

Truth be told, the breakup happens a lot closer to debut than I wanted, at first. I envisioned it being maybe 3 weeks before their debut, so it would be a little less fresh, but then I found out that they filmed 17 Project until the second week of May and I was like okay. Right after mv filming will give me like 13 days, not great but still acceptable, but then in an interview (not sure why I didn't save it, but I can find it if needed) Seventeen are talking about the debut mv and mention that shooting it took 3 whole days? for some reason? So then I only had 9 days until debut. Oh well. Things were gonna be tough either way. Self-sabotage through fear!! Gotta love it.

Jihoon has an interview with MelOn (again, no subs that I could find, someone pls help) and then the Andromeda. This isn't subbed either, so I didn't really mention what they actually talk about during the stream, but the way Jihoon's expression changes when Mingyu starts coming towards them is....... not subtle lol. It takes him a full 10 seconds to kinda get himself back together and smile for the camera again. Then, less than 10 minutes later, Mingyu has his arm around him. Alright guys.

(Jihoon likes him so much I'm so sadddddddddddd)

And that's kinda everything in the chapter that I have links for! I made the rest of it up myself. Everyone knows about the infamous gyuhan fight, which apparently lasted a whole 2 hours and caused Jeonghan to lose his voice; I don't know when it actually happened, but I wanted it here for Reasons. I also don't know when Show Me The Money started filming, just that in a diary entry Jeonghan talks about being worried for Vernon because he ends up not getting much sleep because of the program. And a little disclaimer for that moving forwards: I did not actually watch any of SMTM. Reality shows give me hives!! I read a few recap posts and news articles around the time it was airing, and I do mention it in the fic, but I did kinda want to be upfront about that lol.

But that's it!! This fic has officially entered its angst era. I kinda see this moment in the fic as a bit of a halfway point, even though it's closer to 2/3, because this is where I ended up cutting the document when I ran out of file space on the original google doc. Did you know that google docs have a character limit? Because I did not, but apparently I found it. I split it up into pre-debut and post-debut, and pre-debut is finally over!!! Finally!!!!!

Showbiz life is ahead of them now! Excitement!! Drama!!! Schedules!!!! These posts are about to get a LOT longer, because these guys are genuinely doing something new every single day. But until then....... I am sorry. I leave you with these cuties (and as a little reminder!!!)

See you next week!!!

Happy Friday my loves! It's been quite a week, huh? I hope everyone is doing well. This chapter is pretty loaded, so let's get into it!

The first thing is the second half of 17 Project episode 5, where all of the performances happen. The first one is Group A, and they do well, but the lyrics do really make me giggle. They're different from the released version of no F.U.N, and Wonwoo straight up says "manners makes a man" during his rap and talks about planting mines and like huh, I wonder where they got inspiration for this from! Group B do pretty well too, Group C definitely interact with the audience too much, and Group D are cute! Sofia even makes an appearance! She's like. so incredibly tiny lol

It's cute to watch Woozi fanboy over Verbal Jint, and thankfully Verbal Jint is pretty nice during the judging. The feedback from Hyelim is also kind, and Beomju talks in a really constructive way, and then Rhymer....... he's not overly mean or anything, but he literally doesn't say anything nice lol like damn dude, would it kill you to give them a compliment? He even kinda makes fun of them ("You must know that you're good looking or something, because you totally came prepared to flirt with the audience!") and while I feel like he's trying to be lighthearted/joke with them, none of Seventeen smile or laugh or anything. It's probably a persona, "mean judge" is a common trope in shows like this and the guy truly is supportive of Seventeen irl, but these poor exhausted kids just didn't need that. Like, he truly goes in on them and lectures them on professionalism, and I'm just sitting here like... This is all taking place predebut! How "professional" can they be when they literally have no stage experience to draw from??? The points that he gripes on irritate me because 1) it really wasn't as bad as he's making it out to be, he just needs something to criticize and 2) that's something that's going to come naturally with time and experience anyway.

Sorry. This was so many years ago and I really need to let it go, so I'm gonna stop here. Though!!! I did wanna say that while I allude to there being some kind of bad blood between Bumzu and Rhymer, I totally made that up. I have no idea what their relationship is like at all; I just thought it would be a fun thing to do, and also because the first time I read the Brand New Music wiki page I laughed so hard at this paragraph that I needed to find a way to insert this energy into the fic somehow.

(AFTER HAVING FAILED TO ESTABLISH A CAREER AS A RAPPER SINCE HIS DEBUT IN 1995. someone get Rhymer some ice for that burn.)

But yeah, Woozi has a breakdown. A bit overdue, honestly. Not to get too serious, but I truly do believe that 17 Project had a very real chance of damaging Woozi in a really big way in terms of stuff like confidence and belief in his abilities, because like... He gets put relentlessly through the ringer in a huge, nonstop, very public way for the entire duration of the show, and it is kind of awful when you look past the cutesy editing and bouncy background music. Not to spoil stuff, but he cries twice on camera in the next episode of the show. He's not someone that likes to share his emotions like that, and we've only seen him cry a handful of times publicly throughout the entirety of Seventeen's career, so I can't imagine how he must have been feeling to make that happen. However, I do think that he managed to pull through it okay, and I'm sure that's in no small part due to the support system that he'd cultivated before the show started with the members and the teachers. He's said that he did used to feel a lot of pressure from his responsibilities in the group, but that the other Seventeen members being his biggest fans helped him, and I'm just so, so glad that they did.

Oh my god. I'm rambling so much and it probably doesn't even make sense bc it's currently 5:12am. I am so sorry. I will try to shut up and stick to the facts.

One of the facts is that Rhymer was the guy hired to make Seventeen's debut ep! Which, pretty bold move from Sungsoo when apparently this guy failed at having a rap career for a full 8 years. He talked about it in a 2019 interview, which is where I got all the stuff about Woozi visiting the Brand New Music building, being given a beat by Masterkey (who has a composition credit on Shining Diamond, which is why I think they're the same song), etc etc.

Up next is the meeting about the debut song which again, I made up. I did want to point out a recent development, though: the way my jaw absolutely dropped when Hoshi just fully overshared about Jeonghan during the Follow concert mc LMAO I could not believe it

Like. I am very aware that this does not mean that Jeonghan actually has any kind of fatigue syndrome. I'm not trying to seriously diagnose anyone here. But this + the way they've alluded to him having a hard time/not gaining stamina from working out + the way they always check his energy levels during things + how they had no qualms with letting him constantly rest while simultaneously criticizing Hoshi for not working during OFD Castaway is just all very interesting to me in a like, "provide your text evidence for this interpretation of the text" kind of way (again, I was on the Dean's list in college, I cannot overstate how much of a nerd I am) so it was wild to hear Hoshi just say the quiet part out loud like that. (Also, self-projection plays a big part in this too! I've kinda always liked projecting this onto Jeonghan because as someone that's often exhausted and usually just wants to go home thanks to a chronic pain issue, it is nice to see someone so shameless about being tired!! Representation!!!)

This leads into Jeonghan's voice not being in Adore U because like... Jeonghan's voice isn't in Adore U lol. I think that this is a relatively well-known thing nowadays, but if you're familiar with Seventeen's voices, it's really obvious when listening to the song. I think that he's even said somewhere that it happened because he was sick, which I've seen people debate/not believe, for some reason? Maybe there's something I'm missing, but he states in a diary entry on the first day of filming for 17 Project that he's been sick to the point where he's occasionally losing his voice, and the constant work they did for the show probably wasn't conducive to healing, so like... I believe him lol. The little bit about him being upset in the recording booth and the talk that came afterwards wasn't a scene originally in my plotmap, but I ended up adding it for 2 reasons:
1) I am a taemint + shawol first and human being second

2) Jeonghan has named Taemin as his inspiration as an idol! So it just felt super fitting, considering the situation, since Taemin doesn't have any lines in his group's debut song either.

And last but not least, the beginning of 17 Project's final episode. Relatively par for the course until we get to the Serious Talk Time part, and this is where my whole "fast and loose with filming stuff" comes back in. I mean, in the show, the conversation between Jihoon and Seungcheol is edited to hell and back (only about 30 seconds of consecutive conversation is shown but there's b roll of them talking/laughing that doesn't have audio, and even a slow mo moment where what Seungcheol is saying in audio doesn't match up with the video, it's a whole thing) so I used that to my advantage and let them actually have a bit of a reconciliation before they're fully off camera. Just suspend your disbelief and give me a bit of leeway with this one, thank u

This conversation is where I got a lot of the outward manifestations of Jihoon's stress from the show. Seungcheol describes him as mean and snappy and frightening, and Jihoon agrees with him, showing that he knew it was happening, to an extent. But Seungcheol is really sweet when he talks about Jihoon in his solo interview, acknowledging how busy he is and saying he didn't want to burden Jihoon further by trying to talk about it, but saying with complete confidence that things between them are going to be okay, which is when he tears up and starts crying. He loves Woozi a lot, and it really shows :( I like these guys so much.

This is so long. I'm so sorry. I just have a lot of feelings about these little guys!! But if you've made it this far, congratulations!! 17 Project is half an episode away from being over, which means debut is almost here!! Which like... did any of you think getting to debut would take this long when you started reading this fic? Because I certainly didn't think so when I started writing it. But I'm here, and you're here with me, and I can't thank you enough. I feel like a bit of a broken record saying this, but that's because it doesn't stop being true: the reception for this fic has been beyond anything I could have imagined. Not necessarily in things like hits, or comments (which have also been wild) but just like... so many of the comments that I've been receiving have been so kind, and so thoughtful. It's an incredibly special feeling to have something that you've be written with care be responded to in such a meaningful way, so I just wanna say thank you.

UGH OKAY IT'S ALMOST 6AM NOW I NEED TO GO I LOVE U SEE YOU NEXT WEEK BYE

Chapter 17 right here!!! Hello friends, it is Friday again. Happy Follow to Seoul day 2! I was able to stream the concert with friends last night and it was sooooo fun (absolute banger of a setlist) and I can't wait to do it again! Despite being um. Very very tired.

On that note, I'm gonna kinda keep this one short! But, like with the other chapters covering 17 Project, I don't have a whole bunch of links to share! The chapter starts with them practicing for and then going to perform at Seoul Broadcasting High School, which I'm sure was nice for them, since they've performed there a few times before and if nothing else, know that Seungkwan’s friends will be supportive lol. And the performance goes well. The Bang remix in particular is pretty fun, and they go on to perform it up until like... late 2015.

But Ailee is here!!!!! She's back!!!!!!!!! Like I said in chapter 1, this show is how I found out that they knew each other; since I'm a gen 2 kpop girlie, it really was a shock. She really does give Jihoon a little wave when she sees him, and he just starts smiling immediately, it's really cute.

Then they get broken up into their mixed units, and Jihoon and Amy go to dinner, which is something that I completely made up, but like I said, she is a minor but recurring character in this fic! I wanted Jihoon to have an older, more extroverted, no nonsense kind of friend that wasn't a mentor figure (aka not Bumzu), so I decided it would be her. Her insistence at wanting to collaborate with Jihoon comes from this interview, where she says that them releasing a song together was a dream that they'd always talked about doing during trainee days. Nobody fret, she will appear again (and if you do not like her then well overruled by ME.)

And then prep for the mixed unit missions starts. Spoiler for the next chapter I guess, but I had Jihoon help with group A and D as well as his own group because on the show, the credits for the songs is shown, and "Woozi" is the first name on all 3 songs in both lyrics and composition, as well as his voice even appearing in Group A's backing track. Heartbreakingly, since group C did not get his help and still have a song put together, composed by someone else, he might not have needed to do this, but who knows if he was told that or not. With how crazy of a workload it would be for just an 8 day period, idk why he would do something like that unless he thought he had to, but who knows.

But, of course, we have the iconic bisexual Minghao moment. He likes puppy-like boys!!! Which like. The implications. (i love 97z SO much i'm gonna go stick my head in the sand. go read my 97z fic if you haven't. only if you want to tho. and are an adult bc it is spicy. ok anyways.) This live stream is also when Hoshi spoils that Scoups is Seventeen's leader, because that hadn't been announced yet!

Despite how incredibly late it seems, I had the concept/debut song switch become more discussed here (+in the last chapter) because like I said previously, that second David Byun predebut film was shot sometime after 17 Project started filming. Which feels really crazy, because they started filming the show like 6 weeks before debut happened. So matter what the true timeline was, I feel like it must have been super last minute, since those films were just like. Completely scrapped.

But! They are prepping for the performance. A lot of Jihoon's behavior comes from a conversation that happens in the next chapter, so I'll talk about it then, but the gat thing is so funny actually. They talk in the episode about how they didn't want to do it, but then the CEO ended up approving it, saying "If you're going to fail, do it in a funny way!" which... huh??? lmao

The last thing in this episode is Seungcheol's grandmother getting sick. It's something that he talked about for the first time on a TV show while under hypnosis, and though the whole moment is only 5 minutes total and Seungcheol consented to it, it is a little tough to watch. Minghao, Wonwoo, Mingyu, Seungkwan, Dk, and Wonwoo all immediately get to their feet when they realize Seungcheol is upset (he starts crying while talking about it, Minghao even looks around at the others in a bit of a prompting way) and when the interview is over Jeonghan gets out of his seat and rounds the set so he'll be able to intercept Seungcheol on his way back to his own seat. These dudes really care about each other so much :( He mentioned it again in a dispatch interview in 2018 in a little more detail, which is where I got some other aspects of it (credit to @ninety6line on twt!) :

When I said that there was other drama with Seungcheol around debut time, this was it!! Poor guy has kinda been going through it since the beginning of this fic lmao but it will get better for him soon!!! Plus now he has a Jeonghan to kiss, so that's good for him.

And that's it! Poor Jihoon is very, very stressed. Knowing that this is where we are in the fic and then watching the Follow concert and seeing him so grown and confident, with so many incredible songs released throughout the years that were performed on such a huge stage with so many happy fans and adoring members did make me emotional, ngl. He was already in my bias list (jigyucheol enthusiasts rise up) but the process of writing this fic really has made me so, so embarrassingly sappy about him. I like that guy so much.

And I like you guys too!!! Thank you all so much for reading, and I'll see you next week!!

Oh gosh. Hi guys. I am so relieved to be able to say that. Scary week!!!! I was seriously considering creating a mailing list form on twt or something LMAO I gotta get this fic out to you guys somehow!!! But the crisis has been averted (for now) and we can continue. Honestly, between twitter constantly breaking, ao3 being attacked like this, and tumblr implementing extremely stupid new features, the state of fandom spaces on the internet has really been getting me down lately. I'd been joking about making a jigyu dreamwidth community but... we'll see.

But onto the chapter! We've got more 17 Project and concert prep. Again, the stuff with Dee Shin is stuff that I'm making up, but they're now another step closer to using Adore U as their title track! I have Jihoon so involved in the change decision because in an interview he said that he didn't think the dark vibe suited Seventeen as a group, and that he made Adore U while thinking of how bright the members are. Which really is just the cutest thing I've ever heard. Like, I know that Woozi has said that he laughs until he cries often because of the other members but like geez... he loves those guys so damn much huh.

As I said in the post for ch 14, disordered eating stuff was gonna come up again, and the conversation with Seungkwan is kinda the brunt of it. It'll only really come up one more time in an explicit way, and this conversation is the longest/most explicit one. Again, that probably isn't all that realistic, but I need to protect my own mental health. All I'm really going to say is that with the way Seungkwan talks about food, either you understand exactly where I'm coming from or you don't.

And then its performance time! I really like all of these performances. Here's the full episode, but if you don't want to see the whole thing, here's the Performance Team, Vocal Team, and Hip Hop Team. (there's also a really cute audience moment during the Vocal Team performance.) And thankfully the judges agree with me! The boys are doing well. Like I said when the show started, the first episode is tough, but as soon as the boys get their feet properly under them, things go more smoothly. With how fast the performance turn-arounds were, I'm sure it was hell to live through, but they put on a good face for the cameras.

Them talking about and showing the cleaning bet happens at the beginning of episode 4 before getting into the meat of it and talking about what songs they want to cover for that week's mission. I had the Bang choice stress Jihoon out the way it does because 1) that would probably be stressful and 2) there's a little throwaway caption in the episode next to the cute moments and bouncy background music that just says "Despite the lack of time, Woozi spent all night rearranging the song". Like... that's not okay! He's an 18 year old kid! This wasn't something that I'd ever picked up before when watching 17 Project, but the closer look I had to take to figure out when things actually happened did make me upset lol (especially in the later chapters because unfortunately... it does get worse........)

Jihoon is visibly tired in episode 4 (you can see the bags under his eyes, despite his makeup) and the whole group is tired during the practice scenes, with Jihoon even saying "This is not something a human can do" and Scoups saying "Let's stop practicing. Why should we debut?" Then they get home at 4am (they have an Attack on Titan clock on the wall in their dorm LMAO) and Woozi does fully fall asleep while sitting up. Poor babies. They're all so tired.

This chapter goes up to 13 and a half minutes into ep 4, and then the rest of it is in the next chapter! I'm really excited about that, because if you know what happens in episode 4, then you'll know who pops back up soon! (hint: one of the loves of my life) The next chapter is just a good one all the way around I think, and it is considerably longer, because I know that these past few have been short. These posts have become pretty short too, but all the kids really have going on is 17 Project, and that's just a single link! (but again, if you want any elaboration, just let me know.) Thank you so much for reading, and I'll see you next week!!

Happy weekend! 17 Project is getting into fully swing now. I am visiting my family home this week and didn't bring my laptop with me and don't have all of the usual bookmarks and stuff, so I'm sorry if I miss anything. Though... there isn't a whole lot to talk about in this chapter. I mean, stuff happens, but it's just 17 Project episodes and things that I made up, so I don't have a whole lot of different links to give you guys this time around.

I'm kind of operating under the idea that if I just link the whole 17 Project ep then that counts, but if you'd rather I link timestamps to specific moments that I talk about, please let me know! I know that it can be hard to tell which stuff is something that actually happened vs something that I made up for the fic. For example, for the chapter last week, my beta reader requested that I point out that the whole "jeonghan wearing cheol's group ring" thing was not a thing I made up. It actually happened in the 17 Project episode: you can see here that when Jeonghan is woken up, he's got two rings on, and in the next scene when Seungkwan wakes up Cheol, his ring finger is bare. Little details like that.

The whole first half of this chapter is 17 Project episode 2. It's so funny that they try to pass this mission off as having a whole week to complete, because like... we can just look at the publicly available stuff and can tell that it's not true. Because of the diary entry, we know that they finished filming episode 1 on Mingyu's birthday, the 6th, and then the first ever performance of Shining Diamond had fans at it, some of which took photos, and labeled them 150410, so like... They had 4 days, if you include the day of the performance too, but I don't think that it counts. So they only had 3. Watching this show while actually looking at when things were filmed is absolutely crazy because like... Those poor guys really had no time. It's truly amazing that things turn out as well as they did during the show because like... GEEZ.

But they do it, they get approval from Yeonsoo and then get Shining Diamond recorded all in one day, and the episode is really cute to watch, just for the dynamic between the boys and Bumzu, as well as Jihoon and Bumzu. They're friends! They like each other! I've linked this episode a couple of times, because this is when Bumzu talks about having to take Seungkwan to hospitals and vocal specialists to fix his technique, as well as how Jihoon only started composing 1 year ago.

They throw Shining Diamond together. There's the performance of it in the episode as well as a Hoshi fancam (hoshi fans were on top of stuff from the beginning, most predebut fancams are of him) and one interesting thing about it is that this version of the song isn't the final one. Seungkwan's high note in the bridge is missing here! Which means it was rerecorded between then and debut which I dunno, is kinda cool. They also perform the taste+bed breaker remix (again, a hoshi fancam) and then they're done. I mean, I wasn't there in person or anything, but the performance didn't seem that bad to me. I feel bad about Coups blaming himself for being so nervous; honey, you're a 19 year old kid with an undiagnosed anxiety disorder. I think you're doing a great job.

The next thing is an Andomeda episode, and since Seokmin is a guest for the first hour, it's chaotic. I love Booseoksoon. Vernon pops in later (he didn't plan to, but he was in the room so Seungkwan said "just come over, you're handsome anyway". This episode ends up trending #1 on the streaming site for comedy, so to celebrate Josh, Minghao, and Dino pop in for the last 20 minutes. Meanwhile, I made up the meeting with Dee Shin. I just kind of wanted to have the pov character in there to talk to her before the mv was shot, since it's been said that she was a big part in switching Seventeen's concept from dark and edgy to bright and fresh. I know that Dee Shin is the director's name, but I got the information about her company from this tweet, so hopefully this person is correct.

But they film another predebut film thing with David Byun anyway (flashing lights cw!!). This is the more well known one, because it's the one that the boys reacted to during the Heng:garae comeback showcase. I used to think that both of the videos happened at the same time, but in the previous one they have different hair than in this one. This one has their 17 Project hair, which means that they filmed the glitter face Hoshi video, and said "yeah, that looks good, lets do another one". Now, granted, this one does kind of make sense. The numbers are used to kind of explain why the group is called Seventeen. This type of teaser could have worked, I feel like, but for some reason they decided to do it in the cringiest way possible. Why does Josh have a baseball bat.

And episode 3 starts! This chapter only covers the first 10 minutes, which is basically just them splitting up into their units and talking about which song they want to do. There's a cute soonhoon moment, and the Mingyu comes in! I wrote the scene of them together at the end of the chapter in November, during NaNoWriMo, while I was supposed to be working on Escaping Terminal Velocity instead. During a family trip. Three days after getting my wisdom teeth out. It was a time and a half.

(u/n cropped bc this is a screenshot from my priv. also, any other snowman fans out there?)

And that's that! Again, sorry it's so short, but this felt like a good ending for the chapter. Mingyuzi are in love. I hope you guys are having a good summer so far, and I'll see you next week!

We made it to another Friday!! And now 17 Project has started!!! I can't tell you how excited I am about it. Like, I genuinely can't, I'm sick rn so unfortunately this week's post is probably gonna be short and low energy... but pls know that between the sneezes I am very excited.

But the first thing that happens is John! Our good friend John. It was one of those jokes that kinda got run into the ground at the time, but it faded away faster than the other jokes (kimbap kidding, anyone? which I do not mention in this fic, you're welcome), probably because it happened predebut. It got to the point where Seungkwan was like "...this isn't funny anymore guys we don't have to keep doing this" when it was mentioned in the Andromeda chat lmao

The Woozi and Joshua episode of Andromeda is pretty cute! They play around a lot and Jihoon seems relatively comfortable, laughing and teasing Seungkwan. He's the one that points out that Mingyu is in the room and giggles at him, and his reaction to being hit with the plastic hammer just lives in my mind.

The whole thing about him preferring Mingyu with shorter hair was just a personal headcanon of mine, but then this year during Caratland after Mingyu's haircut, while all of us were in mourning about it, Woozi said that he loves his short hair! so... thank you for validating my headcanon mr woozi!

I mentioned it during the last entry and stuff but The Mingyu Wanting To Stop Growing Thing does come up again here. Mingyu has said in the past that he was desperate about stopping his growth to the point that he did restrict food, which was why I added it into the fic. Things like dieting and image/weight management are things that I truly don't talk about much For Personal Reasons despite this being a idolverse fic, so while it's probably not realistic, it's my fic and I can do what I want! The topic only comes up 2 more times I think (?) for anyone else that's sensitive to things like that. I will warn for it in the author's note but still, just a heads up.

Seokmin also has his second surgery in this chapter, which I mentioned in the chapter where the whole ear thing started happening. It's pretty common knowledge, but Mingyu's stage name was almost Dokyeom, to a point where Jun even calls him it on Andromeda a couple of times. I'm personally very glad that they ended up changing things around, because if Mingyu wasn't Mingyu I couldn't call him Shiba Ingyu or Mingyu Clingyu, which is a need, and Dokyeom just suits Seokmin really really well. It also makes me think of this text post. Like. That's Dk right there.

The leadup to 17 Project seemed really stressful! I mention Jihoon's appearance on the Andromeda episode because it was so funny, he truly does embarrass the hell out of himself. Long story short, the fans are voting on who they want to be regulars on Andromeda with Hoshi and Seungkwan and at first Jihoon was winning, but Mingyu and Wonwoo were pulling ahead by one percent (31% vs 32%) so they asked Jihoon to pledge something to the fans if he won. He ends up saying "Do I really need to say a pledge? Everyone will want to see me anyway." He then promptly collapses out of shame and Hoshi has to hold him. It really kills me. But they write a diary entry about the day before 17 Project shooting started, about shooting inserts for the show and like... they stayed up until 4am working, and Seokmin apparently is really having a hard time, and Jeonghan and Seungcheol both claim to be getting sick.

Speaking of Jeonghan and Seungcheol. I fully did NOT intend on them being A Thing in this fic at all, but they snuck up on me anyway. I have an extremely soft spot for Jeongcheol, especially during debut era (I had a friend that's been a carat since debut that liked them, so even before I knew svt I knew them) and I just couldn't ignore all of the debut era fanservice. I am the fan being serviced, after all. Besides, after all of the Doyoon stuff it just really, really fit together for me. Please don't expect too much, because this fic is not about them, but there are going to be a few more mentions going forward!

And the 17 Project! Now... I kinda play fast and loose with filming stuff. I got all of the scenes and dialogue from here, and while I'm sure more happened that was taken out of the final cut, I don't really try to lengthen the scenes or anything like that, and usually just write out what happened without adding anything extra. Unless I do add extra! But in those instances, just assume that it was cut. I'm like... trying to tell a story here and sometimes things need to be wiggled around for that to work. We know about the episode being filmed on Mingyu's birthday because of this diary entry, where they all talk about what happened, and Mingyu straight up says "I feel down but I tried to not make it obvious". Why is Mingyu's birthday always so cursed? I wrote out Jeonghan's crisis the way that I did because aside from saying in the episode that he had a mental breakdown, he also says so in the diary entry (as well as "I feel like I lost everything in me"), and because I feel like Jeonghan wasn't super secure in his spot in the group for a little while. Jeonghan being an official member in the final Seventeen lineup was actually a bit of a surprise, back in the day. This is all info that I got from that fan forum I've mentioned before, but fan opinions were something that management were very aware of when it came to members of Seventeen, and it was a bit of a common consensus that Dongjin and Jeonghan were two trainees that people didn't expect to stay or debut. Since fan feedback was something that was considered during 17TV, I wouldn't be surprised if that was an opinion that Jeonghan was also aware of. They were right about Dongjin (though. probably not for the reasons they thought) but not Jeonghan!! And we're all thankful for that.

And that's it! 17 Project has begun! I think it's a nice show to watch to get to know Seventeen. Episode 1 is a bit of a tough watch, but I do think that despite some hard moments, it gets easier from there and I would recommend it. But if you don't wanna sit through it, I do cover it pretty extensively during the fic as well! These chapters were some that I really enjoyed writing, so I hope everyone else likes them too! See you next week <3

We have made it to yet another Friday!! Last chapter had a lot of "I love my team I love my crew" vibes, and this one is the "jigyu can't stop making out" chapter. The irl events are just thing after thing after thing happening, so this post is kinda just gonna be quick and streamlined with a lot of links and info.

The first thing is... okay listen. The first thing is the David Byun predebut films. I tried my best, but honestly, what was I supposed to do with these? I mostly just had Jihoon be confused, because I was also very confused. Please feel free to watch if you want to cringe out of your skin. Jeonghan like... gets kidnapped? Glitter face Hoshi?? It's a lot and all of it is bad. My notes for this just say "listen man i have absolutely no idea what's going on".

(This picture just kills me. Who is hanging in the background. Why is Wonwoo blindfolded. Hoshi is on the floor praying and like. Same.)

And yeah, Hoshi was almost called Gun! I don't have the interview on hand, I didn't save the clip for some reason, but he's talked about it before and I can find it if anyone is curious! I think that the reason that it ended up falling through is thanks to Monsta X; on Monsta X's predebut reality show NO.MERCY there was a trainee called "#Gun" that pretty much looked like he was supposed to be in the final debut lineup. Things happened and some stuff got switched around (that show is rigged to hell and back lmao) and it ended up not happening! The guy ended up debuting as a soloist, but I could still see Pledis not wanting to debut Hoshi under such a similar stage name, especially since Seventeen and Monsta X's debuts were so close together.

And then graduation! There are a lot of fantaken photos of Wonwoo and Jihoon's graduation and none of Hoshi's, but Seokmin said in this diary entry that they wrote that he attended Hoshi's, so I assume that's where the other half of the group is. There are a lot of pictures from Wonwoo's (Jihoon is so very round) and Jihoon's (Mingyu does look very cute) and the 96s talk about how they can't believe that they're finally adults.

Then the Lunar New Year happens. Jun and Minghao both write diary entries about it, and while Jun kinda talks about the day in a lighthearted tone, poor Minghao... he does try to sound upbeat but his entry is only 5 lines and he mentions 3 separate times that he misses his family :( Little guy is going through it. The whole thing about Mingyu being too tall is something he talked about in a 2016 vlive, saying that the comments made by the CEO about his height made him genuinely wish he could stop growing. It's touched on more later but again, :(

But then Hoshi and Seungkwan's Andromeda starts!! Along with the diary entries, Andromeda was another great source for figuring out what the boys were doing behind the scenes, especially since Hoshi is really bad about not spoiling things. It's stuff that wouldn't have been obvious as a spoiler in the moment, but since I have the power of knowing the future, I know what he's talking about. The first episode is in two parts with subs (part 1, part 2) and it's kinda exactly how I describe it in the fic lol. Jihoon's pretty cute with his blond emo fringe and oversized hoodie, and Mingyu is wearing a suit jacket, and Seungcheol sniffs Jeonghan's hair a lot. They do have a lot of people asking them who they are and saying less than kind things about them, which is a bit of a theme in the beginning, but either Seungkwan and Hoshi stop reading comments like that, or they become better known on the site (they do become more popular, so maybe a mix of both?) as time goes on.

And then 17 Project!!!!!!!!!!! Dude. 17 Project. Does me calling their upcoming MBC show 17 Project count as a spoiler? I won't talk about it much right now, because I do cover it pretty extensively throughout the fic, but yeah. I'm excited. Things are gonna get so hard for our little Sebongies.

The genuine episode 1 of Andromeda has Wonwoo and Mingyu as guests, and it's not really worth watching? The only thing that caught my attention is the part that Mingyu talks about later about the age gap relationship, and it only really caught my attention because they read the question, discuss the question, move on a little, then Mingyu seems to realize that he didn't really give his input on the situation and makes a bit of a thing about looking directly into the camera and stating very clearly that he doesn't think that the age gap matters lol we get it babe!! Your boyfriend is a year older than you!!!

We all know that the "wisdom" reasoning that Jihoon gave for his stage name was kinda bullshit but I still worked it into the creation of the name somehow, because I wasn't really sure what else to do. Also I have no idea if this is how the stage name thing happened or not, but... oh well! Andromeda was a really useful way to track who has a stage name and when because they introduce themselves to the fans with it, and then it's used throughout the episode. Or, they try to use it. Hoshi is pretty bad at it for a little while.

The Minghao and Jeonghan Andromeda episode is pretty cute and embarrassing in equal parts. They do cringey things and say bad pickup lines and eat snacks! Jeonghan does seem to be really good at understanding what Minghao is genuinely trying to say and explaining things properly to him, since Junhui isn't there to help with translations and stuff. Warning though, Minghao does make a joke about Seungkwan's weight that I really don't like. The whole White Day chocolates scene is where the fic tilted into fully self indulgent, but I had to write a whole 130k before jigyu were able to kiss for the first time, so..... it is my right, I think. I did a lot of suffering to get here okay. Let the boys kiss!!!!!

(I tweet about fic a LOT and I simply could not shut up about this one)

Seungkwan saying that he stayed up all night working with Jihoon was something he mentioned in Andromeda that I unfortunately didn't save, and the thing about Chan not showing any skin during his episode is something that Seungkwan accidentally reads out while he's trying to rap. (It's... a whole thing. These episodes are kinda weird.) Seungkwan and Hoshi calling Bumzu happened in this episode, and it's pretty cute. Seungkwan opens the phone call with "Bumzu-hyung! Bumzu-hyung that I love!"

And then Jihoon's new studio! Again, things like when Pledis moved buildings and stuff was from Andromeda, because again, Hoshi talks about it lol. Andromeda truly is the gift that keeps on giving. There's later content that shows what the new studio looks like, and even gives an idea of where it is in the building (it's the door directly behind the area where Andromeda is streamed, so there are a lot of little Woozi sightings in later episodes when he pops in and out of the room).

And those are the things! Sorry if this post feels rushed; irl life is busy right now, but I really didn't want to miss a week. I hope everyone enjoyed this chapter!! It's the last bit of calm before things like........ get REALLY kicked into high gear in terms of debut prep, and I'm so so so excited. See you next week!

Hello and happy Friday! We've made it to another one!!! Lots of stuff happened in this chapter, so let's get into it.

First up is their SBS appearance! They have a whole 20 minute stage at the SAF (SBS Awards Festival) and oh they just look hysterical. I love it. Here's a 4 minute highlight video from the official Seventeen channel, but pretty much every performance has individual fancams too, which is how I figured out everyone's outfits. Honorable mentions are the Taste+Bed Breaker remix, which Hoshi and Chan talk about coming up with in this diary entry (they finished choreographing it and begun teaching it to the other members literally 3 days before SAF, wtf), Vocal Unit covering Little Bit More by NU'EST (the Jeonghan skirt situation), and then Jihoon does both Sunday Morning with Joshua again and a stage with Seungcheol (very cute cheol fancam btw), gay Because of You, and finally, an rendition of All You Need Is Love by the Beatles. For some reason. and for some reason this is the second time they've sung this? I do not understand. These aren't all of the stages, there are more, and if you wanna look at them the date is 141220! The Christmas video they film afterwards is this! (they're in the same outfits. they also decorate a cake with pop rocks.)

And Jigyu have a talk. Hopefully this cleared things up for people wondering if Mingyu knew how obvious he was being, and the answer is... kind of! He was trying to figure things out for a bit, but everything he did in 2014 was because he had a crush and knew it. Poor Jihoon's heart. And they decide to kind of not really but still sorta date in secret! Because that's always a good idea and never turns out badly for anyone.

The Keroro plush toy was an idea that I pulled from this video, and while this was taken in his new studio, we can just pretend he brought it with him. The New Years performance that I mention is something that I have no information for aside from these photos, but since it says "School Event" I assume that they performed at Seoul Broadcasting High School again, like they did last year. HHU were also at some event called "Best Ever Hip Hop" which made looking things up about it very difficult, so all I have is these photos and this tweet.

And then we're finally in 2015! 2015!!! Finally!!!!!! I mean, we've still got a few months until May, but at least we're in the correct year now! I think this is a pretty well-known predebut moment, but Seventeen decided to hike up a whole mountain on New Years day. They wrote a diary entry (the poor staff did not know they were going to be roped into this activity) and posted a pic on the official twitter account. Their little New Years break was mentioned in this diary entry, where they also talk about cleaning the practice room. I don't know when Jihoon was told about producing music for Seventeen, but I had Bumzu be so insistent about it because during an appearance on Andromeda, he said "Seventeen's album is something that even I put my life on the line for", and Jihoon is so surprised because he said in an interview during RtL era that "Never in our life did we ever think that we'd debut with the music that we wrote." The little scene of JIhoon and his mom talking was inspired by Jihoon saying that his mom used to do manicures on him when he was younger, which I found so cute that I had to add it in.

Okay. Seokmin's ear. It's a whole entire thing, so lemme explain.

Seokmin spoke relatively openly in Andromeda episodes that he's had surgery on his ear. The first time he mentions it is March 11th, saying that he can't hear out of his right ear because of the surgery, then he says that he had a surgery again (like a second one) at the start of April, where he specifically mentions having a hole in his eardrum. Having a hole in the eardrum causes deafness until it's closed (because the eardrum vibrating is what causes hearing) and when I looked into it, usually having a hole in your eardrum is something that doctors attempt to let heal organically before trying surgery. Since the attempted healing time is ~3 months, and he first mentions having the surgery in March, I had the injury happen in January. I couldn't find out how he got the hole in the first place, aside from some claims that it was from illness/infection that I couldn't verify. I didn't know how to write an infection like that, and I didn't want to backtrack and add in a whole lead-up of him being increasingly sick, so I made it be caused by a traumatic injury instead. I had it be an accident because the idea of it being someone else's fault a) made my tummy hurt, how does one deal with the guilt of injuring Lee Seokmin like that and b) dealing with guilt like that just was not something that was relevant/had a place in the Jihoon story that I was trying to tell. Was this what actually happened? Probably not at all. But this suited both my needs and my skill level the best, so that's what I had happen. Though, there is a diary entry on January 8th about Seokmin feeling down and crying because he's having difficulties singing, which fit pretty well.

And then the predebut meeting!!! There's a diary entry about that too, where they literally talk about debut for 7 hours. Their manager is shocked. They're so passionate, I love them so much. And last but not least, the ring ceremony! There are clips of it in both the first episode of Seventeen Project, and at the end of Seungcheol's episode of Hit The Road. There's a really long diary entry about it too, and it's really sweet to read. The detail about Jihoon and Jun's rings being switched came from that entry, and I made Seokmin's too big as well because while it isn't mentioned anywhere, during the first Andromeda episode, everyone is wearing their ring around their finger except Seokmin, who has his on a chain around his neck. Hoshi ends the entry with "Please trust us. We’ll take responsibility to protect our family. I love you."

Seventeen are officially Seventeen! Jigyu are kissing! Jihoon is their composer! Things are happening!!!!! I hope you enjoyed this week, I hope the chapter has found you well, and I hope you enjoy the next one too!!!

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