A long, interpretative post of that one jongho fic
So, today I was in class and my professor said something about differences in interpretation of racism based on class and then I saw this comment for the jongho fic me and sestinande wrote. Needless to say I was pretty much useless in class after that. I even made a list of things I wanted to run by L titled I DON'T UNDERSTAND WHY I DIDN'T SEE IT BEFORE. I have it next to me right now and I will be referring to it in the course of this really long, but hopefully helpful and somewhat explanatory discussion of our fic. Mostly this is for L's sake so that she doesn't get a really long, annoying email with a bunch of capital letters, bold and underlined. Also, for anyone who wants to read the fic and feels like they need clarification or just wants to add to/join me in my complete devotion and excitement at the mere mention of this fic.
I feel like the best way to go about this is not in order of levels, but in things I find interesting or have been mentioned to me by people who read the fic. I will try to keep this organized and readable, but forgive me if at any point I go off on tangents.
Inception: the movie
When I first saw this movie I was really excited. I mean really. I planned an entire super junior fic set in an inception au, but didn't actually get around to writing it because the whole thing seemed so convoluted. I had no idea where to start, how to end, when to reveal what. It was a mess so I just ended up putting it on hold until I got paired up with L for shinee_duets. We agreed to get together a few ideas and bounce them off each other. I put down inception au because it was there in the back of my mind, half finished and still hoping to get written. But then, at the same time I wanted to do post-apocalyptic, you know, the evil, dark things and L wanted to do space. We decided to do them all. Our conversation ended up something like this:
L: WE CAN HAVE IT ALL
Me: THIS WILL BE THE MOST AWESOME THING I HAVE DONE THIS YEAR
Or not exactly like that, but basically dudes, L is amazing. This was so much easier to do because there was someone else who was excited to do it and filled in plot with me. We got the whole thing planned and divided levels and it was going to be awesome. I could tell.
Anyway, on to a brief recounting of the movie for those who didn't see it. Basically, the main character who will be J for the sake of this entry, has his team of "extractors" and they're trying to plant an idea into the head of some rich guy's head so that some other rich guy will stay rich. Point is, extractors can get into a person's dream through a machine and find out secrets/implant ideas. The former is simpler than the latter. To get a secret the person known as the "architect" creates a world inside the sleeping person's head; they project their own thoughts into the dreamer's unconscious mind and they can change the world to whatever they want. The point is not to let the dreamer know that he's dreaming because if he does he'll wake up and there will be no point. (ie the world the architect creates has to appear real to the person dreaming so some background knowledge of the person is necessary). The movie says that a dreamer's unconscious mind will create a safe, locked office, bank or other things like that to guard their secret because the sleeping mind can't think in terms of abstracts. Everything has to be tangible. A secret would be written down on paper hidden in a vault and the extractors have to find it.
To wake up from a dream, the people in the movie have to have some kind of fall/slip/misstep that will give them that sort of empty stomach feeling you get when you ride a roller coaster and it goes downhill. Or when a plane takes a dip when landing. Things like that. Oh, and there must also be someone not sleeping to wake them up/protect their sleeping bodies from danger on every level so that means many people had to be involved in the mission (?) in the movie.
I'll stop there since that's really where we got the inspiration for the fic. For more on inception I suggest you go watch the movie which was amazing.
Inception: our au
L: maybe they were prototype dreamer pairs or something and the program gave up
on Jonghyun because he went too deep, but Minho is like, I WILL GO DOWN WITH THIS SHIP
and tries to bring him back before the program is eliminated
If you've read our fic and watched the movie you know that we didn't follow the movie exactly. Our inception is flexible with things added and changed to fit the different aus we wanted to have. Next, I give you a list of the most obvious differences followed by a brief explanation for why we had them.
1. Timers: In the movie, the extractors can go into deeper levels in the unconscious mind of the dreamer by "falling asleep" within a level. But, there has to be someone to wake them up from that sleep at whatever level they are on. We wanted the main focus to be jongho and adding more people would have taken away from them. The timers in our fic serve the purpose of the person who would unplug the extractors in the movie. They go off ten minutes before they're supposed to wake the extractor up to give a warning (in the movie the person unhooking them played music. In ours we let the warning translate into whatever Jonghyun wanted. More on this later). Timers were all Jonghyun's idea because they allow a single person to do the work of many. One person goes in, the timer wakes them up and there's no need for anyone else to unplug them. Pretty brilliant of Jonghyun if I do say so myself. Timers were also our (L's and mine) emergency plan in case we ever got stuck and needed to wake Jonghyun and Minho up, we could just say the timers miraculously worked (which we didn't have to because we got way into this fic and found our own way) even though the whole conflict was centered around the timer not working. They were out secret weapon. Timers can do everything.
2. One hour to six dream hours as opposed to the 1:10 like in the movie: I like the number 6 and I like patterns. We had 4 levels, Minho lives on floor 5. So, clearly there had to be a number 6 in there somewhere. It might have also been pure coincidence or me subconsciously thinking that there are 60 seconds in a minute, 60 minutes in an hour, so 6. Could have been that I thought it would make the math easier. Could have been a lot of things, so let's go with I like patterns.
3. Two people in a dream instead of six: More people means less focus on jongho. We wanted focus to be on jongho. (See number one on the list)
4. In Inception people get stuck if they die. In ours they don't: Why? Because, Jonghyun was already stuck so we didn't really need that part to be in the fic. Also, having Minho and Jonghyun wake up from levels if they "died" in their dream was easier to work with. It also gave us another way to wake them up besides the empty stomach feeling you get when falling and the timers.
5. There is only one "body" despite there being many levels as opposed to the "one sleeping body per level" thing from the movie: The fic would have gotten too complicated and way longer than it is already if we had to explain all of that too. We would have ended up with a solid novel so, given that we were working on a set schedule, we had to let go of some things. In our fic, to get to a deeper level all Minho/Jonghyun had to do was fall asleep on one level and dream the next one. No dream, no new level.
6. The numbering of levels: There was no numbering in the movie, but we felt it would make things easier for the readers if we had a sort of number system. Unfortunately, we numbered the deepest level 1 instead of, say, 4 which might have made more sense. But, that was easily explained by Jonghyun in the fic. Because if you're dreaming and you work your way outwards, the last level you entered becomes the first you leave and the first level you entered becomes the last one you leave when you wake up. In case anyone needs that cleared up, the space level (1) is the last level Jonghyun entered and is the first he leaves when Minho goes to get him. The post-apocalyptic level (2) is the third Jonghyun entered and the second he leaves when Minho gets him and so on and so forth.
The Levels:
L: this is like planning vacation, kind of "the ocean or the mountains?"
Me: "somewhere where we can be hunted by the government or do you prefer the mafia"
We knocked off three of the four levels pretty quick the first time we talked about this and we had a bunch more aus in the lists we'd made so we were pretty set when we started writing. Each level has its own special place in the fic and all of them add to the whole story because that's the way we planned it. You could technically read the levels as their own story, but at the same time I feel like we did a pretty good job at connecting them, if you'll notice, through the dialogue in the parenthesis.
Level 1 is the introduction, all about the getting you to read the fic. I think L did an amazing job at the descriptions, the writing and the overall come read this fic, you know you want to effect.
Level 2 is where you should hopefully start wondering what the hell is going on, but still maybe (fingers crossed) have noticed that level 1 and 2 start with "Minho wakes up alone." Because, there's a clear break between 1 and 2, the reader should get that the two parts are not necessarily linear just yet, but related in some way. The point was that up to this level, we wanted to keep everyone in the dark.
Level 3 is where the entire story is told. Again the level starts with "Minho wakes up alone." That's 3 levels now, which I hoped did imply that the levels were connected. If you didn't get that yet, there is dialogue in part 3 that was in the parenthesis in the previous two levels. Level 3 is all about explaining the verse, the relationship between Minho and Jonghyun, the leather bracelet from levels 2 and 4 and hopefully what is going on in the fic. At the end of this level, we know that Minho went through 3 levels, but Jonghyun went through 4 which means there's one more level to go. This also means that the story Minho just relived in level 3 is part of his dream. Now, this is one of my favorite parts of this fic. Level 3 is basically Minho and Jonghyun remaking the way they met and reliving everything up to the point when Jonghyun got stuck. BUT, they're still dreaming which begs the question; how much of that story was actually real and how much of it did Minho/Jonghyun polish. We could literally have a whole section of their story that they didn't acknowledge or made up. DO YOU SEE WHERE THE POTENTIAL TO WRITE MORE COMES FROM. Everything in the dream is based off some reality, but you don't know what the reality is because Minho never says (me and L don't either). Like, each level could be based off some event that happened in Jonghyun's life and that he interpreted a different way while he dreamt or maybe he just had a space poster in his room that inspired everything or something.
I live off these possibilities.
Level 4 is the point where Minho is done. He just relived his entire life with Jonghyun, thought he saved him and got a huge HA I LIED, SUCKS FOR YOU from the universe. He doesn't remember he's dreaming anymore until towards the end. I love this level because it's inventive and fun. It's like taking a deep breath after all the stuff stuffed down the reader's throat in the previous level. I think this would have to be my favorite level. Again, L writes things that make me want to cry they are so beautiful.
For anyone who didn't catch it, the clock tower working again, yeah, that was the timer warning them.
The characters: Minho
He’s always prided himself in being a well-read intellectual, logical, and clear headed. Minho likes books and people who don't mind sitting down to read whatever crappy novel they can get their hands on. He knows when to walk away and if he has a competitive streak when it comes to sports, it’s only because he was never good enough at anything else before college.
-From Part 2 of the fic
Inception/Extraction/Dream Science in general was his idea. I don't know what to say about Minho. I love him. I want to punch him in the face. He's good at designing programs and running simulations, but he's crap at math. When we were discussing Minho and Jonghyun, L said that one of the differences between the two is that Minho doesn't see needing help as a weakness. He's sort of more experienced maybe since he's been working at the lab longer than Jonghyun has, but he's more cautious. He runs simulations, works on equations, plans things down to the last detail because he doesn't want things to go wrong. I feel like, although this is a good thing considering the experiments they conduct can be dangerous, it's also a weakness in that it takes him longer to come up with/present new ideas because he has to know how everything works before he feels comfortable doing it (this is the reason it took so long for him to actually admit that he was in love with Jjong and to ask him to move in).
He has money, but I feel like this is something that comes from working and being good at his job and not necessarily something he was born with, although you can argue that he wasn't poor ever. He's also very neat and clean which I feel comes from the whole wanting to know where everything is/how it works and he's just comfortable that way; knowing everything is in its proper place. He's an only child and a private person which you can see because he has two rooms in his apartment and even when he finally comes around to asking Jonghyun to move in with him, he sets aside the extra room as Jonghyun's meaning they're not sharing rooms.
The characters: Jonghyun
"Woah, woah," the smaller man says. "First of all, I’m a magician, you ugly motherfucker. Second of all, lothario?"
-From Part 3 of the fic
Jonghyun is magical.
I adored every bit of his characterization and the way he's the opposite of Minho in certain aspects. He's all about adventure whether it's thinking up new ideas for inception/extraction, screwing around with the world during his and Minho's first run with the program or coming up with his mental defenses. His defenses, Jonghyun's defenses. They make me weep with joy. The boy has zombies, honest to god, fucking zombies as his mental defense. I mean, come the fuck on, after Minho's lanky teenagers, that is some pretty kick ass shit.
I think everything Jonghyun does just highlights who he is. Strong, independent and maybe like he has something to prove which is why it has to be him who presents the timers, him who had to work on the equations, him who has to head the project, him who has to be the first to test it, him who has do everything. Jonghyun is all about getting out there and doing things which is why it makes sense that he and Minho would fight a lot during Jonghyun's research into timers. Jjong would totally be off in his own world, giving no fucks about proper sleeping or eating habits because he's doing his thing and Minho would try to get him to sleep or try to help which Jjong wouldn't take kindly too because he just has to do this alone. Minho wants to help. Jjong says no. There's fighting because, even though both of them have good reasons for getting on each others nerves, they're similar in that they're stubborn when it comes to the things they believe in, which would be a fine mess if they believe in two different things.
The characters: Taemin
He's sure those are what pass for defense in his mind and he's pretty put off that they're mostly lanky teenagers with long hair.
-From Part 2 of the fic
What I find most interesting about Taemin is that he has so much potential. He was originally on level 4 working with Minho where L put him. But I looked over level 3 and basically these are the things you don't notice until the end. Technically Taemin can be Minho's dream version of defense, which although a bit sad (because Taemin is such a tinybabyangelthing), seems amazing to me. Following the logic associated with dreaming, Minho would have had to have seen Taemin or someone like him in his life and thought out some sort of association between real life Taemin and defense.
I mean the things we could do with that literally blows my mind. There could be so many potential offshots/one-shots/multi-chaptered fics just on this verse alone. Like maybe Minho saw Taemin begging for money in the street or Taemin as a teenager standing in the street after school or Taemin on a bus. Then Minho felt like he had to protect hobo!Taemin or schoolboy!Taemin or busperson!Taemin and his dream mind went HA I DON'T LISTEN TO YOU and made Taemin protect Minho instead.
Taemin could be anything we wanted him to be.
The Ending and other comments on the fic
L: we could go balls out inception and end with a "DO THEY? DID THEY MAKE IT?"
Me: it would make my life to see all the comments at the end going "WHY DID YOU LEAVE IT LIKE THIS. YOU SUCK"
I admit I took great pleasure in the ending of this fic. I was completely for the whole open ended, what the fuck, why sort of end to this. It leaves room for interpretation, let's you wonder if they really made it out or if there was something Minho didn't say/was hiding. Maybe they're stuck forever. Maybe it never really happened and Minho just fell asleep during the last modifications and now that he sees the potential harm he will never want to try it. Or Maybe he will. Maybe they made it and Minho will turn around and Jonghyun will be there, rolling his eyes and going "what took you so long?" I mean, the possibilities for this are endless. Wherever you want your mind to take you.
Personally, as long as they're together and happy I don't care what happens, although if I am not going to lie, dude, they so made it out.
Okay, last thing I promise. There was a comment that changed the whole ending for me and prompted me to write this insanely long thing that no one will make it to the end of, except maybe L because this is for you so that you don't have to read it in email form. The following is the gist of the comment:
my interpretation of the end is that when Jjong said "I counted four," he got woken up, but Minho still had another level to go which was the cottage. And he remembered Jonghyun, but eventually he forgot. And Jjong was freaking out in real life cause he was awake and Minho wasn't, and Minho forgot him, so Jonghyun went back in; that's when the magician came into the village right.
I totally see that working because Jonghyun wasn't there and then he was so he was the one that come to Minho this time. I mean there's no right or wrong here which I think is amazing because yeah it could have happened this way and it could have happened some other way. I mean who's to say that Jonghyun even got to level 4. He hinted that he was going for 4 levels, but Minho doesn't actually know because he wasn't there. I could sit here all day discussing just that last level alone and arguing why it was Jonghyun in the end that rescued Minho and not Minho who rescued Jonghyun. I mean can't you just totally see that working; Minho thinks he's off to save Jonghyun, but Jonghyun doesn't want/need to be saved so in the end it's him who does the actual saving. It just seems so Jonghyun to me.
I love the little hints Jjong dropped in the village that he knew who Minho was, because I think there were similar hints dropped by Minho in the beginning and now it's Jjong cause he's saving Minho.
L, TELL ME WHAT YOU WERE THINKING. I mean, there it is again. You just never know with this fic what actually happens because everyone is dreaming and dreams take what's real and switch it up so that nothing and everything is real.
Guys, I LOVE THIS FIC FOR REALS.
In other words, we really put a lot of time and thought into this. If there are any other questions or comments on the verse/ the fic/what was written here, just drop a comment. Thanks, sincerely, to all those who read the fic and took the time to read this ♥
I feel like the best way to go about this is not in order of levels, but in things I find interesting or have been mentioned to me by people who read the fic. I will try to keep this organized and readable, but forgive me if at any point I go off on tangents.
Inception: the movie
When I first saw this movie I was really excited. I mean really. I planned an entire super junior fic set in an inception au, but didn't actually get around to writing it because the whole thing seemed so convoluted. I had no idea where to start, how to end, when to reveal what. It was a mess so I just ended up putting it on hold until I got paired up with L for shinee_duets. We agreed to get together a few ideas and bounce them off each other. I put down inception au because it was there in the back of my mind, half finished and still hoping to get written. But then, at the same time I wanted to do post-apocalyptic, you know, the evil, dark things and L wanted to do space. We decided to do them all. Our conversation ended up something like this:
L: WE CAN HAVE IT ALL
Me: THIS WILL BE THE MOST AWESOME THING I HAVE DONE THIS YEAR
Or not exactly like that, but basically dudes, L is amazing. This was so much easier to do because there was someone else who was excited to do it and filled in plot with me. We got the whole thing planned and divided levels and it was going to be awesome. I could tell.
Anyway, on to a brief recounting of the movie for those who didn't see it. Basically, the main character who will be J for the sake of this entry, has his team of "extractors" and they're trying to plant an idea into the head of some rich guy's head so that some other rich guy will stay rich. Point is, extractors can get into a person's dream through a machine and find out secrets/implant ideas. The former is simpler than the latter. To get a secret the person known as the "architect" creates a world inside the sleeping person's head; they project their own thoughts into the dreamer's unconscious mind and they can change the world to whatever they want. The point is not to let the dreamer know that he's dreaming because if he does he'll wake up and there will be no point. (ie the world the architect creates has to appear real to the person dreaming so some background knowledge of the person is necessary). The movie says that a dreamer's unconscious mind will create a safe, locked office, bank or other things like that to guard their secret because the sleeping mind can't think in terms of abstracts. Everything has to be tangible. A secret would be written down on paper hidden in a vault and the extractors have to find it.
To wake up from a dream, the people in the movie have to have some kind of fall/slip/misstep that will give them that sort of empty stomach feeling you get when you ride a roller coaster and it goes downhill. Or when a plane takes a dip when landing. Things like that. Oh, and there must also be someone not sleeping to wake them up/protect their sleeping bodies from danger on every level so that means many people had to be involved in the mission (?) in the movie.
I'll stop there since that's really where we got the inspiration for the fic. For more on inception I suggest you go watch the movie which was amazing.
Inception: our au
L: maybe they were prototype dreamer pairs or something and the program gave up
on Jonghyun because he went too deep, but Minho is like, I WILL GO DOWN WITH THIS SHIP
and tries to bring him back before the program is eliminated
If you've read our fic and watched the movie you know that we didn't follow the movie exactly. Our inception is flexible with things added and changed to fit the different aus we wanted to have. Next, I give you a list of the most obvious differences followed by a brief explanation for why we had them.
1. Timers: In the movie, the extractors can go into deeper levels in the unconscious mind of the dreamer by "falling asleep" within a level. But, there has to be someone to wake them up from that sleep at whatever level they are on. We wanted the main focus to be jongho and adding more people would have taken away from them. The timers in our fic serve the purpose of the person who would unplug the extractors in the movie. They go off ten minutes before they're supposed to wake the extractor up to give a warning (in the movie the person unhooking them played music. In ours we let the warning translate into whatever Jonghyun wanted. More on this later). Timers were all Jonghyun's idea because they allow a single person to do the work of many. One person goes in, the timer wakes them up and there's no need for anyone else to unplug them. Pretty brilliant of Jonghyun if I do say so myself. Timers were also our (L's and mine) emergency plan in case we ever got stuck and needed to wake Jonghyun and Minho up, we could just say the timers miraculously worked (which we didn't have to because we got way into this fic and found our own way) even though the whole conflict was centered around the timer not working. They were out secret weapon. Timers can do everything.
2. One hour to six dream hours as opposed to the 1:10 like in the movie: I like the number 6 and I like patterns. We had 4 levels, Minho lives on floor 5. So, clearly there had to be a number 6 in there somewhere. It might have also been pure coincidence or me subconsciously thinking that there are 60 seconds in a minute, 60 minutes in an hour, so 6. Could have been that I thought it would make the math easier. Could have been a lot of things, so let's go with I like patterns.
3. Two people in a dream instead of six: More people means less focus on jongho. We wanted focus to be on jongho. (See number one on the list)
4. In Inception people get stuck if they die. In ours they don't: Why? Because, Jonghyun was already stuck so we didn't really need that part to be in the fic. Also, having Minho and Jonghyun wake up from levels if they "died" in their dream was easier to work with. It also gave us another way to wake them up besides the empty stomach feeling you get when falling and the timers.
5. There is only one "body" despite there being many levels as opposed to the "one sleeping body per level" thing from the movie: The fic would have gotten too complicated and way longer than it is already if we had to explain all of that too. We would have ended up with a solid novel so, given that we were working on a set schedule, we had to let go of some things. In our fic, to get to a deeper level all Minho/Jonghyun had to do was fall asleep on one level and dream the next one. No dream, no new level.
6. The numbering of levels: There was no numbering in the movie, but we felt it would make things easier for the readers if we had a sort of number system. Unfortunately, we numbered the deepest level 1 instead of, say, 4 which might have made more sense. But, that was easily explained by Jonghyun in the fic. Because if you're dreaming and you work your way outwards, the last level you entered becomes the first you leave and the first level you entered becomes the last one you leave when you wake up. In case anyone needs that cleared up, the space level (1) is the last level Jonghyun entered and is the first he leaves when Minho goes to get him. The post-apocalyptic level (2) is the third Jonghyun entered and the second he leaves when Minho gets him and so on and so forth.
The Levels:
L: this is like planning vacation, kind of "the ocean or the mountains?"
Me: "somewhere where we can be hunted by the government or do you prefer the mafia"
We knocked off three of the four levels pretty quick the first time we talked about this and we had a bunch more aus in the lists we'd made so we were pretty set when we started writing. Each level has its own special place in the fic and all of them add to the whole story because that's the way we planned it. You could technically read the levels as their own story, but at the same time I feel like we did a pretty good job at connecting them, if you'll notice, through the dialogue in the parenthesis.
Level 1 is the introduction, all about the getting you to read the fic. I think L did an amazing job at the descriptions, the writing and the overall come read this fic, you know you want to effect.
Level 2 is where you should hopefully start wondering what the hell is going on, but still maybe (fingers crossed) have noticed that level 1 and 2 start with "Minho wakes up alone." Because, there's a clear break between 1 and 2, the reader should get that the two parts are not necessarily linear just yet, but related in some way. The point was that up to this level, we wanted to keep everyone in the dark.
Level 3 is where the entire story is told. Again the level starts with "Minho wakes up alone." That's 3 levels now, which I hoped did imply that the levels were connected. If you didn't get that yet, there is dialogue in part 3 that was in the parenthesis in the previous two levels. Level 3 is all about explaining the verse, the relationship between Minho and Jonghyun, the leather bracelet from levels 2 and 4 and hopefully what is going on in the fic. At the end of this level, we know that Minho went through 3 levels, but Jonghyun went through 4 which means there's one more level to go. This also means that the story Minho just relived in level 3 is part of his dream. Now, this is one of my favorite parts of this fic. Level 3 is basically Minho and Jonghyun remaking the way they met and reliving everything up to the point when Jonghyun got stuck. BUT, they're still dreaming which begs the question; how much of that story was actually real and how much of it did Minho/Jonghyun polish. We could literally have a whole section of their story that they didn't acknowledge or made up. DO YOU SEE WHERE THE POTENTIAL TO WRITE MORE COMES FROM. Everything in the dream is based off some reality, but you don't know what the reality is because Minho never says (me and L don't either). Like, each level could be based off some event that happened in Jonghyun's life and that he interpreted a different way while he dreamt or maybe he just had a space poster in his room that inspired everything or something.
I live off these possibilities.
Level 4 is the point where Minho is done. He just relived his entire life with Jonghyun, thought he saved him and got a huge HA I LIED, SUCKS FOR YOU from the universe. He doesn't remember he's dreaming anymore until towards the end. I love this level because it's inventive and fun. It's like taking a deep breath after all the stuff stuffed down the reader's throat in the previous level. I think this would have to be my favorite level. Again, L writes things that make me want to cry they are so beautiful.
For anyone who didn't catch it, the clock tower working again, yeah, that was the timer warning them.
The characters: Minho
He’s always prided himself in being a well-read intellectual, logical, and clear headed. Minho likes books and people who don't mind sitting down to read whatever crappy novel they can get their hands on. He knows when to walk away and if he has a competitive streak when it comes to sports, it’s only because he was never good enough at anything else before college.
-From Part 2 of the fic
Inception/Extraction/Dream Science in general was his idea. I don't know what to say about Minho. I love him. I want to punch him in the face. He's good at designing programs and running simulations, but he's crap at math. When we were discussing Minho and Jonghyun, L said that one of the differences between the two is that Minho doesn't see needing help as a weakness. He's sort of more experienced maybe since he's been working at the lab longer than Jonghyun has, but he's more cautious. He runs simulations, works on equations, plans things down to the last detail because he doesn't want things to go wrong. I feel like, although this is a good thing considering the experiments they conduct can be dangerous, it's also a weakness in that it takes him longer to come up with/present new ideas because he has to know how everything works before he feels comfortable doing it (this is the reason it took so long for him to actually admit that he was in love with Jjong and to ask him to move in).
He has money, but I feel like this is something that comes from working and being good at his job and not necessarily something he was born with, although you can argue that he wasn't poor ever. He's also very neat and clean which I feel comes from the whole wanting to know where everything is/how it works and he's just comfortable that way; knowing everything is in its proper place. He's an only child and a private person which you can see because he has two rooms in his apartment and even when he finally comes around to asking Jonghyun to move in with him, he sets aside the extra room as Jonghyun's meaning they're not sharing rooms.
The characters: Jonghyun
"Woah, woah," the smaller man says. "First of all, I’m a magician, you ugly motherfucker. Second of all, lothario?"
-From Part 3 of the fic
Jonghyun is magical.
I adored every bit of his characterization and the way he's the opposite of Minho in certain aspects. He's all about adventure whether it's thinking up new ideas for inception/extraction, screwing around with the world during his and Minho's first run with the program or coming up with his mental defenses. His defenses, Jonghyun's defenses. They make me weep with joy. The boy has zombies, honest to god, fucking zombies as his mental defense. I mean, come the fuck on, after Minho's lanky teenagers, that is some pretty kick ass shit.
I think everything Jonghyun does just highlights who he is. Strong, independent and maybe like he has something to prove which is why it has to be him who presents the timers, him who had to work on the equations, him who has to head the project, him who has to be the first to test it, him who has do everything. Jonghyun is all about getting out there and doing things which is why it makes sense that he and Minho would fight a lot during Jonghyun's research into timers. Jjong would totally be off in his own world, giving no fucks about proper sleeping or eating habits because he's doing his thing and Minho would try to get him to sleep or try to help which Jjong wouldn't take kindly too because he just has to do this alone. Minho wants to help. Jjong says no. There's fighting because, even though both of them have good reasons for getting on each others nerves, they're similar in that they're stubborn when it comes to the things they believe in, which would be a fine mess if they believe in two different things.
The characters: Taemin
He's sure those are what pass for defense in his mind and he's pretty put off that they're mostly lanky teenagers with long hair.
-From Part 2 of the fic
What I find most interesting about Taemin is that he has so much potential. He was originally on level 4 working with Minho where L put him. But I looked over level 3 and basically these are the things you don't notice until the end. Technically Taemin can be Minho's dream version of defense, which although a bit sad (because Taemin is such a tinybabyangelthing), seems amazing to me. Following the logic associated with dreaming, Minho would have had to have seen Taemin or someone like him in his life and thought out some sort of association between real life Taemin and defense.
I mean the things we could do with that literally blows my mind. There could be so many potential offshots/one-shots/multi-chaptered fics just on this verse alone. Like maybe Minho saw Taemin begging for money in the street or Taemin as a teenager standing in the street after school or Taemin on a bus. Then Minho felt like he had to protect hobo!Taemin or schoolboy!Taemin or busperson!Taemin and his dream mind went HA I DON'T LISTEN TO YOU and made Taemin protect Minho instead.
Taemin could be anything we wanted him to be.
The Ending and other comments on the fic
L: we could go balls out inception and end with a "DO THEY? DID THEY MAKE IT?"
Me: it would make my life to see all the comments at the end going "WHY DID YOU LEAVE IT LIKE THIS. YOU SUCK"
I admit I took great pleasure in the ending of this fic. I was completely for the whole open ended, what the fuck, why sort of end to this. It leaves room for interpretation, let's you wonder if they really made it out or if there was something Minho didn't say/was hiding. Maybe they're stuck forever. Maybe it never really happened and Minho just fell asleep during the last modifications and now that he sees the potential harm he will never want to try it. Or Maybe he will. Maybe they made it and Minho will turn around and Jonghyun will be there, rolling his eyes and going "what took you so long?" I mean, the possibilities for this are endless. Wherever you want your mind to take you.
Personally, as long as they're together and happy I don't care what happens, although if I am not going to lie, dude, they so made it out.
Okay, last thing I promise. There was a comment that changed the whole ending for me and prompted me to write this insanely long thing that no one will make it to the end of, except maybe L because this is for you so that you don't have to read it in email form. The following is the gist of the comment:
my interpretation of the end is that when Jjong said "I counted four," he got woken up, but Minho still had another level to go which was the cottage. And he remembered Jonghyun, but eventually he forgot. And Jjong was freaking out in real life cause he was awake and Minho wasn't, and Minho forgot him, so Jonghyun went back in; that's when the magician came into the village right.
I totally see that working because Jonghyun wasn't there and then he was so he was the one that come to Minho this time. I mean there's no right or wrong here which I think is amazing because yeah it could have happened this way and it could have happened some other way. I mean who's to say that Jonghyun even got to level 4. He hinted that he was going for 4 levels, but Minho doesn't actually know because he wasn't there. I could sit here all day discussing just that last level alone and arguing why it was Jonghyun in the end that rescued Minho and not Minho who rescued Jonghyun. I mean can't you just totally see that working; Minho thinks he's off to save Jonghyun, but Jonghyun doesn't want/need to be saved so in the end it's him who does the actual saving. It just seems so Jonghyun to me.
I love the little hints Jjong dropped in the village that he knew who Minho was, because I think there were similar hints dropped by Minho in the beginning and now it's Jjong cause he's saving Minho.
L, TELL ME WHAT YOU WERE THINKING. I mean, there it is again. You just never know with this fic what actually happens because everyone is dreaming and dreams take what's real and switch it up so that nothing and everything is real.
Guys, I LOVE THIS FIC FOR REALS.
In other words, we really put a lot of time and thought into this. If there are any other questions or comments on the verse/ the fic/what was written here, just drop a comment. Thanks, sincerely, to all those who read the fic and took the time to read this ♥