Yuletide! reveal!
Jan. 2nd, 2013 06:47 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
elsaneSo this year I actually wrote something for Yuletide! I was trawling Dear Yuletide Writer letters, as I do wistfully every year with varying degrees of intent, and I came across shati's prompt,
Naturally, because I'm incapable of actually writing to prompts, I immediatedly started to wonder, how would you justify that crossover? Then Cha Song Joo and Gu Yong Ha started talking to each other, and then it was all over, and I was doomed to writing Step by step on the flowers placed before you. It also spawned a Yong Ha-and-Jae Shin coda, because I can never resist writing double-layered conversations when I get a chance to, After and Before. (Actually, this was also supposed to have a brief Cha Song Joo-and-Cho Seon coda as well, which would even make the title meaningful instead of "oh look I was pulled out of a hat at the last minute", but I completely ran out of timeas you can totally tell. Oh well!)
innerbrat was remarkably cheerful about being contacted out of the blue by a stranger on Christmas Eve to rush-beta an unfinished fic: thank you very much again!
Since I know most of the people on my flist aren't familiar with either fandom, I recommend them both!
Both Capital Scandal and Sungkyunkwan Scandal are Korean TV shows, the first set in Japanese-occupied 1930s Korea, the second in the late 1700s. I generally find movies too short and self-contained to sustain much fannishness, and American TV shows far too indoctrinated into the cult of the reset button to repay engagement. But Korean dramas are the happy medium: they are TV miniseries, of length varying from 8 hour-plus episodes on the short end to 50+ episodes on the long end, so they have space for plots and subplots and ensemble casts on one hand, and the mandate to develop characters and resolve their plots on the other. Popular K-drama genres are melodrama, rom-coms, and, my personal crack, historical fiction. US residents can legally watch many subtitled K-dramas on Hulu or Dramafever, including Sungkyunkwan Scandal; you can find Capital Scandal subtitled on YouTube.
Sungkyunkwan Scandal is what's known as a "fusion sageuk", meaning it's historical fiction that doesn't always play the historic bit entirely straight. The protagonist is Kim Young Hee, a cynical, impoverished, and brilliant scholar who gets railroaded into taking the entrance examinations for the exclusive Confucian academy, Sungkyunkwan (think Harvard, if Harvard were the only school in the entire Ivy League). The wrinkle? Young Hee is a girl, so her presence at Sungkyunkwan, if she's ever discovered as female, is punishable by death. It has fascinating female characters, plural; fascinating characters, plural, some of whom are played by extremely good actors; proliferating sexual confusion; buckets of idealism, served up with surprising amount of nuance about the exigencies of the real world, and how easy it is to be idealistic when you're born into privilege; a het romance where they fall in love with each other's brains first; and some gorgeous production values.
It's not perfect -- there's a slow bit in the middle where there is a bit too much idtastic rolling around in angst and shippiness for my taste, and the ending is rushed (I blithely overlook the last ten minutes in favor of my own head canon, as I think much of the fandom does). But I adore the characters madly, all of them, and love their aspirations. (Though I admit that Yong Ha is my favorite. In no small part because of his actor Song Joong Ki, who is amazing.)
For Capital Scandal I am just going to point you atskygiants's costume polls, because goodness knows they certainly worked on me.
shati's prompt,
Farfetched, but if you offered both Capital Scandal and Sungkyunkwan Scandal and feel like writing Cha Song Joo and Gu Yong Ha hanging out and people-watching together, I would not expect you to justify the crossover at all. AT ALL.
Naturally, because I'm incapable of actually writing to prompts, I immediatedly started to wonder, how would you justify that crossover? Then Cha Song Joo and Gu Yong Ha started talking to each other, and then it was all over, and I was doomed to writing Step by step on the flowers placed before you. It also spawned a Yong Ha-and-Jae Shin coda, because I can never resist writing double-layered conversations when I get a chance to, After and Before. (Actually, this was also supposed to have a brief Cha Song Joo-and-Cho Seon coda as well, which would even make the title meaningful instead of "oh look I was pulled out of a hat at the last minute", but I completely ran out of time
innerbrat was remarkably cheerful about being contacted out of the blue by a stranger on Christmas Eve to rush-beta an unfinished fic: thank you very much again!Since I know most of the people on my flist aren't familiar with either fandom, I recommend them both!
Both Capital Scandal and Sungkyunkwan Scandal are Korean TV shows, the first set in Japanese-occupied 1930s Korea, the second in the late 1700s. I generally find movies too short and self-contained to sustain much fannishness, and American TV shows far too indoctrinated into the cult of the reset button to repay engagement. But Korean dramas are the happy medium: they are TV miniseries, of length varying from 8 hour-plus episodes on the short end to 50+ episodes on the long end, so they have space for plots and subplots and ensemble casts on one hand, and the mandate to develop characters and resolve their plots on the other. Popular K-drama genres are melodrama, rom-coms, and, my personal crack, historical fiction. US residents can legally watch many subtitled K-dramas on Hulu or Dramafever, including Sungkyunkwan Scandal; you can find Capital Scandal subtitled on YouTube.
Sungkyunkwan Scandal is what's known as a "fusion sageuk", meaning it's historical fiction that doesn't always play the historic bit entirely straight. The protagonist is Kim Young Hee, a cynical, impoverished, and brilliant scholar who gets railroaded into taking the entrance examinations for the exclusive Confucian academy, Sungkyunkwan (think Harvard, if Harvard were the only school in the entire Ivy League). The wrinkle? Young Hee is a girl, so her presence at Sungkyunkwan, if she's ever discovered as female, is punishable by death. It has fascinating female characters, plural; fascinating characters, plural, some of whom are played by extremely good actors; proliferating sexual confusion; buckets of idealism, served up with surprising amount of nuance about the exigencies of the real world, and how easy it is to be idealistic when you're born into privilege; a het romance where they fall in love with each other's brains first; and some gorgeous production values.
It's not perfect -- there's a slow bit in the middle where there is a bit too much idtastic rolling around in angst and shippiness for my taste, and the ending is rushed (I blithely overlook the last ten minutes in favor of my own head canon, as I think much of the fandom does). But I adore the characters madly, all of them, and love their aspirations. (Though I admit that Yong Ha is my favorite. In no small part because of his actor Song Joong Ki, who is amazing.)
For Capital Scandal I am just going to point you at
skygiants's costume polls, because goodness knows they certainly worked on me.
(no subject)
Date: 2013-01-03 01:54 am (UTC)This is exactly the reason that kdramas are my favorite right now! I can get properly invested without feeling the depressing awareness that the series will go on a million years with no proper resolution and eventually jump off a cliff.
(I'm curious what your SKKS headcanon is! I actually was really pleased with the epilogue - it was a way more progressive ending, especially for the ladies, than I was expecting.)
(no subject)
Date: 2013-01-03 04:02 am (UTC)Ah, I felt like the gender politics was surprisingly good, but in a kind of fan-servicey, suspension-of-disbelief-breaking way? and the happily-ever-after quotient relative to the sustained commitment to idealism, not so much. Which is to say, I admired the idea that Sungkyunkwan was winkingly open to women, but at the same time was frustrated with it, because it was incredibly facile. (Likewise, the idea that Yong Ha is happy as a fashion designer, and Jae Shin happy as a guard, as if politics were over and they won. Joseon!spoiler: bzzt, try again later.) I am more than willing to suspend disbelief to imagine that they would make an exception for Young Hee, because that is how things work(ed), particularly if said woman goes on to play nice regarding challenging gender roles in public, but using this as a wedge in the door for more women like the Blue Messenger? It is not so easy, it especially isn't so easy in Joseon; I only wish that it were.
It's more Yong Ha and Jae Shin I take issue with. No way they got off quite as easily as the finale implies. They would be secret operatives for the king, and beholden to him (cue detective hijinks! and political intrigue!), and they would not be happy just being guards, or fashion designers, without pushing back, without some other layer. Odds are they would both pass the exams, as smart as they are, as favored as they are, and with familial pressures being as serious as they are, and then Jae Shin has to justify "settling" for being a military man rather than an intellectual, then Yong Ha has to deal with actually being a yangban in his own right, since that's what passing the exam means, and I'm sure that both of them feel incredibly cynical about the whole thing.
All of this boils down to "no no no it's more complicated than that", which is wonderful for fic fodder, so I am not complaining too hard. None of this is a dealbreaker! It's the sort of thing they could sell me on if they took more time! I am just being a grouch about the fan service and the rush.
... and having said all that, I have all of this stuff about how Yong Ha marries lesbians and spies for Jeongjo and not his son, and the four of them start publishing an underground political newsletter at Young Hee's instigation, and Yong Ha finally brings Jae Shin around, and um. I ship them? (this is not a surprise.)
(no subject)
Date: 2013-01-03 03:01 pm (UTC)Ha! Oh, I totally agree with you then - I mean, I like the finale a lot because of what it allows, but I definitely don't thin they all got there without a lot of complications and a lot of layers involved in what's gong on past what we see! And neither Yong Ha and Jae Shin are ever going to be anything other than cynical, in their own very different ways, or anything but involved in six twisty layers of hijinks. (In my head, the Blue Messenger is also not known to be female by anybody other than Jae Shin and Yong Ha
and eventually her girlfriend Hyo Eun after a whole lot more wacky confused cross-dressing political hijinks, because why shouldn't Cho Seon get her own adventure story?)UNDERGROUND POLITICAL NEWSPAPER *____* DO WANT
(no subject)
Date: 2013-01-04 12:33 am (UTC)Wait, did I miss something, was the Blue Messenger actually Cho Seon? THOUGH THAT IS A FUTURE FOR CHO SEON I TOTALLY SUPPORT! using all her ninjaing around on rooftops for her own ends! And more confused cross-dressing political hijinks: PERFECTION YESSS.
I have a mad itch for Jae Shin and Yong Ha off on epic covert missions and being all cynical about obligations, the government, and their own roles, with enthusiasm infusions from Young Hee (and ok, yes, Seon Joon too) but I do not have the time to write this anytime soon and fandom is not providing me with instant gratification in the form of fic :( (Not to mention I would have to read up on Korean internal politics and Korean-Chinese diplomatic relations circa 1790 to make it make any sense, which is probably why fandom is not providing me with instant gratification in the form of fic, haha.)
(no subject)
Date: 2013-01-04 02:31 am (UTC). . . both
I ALSO WANT THIS but . . . I also have to be added to the list of people who do not have time to write it anytime soon. ;___; But this is what Yuletide and Kaleidoscope are for: to either request it and receive it, or be handed the excuse to write it!
(no subject)
Date: 2013-01-04 03:09 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2013-01-04 03:13 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2013-01-04 03:15 am (UTC)But even so, Cho Seon seems more the type to have copied it over until it was perfect instead of scribbling out mistakes!
(no subject)
Date: 2013-01-04 03:20 am (UTC)I DON'T CARE WHAT YOU SAY I'M KEEPING MY HEADCANON >:|
(no subject)
Date: 2013-01-04 07:11 am (UTC)I think green. /nods
(no subject)
Date: 2013-01-04 07:25 am (UTC)Maybe the Blue Messenger we see on screen is a fake hired to discredit the real one with badly spelled messages!
Sorry, I was bemoaning, not trying to make you write it! I have sworn off signing up for exchanges because I can't trust myself to write short to prompt, or have predictable spare time. (Before shati, the last prompt I tried writing for spawned an insane Saiyuki AU of epic insanity, which I'm still working on, ha ha and also ugh.) So I just read wistfully over everyone's shoulders! I've been really surprised by how little fic there is for K-dramas in general, though -- I'm used to being able to kind of vaguely placate the itch with other people's fic, but this hasn't worked out so well for SKKS or Dae Jang Geum.
(no subject)
Date: 2013-01-04 09:27 pm (UTC)Oh, hee, I know, I was just bemoaning too really. I would love for someone to write it some day though, and I would also love for me to write it some day, but at the moment both seem equally unlikely. Alas!
I am also perpetually sad about how little fic there is for kdramas, because to me they seem so perfect for it, and yet that sort of fandom for them doesn't really seem to exist (at least in English, or in places I would know to look for it.)
(no subject)
Date: 2013-01-05 02:00 am (UTC)It had not quite dawned on me that Hyo Eun/Cho Seon means that Ha In Soo is going to glare so hard his eyeballs sizzle, but that is a hilarious and unexpected bonus. (Actually, I figure he's out of the country, or rusticating very remotely. Bad things happen to people whose fathers are convicted of treason.)
This time thing is tragic. So is the lack of English k-drama fic. (I figure there must be more in various Asian languages...). Too many different dramas, maybe, getting in each other's way? But you could say the same things about movies, so I really don't get it.
(no subject)
Date: 2013-01-04 12:40 am (UTC)I lied: some of what you said is why I love the finale, the rest is all the delicious future speculation I could not do myself. And it is perfect.
(no subject)
Date: 2013-01-04 07:09 am (UTC)Anyway, I totally see what you're saying. For some reason I was not afraid at all that they would put Yoon Hee in the metaphorical kitchen, but if I had been worried about that, then, yeah, the finale would've been a relief, and I do like that the endings were open. My major problem with it was that the fan service piled up so high it ended up toppling over and knocking my disbelief out of suspension. (No, producers, if your last script has a few plot holes and you are too rushed and exhausted to figure out how to condense it, just adding on more takes of Song Joong Ki mugging for the camera isn't actually going to magically solve things!)