pauraque | Entries tagged with fandom: kdramas

Oh yeah, I actually did write some fic this year! It was mostly in the first half of the year so I sort of forgot. I wrote 9 things in 9 different fandoms, for a total of 6,050 words.

( and here they are )

So, I realized two things this year about where I am with writing:

1) There are times in my life when I write a lot of fic and times when I don't, and I've become okay with that. I am done with feeling like I've failed if I don't do it. I would rather write a few fics here and there when I feel moved to do so than push myself to do more out of a sense of obligation.

2) Writing reviews is writing. In 2024 I wrote a combined total of 71,000 words of book and game reviews. Writing reviews is easier for me than writing fiction, but that doesn't mean it takes no effort or time, and it doesn't mean I have to value it less or feel like I am "not writing" when many thousands of words are in fact being written, edited, and posted by me.

So there's that.

Here are some things I have watched since the last time I posted about watching things. Maybe if I watched more TV these posts would happen more often than, like... annually.

Community, complete series

Yes, this was my first time watching this, and yes, I do live under a rock.

Fandom osmosis, as is often the case, had given me a very incomplete picture of what the show is. I was under the impression that Troy and Abed were the main characters (how progressive for 2009!) and that the show was primarily about their geeky and/or slashy adventures. I was aware that there were at least two female characters because I knew the fandom had a presence in the femslash exchanges. I did not know any other characters existed.

I now realize that it is a show with an ensemble cast led by a white guy! (Jeff grew on me, but you can imagine how his centrality initially felt bewildering.) I watched a lot of it out of order because I had asked

sdk to recommend good episodes that stand alone so I could see whether it was something I would like even if it took some time to find its footing, but I eventually watched everything.

I did like it. Here are some things I think about it:

- It seems clear that the writers initially thought they were making a different show than the one they ended up making, and I respect their willingness to let the show evolve when it became apparent that the Jeff/Britta will-they-or-won't-they thing did not work and that other characters had unexpected chemistry and that maybe the setting was more reality-bending fantasy than straight-ahead real world.

- Troy and Abed are the best thing about the show and I understand why a lot of the fandom only cares about them! Annie is also great and Troy/Abed/Annie is my OT3.

- During the episode where Jeff and Abed get blackout drunk together, they obviously made out. It is known.

- Justice For Britta! I have seen a lot of female characters get shit on by TV writers, but this was really bad and actually got worse as the show went on. There should also be Justice For Shirley but at least she was only chronically underutilized and not reduced to being the butt of a tiresome joke which made the other characters look increasingly bad. (If everybody thinks Britta sucks, why is she friends with them!! She should stop hanging out with these jerks and get some friends who actually like her!!!)

- Also, it was so painfully apparent to me that Britta is a closeted lesbian who desperately needs to read the Masterdoc (and I'm not saying it's the be-all-end-all, just that the type of closetedness it describes is what I see in Britta) that it's hard to believe the writers weren't doing it on purpose. Like, if I set out to write about a deeply closeted and in-denial lesbian in this kind of setting, Britta is exactly who she would be.

- I hate Pierce. Not love to hate, just hate. I am aware of what was happening behind the scenes, and I think it could be taken to illustrate the stark contrast between what happens in fiction when That One Guy in a group is a piece of shit but for some reason people keep giving him a pass, and what happens in real life. (I have also never found Chevy Chase funny to start with, which is not something I had thought about since he stopped being relevant circa 1993, and this was an unwelcome reminder.)

- I'm a fan of Paget Brewster and I wish her character had been introduced much earlier! But the loss of Donald Glover was difficult to recover from, and my rate of and enthusiasm for watching diminished the longer he was gone.

- While watching the show, I started writing three fics for it, but as of yet none has been completed.

- Apparently there is going to be a movie at some point. I will be very interested to see what they do with it. (Maybe Britta will come out? I should probably manage my expectations on that.)

Our Flag Means Death, season 2

I did not like this nearly as much as the first season, sadly. It started out okay, but quickly began to seem rushed and confused. Themes and character arcs were all over the place, the shipping of secondary characters felt forced, and overall it just didn't land for me. It seemed like there was an attempt to make it work either as a final season or as a middle season in a planned three, and it ended up working as neither. Which is too bad, because I really thought the first season was great and it deserved a better continuation than this.

delphi's post Why Izzy's Speech in the Finale Is (Mostly) Great - And Why I Wish It Didn't Happen does a much better job than I (as a casual viewer) could have at articulating some of the thematic and structural problems.

Quantum Leap (2022), season 2

I was surprised by how much I enjoyed this season, since it dealt heavily with some themes that are usually a miss for me. I normally don't like it when there's romantic jealousy and people feeling torn between two partners, not only because I am way too poly to understand it, but also because it so often turns characters into the worst versions of themselves.

So I was pleasantly surprised that this show took it in a direction where the characters are struggling with complicated and painful circumstances that make it hard to know what they want and what's reasonable to expect, but they all want the best for each other, and when it comes down to it, they respect one another's autonomy and act like adults. (It also helped that Hannah is SO poly. Though they never used that word, it was clearly not just assumed that everybody has One True Love, and I think if they'd operated on that assumption her storyline would not have worked at all.)

I also continue to enjoy the writers' shameless earnestness in addressing social issues that matter to them. The lack of cynicism or ironic distance is very refreshing to me.

My biggest complaint is that I still often felt that Jenn was underused, like the writers weren't sure what to do with her character. I can see there was an effort to make her more plot-important than she was in S1, but I wanted more!

I hope they get a third season, but I also think they did a good job of ending it in a place where they can keep going if they get the opportunity, but it doesn't feel terrible if this is all we get.

White Christmas (2011 Kdrama), complete series

In this eight-episode horror series, seven students at an elite, high-pressure boarding school each receive a threatening note telling them to stay on campus over the Christmas break. They're joined there by one teacher and, soon, a mysterious stranger who survived a car wreck near the school. A blizzard leaves them snowed in for the duration, and then...

Well, it's a bit hard to summarize, because I was completely surprised by almost everything that happened. The setup made me think it was going to be an everyone's-a-suspect murder mystery in the style of And Then There Were None, and it does have some of that, but then takes off in a lot of other directions. I ended up feeling a little puzzled about what the takeaway was supposed to be, but I certainly did enjoy the ride. It is a very atmospheric, creepy, and well-acted show.

In the event that you have already watched it, I would highly recommend

lirazel's sequel fic:

in front of two mirrors facing each other, a devil jumps out (6514 words) by Lirazel
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: 화이트 크리스마스 | White Christmas (2011)
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Characters: Lee Jaekyu, Choi Chihun | Choi Chihoon, Park Mooyul, Yoon Eunsung, Jo Youngjae, Kang Mireu, Yang Kangmo
Additional Tags: Post-Series, Character Death, Canon-Typical Violence, probably shouldn't read this if you still think mooyul is a good guy, but man i really love my murder babies, mentions of chihoon/jaekyu, mentions of eunsung/youngjae, mentions of one-sided mireu/chihoon because i am who i am
Summary:

“We helped make him! We helped do this, up on the roof! It’s our responsibility.”

Monsters are made, again and again.

fandomtrees has revealed! I wrote this:

The Year of the Two-Legged Table (1552 words) by pauraque
Fandom: 손 : The Guest (TV)
Rating: General Audiences
Relationship: Choi Yoon/Kang Kil-Young/Yoon Hwa-Pyung
Additional Tags: Ambiguous Relationships, Polyamory, Asexuality Spectrum
Summary: Kil-Young always thought that being touched by evil so early in life is what made her strange and broken. But now she has begun to suspect that 'strange' and 'broken' may not be the same thing.

Surprise, it's a Kdrama fic! The Guest was the first Kdrama I'd ever watched, on

lirazel's recommendation, and I really enjoyed it. It is horror, in that it's about exorcists (and an intially-skeptical police detective) hunting a demon that possesses people and forces them to do terrible things. It's also a character-focused psychological drama. It's about traumatized people who think what they need is justice, but what they turn out to need more than that is connection, and that really resonated with me. I loved the characters and their relationships, and it was a pleasure to write about them.

The series was on US Netflix when I watched it, but sadly it is not available there anymore. I do recommend it if you can find it somewhere accessible to you.