Random Hanadan/BoF Shitpost
After hearing that Love in Flames of War, a republican era cdrama had Hana Yori Dango/Boys Over Flowers/ Meteor Garden/ F4 vibes... but eventually failed to deliver on that front I rambled at @dangermousie that, actually, we SHOULD have a Hanadan version of every genre of cdrama.
No...wait...I’m joking...but also not. My reasoning for this is solid:
1) No matter what you thing of Hanadan and all it’s objectively toxic and dated glory, you can’t deny it is a hallmark in the history of shoujo manga/anime/asian drama/ live action adaptation/remake pumping machine. It paved the way for all the ItaKiss, Fated to Love You, etc...and it is still to this day a nostalgia magnet for an easy cash grab with each remake (also the latest one might be the best lol).
2) *Surrender by Cheaptricks plays in the background, talks in “there is no war in ba sing se” mode* There are no new ideas in media. Everything is a sequel, prequel, remake, reboot, retelling, soft reboot, parody, homage, the same thing over and over again but call it by another name (it’s still a rose, yeah Shakespeare, you’re a genius, congrats!).
3) Let’s face it. Dramaland is going through the lowest of lows. Cdramas are bad and boring, Kdramas are scarce and boring and Jdramas are 10 ep cute little intros to the story you really wanna see that’s about to begin...at the end of ep10, last episode, no 2nd season. So, they might as well try Every Hanadan Set Everywhere all at Once.
So, without further ado, introducing...every genre of Cdrama Hanadan (with crazy plot eggs for some and none for others bc I say so):
Starting with contemporary…
1) Reverse hanadan where the fl is a rich asshole and the ml a poor little meow meow
3) Modern Fantasy hanadan (sort of like the beginning of Bulgasal but more petty and less angsty lol)
4) Transmigration low budget web drama romcom hanadan
5) *barfs* modern office corporate romance hanadan
6) *barfs again* gaming hanadan
7) Sports hanadan (aka if HanaKimi wasn’t genderbender or cute but toxic instead)
8) Coming of Age/ Youth to Adult Married life Hanadan
Syke! Too late! There is already an OG classic toxic Hanadan of this Genre, it’s called Itazura na Kiss (and it’s my guilty pleasure, my personal hanadan lol)
9) Ice sports hanadan....yesss...get gory with the bullying with ice skating blades muahahaha. The red card locks her on the ice rink and they oil the railings/plexiglass around it so she can't even climb out and she nearly freezes to death. They rope her to the back of a zamboni and drag her through the ice. While she is trapped on the ice rink, they rig a bucket of water to fall over her so she freezes faster.
Now for the period dramas…
10) Republican Era hanadan
They could use the boat scene ending from the finale of the anime as a convenient plotpoint to escape the republican era without dying in the republican turmoil. "Oh, they just reunited dramatically on a boat post amnesia and went abroad together and missed all the political fatal shit and lived happily ever after. Their kids returned to China and lived happily under the great CCP rule (/s)!
It’s hanadan meets legend of Ruyi where he is the Crown Prince but the Empress Dowager holds all the power and on some humiliation move has him take a barbarian slave as a concubine...and the red card is that it's open season on her from every noble or regular consort of his harem and his friends in the court...all is fair the only rule is she cannot be murdered, everything else is fair game. So she is beating to the brink of death, poisoned daily with agonizing pills only to be given antidotes at the last minute, drowned, flayed, etc.
12) Wuxia hanadan. Similar. Dude is the leader of the jianghu, declares her a demon bc she offended him and has all the pretentious righteous sects go after her with agonizing Gus pushed on her body, plenty of chains, kebab her in multiple ways with stakes in torture chambers to cast out the evil.
13) BL Wuxia hanadan. (this one is just here by popular demand. Mine. No, I will not elaborate on that).
14) And at last…my personal favorite….drum rolls… Xianxia hanadan (here is the plot):
She spilled peach wine on his cloud robes once by accident before the Great Heaven's Ceremony so he scribed her name carelessly on the stone of the doomed as petty revenge hoping she'd get some bad karma. But at the time the Demon Overlord was fighting the Lord of Fate and the Dijun on Kunlun and as they made their final strike the demon overlord turned into a cloud of heavy miasma that swirled away swiftly for miles and landed on the stone of the doomed. Hence, for the next 10.000 years the calamities and heavenly tribulations of every god were transferred into the unlucky FL.
In the first 300 years, the gods were unsure of what was happening, but soon word spread of a small menial demigoddess who seemed to be getting an abnormal amount of calamities and trials and yet never ascended into a higher level god. But other gods were getting past their fated tribulations dates without experiencing the event itself but still ascending afterwards. Soon this bizarre phenomenon was being gossiped throughout all the heavenly realms and the gods were rushing to get their hands on every magical item capable of moving forward their tribulation dates... After all, who knew how long this free meal would last? So it follows that our female lead spent the next 10.000 overbooked from torturing calamity to the next without a break or a reward.
Our cloud cloaked protagonist came to learn of this business about 500 years into it. It was not his intention for the karmic payback to be that harsh...but then again it was his best cloud vest that the annoying, insignificant little demigoddess had ruined...and if the consequences had been that rough, who was he to question the Great Design. He soon forgot all about it, surely none of that pesky matter would come back to bother him...
10.000 later: Our fuming fl finally had enough...after experiencing every form of dismemberment as a human, for eons, though she didn't collect an ounce of heavenly grace to ascend to higher goddess....she sure damn well accumulated enough yin to form a monumental grudge...and she would use all of that energy into one single punch for a certain cloud clothed god that would send him so high the gods would finally know what lies above the heavenly realm...not that he'd get the opportunity to tell the tale.
Congrats! you made it to the end of my loooong ass ramble.