You've read young and free, and I've finally finished writing it. 59k words, that's a lot because initially I had intended this story to become WAY smaller. I hope you enjoyed it.
As I've said before, I got this idea in 2016, and that's pretty long ago. First I had thought of making it a short story. There would be 7 chapters, each focused on a member.
I plotted it a lot inside my mind. Often I would think about it, but I never had the courage to sit down and write. I thought no one would read it. My stories were so focused on romcoms, sometimes with a hint of angst, that I'd grown an audience here who would only crowd around my usual works, or so I'd thought.
As I was plotting in my head for all these time, the ideas kept growing and the characters started to become so elaborate that I didn't realize it was impossible to fit each their arcs into single chapters, until I started writing YaF.
The idea came to me through the kdrama age of youth/ hello my twenties but if you've watched that drama you know how vastly different this story is from that. It's the essence I wanted to capture.
People may think youth is such a beautiful, wonderful time of joy, when it's not, most of the time. We go through such difficulties, harsh realities, all of us, that just elude other's eyes.
Each of the members has a story of their own, complex and filled with their own struggles. To the other members it might seem they are fine, because they are only seeing what each member is showing.
I think that's what also happens in real life. We are all so deep in our own abyss, we think that we are so alone in this. Although, everyone is so vivid and everyone is fighting their own demons, maybe even the person next to you. We just don't know, because we are seeing through a window. Everyone is a main character in their own story/ life.
Till the end even the boys didn't know everything about each other. They became close so they merely shared what they wouldn't usually share.
Now I'd like to focus on what was going through my mind when I started building the arcs. I started with Jimin, who I thought the readers could relate to the most, then Taehyung who also felt understandable to many readers. As the arcs devolved into another it kept becoming complex, until it ended in Hoseok and Jungkook which blew many away.
I had everyone's story planned except for Hoseok, whom I pondered on for a long while.
I really wanted to portray more mental illnesses in my stories. I've had suicidal characters and characters with depression, and social anxiety before. (Twelve hours till death, midnight advisor, online crush)
I wanted to write more. Last year I had a one year course on psychology and started to think this platform needed more stories where we talk about other illnesses. I started with borderline personality disorder because that's what I know a lot about for personal reasons.
I did more research anyway, and I asked around in my social medias. It was surprising to see that many people didn't know a disorder called BPD existed, many didn't believe in its authenticity, a few said borderline people are scary (they are actually but it's not their fault).
Society calls BPD patients a 'freak'. Even other patients with mental disorders don't like them. I've made Hoseok very 'different' or what some would say, because people have a notion that BPD patients are always so cold, and gloomy, and angry. They can be nice if they try.
BPD is a very real disorder, and is more common than you think. Sadly, it is not popular worldwide in terms yet, like schizophrenia, OCD or other illnesses. Till to this day it often goes misdiagnosed. It is a bit similar to bipolar disorder but they are not the same.
I hope you can look up more into it but I'll give you some information here,
They have extreme mood swings. They feel emotions too much. Has inappropriate anger, sudden outbursts.
Massive impulses and can't control them. Binge eating, impulse buying, wreckless driving, substance abuse, alcohol abuse, harming themselves and a lot.
Often they're delusional, detached from the reality.
Has extreme fear of abandonment.
Always feeling empty, can't connect to anyone, unstable relationships.
Plethora of other disorders are linked to this.
There's more. It's not curable but they can get better controlling their emotions with therapy. Often with age it starts to mild down as well.
I also had a tough time with Jungkook's arc. I did a lot of research by myself on camboys, child abuse, and male rape.
It is saddening but true that male abuse/ rape happens quite often (the predators are usually male, but women also rape men), it's not talked about more. Because men who are raped/ abused are not taken seriously even by the police or psychiatrists (there's been numerous cases like this).
Male victims stay quiet and it grows on them. Often they feel ashamed of themselves because the society portrays men as above all, and rape/ abuse cases bring humiliation to them. Often they feel like they're not 'musculine' anymore by the society's standards.
Children who are sexually abused at a tender age grows up to show symptoms of trauma/ mental illness later. PTSD, social anxiety, conduct disorder, major depressive disorder, a lot could be the cause of child abuse. Some children grow afraid of sex, some become aware of it to the extent that they are hyper-sexualized. Every victim copes with trauma differently.
A lot of the children are sexually exploited later in their adulthood too. They choose to work in the line of prostitution. Camming is also a part of the profession, in case you're not aware yet.
It was quiet difficult for me to write his arc but this is my small partake in raising awareness.
Let's talk about other trivias now. Jin's ex boyfriend, August Hendrick, I pictured him as a mixture of Troye Sivan and Timothee Chalamet, and I wanted you to know that for no reason.
Also that I literally came up with his name because my birthday is in August, I don't have any other explanation. I just love August.
Namjoon and Jin are hinted to have some type of affection between them, platonic or romantic, whatever YOU, the reader would like to believe.
Namjoon also wants to go around the globe, visit different places and I think he's very similar to August on this aspect. No one noticed this.
Jin and Namjoon both play major parts in each others arcs.
There has been changes throughout the season the whole book, indicating a whole cycle of a year. I don't know if anyone noticed that.
Jimin joined the dorm almost at the end of spring where it showers rain a lot. In Taehyung's arc it rains a whole lot more, indicating a summer that follows to Jin's arc.
In Namjoon's arc it's clearly autumn with multiple references to the maple tree and indicating a coming winter. In Yoongi's arc we skip to winter and throughout the end of his story we see winter taking its final form but at Hoseok's arc the weather seems fine, winter is slowly fading away.
Yet when we find Jungkook at Diana's apartment there's another blizzard, mirroring the one that was there the day he got kidnapped.
At the last chapter, which also works as an epilogue we see the start of a spring. And a fresh beginning with the dorm's name changing.
There's a fun thing I want to point at, the landlord who lives at the second floor, we never see him in the book. He's just present there, somehow, and he helps all the boys in their arcs, somehow.
He's the one who got Jimin in this cheap yet peaceful dorm where he found his friends. Jimin ended up rooming with Yoongi, whom he could help while Yoongi was having a tough night, thinking really dark thoughts to himself.
In Taehyung, Namjoon and Hoseok's arcs he's playing old music from the second floor that could help them feel calm.
He warded off Diana with water when she's there to stalk Jungkook late at night before the dorm. If he didn't call Namjoon to ask about Jungkook's rent it might have taken the boys longer to realize Jungkook was gone.
In Jin's arc he's playing Edith Piaf's "life in pink" which gives Jin an epiphany how he really wants to lead his life. The landlord and him seem to know each other for the longest time.
To me, the landlord is a mysterious creature that somehow knows a lot that's happening with the boys, a floor below him. He's almost like the readers of the book, or so I like to think.
The names of the chapters are in Japanese so congrats you've just learned how to pronounce 1 to 35 in Japanese!
There isn't a reason why I made it like that. I'm learning how to speak Japanese and thought it could be good practice.
Though there's this thing, 4 which is yon/ shi and there's 7 which is shichi/ nana. The Japanese mainly use yon and nana for 4 and 7 because Shi and shichi are the homophones of death.
I think it brings a very gloomy atmosphere to the story. So I added Shi and shichi anyway.
That is all. If you have a question please ask me. This app is filled with millions of stories, hundreds and thousands of writers, yet you somehow managed to stumble upon this one book that didn't have an extravagant cover or a description. You read it, while you could be spending the time reading something entirely else. For that I'm really thankful.
Even if it hurts now, please stay strong. I love you and I know you will be okay someday. We are still young and free, after all.