oh thank you!! i just logged back into this retrospring acc and saw this message!

thank you so so much for reading taking to water. im really touched to know that you connected with it and got so much from it! i spent months watching fishing and camping videos to capture the feeling of this fic (haha to this day I've still never ever been fishing or to busan) so im glad that it was as immersive and atmospheric as i wanted it to be.

honestly even though the fic is about jusang and stuff I've never done or places I've never been to, it's still a personal fic to me. thematically, it tackles a lot of struggles with sexuality and societal expectations that i related to, but seeing all the comments from people who read this and also related to it touches me too because now i see that everyone goes through similar things as me and im not as alone as i thought.

yes, I've retired from tbz ficdom but i still occasionally look at them and i am happy to see them all doing well and thriving, and also praying for that world tour to come so i can finally see them live. i may not write for them anymore but i still have a soft spot for them. i thought about doing another similar type of long au fic about haknyeon in hong kong, but that never manifested. im not entirely out of the kpop fic space though, since my retirement I've been writing boys planet/bp adjacent fic but now i think I'm even growing out of that. there's only one fandom now that i think i could start writing for longer-term but well... that would be a different retrospring answer.

thank you so much for leaving this in my retrospring. this made me reflect a lot about the past year and a half since i posted that fic, and im happy to say that even though there were a lot of rough times, im overall doing quite well. i hope you are well too anon!