[commentary] corvi volantes
Apr. 30th, 2025 06:02 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shyshyshilohah, olymfics. the most wonderful time of the (every other) year.
firstly, and before i say anything else: as always, i want to shout out my team, and especially my incredible beta readers, who were some of the biggest champions of my piece and really helped it get off the ground. the community will always be my favorite part of olymfics, and even though i couldn’t be present or involved as much as i would have liked, i still cherished every second of it.
secondly, and entering the absolutely egotistical part of every one of my commentaries with an immediate and rude awakening: this, as per usual, is mostly me talking my mouth off about my apparent favorite subject (me!) and does not offer any real insight into the fic itself. sorry.
olive branch of miscellaneous fun facts about corvi volantes and the process behind it:
and now back to our regularly scheduled programming.
the thing is, at first, i didn’t even really want to write for “girls never die”. it’s a song, music video, and overall comeback that means a lot to me, and i didn’t think i could do it justice. unfortunately i didn’t have any better ideas for most of the other prompts, so i ended up listing gnd as an option for myself anyway, and — lo and behold, it ended up becoming my assignment.
i think i would have understood it if i had freaked out about the whole thing. but instead, because i am crazy and because i am only stubborn when the silliest stakes are involved, i thought to myself, no, this was meant to happen! because it means so much to me, i have to be the one to write this!
and then i spent the next three months convincing myself that that was true.
i wrote corvi volantes 300 words at a time, every night, slowly learning why sleep deprivation is considered a human rights violation. i pushed myself because i knew it was going to be a longer piece, because i refused to let the vision in my head go unseen, because i wanted it to be so fucking good that it would all be worth it.
obviously, i was writing izone fanfiction in the year 2025, so this was probably an unwarranted level of intensity. but my life was crazy in the moment (and still kind of is), and i was experiencing the perfect storm of conditions to write this piece. i don’t think i could have written this at any other time, and, some retrospective reservations aside, i don’t think i would have wanted it any other way.
earlier this year, i had a minor crisis in which i a.) regretted not pursuing dance as more than a hobby while i was still in school and b.) seriously considered returning to university for a BFA in dance. this was crazy for multiple reasons (one of which being — straightforwardly, i am not a good enough dancer to make it into the program), but it really made me so, so sad. dance is the thing that made me love my body and made me feel like a person. i couldn’t stand the idea that i was, in at least a few ways, leaving it behind, or had even already done so.
i also entered the year with two jobs (stressful) and am now staring down the barrel of losing both of them (stressful). one of them is with a research lab, so that’s just the misfortune of being reliant on scientific funding in this very cool american day and age, but the other is a position as a seasonal outreach educator, where i travel to elementary schools and give guest lessons. it’s a relatively new experience for me, but every time, the students have taken me by surprise with how thoughtful and brilliant they are.
it may or may not be surprising to learn that none of this left me with a lot of time to myself. and while all of this spiraling and imminent unemployment was going on, because i apparently didn’t have enough to do, i made it my goal to be able to recognize every single bird species in my state.
so, yeah: dance. work. kids. birds. if you’ve read the fic, i’m sure you can see where this all ended up going.
maybe one day, i’ll write something where it isn’t so extremely personal, where it’s not just a confessional barely disguised as kpop rpf. or maybe this is the only way i know how to write at all. i like this fic for what it is and for what it means as a time capsule of this weirdass period of my life, but these are also the things that are making me think that this is… i don’t know, unsustainable.
i put a lot of myself into this fic — and, like, nobody asked me to do that. i did it of my own free will because i am, again, crazy and stubborn. but the exhaustion that came of writing it and the resulting disappointment of it not quite living up to what i hoped it might be have really made me feel like i need to confront what my hobby(!) of writing fanfiction should mean to me.
here’s what it is: i do think that there is space for fanfiction that aims for serious emotional depth. i do think that there are excellent fic writers who shouldn’t have to minimize their work simply because it is fanfiction. i just don’t know what to do with the feeling of not believing that i count for either of those things despite essentially trying to achieve them anyway, or of wanting and feeling guilty for wanting attention on my writing, or of feeling stuck in a vicious cycle of ambition and shame and unnecessary struggle. and all for kpop rpf!!
(i’m realizing that i talked about pretty much this exact same thing in my 2024 year-end dw post. i’m also realizing that this, like i’ve said, has not been an incredibly optimal time in my life and that that may be bleeding into what i usually like to do for fun. and i’m realizing that this is so not about corvi volantes or olymfics at all and so we’re rerouting.)
tldr, i did not need to do this — but also, emotionally, i kind of did.
none of the things weighing on my mind while writing this fic have resolved themselves (except for the bird thing. i do in fact now know around 300 species of birds by common name, scientific name, family, and order), but it feels right for this fic to exist. in some ways, it’s my exact manifesto for living. it’s a little piece of me that can always be around to remind me of who and where i was, down to every last frustration and imperfection. and even when everything is an unmitigated crapshoot, even when i spend so much of my time angry and tired, even when the state of my existence is the most uncertain it’s ever been, what i know is — i want to live. god, it is so good to be alive.
they say gratitude is one of the most important factors in happiness and, like, on one level that is the absolutely trite bullshit that they sell in airport bookstores. it is, though, also something that i genuinely subscribe to. my life philosophy is really truly that love is in everything, and both for my own necessity and in service of the story, that’s what i tried to write into the world. i see it in blades of grass and stranger’s faces and the daily good luck charm of seeing a crow out the bus window on my morning commute. i see it in my students. i see it in dance.
i just — i don’t really know where i’m going with this, and i’m starting to get sappy. but if i had to guess, it would be: life is incredibly hard. there are so many things that promise to make it even harder.
but you know what? i’m going to live. if it’s the only thing i do, i’m going to live. and i hope that, even if only a little bit, something in this fic made you want to live, too.
firstly, and before i say anything else: as always, i want to shout out my team, and especially my incredible beta readers, who were some of the biggest champions of my piece and really helped it get off the ground. the community will always be my favorite part of olymfics, and even though i couldn’t be present or involved as much as i would have liked, i still cherished every second of it.
secondly, and entering the absolutely egotistical part of every one of my commentaries with an immediate and rude awakening: this, as per usual, is mostly me talking my mouth off about my apparent favorite subject (me!) and does not offer any real insight into the fic itself. sorry.
olive branch of miscellaneous fun facts about corvi volantes and the process behind it:
- yes, the fic is set in an alternate reality/future where pd48 wasn’t rigged. i know it was never revealed which specific izone members benefited from the rigging, so i just took our two lucky last-placers and called it a day 💥
- i guess i’m serious about birding now (more on that later) so in the name of accuracy, i did the research to verify the most populous crow species in korea (being, of course, the large-billed crow). big love to ebird timeline data and the birds of the world sister site
- the quote from the dance instructor about children as freestyle dancers is a real thing one of my former breaking teachers (who i do actually like — thank you for lending me your wisdom, j) used to tell me
- i also conceptualized the song in chaeyeon and jihye’s first lesson to be old-school house, which i chose because it is a music/dance genre that i personally love and think has, for better or worse (okay, probably better), so far been disregarded by the forces that commercialize and capitalize on dance and is thus not present in a lot of idol training or existing kpop choreography. (imo this is because the gentrification of black diasporic dance forms primarily relies on stripping the groove from those styles, and house is both the one with the most complex grooves and the one that looks the “most” incorrect without proper grooves. but i digress)
- i bought a cheap riesling as research for this fic. it was Not That Good, because it was a cheap riesling
and now back to our regularly scheduled programming.
the thing is, at first, i didn’t even really want to write for “girls never die”. it’s a song, music video, and overall comeback that means a lot to me, and i didn’t think i could do it justice. unfortunately i didn’t have any better ideas for most of the other prompts, so i ended up listing gnd as an option for myself anyway, and — lo and behold, it ended up becoming my assignment.
i think i would have understood it if i had freaked out about the whole thing. but instead, because i am crazy and because i am only stubborn when the silliest stakes are involved, i thought to myself, no, this was meant to happen! because it means so much to me, i have to be the one to write this!
and then i spent the next three months convincing myself that that was true.
i wrote corvi volantes 300 words at a time, every night, slowly learning why sleep deprivation is considered a human rights violation. i pushed myself because i knew it was going to be a longer piece, because i refused to let the vision in my head go unseen, because i wanted it to be so fucking good that it would all be worth it.
obviously, i was writing izone fanfiction in the year 2025, so this was probably an unwarranted level of intensity. but my life was crazy in the moment (and still kind of is), and i was experiencing the perfect storm of conditions to write this piece. i don’t think i could have written this at any other time, and, some retrospective reservations aside, i don’t think i would have wanted it any other way.
earlier this year, i had a minor crisis in which i a.) regretted not pursuing dance as more than a hobby while i was still in school and b.) seriously considered returning to university for a BFA in dance. this was crazy for multiple reasons (one of which being — straightforwardly, i am not a good enough dancer to make it into the program), but it really made me so, so sad. dance is the thing that made me love my body and made me feel like a person. i couldn’t stand the idea that i was, in at least a few ways, leaving it behind, or had even already done so.
i also entered the year with two jobs (stressful) and am now staring down the barrel of losing both of them (stressful). one of them is with a research lab, so that’s just the misfortune of being reliant on scientific funding in this very cool american day and age, but the other is a position as a seasonal outreach educator, where i travel to elementary schools and give guest lessons. it’s a relatively new experience for me, but every time, the students have taken me by surprise with how thoughtful and brilliant they are.
it may or may not be surprising to learn that none of this left me with a lot of time to myself. and while all of this spiraling and imminent unemployment was going on, because i apparently didn’t have enough to do, i made it my goal to be able to recognize every single bird species in my state.
so, yeah: dance. work. kids. birds. if you’ve read the fic, i’m sure you can see where this all ended up going.
maybe one day, i’ll write something where it isn’t so extremely personal, where it’s not just a confessional barely disguised as kpop rpf. or maybe this is the only way i know how to write at all. i like this fic for what it is and for what it means as a time capsule of this weirdass period of my life, but these are also the things that are making me think that this is… i don’t know, unsustainable.
i put a lot of myself into this fic — and, like, nobody asked me to do that. i did it of my own free will because i am, again, crazy and stubborn. but the exhaustion that came of writing it and the resulting disappointment of it not quite living up to what i hoped it might be have really made me feel like i need to confront what my hobby(!) of writing fanfiction should mean to me.
here’s what it is: i do think that there is space for fanfiction that aims for serious emotional depth. i do think that there are excellent fic writers who shouldn’t have to minimize their work simply because it is fanfiction. i just don’t know what to do with the feeling of not believing that i count for either of those things despite essentially trying to achieve them anyway, or of wanting and feeling guilty for wanting attention on my writing, or of feeling stuck in a vicious cycle of ambition and shame and unnecessary struggle. and all for kpop rpf!!
(i’m realizing that i talked about pretty much this exact same thing in my 2024 year-end dw post. i’m also realizing that this, like i’ve said, has not been an incredibly optimal time in my life and that that may be bleeding into what i usually like to do for fun. and i’m realizing that this is so not about corvi volantes or olymfics at all and so we’re rerouting.)
tldr, i did not need to do this — but also, emotionally, i kind of did.
none of the things weighing on my mind while writing this fic have resolved themselves (except for the bird thing. i do in fact now know around 300 species of birds by common name, scientific name, family, and order), but it feels right for this fic to exist. in some ways, it’s my exact manifesto for living. it’s a little piece of me that can always be around to remind me of who and where i was, down to every last frustration and imperfection. and even when everything is an unmitigated crapshoot, even when i spend so much of my time angry and tired, even when the state of my existence is the most uncertain it’s ever been, what i know is — i want to live. god, it is so good to be alive.
they say gratitude is one of the most important factors in happiness and, like, on one level that is the absolutely trite bullshit that they sell in airport bookstores. it is, though, also something that i genuinely subscribe to. my life philosophy is really truly that love is in everything, and both for my own necessity and in service of the story, that’s what i tried to write into the world. i see it in blades of grass and stranger’s faces and the daily good luck charm of seeing a crow out the bus window on my morning commute. i see it in my students. i see it in dance.
i just — i don’t really know where i’m going with this, and i’m starting to get sappy. but if i had to guess, it would be: life is incredibly hard. there are so many things that promise to make it even harder.
but you know what? i’m going to live. if it’s the only thing i do, i’m going to live. and i hope that, even if only a little bit, something in this fic made you want to live, too.
