Super Junior; Band!fic; Me
Title: Me
Fandom: Super Junior
Pairing: band!fic
Word Count: 2,203
Rating: G
Summary: Breaking down the Korean version Me MV, because if you look close enough, the difference is a lot bigger than just the sound of the track playing behind our boys.
Genre: Fluff(?)
A/N: So i didnt realize this was so long...I remember watching the Me vid Korean version (i wrote this almost directly after) and when i saw donghae everything was so clear how different it was. His is the most obvious. but yeah, it just made me think of the members, and how they thought of the vid. idk, i think its a little long for the quality of this one, maybe its just that im tired of re-reading it as editing, but i just needed to post it and get it off my mind. it may not be worth a read, and if its not, im sorry, but i just like the donghae part. and its FULL. of SAP. oh man, the sap...i apologize in advance.
They feel like they’ve been here before, and that’s because they have. They’re in the same clothes, with the same hairstyles, in front of the same background. Only this time, when they open their mouth, it’s not to the sound of a Chinese track echoing on the set. It’s Korean, and it changes everything.
***
Zhou Mi is on his ninth take. All he has to do is mouth the foreign words at the camera and do it looking cute. No big deal. The other members don’t know though, just how hard that is, how frustrated he is, and maybe even just a little bit sad. Zhou Mi takes that back; the other Korean members don’t know. Gege and Henry, they know, because they can feel it too. He can see it when he looks over at them, at Henry’s subdued manner and Hankyung’s strained smile. Zhou Mi goes over the lyrics again in his head, the Korean heavy and awkward on his tongue, strange sounds that he tries to fit is tongue around but can’t quite grasp it the right way. Zhou Mi gives the camera his best smile, but it doesn’t quite reach his eyes. By the twelve take, he’s tired of pretending. His shoulders are slumped forward and he lets a soft sigh of frustration slip through his teeth as the director finishes reviewing his cuts and announces that they’re going to try again.
“Geez, Zhou Mi, can’t you get it right? It’s just Korean,” Kyuhyun teases jokingly as he passes. He doesn’t know how much it cuts Zhou Mi, and Zhou Mi tries not to let it show.
They don’t even use fourteen out of the fifteen takes. They only use bits of the first, because after that it was all downhill from there.
***
Donghae seems happier, livelier, Henry notes. He’s more talkative, he’s more…Donghae. In China, he was quiet, afraid of saying the wrong thing or being laughed at. When Donghae is just himself, he doesn’t mind the giggles and cooing, but when he actually tries, when he tries hard and does something wrong…well, hes a fragile person. He doesn’t always show it, brushing everything off as a joke, but he has a simple, soft heart. He puts all of himself in everything he does. He doesn’t want to let any one down, especially the one person who’s gone. So, he’s careful. In China, Henry simply thought Donghae was quiet, but now that he knows the right words to say, he says them all. He flits about the set, and Henry can practically feel the joy radiating off of him as he flies past. Donghae smiles wider, more, and straight into the camera. He does cute poses. He’s playful. He acts like he would as if he were home, because the jumble of Korean wafting through the room almost makes him forget he’s not.
The track playing behind Donghae is brighter, louder, his voice echoing with confidence. When Donghae sings in Chinese, he sings with his voice. When he sings in Korean, he sings with his heart. Henry can hear the difference.
***
Siwon knows he’s laying it on a bit thick, maybe overdoing it for the camera a little. It’s okay though. He’s just trying to put on a good show, the best he can. Siwon always does the best he can. The director plays the film back and watches on a little screen, and Siwon has a minute before they do another take. He can’t stop fidgeting, rocking back and forth on the balls of his feet ever so slightly as he waits. He tells the members he’s not any happier to be singing a SJM song in Korean, says he loves speaking in Chinese just as much, but then there’s that nagging feeling in the back of his brain that always pops up when he’s lying. He doesn’t want to admit it. Still, Korean’s his native language, and it just feels right on his tongue. When he speaks Chinese, sometimes it feels like peanut butter on the roof of his mouth, while Korean is like honey, sweet on his tongue. He savors it, because he doesn’t know when he’s going to be singing in Korean again, and they have a variety show tomorrow, so it’s back to Chinese already.
Siwon smiles in the camera as they resume filming. He moves his mouth to the Korean lyrics floating behind him, and he admits it. It just feels right.
***
Henry sighs. He can’t say it right. He can’t say the syllables dropping awkwardly off his tongue, words not rolling off smoothly like he knows they’re supposed to. He watched as Zhou Mi took fifteen takes, and he thinks he’ll probably have to do twenty. He grimaces a little at the camera when no one’s looking. First they make him speak in Chinese, now they make him speak Korean. Henry wonders whatever happened to English. Sure, he’s good at Chinese, fluent even, but Korean is still new to him, still foreign, and sometimes he wishes he could just find someone from Canada and latch onto them and everything he used to know. …But that would probably freak them out. Instead he faces the camera, colorful background behind him, and tries to fit his mouth around this new language. It's awkward, and he feels kind of stupid, but it’s what he does: he speaks when he has to and then everybody coos at him.
He’s surprised when he doesn’t surpass Zhou Mi’s grant total of fifteen, instead making off with eleven takes. He appears at his hyung’s side while he’s at the refreshment table in the corner, and just stands with him for a while, not getting anything for himself, just standing quietly, and Zhou Mi understands. He drapes an arm around his shoulders. Henry doesn’t say anything, but Zhou Mi knows.
***
Kyuhyun doesn’t seem to care whether he’s singing in Chinese or Korean. It doesn’t make a difference to him, because he’s good at singing in both. He’s good at singing in general. He doesn’t do anything different in the video; he makes the same moves, gives the same smiles, the same glances at the camera. He doesn’t see why he should make it any different. Korean, Chinese, whatever, all he cares about is singing. The rest are details that he works around, adapts himself to fit the circumstances and molds them in turn to best fit him. As long as he’s singing, Kyuhyun figures everything is fine.
Kyuhyun knows Zhou Mi is having a hard time. He puts it out of his mind as he films, as he syncs his lips to the music, and he finishes quickly, effortlessly. All he had to do was sing, or, technically, pretend to sing. When he finishes, Kyuhyun goes to look for Zhou Mi. He finds him and Henry together, sitting and talking a little bit in Chinese. Kyuhyun smiles and waits for them to acknowledge his presence. When Zhou Mi lifts his head and spots him, he says his name in greeting. Kyuhyun. The younger boy shakes his head, smiling lightly. Kui Xian, he says, pointing at himself as he walks over and crosses the short distance to the two. It means more to Zhou Mi than the Chinese boy can tell him, so he just smiles at Kyuhyun and doesn’t try to explain.
***
Ryeowook seems brighter. Siwon can see the way he glows just a little bit more than usual. It doesn’t matter if Ryeowook has excellent Chinese, or how he’s so wildly popular among all China’s fangirls. Korean is Korean, and Ryeowook has missed it just a bit, even if he doesn’t say so. It’s not something conscious, because Ryeowook doesn’t seem to be aware of how radiant he looks on set. It’s just something weaved into Ryeowook, a part of him. Siwon supposes whatever it is comes from being born and raised here and living here all your life, because he kinda sorta feels it to. When you’re home, every fiber in your being seems to know it. It’s just magnified in Ryeowook even more because he loves so much and so easily, and the love for his home is one of the strongest Ryeowook has. Siwon can see it; his moves are bigger, his voice resonates across the set and Ryeowook can’t even see how bright, how clear his face is as he lip-syncs into the camera.
There’s no fans chanting LiXu, and the only murmurs of Chinese are drowned by the babbles of Korean from the others. Ryeowook is in Korea, and Korea is in him. There’s now a little Chinese in him too, but it fades just a little in the light that fills Ryeowook when he knows he’s home.
***
Hangeng doesn’t know where he stands. He’s the middleman. He’s passed back and forth, from China to Korea, from Super Junior to Super Junior M. He doesn’t really mind, but then sometimes he does. He can’t tell if he likes that there’s a Korean version of Me or if he hates it. One moment he decides he hates it, because it belongs to Super Junior M, and Super Junior M belongs to him. It’s the one thing he has, the one thing that separates him from the 12 other big personalities jostling for room and attention and something special in Super Junior. He instantly changes his mind when he sees Donghae, sees how happy he is being able to sing again in Korean, sing what he knows. Hangeng is happy to see his bandmates happy, but he cant quite seem to shake this feeling in the pit of his stomach, and on his tongue is not only Korean but the taste of defeat, the bitterness of being robbed. He pushes this to the back of his mind. He has a video to make, and it’s his video as the leader and he wants to make sure it’s as good as the other videos, Chinese or Korean or whatever. He watched Zhou Mi struggle. He watched Henry struggle. He watched all the other members breeze past as if this was nothing. He faces the camera and wonders what category he’s going to end up in. As if the video being easy or hard is going to tell him where he really belongs.
The words feel familiarly strange and slippery but he makes it through the lines, and it looks effortless. He’s done this before, and he knows just how to play it to the camera like Korean is just like Chinese, even though it’s not. He smiles and moves his mouth. It feels oddly familiar, and an odd surge of happiness swells in him as he hears the Korean waft around him. It’s not Chinese, but it’s part of Hangeng too. In a way, he feels like he’s where he belongs. He will always belong in China, but maybe he belongs in Korea too. Maybe he can have both. He thinks about all the time he’s spent there, all the blood sweat and tears shed on Korean soil that will forever tie him there. He thinks about the 12 people who so graciously welcomed him, and the small groups of fans who didn’t, and the fight he put up to stay, to be loved by the people he started to care about most. He thinks about the early years, when he cried almost every night because he missed his parents. He doesn’t cry any more, at least not as much, but there have been a few nights when he’s found that his pillow was wet when he was thinking about Korea and the people in it, and he was thinking about how much he missed it. How much he missed being….home?
Hangeng sits with the other members on set. Some of them look tired, some of them are talking in Korean, and Donghae looks like he’ll never come down from his high. Hangeng thinks about this set and how it transforms so subtly from Korean to Chinese and back again. There are only slight changes in the feeling of the atmosphere that sets them apart, but it’s still the same.
So is Hangeng. He changes ever so slightly when he transitions from Korean to Chinese and back again, but he’s still the same. He’s come to the conclusion that he doesn’t have a side. He’s both. He’s Korean and Chinese. He has two homes. He’s Hankyung and he’s Hangeng. But most of all, he’s happy.
***
The music video comes out and even though it’s fundamentally the same, the only differences small ones, everyone applauds them on it and coos over it appreciatively. The members love it, they really do. All of them. They put a lot into it, went through a lot on that set, and they know how difficult it was for some and how fun it was for others. It’s brought them together. It fused them and their cultures and their separate worlds, connected them in a way only they can feel. They smile at each other.
Super Junior M just might be the most versatile Super Junior subgroup of all.
***
Started: 10.1.08
Finished: 11.9.08
Fandom: Super Junior
Pairing: band!fic
Word Count: 2,203
Rating: G
Summary: Breaking down the Korean version Me MV, because if you look close enough, the difference is a lot bigger than just the sound of the track playing behind our boys.
Genre: Fluff(?)
A/N: So i didnt realize this was so long...I remember watching the Me vid Korean version (i wrote this almost directly after) and when i saw donghae everything was so clear how different it was. His is the most obvious. but yeah, it just made me think of the members, and how they thought of the vid. idk, i think its a little long for the quality of this one, maybe its just that im tired of re-reading it as editing, but i just needed to post it and get it off my mind. it may not be worth a read, and if its not, im sorry, but i just like the donghae part. and its FULL. of SAP. oh man, the sap...i apologize in advance.
They feel like they’ve been here before, and that’s because they have. They’re in the same clothes, with the same hairstyles, in front of the same background. Only this time, when they open their mouth, it’s not to the sound of a Chinese track echoing on the set. It’s Korean, and it changes everything.
***
Zhou Mi is on his ninth take. All he has to do is mouth the foreign words at the camera and do it looking cute. No big deal. The other members don’t know though, just how hard that is, how frustrated he is, and maybe even just a little bit sad. Zhou Mi takes that back; the other Korean members don’t know. Gege and Henry, they know, because they can feel it too. He can see it when he looks over at them, at Henry’s subdued manner and Hankyung’s strained smile. Zhou Mi goes over the lyrics again in his head, the Korean heavy and awkward on his tongue, strange sounds that he tries to fit is tongue around but can’t quite grasp it the right way. Zhou Mi gives the camera his best smile, but it doesn’t quite reach his eyes. By the twelve take, he’s tired of pretending. His shoulders are slumped forward and he lets a soft sigh of frustration slip through his teeth as the director finishes reviewing his cuts and announces that they’re going to try again.
“Geez, Zhou Mi, can’t you get it right? It’s just Korean,” Kyuhyun teases jokingly as he passes. He doesn’t know how much it cuts Zhou Mi, and Zhou Mi tries not to let it show.
They don’t even use fourteen out of the fifteen takes. They only use bits of the first, because after that it was all downhill from there.
***
Donghae seems happier, livelier, Henry notes. He’s more talkative, he’s more…Donghae. In China, he was quiet, afraid of saying the wrong thing or being laughed at. When Donghae is just himself, he doesn’t mind the giggles and cooing, but when he actually tries, when he tries hard and does something wrong…well, hes a fragile person. He doesn’t always show it, brushing everything off as a joke, but he has a simple, soft heart. He puts all of himself in everything he does. He doesn’t want to let any one down, especially the one person who’s gone. So, he’s careful. In China, Henry simply thought Donghae was quiet, but now that he knows the right words to say, he says them all. He flits about the set, and Henry can practically feel the joy radiating off of him as he flies past. Donghae smiles wider, more, and straight into the camera. He does cute poses. He’s playful. He acts like he would as if he were home, because the jumble of Korean wafting through the room almost makes him forget he’s not.
The track playing behind Donghae is brighter, louder, his voice echoing with confidence. When Donghae sings in Chinese, he sings with his voice. When he sings in Korean, he sings with his heart. Henry can hear the difference.
***
Siwon knows he’s laying it on a bit thick, maybe overdoing it for the camera a little. It’s okay though. He’s just trying to put on a good show, the best he can. Siwon always does the best he can. The director plays the film back and watches on a little screen, and Siwon has a minute before they do another take. He can’t stop fidgeting, rocking back and forth on the balls of his feet ever so slightly as he waits. He tells the members he’s not any happier to be singing a SJM song in Korean, says he loves speaking in Chinese just as much, but then there’s that nagging feeling in the back of his brain that always pops up when he’s lying. He doesn’t want to admit it. Still, Korean’s his native language, and it just feels right on his tongue. When he speaks Chinese, sometimes it feels like peanut butter on the roof of his mouth, while Korean is like honey, sweet on his tongue. He savors it, because he doesn’t know when he’s going to be singing in Korean again, and they have a variety show tomorrow, so it’s back to Chinese already.
Siwon smiles in the camera as they resume filming. He moves his mouth to the Korean lyrics floating behind him, and he admits it. It just feels right.
***
Henry sighs. He can’t say it right. He can’t say the syllables dropping awkwardly off his tongue, words not rolling off smoothly like he knows they’re supposed to. He watched as Zhou Mi took fifteen takes, and he thinks he’ll probably have to do twenty. He grimaces a little at the camera when no one’s looking. First they make him speak in Chinese, now they make him speak Korean. Henry wonders whatever happened to English. Sure, he’s good at Chinese, fluent even, but Korean is still new to him, still foreign, and sometimes he wishes he could just find someone from Canada and latch onto them and everything he used to know. …But that would probably freak them out. Instead he faces the camera, colorful background behind him, and tries to fit his mouth around this new language. It's awkward, and he feels kind of stupid, but it’s what he does: he speaks when he has to and then everybody coos at him.
He’s surprised when he doesn’t surpass Zhou Mi’s grant total of fifteen, instead making off with eleven takes. He appears at his hyung’s side while he’s at the refreshment table in the corner, and just stands with him for a while, not getting anything for himself, just standing quietly, and Zhou Mi understands. He drapes an arm around his shoulders. Henry doesn’t say anything, but Zhou Mi knows.
***
Kyuhyun doesn’t seem to care whether he’s singing in Chinese or Korean. It doesn’t make a difference to him, because he’s good at singing in both. He’s good at singing in general. He doesn’t do anything different in the video; he makes the same moves, gives the same smiles, the same glances at the camera. He doesn’t see why he should make it any different. Korean, Chinese, whatever, all he cares about is singing. The rest are details that he works around, adapts himself to fit the circumstances and molds them in turn to best fit him. As long as he’s singing, Kyuhyun figures everything is fine.
Kyuhyun knows Zhou Mi is having a hard time. He puts it out of his mind as he films, as he syncs his lips to the music, and he finishes quickly, effortlessly. All he had to do was sing, or, technically, pretend to sing. When he finishes, Kyuhyun goes to look for Zhou Mi. He finds him and Henry together, sitting and talking a little bit in Chinese. Kyuhyun smiles and waits for them to acknowledge his presence. When Zhou Mi lifts his head and spots him, he says his name in greeting. Kyuhyun. The younger boy shakes his head, smiling lightly. Kui Xian, he says, pointing at himself as he walks over and crosses the short distance to the two. It means more to Zhou Mi than the Chinese boy can tell him, so he just smiles at Kyuhyun and doesn’t try to explain.
***
Ryeowook seems brighter. Siwon can see the way he glows just a little bit more than usual. It doesn’t matter if Ryeowook has excellent Chinese, or how he’s so wildly popular among all China’s fangirls. Korean is Korean, and Ryeowook has missed it just a bit, even if he doesn’t say so. It’s not something conscious, because Ryeowook doesn’t seem to be aware of how radiant he looks on set. It’s just something weaved into Ryeowook, a part of him. Siwon supposes whatever it is comes from being born and raised here and living here all your life, because he kinda sorta feels it to. When you’re home, every fiber in your being seems to know it. It’s just magnified in Ryeowook even more because he loves so much and so easily, and the love for his home is one of the strongest Ryeowook has. Siwon can see it; his moves are bigger, his voice resonates across the set and Ryeowook can’t even see how bright, how clear his face is as he lip-syncs into the camera.
There’s no fans chanting LiXu, and the only murmurs of Chinese are drowned by the babbles of Korean from the others. Ryeowook is in Korea, and Korea is in him. There’s now a little Chinese in him too, but it fades just a little in the light that fills Ryeowook when he knows he’s home.
***
Hangeng doesn’t know where he stands. He’s the middleman. He’s passed back and forth, from China to Korea, from Super Junior to Super Junior M. He doesn’t really mind, but then sometimes he does. He can’t tell if he likes that there’s a Korean version of Me or if he hates it. One moment he decides he hates it, because it belongs to Super Junior M, and Super Junior M belongs to him. It’s the one thing he has, the one thing that separates him from the 12 other big personalities jostling for room and attention and something special in Super Junior. He instantly changes his mind when he sees Donghae, sees how happy he is being able to sing again in Korean, sing what he knows. Hangeng is happy to see his bandmates happy, but he cant quite seem to shake this feeling in the pit of his stomach, and on his tongue is not only Korean but the taste of defeat, the bitterness of being robbed. He pushes this to the back of his mind. He has a video to make, and it’s his video as the leader and he wants to make sure it’s as good as the other videos, Chinese or Korean or whatever. He watched Zhou Mi struggle. He watched Henry struggle. He watched all the other members breeze past as if this was nothing. He faces the camera and wonders what category he’s going to end up in. As if the video being easy or hard is going to tell him where he really belongs.
The words feel familiarly strange and slippery but he makes it through the lines, and it looks effortless. He’s done this before, and he knows just how to play it to the camera like Korean is just like Chinese, even though it’s not. He smiles and moves his mouth. It feels oddly familiar, and an odd surge of happiness swells in him as he hears the Korean waft around him. It’s not Chinese, but it’s part of Hangeng too. In a way, he feels like he’s where he belongs. He will always belong in China, but maybe he belongs in Korea too. Maybe he can have both. He thinks about all the time he’s spent there, all the blood sweat and tears shed on Korean soil that will forever tie him there. He thinks about the 12 people who so graciously welcomed him, and the small groups of fans who didn’t, and the fight he put up to stay, to be loved by the people he started to care about most. He thinks about the early years, when he cried almost every night because he missed his parents. He doesn’t cry any more, at least not as much, but there have been a few nights when he’s found that his pillow was wet when he was thinking about Korea and the people in it, and he was thinking about how much he missed it. How much he missed being….home?
Hangeng sits with the other members on set. Some of them look tired, some of them are talking in Korean, and Donghae looks like he’ll never come down from his high. Hangeng thinks about this set and how it transforms so subtly from Korean to Chinese and back again. There are only slight changes in the feeling of the atmosphere that sets them apart, but it’s still the same.
So is Hangeng. He changes ever so slightly when he transitions from Korean to Chinese and back again, but he’s still the same. He’s come to the conclusion that he doesn’t have a side. He’s both. He’s Korean and Chinese. He has two homes. He’s Hankyung and he’s Hangeng. But most of all, he’s happy.
***
The music video comes out and even though it’s fundamentally the same, the only differences small ones, everyone applauds them on it and coos over it appreciatively. The members love it, they really do. All of them. They put a lot into it, went through a lot on that set, and they know how difficult it was for some and how fun it was for others. It’s brought them together. It fused them and their cultures and their separate worlds, connected them in a way only they can feel. They smile at each other.
Super Junior M just might be the most versatile Super Junior subgroup of all.
***
Started: 10.1.08
Finished: 11.9.08