Flower Boy Next Door Fic: Happy (PG-13)

My first experience of Internet fandom was as a writer of fanfic. I don’t write it much these days, but I sometimes come across a show that I’m unwilling to say goodbye to. Flower Boy Next Door definitely falls into this category—the drama may be over, but its characters are still very much living in my head.

And because one of the greatest pleasures of maintaining this blog is that I get to post whatever the heck I want, here’s a short, fluffy piece of fan fiction about the continuing relationship of FBND’s Dok Mi and Enrique.  

(For more of my fanfic, visit my page at fanfiction.net or head over to the only other Kdrama story I’ve written, an epilogue to Coffee Prince.)

Fic: The Transcendent Happiness of Choi Han Gyul

An abiding love for fan fiction is pretty much my darkest secret. (Which is saying something, coming from someone with her own blog about Korean drama.)

The more mainstream fan fiction gets, the more embarrassed I become about the whole thing. Back when I was regularly involved with it, the only people who understood what the word fanfic meant were the ones reading and writing alongside me. Nowadays, though, every soccer mom on my block is reading smutty, thinly veiled Twilight fanfic and the author of The Very Secret Diaries has appeared on the New York Times bestseller list.

I may have gone largely revisionist about it in recent years, but fan fiction’s siren call has always been too loud for me to ignore. I’ve given up on it probably a dozen times, but it’s never quite given up on me. Which explains today’s post.

Weirdly, one of the things that drew me to Korean drama was that it felt a bit like fan fiction: The whole genre is full of uncomplicated, unrestrained pleasures that are refreshingly unconcerned with reality and plausibility. The things you most want from Korean dramas almost inevitably happen, making them feel predictable in the coziest, homiest way possible, just like fan fic. And like fan fiction, I often find myself relating to dramas on a level beyond objective quality: it’s their emotion that really draws me in—their sincerity, to borrow a uniquely Kdrama word.

There doesn’t seem to be much English-language fan fiction out there about Korean dramas, much to my sorrow. I can see why this is the case: Kdramas have very limited shelf lives, so it’s hard to build too much of a fandom around a single series. It also takes a lot of guts (stupidity?) to write about a culture you barely understand. 

But there are some shows that I just can’t quite put out of my mind. Of course my beloved Coffee Prince is the prime example: when I finished watching that drama’s final episode, it felt like losing a friend. Ever since, I’ve found myself randomly wondering what might have become of its characters. To indulge that curiosity, I finally decided to give Coffee Prince fic a shot--even if I’m about five years too late for anyone to care. 

Note that the story certainly won’t stand up to any K-picking (if there is such a parallel to the Brit-picking of Harry Potter fan authors), but I hope it’s at least in keeping with Coffee Prince’s sweet vibe.

The Transcendent Happiness of Choi Han Gyul

Fandom: Coffee Prince

Rating: PG-13

Word count: 2,800-ish

Contents: Pure cotton-candy fluff