Title: The Soulmate Paradox
Author: Alex Zachary Lai
Type: Novel
Genre: Romance / Teen Fiction
Date Started: February 4, 2021
Date Finished: August 13, 2021
Number of Chapters: 22
Word Count: 63, 697
Editing Started: September 23, 2021
Editing Finished: Honestly, is it ever?
Submitted for Wattys: September 24, 2021
Hi, hello, bonjour, hola, hallo, こんにちは, 안녕하세요, 你好, ciao, selamat sejahtera, etc etc. It seems ironic that I'm saying hi so many times when this is actually a goodbye. But I always did love a bit of irony.
What do I even say here? It's been like, nearly two years since I wrote one of these. "Hi, hello, welcome to my ass, it is open 24/7 and you are welcome to enter it any time, except for the fact that I have a boyfriend so that is sadly NOT an option---"
(This is why you should not let me write author's notes when I haven't eaten for a week.)
aNygAyS, we have reached the end of The Soulmate Paradox. The end. Fine. My baby. Which, against all odds, I somehow managed to finish. Despite life and Covid collectively hitting me like Truck-kun and my self-esteem gradually crumbling throughout this entire mess, I did it. Did I do a good job? Absolutely not. But did I complete the job anyway? YES.
Honestly, I never thought I would make it. When I got kicked out of the ONC, I was like, "Oh, schist. This is it. It's over. Goodbye, world." because I'm dramatic like that. And then I vowed to scrap this book. And then I proceeded to not only NOT scrap this book, but also turn it into a full-length novel, complete with a bunch of completely unnecessary bonuses.
(I'm indecisive that way.)
Anygays, a BIG BIG BIG THANK YOU to everyone who has given The Soulmate Paradox a go. Thank you to my old readers, who stuck with me through thick and thin. Thank you to my new readers, who found me featured on Wattpad and hopped in. Thank you to my active readers, who never fail to brighten up my day with their votes and comments. Thank you to my silent readers, who have contributed to my rather impressive read count. Thank you to everyone who has stuck with Jeong-Soon and Gregory. And thank you to everyone who has stuck with me.
It's been a ride. And that ride's a train. And that train crashed. So it's been a bit of a trainwreck. But that's okay, because it's the journey that matters. And I have thoroughly enjoyed going on this journey with all of you. Even though this isn't exactly the best book out there, I'm really grateful that you guys have decided to stick with it.
Will I be writing a sequel? No. I won't. I won't be writing any spin-offs, either. (Sorry, people who wanted Mia to get her own book.) I did toy with the idea of a Stella spin-off, but for now, I think I'm done with this world. (Kind of. Although you should probably expect cameos from these guys in some of my other books.) I think the ending wrapped everything up quite nicely, and a sequel would only ruin that. And while I love Jeong-Soon and Gregory's world, I think it's time for me to move on to a new one.
Thank you so much for all your love and support. Thank you for crying and squealing and commenting like heck. Thank you for loving my boys, and thank you for loving me.
Thank you for reading The Soulmate Paradox. I love you guys so much. Really, truly, honestly. Y'alls are my angels.
I really, really hope you guys have enjoyed The Soulmate Paradox. Let me know your final thoughts, and I love y'alls.
Now, onto some trivia, as well as a preview of my upcoming book!
٩( ᐛ )و
TRIVIA
• Jeong-Soon and Gregory's relationship was not always mutually antagonistic. Although we see them having a mutually antagonistic relationship in what TSP is now (Jeong-Soon calls Gregory out unnecessarily, ignores him/leaves him stranded and openly admits to wanting to hate him, while Gregory curses at Jeong-Soon when unprovoked, hits his friends, and generally is a dick), it started off with a very one-sided hate on Gregory's side, while Jeong-Soon just...loved everyone, honestly.
Honestly, Jeong-Soon's character was quite underdeveloped in my original idea. He didn't have much of a personality outside of being a clumsy golden retriever, which was why his relationship with Gregory was only antagonistic from Gregory's point of view. (I personally prefer the mutually antagonistic relationship they have now. It's much more interesting. Gives Jeong-Soon more dimension.)
• The original idea for TSP was born long before the ONC. It was...very different from what TSP is now. I'll be honest: the moment I saw Vixx's Whisper, I instantly knew I wanted to make a story out of it. Except while the current TSP is roughly based off Whisper, the original idea was pretty much a songfic. Titled Whisper, it revolved around university student (yes!!! university!!!) Kang Jeong-Soon (okay, so I kept Gregory and Jeong-Soon's names the same).
Told entirely in Jeong-Soon's POV, he's plagued by glowing red strings that trap him every day, as well as unintelligible whispers that drive him nearly mad. When a pair of red headphones fall into his lap, he's determined to find the owner, convinced they're connected to the strings and whispers. That's until he discovers they belong to hotheaded Gregory Gan, who completely hates his guts. I mean, it's not SUPER different from TSP, but still. Honestly, that idea was gonna go into storage until the ONC came up and I saw the music festival prompt and was like, "ykw let's tweak this schist and make a story" and baddabing baddaboom boom boom, TSP was born.
• My main goal for TSP was to use clichés without actually being cliché. If you know me, you'll know that I flipping hate clichés. I literally break out in hives when I'm exposed to too many of them, which is part of the reason why I haven't updated my review shop in literal months. I spent days taking popular tropes I could stand (okay, so I like SOME clichés. for example, I would DIE for enemies to lovers.) and flipping them around a bit.
My goal was subversion. And so I subverted as many tropes as I could. The ones that I flipped the most were the 'therapy tropes'. The one where the person with poor mental health instantly gets everything fixed when they fall in love? I've always hated that one, mainly because I'm pretty sure I've fallen in love with my boyfriend and yet my genetically-inherited mental health is still crap. I displayed that with Gregory, how he couldn't keep a stable relationship with Jeong-Soon until he FINALLY started attending therapy.
There's no denying he has reaaally shitty mental health, and it definitely gets in the way of a relationship, and Jeong-Soon alone isn't magical enough to fix that. While he IS the reason why Gregory ends up agreeing to therapy, he doesn't 'fix' him. Because I freaking hate the trope where the love interest 'fixes' the broken kid. So I flipped it into a trope where the broken kid tries to get better for the love interest instead of being completely fixed. I think that's more realistic and much healthier.
Besides the therapy tropes, I worked with a lot of other tropes and flipped them a bit (love at first sight trope, enemies to lovers trope, evil stepmother trope, etc etc). It was actually pretty fun using subversion and...well, being cliché without actually being cliché.
• Marilyn's character is actually a combination and subversion of two popular stepmother tropes: the Wicked Stepmonster and the Gold-digging Slut. I took both those common stepmom tropes...and switched them completely. Evil Stepmonster? No, we're making the sweetest thing ever who sees Gregory as her own. Gold-digging Whore? No, we're making her a fabulous young lady who dresses in whatever she feels comfortable in.
To 'flaw' her, I gave her insecurity issues. I'll say it here: her bazongas aren't real. They're pretty much 100% plastic. That doesn't mean you should make fun of them, because that's still body-shaming and body-shaming's not nice. She also often changes her clothing style (such as dressing more modestly to make Gregory happy) to please others, implying she is overly eager to please people and is willing to change herself just to do so.
Marilyn is actually based off a real life person---sort of. So you see, my dad has a really good friend who's an amazing lady (she's fairly famous, but no, I'm not revealing who it is, and yes, my dad was friends with her before she became famous. My dad's friends with EVERYONE tbh), but I've always been really intrigued by her relationship with her stepmom. I've never met her stepmom, but from what I've heard, she's actually an okay lady. But my dad's friend h a t e s her guts. Reason? Because she still misses her bio mom. I wanted to embody that in Gregory and Marilyn's character relationship by creating the sweetest stepmother ever...and then having her stepkid still hate her because he misses his bio mom. (I DID provide an outlet for them to sort of 'patch' it up, though, mainly because that was a great way to give Gregory character development.)
• There are like, two cishet people in the cast. Three if you count Ms Eliza. Arthur (Gregory's father) and Marilyn are both cishet. Everyone else is part of the LGBTQ+ community, whether it's been explicitly mentioned, implicitly mentioned, or I didn't have a chance to display it in TSP but I'm saying it here.
Mentioned/Implied In Book:
Jeong-Soon — queer (unlabelled)
Gregory — gay
Mia — pansexual
Si-Young — pansexual
Demeter — transgender, lesbian
Dillon — bisexual
Sully — aromantic asexual
Archer — idk wtf he is, but boi def ain't str8
Sam — bicurious
Colin — bisexual, but very much in denial
Colt & Jude — legend says they're in love with each other and bond over their shared role of being irrelevant background characters. so, not straight.
Rylee — his sexuality is never mentioned, but we all know he's not straight despite never actually seeing him, since he's dating Dillon. he's pansexual.
Me Pulling A JKR (jkjk i just didn't have time for too many SiDepLotS so here we are):
Magnus — bisexual (currently dating Aimee)
Aimee — bisexual (currently dating Magnus)
Lana — unknown, but if she had a bigger role in the book, we would have seen her start a relationship with 'Angie' (from Chapter 15), so it's safe to assume she's not straight either. she would most likely have been biromantic demisexual/asexual.
• Si-Young was supposed to have an ex-partner. A sort of former love interest, so to speak. They would have been named Dawn, and they would have been Si-Young's co-worker, ex-partner...and my second ever non-binary character. Dawn would have been in a Lana/Rylee type of situation where they never appear 'on-screen', but are talked about.
I even wrote a scene where Si-Young talks to Jeong-Soon about why she and Dawn broke up, and it would have been revealed that she cheated on them, that she slept with someone else and Dawn saw the hickeys, which led to them breaking up with her. Ultimately, though, I had to cut this scene because I didn't want too many side plots. I also felt like this scene would have changed the readers' view of Si-Young to negative because of her having cheated on Dawn, and as this scene took place before the Big Blocking Reveal, I didn't want readers to have a negative view of Si-Young. (I thought it would be much more effective and more of a twist if most of the readers had a positive/neutral view of her until the Blocking Thing.)
Admittedly, I haven't been great with non-binary representation. I generally struggle with writing non-binary characters, because I'm not non-binary. Occasionally, I slip up their pronouns when writing by mistake. I've done one nb character before, background character Starling Allred from Road Trip To Werewolf Hell (now taken down). Dawn would have been my second if it hadn't been for my hatred of too many sideplots. However, I can promise you that there'll be one nb character in my upcoming project, and they'll have a pretty big role. Not main character level, because I prefer to work with cis or trans MCs, but a decent role.
• TSP is my first novel. Yeah. I've written plenty of novellas, poems, short stories, and even scripts before. I finished my first short story when I was 5 and my first novella when I was 12. But I've never finished a novel before, mainly because I keep saying I'm gonna rewrite my novellas into novels and then I never do 🤡
• TSP 'ends' with Gregory agreeing to go to therapy because I didn't want to write proper character development for him. The thing is, I didn't want to give Gregory character development. It's not that I couldn't---after all, my most famous protagonist before TSP was Canterbury Swayze, who went through such an insane amount of character development that even I was shocked. I'm good at writing characters, and I'm good at developing them. So it's not that I couldn't. I just didn't want to.
Gregory's character just seemed...unsuited for development. Like, to me, that's his character. You hate him, you love him, you love to hate him, you hate to love him. Gregory is the manifestation of what this entire book is about. He's a paradox. Half my readers say he's their favourite character, and that doesn't make sense, but it does when you look at it carefully. He's flawed, he's often relatable, he's violent and angry and bitter and yet we still love him. Even I kept flip-flopping between hating him and loving him. Some of my earlier A/Ns display me clearly disliking him, some of my later ones...well, I mostly just talk about how dumb he is, but I digress.
Point is, it's so freaking hard to dislike him, despite all his flaws, and I didn't want to give him proper character development because I didn't want him to lose that paradoxical aspect of his character. Although Jeong-Soon would be the Main Character if I really had to pick just one MC, Gregory is the essence of what this entire book is about. And if I changed that, it would feel like betrayal. Gregory would not be Gregory anymore if he went through the amount of character development my characters usually go through. He'd be a different person in the same body with the same name, but he wouldn't be Gregory Gan.
The problem is, I couldn't leave him as he was. In my opinion, Gregory's worst flaw is that he can be a hugely toxic person. One step further and he'd classify as the antagonist of TSP. And a relationship with a toxic person is generally a toxic relationship. And I have a policy of refusing to romanticise toxic relationships, which means that if Jeory had been a toxic relationship, they wouldn't have gotten a happy ending.
I ended up loopholing the hell out of that. Gregory goes through some minor character development, such as saying sorry and calling Marilyn by her real name, but I made sure it was suited to his character. (He's prideful, yes, but he's not blind to his flaws, and he knows when he's wrong. He just often has too much pride to admit it.) What I put out instead of proper character development was the promise of character development, the hope of Gregory's character developing without it actually developing. He's willing to try therapy, which is a good start. Any further character development from there is left ambigious and up to reader interpretation.
I know. You think I'm lazy. Which is true, but not when it comes to writing. (I lied. I'm lazy when it comes to writing too.) And in a way, it does seem like a cop-out. Instead of proper character development, I send him to therapy. And you may take it how you wish. If you choose to interpret it as me not being a good enough writer to develop my characters properly, that's perfectly fine with me. Maybe it's true. Who knows? But to me, it was completely intentional, because Gregory is everything TSP is about, and had I developed his character properly, I would have lost that core.
• Mia and Demeter's relationship was the hardest one to write in the whole book. There's quite a few relationships in TSP. Jeory, of course. Dillon and Rylee. Magnus and Aimee. Gregory and Colin, formerly. Jeong-Soon and Mia, formerly. Archer and Sam, kinda. And then there's the femme, wlw, sapphic-undertones relationship I've wanted to write for like, forever, Mia and Demeter.
Although Jeory is the complex relationship and the main one, the natural chemistry and ridiculous openness of my boys made it a lot easier to pen them down. Also, let's not forget Mia and Demeter are in a very delicate place where it's mainly crushing and flirting and putting numbers in ice cream. They're not together, exactly. I mean, they are, but it's more of an ambigious, future developments kind of thing. Also, since I identify as male and use he/him pronouns, I was kind of scared people would somehow decide to accuse me of fetishsizing wlw relationships or something. Especially since I used two femme characters rather than the traditional femme/butch dynamic.
Also, there was the issue of telling their relationship from Jeong-Soon's POV until the bonus chapter. Which meant that instead of straight-up going with my "ah yes they are girlfriends" style, I had to pull out the sapphic undertones and beating around the bush and Jeong-Soon's last braincell failing to do its job properly. You have NO idea how hard it was to write 'friend from the ice cream shop' instead of 'future wife'.
• Kaden originally had a much bigger role in TSP. Does anyone remember Kaden? Gregory's former best friend who got his leg broken? Yeah. He was pretty much deleted and combined with Colin because people found the scene too confusing and had trouble telling whether Colin and Kaden were different people or not. So we never spoke of him again.
In my original idea, at some point, Jeong-Soon was meant to bump into Kaden, who would be hopping around on his broken leg. He would have apologised for calling Gregory a f___t, and then would have ended up telling Jeong-Soon to pass on the message...before going to meet his new boyfriend. But because of all the confusion with Colin and Kaden, and my general dislike of too many side plots, I ended up scrapping this plot point and Kaden's character entirely.
• Jeong-Soon does not use the f-word until he claims he's becoming like Gregory. Jeong-Soon says every other swear word other than 'f#ck' until Chapter Fourteen. We all know Gregory's favourite word is 'f#ck'. Definitely rubbing off on him. And yes, that was intentional.
• Jeong-Soon has mild anxiety. To some extent. It's not severe, but it's there. He tends to overthink things a lot, and also suffers from occasional small panic attacks. I wanted to write an extroverted character with anxiety. And I didn't want to explicitly say it was anxiety. Ultimately, TSP is an extremely implicit, read-between-the-lines kind of book. I felt my MC's mental disorder should reflect that implicitness too.
• Jeong-Soon was originally meant to be dyslexic, while Gregory was originally supposed to have OCD. However, these ideas were both scrapped. Okay, so I'm not dyslexic. I wanted to write a dyslexic character. I realised that, as a non-dyslexic person, I had no idea how to write a dyslexic character. I proceeded to google pages of info on how to write dyslexic characters. Once I'd amassed several months worth of research, I realised that I was working on a 3 month deadline. Then when I got kicked out of the ONC and had all the time in the world to do my research, I was already like 7 chapters in and decided I was too lazy to completely change Jeong-Soon's entire character. And that's the story of why Jeong-Soon is not a dyslexic character.
Gregory's case was a bit more...difficult. I have mild OCD. I do know how to write a character with mild OCD. But the thing is, I do not want OCD to be portrayed negatively. Like, yeah, it's a negative thing, but you ain't crazy if you've got it. And then there was Gregory, who was DEFINITELY a negative, slightly insane character. And I was like, "Schist, this definitely will put people with OCD in a negative light. And I don't want that." Therefore, that idea was scrapped too.
• I made up a bunch of new word combos that technically do not exist for the sake of 'pretty writing'. My motto is to fill everything with description so it looks deep when it's actually shallower than the kiddie pool. Hyphenate two pretty words together, they look nice whether they make sense or not. Use a big, fancy word in the completely wrong context, it looks nice whether it makes sense or not. I did that a lot and you'll never find them. Yeah, that's a big writing tip. Enjoy.
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ADONIS
Simon Huang's a quiet loner with dreams of being on stage. Too scared to disappoint his overbearing, grade-focused parents, he forces himself to stick to books instead of scripts. Then he meets his Literature professor's son, and all that changes.
For piano prodigy Vincent Kelle, failure is not an option. Gifted from birth, he prides himself on dominating all the competitions he's ever participated in with a giant smile on his face. After his mother enrolls him in a piano competition outside London, he's forced to fly to America to stay with his estranged father until further notice. Determined to win the contest and head back home immediately after, he's intent on getting out of America as fast as possible. Then he meets his father's star student, and all that changes.
When a boy who's afraid to try meets a boy who's afraid to fail, there's only two ways it can go. It'll end in tragedy---or maybe they can rewrite the stars.
𝐀𝐃𝐎𝐍𝐈𝐒 © 𝐀𝐋𝐄𝐗 𝐙𝐀𝐂𝐇𝐀𝐑𝐘 𝐋𝐀𝐈
𝐂𝐎𝐌𝐈𝐍𝐆 𝟐𝟓𝐓𝐇 𝐒𝐄𝐏𝐓𝐄𝐌𝐁𝐄𝐑 𝟐𝟎𝟐𝟏