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: 2013-01-04 03:20 am (UTC)I DON'T CARE WHAT YOU SAY I'M KEEPING MY HEADCANON >:|