Road to Utopia - NCT

story notes

This is where my ideas for the story belong, where some things I left out are and any answers to your questions lie. If you have any questions relating to the never-ending plotholes, leave them here and I'll answer them by replying or adding to the notes. I tried to keep up with this section as I went along, but towards the end, I didn't have this file and couldn't add to it. These are all the ones I could remember/ think of, but if there's anything I can add, I will.

· The meaning behind the title, Road to Utopia can be interpreted in two different ways. For the government, their utopia was a world where they were in control, mass domination, etc. The typical evil villain stuff. For NCT, it was to stop the influence of the government and reverse their changes, because, in their eyes, Korea was fine before the Utopia Party. So, depending on which side you took, there was a path to their ideal world, with some of them achieving it.

· This is my first book without an official epilogue. Although, some of the endings did take a narrative view into the future later on, so maybe I technically did have one.

· Somewhere in the middle, it stopped being about personality ruling the world and capitalism ceasing to exist. It was a good but very, very undeveloped concept, mainly because I didn't add Jisung to have multiple personalities. In the eventual rewrite/editing, that idea from the 'about' section will be removed.

· For some reason, I think it basically became an extended metaphor for my hate towards capitalism controlling us with materialistic values to succeed in life. The Utopia Party just wanted to rule the world (capitalism) and NCT wanted to remove that greed (somewhat socialism?)

· Jisung was supposed to have dissociative identity disorder (DID) but I didn't know how to include his personality switching properly so I changed it to dissociative amnesia. The personalities were supposed to be: normal, typically a scaredy-cat; fearless and reckless; one with anger issues and unstable emotions; child-like (I was reading a lot of little-space books at the time); psychic (which I sort of still included); and finally suicidal/emo.

· The psychic part of Jisung came to me when I finished chapter 7 (intro to Yuta). I intended for it to be a coincidence (which should have happened on time and not after the Dream mission) since the book is not a supernatural one, but it made it more fun by having Jisung be somewhat psychic. The true explanation for his abilities was that he could predict a bad incident but not the actual time. He could make a guess, but it isn't 100% accurate. I found this to be Doomsayer (which the name sounded boring). The alternative to his ability would have been called Cassandra (Greek mythology) where he would have told true predictions, but no one would believe him (which I didn't like so despite the name being cool, it had to be a discarded idea). Although, later on in the book, after my long break, I lowkey forgot about his ability and never used it. I'm gonna use Scarlet's idea of Jisung knowing the enemy's plans because he works for them to logically explain it because no amount of logic that I can come up with can explain it, especially since this isn't a supernatural au.

· Jisung's amnesia condition was supposed to be hidden. The members suspected he was just forgetful, but I thought it would be nicer for them to know. That, and the mini-meeting in chapter 13 sort of lead to it, what with the talk of the therapist. And after all that, it turns out that he was forever controlled by the government.

· I had planned out the roles about 2 months before putting my fingers on the keyboard. It was only then that I realised, I had completely missed Jaemin and Winwin didn't have a role except "SUNSHINE" (which was never a role and idek what I was thinking).

· The real reason why Xiaojun finds Jisung familiar (not just because Chenle's showed photos of them together) was because he was on a mission and found him in one of the government's buildings. It's never properly addressed in the story, and only mentioned like once (on second thought, did I include it at all?), despite that being one of the biggest reveals that I planned out.

· Lee Soo Man making the appearance(?) in this book was never supposed to happen. My friend was reading the plot and wondered why they had stairs when they could have elevators, especially in such a modern world. And by then, the base had been somewhat described so I made him the rich benefactor/sugar daddy-type person to fund for a new place when the restaurant closed.

· This is the first book where I named the chapters and let me tell you IT ISN'T HAPPENING AGAIN! It's so hard to think of titles for some of the chapters (e.g., The Cleaner and the Crutch Man, like what was that?). Kudos to those who can do it successfully, but I don't think I could ever do it again. Definitely need to change some of those later on.

· Chenle was never supposed to be best friends with Jisung, not the way I portrayed him to be at least. He was supposed to be recruiting potential members (he only managed Sungchan), but he would keep an eye out for Jisung and act like best friends to blend in. Eventually, they were supposed to fight and struggle to get along, but how could I break that up?

· The drug the therapist gave was a sleeping drug. However, the first draft was actually the pink pill they gave later. If I had done that, a lot of this book would never have been written, but I needed a mission that most/all members went on before the final 'arc'.

· Speaking of arcs, it was split into: Jisung into NCT; Jisung being confused 24/7; Jisung needs rescuing; Jisung works for the government and loses himself; battle – NCT vs Jisung/government.

· Yuta and Haechan turned into my comedic relief about halfway through the book. I intended it to only be Xiaojun and Hendery, but they got a little forgotten during those times/ couldn't be put into the plot. However, Haechan and Yuta were there, and I always imagine Haechan butting heads with almost anyone, and Yuta being the only one to answer back because he also wants to win?

· Ice cream Tuesday was such a random thing to add in, but it was inspired by my own experience where my siblings and I just ate ice cream only on a Tuesday. It was only twice, and I swear it took half a year for me to eat ice cream again.

· I actually gave away most of the rest of the storyline in chapter 31. I was getting bored, no one gave the right theories, so I made Taeyong that conspiracy meme guy. It may have seemed like he was sleep-deprived, which he was, but he was right about Jisung.

· Eunhee was supposed to be the therapist's name, but it was too late to go back and fix it, since I thought I'd leave her nameless and did. Eunhee, as mentioned, was Jaehyun's ex and hated how he ghosted her, so she tracked him down and joined a research facility to exact her revenge. She also actually hated the government too and was trying to kill the president to put herself there. Sounds normal until you realise that she is worse and would have made the country her own harem or something because she's crazy. Fortunately(?), she was eventually given capital punishment and killed for treason for messing with the supply.

· I totally was singing "Choke me like you hate me, but you love me" whilst writing Jisung strangling Taeyong because that was my only inspiration at how Jisung could attack the other members.

· The reason they gave Jisung the gun back at the facility was because they wanted him to kill NCT through Eunhee's commands but the effects of the drug he took weren't fully working (which helped in the good ending).

· Depending on the ending you read, canonically, Jisung never actually liked Chenle. He was simply the gateway into NCT, where he would make a string of planned interactions to infiltrate.

· It was never developed, but also canonically, Jisung was a spy for the government. He was trained and raised by them, testing drugs. And he tells people he escaped but in reality, he's made to go and infiltrate different groups. He terminates them from the inside, reports his progress to the government and repeats. For NCT, he was found by Taeyong at one point and the leader basically charmed his way for Jisung to switch sides. Depending on your ending, it either worked or didn't.

· That one chapter where Shotaro takes the crowbars was just me projecting Seventeen Jeonghan's comfort from utensils. I didn't realise it at the time, but looking back on it just makes sense.

· Originally, Jisung was always going to get a sad ending. I know, cry all you want, but that's how I envisioned the main protagonist to end: either he gets fully controlled by the government, he gets shot by the government, or NCT have no choice but to kill him.