17hols 2025 roundup post

[rainiest]

For the first time this year I happened to exist on this mortal plane during 17hols season, so I was finally able to participate instead of just longingly scrolling prompts I was incapable of writing for.

Here’s a roundup of all the prompts and fills I posted this year along with some commentary!

Click to jump to sections:

> sweet tooth commentary

> Vesuvius commentary

> song for the wandering moon commentary
>>>> svt member daemon assignments

> Prompts I posted + favourite fills

[1] sweet tooth

Joshua/Mingyu, 1.3k
prompted by anonymous
prompt:

An unexpеcted taste
A cake that only looks beautiful
If you expected sweetness
Baby, I'm sorry

-ICHILLIN', Bite Me

When I saw this prompt with the prompter suggesting Joshua, it immediately made me think of the first Shua & Cook episode where he suddenly goes: Btw carats! I don’t even like eating sweets, the camera just always catches me when I happen to be eating them. That’s why you guys think I like them but I actually don’t like or eat them ever! Glad we could clear that up :) Now let’s check out this cookie recipe!

I was like hmmmm okay. Fascinating stuff. Along with these two fucked-up josh hongs that I imprinted on last year (one-man cult by yoonbot (iverins), and the moon falls into the earth by amoteamame (jeonghan-centric)), I knew it was finally time for me to get nasty.

I’ve been having gyushua thoughts for a few months now. It’s an interesting dynamic to me because in my mind they are very similar but also different.

There’s their appearance on It’s good to eat well? where they talk about how they are the cleanest two members and talk shit about all the gross stuff they had to endure from the others in the dorms. They’ve traveled overseas on private holidays just the two of them more than once. To me they are also two of the more typical extroverts in the group (vs someone like vernon, who comes back extroverted on every test but isn’t at all typical in his extroversion). There’s also this edit of them winking at each other that sent me into cardiac shock (yes it really is that easy to capital G get me).

They have similar hobbies, habits, and visions of how they want their lives to look, and yet I can’t shake the feeling that under it all they are extremely different people. Hence this part in the fic: “Maybe we do the same things,” Joshua had replied then, “but they don’t have the same meaning.”

Once I had a grip on the dynamic and characters I was aiming for, the fic really wrote itself. It was a very refreshing writing experience and imo is how writing flashfic should be (this is me directly shading my next two fills). I had a few scenes or conversations pop up in my head, jotted them all down over the course of one evening, spent maybe an hour the next day stitching them all together and it was done.

I’m pleased with how it turned out. I think I captured the exact Joshua, and the differences between him and Mingyu, that I was hoping to. I like the tiny nod to second language struggles—Joshua has said as recently as Nana tour that he doesn’t feel like he can fully express himself in Korean and that would colour every single interaction he has.

[…] Joshua couldn’t keep up, no matter how much sense the words made in his own head.

He’s been dreading it for weeks now, turning arguments over and over in his mind for when Jeonghan inevitably struck.

One other thing I like but also wish I had leaned into a tiny bit more is the suggestion of Joshua being an unreliable narrator of his own self. It’s only really implied through Jeonghan, and to a lesser extent Seungkwan. But through Jeonghan’s actions there’s the impression that maybe the way Joshua thinks he treats people doesn’t line up with the way he treats them in reality (At least, to the extent of Jeonghan’s knowledge. Joshua is outright mean to Mingyu behind closed doors, and even meaner to him in his own mind).

This leans into the whole thematic crux of the fic anyway: action vs intention. Is being kind to others for selfish reasons (because you want to be seen as a kind person) really a bad thing? Or does the fact that you were kind matter more than the reasons behind it? Maybe! I don’t know shit!

Favourite parts:

The other half of the truth is that Mingyu has known love all his life. It’s in everything he does, radiates from him as reliably as body heat. There’s nothing in him Joshua could break that Mingyu wouldn’t be able to put back together with his own two hands.

Sometimes the perfect words or the exact right angle to pinpoint a character’s essence just occur to you out of nowhere. I’ve never written Mingyu as a main character before so this was enlightening. To me he’s a lover, he’s an optimist and he’s a fixer—which is probably why I rarely write him. I like my main characters a little more passive and introspective. (I say this and yet I have a Mingyu-narrated WIP at the top of my priority list right this very second.)

All he has to do then is wait. Mingyu will be in the doorway before long, eyes several shades too dark like he’s stepped out of a dim room directly into the sun.

Could see this image so clearly in my head but had to circle around the right words for a while before I finally got them to click. So satisfying when that happens.

[2] Vesuvius

Wonwoo/Jun, 5.4k
prompted by harbourdreams
prompt:

THERE IS A PERIOD WHEN IT IS CLEAR THAT YOU HAVE GONE WRONG BUT YOU CONTINUE. SOMETIMES THERE IS A LUXURIOUS AMOUNT OF TIME BEFORE ANYTHING BAD HAPPENS.

– from The Living Series by Jenny Holzer

Oh boy. Here we go.

Vesuvius, I am here
You are all I have
Fire of fire, I’m insecure
For it is all been made to plan
Though I know I will fail
I cannot be made to laugh
For in life as in death
I’d rather be burned than be living in debt

Vesuvius, Sufjan Stevens

Like I said in the original ao3 notes, I got this idea back in 2020. Clearly I was going through it but who amongst us wasn’t.

I never started writing it back then, I had just plotted out the scenes and themes in the way I normally do. It was originally a much longer fic, only around a third of the scenes in that original plan made it to the final version. Some of them were harvested for other fics: the part in peacock utopia where Sana talks about how some things are so terrible that they change a reality forever, a part in the Fish in the water part 3 plan (it exists I swear). The other scenes got cut because five years later I couldn’t remember wtf they were talking about from my vague notes (“Conversation with ksy” GIRL WHAT CONVERSATION??). New things got added too (Jeonghan florist was new, Jihoon fisherman wasn’t but the wife part was). But I’m glad most of it got axed because I think this fic didn’t need to be any longer than it already is. If anything it could’ve been shorter.

Favourite parts:

Jun is smiling at him like he has a secret, which makes Wonwoo’s words falter. The light grows blurrier the farther they walk from the diner, and he is quite beautiful.

Jun is quite beautiful. It’s true, I’ve seen him.

Jun reaches up and plucks Wonwoo’s glasses from his face. The last thing he sees clearly is the giddy intent in his eyes.

“How blind are you?” Jun asks. Blurrily, Wonwoo sees him extend one arm and place his glasses to the side.

“Very,” replies Wonwoo. His heart is pounding.

“Whoa,” says Jun. The smudge of him comes closer, anchored by his black sweatshirt. “Cool.”

The dry slide of Jun’s palm against his neck is all the warning Wonwoo gets. The Jun-shaped blur eclipses all light as he pulls him back in.

Sometimes you just have to neg a guy about his eyesight right before you kiss him. And sometimes, if he’s enough of a loser, he’ll like it.

No but when I first wrote it, this was a much different and shorter kiss scene and it was sooo bland. Didn’t feel right for them at all, so I added the whole glasses bit. I don’t consider myself a good writer of romance so I think for very romance-trope style scenes like a first kiss I need to lean hard into specificity or it just comes out completely flat.

Here is a secret: sometimes, if you are very quiet and listen very hard, you can hear things that ordinarily you would not.

A silver flutter in the air overhead. Water soaking through the soil to wake the forest from sleep. The trunk of a towering tree speaking truths older than words. Listen closely and the sunlight makes a sound.

Life. Above and below and all around. Long before today and long, long after: there is life.

Ever since I wrote Spirit last year I’ve started to feel like we should all be a little more disrespectful of the fourth wall. Actually the start of this section originally read Let me tell you a secret instead of Here is a secret, but abruptly introducing a first-person as well as second felt like too much of a blatant fourth wall break so I changed it.

I wrote this section on a weeknight right when I was gonna go to bed but I felt too restless so sat in front of my laptop to see what would happen, and this flooded out in about five minutes (that’s fast for me). Then I had to stand up and walk away so I wouldn’t cry lmao sometimes it’s like that!!! I guess I really had something weighing on me that day. But I did feel better after. Writing is my girlfriend, writing is a god, etc.

This fic has much heavier themes than I would normally touch. It was a good experience for me to write it because it taught me something important: I don’t like to write about this kind of thing. Or at least not explicitly—the end of the world is also about trauma but it never goes into detail about what that trauma is, which for me was a much more comfortable way to write about it.

But apart from that, I did enjoy writing this. Wonhui is still delightful and writing them again after all this time felt like seeing an old friend (though the friend is probably just the me of 2017-2021).

Blanket warning for non-specific discussions of trauma for the rest of this section, nothing worse than what’s in the actual fic. Click here to skip to the next section.

While the end of the world is about how to show someone else those inner, traumatized parts of yourself, Vesuvius is about how to live with the aftermath of a trauma that is long over.

Doesn’t anger feel so good when it’s justified? I’m not going to pretend it doesn’t. I sometimes think I could sit stewing in my own rage forever and call it acceptance because something that feels that good must actually be good for you, right?

The part of me that wanted that was much louder in 2020 than it is now. I kinda wonder what this fic would’ve turned out like, had 2020 me written it instead of handing it over to 2025 me. But only kinda. I don’t think I really want to know.

“There’s nothing else quite like cruelty, is there?” He hadn’t realised Jun was awake too. Wonwoo skates his hand once over the soft growth of his hair to show that he’s listening. “Once you do something truly cruel it never leaves this world. It only gets passed on.”

My point with this fic was: an act of true cruelty can already take so much from you without warning or cause. And it will keep on taking and taking and taking unless you can find a way to let go. You can’t let anger seduce you. Same with regret or despair or hatred, especially hatred of yourself. Don’t let that pressure build, not over something that’s already dead and gone.

There are certain consequences you might have to live alongside and that can’t be helped. Just do what you need to do and nothing more. Let everything else go. There are so many other things that matter in this life to hold onto and you only get two hands.

It makes so much sense to me when I write it all out like that and yet here I still am. Mad as hell. There’s this funny contradiction in my relationship with writing/fiction where I find it so easy to uncover truths within it and almost impossible to follow my own advice once I’ve written it out. Sometimes I feel like I write from the brain of the person I wish I was, not from the brain I actually have (which is probably part of why I do it. Wanna be her so bad even just for a while).

It starts deep underground. I ask myself,
What am I capable of? (If I give in to anger, to hatred or regret or despair, is there anything I couldn’t do?)
What am I capable of giving up? (I imagine justice all the time. I imagine the world feeling fair again. What is that worth? What would I let it cost me?)

I must’ve asked myself some variation of this ten-thousand times over and I still can’t answer.

In the end, I think Sufjan says it best:

Vesuvius, fire of fire
Follow me now as I favor the ghost

Follow me now or follow me down
Why does it have to be so hard?

Vesuvius, Sufjan Stevens

Why does it have to be so hard?

[3] song for the wandering moon

Jihoon/Jun, 3.5k
prompted by dearmonday77
prompt:

Perhaps the human soul needs excursions, and must not be denied them. But the point of an excursion is that you come home again.

Lady Chatterley’s Lover, D.H. Lawrence
&

Come back to me like you used to do
Be what you be, I will roll you to moon

Come Back To Me, RM

Surprise surprise I have written yet another fic about the passage of time. I think this is about a slightly different period in life to my previous ones though. Two off the top of my head, tides and Arachnophobia, are about the transition from childhood to adulthood. triangles is about looking back and realizing you’re no longer the person you used to be, and all that remains despite that. Chronologically, this fic sits somewhere in the middle.

“That was ten years ago,” Jihoon says. More, probably. He had rationed the one small bag [of sweets] he had, allowing himself one every several weeks and forcing himself to let the hard sugar dissolve slowly on his tongue, to let it last.

The carbonation prickles at the top of his palate until he has to swallow. It’s not like it was back then, hardened sugar that he could let melt slowly. For hours if he really tried. Now, the taste becomes a memory before he can blink.

Anyone else noticing that time doesn’t feel like it used to? That memories don’t seem to crystallise the same way as you get older? There are entire years of my life from which I can’t summon a single distinct memory. Rationally I get why this happens: the more time you live, the less novel experiences you can have, and the less relative space time takes up in your total memory, so it feels less significant. Doesn’t mean I have to like it though.

I, and I think many of us in this fandom for an almost ten-year-old group, have reached the phase of life where there exist far fewer milestones. As a child in school, every year comes with a new grade level and a whole new set of freedoms. You graduate, you celebrate, then you might go to university. You graduate, you celebrate, and then most people will start working. And after a couple years you suddenly realise: this is it. Maybe there are promotions. Changing jobs or fields. But the ground ahead of you is mostly flat. There might be marriage and/or kids for some, but that’s something less and less of us are aiming for these days. Aside from that, there are almost no big, society-mandated milestones in your future that signify achievement or change in the way there used to be.

It’s an intimidating realisation to have and I think many of us put immense pressure on ourselves to invent and achieve milestones to cope. Seems like everyone I know has a side-hustle, or is training for a half-marathon, or is writing a book or is planning a trip around the world or is suddenly really into climbing for some reason?? And I’m all for goal-setting and living an intentional life. But most people I know are doing these things despite it seeming to make them deeply unhappy, or at best apathetic and tired.

At this phase all kinds of different gravities start to act on us too. There are people you used to see every single day, who at one point in life felt like a part of you, and one day you blink and it’s been months or years since you’ve last seen them.

A whole year of both their lives had passed.

“Where have you been all this time, our Jihoon?” Jun asks, head tilted to look at him. “What have you been up to?”

[...]

“I’ve been right here,” Jihoon tells him. “Making music, like always.”

What I wanted to say is: I think that staying in the same place, doing the same thing, is something to feel immensely proud of. You’ve built a life that is true enough to who you are that you can comfortably exist in it for several years without seeking change or creating milestones to justify the passing of time? That is a fucking achievement. Not everyone is supposed to cross oceans, and not everyone wants to. Some of us are meant to be ports. The right people in life will understand and appreciate that, and may even come to rely on it. That’s all I wanted to say! And also that I miss Jun!!!

To talk about the writing part, this felt a lot like writing Smokescreen (BNHA au) last year, in that it was basically me shoving my kpop boys into an existing universe and then writing down all the lore that my brain came up with. It was super fun for me!! All the big paragraphs of exposition were basically written in advance before I started writing the actual scenes/story, and then I just had to find the right place to slot them in as I went. Considering there is barely any actual action for a 3.5k fic (Jun arrives back, flashback to one conversation with Wonwoo and Jihoon, Jihoon and Jun on the roof), I think I did pretty well in making it not feel too overtly like a lore dump when that’s exactly what it is lmao.

Favourite parts:

That had been the same year that– the lake at night, water dark and clear and so cold that they shivered when they climbed out, even at the height of summer. Jun’s hand in his, the vague shape of his mouth in the dark. Jun standing very close, standing over him, already so tall, and Jihoon had thought that maybe– maybe–

“Wow,” he says, reeling.

Jun laughs. “Right?”

Like I said above about memories. I have ones that feel just like this from when I was a teenager or younger adult, chaotic and vivid and razor-sharp. They’re precious to me, as are the people who share them.

Across the courtyard, the silhouettes of their daemons draw closer together and then closer still, enough to overlap. High above them, exactly where it should be, is the moon.

I've ranted enough publicly about romance and my feelings on it but tldr I’ve never experienced romantic attraction personally and struggle to relate to it. But something about the idea of this fills me with this weird, dizzy excitement. I think this is close to what most people feel when they describe romantic attraction.

The question is: if our souls could talk directly to each other without us overhearing, what might they say to each other? And I don’t even think this is a hypothetical question. How better to describe the creation and consumption of art?

On Daemons:

His Dark Materials was formative for me as a child and still held up when I reread it as an adult. Ficwise, I think the daemon concept is a huge well of untapped potential. Not just being able to choose the representation of someone’s inner self/soul and using that to speak on character, but that soul being an actual entity that can speak and interact with both the character and the outside world has so many interesting possibilities to me, as someone who is constantly looking for new ways to express character.

The interaction with self is especially fascinating to me. How harmonious is that person’s identity? How do they feel about themselves? For example, Jun and Yue argue and contradict each other in front of company but still tell each other everything at the end of the day (I see Jun as someone with a very secretive and somewhat chaotic sense of identity, but who is always honest with himself). Jihoon and Seonyul are like a pair of advisors that have meetings on everything they observe around them, but also keep their own secrets from each other. They get annoyed and huffy but also have a genuine love that they almost never express, because they don’t need to. Them staring at each other across an empty concert hall mutually being like Well? Are you gonna do something or..? is just so funny and so Jihoon to me. And then there’s Wonwoo and Jihye who barely speak and are perfectly content just being together. Again, I had so much fun with this.

As promised, here is the svt member daemon breakdown. Some were easy and some were hard (which is reflected in the length of each entry), and I could be convinced to change my mind on any of them. I am sitting behind a table in public with a big sign that says DEBATE ME.

Seungcheol: honey badger

These things are territorial as all hell and super strong. Smart and fearless, have been known to square up to both lions and hyenas and WIN. They’re at all times pissed off and ready to throw down but also have a sweet side (huge fans of honey, hence the name).

Jeonghan: ring-tailed lemur

Communicate with weird noises and have grabby little hands perfect for holding plastic utensils, toy swords, other small objects. They’re smart, sometimes cute and sometimes terrifying. They are also one of few animals to have a female-dominant social hierarchy (Jeonghan’s daemon is female). Always up to mischief, kind of a freak. Look me in the eye and tell me that’s not Jeonghan.

Joshua: angelfish

(We are ignoring the logistics issues of having a water-bound daemon.)
Delicate and beautiful and untouchable. A slight change in the very specific conditions of his home environment and bro will instantly die. They mate for life which I didn’t know before reading the wikipedia page but also fits Joshua. He is very selective about who he spends his time and energy on (see: his thousands of unread kkt messages) but once he decides he likes and is committed to someone he’s all in (not limited to romantic relationships—he and Seungkwan have that conversation about exactly this on in the soop 2 and how it applies to his friendship with sk).

Jun: Chinese mountain cat

Jun meowmeow. Self explanatory. Secretive and hard to catch a glimpse of in the wild, like how by all reports Jun rarely discloses what he’s actually feeling or worried about. Terrifyingly competent and self-sufficient when he needs to be.

Soonyoung: honey bee

Tiger is just sooooo obvious. You want fluffy and stripey? Oh I’ll give you fluffy and stripey. But I didn't just do this for the bit I really think it fits. Hear me out: he do his little dancey dance, workaholic, can sting but only at great personal cost (bro has emotionally invested in every argument he’s ever been in), understands the importance of the hive/community (his donations/scholarships in his hometown come to mind), buzz buzz annoying buzzzz

Wonwoo: Scarab beetle

(Don’t ask me which species. There are like thirty thousand.)
Something I find particularly interesting about the daemon concept is that the form is not just based on the animal itself but also its expressiveness and the way it communicates. For example Pan, the daemon of the main character Lyra, often changes into a moth when Lyra is telling a lie so that his agitation doesn’t give her away. I see Wonwoo as someone who prefers to keep his emotions close to his chest, hence a less expressive daemon like a beetle. I also can’t see Wonwoo with an ostentatious kind of daemon, so I went with something understated but resilient. Jihye means wisdom in Korean.

Jihoon: Ural owl

You probably read the fic, so you already saw my vision. Nocturnal and solitary. You might hear its song but you won’t see it unless it wants you to. Sits up high and observes, has great vision and hearing.

Seokmin: pika

Cute and utterly defenseless. Bouncy little guy with a hell of a voice on him.

Mingyu: Border Collie

He was always gonna be some kind of dog to me. Fun fact: in the hdm universe all butlers/servants have dog daemons. Mingyu acts of– sniper takes me out through the window.
Border collie is one of the smartest dog breeds, always active, boundless energy, loves to make friends and meet people. That’s Mingyu guys

Minghao: red-crowned crane

For my hdm lovers, I can clearly imagine Minghao as a witch in this universe (even though he’s mentioned in the fic as a regular student), hence the bird daemon. Even aside from that detail, he just gives water bird vibes to me. I considered swan at first but they have too much genuine malice in their hearts. For Minghao’s tranquility, uniqueness, grace and wisdom, I think crane is a good fit. Your yearly reminder that I am in fact 8star despite rarely writing him.
I didn’t know this before looking at the wikipedia page, but there also happens to be a population of wild cranes with a tiny breeding ground right beside where Minghao grew up! (The predominant breeding ground is much further north.)

Seungkwan: shima-enaga (sub-species of long-tailed tit)

Full of love. Delicate and tender-hearted, just looking at it makes you happy. Understands the importance of kindness and social connection: they nest communally to survive the winter, and pairs whose nests fail in breeding season are known to join the nest of another pair as a helper. Iconic and easily recognizable as a symbol of its home island (Hokkaido)—the shima in its name means island.

Vernon: capybara

Not much explanation needed. Always fucken chilling! Makes friends in the most unlikely of places. Popular subject of memes.

Chan: tanuki

From the Wikipedia page:

In Japanese folklore, Japanese raccoon dogs (tanuki) have had a significant role since ancient times. They are reputed to be mischievous and jolly, masters of disguise and shapeshifting but somewhat gullible and absent-minded.

Guy with five hundred elaborate alter egos!! I also once saw a video compilation of chan not knowing what the fuck is going on but I’ve lost it now sorry. For me it’s also the way he overflows with talent. When you look at him perform and you’re like wow, I’m witnessing something special here… something almost mystical… That’s a tanuki! That’s him!

Prompts I posted

[1] Red Velvet/The Fairly Odd Parents
[2] The Hippocratic Oath/Shrek/Game of Thrones (I was particularly proud of this one, especially because it caught the exact fish I was aiming for)
[3] The Great Gatsby/Fahrenheit 451 (NO ONE SAW MY VISION?? which is fine it just means I’ll have to fill it myself someday)
[4] Twenty Five, Twenty One
[5] Noel Gallagher’s High-Flying Birds/Nana Tour

Favourite fills

In no particular order and non-exhaustive because I still haven’t managed to read every fill

telltale by arundels, Jeonghan/Mingyu

my boy builds coffins by tembusu, Vernon/Chan

so make it count by tembusu, Minghao/Vernon

degrees of noise by poppyseedheart, Jihoon/Soonyoung

you haven’t changed by poppyseedheart, Vernon/Seungkwan

my savior, come to rescue me by notspring, Jeonghan/Seokmin

parallax by kumquat, Jun/Wonwoo

this is not a love song by hyojungss, Jeonghan/Nayoung

take what you want, take what you can by klav, Jeonghan/Seungcheol

If any mods happen to be reading this: thank you infinitely for all that you do!

Happy holidays! See you around in 2025