A while back, I somewhat jokingly suggested to GD that we play a fun, new game–Will it Ateez?-- in which we take a piece of media that has absolutely nothing to do with ATEEZ or the lore and try to make it about ATEEZ, see what connections we can discover. I was heavily inspired by GD’s excellent WTW about The Devil Wears Prada. And so today, I am going to rise (perhaps--remains to be seen) to my own challenge, and try to play the game with a book that literally no one has ever heard of.
At this point, if you’ve been following along, it’s no secret that GD and I have been known to go a little overboard when it comes to ATEEZ. A few months ago, Jongho’s Gravity was up for a Best OST award (I don’t even remember what award show it was for at this point and also I cannot believe we are currently living this hell again), and it felt like zero Atinys were voting for him. In order to obtain more credits or hearts or stars or whatever to vote, we both signed up for different subscriptions we would later cancel. Except, GD found she had one that was impossible to cancel–a faith-based romance book subscription. She now has quite the collection. When I was in Dallas for the Babies’ concert, she oh-so-kindly gave me one of the books as part of my welcome package. A few weeks ago, I was sick at home for several days. So with all that extra time, I read A Family for the Orphans by Heidi Main. And today, I’m here to discuss the links between this soft little love story and ATEEZ's musical revolution.
Although I did not think this book was very good, I am not going to go too hard on Heidi. Writing even a bad book takes a lot of work and putting it out there for people to see takes a lot of guts. It’s something I’ve never managed to do, so in spite of my feelings, Heidi still has my respect. However, as someone who studies literature professionally, I do have some Thoughts and Opinions.
When the story begins, the titular Orphans are already orphaned and have already been adopted by their guardian Walker, our male lead. Walker works in cybersecurity, but he has quit his job in order to run the horse farm that the orphans’ parents had planned to buy and raise their children on. The problem is that Walker is absolute garbage at running a farm. Enter Trisha, our female lead. (Trisha actually doesn’t really “enter” so much as she is already here at the start of the book.) Trisha has a degree in Horse Farm/Barn Management (?) but had given up her horse farm dreams in favor of teaching because when her ex fiance broke up with her, his parents rescinded their horse farm management offer they had made to Trisha. Also, when the story begins, Walker and Trisha (ship name: Wisha) already know and like each other but are in the denial stage.
The entire plot of the story centers around saving the horse farm from failing and being bought by the evil land developers. In the midst of all that drama (and “drama” is actually a stretch. The drama is mild at best), Wisha very slowly decide to allow themselves to like each other.
There are two levels to the Will It ATEEZ? game. The first level involves searching for related themes and similar motivations. The second level asks us to apply those similarities to see what they can reveal about the Lore and the members as characters. So let’s try it, shall we?
In A Family for the Orphans, Walker suffers from survivor’s guilt. He and his wife were driving at night when they were struck by a drunk driver. Walker’s wife Phoebe was killed and Walker has blamed himself for her death ever since. Very early in the book Walker admits that he has feelings for Trisha (and I do mean very early–like the first chapter), but he believes that he doesn’t “have the right to be attracted to another woman. Not after what happened to Phoebe.” This keeps him from pursuing Trisha throughout the majority of the book. And any time he does give in to his attraction, it is swiftly followed by a reminder that he had been in love once and that he had failed to protect that love.
Similarly, we have two characters in the Diaries that are weighed down by the guilt of losing someone they love: Yunho and Left Eye. We don’t know enough of either of their stories to determine whether either of them was actually responsible for the deaths of their loved ones. We know for sure that when Yunho gets a second chance to keep his brother safe, he does the best he can, demanding his brother not leave the house when he sets off to save his friends from some murderous cultists. While Left Eye’s guilt keeps him trapped in a yellow smoke-induced stupor, Yunho’s guilt seems to propel him forward, chasing his brother’s dream of being a musician while at the same time keeping him tethered to his past. We see it in how he visits his brother’s resting place (likely a columbarium) everyday, and you could maybe even argue we see it in how he chooses to stay with his resurrected brother rather than returning to Strictland to save Yeosang with the others.
So while all the methods of dealing with guilt are a little different, they all have one thing in common: guilt is a weight. It is an anchor keeping you stuck in one place, making it hard to move on with your life. Left Eye has to be absolved of his guilt (aka confronted by Yunho) in order to break free from his hallucinatory prison. Yunho needs to be straight up told by his brother “this isn’t your fault” before he can feel free to leave him and accompany his friends to Strictland for a Grand Adventure. And Walker. . .
Well, here’s the thing about Walker. I’m not sure what the catalyst was for him giving up his guilt. This book has a tendency to circle back on itself narratively so that you constantly feel like you aren’t making any progress. Walker repeatedly makes advances towards Trisha–flirting, hand holding, tucking stray locks of hair behind ears, and every single time follows the advance by checking himself mentally and reminding himself how much he doesn’t deserve to be with anyone. Until. . . he just doesn’t. Slightly past the halfway point, Wisha are taking the kids to go see fireworks. On one page, Walker is mentally freaking out because he opened Trisha’s car door for her and he didn’t want her to get the wrong idea. On literally the next page, he starts holding her hand. And then just two pages later they’re doing the forehead touch–this is all at the same fireworks show with zero conversation about their relationship. This begins their situationship in which Walker is still regularly telling himself he doesn’t deserve Trisha. And then just all of a sudden, after an argument in which Trisha is being very petty and insecure, he just says he needs to “live in the present and maybe put himself out there.” And that’s it. He’s fixed. I suppose you could argue that it’s the power of prayer because he does pray. One time.
Regardless of the method of obtaining freedom, it’s clear that freedom must be obtained. You can’t just ignore the guilt until it goes away. You have to do something with it. You have to face it and recognize it for what it is.
We never get to see how Yunho reacts when the group breaks up due to Mingi leaving or to Yeosang’s father’s interference (depending on who’s telling the story). But I wonder how he might have proceeded with his brother’s dream without the support of his friends. Would he have been trapped trying to fulfill a dream that was not really his own and unable to find his own happiness?
And this was a question I had on my mind earlier today: when you do a right thing for a wrong reason, does the action lose its value?
I was thinking about this because in A Family for the Orphans (the name never ceases to be hilarious), Walker in particular had absolutely no plans to work on a horse farm. As I mentioned before, he’s genuinely terrible at it. Every decision he makes is the wrong one, and he never grows and learns. He just continues to be bad at this new position he’s found himself in. The only reason he’s at this horse farm is that his best friends died in a helicopter crash and he and Trisha have determined that they absolutely must, no matter what, raise the children on this horse farm.
This determination never made sense to me. The children had never actually lived on the farm. Their parents were apparently in the process of purchasing it when they passed. So Wisha decide they need to purchase it themselves. Or rather, Walker does. It’s unclear if Trisha has any financial stake in the property. The central struggle in the book is making the farm turn a profit so that the kids can keep living there.
As I was reading, I was reminded of how when ATEEZ finally come face to face with Halateez, they are given a job to do whether they want to or not. In Bible Study, GD and I have talked about ATEEZ’s turning point–what is the thing that makes them want to stay and fight? They come back the first time specifically to rescue Yeosang. But why do they stay? Is it the sight of all the citizens and Black Pirates who have been drained of their life force and turned into zombies? Is it the deaths of the Grimes siblings? Is it Left Eye who convinces them? We don’t know for sure. Perhaps it’s all of the above. Maybe they realize they feel more free in this restricted world than they did at home.
But ATEEZ take on this new mantle and make the best of it. Just because it was not their original dream does not mean that it’s not their true dream. At its heart, ATEEZ’s lore isn’t actually about fighting against a totalitarian anti-art regime. Yes, the lore is about embracing emotions and being free to create, but it’s also very much about family and love and the bonds that keep us together. (This last point being much harder to argue if you’ve read the most recent diaries because wtf.)
It was this idea I had in my mind about halfway through the book when I became absolutely convinced that I had misjudged the author and she was about to do something unexpected and amazing. So much of the conflict of the book stems from the fight to keep the farm afloat and with each new small triumph comes a whole host of bigger tragedies. Oh, were you able to find some new boarders? Too bad–your horse is sick now and needs surgery. Did you plan a fun family weekend horse competition thing that I don’t understand? Uh oh–looks like the rain’s a-comin’--better watch out for heavy winds that will knock over all of your tents and try to crush your female lead.
Wisha’s struggle against all the odds is so unending and seemingly futile that I began to think that they would actually lose the farm in the end. And that that would be the point. Because the farm isn’t the thing–the family is the thing. It’s right there in the title. It’s not A Horse Farm for the Orphans.
And so I started waiting and waiting with each new set of terrible circumstances for the main characters to give up and let go and find peace in a new dream. I remember how Jongho, when dealing with a serious injury that ended his basketball dreams forever, turned instead to a new dream of singing and dancing with his new friends. He was upset at first, of course, but he realizes this new dream is so much better and more fulfilling than the old one--primarily because now he has a found family who won't abandon him. So surely Wisha would do the same.
But that’s not what happens. They somehow, through the power of community, manage to scrape together a living at the farm. And that’s it.
It’s not a bad message. And you could argue that ATEEZ faces the same series of obstacles and that by my logic, they should just give up on Strictland and go home. And I suppose you’re right.
And to be fair, both Trisha and Walker come around in the end and realize that running a horse farm might be their dream after all, as long as they can do it together.
I once wrote a whole post about ATEEZ accepting the responsibility that Halateez had given them but, in my opinion, maintaining their own identity and passions. I still think that’s true, even with all the new information we’ve received over the past year.
Perhaps that’s the point of all of this. That just because you aren’t doing the thing you expected doesn’t mean that you aren’t doing the thing that will make you the most happy and fulfilled. I suppose we could all argue that both ATEEZ and Wisha were dreaming too small, that saving an emotionally dead world and running a Texan horse farm were their truest destinies after all, destinies they could have never reached if they were still clinging to their pasts.
I really did not enjoy A Family for the Orphans. It stopped being stupid fun very early on and became a boring slog that forced me to skim pages at a time just to finish. That said, I am not the book’s target audience. If you have an older and maybe more delicate relative who enjoys simple and straightforward stories, faith-based or otherwise, they might enjoy the book.
What I do enjoy, though, is that ATEEZ’s lore has given me a lens through which I can read any story and find depth of meaning and reasons to appreciate, provided I’m up for the challenge.
You’ve done the lords work here today, and I feel sure that Wisha would be proud.