#I wanna gif everythinggggggg

[rings-of-power-realm]

"Every soul in Middle Earth is in peril."

The Rings Of Power | Season 2 Trailer

[bonvoyagenoona]

oh yes I have something I've been wanting to tell you & I should get it out now before I get distracted again...

so I think it was with Countermelody that I started really commenting on stories & because of the response I got from you, I started commenting on pretty much every story I read. (I couldn't NOT talk to you about Countermelody, my brain literally wouldn't let me live until I did) but before Countermelody, I didn't really comment & also I wasn't really paying attention to who was writing what. however~ I recently realized that you wrote Bear With Me, which was actually the first series I read (everything else at the time were one-shots) & I was blown away by how invested I got into the story o: I had no idea that there are incredible writers on tumblr! (but now I do & I appreciate you all so much)

Bear With Me's exploration of companionate love vs (or overlap with?) romantic love & balancing chasing your dreams vs (or clashing with?) domestic bliss was so captivating...I remember staying up late to finish each chapter at the end of the day. BWM Jimin ruined me for sure 😭

I would love to learn about the making of Bear With Me! 🤗 what spurred you to write it? were there pillars you stuck to while writing it? what did your characterization planning look like? I don't even know if these are the right questions to ask, but I wanna know everythinggggggg

Ahh hi dear friend! Thank you so much for sending me this ask!

I'm so glad that Countermelody and Bear with Me resonate with you so much! It’s probably pretty safe to say that people always love getting to talk about their stories! And it’s been a joy to learn more of yours! As we've gotten to know each other better, I've been so grateful for our conversations about these deeper themes of identity and relationships, especially as they evolve over time. So much more to chat about, and so much more to learn. 💜

Bear with Me was meant to unpack exactly that -- what is capital “L” Love? Does it change? How so? Seems silly to say that love was the main theme for this story, as we’re all usually thinking and singing and writing about love, especially the love ARMY has for our boys.

But, to that point, what actually prompted me to write it was love for my mother. It is, in many ways, her story. 

Or, rather, our story.

Here’s more about the making of Bear with Me, with specifics and spoilers after the jump for anybody who’d like to check out the story first. For those of you who have, especially you, dear @yuugehn, I hope you enjoy reading this post! (Needless to say, it got very long lol, but because it means a lot.) And as always, to anyone who spends some time in the BWM universe, thank you for reading with me!

I’ve written a little bit about my writing process, and how I use case conceptualizations using the cognitive behavioral theory framework to set up my characters and their arcs. 

For Bear with Me, the core theme that I wanted to explore was whether platonic and romantic love are actually any different, and what those similarities and differences mean. But the main questions for Jimin and Red are slightly different than that, say, of Kittenfishing’s characterizations of Kitt, Taehyung, and Yoongi.

The characterizations and underlying themes became:

Jimin = Freedom

Red = Control

And, with regard to Love:

Jimin = What does Love look like? Feel like? Smell like? Taste like? 😏

Red = How do all the uncontrollable aspects of life impact our experience of Love?

Jimin’s character is as nebulous and freeform as Love itself. He doesn’t follow any particular plan. He shapes his life by following his intuition (e.g., joining the gig economy rather than pursuing a traditionally established career) and his strengths (e.g., modeling, which involves showing off his innate features). He shows compassion as he acts on his freedom, but he is always responsible for his actions, and he takes responsibility for the actions of others. He has unending empathy for those close to him. He is fiercely protective. He always wants to have a happy, good time. He houses the more unsavory dimensions of love: jealousy, pettiness, possessiveness. Everyone knows Red as his; he’s the one who names her. But he houses the best, too. He gives everything -- everything -- to Red.

Red’s character sets off by following a plan. In many ways, The Plan. In the beginning, she (and the rest of the cast) are young, but she acts her age, well within the parameters of what is acceptable by society. She’s studying nursing, something difficult and respectable, something meant to be healing and charitable to society. When life throws her a curveball in the form of an unplanned pregnancy, she decides to welcome this new life. And when life throws her another curveball in the form of a miscarriage, she mourns the loss wholeheartedly. She feels like both situations are somehow her fault, or the result of something faulty within her, as if she has stepped too far outside of what is expected of her. But both events actually help her continue this path of following The Plan, this socially-constructed expectation that she was too young to have a child then, and she's better off having a child later in life, when she is more established.

The eventual joining of these two characters is meant to speak to the joy that comes with the balance of Freedom and Control in our lives, especially as that balance pertains to Love. When the characters are further along in their lives, Red comes to the realization that she is stable enough to have a baby. In a traditional sense, she doesn’t really have control over that because she isn’t partnered at that time. So, she takes control by seeking other ways to have a baby. Jimin, who so loves Red, steps up, because he so badly wants to give her everything that she wants and needs. 

They continue their initial patterns in that Jimin bends over backwards to do everything that he can to realize Red’s dreams. And Red holds the fort down, maintaining control of their home life and keeping everything as stable as possible. 

Namjoon arrives as a representation of societal norms, which is something @parkblooming truly dug deeper into, with an assessment of how gender roles even come into play (thank you for caring so much to share such amazing thoughts about the story!!). I chose Namjoon purposefully here because my core understanding of his character sets him up nicely to reinforce Red’s initial view of the world: he is also in the medical field and has highly specialized work, has a stable life, and is caring for another living being. 

But Red’s inevitable rejection of him is a representation of her relinquishing Control and choosing the unknown path. A Freer path.

The Love between Jimin and Red is balanced, and it becomes Truth in a way. First of all, lol, they evolve the meaning of sex. In the beginning, sex is meant to be a fun release. Over time, Jimin and Red explore sex as connection, expressions of love, and an act through which they can create more, and a different kind of, love. 

But secondly, and more importantly, all Jimin and Red know to be true in life are each other, so they redefine all things about life with each other. They took on traditional as well as non-traditional roles to create a real home for one another. They did all the core things that society expects people to do, but they did it “out of order”, and in their own way. And that resulted in their sweet baby Mujigae, their pride and joy. 

And that brings me to how this is ultimately a story about my mother and me.

My mother became a nurse because she wanted a different life than the one she saw for herself in the Philippines. It wasn’t the career she initially thought she would pursue, but, like it does for Jimin, her inevitably chosen career built upon her innate strengths (empathy, love, and caregiving) and allowed her to travel and see the world. It provided all of these incredible opportunities for her. She decided that she wanted children much later in life, compared to others her age. She suffered a miscarriage when she and my father tried for their first. And then I came along. As shown in the fic, the first baby born after a miscarriage is called a “rainbow baby”. So, I myself am a rainbow baby -- just like Mujigae, which means “rainbow” in Korean. 

As such, my mother represents this balance of Freedom and Control so beautifully for me. She has lived her life completely on her own terms, but she also selflessly chose to give her life to others. She sponsored her entire family over to Canada and has been responsible for the health/well-being/happiness for our immediate family, as well as her friends and their families, and her co-workers and patients. Anytime anybody was sick or needed help, my mom was immediately there. At the same time, she is fiercely independent, doing things the way that she wants to do them. Even now, she is stubborn as hell lol. She just doesn’t do what she doesn’t want to do. She goes for opportunities that she’s passionate about. Every single move she makes is purposeful, even if that purpose is to be completely at peace and detach. And she instilled in me the same exact viewpoint, which happens to vibe quite nicely with my own personality. 

Have we had difficult times? Yes. Think about Mujigae giving Red absolute hell, with all her crying and whining and annoying her with her seemingly ineffable connection with her father, Jimin (ugh don’t get me started on my father, there’s so much represented within Jimin too!!). But ultimately, my mother is my truth, and she is the one who defined what Love is. And I wrote this story (which had been brewing for a while but just needed the right cast of characters) in part, to honor her for it.

PHEW OK THIS WAS LOOONG but I hope it was interesting? Always excited to answer these kinds of questions, so reach out if you’d like more! Thanks again @yuugehn and @parkblooming for unpacking these themes with me, and thanks again to all y’all for reading!