Weekly Fic Discussion

[lachrymosy]

Weekly Fic Discussion

Welcome again to kpop_fic! It's so so exciting to see so many different people joining in this community and sharing fics!

One idea arundels and I also had for this community was to have some regular discussion posts so that people have a chance to chat. So, here is our first Weekly Fic Discussion post!

This post can be used for any kind of fic discussion you want, but will also have a few prompt questions each week. We'll try to target both writers and readers with the prompt questions. You can reply to all of them, one of them, or none of them if you have something else you want to talk about!

Feel free to post WIP snippets, ask others' opinion on characterization, share a clip that has broken your brain, etc.!

This week's prompt questions:

• How did you get into reading/writing K-pop RPF?


• What is your platonic ideal of a K-pop fic (e.g. the elements you usually gravitate towards)?

Comments

[arundels]

I got into kpop in 2008 with 2ne1's debut, but the concept of rpf as a fandom didn't even occur to me then (despite how much I shipped GD/CL). I had been reading and writing fanfiction for around 4(?) years by then, but only ever for fictional fandoms. The thing that got me into rpf was getting into 1D around 2013/14 and watching a ship video... my eyes were truly opened to the wonders of rpf. I didn't actually write for 1D but I read a lot of fic. When the band fell apart I then bounced around fandoms casually until finally falling back into BTS around 2017/18 - once again it was a ship video that got me into rpf! I started writing fic, slipping from one kpop fandom to the next, and now here I am.

One thing about me is that I find it hard to stick with one fandom for a long time as I get bored and want new content and characters to gnaw on - and kpop rpf is so ideal for that because there are so many interlocking circles of groups and idol dynamics, it's like a never ending feast! There's so much content that tbh even within one group there are a lot of potential ships to explore, because you can definitely find interactions for almost any combination of people you want, unlike in fictional fandoms where the source material is limited so you typically only have a few viable ships and that's it.

My platonic ideal of a kpop fic involves an umbrella trope that I have distilled after careful examination of my reading and writing preferences: intimacy but not the kind of intimacy we want. I love fics where characters are forced into a form of really intense closeness, but there's still something lacking or a final distance that can't be bridged. Canon fics in general are really good for this because of the inherent intimacy of having your life paths tied to each other, as well as all the fanservice / shipping - but at the same time it's a ripe space for pining because none of that is inherently romantic. But this umbrella trope also covers most of my other favourite tropes: fake relationship, arranged marriage, friends with benefits, soulbond, pacrim/drift partners, etc. My favourite AUs are also the ones that employ this sort of dynamic - heist AUs or space AUs or bandom AUs where the characters are on some sort of a team/crew together come to mind. Or zombie/apocalypse AUs where the characters are desperately reliant on each other to survive and yet still can't cross that line in the sand... so delicious.

I also love it when fics blend canon with one of these AU elements - it just takes everything I love about canon fics and dials it up to 100! I think the blending of canon and AU also involves a lot of creativity and skill, and it's just such a fun reading experience to see how different authors take that and run with it.

[celli]

Oh my gosh, I love all those tropes! Do you have any good drift partners recs? I've read one and really liked it.

[arundels]

Not off the top of my head for kpop, though I think I once saw a long one for Monsta X that I never got round to reading (sorry idk how I would ever find it again...) I am writing one for Seventeen at the moment but who knows when I'll finish... What's the one you read! I'm trying not to read pacrim fic at the moment to keep my mind ~pure~ for my version of it, but I'd love to add it to my mfl list!

[celli]

Of course AO3 is down so I can't look for it, but it was BTS - Jin and Jungkook. I will try to find it after work if the site comes back up!

[arundels]

Omg I love jinkook!! Thank you in advance, looking forward to it~ You should rec it as a new post here so everyone else can be delighted by it too :)

[thistidalwave]

omg hello fellow former 1D fan! in 2012 i almost got into hockey rpf thanks to lj primers, but then there were 1D primers as well, and i fell HARD into them instead (and then ofc it was easy to follow the 1D-->hockey pipeline instead of the one to kpop, but...i ended up here eventually). i both wrote and read a lot of fic - if u care to say, which ships were you most into? i wonder if we unknowingly crossed paths.

[arundels]

haha the 1D pipeline has fed a lot of currently-active fandoms, I suspect! I got into 1D rpf via Ziam, which of course got extremely dramatic and upsetting after Zayn left... but I also read a lot of Lirry (Liam/Harry) and Lilo (Liam/Louis). Liam was honestly so fascinating to me in an rpf sense because he had such obvious and deep-seated insecurities that he tried to cover up with way too much bravado; unfortunately all of those are really coming to the fore now and he is... [no comment]

[thistidalwave]

hahaha, omg mood! I've always been a rare pair shipper and also a niall girl, but my corner of fandom was lilo-heavy and i really liked liam for those reasons as well...... Unfortunate

[lachrymosy]

ALLYYYYYYY ok obv I knew about the 2NE1 origin story, and I knew you were a fan of 1D, but I don't think I knew 1D was directly responsible for the rise of AO3 user saturnalyia! We all benefit as readers now because that band broke up and sent you to kpop hahaha!

Reading your platonic ideal of a fic description, I totally understand how we became friends via AO3 comments actually haha. I feel like what we look for in fic isn't identical but it's really adjacent and complementary? I feel like where you're looking for "intimacy but not the kind of intimacy we want," I'm often at more of a place of "intimacy but it's hollow or impossible to have." Maybe this is part of why we really enjoy each other's fic even when we have different focuses!

PACRIM AU PACRIM AU PACRIM AU literally just waiting for all your fic hehe!

[arundels]

haha that domino meme with "simon cowell forms one direction" all the way to "faking it" sjdjlskf

Your comment on our adjacent fic tastes is so interesting! I completely agree that it's really similar but not identical, which gives us loads to talk about. In a way I feel like maybe there's a slight tone / focus difference between what we like as well - in both cases there's that distance from the One True Intimacy but I'm obsessed with all the intimacy that the characters do have and how close they're getting, whereas you focus is on that final distance that just can't be bridged? All different ways of looking at the same thing perhaps!

God don't remind me about pacrim au I need to finish my fest fics so I can go back to it... I told you think on discord but I re-read it yesterday and got the end of the stuff I'd wrote and it was like, WHERE IS THE REST OF IT OP except I'm OP