This film gave me such acute brainrot that I immediately started writing a fix-it in which Song Seo-rae gets what she deserves (a cute stalkery slow burn). If bookverse!clannibal and bookverse!villaneve get their happy ever afters then somewhere, at least in fic, she should too.
Summary: After escaping Ipo, Song Seo-rae gets the feeling that she is being watched. For some reason it’s a comfort more than anything.
Noticing an influx of comments on my Mr. Queen fics now that it’s on Netflix, so here gentle readers is a masterlist. I spent the better part of a year writing these stories, most of which are novel-length!
Are you a cheolbong truther, and wish the show would have committed to the wacky queer love story of our dreams? Or does your heart beat for the silenced Kim Soyong, who got pushed out of her own narrative? I’m here to fulfill all your fix-it needs! ❤
Mrs. Queen
Summary: She has always been good at hide and seek. A retelling of Mr. Queen from Kim Soyong’s point of view.
This was my first MQ retelling where Soyong and Bong-hwan are both awake and bickering inside their mind, wrestling for control. Soyong/Cheoljong endgame; Bong-hwan is mostly around to matchmake and cause trouble like the gremlin he is.
And I, and Silence
Summary: Jang Bong-hwan can feel his mind disintegrating, and he is looking for a way back to Seoul. Suddenly Kim Soyong is back. And, as it turns out, she is already married.
The last thing Kim Soyong remembers is jumping into the lake. Now she’s back mid-story and forced to fend for herself without any memory of what has happened in the past few months. Lots of angsty pining, gratuitous Emily Dickinson references, and the birth of my most beloved crackship ByeongJin (Jo Hwa-jin/Kim Byeong-in).
The Raw Ingredients
Summary: After a miserable year in Seoul, Bong-hwan finds a way back to Joseon. When she returns everything is very different from how she left it.
We’ve got magical trans girl Bong-hwan returning to Joseon, only this time in the body of a lowly palace maid. How ever will she get to her king? Well, with a little help of cunning minister Kim Soyong, of course.
Patchwork
Summary: Sobong returns to her king.
A ficlet with the same basic premise as The Raw Ingredients but much shorter.
The White Grass
Summary: Kim Soyong discovers the hard way that her clan would do anything to ensure that the next royal heir comes from the Kim bloodline, no matter who they have to hurt to do it. To survive in the palace she makes a deal with the king. AU where Jang Bong-hwan never came to Joseon.
This one has some dark and gritty dubcon sex! It’s also got a Kim Soyong who girlbosses, gaslights, and gatekeeps her way to power in a patriarchal government, and accidentally falls in love with her husband along the way.
Whatever Souls Are Made Of
Summary: Kim Soyong and Jang Bong-hwan are the same soul reincarnated. On the same night, 170 years apart, they both drown. That’s when things get weird.
In this story Sobong is just one (1) person, but with two sets of memories from two points in time. There’s some multiverse theory, library sex, and a journey of self-discovery for our dear genderfluid queen! This is my personal favorite of the bunch.
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
Rating: Mature
Category: F/M
Fandoms: Cyrano de Bergerac - Edmond Rostand
Relationship: Cyrano de Bergerac/Roxane
Additional Tags: Romance, Post-Canon Fix-It, Angst with a Happy Ending, Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, One Shot, Ficlet
Summary: After the war, Christian tells Roxane the truth.
I keep forgetting to link my fics on tumblr, but here is a short little fix-it that I wrote after a rewatch of the 1990 film! Brought to you by my intense childhood crush on Anne Brochet.
Last year I had the pleasure of getting to know the very sweet Amata who gifted me these amazing paintings based on some of my Rookie Historian stories. She kindly gave me permission to share them, even though she has since left fandom. I will be 80 years old and still raving about these pictures, they’re so very very lovely.
The scenes depicted are from: A Natural Defect (a Pride & Prejudice crossover), The Marriage Decree (a marriage of convenience fic), and Between the Lines (involving a diary/sachaek mishap and lots of rain).
Rules: In a new post, show the last line you wrote and tag as many people as there are words.
Thank you @rain-hat for the tag! Here is a Rookie Historian fic that I am scribbling on instead of finishing the last chapter of my ongoing wip… endings are so hard!!
She ought to let Lady Han take precedence. She was nobility, and Kyung-mi was not. It was what her father would have done.
“Class over seniority,” she said to herself, closing her eyes. “Class over age. Class over everything.”
“Even love?” Seo-jun said softly. His voice sounded very close, even though she had not heard him move. U-hui closed her fists.
“I love them both,” she said. “And therein lies the problem.”
I’ll tag @angryteapott @vegaelettra and @solrosan if they want to share!
Tell us all about your writing year- an AO3 or google docs wrapped. 😘
Haha I was going to, anyway! Thank you for the ask. Here is my tale, and hopefully the beginning of a few round-up posts I will be able to write if life allows me to juice down my ration of lemons. h/t for questions to @floydsin, orig. here.
1. How many words have you written this year?
I published 29,812 words on AO3 this year. I wrote an additional 111,715 words in various drafts, some of which I hope to publish in time.
2. How many works did you publish this year?
Six, of which one was the re-publication of an archival story from my LiveJournal days.
3. What work are you most proud of (regardless of kudos/hits)?
I’ve been trying and failing to write various stories I have in mind for Assassination/Amsal for most of this year, so I’m pretty glad I knuckled down and knocked out “Waiting Room” in a day. Sometimes the only way to deal with a very daunting subject is to break it down as small as it will go.
4. What work of yours has the most hits?
I don’t look at hits or kudoses.
5. What work of yours got more feedback than you expected?
"Waiting Room" got two comments, which is two more than I expected! I’m not fussed, I just didn’t expect anyone to read a story based on a film from 2015 that hasn’t been widely seen in fandom. (Which is a mistake, by the way: you Goncharov girlies are going to have a meltdown when you get around to discovering it.)
6. Favorite title you used
“Lips Against Mind,” which comes from the first line of Stephen Dunn’s “The Kiss,” which is essentially what the fic is about.
7. If you use song lyrics, which artist’s songs did you pull from the most?
I almost never do. The exception this year was “Sugar In My Bowl,” an amnestied WIP, which is named for the Nina Simone song (or, more correctly, the Bessie Smith song written by Clarence Smalls et al.)
8. Pairing you wrote the most for this year?
The pairing across the most number of open documents I have is my beloved Ahn Ok-yun and Hawaii Pistol from Assassination, because for Jun Ji-hyun I will rescue all of Asia from the fatality of our bitter, blasted twentieth century. The most words I’ve written in total are for a sort of spin-off of @drivingsideways’s "Terms of Surrender," which features two mostly off-screen characters from that ‘verse, and which only Pri and @elderflowergin are reading.
9. Favorite pairing you wrote for this year?
It is still and always Yeong and Ryeong, for whom I wrote a very small ficlet this year and who therefore slide in on a technicality.
10. What work was the quickest to write?
See 9.
11. What work took you the longest to write?
I’ve really only published work that I wrote in two days or less this year, because I just haven’t had more bandwidth to finish anything.
12. How many WIP’s do you have in your docs for next year?
I accounted for this in my writing birthday post last month: happy 2023 to me. 🙂
13. What’s your longest work of the year?
“Object Permanence,” which was ~7700 words.
14. What’s your shortest work of the year?
“Something To Tell You,” which was ~1500 words.
15. What WIP are you taking into next year with you?
Over the holiday week I hope to be writing the series I’m tagging to @drivingsideways’s Terms ‘verse.
16. What’s your most common “Additional Tags” tag?
It’s split down the middle between ‘Alternate Universe –– Canon Divergence’ (we have to do something about the unsatisfactory and catch-all nature of this categorisation) and ‘Additional Warnings in Author’s Note,’ ha!
17. Your favorite character to write this year?
My beloved Ahn Ok-yun who I am crazy about; her twin, Mitsuko, who turned out to be unreal fun to write; a character in the Terms ‘verse WIP whose voice allowed me to strike the hypervocal tone I find most enjoyable to write.
18. The character that gave you the most trouble writing this year?
I’ve been putting off hitting one particular note for one particular character whose PoV I am devising, for literally months. I don’t want to hurt my readers or my characters!
19. What’s one pairing you want to explore next year?
Everyone who’s in the writing birthday post but I really feel like if I had more time I would like to climb the rock-face of the steep mountain that is Jeong Seo-kyung’s writing and find a way to write about Hwa-young and In-joo, afterwards.
20. Which work of yours have you reread the most?
I haven’t! I’ve been immersed in reading my friends instead.
21. How many kudos in total did you get this year?
See 4.
22. Which work has the most comments?
“Object Permanence” has 44 comments. Thank you to a score of commenters who enjoyed it and had nice things to say about it.
23. Did you do any collaborative works this year?
Reading and writing and talking with Gin and Pri has been my deepest imaginative pleasure this year. I’m thankful for the microclimate of our groupchat, in which all kinds of beautiful things are constantly growing. At this point I am more the grass of their forested country than myself.
24. Did you write any gifts this year?
I haven’t published any. Ungrateful little chit, Rain!
25. Did you receive any gifts this year?
I was incredibly rich in gifts this year, and I’m stunned by how wonderful they all were.
+ “Something Rotten,” @stickypearls1's glorious, hungry, poetic, blood-drenched character portrait of the little queen in Kingdom, and how she traps, and is trapped by, her righteous son-in-law. Pearls got the unctuously stifling character of the Inner Court in Kingdom down in words in a way I wouldn’t have thought possible. This is so harsh and so silken and so, so satisfying.
+ “Hakuna Matata,” by @drivingsideways, in which Moon Ji-woong and Ji Seung-wan from Twenty Five Twenty One take twenty years to do all their life’s milestones backwards. It’s got Pri’s sweeping and capacious world-building that's such a trademark in her fic, but in service of the lightest, sunniest, rom-com you could think of. In my headcanon, grown-up Ji-woong and Seung-wan are present-day Jung Woo-sung and Jeon Do-yeon, so there’s one particular part of the story that’s, like, triply hilarious to me. If AO3 is summer, this is the ice lolly you want.
+ “The Freshman from Mapo,” by @elderflowergin. First of all, audaciously fun world-building on top of Chief of Staff. After all the gothic suffering and life-or-death brinksmanship of the show, our two lovely leads, Jang Tae-jun and Kang Seon-yeong, find themselves drawn into the better world they’ve fought to create, thanks to the freshman from Mapo who becomes president of South Korea––one Han Gyeong-jae. (Gyeong-jae is, of course, from Steel Rain 2, but the story has nothing to do with that film, which I couldn’t bring myself to watch more than 20 minutes of and which I think Gin never even started, because she’s wise.) It’s written with that terrific restraint that comes to Gin so effortlessly, not one wasted word and no easy slide through the hairpin bends of the steep terrain she takes you through. But it’s also so generous, and so full of happy surprises, and such a love letter to Seon-yeong, who deserves it. I lived in the world of this story for like a full month and I keep wanting to go back.
+ “got a wicked thirst to feel alive,” by @nubreed73, even the title of which I can’t type without sweat dripping into my eyes. Holy smokes, you guys. Nubreed slides a stilletto under the glossy high-toned veneer of My Country: The New Age and lets us have a peek at the lava underneath. This is a sexy one-shot with incredibly hot sex but I think the temperature really rises because of how polished and poetic the character work is. This is a Bang-won unlike few others in this fandom, captured in his dual terror as both an open wound and a finger pressing down on a bruise. I am so gobsmacked that I got this present!!!! For me!!!!!!! But I’m also so happy that I get to share it with all my MCTNA pals in this fandom. You guys are the best in this place and until I unceremoniously ditch you all when kdrama Tumblr’s Assassination hive rises you’re stuck with me.
+ “the process of discovery,” by @elderflowergin. I only read one fic in Extraordinary Attorney Woo fandom this year. If I had read only ONE FIC in total this entire year it would have been fine as long as it was this one. Pri and I still shake each other and go “Can you believe she WROTE THIS?” because it’s so fucking perfect. EAW writer-nim you will not be forgiven for throttling the best pairing on the show before you had a chance to realise it. But for us fans, all mistakes are amendable, and this is the kintsugi on the cracked pot of the second half of that show.
+ "Terms of Surrender" by @drivingsideways. I don’t really know how to write about this, since it feels private –– there’s a reason Pri hasn’t tagged it for City of the Rising Sun, which is where the character’s names partially come from, and which was the beginning of the notional fandom to which this belongs, the Jung Woo-sung x Lee Jung-jae universe, though this is not RPF in the slightest. You can treat it as a spin on the outrageously perfect soy sauce commercial she ultimately tagged it for (seriously, it’s the opposite of whatever incest coffee thing you guys are always going on about, in that you will be on your feet and cheering for these two, ready to pay for their wedding reception from your own pockets, in about 15 seconds). You can treat it as a tweak of the nose to CLOY, which Pri betrayed me by dropping ten episodes in. You can definitely read it as original fiction. It’s a sort of un-landscaped garden with many paths in, for many kinds of readers. There’s romantic comedy and a little bit of slapstick and melodrama, and a fuck-you kind of alternate history that unties more than one Gordian knot. And these are all bridges over these deep bodies of water that contain grief and melancholy and loneliness, and you can look at your face in the water without anyone pushing you in. I don’t know! I don’t know what to say. It’s very good and Gin and I have been frolicking in it for months. Go give it a shot if you want, but even if you don’t, know that it’s completely wonderful.
26. What’s your most common category?
Alternate universe? I guess?
27. What do you listen to while writing?
I don’t, at all. This year I’ve been listening to a little bit of Beethoven when I’m thinking, but absolutely nothing else.
28. Favorite work you wrote this year?
Ugh, god, it’s the second chapter of this Assassination story that I don’t think I’ll ever be able to finish and that I am dying for someone to read and enjoy even a tenth as much as I’ve enjoyed writing it. Oh well, these are the gifts of the magi to us silly little girls in fandom.
29. Favorite line/passage you wrote this year?
Unpublished: And then, at a traffic signal by a busy square, his eyes alight on the door of a bookshop from which a woman emerges in an oxblood beret with a bag stuffed with books.
“Sir?” Suleiman calls. “Sir!”
He crosses the street to the sound of clanging horns and walks behind her, oblivious to the commotion. She still scatters radiance wherever she goes, the least covert of covert operatives, with her conquering stride and head held high.
30. Biggest surprise while writing this year?
Friends, I’m just glad I’m still here, and so are you. Happy holiday season.
Hattie, i read your love in the moonlight fic "hoarfrost" and LOVED it. Cho ha yeon was such a wonderful character and I'm glad you wrote about the amazing life i always thought she'd probably be living. Basically all i want to do is read your fics about my favourite kdrama female characters (ji seung wan is another one) because the care and depth you give to their dreams and ambitions and how they negotiate with the world around them to lead fulfilling and awesome lives feel so refreshing instead of the usual idealistic nerd gets crushed by cruel world to eventually become jaded. Thank you so much showing me how joyful their lives could be. If it's not too much, can i ask you for more recs for these types of fics and even books please?
Thank you for a wonderful message that made my day, anon! I'm so glad you enjoyed the story. They really gave us such a smash-hit second lead in Cho Ha-yeon: smart, self-willed, naive but quick on her feet, and so very brave. I loved imagining a new life for her so much. I wrote another story, "But In Love," in which she plays a major role and has some big adventures.
If you'd like to read sageuk-based fics that centre women's stories and their happiness I highly recommend the work of @stickypearls1 ! @angryteapott-nim has written great stories about the women in Mr Queen. Not only or even majorly sageuk-based but @leechangjoons writes ambitious imaginative stories that tackle gender and gender roles in themselves in unexpected and cool ways. You'll find many well-written women characters in the "fic rec" tag on my Tumblr. I'm biased but my friends @elderflowergin and @drivingsideways write some of my favourite women characters in fandom, please check out their work.
I'd love to recommend you some books but I'm not sure where to begin. But I hope you enjoy these. Thank you again for your wonderfully kind words.
#where is the dirty dirty lee chang/queen cho smut fandom? I mean I had thought about them but maybe not like that.... Thanks for putting that in my head WOW
I was just talking about this with @elderflowergin! And we both agree that nothing compares to the sick power of that first scene where he calls her "mother" and she calls him her son, and they both abhor one another. It's an odd show, full of people who fuck (in theory) but very chaste. Maybe the writer never thought about it, and we all know sex in kdramas tends to be sublimated using strategies on that spectrum of chastity –> prudery. But it's such a physical, oozing, sleazy, visceral show, so hyper-focused on starvation and hunger and gorging yourself that it feels a bit avoidant on the matter of sex, all the same.
Anyway long story short I'm totally into any/all combinations of Seo-bi + Yeong-shin + Chang but if I had to pick a hot hot pairing for which to write a PWP it would be the scheming survivalist little queen and the idealistic virgin concubine's son.
Relationships: Goo Hae-ryung/Min U-won, Cho Seon/Kim Yoon Hee, Gu Yong Ha/Moon Jae Shin, Goo Hae-ryung & Kim Yoon Hee
I just started a new crossover between Rookie Historian and Sungkyunkwan Scandal, because who doesn’t love a tropey college AU? It can be found here on AO3.
good night to people who write extremely rare-pair fanfiction, enthusiasts of the college au, people who hate canon with a passion, people old enough to have been squicked, gen z wattpad users, forgotten OCs from 13 years ago, the kudos button on ao3, people who write one-shots exclusively, the first kisses that happen on chapter 42 at the Earliest, enemies to friends to enemies again to lovers, and lastly… people who comment on fanfiction regardless of when it was posted
Relationships: Goo Hae-ryung/Min U-won, Cho Seon/Kim Yoon Hee, Gu Yong Ha/Moon Jae Shin, Goo Hae-ryung & Kim Yoon Hee
I just started a new crossover between Rookie Historian and Sungkyunkwan Scandal, because who doesn’t love a tropey college AU? It can be found here on AO3.
It’s almost winter when he hears of the Gentleman Pirate’s death.
Written by @stickypearls1
Time: 04:04
Click here to listen on AO3
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[Image Description: The background is a sunrise over the ocean, and the entire sky is red. The title “Sea-wind of the Night” is written in a large white font in the middle. “written by stickypearls” is written in a smaller white font in the bottom left corner, and “read by klainelynch” is written in the same font in the bottom right corner. End ID]
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