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ivyuns · 4 years

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landing in my heart: paragliding

han jisung

genre: angst

word count: 2.1k

warnings: location spots are in north and south korea, language, mentions of mines, weapons, death, cliffhanger, if i missed anything plz lmk :)

A/N: first part of landing in my heart series! changsik is y/n’s helper for la vie en rose

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LIMH chapters

“tomorrow, the story about you and actor sangu will be posted”

“itll say how you two were just pranking fans that you two are together. as you see, the picture just shows that you were just holding his wrist. plus your face is blurred so there shouldnt be a problem” changsik says.

you turn off your phone and start paying attention to changsik. “okay but can we do something about the blur effect?” you asked. “oh, do you want me to ask them to blur your face more?” “no, its just that they put the effect on my earrings. you know those earrings are rare to get in the collection”

everyone in the meeting takes a big sigh. “ah, purchasing manager. what are you going to do?” you asked as he slams his note taking book close. “pardon?” “the earrings, purse, shoes. you need to make sure theyre in stock at all times” nodding his head, he goes to restock the items you told him to.

exiting your office, everyone talks about you. “is that her?” “she looks ugly in person” “hes probably with her for her money”. continuing walking behind your bodyguards, you get a call from an unknown number.

“look at you. you look like a celebrity or something”

“who is this?”

“i- you dont even have my number saved? its your eldest brother, sejun. anyways since you dont keep up with the news, dad is coming back home from probation. you should probably come by the house and greet him”

pausing your tracks, “is this your number?” “yes, please just save it” “dont get another number or blocking it for two times will be annoying” you said and blocked sejun.

hesitating to enter your family’s house as you heard sejun and sehyeong argue about who will be deserves to inherit the family company during diner and your dad yelling out where were you. stepping into the house, the house was quiet.

“hello dad. congratulations on getting out on probation. i heard you wanted me to be here. is there anything you need to speak to me about?”

“you should move back in” “is that all? i was wondering why. you look great by the way. please take care of your heath. i just came here to say hello so ill be leaving now” you waved goodbye and walked towards the exit.

“i want you to take my position” you dad tells you before you could exit the room. “dad!” your brothers yell out. turning around, you see everyone looking at you as your mom shakes her head towards you. “you left home and started your own company for 10 years, i think you deserve it”

hesitating to answer, you agreed to take the position which annoyed the brothers. finally exiting the room, you left the house with fear in you.

“shall we start?” you asked as everyone gets your parachute ready for paragliding. running off the cliff, you begin floating in the sky with a huge smile on your face. “miss yoon, please be careful!”

peacefully enjoying the scenery, you take notes on how beautiful it was. you then see a floating tractor. worry takes place as you realize theres a tornado happening. trying to not get in it, the wind forcefully takes you to the tornado, making you scream out for help.

north korean boarder

jisung heads to the northern side of demilitarized zone to patrol with company five and a few other soldiers and hears shooting going on. quietly walking into the direction of everything going on as a group, jisung stops as soon as he hears what type of guns theyre using.

“captain han, theyre heading into this direction, judging by the sound of the gunshots” hyunjin pauses, “maybe its a deserter from the south-” “the combat site is 400m away from our current location. going in at 11 o’clock, total count is 10. k2 automatic title, six in total. and tokarev tt-33, three are in use” jisung tells them.

“whats tt-33?” seungmin asked. “theyre our camrades” jisung answered and started walking with his group behind him. seeing whats going on as he saw three men on the ground and the military of the south, he gave him group a signal to continue walking. lifting their guns up, the southern sees them and puts their guns up as well.

“step back. take one more step and youll enter our garrison” jisung shouts out. “hand these three over and well be gone” one of the soldiers said. “theyre our camrades” jisung answers. “captain! we got the state security departments approval and came here to hunt deers but we got lost by the tornado” one of the men on the ground said.

“they crossed the southern limit line and caught digging cultural artifacts” the same soldier said and shows proof. “is anyone injured?” jisung asked as the southern military puts their guns towards him more. “the problem is solved. put your guns down and we will too. i swear on my countrys honor and will stictly punish them. when it comes to punishments, we, the north will certainly outdo the south. well drop our weapons on the count of three.”

by the count of three, everyone puts their weapons down. the three men on their knees sees a gun in front of them and grabs it. trying to shoot the soldiers, jisung quickly grabs them. everyone puts their guns up till- “just return, dont get into conflict with the north” “do you hear me? dont conflict with the south” the radios from both sides said.

after gathering the three men and tying them, company five got them as jisung stayed behind. making sure the south was gone.

back at the gate, jisung is in front of the car that the three men are in as he waits from cheolgang to arrive. seeing him arrive, he stands up straight and salutes him, as well as hyunjin and seungmin. cheolgang sees the three men in the car and turns to jisung.

“greetings sir. company five is is on standby to transfer the grave robbers, who we arrested in the northen demilitarized zone” jisung tells cheolgang. “good work. anything else?” jisung relaxes and tells him how some of the fences were down due to the tornado. “we should tighten security for the area thats damanged until everything is fixed”

cheolgang nods his head. “they probably crossed the southern line due to misunderstanding so let their punishment be lenient” “it happened in our patrol zone. this cannot be taken lightly” “you are well aware that the state security department gave them permission for them to be here” cheolgang says.

“are you saying that they gave them permission to pass the demilitarized zone just to collect artifacts?” jisung asked, feeling annoyed with cheolgang. “of course not, captain han” he chuckles, making company five tensed. “i told the south that they will be taken for punishment, and i shall keep that promise” “do whatever you want, but i do have a promise. i, jo cheolgang, never go easy on anyone. no matter what their ranks are. if you create any act that may threaten our army security, youll be finished right on the spot. but of course, youll never do that” cheolgang finishes. jisung salutes him as he leaves.

south korea

“but i need to get there, i need to see miss yoon” changsik says as he heard people said that youre nowhere to be found. as he sees someone on the stretcher, he starts tearing up as he thinks youre dead. the police comforts him and sees the cameraman that was supposed to take videos of you in the sky. “hey! wheres my boss?” changsik yells at him. “i dont know” he cries out in pain. “didnt you have a camera? why didnt you take a video of everything?” “in that situation, i couldnt. i nearly died!”

changsik was left alone as the rest of the rescue crew tried to find you. “gosh why did you have to make yourself do this y/n”

north korean boarder

you wake up, high up in a tree. as you yell out for help. as jisung and seungmin is around the area, he stops walking and asks seungmin if he heard anything. shaking his head, seungmin gets a call from the other company five members, asking for him to come back and help with the fence. jisung gives him a signal to go and looks around the area.

as jisung sees you in the trees, you look down. “excuse me, can you help me get out of here” seeing his metal and gun pointing at you, you quickly unbuckle everything and falls onto jisung. realizing, you quickly get off of him.

“ah, did you come here from the north? are you a defector? welcome to the republic of korea” you said. “r-republic of korea? i think youre mistaken. i didnt go to the south. you came to the north” not believing what he said, you looked around and saw his serious face. “since you came here, youll be taken for investigation” jisung says. “huh?! wait i didnt mean to come here at all-” “then explain everything to them like that.

after arguing, you ran but was stopped by jisung yelling you to stop since theyre mines in the area. “dont move or else youll loose an ankle-” jisung pause as he accidentally steps on a mine. “are you okay” you asked. “im fine” “are you sure because you dont look fine-” “i said im fine!”

jisung grabs his walkie talkie to call seungmin for help when his grip failed and the device fell into the river. walking to the walkie talkie, you picked it up. “thank you for picking it up-” “who said i was gonna give it to you?” jisung sighs. “tell me which way i need to go first” “follow the path and when you meet with two paths, take the right one”

after telling you the directions, seungmin calls out jisungs name. “im here!’’ jisung yells out. fear taking over you, you quickly ran.

seungmin finds jisung on a mine and quickly sets him free. “captain han, is there anything wrong?” seungmin asks. “let the crew know that someone is in the zone by accident” “huh? is it a spy?” “no, a south korean girl who accidentally came here” seungmin nods his head and lets the crew know what happened by radio.

as you ran, you took the left path instead, not trusting jisung. you came across of a field that had a sign saying ‘mine field’. turning around to a safer route, you see the soldiers looking for you. headed to the minefield instead, you ran through it and the soldiers made a detour to get you.

as seungmin and hyunjin are trying to get you, you saw a broken tree on the fence, thinking it will lead you to the south again. as youre on the top, you see the two men giving you signals to not go there. not listening, you jumped over the fence as you saw hyunjin raise his gun at you and fired.

as you kept running, you passed jeongin who was reading a letter from his mother in the fields. as you were running still, you ran into a forest and tripped on a rock. “mom-” you said quietly. trying to pull yourself up, you go back into the past. everytime you fell, you would always cry out for your moms name. but realizing how weak you relationship with her was weak and she was not here with you.

regaining your strength, you got up and walked.

back in south korea, your mom gets a call saying that you were lost and tells the rest of the family. sejun and sehyeong and their wives are pleased, knowing that one of them will get their dads position.

“honey, you need to make sure you get this position” sanga tells sehyeong. “but you still need to find minseok” sehyeong nods. “dont worry sanga”

“hyung. do you think sehyeong will find me?” minseok asks mr oh. “i think we should go somewhere else, i dont think its safe here anymore” minseok nods his head and packs up to go somewhere else.

as an old lady asks for a ride as she sees military trucks, she was rejected. she then sees three men in one of the trucks. as they hit the end of the road, she sees another truck hitting them and another one, making the truck that the three men are in fall into a ravine and explode. she gathers her stuff and tries to run away when another truck runs into her.

after walking for miles in the dark, you ran into a village. feeling relieved, you smiled. until you saw the lights shut on, you were met with music going on. seeing everyone getting ready for their morning routine, she now believes shes deeper into north korea,

just as the leader enters the village, jisung quickly grabbed you and hid you in his chest from getting caught.

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dawnfelagund · 7 years

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This essay was written for @backtomiddleearthmonth for the orange/nonfiction path prompts “Meta about Fandom” and “Multimedia.”

“Review Plz?” Feedback Behavior in the Tolkien Fanfic Community

A little over a year ago, I ran an online survey about Tolkien fan fiction as part of my ongoing research on the history and culture of the Tolkien fan fiction community. (Read more about the Tolkien Fan Fiction survey here.) I have been slowly posting the results of the survey over the last year or so. For the orange/nonfiction path prompt "Meta on Fandom," I decided to dig into a topic from the survey based on what other B2MeM participants would like to know more about. People who answer my poll wanted to know more about, "How many readers comment or give feedback on stories? Why do they do this?" I will eventually investigate the other topics as well, most likely over the summer while I'm on break from school.

This essay seeks to answer some basic questions on feedback behavior in the Tolkien fanfic community. Who leaves feedback? How often? I will also begin to look at why people leave feedback, specifically at social pressure to do so. This will be the first post in a series looking at feedback behavior; the series will in all likelihood extent beyond B2MeM; follow my Twitter or the Tumblr tag #tolkien fan fiction survey for updates related to the survey.

Probably the first question to answer when thinking about commenting is: How often do people comment? I asked the question, "Do you leave comments or other feedback on Tolkien-based fan fiction stories?" Of the 1040 people who answered that question, 75.9% of them said YES.

Now it's important to note the "or other feedback" in the statement. This didn't ask just about comments or reviews; it could have included one-click feedback like kudos or likes as well. If I could go back and do this survey over, I'd likely change this question to distinguish between the two. For now, though, it's what I have to work with.

Who Leaves Feedback?

When we break down this question by the participant's role, the results become more interesting. I looked at the responses of writers versus readers only to this question. Writers were far, far more likely to leave feedback on what they read: 86.5% of writers (n = 635) answered YES compared to 59.3% of readers-only (n = 393). My initial reaction to this information is, "Well, of course, writers would best understand how much feedback matters to other writers." I think that's part of it, but there are probably other factors involved as well.

Writers are more likely to belong to the sites where they read. Many sites (SWG and MPTT, for example) do not allow comments from anonymous users.

Writers are more likely to be comfortable enough with English (or the language the story is written in) to be able to write a comment. I can read tolerably in Spanish, for example, but would never dare attempt to comment on something written in Spanish.

Writers are more likely to simply know what to say in a comment. They know what they like to hear on their own stories. They know what goes into crafting a story and are possibly more accustomed to noticing a characterization detail or a particularly good turn of phrase: the kind of thing you'd mention in a comment.

Interestingly, 13.5% of writers responded that they did not leave feedback on stories that they read. I find this group intensely interesting, and a future post will look specifically at this group of participants.

How Often Do Readers Leave Feedback?

Of course, a participant could have left a single comment or liked one story posted on Tumblr and answered YES to the above. Any author can tell you that three-fourths of their readers do not leave feedback on a specific story; many of my stories, based on click counts, would have hundreds of comments, and it is rare for me to exceed ten comments, and I receive more comments than most authors. (The highest percentage of kudos-per-click on my AO3 stories is about 19%.) So what percentage of stories do readers leave comments on?

I asked participants to "Estimate the percentage of Tolkien-based fan fiction stories that you leave comments or other feedback on." Those who responded with a number greater than zero left comments on a median average of 30% of stories.

Breaking down the data a little further also shows that readers willing to leave feedback tend to leave it relatively infrequently. More than half of participants (54.7%) left feedback on one out of three stories, or less. The graph below shows the number of participants who left different amounts of feedback. The numbers drop steadily until spiking briefly around 50%--likely because someone is more likely to respond with 50% rather than dithering slightly to either side of that number; after the 50% mark, the numbers hang rather steadily. There is a small resurgence among the participants that, in my mind as I worked on these numbers, I termed "unicorns": those who left feedback on almost everything they read. The graph at the top of the post shows this data.

It's important to note that these numbers are likely slightly inflated. Even in anonymous surveys, like this one, there is a tendency to overstate positive behaviors, like one's habit of leaving feedback on the fiction one reads for free. To support this point in this particular survey, several participants left brief comments on their answers, suggesting that they'd recently increased their feedback due to growing awareness of its value to authors or that they felt they needed to do more; some participants offered excuses (such as English as a second language) or responded to a perceived low number with self-effacing humor (like a :P emoticon). In addition, numbers were potentially inflated because one is more likely to remember the stories one takes time to leave feedback on, especially comments. A ficlet skimmed quickly on Tumblr, for instance, is more likely to be forgotten than the same ficlet on AO3 where the reader leaves a one-sentence comment or even clicks a kudos; especially the comment requires more careful reading.

Looking at actual feedback numbers supports that 30% is likely inflated. I chose ten stories on AO3 from the section "The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-earth -- J.R.R. Tolkien." The stories had been posted just over a week ago and were on the sixth page of results, so they had likely received the first heavy wave of readership. Since most AO3 readers who leave comments, in my experience, also leave a kudos (and since comment counts on AO3 also include author replies and further conversation on a story), then I looked just at kudos. For those ten stories, the kudos-per-click percentage was a median average of 9.2%, spanning a range of 1.7% to 26.2%: nowhere near the self-reported 30% rate from the survey.

Do Readers Want to Leave More Feedback?

As implied above, there is a degree of social pressure to leave feedback on stories. I was curious if readers felt they needed to do this more, or if they were happy with the current amount of feedback they left, so I looked at responses to the statement "I want to leave comments and other feedback more often on the stories I read." Participants had five options to choose from: Strongly Agree, Agree, Disagree, Strongly Disagree, and No Opinion/Not Sure.

Overwhelmingly, participants wanted to leave more feedback: 77.6% agreed or strongly agreed with the statement. In other words, three out of four readers think they need to leave more feedback. Fewer than one in ten (8.89%) disagreed or strongly disagreed. Of the latter category, a mere eight participants chose this option.

I looked closer at that group: participants who strongly disagreed that they wanted to leave feedback more often. Of those eight participants, three were part of the unicorn group that left feedback on almost everything they read; it's understandable why they felt they didn't need to do more! One participant left feedback a reported 70% of the time--still a relatively high number--so about half responded with Strongly Disagree because they really can't do much more than they already are. One person did not provide a response for the amount of feedback they left but answered NO to the question "Do you leave comments or other feedback on Tolkien-based fan fiction stories?" Three entered "zero" for the amount of feedback they left; these four responses felt somewhat defiant to me given how contrary to correct fandom etiquette it was. (I would say that this etiquette demands that one either leave feedback or feel badly for not doing so.)

I was also curious about the unicorn group: those who left feedback a reported 90 to 100% of the time. Despite leaving feedback on just about everything they read, 65% still agreed or strongly agreed that they wanted to do more. (Including those who reported that they left feedback 100% of the time: 67% of these participants still wanted to do more, including five who strongly agreed with the statement.)

Of the unicorn group, 21.7% chose No Opinion/Not Sure, a percentage much higher than the 13.5% of all participants who chose this option for this statement. I generally avoid making inferences about the No Opinion/Not Sure participants--there are a lot of reasons why people might choose this option, including that they truly do not understand what the statement is asking--but this discrepancy is too interesting to pass up hypothesizing about a little. I suspect that these respondents know that they are going above and beyond the majority of fandom but still feel uncomfortable stating directly that they don't think they need to do more. Choosing No Opinion/Not Sure is quite possibly the more socially acceptable option: a way to circumspectly admit that one really can't do much more.

The unicorns are an interesting group. Why do so many of them--about two out of three--feel that they need to do more? It is possible that the feedback they are leaving is mostly or entirely kudos or other one-click feedback, and they feel they should be writing more comments. (Readers who leave kudos on everything they read are a well-reported phenomenon on AO3; one participant even commented that they "kudos" everything they read.) It is also possible that social norms in fandom dictate that one should always be striving to improve on how much feedback one leaves on stories, and these readers feel that guilty gnawing even though they already are leaving feedback on almost everything they pick up. Here, I can turn to personal experience: I am in the unicorn group myself, leaving feedback on everything I read (in the form of comments) except when I regularly have to skim stories as part of my mod duties on the sites I run. (Sometimes even then I get sucked into a story and comment.) Despite the number of comments I leave, despite the hours of work I do in the fandom each week, I still feel guilty over not commenting on more of those stories skimmed in the course of daily site business. (I also feel guilty for not reading more, period.)

Conclusion

From this data, it is possible to draw a few conclusions:

Most readers of Tolkien fan fiction leave feedback, but most readers leave feedback on a relatively low number of the stories they read.

Self reports of the number of stories a reader feedback on appear to be significantly inflated. This doesn't have to mean that participants wanted to deliberately mislead in their responses--there are a number of reasons why self reports might be inaccurate, discussed above--but it is worth keeping in mind for other items on the survey where self-reported and actual behavior are more difficult to compare.

Authors are significantly more likely than readers-only to leave feedback on a story.

The vast majority of readers express that they want to leave feedback more often on stories they read. This includes the so-called "unicorns": readers who leave feedback on almost everything they read. This suggests, to me, that there is enough social pressure to leave feedback that participants may have felt uncomfortable stating that they felt they were doing enough. If you have an alternate explanation, please share in the comments!

If you have a question you'd like to see data on, please do share! Next time, I will likely look at why readers decide to leave feedback on a story, but if there's a topic or question you're interested in seeing analyzed and discussed in greater depth, let me know!

#tolkien fan fiction survey #tolkien fan fiction #fan fiction #fan fiction feedback #fan fiction reviews #b2mem 2017

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