Kpop Fanfiction

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Yes, it's true, I'm a kpop fan now, two years after R first showed me Haru Haru with the comment, isn't this kind of gay?

(Well yeah, but it's also kind of contrieved and boybandy, and I had other things on my plate! And then, two years passed... but we're here now, and we're 'bout to set the roof on Fire! /lame joke)

Here's my stuff so far:

Disordered (2NE1, Park Bom)
Stealing Members (Big Bang & 2NE1, everyone)
The Best Part of Waking Up (Big Bang, GD-Seungri-TOP)
Skinship (Big Bang, GD-Seungri)
Sun and Moon (Big Bang, GD-TOP)

Some videos, for (mostly my own) reference:


GD & TOP: High High / Knock Out / Heartbreaker (GD solo) / Of All Days (TOP solo). And then they backed off a bit and put out some straight romance stuff - one, two - which I personally find kinda disappointing, but lots of people seem to like this kind of thing so what do I know XD.

...I love that this collaboration is named "Volume 1", it is a promise and threat all in one! This remix of "Baby Good Night" is so wrong, it's right.


Hmm, and now it's a bit late and I should probably go to bed, but I haven't linked any 2NE1 videos yet! They are still my favorites and the reason I cared enough about Big Bang to watch videos of them on Ytube in the first place. ^^ Well, in my defense, nearly all of 2NE1's material is good, whereas lots of Big Bang's material is good if you like them but doesn't stand out much otherwise. Their good stuff is really, really good though.

Next up: Dara and her brother, TOP and alcohol. And a really terrible HyunA fic that's already written, but that I am shy about posting because I'm afraid it will give the wrong impression. ^^

Comments

[troisroyaumes]

Wow, I had no idea that you had moved into K-pop fandom...and for Big Bang and 2NE1 too! Sigh, this is like high school all over again.

I liked your fics though! Missed reading your writing and how conceptual it is. ^^

Several things to me seemed a bit off to me about your Park Bom character study, though I'm not sure if you want the nitpicking?

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I definitely want nitpicking! Nitpick away! Like I said in the story notes, I didn't have time to watch a lot behind the scenes stuff, and I also don't claim to have any special insight on Korea or Koreans. ^^;

I dunno if any of this counts as conceptual, it's more like speculation about possible root causes of behavior... well, though maybe that's the same thing XD.

Have been watching other kpop stuff, just haven't tried to write anything for it! Though I wrote a story about HyunA, actually, which I'm a little bit afraid to post because it reads kind of like a fanboy fantasy, which was not my intention -_-.

[troisroyaumes]

I meant conceptual in terms of character exploration, not worldbuilding or thematic.

Re: Park Bom fic...

It's so true that Koreans comment constantly on appearance so I don't disagree with that. I just feel like there's a lot of oversimplifcation going on in terms of attitudes towards eating and dieting.

They don't even think twice about it - totally unlike when Bom was in the states and her concerned (Americanized) family sent her to a psychiatrist when they were worried that she was developing an eating disorder.

I'm by no means completely up to date on Korean social issues, but it was my impression that there have been some public campaigns to raise awareness of eating disorders? It might not be as much in the public consciousness as it is here, but...people are going to comment if you don't eat enough. To elaborate, in my experience, people of my parents' generation grew up with almost universal malnutrition, and that mentality hasn't entirely been forgotten yet despite the current prosperity. Being too thin != attractive, and not eating all the food on your plate = really rude. Her handlers/managers may not comment on it and find it normal, but if she gets to spend any time with her extended family, the elders definitely will. With disapproval for not appreciating food and lots of stories about starvation. Dieting tends to actually be considered a sign of Westernization, and dieting fads are almost always picked up from Hollywood, so I find the dichotomy (Korea = "dieting normal and uncriticized", U.S/Americanized. = "more aware about harms of dieting") a little too facile and in some ways kind of backwards.

I can buy Bom's mother being obsessed about her daughter staying thin. I can't buy the motivation. "Be thin because I always wanted to be, but couldn't." Even if Bom's parents are substantially younger than mine so that they didn't grow up with the norm of never having enough food to eat, I just never see gender policing happens this way. Gender roles in Korea is a lot more about the social context and performance rather than personal wishes or identity. "Be thin because you will stand out and look different from everyone else if you're not. Be thin because people won't hire you if they think you unattractive." This is not a healthy mode of thinking, obviously, but it's a bit different from the sort of internalized "I am not attractive because I am not thin enough." (I think you actually get at that distinction in your TOP/G-Dragon fic, where you talk about being considered straight as long as you perform straightness. A lot of these things are not really thought about in terms of identity but what you do and how others perceive it.)

... Bom's town was full of Koreans, that was the worst part: that in a town full of Koreans, she was bullied and outcast for her accent in English. That the Korean-Americans were so eager to distance themselves from a Korean-Korean like Bom that they shunned her, fed into her insecurities about herself. Even now a part of her wants to prove that she's American enough - that her English is good enough - that she's a pop star like Beyonce.

The ostracism that Bom received in her town...that was the part that required the most suspension of disbelief. If there's a lot of Koreans in her town, then there would also be a lot of other recent immigrants; Bom would hardly be alone in having accented English. I don't know, there's a lot of social conformity that emphasizes being proud of Korean identity in places with a high Korean-American population; the self-hatred and active assimilating tends to happen in places where there aren't so many Koreans.

That being said, Wikipedia tells me that Bom came to the U.S. alone to study abroad at private boarding schools. This means: her family stayed in Korea and didn't accompany her, she's also pretty upper middle-class and probably has a better accent in English than a lot of 1.5-gen Korean-Americans I know, thanks to tutoring from an early age, and she probably never lived in a town with a lot of Korean-Americans. In fact, Korean-Americans in general may be somewhat of a mystery to her; most of the other Koreans she would meet at school would have been international students like her. Knowing all of these, I can buy her wanting to return to the U.S. and thinking of it as her home--this happens a lot--but I can't buy the whole set of identity issues she has. I know quite a few Koreans who have the same sort of personal history, and I haven't met one that actually gets Korean-American identity issues. There's often a "what's the big deal" reaction.

Bleh, sorry for the tl;dr...and of course, take everything I say with a grain of salt! It is only one perspective.

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OMG, thank you!!! This is great stuff and I'm definitely going to revise and try to work as much in as I can. I don't think I realized just how wrong I could be in such a short space, aha. (I did realize that the tone was probably way too critical considering it was a subject I didn't know much about.) The goal of the story was to get at Bom's "no one will love me if I'm not pretty enough" thing, and to try to think of a background that would explain that, but obviously if you're gonna write about another culture you shouldn't just assume it's like yours (or worse).

About the school, at one point in their reality TV show she says she attended boarding school, and at another point she says she stayed with her mother's sister in California. So I went with the "mother's sister" storyline for middle school, and assumed the academy was high school. In other words there is some small justification, but it's very tenuous and speculative XD. Probably better just to take out that section, aha.

Thank you again for your thoughtful and detailed reply. <3

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OK, how's this: http://2ne1-fiction.livejournal.com/165042.html

[troisroyaumes]

Ohh, yes, I really like the revised version! The emphasis on contradictions and mixed messages about body image and everything really rings true for me.

Re: school, you're right, I guess we don't know where she went for middle school...I have to admit my instinct is to still say boarding school, with vacations/breaks spent with the aunt in California. I did a bit of searching around on Korean search engines, but no info there. (Incidentally, I was quite impressed to sees that her older sister studied at the Peabody School of Music and is a classical musician! I guess despite the parents' opposition to her pursuing a music career, they must be a really musical family.)

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Yay, I'm glad it works! Now I just need to figure out a way to let the other people reading the comm know it's been fixed, haha. Guess this means I should post another 2NE1 story so I can announce the edits at the same time. It'll probably be on Dara and the Philippines (joy...) but if Korean stuff comes up again, would you mind if I ran it by you first? Just as a basic fact check thing.

If she went to boarding school, it would explain certain things, like how she always seems to be physically touching the other members and not observing personal space. (Boarding school in middle school, kind of like a four year slumber party???) And that's really interesting about her sister. Maybe it's the pop thing they objected to, then.

I know Minji is supposed to be the granddaughter of a famous dancer as well (so says wikipedia). I wonder if this means they could eventually arrange their own music, or at least have a hand in its composition? That would be cool...

[troisroyaumes]

Sorry for the late reply (was a bit busy trying to catch up on work for Lunar New Year) but I wanted to say that sure, you're welcome to run things by me! I'm far from an expert in everything Korean by any means, but in the past, when I've done cultural betas, I've been able to help fic writers do research by looking up references in Korean--that's something I'm willing to do and have found educational for myself as well.

I'm kind of curious about the older sister, and whether they objected to the pop or whether they objected to the older sister pursuing a career in music too (the latter does seem like a possibility to me). Either way, good material for fic?

Oh interesting, I would love to see some of these bands grow up and become independent artists in their own right. E.g. what Seo Taiji is doing now--not everyone likes it or even thinks it's good, but he clearly has an idea of what sort of music he wants to make and what direction he wants to go in; since he's kind of like the grandfather of all K-pop, I'm hoping more pop stars end up following in his footsteps.

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Yeah! Well, I think it's sort of like the pop industry in the US or other countries, in that as long as you are reliant on other people writing your music, you're a product with a sell-by date, because the production company's limited songwriter resources are going to be earmarked for the latest hot, young new group. Of course if your audience is really devoted to you personally, that's a bit different, but in general you're only as good as your material and the companies are only going to invest where they think they can make money, right?

If you're writing your own stuff, or at least bringing in ideas, you're still reliant on the machine for studio polish and promotions, but you're a bit more free to maneuver I think.

Seo Taiji stands out because he isn't working under someone else, AND he isn't working over other people, you know, recreating the system he came up under. (Unless you think he is guiding YG and JYP Entertainment, which is a bit of conspiracy thinking I like to indulge in from time to time... lol just kidding, I don't really believe that.)

[troisroyaumes]

You're not wrong with the diagnosis, but there were a lot of artists who came out of the previous wave of K-pop bands (post-Seo Taiji but pre-DBSK), who are in different stages of independence now if they're still in the business. And many do have significant artistic input as they branch out and explore their own styles. But K-pop is a much more crowded playing field now than it was before, so I'm wondering if it'll be harder for this wave of idol bands to do the same.

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Huh. Yeah, I see what you mean - not only did they not face the same competition among their own cohort, but there really wasn't a kpop industry at that point, so it was probably a lot easier to get into the production booth in the first place.

Now there's an industry with professional songwriters and professional musicians and this whole structure with lots of $$$ at stake, plus people (idols) are sometimes chosen for extra-musical reasons... between this that and the other, and all the attention that's focused on acts being "up to grade" from the very beginning or they don't even get an EP, you have to reach a certain level before you're even allowed to sing live without a backing track, let alone compose your own music. And if you are constantly busy with promotions and variety show appearances etc, how are you ever going to learn the studio side of it?

I guess this is a way of saying that while there are lots of acts now, the number of acts who have (or appear to have) control over their own musical destiny is much smaller - and these are the people who are likely going to survive into the next generation. Well, but that's just how it looks to me. You're more familiar with this stuff, what do you think?

[troisroyaumes]

Nod, nod, sounds about right. I mean, I'm not an expert either, but it certainly rings true.

There's also been a boom in K-indie acts, but I think there's something slightly different going on there. Increased opportunities to market themselves cheaply through the Internet, more emphasis on making money through live performances than selling albums...and of course, most of those groups aren't making enough money to support themselves.

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Ooooh, K-indie! Are there any groups you like? I've been trying to look around outside the idol groups but it's harder to find stuff without knowing the Hangul. The rap in Kpop is making me really nostalgic for my childhood (which is funny because when I was a kid, I wasn't into hip hop, even though it was all I heard at school and on the bus etc) so if you know any hip-hoppish acts, that's a bonus.

(And for my part I'm trying to be better about listening to rap music made by actual black people in the US. Race issues, man, they are so thorny and difficult.)

[troisroyaumes]

A lot of the K-indie bands are trying to market themselves in English-language spaces now, so it's actually a lot easier to find than it was when I was in college. (It's kind of amazing, Apollo 18 was at SXSW!) But it's also really confusing because they disband and re-form under new names--apparently, it's a bit of an incestuous circle, boom or no, because they all perform live in the same concert spaces in Hongdae.

Anyway, in English, it used to be indiefulrok/indiefulrok, but I think she's not posting so much now, other than the Top N charts.

Korean Indie/koreanindie is trying to take over, but the main bloggers' tastes skew more to the alt-rock, folk, and shoegaze. (I like K-rock for singing at karaoke and for having interesting lyrics, but musically, it's not very interesting.)

orienkorean's Youtube channel (owner is Korean and affiliated with indiefulrok although different person than the blogger) is a good place to go exploring for your favorite genres. Though no guarantee that the bands there still exist since it is several years out of date now.

Apls is the first name that comes to mind--not hip hop but certainly dance. They're a bit all over the place with their sound but I like how they experiment.

Humming Urban Stereo is electronic (as well as their more hard-core dance incarnation, Instant Romantic Floor.

I really like Casker and Bluedawn but that may be straying into ambient territory.

I actually have the Eastronika albums; I'll go listen to them again and see if I can dig up some more hip hop names for you.

(If you are into old-school K-pop, I really like Koyote, also known as the only group whose rap I will actually try to emulate at karaoke. Haha.)

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<333333

Lots of stuff to go through, thank you very much! I really like Humming Urban Stereo/Instant Romantic Floor so far. Also, Koyote, who are hilarious XD.

[(Anonymous)]

Nice editing comments. ~R