The number #1 question that many writers are asked is the perennial favourite, “Where do you get your ideas?” The answer is usually “It depends.” But for the purposes of this post, I’m going to spell it out for you concerning one particular project.
Genesis
In 2016, I went to Canberra to attend ACAF (Australian Comic Arts Festival). Ryan K Lindsay was running a workshop there. I think it was on generating ideas or some such thing. He took us through an exercise that I found really helpful—so helpful, in fact, that I pinched it and used it in a couple of workshops that I ran later that year. (Sorry and thank you, Ryan!)
Ingredient 1: Love
I used the exercise at a workshop I ran for the Sydney Comics Guild about writing short comics. But I made the participants at this workshop generate ideas around the theme of love. I chose this theme because I thought it might help the participants to start with something, rather than nothing, and also because I have, in the past, toyed with writing an anthology of comics on the subject. (NB: I never made this anthology.)
Why “love”? I would say that I’m a bit of a sucker for love stories, but that’s not exactly true: I’m also highly critical of them too. If you will pardon the poor use of the expression, I have a bit of a “love/hate” relationship with romcoms. I watch them, but I don’t enjoy most of them because they also annoy me. Take You’ve Got Mail: Tom Hanks’s character is rude to Meg Ryan’s character the first time they meet in person after he’s figured out who he’s been corresponding with, and he humiliates her in public. Why, then, is she so quick to forgive him later on?? Or Clueless: what is so attractive about Paul Rudd’s character in the eyes of Alicia Silverstone’s? Or 10 Things I Hate About You: Heath Ledger’s character never actually apologises to Julia Stiles’s character for concealing the fact he was paid to take her out. He just buys her the guitar she’s always wanted, and all of a sudden they’re kissing in the parking lot at the end of the movie.
For me, there has to be an element of believability in the love story—less in terms of the characters’ circumstances and the plot of the movie, and more in terms of what the characters see in each other, what draws them together and how they make each other better. Like Tong Yao and Lu Sicheng in Falling Into Your Smile, or Hong Ra On and Crown Prince Lee Yeong in Love in the Moonlight: the relationship has to make sense in some way. It’s that journey—whether it be from acquaintances to boyfriend and girlfriend, or enemies to lovers—that fascinates me. What makes two people fall for one another? Furthermore, what makes their relationship survive?
Ingredient 2: Games
The Pokémon GO logo
I also ran Ryan’s ideas exercise later in 2016 at Bezerkacon. This time, because Bezerkacon was a gaming and pop culture con, I made the workshop participants generate ideas around the theme of games. At the time, Pokémon GO had exploded onto the scene and while I wasn’t playing it myself, an awful lot of people I knew were. As an outside observer, I found the whole thing absolutely fascinating: here was a game that was actually making a difference to people’s lives, getting them out of the house and exercising, walking around their neighbourhoods looking for Pokémon, and even connecting and socialising with other gamers. Furthermore, it was resulting in positive social benefits: consider this viral story about an autistic boy who began to engage more with others through playing the game. It made me wonder what other positive social benefits could be reaped from playing games. It made me wonder what if there was a Pokémon Go-type game that people played in order to meet other people and fall in love?
Ingredient 3: Dating
Taken Out
I confess I don’t have that much experience with romantic relationships. Ben and I married young, and before that, we each had had only one significant romantic relationship.
That probably explains why we were both rather fascinated by the show Taken Out, which aired on Australian TV during 2008-2009. Unlike Perfect Match, which aired during the 80s, Taken Out featured more contestants: it starts with a single person—the candidate—being introduced to 30 other single people of the opposite sex. In the first round, the 30 are asked if they are in or out based on their initial impression of the candidate. The 30 indicate their preference by either turning out their light or keeping it on. In the second round, the remainders watch a short video package in which the candidate talks about himself or herself. At the end, they are asked again if they are in or out, and those who opt out turn out their lights. In the third round, the remainders watch a short video package in which the candidate’s friends and family are interviewed about the candidate. Once again, the remaining singles are asked if they are in or out. The fourth round is the final round, and this time, the candidate gets to choose three singles from the remainders. He or she then asks these three people two questions. Based on their answers, the candidate then selects one of the three and they go on a date together. If they decide they like each other and want to progress the relationship further, they meet up later at the top of this tower overlooking the city.
The Australian version of the show was short-lived, but it inspired other versions of it around the world—the most famous of which is arguably the Chinese version, If You Are the One, which some people in my social circles watched rather obsessively.
Modern Romance
Modern Romance by Aziz Ansari and Eric Klinenberg (cover)
2016/2017 was also around the time I was reading Modern Romance by Aziz Ansari and Eric Klinenberg (or rather Aziz Ansari was reading it to me; I was listening to the audio book). I was reading it partly because of my idea and partly because I enjoyed watching Ansari in Master of None. Modern Romance was born out of Ansari’s obsession with how romance and technology interact and it’s absolutely fascinating. The early chapters outline a history of romantic relationships that contrast sharply with the later chapters, which detail how everything has changed. In the “olden days”, people usually ended up marrying people who were in close physical proximity to them—the girl next door, the boy down the street, etc. Then society became more mobile, with young people moving interstate for college or work, and forging relationships with people who grew up further away from them. The rise of the internet and internet dating opened up things up even further: suddenly the pool of potential romantic partners was seemingly infinite.
However, with more choice came a kind of decision fatigue. Ansari talked to multiple people who complained about feeling burnt out by internet dating because of the amount of “work” it generated for them—vetting candidates, answering messages and setting up dates. Sometimes during his live shows, Ansari would ask audience members to log into their internet dating accounts, which were then displayed for the rest of the audience on large screens. One fairly attractive young woman logged into her account and the audience were aghast to see the number of messages she was receiving from potential matches. She said she felt bad for the guys who were messaging her, but there was absolutely no way she could keep up and respond to all the messages herself. I found it interesting that, because of this sort of thing, Tinder became hugely popular: in a sense, it brought dating back to the “olden days”, restricting the pool of potential candidates to the people around you.
In the final chapter of Modern Love, Ansari tries to put into practice some of the things he’s learned about dating and how to do it better. He asked his friends to set him up with people they thought would suit him. He focused on taking the same girl out on multiple dates, rather than taking multiple girls out for just one date. He varied what they did on each date, because doing the same thing—like dinner and a movie—each time is boring, and when you do different things together, you get to see a whole other side of a person you might not normally get to see. Ansari wasn’t necessarily saying that one way of dating is better than other ways of dating; instead, he felt like he was increasing his odds of finding someone by doing these things, rather than subjecting himself to the chaotic, wild jungles of internet dating.
Combine and stir
I asked myself, “What if there was a Pokémon Go-type game that people played in order to meet other people and fall in love?” The result was a novella that I initially called The Dating Game.
Beta reader copies of The Dating Game
(Side note: A novella is roughly half the size of a novel. Most novels are 80,000-100,000 words [unless you’re George RR Martin; then they’re 150,000 words]. Most novellas about half that. Mine is just under 40,000 words.)
I spent most of 2018 writing it. Curiously, I did a lot of work on it during the six months that Ben and I were separated. (It sounds odd, but writing a love story is actually a good anti-depressant for when you’re down.)
After I finished the first draft, I sent it to a flock of beta readers to see what they thought. I decided to have a go at using Lulu.com’s print-on-demand service and created the print copies pictured above as a test run. (The shipping actually cost more than the books did.) I submitted the manuscript to a small independent publisher who were doing a callout for “seasonal” novellas. Unfortunately it sat in their slush pile for the better part of a year before ultimately getting rejected. (Also most unfortunately, that indie publisher didn’t allow simultaneously submissions, which meant I couldn’t send the manuscript elsewhere while it was in their slush pile.)
Then at the beginning of 2020, I decided I really needed to do something with the story. I had pretty much given up on getting it traditionally published as there is a very limited market for novellas, and it didn’t really fit into the sort of boxes publishers are looking for, being not quite completely speculative fiction (even with its more futuristic elements) and not quite completely romance either. I decided to fall back on what I’ve always done and publish it myself.
I got it professionally edited by Dan Hanks, who I met on Twitter. Dan really seemed to get what I was trying to do with the story, and gave me some helpful advice on how to fix the parts I felt weren’t working.
I also made a couple of mock-ups of potential covers and put them up for feedback in one of the Facebook writers groups I’m a member of. Lots of people gave me some very helpful advice, which I used for the next round of options.
Then the pandemic hit and, like many people, I lost momentum.
Finished is better than perfect
Fast forward to this year (2022). The novella had been sitting around for so long doing nothing that two other books with the title The Dating Game came out in the interim. I decided I really needed to do something about the manuscript—that I really needed to actually finish it. Because I was going to table at Book Fair Australia on the 26-27 November and because I wanted to have something new to sell, I figured I should really use that event as the impetus to get the job done. After all, I can’t sell an unfinished book, and I still need to make back what I’ve already spent on production.
So over the last couple of months, I went back into my drafts, the feedback my beta readers sent me, and Dan’s editing notes, and I started revising and redrafting, editing and polishing. When I was satisfied the manuscript was as good as it was going to get (continually reminding myself that “finished is better than perfect”), I worked on the layout. I typeset and proofread the whole thing myself. I created the cover based on previous iterations and feedback (with input from some trusted friends). And for obvious reasons, I changed the title.
My printer sent the finished copies last week and they look marvellous:
I’ve done a very limited print run using print-on-demand. The unit cost was a little higher than I was expecting, but there’s a paper shortage, which is affecting the entire publishing industry in a big way, and the pandemic has made everything a little more expensive these days.
Introducing: The Dating Program: A novella
So I am very pleased to introduce to you The Dating Program: A novella:
The Dating Program: A novella (cover)
In the near-future, concern about an increasingly workaholic corporate culture and the falling birthrate causes the government of one metropolis to institute GoDate, a city-wide summer dating program for people of a certain age. Players are sent on a series of ten different dates, during which they are matched with potential love interests via algorithms.
Petra, a 24-year-old highly introverted graphic designer, isn’t sure she’s ready for a relationship, but isn’t entirely happy with singleness either. Encouraged by her co-workers and driven by a strong desire not to live with regret, she decides to participate in GoDate for the very first time. But as GoDate takes her on all manner of dates—both good and bad—Petra is forced to question what it is she actually wants.
I would call my novella speculative fiction, but it definitely skews more towards the romance genre than the speculative fiction genre. It’s certainly not dystopian in the slightest! Instead, I think of it as being a comfort read—something to turn to when you’re feeling down, or when you just want something light and fluffy to escape into for a little while.
(If you know me personally, get in touch with me for a special coupon code so that you aren’t charged shipping, and I’ll give you yours the next time we catch up. Also, I will have copies at Book Fair Australia.)
If, however, you like to read your books electronically, the e-book of The Dating Program is now available on Kindle:
I’m currently working on getting it into Google Play, but there are problems I need to overcome. (I really should have started the process with those earlier. Did I mention how inexperienced I am with this whole self-publishing prose thing?)
If you think The Dating Program might be your cup of tea, I encourage you to check it out. And if you like it, please tell someone else about it; you’d be surprised how much word of mouth sells books.
So The Dating Program has been out for about two months now and I have completely dropped the ball on promoting it. (You can tell I’m a writer by how much I suck at marketing.) I did have grand plans and half-formed blog posts bubbling in the back of my brain once Book Fair Australia was over, but December and, somewhat unexpectedly, much of January has steamrolled all that.
Still, the worst thing about not promoting a book is continuing not to promote it (right?) So in an effort to get back on this very lame horse, I thought I would post about cover design.
That said, you should know that I am not a professional graphic designer. I have absolutely no training in art or design. Everything I know is based on what I like and what I’ve seen other people do, and I am completely self-taught on InDesign. I know the cover is important and perhaps given its importance, I should have budget for a more professional cover. But I decided to do it myself.
As I wrote in my last post, I used Lulu.com to create a dummy copy—partly for beta reading purposes and partly to see how Lulu handles self-publishing. In terms of cost and speed, Lulu were incredible: from memory, one copy cost a mere $3 to print and $6 to ship (twice the unit cost). In terms of print quality, I realise that Lulu does digital printing, but I do think the quality could have been … better.
But I digress. Even dummy copies need a cover. So I threw this together:
Dummy/beta reader version cover
(Note the old title!)
It was deliberately simple. The background pattern was intended to resemble the interior decor of a restaurant that serves as the setting for one of the dates. I used Futura for the title because it’s one of my favourite typefaces, and because I thought I needed something to contrast with that (a serif font with a sans serif font), I used Baskerville, which is another one of my favourite fonts. I think I probably spent 15 minutes on it tops, fiddling with the font size, the positioning and the kerning. Fitting for something that was intended to be a test.
When it came to the “real” thing, though, I decided to create a few options and poll the Australian Speculative Fiction (ASF) Facebook Group for their opinions. I posted the dummy cover as well as these two:
Hipster versionYA version
and the blurb:
In the near-future, concern about an increasingly workaholic corporate culture and the falling birthrate causes the government of one metropolis to institute GoDate, a city-wide summer dating program for people of a certain age. Players are sent on a series of ten different dates, during which they are matched with potential love interests via algorithms.
Petra, a 24-year-old highly introverted graphic designer, isn’t sure she’s ready for a relationship, but isn’t entirely happy with singleness either. Encouraged by her co-workers and driven by a strong desire not to live with regret, she decides to participate in GoDate for the very first time. But as GoDate takes her on all manner of dates—both good and bad—Petra is forced to question what it is she actually wants.
The responses were interesting: each of the three had their fans (and for different reasons as well). But the overall response was that the cover wasn’t quite matching the genre/market placement of the novella. The one with the birds apparently screams YA (young adult fiction), whereas the dummy cover with just the pink and purple background didn’t signal anything at all and could also have been mistaken for self-help. This probably reflected my own uncertainty too. I wrote in the comment thread,
I’m not quite sure where would be best to position it in terms of genre. While I was writing it, I always thought of it as a romcom. But even though the story has romance elements, a relationship isn’t the main focus of the thing. It’s more an exploration into the whole subject of dating and relationships—how to find The One in a city of 12 million, what makes two people connect, whether algorithms actually work for human relationships, etc. But all wrapped in a slightly futuristic setting of server bots, self-driving cars, architecture designed for single people, and of course a government-run dating program. So I guess I’d call it spec fic. But it’s supposed to be lighthearted and fun, rather than dystopian, hence the romcom bent.
The good people of ASF gave me some helpful advice and pointers, including incorporating some digital elements to indicate the speculative fiction side of the book as well as more “romantic” elements to highlight its romcom side. Some also said I should flag that it’s a novella. This resulted in these two revised covers with digital circuitry and some “lovebirds” (human and otherwise):
Park bench versionRevised YA version
I sent these to Dan Hanks, my editor, along with my manuscript, and asked his opinion. Before he worked on the MS, he told me liked the bird one with the London-ish skyline better. But when he had finished the editing, he preferred the park bench one as he felt it fit the novella better and shaped reader expectations more appropriately. So I went with the bench. And then adjusted the titles (with the new title!) accordingly.
Final cover
Of course, the thing about covers is that when you have settled on the front, you still need design the back. I probably should have thought about this earlier, but remember I’m a n00b. My solution was to Google some gorgeous front-and-back cover designs, get depressed and then try to take some of those design principles and make it work with mine.
Immediately I ran into the problem of the awesome background I had chosen: it was too busy to put the back cover blurb over the top, so how was I going to make it stand out? I tried a ghostly white box:
Version 1
It looked sort of amateur-ish. (I am an amateur, but I don’t want to look like one.) Also, it was a bit weird having the black silhouette of the ground, the park bench and the people just going nowhere. What if I continued the strip of black along the bottom? That would also help with the barcode. I tried it and rather liked the effect, and stretching the white box out across the whole of the back cover into the black strip seemed to work.
That just left the question of the patterned background. I thought perhaps flipping it might be fun, so I tried it:
Version 2Final version
By this point, I had completely lost all perspective, so I ran the cover by Ben and a couple of friends. They preferred the up-and-down triangles, so I went with that. I think I would have been happy with either, but I like how the background has remained essentially the same since the dummy design.
Anyway, if you are judging my book by its cover, please check it out. You can read an excerpt in PDF. You can grab the e-book from these fine e-retailers:
Every now and then, I need a break from K-dramas and return to C-dramas. Whereas K-drama episodes are usually 60-90 minutes long, the average C-drama episode is 40-50 minutes long. This makes for long seasons (The Rise of Phoenixes clocked in at a whopping 70 episodes), but arguably the run time is about the same.
Falling Into Your Smile is a very respectable 31 episodes, making it comparatively short and sweet. And for all those who wished The King’s Avatar contained a romance, this series is for you, combining an e-sports/sports plot/journey to the top with romantic comedy set in an alternate 2020 where COVID doesn’t seem to exist.
Tong Yao (played by Cheng Xiao of South Korean-Chinese girl group WJSN) is a young woman in her early 20s who has finished university and is at a crossroads in her life. She also happens to be very good at playing Onmyoji Arena.
Onmyoji Arena (which is a real game, by the way—unlike Glory in The King’s Avatar) is a multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA) game in which two teams of five players compete against one another to take out the opposing team’s castle. The setting and many of the characters/Shikigami (of which there are over 100) have been plucked straight out of Heian-era Japan. (The game’s publisher is Chinese though.)
Tong Yao’s speciality is a Shikigami named Tamamonomae, and she currently ranks #1 on the Chinese server playing that character using the online handle “Smiling”. (I think that is referenced in the title of the show, but I have no idea if that’s an accurate translation of the original title. From what I can gather from some very cursory online research, the show is based on a novel, but I’m not sure if the novel and the show share the same name.)
Because of Tong Yao’s gaming abilities, she receives an invitation to join the Onmyoji Arena e-sports team ZGDX. (I have no idea what those letters stand for, if anything.) At first, she is unsure the offer is real. But then the team bring her to Shanghai to watch the team at the Spring Playoffs, and she ends up accepting their offer and becomes a professional e-sports player, much to the dismay of her more conservative parents.
This means moving in with the rest of the team into the ZGDX home base, which is located in Shenzhen. (Fun fact: this is the area my ancestors are from.) Initially, not everyone is welcoming of her, particularly as she is the only female pro player in a league dominated by guys. This is so for some of her fellow team members as well as for the fans, who like to gossip about all things league-related on the E-sports Farm forum. But over time, and as she proves she has what it takes to be in the league and to be a professional, their opinions about her begin to change.
In addition, now that she’s a public figure, Tong Yao’s romantic history is put under the spotlight: her ex just happens to be Jian Yang, captain of CK, a rival team, and he seems to be still carrying a torch for her. But her eye has been caught by Lu Sicheng, the brilliant, handsome and so-rich-he-drives-an-Aston-Martin captain of ZGDX. (Cue hijinks.)
Of course, being an Asian drama, the series involves much more than just the romance plot; the cast is still an ensemble, after all. Tong Yao needs to learn to work with the rest of her teammates as much as they need to learn to work with her so that they can actually function as a team and progress through the tournament. In various episodes, teammates have little subplots that complement the main romance/e-sports plotlines—for example, K (my favourite character, played by the way-too-pretty Gao Han) has a fraught relationship with his parents, which provides a direct contrast to the normal parental disapproval surrounding young people entering e-sports as a profession.
In addition, various episodes explore the relationship between ZGDX and other professional teams in the league. Tong Yao’s best friend Chen Jinyang (not to be confused with her ex-boyfriend Jian Yang; I’m sure the distinction is clearer in Mandarin) is in an on-again-off-again relationship with Ai Jia, a member of rival team YQCB, leading some to question whether their relationship affects Ai Jia’s performance, and whether pro players should be allowed to have romantic relationships at all.
Also, YQCB has just hired a South Korean player named Lee Kun Hyeok (online handle: Hierophant) who used to be Lu Sicheng’s teammate back when they were both part of the South Korean team TAT. (Lee Kun Hyeok is played by Wang Yi Jun, who is Chinese but who is represented by South Korean entertainment company YG. I think all the Korean characters are actually played by Chinese actors, but it seems like some of them do speak Korean during the Korean bits, whereas Lu Sicheng’s Korean sounds dubbed.) The rivalry between Lu Sicheng and Lee Kun Hyeok makes for some interesting gameplay as ZGDX and YQCB progress through the tournament.
The presence of Korean players in the Chinese league also brings up all sorts of issues regarding privilege and game strategy, as well as the relationship between pro players and their fans. One subplot involves a South Korean pro player named Kun of the team FNC who was also a fellow teammate of Lu Sicheng’s during their time in TAT; who is known for being a bit of a flirt and having numerous girlfriends; and who develops a romantic interest in Tong Yao. Another subplot involves a South Korean DQ Five player named Xu Tailan who is cheating on his long-time girlfriend with a fan and who becomes enraged at Tong Yao for refusing to cover for him.
Surrounding all this is e-sports media and the online gossip mill, with various fans expressing their opinions about various things through forums or even during the livestreams that pro players must engage in as part of their contracts. It doesn’t take much for public opinion to turn against a player, and when it does, it can affect a player’s performance quite significantly.
Things I liked about the show:
The character of Tong Yao. I like how she develops resilience and grit as the series goes on, learning to keep a check on her temper and not to be swayed by what people say about her online. I like that she is actually good at what she does and she makes a number of meaningful contributions towards the team’s game play, solidifying her place as a key member of ZGDX and proving to others that girls can be good at e-sports.
The way the male characters support and even champion Tong Yao. Although at times she is sidelined for her gender, once she proves her worth and even makes a difference in the lives of other pro players outside the game, they become her strongest advocates. This goes for her fellow teammates, but also for other players in the league whose lives are touched by her in some way.
The Complementarianism on display throughout the series as Tong Yao and her teammates learn to work together to dominate in Onmyoji Arena. I feel like that’s not something we see very often on television.
The romance: it is seriously cute! Lu Sicheng in love is stupidly adorable and also really funny; his attempts to kiss Tong Yao had me in stitches. There are some scenes that are a little ridiculous, but overall, I like the way the romance plays out. I understand what he sees in her and how she makes his life better. I also like that the romance doesn’t dominate the show to the exclusion of everything else but is kept in its proper place without sacrificing the rest of the show’s elements.
The character of Lu Sicheng: in some respects, he is a lot like other romantic male leads in C-dramas—for example, Xiao Naihe in Love O2O, Xu Feng in Ashes of Love and even Ye Hua in Eternal Love). They’re all brilliant, handsome, clever, wealthy, a little cold at first, and ever so slightly authoritarian in almost a fatherly way. If there’s a problem, they go and take care of it, and they don’t seem to need anyone or anything. Lu Sicheng starts off that way but doesn’t continue, and it was refreshing to me to see a character like that admit that he isn’t perfect, that he was in the wrong and that he needs others.
The CG animation and action during some of the Onmyoji Arena fight scenes: it is glorious and beautiful, and it makes the game battles so much more interesting than what‘s actually on the players’ computer screens.
The recurrence of some of the minor characters. For example, in episode 1, Tong Yao and Chen Jinyang meet a female ZGDX fan while waiting in line outside the stadium when they are heckled by some male fans who poke fun at them and accuse them of being idol fangirls who know nothing about the game. Tong Yao puts them in their place, and once she joins ZGDX, that female fan is spotted at all their games, cheering her on.
The humour: oh my goodness, this series made me laugh so much! I loved the interactions between the characters—particularly Lu Sicheng and Tong Yao (who Lu Sicheng calls “Dwarf” or “Shorty” because she is smaller than him. I find that a little disturbing as she is actually a little taller than I am and I have never ever been called “short”), as well as between fellow team members K and Cat. (Cat never seems to understand what’s going on, whereas K understands perfectly but knows to leave well enough alone.) There is a joyfulness to the script that is similar to Love in the Moonlight.
The representation of different kinds of Asianness, which I realise might sound a little strange, but you must remember that China is predominantly a monoculture and (as least in my foreigner eyes) doesn’t do well with multiculturalism. Merxat, who plays Ming, coach and former player of ZGDX, stands out because of his Uighur heritage. There are scenes in which characters speak Korean to each other—sometimes in front of characters who don’t understand it, sometimes in Korea, sometimes in China. The game the characters play is thoroughly Japanese, and during fight scenes, the music is too, featuring the distinctive sound of the shamisen. It’s really refreshing to have different kinds of Asianness portrayed in juxtaposition with one another.
The soundtrack: I don’t listen to much Mandarin pop, but I liked most of the songs.
Things I thought could have been improved:
The body shaming: Cheng Xiao is super cute and pretty, but Tong Yao is only considered “average” in looks, and she is slammed for her appearance by online trolls, and is further shamed for buying a beauty camera for livestreaming. One member of ZGDX is named “Chubby” or “Fatty” and is usually shown eating. In contrast, K refuses food because he is worried about putting on weight. (Of course, all the talk of appearance and weight does not stymie the number of food-related scenes in the show; this is an Asian drama, after all.)
The costumes: I don’t know if 80s fashion is currently trendy in China, but I got a bit sick of the oversized brand name T-shirts and distressed denim the majority of the characters seemed to wear. Also, I don’t see why Tong Yao had to wear a short skirt as part of her team uniform when the others got to wear pants.
The realism: Tong Yao lives with six guys, and yet the ZGDX base is always as neat as a pin and no one complains about BO. There is, however, a scene when Tong Yao is flattened by period pain and the others are very understanding.
Xu Tailan’s treatment of Tong Yao: perhaps I am oversensitive to it, but when a female character is forcibly restrained by a male character in a C-drama (like Bai Qian by Ye Hua in Eternal Love and Jinmi by Runyu in Ashes of Love), sirens go off in my head. There is a scene where Xu Tailan confronts Tong Yao in a corridor, threatens her, and refuses to let her leave by grabbing her by the wrist and pinning her to the wall. I thought it might just be me, but I showed it to Ben and he was also disturbed by how menacing Xu Tailan was. Tong Yao gets out of that situation using her own wits, but she is punished by Lu Sicheng for how she does it later. Even though, in his own way, Lu Sicheng gets back at Xu Tailan for his treatment of Tong Yao later, I feel like had Lu Sicheng known what Tong Yao was facing in that scene, he would have been less judgemental of her and more vindictive towards Xu Tailan. Also, given the situation, the whole team should have rallied around Tong Yao to make sure she was never left alone.
Some of the subplots could have been developed more. I would have liked to have gotten to know some of the minor characters a little better—particularly the other team members. That’s something that was done very well in The King’s Avatar, but that series had 40 episodes in which to do it, whereas this only has 31.
There were contradictions in the script—for example, just how old Tong Yao is and whether players are allowed to date/date their teammates.
The gaming battles: at least in The King’s Avatar, the game avatars resembled their live action counterparts. In this, I was often confused about who was playing which Shikigami. This is also because the players change Shikigamis every game. To be fair, I think the director(s) did what they could to help the audience along, but I think they could have done a bit more. In addition, unless you know Onmyoji Arena, it was a little difficult to follow the game play. I thought the script and the dialogue did a decent job of helping the audience understand the big picture of what was going on from battle to battle, and how certain battles were different. But often it was bewildering trying to follow exactly what was actually happening on screen.
Although there is potential for Falling Into Your Smile to have a second season (the plot thread involving South Korean team TAT remains tantalisingly unresolved), it doesn’t sound like it’s going to get one. Which is a shame as I will have to look elsewhere to have my Asian e-sports drama itch filled.
I don‘t suppose there are any e-sports K-dramas out there …?
It’s been a particularly busy month lately, with various things drawing upon my time and attention. I feel like I’ve been composing this review in my head for about a month, but it’s only been 18 days since I last blogged. (Bless me, Father.)
Anyway, the focus of this post is a review of yet another K-Drama, but this time we get out of the Joseon era and instead spend some time in a much earlier period of Korea’s history in the kingdom of Silla (which existed from 57 BC to 935 AD). At the time, Silla was the smallest of the three kingdoms (the other two being Baekje and Goguryeo/Goryeo; the name “Korea” comes from the latter). Furthermore, the influence of China is more pronounced during this period than in the Joseon era: you can see it in the clothes and the hair.
This gives Hwarang quite a distinct look: unlike the Joseon period when men wore their hair tied up and fastened in place with a manggeon/circular headband, the men of Hwarang mostly wear their hair long and out. Unlike the Joseon period when aristocratic men and women wore hanbok (blouse shirt/jacket with full skirt for women; shirt/jacket with loose-fitting trousers for men), the clothing in Hwarang was more influenced by hanfu (the traditional clothing of ancient China).
But I’m getting ahead of myself (and a word of warning: minor spoilers follow). Hwarang: The Poet Warrior Youth is a TV series about the formation of the Hwarang or flower knights, an elite group of male warriors who fought on behalf of the kingdom, during the reign of King Jinheung of Silla. (Some historians say they had a key role in the formation of a unified Korea, but others say that’s debatable.) But while the premise of the show is rooted in history, the execution is most decidedly modern in flavour.
Although Hwarang has quite an ensemble cast, much of the storyline focuses on a young man named Dog Bird. He’s called that because he’s a bit like a dog (i.e. scrappy mongrel-ish) and a bit like a bird (i.e. able to leap massive distances in a single bound; let’s not think too hard about that one). He also has no family and therefore no name. But he does have a best friend—another young man named Mak Moon, who he grew up with in a little village in Silla.
Unlike Dog Bird, Mak Moon remembers his family and knows that he was separated from them. He thinks they’re in the capital, so Dog Bird accompanies him on a trip to go look for them. The problem is, it’s dangerous: if you’re in the capital, you need to have the credentials to be there, and if you’re a peasant and you’re found to be without credentials, you will be executed.
This is all part of the bone-rank system that undergirds Sillan society. (I have no idea if “Sillan” is the right adjective, but I’m using it anyway.) At the top are the so-called “sacred” bones: the royal family, and at this time, Queen Jiso is regent in place of her son, King Jinheung, who has lived most of his life in exile and is almost of age. Jinheung, who returns to the capital in the dead of night, is keen to take the throne, but his mother doesn’t feel that he’s ready and wants him to wait. Unfortunately the relationship between mother and son is strained so it’s not clear whether the queen is just trying to hold onto whatever power she already has or whether she is trying to stabilise the kingdom for when he ascends.
Certainly Queen Jiso has plans: she wants to form the Hwarang/the flower knights—an elite fighting force of beautiful young men (though it is never explained why they need to be beautiful) drawn from the children of the court officials (who are the “true” bones and head ranks) who will serve the king, and fight on behalf of him and the kingdom. She elevates Lord Kim We Hwa (who was a real person) from his lowly status and enlists him to train the Hwarang. But he, having no love for the queen, bears his own agenda.
Dog Bird and Mak Moon, wandering around the city, conducting their investigation into Mak Moon’s family, run into trouble at Okta House, the local “nightclub” where they run afoul of the aristocratic youth—the sons of the court officials. There’s two gangs—one led by Kim Su Ho, whose family supports the queen, and one led by Park Ban Ryu, whose family is dominated by the Prime Minister Park Young Shil, who secretly wants to overthrow the queen. Mak Moon gets into trouble when he thinks he has spotted a girl who might be his sister, and Dog Bird fishes him out of it.
Unfortunately Mak Moon’s bad fortune doesn’t end there: he happens to glimpse King Jinheung’s face, and because the Queen has made a decree that anyone who sees the King’s face must be executed, Mak Moon is hunted down and killed, despite Dog Bird’s efforts to protect him. And of course, this happens right at the point when their search finally unearths Mak Moon’s family, and Mak Moon’s father, Kim Ahn Ji, finds both his dead son and an injured Dog Bird, and takes Dog Bird in.
Kim Ahn Ji used to be an aristocrat/true bone, but was driven into poverty and now spends his days treating peasants with his formidable medical skills. He has a daughter named A Ro—Mak Moon’s sister—but because his children are the offspring of a servant woman (i.e. they don’t even rank in the bone-rank system), they are regarded as being “half-breeds”. (I find it interesting that this designation is not about race, but about caste.)
Kim Ahn Ji asks Dog Bird to stay with him and live as his son, taking his son’s name (Seon U) and being a brother to A Ro. Dog Bird accepts out of guilt, but also because he is consumed with thoughts of avenging Mak Moon and wants to track down the king who got his friend killed. But his actions land his adopted family in hot water with the Queen, who basically blackmails him into joining the Hwarang.
This is also basically how the sons of the officials also end up in Hwarang—through some behind-the-scenes machinations by Lord Kim We Hwa that I thought were rather clever and amusing. Furthermore, King Jinheung, sick of waiting around, decides he’s going to do something and cajoles Lord Kim We Hwa (who doesn’t know that he’s king) into letting him join too, much to his mother’s displeasure. This brings all the key players together in Hwarang House, where they must live, learn and train together to become the fighting force the Queen desires. (It should be noted that it’s at this point—when most of the cast are dressed in uniform—that figuring out who is who becomes a little more difficult.)
So I’ve spent roughly 1,000 words setting up the premise of the series and I’ve recounted about five episodes worth of plot (with a lot that I haven’t mentioned, by the way). It takes that long to establish the different characters—which is fair enough, given its size, but it is completely worth it. The thing the show does well is pit the characters against each other, putting them into situations where you understand the conflict and the stakes in context, and you see the characters grow. There is a love triangle (which I’m not going to talk about because I found it a little frustrating and couldn’t understand what the guys saw in the girl as she cried a lot and pouted like a child, which therefore meant I was never rooting for the main couple and largely didn’t care whether or not they ended up together). There are themes to do with caste and class that I found interesting and that work themselves out around what happens to Dog Bird, as well as a B storyline involving the brothers Seok Han Sung and Seok Dan Se. There’s the politics—not just internally in Silla with the Queen, the scheming Prime Minister and the court officials, but also with the neighbouring kingdom of Baekje. And there’s the camaraderie that develops between these young men from very different backgrounds who end up really banding together and forming the Hwarang of Queen Jiso’s dreams.
Given that this is essentially a show about beautiful young men, the cast is definitely full of eye candy. (There is even a scene in which people flock to the playing fields because beautiful people are playing beautiful soccer, as well as another where the Hwarang perform a dance that could have been lifted straight out of its K-Pop soundtrack.) Park Seo Joon as Dog Bird walks that fine line of dumb-peasant-who-just-happens-to-become-really-good-at-everything-he-puts-his-mind-to quite well. Go A Ra as Ah Ro is competent, although occasionally annoying. (She is fantastic as a storyteller, working hard to hold onto her audience, but her medical skills are a bit odd: I don’t understand how blowing on bleeding wounds helps anyone.) Park Hyung Sik of the KPop group ZE:A Five is charmingly vulnerable as the young King Jinheung. Sea Yea-ji as Princess Suk Myung is essentially playing her character in It’s Okay Not to Be Okay, and Kim Ji Soo as Queen Jiso did a fabulous job at playing a woman who was both sympathetic and also utterly infuriating in the way she manipulates the people around her.
But it was the other Hwarangs who stole the show for me: Do Ji Han as Park Ban Ryu; Choi Min Ho of K-Pop group Shinee as the adorable Kim Su Ho (who wears some very cool earrings as part of his costume, and one of the things I really enjoyed about the series was the bromance between him and Park Ban Ryu); Jo Yoon Woo as Kim Yeo Wool, who seems to enjoy challenging the sexuality of the other guys in his room; and Kim Tae Hyung of BTS as Seok Han Sung who has a half-breed brother in Kim Hyun Jun’s Seok Dan Se. Indeed, I thought, given the ensemble nature of the cast, it could have continued for several more seasons and I would have watched it, happily getting to know the other Hwarang and their complex relationships, familial and otherwise.
The other thing I really loved about the show was its production design—some of which you can view in the videos on the network’s show page. The costumes of the upperclass are gorgeous, of course, but some of the sets—the palace, Hwarang House, Okta House, the Dayiseo department store, even the Sutabaksu tea house—made the capital look like a beautiful, cosmopolitan place where I wouldn’t have minded living if I had been born as an aristocrat then. (Well, aside from the plumbing issues—though there are a couple of shower scenes where hot water is sent through bamboo pipes that had me questioning some of the show’s the historical accuracy).
Also, I found the ending satisfying-ish—as in I was about 80 per cent satisfied with it, and the other 20 per cent just had to do with a few plot threads and character arcs that don’t get resolved completely (which is why the show should have another season!) Things for the main trio—Dog Bird, A Ro and King Jinheung wrap up nicely in a way I wasn’t quite expecting (but was hoping for); it’s just some of the minor characters who are left hanging.
Two final things to finish this review: firstly, one of the reasons I really liked Hwarang is that some of its content and themes dovetail nicely with my novel. I’m writing about a residential magic school in an Asian-influenced fantasy world, and there were certain details that I made up because obviously there is no such thing in real life. But in this show, I got to see what a residential Sillan school might have been like—with combat training conducted in the court yard; bunk beds in the dormitories (did ancient Korea have bunk beds?!! It’s not that farfetched, is it?); students carrying little wooden trays with legs to their table in the dining room; students having to do their own chores—like washing their clothes in the river or mucking out the stables (so funny watching King Jinheung retching at the smell!); and students being given leave to visit their families every ten days (why ten?)
Furthermore, Dog Bird’s journey is similar to my protagonist: because he’s a half-breed, the other upperclass Hwarang don’t want him there. Plus he’s illiterate and bad at everything at first. The scenes were A Ro teaches Dog Bird to write were instructive as I have never been taught how to write with a brush. Also, it’s interesting how they sort of gloss over the fact that he only knows a very limited number of (Chinese) characters and has to master a lot more in order to master basic reading. (He thinks there are only 200 in the world and is quickly disabused of that notion.)
Second and final thing: around the time I was watching the show, I was also reading through 2 Samuel and some of the Psalms of David concurrently as part of the Robert Murray M’Cheyne Bible reading plan. Some of King Jinheung’s experiences—of having to hide his identity from others, and of being King only in name and not in authority—resonated with King David’s experience of having been anointed King of Israel by the prophet Samuel, but instead of ruling, he had to flee from King Saul, and live in hiding and in exile. That in turn led me to thinking of the David—King Jesus, who inherits King David’s throne, who was crowned with glory and honour at the cross (Heb 2:9), but who is not yet recognised and acknowledged by all as the true ruler of the world. Obviously the similarity ends there: King Jesus is very different to King Jinheung in that he experiences no doubts or insecurities about his role and his relationship to his subjects. But it was just interesting to think about the “now and not yet”-ness of the world and how the Son of God might be experiencing that now.
Life has been super crazy lately, but I haven’t forgotten my desire to review the third Joseon-era K-drama I’ve been watching lately (the first two being Moon Embracing the Sun and Love in the Moonlight, though perhaps I should also be counting The King’s Affection).
Like the dramas I’ve mentioned above, 100 Days My Prince (also known as Hundred-Day Husband) has a lot of the same roles. There is a King, but he is a shady character who stole the throne from his brother and whose first wife died as a result of the usurpation. There is a Queen—the King’s second wife—who has a son by the King and who is keen for that son to become Crown Prince, so she schemes behind the scenes. There is a Crown Prince (Lee Yul), but he is cold and resents his father for what he did, blaming him for the deaths of both his mother (the King’s first wife) and his first true love (more about her later). There is also a Crown Princess who is married to the Crown Prince (though he disdains her and refuses to consummate the marriage) and who also happens to be the daughter of the Prime Minister. And there is a Prime Minister (Prime Minister Kim again), who orchestrated the King’s path to the throne and who holds the entire court in his iron grip.
(Oh, there’s also a bodyguard, childhood friend of the Crown Prince, but he doesn’t have a very significant role and isn’t on screen for that long.)
100 Days My Prince begins when the Crown Prince was a child and was not the Crown Prince: instead, he was just Lee Yul, nephew to the previous king, who preferred to play than study, and who liked to bully the peasant kids around him. But a girl named Yoon Yi Seo intervenes, sticking up for his victims and rebuking him for his behaviour. Struck by her wisdom and compassion, Lee Yul turns over a new leaf and applies himself to his studies, vowing to one day marry Yi Seo.
Unfortunately for the childhood sweethearts, tragedy strikes: in the upheaval that results from Lee Yul’s father seizing the throne, Yi Seo’s father, the general and right-hand man of the previous king, is killed at the hands of Kim Cha Eon (who becomes Prime Minister Kim). Yi Seo and her older brother, Seok Ha, flee and are pursued. Lee Yul’s father ascends as King, his mother is killed (presumably also at the hands of Kim Cha Eon), and Lee Yul himself becomes Crown Prince against his will.
Fast forward 16 years. Lee Yul is now married to Prime Minister Kim’s daughter, Kim So Hye, the Crown Princess. But he has never forgotten Yi Seo, even though he believes her to be dead. Furthermore, he resents Prime Minister Kim so much for what the Prime Minister did that he refuses to consummate his marriage with the Crown Princess. He also keeps getting sick, and his discreet investigations into the cause of his illness point to the Prime Minister for reasons that aren’t entirely clear.
For her part, Yi Seo is now living as a peasant girl named Hong Shim in Songjoo village. She has been adopted by a kind commoner man named Yeon who is a widower, his wife and child having died a while ago. (If you’ve seen Love in the Moonlight, you’ll recognise him as Hong Ra On/Sam Nom’s father.) The night of the coup, Yi Seo was separated from her brother, but because they had promised to wait for each other at this particular bridge at the full moon, every month she makes the trek to the capital to search for him.
It is during one of these pilgrimages that she is spotted by the Crown Prince, who thinks he might be seeing a grown-up Yi Seo. She also comes to the attention of a lowly official and son of a concubine named Jung Jae Yoon, who, despite suffering from prosopagnosia or “face blindness” (which basically means he can’t recognise faces), seems to remember hers and therefore begins to fall for her. (Cue love triangle. You know there has to be one! Also, the prosopagnosia is an important plot point.)
Meanwhile, the Crown Prince is facing pressure from the royal court to consummate his marriage, with many officials suggesting that him doing so will break the terrible drought the country is facing. The Crown Prince is rightly sceptical and decrees that if that’s what it will take to bring rain, all the single people in the kingdom must get married within the month or face the consequences.
Unfortunately this has consequences for Yi Seo/Hong Shim, who is the oldest spinster in her village. The local lecherous nobleman makes her an offer to become his fifth wife, but she turns him down, hoping for another solution.
The King sends the Crown Prince to officiate a ritual for rain, but on the way, he is attacked by assassins and flees, accompanied only by his bodyguard. To keep the Crown Prince safe, the bodyguard switches clothes with him and leads their pursuers away. But the Crown Prince has an accident and ends up wounded and unconscious near Songjoo village.
He is found by Yeon, Yi Seo/Hong Shim’s adoptive father, and nursed back to consciousness. But as he is now suffering from amnesia, Yeon takes the advantage of the situation and tells him that he is actually a young man named Na Won Deuk, who is betrothed to marry Yi Seo/Hong Shim. Thus the two of them save Yi Seo/Hong Shim from getting flogged. Yi Seo/Hong Shim and the Crown Prince/Lee Yul/Na Won Deuk actually get married. But their relationship is far from harmonious, with the Crown Prince proving himself to be a rather useless peasant, landing himself in enormous debt (thanks to his upper class tastes!) with the local money lender not long after the wedding.
Meanwhile, the palace is in an uproar, trying to locate the missing Crown Prince, even though some factions within wish him dead. Jung Jae Yoon is pining for Yi Seo, even as he secretly investigates the Crown Prince’s disappearance and is unexpectedly made governor of Soongjoo Village. And Yi Seo’s older brother, Seok Ha, comes back on the scene—only now he seems to be at the beck and call of Prime Minister Kim …
There’s a lot of things I enjoyed about this drama. I liked the way the plot combines a number of Joseon drama/romance tropes into one coherent storyline: there’s the Prime Minister controlling the court, trying to undermine the king; there’s a romantic lead with amnesia; there are hidden identities; long-lost/childhood lovers are reunited without them realising (also a feature of Moon Embracing the Sun); there’s a marriage of convenience; and there are enemies who become lovers (watching Lee Yul and Yi Seo bicker is very entertaining, as well as instructive about how marriages were supposed to work under Confucianism). I liked that this drama focused on the lives of the peasants and how hard things were for them under the heel of the nobility. (I really felt for Yi Seo, anxious over the financial stress the Crown Prince’s bad decisions cause her family.) The minor characters are delightful and humourous, and do well to portray village and community life where everyone is so reliant on one another. And I liked watching Lee Yul and Yi Seo gradually fall for one another and discover the truth about each other, even as they try to deny their feelings. (There’s also a sly dig at romance novels, with the Crown Prince taking a job copying out works of popular fiction—including a volume titled Fifty Shades of Mr Gray.) Although there are aspects of the main story and the subplots involving some of the minor characters that are grim and tragic, these are balanced by the lighter fare in both the romance storyline and the villagers. Furthermore, justice comes to those who deserve it, the love triangle does not end badly, and the ruse the King pulls that finally brings about the Happily Ever After was, I thought, rather satisfying as it brought aspects of the story full circle.
The one quibble I had with the drama was the final scene: although it hints at the Happily Ever After and tries to tie up everything in a neat bow, I still wanted a little bit more. Unlike Moon Embracing the Sun where we’re given a glimpse of life several years later, 100 Days My Prince just ends. There were a couple of plot arcs and character threads that I felt were unresolved—such that the final episode left me unsatisfied and full of questions. It reminded me a bit of how Eternal Love ends: the lovers are reunited and get their Happily Ever After, but their union is not quite established in community the way it should be—which wouldn’t matter if Lee Yul and Yi Seo were just commoners, but he is the Crown Prince, for goodness’ sake.
I realise this sort of thing might only bother me. But if you happen to watch this one, let me know what you think and whether this annoys you too.
So following on from my review of Moon Embracing the Sun, I wanted to talk about Love in the Moonlight, which is a much lighter, happier show.I’m not a big fan of the title and don’t see why the translators couldn’t have just stuck to the original title of the book from which the series is derived: Moonlight Drawn by Clouds (by Yoon Yi Soo and Kim Hee Kyung). The image is a metaphor: in this case, the moon is the King and the clouds are the people, and the idea is that of a King “drawn with the will of the people”.
This is important to remember, because at first glance, Love in the Moonlight seems like another Joseon-era romance. Oh, it certainly has the trappings of a palace drama much like Moon Embracing the Sun. But it’s not just that. There is a King on the throne, but he’s a bit unstable, having been very affected by the peasant uprising 10 years ago that left thousands dead. There’s a Queen, but she’s a second wife, daughter of the Prime Minister; the first Queen, mother of the Crown Prince, passed away under suspicious circumstances. There’s the villain of the piece—the Prime Minister (Prime Minister Kim, this time), who pretty much controls the court and prevents the King from doing any good. There’s a Princess, sister to the Crown Prince—Princess Myeong Eun, who is portrayed by one of the few plus-size actresses to appear in a K-Drama (though—spoiler: she undergoes a makeover). And of course, there’s the male lead: the Crown Prince—Lee Yeong—who is based on a real person: Crown Prince Hyomyeong, who lived 1809-1830, who was famous for being a very talented writer, composer and choreographer, and who died very tragically at the age of 20. (His death is not part of this drama though. I wonder why the authors decided to use a real historical figure instead of just making one up.)
In addition, the Crown Prince has a handsome bodyguard, Kim Byung Yeon, who grew up with the prince, as well as with Kim Yoon Sung, the only male heir of Prime Minister Kim’s family (the third side of the love triangle). When they were children, Yoon Sung was once the Crown Prince’s best friend. But now that they are older, they are estranged because of Prime Minister Kim and the Prime Minister’s suspected involvement in the death of the former Queen.
“But what of our female lead?” I hear you ask. Good question! In this drama, she’s a young lady named Hong Ra On who has spent most of her life disguised as a boy named Hong Sam Nom. It’s for reasons she doesn’t quite understand, but her mother said it had to do with her safety. Now at 18 years old, she has lost her mother and is living with a travelling performer who found her just after the peasant uprising 10 years ago and took her in. But he’s sick and feels guilty for being such a burden on her. She makes money by writing novels, giving out relationship advice (for which she has a particular talent) and even writing love letters for people. However, she’s also in debt with some very bad people.
The series opens on the Crown Prince, who isn’t really taking his role as the monarch’s heir seriously. But when he finds out that his sister, Princess Myeong Eun, has been receiving love letters from a stranger, he resolves to put an end to what he sees as an unsuitable relationship. The thing is, Hong Sam Nom has been writing those letters, and her patron begs her to go meet with the Princess (who she doesn’t know is the object of his affection) to call it off and to apologise for falling for her in the first place. Even though Hong Sam Nom is a commoner, she dresses up as an aristocrat to attend the meeting and runs into the Crown Prince, who is in disguise. This confuses her initially as she thought she was going to meet a woman. For his part, the Crown Prince is suspicious of Hong Sam Nom and wants to find out what noble house she belongs to. To extricate herself from the situation, Hong Sam Nom causes them both to fall into a deep hole, and the only way out is for the Crown Prince to hoist her up on his shoulders so she can climb out and go for help. She doesn’t, though: she leaves him in the pit, promising that if they should ever meet again (and you can tell she doesn’t think they will), she will do whatever he says.
Unfortunately Hong Sam Nom’s matchmaking activities have gotten her in trouble and there are people after her. While on the run, she encounters Kim Yoon Sung, grandson of Prime Minister Kim, who works out pretty quickly that Hong Sam Nom is a girl and not a boy, and who helps her. (He also falls for her later, though he pretends not to know her secret.) This respite is short-lived; her debt collectors catch up with her and she is sold to the palace as a eunuch. (The scene where she manages to avoid castration is both hilarious and mildly horrifying in that this is what they used to do to people.) And then when she is forced to enter the palace, she runs into the Crown Prince again (not knowing he is the Crown Prince). He, remembering her promise to him, makes it his mission to help her pass all the eunuch examinations so that she has to stay. And then over time, she and the Crown Prince begin to fall for one another …
Of course, no love story is easy, and there is plenty of drama and heartbreak as their relationship unfolds against the backdrop of palace intrigue/Prime Minister Kim’s machinations, the return of the peasant uprising from 10 years ago, and the truth about Hong Sam Nom’s/Ra On’s identity, which threatens to split the two lovers apart.
There is a lot I love about this show. The leads are absolutely adorable: Kim Yoo Jung (who plays the younger version of Heo Yeon Woo, the female lead in Moon Embracing the Sun) is gorgeously expressive, regardless of whether she’s doing a comedic scene or a dramatic one. She doesn’t quite pass for a boy (everyone keeps going on about how she’s too pretty), but she does a decent job at playing one, and clearly seems to relish some of the freedoms that passing as a male gives her.
Park Bo Gum, who I had never seen before in a K-Drama, makes a wonderfully handsome Crown Prince, and the way he brings out the prince’s emotions throughout the course of their turbulent love affair makes him very deserving of the awards he won for that role.
The chemistry between those two are part of what make the series so very addictive, and I could watch the scenes where they come to know the truth about each other over and over again, and not get sick of them. (The scene when Hong Sam Nom learns that Lee Yeong is the Crown Prince is absolutely hilarious!) Also, unlike Jung Ji Woon, the male lead in The King’s Affection, the Crown Prince, in the midst of falling for Hong Sam Nom/Ra On does actually seem conflicted about the idea that he might be gay, instead of glossing over the issue (though that doesn’t last very long).
The leads aside, my favourite cast member is Kwak Dong Yeon (who makes a brief appearance in very memorable episode of It’s Okay Not to Be Okay as the son of an assemblyman who has been diagnosed with mania). Dong Yeon plays the bodyguard, Kim Byung Yeon, who is trusted and valued by the Crown Prince but who is also secretly working for the resistance. Although he doesn’t say much, he does a lot of acting with his eyes and his body, and you can really see how conflicted he is, torn between his loyalty to the cause, and his friendship with both the Crown Prince and Hong Sam Nom/Ra On. (There’s a lovely scene at the end of the second episode when the three of them are enjoying a chicken dinner outside, sitting on a pyung sang—that is, one of those square wooden benches found in the yards of Korean houses—and Hong Sam Nom/Ra On is waxing lyrical about how unpopular the Crown Prince is among the palace staff while Byung Yeon is trying not to laugh and failing, much to the Crown Prince’s disgust.) Also, the way Byung Yeon puts out candlelight—and the way Hong Sam Nom/Ra On complains about it—had me in stitches.
The other minor characters are also terrific and well-rounded. I particularly liked Cho Ha Yeon, daughter of Minister Cho, who becomes Hong Sam Nom’s/Ra On’s rival, but not in a way that reduced her to a two-dimensional stereotype like the Queen in Moon Embracing the Sun. In addition, if you’ve seen Moon Embracing the Sun, you’ll notice some of those actors popping up in this—for example, the actor who played the King and the actress who played the Chief Shaman.
Secondly, I appreciated seeing palace life from the perspective of the eunuchs and ladies-in-waiting—something that was not really present in Moon Embracing the Sun. These are the people who work closely with the royal family, tending to their needs and carrying out their wishes. But I’d be willing to bet very little is known about them and their inner lives. I liked learning small historical details about them—for example, I did not know that women who serve in the palace are considered property of the King and are not allowed to have relationships with other men. There were little shots of what the palace kitchens were like (I find it interesting that the food is usually cooked outdoors). Also, there’s a couple of attempted poisonings, and you can see why Korean royalty were paranoid and ate off metal tableware using metal chopsticks in the hopes of detecting dangerous substances.
Thirdly, I liked how the romance plot tied in so well with the larger story about the kingdom and the different factions wrestling for control of it. The lovers’ suffering always feels organic instead of forced, and at times, I did wonder how on earth things were going to result in a Happily Ever After.
That said, there were two things that made me unhappy. Firstly, as usual, the love triangle doesn’t end well. I don’t know if that’s a spoiler, but it never seems to end well for the extraneous side—which is a shame, because I really liked Kim Yoon Sung, and he could have had a happy ending. Secondly—and this is my main critique of the series—I liked the way the whole thing unfolded up until the very last 20 minutes when everything felt really rushed. Apparently the network wanted the creators to make 20 episodes, but the actors had only been booked for 18, so they only made 18. I think they could have used at least one more to tie up all the loose ends. This is why the ending feels less like a Happily Ever After and more like a Happily For Now, and I found it less satisfying than Moon Embracing the Sun. That said, perhaps my expectations were wrong: this is not solely about the core romantic relationship, but also about the King being drawn by the will of the people. In that respect, at least, I guess it sort of lived up to its title, and perhaps I am just being greedy in wanting a little more.
Final thing: apparently this drama is leaving Netflix on 15 May, which is sad. You can also find it on Viki Rakuten, but not if you’re in Australia (or at least not yet. Perhaps that will change once it leaves Netflix). If you do check it out, I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.
If you were to go to a producer and say, “I want to make a movie with dialogue mostly in Mandarin and broken English about a middle age Chinese woman named Evelyn who gave up everything—including her parents’ acceptance—to migrate to the US with her husband Waymond and run a coin laundry, where they raise their daughter Joy, who is clearly struggling with living as a child of two worlds and who seeks wider acceptance for her relationship with her girlfriend—particularly during the family Chinese New Year celebration, when Evelyn’s super traditional and rather frail father has come to stay, but of course, this is happening at the same time as Evelyn and Waymond are being audited by the IRS, plus Waymond is filing for divorce and trying to talk to Evelyn about it, and then Evelyn gets drawn into a crusade by the Alpha universe to save the multiverse from the evil schemes of a shadowy figure named Jobu Tupaki, who looks suspiciously like Joy and who wants to destroy it all—and by the way, there’s a universe where everyone has sausages for fingers, as well as a universe where no life evolved, though there are a couple of talking rocks, and also, could we get some googly eyes?”, I reckon no movie producer in their right mind would ever have wanted to make this film.
And yet somehow, the Daniels (Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert) got it made and it is BRILLIANT.
First of all, the cast is phenomenal. Michelle Yeoh makes the seamless transition from down-on-her-luck so-very-Chinese-in-only-the-way-Chinese-mums-can-be Evelyn to absolutely awesome take-the-room-apart kung fu master of the multiverse. Stephanie Hsu matches her as Joy, undergoing more over-the-top costumes changes than a Lady Gaga concert. The one who blew me away the most, though, was Ke Huy Quan as Waymond, making the leap from mild-mannered/painfully submissive and pathetic Waymond to take-charge/swoon-worthy Alpha Waymond sometimes multiple times within the one scene. (Special mention should be made of Harry Shum Jr, whose scenes could have easily ended up on the cutting room floor but were among the most enjoyable, even as they were crazy. SO CRAZY!)
Second of all, although the film is a high-concept save-the-multiverse science fiction action adventure, it is also a rumination on the roads less travelled and the choices that make us who we are AS WELL AS being a smaller drama about one particular family struggling with their own very particular problems that span generations, encompass cultural issues and are characteristic of the Chinese American migrant experience, where east clashes with west. If that sounds like a lot, it is. And yet the script never loses the details, it never simplifies the issues, and it never lets go of the tension, even in the midst of the more ridiculous scenes that had me in absolute stitches, gasping for air. In the hands of other directors, things could have easily spun out of control, leaving the audience lost. Not here: you know exactly what’s going on at all times, even during scenes that cut rapidly back and forth with other scenes—other universes.
Thirdly and finally, although there is a lot of violence and some amazing martial arts on display, the way the plot is resolved is as unexpected as it is beautiful, tying together everything I’ve just talked about—the science fiction elements to do with saving the multiverse, Evelyn’s feelings about her life and where she has come to be at this point in it, and even the conflicts in the core relationships between the principle characters. “Everything Everywhere All at Once” comes together in a neat bow that is both emotionally satisfying and hugely poignant. I couldn’t have asked for more.
I’ve been escaping reality lately by watching a whole slew of Korean Joseon-era dramas. Sometimes I think watching period dramas is a lot like watching fantasy: everything is different enough to seem like a completely different world—from the clothing to the social structures to the food to the customs and so on. (Certainly Bridgerton is pure fantasy that seems to completely ignore Britain’s colonial history.)
There are three that I’ve completed recently and I thought I’d review them over subsequent blog posts. (Sorry Facebook friends: I’m posting these reviews to my blog because my blog is way easier to search than my Facebook page.) I did consider putting all three reviews into one post, but that would make it waaaay too long. Nevertheless, I’m hoping I can still compare and contrast them, because I find the commonalities between them quite interesting. I don’t know if the Joseon K-Drama is an actual genre the way that wuxia and xanxia novels/films/TV shows are in Chinese culture—it probably is and I’m just ignorant—but it’s interesting identifying some of the tropes and how each series uses them.
The Joseon era of Korean history (from my very meagre knowledge of the subject) lasted for about five hundred years—1392 to 1897. From what I can gather, it was a pretty turbulent time, with Korea existing as a vassal state to China, on the one hand, and being invaded by Japan on the other.
Moon Embracing the Sun was adapted from the novel by Jung Eun Gwol and contains many of the trappings of a Joseon K-Drama: a King is on the throne, but his rule is unstable due to various factions within his court—the largest one led by one particular court official with a lust for power, who often is/becomes the Prime Minister; the King’s successor, the Crown Prince, is usually the romantic male lead in the A plot, who often clashes with his father because their desires and goals do not align; there is a Queen, who may or may not be the Crown Prince’s mother (though in this particular drama she is); there’s a Crown Princess, who is not necessarily the romantic female lead (more about her later; it’s complicated); there’s a Princess, the Crown Prince’s sister, who carries the B plot; and there’s the third side of the love triangle involving the romantic leads (though depending on the drama, there can be multiple triangles involving various characters).
Moon Embracing the Sun begins with a bit of a prologue: the Queen, concerned about her son’s succession to the throne, orders the assassination of her stepson, the King’s son by a concubine, and enlists Lord Yoon Dae Hyung to help bring it about. Unfortunately the hit is witnessed by A-ri, a shaman of the Royal Astrology House who grew up with the stepson and knew that the bastard prince had no interest in becoming King.
A-ri is discovered and pursued, and in her flight, she runs into the pregnant wife of the Chief Scholar, who helps her and hides her. In return, A-ri vows to protect the unborn child and prophesies about the child, who she claims will have a noble, but tragic fate. Here’s where the imagery of the series title comes into play: the “sun” is the King; the “moon” is the Queen. But there can only be one sun and one moon. Two suns spells instability for the kingdom; two moons spell instability for the King. She predicts a bloodbath in the palace, and the rest of the series plays out in the shadow of this prophecy.
Unfortunately A-ri is captured, tortured and sentenced to be executed. Before her death by dismemberment (definitely not a nice way to go!), A-ri enlists her best friend and fellow trainee at the Royal Astrology House Jang Nok Yeong to look after the Chief Scholar’s child in her stead.
Fast forward 13 years. The Chief Scholar’s child is born: Heo Yeon Woo, a girl of great beauty and singular intelligence and wisdom. (As a 13-year-old, she’s played by the absolutely adorable Kim Yoo Jung, who goes on to do Love in the Moonlight, which I will review next.) Jang Nok Yeong ascends to become the Chief Shaman of the Royal Astrology House and therefore at the beck and call of the former Queen, who is now the Queen Dowager. In the absence of any competition, the Queen Dowager’s son has become King and has sired three children: a son by a concubine (Prince Yang Myung), the Crown Prince (Prince Lee Hwon) who is two years younger than Prince Yang Myung, and Princess Min Hwa. In addition, the Queen Dowager’s murderous accomplice, Lord Yoon Dae Hyung, has become Prime Minister (Prime Minister Yoon).
(Hopefully you’re still with me after all those names! For the purposes of the A plot, the most important ones you need to remember are Heo Yeon Woo, the Chief Scholar’s Daughter, and the Crown Prince.)
One fine day, Heo Yeon Woo goes to visit the palace with her mother because her older brother, Heo Yeom, who came first in the academic exam, is being honoured, along with the other graduates of the civil service examination. (This includes Kim Jae Woon, who came first in martial arts and who was childhood friends with Heo Yeom and Prince Yang Myung. I only mention him because he eventually fills the role of the Crown Prince’s bodyguard. Strangely enough in these dramas, the bodyguard is the only male at court who doesn’t wear a manggeon/circular headband, and his wild hair usually makes him appear more attractive. See Kim Ga On, the bodyguard in The King’s Affection.)
During the ceremony, Heo Yeon Woo becomes distracted by a butterfly and decides to chase it, which takes her into another part of the palace grounds. There she runs in the 15-year-old Crown Prince, Lee Hwon. (The younger version of him is played by Yeo Jin Goo, who was the hotel manager in Hotel Del Luna.)
At first, Heo Yeon Woo thinks that Crown Prince is a thief, because he’s carrying a bag full of stuff and is trying to escape the palace by climbing over its walls. He seeks to defend himself, saying that he just wants to go visit his brother, Prince Yang Myung, who has been sent to live outside of the palace—perhaps by the Queen Dowager, who is concerned, again, about the line of succession. But the Crown Prince does not reveal his identity to Heo Yeon Woo—at least, not at first, fearing that if he does, she would change the way she is treating him. Instead, he begins to fall for her, thanks to her intelligence and wisdom, and very strong sense of what is right and wrong. Nevertheless, before she leaves the palace grounds that day, he finds a way to send her a note with a riddle that causes her to work out who he is.
Now for the love triangles—of which there are two: not only does the Crown Prince fall for Heo Yeon Woo, but his older brother Prince Yang Myung is also in love with her, having been acquainted with her through his friendship with her older brother, Heo Yeom. For her part, Heo Yeon Woo has no interest in Prince Yang Myung, but instead develops an affection for the Crown Prince—so much so that when the time comes for the Crown Prince’s marriage to be arranged, she willingly becomes a candidate, even though she knows that if she fails to become the Crown Princess, she can never marry.
Of course, Heo Yeon Woo isn’t the only candidate, and there are forces at work behind the scenes, trying to make sure that the future Queen is someone who can be controlled—who can influence the future King in the “right” direction. The Queen Dowager and Prime Minister Yoon put forward Prime Minister Yoon’s daughter, Yoon Bo Kyung, who takes one look at the palace and decides she wants to live there. She and Heo Yeon Woo are placed in the company of Princess Min Hwa to befriend there, but there’s a rivalry between them from the start—particularly as Princess Min Hwa favours Heo Yeon Woo because she is in love with Yeon Woo’s older brother, Heo Yeom. Shaman Jang Nok Yeong sees immediately that the two girls are the two moons who will bring instability to the King.
The Crown Prince is desperate to marry Heo Yeon Woo, but unfortunately he has no say in the matter as royal marriages are usually decided by the Queen Dowager. The way he gets around this is quite inventive, though, and fortunately for the two young lovers, Heo Yeon Woo passes all the tests and becomes the Crown Princess.
This does not please the Queen Dowager and Prime Minister Yoon, though, and they enlist Shaman Jang Nok Yeong to curse her with magic. The Royal Astrology House is dependent on the patronage of the Queen Dowager for its survival in an age of Confucianism, you see, and so this places Shaman Jang Nok Yeong in a very difficult position. On the one hand, she needs to appease the Queen Dowager or risk the destruction of her order; on the other hand, she made a promise to A-ri to watch over and protect Heo Yeon Woo. Her solution is to pull something of a Romeo and Juliet: she casts evil spells on Heo Yeon Woo that make her seriously ill—so ill that she is forced to leave the palace, much to the Crown Prince’s distress—and then she gives her a potion that makes her seem dead. Shaman Jang Nok Yeong hopes to give her a fresh start, and at first, things certainly seem that way—particularly as, after Heo Yeon Woo is revived, she loses all memory of her former life and is taken away by Shaman Jang Nok Yeong to become her apprentice.
Fast forward eight years to episode 7 (and I promise I’ll stop recounting the plot in a moment). The entire cast changes and that’s quite disconcerting as you then have to get used to who the new actors are playing. The Crown Prince has now ascended to the throne as King. He has been married against his will to Prime Minister Yoon’s daughter, but he disdains his Queen and refuses to sleep with her, despite of the pressure his court places on him, because he still mourns for Heo Yeon Woo. Prime Minister Yoon controls his court and works against him, on the one hand; the Queen Dowager, who is still alive, also tries to manipulate things behind the scenes from her end. Prince Yang Myung still isn’t that welcome in the palace, and the relationship between him and the King is strained. (The Prince also still mourns Heo Yeon Woo and has also not moved on.) The King’s only friends are his chief body guard, Kim Jae Woon, and his chief eunuch. (His interactions with his chief eunuch are one of the few moments where the series feels more lighthearted; otherwise, it’s all very serious and tense, much like The King’s Affection.) Princess Min Hwa, however, has been given her wish and has married Heo Yeom.
The Prime Minister, sensing the Queen Dowager’s influence is waning, is seeking more power for himself. The Queen Dowager, for her part, is keen to establish her dominance, and summons Shaman Jang Nok Yeong back to court. This brings Heo Yeon Woo (now known as Shaman Weol) back into the palace—and back into the orbit of the King, who has never forgotten her. But it’s been eight years and she still has amnesia …
Moon Embracing the Sun, much like The King’s Affection is a very tense drama. There’s not a lot of lightheartedness to it, aside from a few of the interactions between the characters. (The King, for example, likes to tease his chief eunuch by implying that he and his chief bodyguard are romantically involved.) That said, I thought the cast was excellent: the younger actors in the lead roles were particularly charming, and I could see why both the Crown Prince and Prince Yang Myung fell for Heo Yeon Woo in the first place, and why they mourned her for so long. Their older counterparts do a good job, and I did like Kim Soo Hyun who plays the older Crown Prince/King, even if he does get a bit shouty and impatient at times. (Kim Soo Hyun was the male lead in It’s Okay Not to be Okay, which, unfortunately, I have never reviewed on this blog, but it is excellent. Also, not a Joseon K-drama. I think Moon Embracing the Sun was his breakout role.) Ha Ga In is lovely as Heo Yeon Woo/Shaman Weol (though, in my opinion, overshadowed by her younger counterpart), and while the amnesia plot is somewhat frustrating, it’s also very satisfying in the third act when the truth finally comes to light and the suffering of the leads is vindicated. The more minor characters I have not mentioned here are also terrific because they are fully fleshed out with their own smaller arcs, and at times, they are even given more to do than just aid the leads.
The court politics were not that interesting to me, though they did spur a lot of the tension that plays out in the backdrop of the A plot love story. I did like that much was made of the morality of characters’ decisions, with those decisions determining whether they will walk the path of righteousness or no, and therefore whether justice will be eventually be served (even K-dramas can’t escape fate!) Princess Min Hwa’s arc in particular was very well done, though devastating.
The part that disappointed me was what happened with the extraneous sides of the two love triangles: the Prime Minister’s daughter/Queen Yoon Bo Kyung never really stands a chance, and Prince Yang Myung never finds happiness (though his actions are very heroic).
But I did like that the series tied things up well at the very end, particularly as not all K-Dramas do that: after all that tragedy, you do actually find out what happens to all the characters. There is a reckoning, there is forgiveness and there is even redemption. But there is also peace and the re-establishment of order. Things are made right in the end, and while not everyone gets a happy ending, there is still a happily ever after.
Weeks go by when I think about blogging, but don’t actually blog. (My inner drill sergeant would like to point out that if I wasn’t such a perfectionist, I might actually blog more.) Given the current COVID situation, I keep having the impulse to do some sort of life update about how COVID has affected us. But I don’t want to do that—well, not necessarily.
The summary is that this year so far has felt very … haphazard, for want of a better word. Just when I think I have a handle on life, something happens that throws the balance of everything off again. Part of me is impatient because I want to be doing things and there seem to be so many obstacles to doing things—responsibilities, my never-ending To Do list, COVID messiness, my fatigue. Part of me feels like there’s some sort of life lesson here—about learning to work within your own limitations, being content in whatever situation you find yourself (Philippians 4:11, anyone?), accepting the things over which you have no control.
And yet.
I feel like I’ve been running a bit of a marathon since mid-February. I had my normal work commitments. But on top of those, I attended GenreCon (conference for genre writers) virtually and enjoyed it. (The title of this post is the one big thing I took away from it, which I will get to in a moment.)
(Here are some screen caps of GenreCon’s Gather environment. I loved the secret room that you access through the fireplace.)
I organised family events to celebrate Miss 7 becoming Miss 8. I participated in the Futurescapes Writers Workshop, which meant doing a heap of reading beforehand and getting up at 6am three days in a row. (I am definitely not a morning person.) I went straight from that to running the first live event for the year for work (the first in-person and livestreamed one in almost a year) as well as organising Miss 8’s birthday party with a few friends, dealing with an infected cyst on my neck and working on Miss 11’s high school applications. (Yeah, I can’t believe she’s almost in high school already either.)
And then on the back of all that, Miss 11 came down with COVID and we went into isolation.
It’s more than seven days later and we’re out. Mostly; NSW Health advises those who have been exposed to COVID to avoid people and indoor settings for at least seven more days. So I’ve only been doing school drop-offs and pick-ups, and avoiding the gym. Though Miss 11 was definitely COVID-positive, the rest of us never returned a positive test—RAT or PCR—and our symptoms have been various and very short-lived. So I don’t know if I can say if I’ve had the dreaded plague or not. Is my fatigue COVID-related or February/March madness-related? Dunno.
In an alternate COVID-free universe, I imagine my life running much as it did last year before we went into lockdown in July: I managed to keep my working hours to about three days a week so that I could spend Tuesdays and Fridays working on my novel, handling the housework and all the household admin, and doing all my volunteer stuff (uniform shop, looking after Book Club for the school, church commitments, which included leading Bible Study and doing band for the morning service).
In reality, this year hasn’t looked like that at all. I had one very lovely day a couple of weeks ago when I did school drop-off and then went and wrote in cafés and libraries all day until school pick-up. That was an anomaly and I despair of ever getting that again.
Three-salad lunch during a rare productive writing day.
All right. I’m rambling. I know I am.
Back to the post title. One of the best things of attending GenreCon was this seminar by YA crime/thriller writer Ellie Marney called “Finding time to write when you’re busy”. I cannot express how much I appreciated it and how grateful I am that she delivered it at just the right time. In addition, it really meant a lot to me that Marney was coming at the topic from the position of working part-time, writing part-time and being a mum of four boys, instead of a privileged male author who has someone else to take care of all the house and kid stuff for him and who lays down the law about writing every day just because, without taking the time to explore why that can be impossible for some. Marney didn’t lay down the law; instead, she gave us some things to try, with the caveat that not every tip will suit our particular situation and that some things will only work for a time, and then it’s worth trying something else. I’m not going to regurgitate all her tips because I tweeted them all in this thread (but go read; they’re worth checking out).
I just want to share a couple things she said—specifically,
3. Use your time confetti (my term, not hers)—e.g. time spent waiting in doctor’s offices or for trains or Saturday sport. Bring your laptop or notebook, and use those short chunks of time for writing.
Even better, plan how you’re going to use them for short tasks, e.g. the dialogue for a particular scene; how to describe this house; researching something. Don’t expect to sink too deep into your project during this time, but use it well.
and
4. (Related): plan ahead what you want to get done with the time you have. Ellie says if she knows she has three 40-minute chunks during the week and two hours on the weekend, she will use those 40-minute chunks to do things like Point 3 (above) so that she is ready and primed when she gets to the two-hr block.
and
6. Thinking is also writing, plus you can do it anywhere. It’s especially good when you’re doing repetitive tasks (e.g. housework) that don’t require your brain so much.
Most of all, think about your characters as that is always going to be enjoyable, rich and useful.
and finally,
12. Don’t exhaust yourself. It’s fine to give yourself a break sometimes. Writing is important, but not as important as your physical and mental health, and your close relationships. Fallow time can also be helpful and inspirational.
Maybe you’re not blocked, you’re just tired.
Marney’s seminar highlighted for me that I’m not very intentional about my time; I tend to fritter it away instead of using it constructively. Don’t get me wrong: I’m a fairly structured and organised person—at least in my professional life—and while I manage to get a lot done by putting certain systems in place to keep the housework from spiralling out of control and getting the major things done, I can be lazy about all the other stuff.
Like writing. I feel frustrated with myself because theoretically, I have two days in which to work on my novel. But instead, I don’t use them well or they get filled with other things. (Or maybe, as Marney said, I’m just tired. I’m tired now, and have given myself a much-needed day off today to just laze around, read books, catch up on my Twitter feed and write this blog post.)
I’m trying to be more intentional about my writing time. I’ve taken Marney’s advice to heart about using my time confetti better. I even bought a steering wheel desk so that I can write in the car because I always get to the school early for pick-up just to score a good parking spot.
My steering wheel desk. I’ve tried it out once and it works pretty well for longhand; not sure about laptop yet.
I’ve even tried to be a bit more organised with writing the novel by uploading key world building documents (maps, character lists, timetables, the outline of this chapter, etc.) to Google Drive so I can access them wherever I am. (Duh, not sure why I haven’t done that earlier.)
But I’m not just being more intentional about my writing time; I am also making myself be more intentional about my leisure time. I don’t know if this fatigue is because of all the energy I’ve been expending lately on various things or because of COVID (though one good thing I can say about isolation is that sleeping in is excellent and highly recommended). I do know that I continually shortchange myself by continuing to push myself while tired. It doesn’t mean that I will never do it again; I know I will because I’m stubborn and stupid that way. But I am starting to take more of a leaf out of whoever it was who said small breaks more often can go a long way to fuel the rest of your life. (I know it was Alex Soojung-Kim Pang who said something like that in Rest: Why you get more done when you work less, a book that annoyed me because it was filled with privileged men who had other people to look after their households and children. But he was more concerned with vacations, whereas someone else advocated little breaks throughout the work day as a valuable tool for getting through the workday. I wish I had Google for my brain as I can’t remember who it was.)
Right. This seems as good a point as any to end this messy, imperfect post. Until next time, whenever that is.
NB: This is an edited transcript and has not been checked for accuracy. I apologise for any errors.
Introduction
[Music]
Karen Beilharz: Welcome to Hiveminded Podcast, an occasional and seasonal podcast about the creative arts and the people who create them. My name is Karen Beilharz and I’m coming to you from Sydney, Australia.
During this mini season of the podcast, we are focusing on comic creators. As the COVID-19 pandemic has shut down all the conventions and zine fairs where I would normally see my friends in the Australian comic scene, I thought instead it would be fun to catch up with them and interview them about comics, and ask them all the little niggly questions I’ve always wanted to ask them about their projects and their creative processes.
Louie Joyce is an award-winning comics creator, illustrator and rollerblader who hails from Wollongong in New South Wales, Australia. He is known for his work on Haphaven with Norm Harper, which won the 2020 Silver Ledger Award, and which is about a superstitious girl named Alex who steps on a crack and actually does break her mother’s back, so she embarks on a quest to save her; Past the Last Mountain with Paul Allor, which won the 2017 Silver Ledger Award and which is about an unlikely family of a dragon, a troll and a faun who are on the run from the US government, who have rounded up and imprisoned all the fantasy creatures that live among us; the sci-fi one-shot Astral; the black and white silent comic A Life in the City; and his self-published collections of short comics and illustrations, Mishmash and Hodgepodge.
René Pfitzner is a comic artist and writer, and former animator and storyboarder who hails from Melbourne in Victoria, Australia. He is known for his all-ages fantasy adventure story Sneaky Goblins, which is about a goblin named Dank who is forced to go on a quest to try to steal a sacred elf relic for the local mob; the follow-up anthology Sneaky Goblins at College, which collects together three stories about Dank and his friends; and Mythic Creature Trainer, which is about a man named Ulrick who, after losing his job in the royal stables, sets out on an adventure to try to get it back—and save the kingdom in the process.
In this episode of the Hiveminded Podcast, Louie, René and I talk about all-ages comics, what makes a good all-ages comic, some good all-ages comics that we like, and also how being parents has affected the way we create all-ages comics.
This is Part 1 of my conversation with them.
KB: Welcome to the Hiveminded Podcast. My name is Karen Beilharz and I’m coming to you from Sydney in Australia. And I’m here today with two comic creators: Louie Joyce, who is in Wollongong, and René Pfitzner, who is in Melbourne in Victoria. Hi guys! It’s nice to see you.
René Pfitzner: Hey Karen! Good to be with you.
Louie Joyce: Hey Karen! Great to be here.
KB: So today we’re going to talk about two things: we’re going to talk about all-ages comics and then we’re going to talk about colouring, which I know nothing about. Which will be very, very fun.
Comic creator origin stories
KB: But before we get to that, I’d like to know: what is your comic creator origin story? Louie, do you want to start?
LJ: Yeah, my comic creator origin story is, I’m sure, a lot like a lot of other people’s. I’ve been reading comics as long as I can remember. And I’ve just always absolutely loved the medium. It has always been around. It’s always been my favourite way of experiencing or ingesting a story.
My dad collected comics—or collects comics; he still does. Actually, this past weekend, I’ve been helping him move house and packing and organising his comic collection, and it’s been amazing[Laughter] and awesome to look at all these comics that I remember flipping through as a kid. There’s boxes behind me, because I claimed a whole bunch of stuff that I remember flipping through as a kid, and stuff that definitely—I probably shouldn’t have been flipping through. But I can see why I was so taken with the medium, having it all around me. It’s just an exciting thing as a kid to look at: it’s visual, it’s engaging, it’s not all given to you; you are a participant. You are kind of putting the pieces of these boxes on these pages—the puzzle of that—together in your head. I just really loved that as a kid, and have continued to do so.
I definitely waned a little bit in my reading when I was a teenager. But it’s been a pretty consistent hobby of mine. And it definitely influenced me to draw as well, and to try and tell my own stories and create my own worlds and characters, and things like that. So being a comics reader has definitely been a huge part of why I became a comic creator.
KB: Were there particular ones that your father bought that you were into, or—?
LJ: Oh, I remember looking at Lone Wolf and Cub stuff when I was very young, and its intense, graphic, black and white storytelling, just beautifully illustrated—there’s so much motion on these pages. And if I look at myself now and the artist I am now and the type of drawings I try to create, it’s all about creating that sense of motion—this idea that these characters are moving on the page, and if you look away from them, they might just continue moving or whatever—this frozen moment in time. I can see so much of that love of that sense of image and motion was baked into me from looking at this kind of stuff when I was seven, eight years old.
There’s so much—a whole bunch. There’s an X-Men comic, because my dad would get X-Men comics. I would get X-Men comics in the 90s, but my dad has this issue and I always had to ask him to look at it. So this issue in particular became this kind of mythological issue that was different to the X-Men comics that I was reading, and it’s a famous issue drawn by Barry Windsor-Smith, and it is stunningly beautiful—an incredible done-in-one comic storytelling experience. So there was all these amazing things around me and it definitely got me wanting to create and tell stories through that medium. It all stems from there, really! [Laughter]
KB: But what made you then take the leap to start making your own comics?
LJ: I think the great thing about being young and reading comics is that once you figure out that the people are doing—these creators are doing it—at a base level, with pencil and paper—you know? That is all it takes to tell stories—is to draw your own little pictures. Most kids love drawing, and I certainly did when I was that age. So it didn’t seem unattainable to me: “Oh, I’ve got a pencil. I’ve got a rubber. I’ve got pieces of paper. I can try and tell my own stories.”
When you’re a kid, it’s not even that you feel you have to make up your own stories. I can draw my own Spider-Man stories. I can draw my own X-Men stories. I can take these characters and create my own adventures with them. I was copying drawings directly from comics. So that was developing my drawing skills as it went. And my mum, she wasn’t a comics reader as much. But she would do these little cartoon strips about when she was travelling, or about family or stuff. So it was around me as a form of expression—as a thing that was a fun kind of activity that you could do. So the idea that it was something that I could do definitely spurred me on to continue drawing.
KB: That’s so cool! My mum used to do something similar as well: she would draw little cartoons and things—little stories about us or other things as well. I’d forgotten about them, actually, until you just mentioned your mum. I didn’t actually go down the drawing route. It’s really lovely, I think, when your parents are also into comics and drawing comics themselves. I can see how they can still have a big influence on you. It’s having a big influence on my daughter as well, just having comics around the house—like, I just sort of leave them—
LJ: Yeah, that’s right! They’re making their own comics, right?
KB: Oh yeah!
LJ: Yeah. That’s awesome.
KB: I’m actually in the process of putting together Volume 3 of Astrid’s monster stories.
LJ: Amazing!
KB: And she’s well into doing the comics for Volume 4. It was actually kind of funny: she stopped for a very long time, and it was only recently because I said, “Okay, if we’re going to do Volume 3, you’ve got to start scanning in the art for me”, and then that sort of kicked off her making more, because she hadn’t done it for ages. And now she tells me, “Oh, I just sat around at lunch and recess drawing my comics!” Okay.
LJ: Ah, that is so cool!
KB: She’s so funny. How about you, René? What is your comic creator origin story?
RP: Well, Louie, it’s funny that you mention your dad’s comics. My dad had a little pile of Phantom comics that he’d picked up through the 80s, I guess. And far from being inspired by those, I just looked at them and I thought, “Oh, that is so old-fashioned!” You know—I was not [Laughter]—I didn’t want to do anything like that!
So the comics I got into as a kid were basically Tintinand Asterix comics, because it’s amazing: you go to school libraries and public libraries now, and they’re just full of graphic novels and comics, and there’s a whole section. But back when I was coming up, there were only two comics you could get in the library, and it was those two. I remember the first time I brought home an Asterix comic: it was Asterix in Britain, and I just read that thing over and over; it was so colourful. I couldn’t believe it. It was magical.
So it pretty much grew from there. And the Tintin comics. I got into Spider-Man, the Sal Buscema—I’m not sure how to pronounce his name, but I just loved his style—just really graphic and bold. Not a lot of details in the characters, but, that stuff grabbed me.
So it went on from there in the 90s. I started buying my own and I got a lot of the Image Comics when they started coming out. And, again, the colours in those were just amazing: they jumped off the page and I thought, “If I can do something like this, that would be fantastic!”
I started making my own comics in school and a friend of mine, he would write the stories, and I would draw the characters. So we started with this character called “Horrible Harriet”—typical four-panel little stories—and it was her getting the best of the adults around her.
KB: How old were you when you were doing this?
RP: This was high school. But a couple of years later, we started to get a bit more edgy. There was a local publication called The Bazaar Times. My friend said, “Let’s come up with characters we can put in this thing.” So we submitted a couple of different comics and one of them was called Bob the Yob: he was just this overweight guy who drinks beer all day, and he’s got some very strong opinions. But yeah, we submitted that one [Laughter] I just look back on those drawings and it was almost like I was trying to do Image-style, but the actual material was more of your Bruce Mutard kind of—actually, Bruce was in the same publication for a few years. So that was pretty exciting to be involved with that.
After that, I pretty much stopped making comics. I got into animation after university and was doing that for a few years. And then some Christian friends of mine were putting together a comics anthology, and I said, “I’ll be in that”. And I just went, “Oh, what’s some scenarios I can come up with?” and I retold some of Jesus’ parables using school kids. I put those together, sent them in and put it in a little anthology comic called Pulp Crucifiction, which ran for a couple of issues, and—
KB: I remember that! [Laughter]
RP: That was a while back! And then I stopped again for a few more years. I was at the stage of my life where I was really thinking about creativity and what I was doing with my ability, and I started to get back into landscape oil painting, and going out on a morning and just in plein air doing landscapes in oils. At the same time, I was also listening to a podcast called Paper Wings with a guy from California who had worked at Disney—Chris Oatley. That really captured my imagination: he described making your own comic—and incidentally, he was putting his own comic up on the web. So publishing the comic yourself, just putting up a page every week and creating something of your own that’s ongoing—an ongoing story that you can eventually collect into a book. I started thinking about that. I thought, “That’s a big project.”
And I listened to another podcast, which you were on, Karen, and I can’t remember—we never figured out which podcast it was, but you were talking about doing your comics on depression and I thought, “Wouldn’t that be cool: team up with Karen; she could do story; I could do pictures”. Then of course we did collaborate on the Monsters book, and we also did that one-off on cosplaying (Coarse Play). I think that was the turning point that gave me the confidence to then go, “Right: I can do these longer form stories—100-150 pages.” And then I did. Which pretty much brings us up to today.
KB: That’s so cool. [Laughter] There you go: I didn’t know I was part of your creator origin story. That’s very, very cool.
RP: Absolutely!
Haphaven and Sneaky Goblins
KB: So we’re going to talk a bit about all-ages comics and I wanted to talk to both of you, because you’ve both done some. But I thought you could talk about just one particular project and how it came to be. I was suggesting that, perhaps, Louie you could talk about Haphaven, which is a book that you did with Norm Harper, so it’s not completely just your thing, and René, perhaps you could talk about Sneaky Goblins. Louie, do you want to give us the Artist Alley pitch for Haphaven?
LJ: Yes, sure. It’s been a while since I’ve been in an Artist Alley, so I might be a bit rusty. But we’ll see how it goes.
Haphaven is an all-ages story about a young girl who, on the eve of her 13th birthday, steps on a crack and literally breaks her mother’s back. And she then has to go on a journey to find a cure for her mum in the mystical world of Haphaven, which is kind of this world that is connected to our own, and it’s where all the power of superstitious belief comes from.
She’s an incredibly superstitious young girl. She throws salt over her shoulder, she has daily rituals around everything, she’s very, very superstitious. So the entire story is all about her learning to take control of her own life and to take responsibility for her own actions, but through an awesome, mystical magical adventure filled with leprechauns and the Jinx and all these superstitious-based characters and things.
KB: And there’s an element of family histories in there as well, isn’t there.
LJ: Yeah, so the reason behind her reliance on superstition is based around a tragedy that happened when she was young. She’s learning to deal with loss and all of these things as well. So it’s got a lot of elements within it. But one of those great things about all-ages stories is it’s all through this lens of an adventurous, colourful, fun story that everyone can find stuff in.
KB: So what was it that jumped out at you about the project when it was first pitched to you?
LJ: Well, I can remember running down King St, Newtown, with my sister, avoiding cracks, shouting, “Step on a crack and you’ll break your mum’s back!” Just that initial hook of, “Whoa, what if it actually happened? We stepped on a crack and something’s happened!”—that hook, for me, immediately, I was, “Yes! That sounds really cool.” And then as I read more into the story and the adventure of it, it just sounded like a really fun journey and a fun story to illustrate.
Also, the main character, Alex, and her relationship with her parents—her dad, her mum—that formed the backbone of the whole story came at the exact right time for me. Me and my wife had just had a baby—it must have been a year and a half earlier than when I started? Maybe a bit more. He might have been two or something. So we had a young child at the time, and immediately I was thinking about, as a creator, the kind of work that I make and the stories that I want to tell, and the things that I want to be able to read with my kid. So this felt to me like a story that I could illustrate—that I could put a lot of my own experiences as a parent and watching my kid grow—and something that I would hopefully be able to read with them in a few years down the line as well.
Also, Norm the writer, who is the one who contacted me about it, he seemed like a really nice guy. I looked at some of his previous work as well. He did a book called Rikki Tikki Tavi, which was an adaptation of the Rikki legends, and that was really good. So it seemed like a really good project and an exciting project to be a part of.
KB: Had you done an all-ages story before?
LJ: No. I’d done some shorter comics. At this time, I was doing my Mishmashi and Hodgepodge books. Mishmash was full of short comics, so it was a place for me to explore storytelling and different styles of illustrating, and different storytelling methods of making comics. I’d done a few shorter stories that could be considered all-ages, but nothing—my previous comic and the longest thing I’d done before that was Past the Last Mountain, which is not all-ages [Laughter], as much as it looks like it might be sometimes.
Also, growing up, I was a huge Stublio Ghibli fan: those movies, to me, are the epitome of quality all-ages entertainment, because they are of such a high standard of imaginative, engaging storytelling that does hit. If I think of an example of all-ages, that is what I think of. And this felt to me that that was a story in a similar vein that I would be able to bring those kind of inspirations to and have a crack at doing that. And it was a such a blast to illustrate. I had so much fun on that book.
KB: Yeah, I think I could tell, just looking at your art and the style: a playfulness is there. But did you find that you changed your approach because it was an all-ages story, or was it pretty much the same?
LJ: It was pretty much the same. I do tend to change my approach a little bit, artistically, stylistically—from a drawing standpoint—to each project. I think there are a few things I did with this project—little changes in the way I was colouring, little textures I was using different. I tend to change things up a little bit per project. So in terms of storytelling, yes: simpler layouts. Sometimes I can get quite experimental. Some of my shorter comics are web-based and very abstract, and infinite scrolling. Or some of my more zine-based projects are—I’m trying to be as inventive as possible, in terms of how I’m telling the story. But I think for an all-ages book, and for a graphic novel that’s really targetting that all-ages/YA market, you want it to be as clear as possible—as accessible as possible. So I really wanted clear, concise storytelling, and that was probably my biggest focus in doing the book.
KB: Wow, that’s really interesting! How about you, René? Do you want to give us the Artist Alley pitch for Sneaky Goblins?
RP: Sure. So I’ve never actually been in Artist Alley, but I will be at [Laughter] Oz Comic Con Melbourne in December! [Editor’s note: This interview was recorded in November 2021.] So I’m very excited about that: my first-ever Comic-Con.
KB: So this is good practice! [Laughter]
RP: Yeah! Tell me how I go. So Sneaky Goblins is about a goblin. He’s a student at an assassination school, and he graduates and has got no job. And so, he gets forced into taking on this mission from the local crime gang, and he has to steal a sacred elf relic from a land far away, because he’s not very resourceful: he wasn’t a good student. In fact, he was the worst student in his year. So he has to recruit some friends to help him get the relic, and get it back to the crime boss before his whole family is killed. He manages to cause a whole lot of mayhem along the way—the way you’d expect a goblin would. And I like to think that even though he’s a nasty little guy, you kind of end up rooting for him along the way.
The way I first conceived of this story was I’m a big World of Warcraft fan from way back. I’m taking a sabbatical from Warcraft at the moment, because it is very addictive. But there was this character who was always around in the background—a little goblin character who sat on shoulders. He had a shop and you could buy items from him. He sat on top of an ogre and he would just sort of tell the ogre where to go and what to do. And I thought, “Oh, that’s a really cool idea for a relationship between two characters.” And I thought, “Maybe the goblin—he’s in a bad situation and he gets this giant ogre or orc to help him out, and tricks him into it.” I was on holidays, and I quickly wrote this idea down in my journal, and I thought, “Yeah, that would be really cool to do a short cartoon or a comic book.” I eventually put it together and thought, “Yeah, I can expand this idea—make it a whole book out of it”—and sat down, belted out 10,000 words, and that was the story. [Laughter] It just happens like that, you know: inspiration strikes and you’ve got to take it.
KB: That’s fantastic! And it’s really interesting to me that that core relationship between Dank the goblin and Bog the orc was what kicked it all off. That’s really, really cool.
RP: Yeah, definitely. There was an anthology called Oi oi oi! and the creator of that—his name escapes me—
RP: Nat Karmichael! Of course. [Laughter] Great guy. He said, “Do you want to contribute to this?” And I said, “Yeah. How many pages do you want?” He said, “Well, let’s start with six or eight pages and just serialise it.” I sent in the first eight pages of Sneaky Goblins and I thought, “Well, here’s a manageable schedule. I can just send him eight pages at a time.” I think it only made it into a couple of issues before that closed up. But that’s how I started that practice of ongoing page creation.
KB: And when you started with the project, were you thinking it would be an all-ages story?
RP: Yeah. I basically wanted to create the kind of book that I’d be into. And from that, I was very much referencing Asterix and that madcap cartoon violence kind of thing. But yeah: I wanted my kids to be able to read it as well. So I tried to keep the swearing to a minimum, and nothing too gorey. There is a bit of blood, but I did take out a little bit of swearing and blood for the final printing of the book. But, yeah, I wanted my kids to read it and share it with their friends, and I’ve even given some to the school libraries in our area so more kids can read it.
Recently, I did an author talk for my daughter’s Grade 1 class. They were really excited, because I did a workshop where I made a one-page comic, and I just sourced ideas from all the kids—asked them, “What’s the character going to be? What’s special about them? What’s the big problem that they have, and how are they going to solve that problem?” They just composed this story within one page, and I did a screenshare and made that comic with them.
KB: That’s so cool! [Laughter] I love that.
RP: Yeah, it was pretty awesome. And my daughter was so excited: she loved it.
KB: Yeah, there’s something about having your parents come to the classroom—well, before they get too old and it’s embarrassing. When they’re young enough [Laughter] it’s like, “Oh, this is so cool! My mum is coming—my dad is coming to talk to my class.”
RP: Yeah. I don’t know how excited my 14-year-old would be if I went to his school and did that. Although, I have offered to our local high school where he goes. So who knows? One day, maybe.
KB: Yeah, one day! [Laughter] Excellent.
What makes a good all-ages comic?
KB: So what do you guys think makes a good all-ages comic?
RP: You go, Louie.
LJ: I find that the all-ages stories that I really respond to are ones that are not talking down in any way. They’re not seeing “all ages” as an excuse to simplify the storytelling. They’re using “all ages” an excuse to kind of clarify—or as a reason to clarify, instead of simplify. So they’re not making things simple and easy, and sugar-coating everything or whatever; they’re just telling things in a way that is clear and approachable to a different range of ages, if you know what I mean.
So it’s stories that treat everyone with the same—I can’t think of how best to say this, but it’s like they’re—they don’t talk down; they just talk to a wide group of people and let everyone come to their own—it’s like they give you all the information and they let the different people—the different ages who are experiencing it—come to their own conclusions.
I find that I always really respond to that, because I get annoyed when, if I’m watching something with my kid and I know that they’re just trying to make it “kiddy”—when I know that my kid has a deeper understanding and can grasp deeper concepts, and should be experiencing these deep concepts and things now when they can discuss it—when they’re watching a movie, when they’re reading a story with their parent—and they can ask questions and discuss it. If I watch something with my kid and they don’t ask any questions, I’m kind of a bit suss on it. If I watch something with my kid and they are asking questions, I’m like, “Oh yeah, that’s good. That’s promoting a level of discussion, and that’s a really great thing.” So that, to me, is a sign of a really good all-ages story.
KB: Yeah, I know what you mean: the dumbing down thing can be a big part of children’s—well, not just comics, but children’s literature generally. But you’re right: good all-ages comics don’t do that at all. There’s a sort of respect there for the audience.
LJ: Yeah, “dumbing down”: that’s a good way to put it. And they’re so obvious when it’s happening, and I find it annoying. [Laughter]
KB: Yep. What do you think, René?
RP: Yeah, I completely agree: what makes a good grown-ups show, the same elements make a good kids show. I like to compare comics and TV that I can tell are just cranked out because the studio has a licence and they see this as a way to sell stuff to kids. Contrast that with stuff that’s creator-owned. A lot of Cartoon Network came up from creator-owned stuff—Adventure Time, Clarence and Steven Universe—and you look at the quality of that storytelling versus something like Total Drama Island or Slugterra—they look like they were made to sell toys. Kids might love them, but I’m looking at them, going, “This is the exact same story as last week”— [Laughter]—“and the kids are going to figure that out and they’ll feel ripped off.”
There might be some nostalgic value. I’m sure plenty of parents looked down on He-Man back in the day. But we can look back at that and think, “Oh, isn’t that brilliant—just the whole aesthetic—and these characters who were so archetypical and just fun to watch.”
Good all-ages comics
RP: But, yeah, I’m biased. I have particular comics that I like. See, I don’t read Dog Man. I don’t think Dog Man’s a good comic.
KB: What??? [Laughter]
RP: From the author of Captain Underpants. But my son loves them. A 10-year-old. He still—well, he probably just recently stopped reading them—but he just poured over those books and loved them. So I don’t know. I know what I don’t like. [Laughter] And I know what I like. But yeah, it’s sometimes hard to put a finger on it.
KB: Oh, you got to read Dog Man! Dog Man are very good all-ages comics. I know the style doesn’t agree with everybody, but you got to remember that the conceit is they’re being drawn by George and Harold from Captain Underpants and that’s why they look the way they do. They can be surprisingly sophisticated for what you think are quite simple stories. I haven’t read all of them—
RP: I’m going to have to give them another chance and read the Dog Man stories again.
KB: Yeah and also the Cat Kid Comic Club series that he’s just started, which is the Dog Man spin-off, the first one. Oh my goodness! It’s hilarious? Have you read it, Louie? Cat Kid Comic Club? Oh wow!
So it’s basically L’il Petey decides to do a comic-making club, and he’s doing it Molly, who’s this other character from the Dog Man series. I haven’t read that book so I can’t remember how Molly’s in the picture. But there are all these frogs as well who are in the club, making comics. And it’s a master class, in a way, of teaching kids to make comics, because they are making all these short comics throughout the volume in different styles and talking about it.
For example, there’s this frog named Melvin who’s a bit stiff-upper-lip kind of thing, and he draws this comic called “Dennis the Toothbrush Who Wanted to be a Lawyer for Dinosaurs”. And [Laughter] it’s just done in HB pencil, black and white-ish, and it says, “Dennis the Toothbrush wanted to become a lawyer for dinosaurs. So he did.” And that’s it. [Laughter] And the rest of the frogs are just absolutely outraged at the story and say to him, “Melvin! It’s terrible” and just completely dumping on him. And Petey is being a very good teacher and saying, “Well, Melvin did a good job and he tried, but there are some elements missing from the story.” So it teaches kids about storytelling—how to have the beginning, middle and end—through these different comics and showing what comics can be. Anyways, it’s brilliant. It was nominated for an Eisner, I think, this year. So pick that one up.
LJ: Yeah, wow. That’s really good to know, because I haven’t gotten into the Dog Man stuff yet. I read a little bit of my niece’s copy and I found it—it just wasn’t—I don’t know, I wasn’t that into it. But I can see that it is very quality reading experience and a very creative reading experience, and that then—what you’re saying about that other one—what was it called? Cat Comic Club?
KB:Cat Kid Comic Club. Bit of a tongue twister.
LJ: Yeah, that sounds great. So I’ll check that out, definitely!
KB: Sorry, René. I interrupted you. I thought it was interesting how you come at it, as well, from that perspective of having worked in animation and seeing a lot of kids shows. Was it like that when you were working in animation?
RP: We used to receive the scripts of all of these Disney sequels. This was the big—I want to say Michael Eisner, but you just mentioned “Eisner” and now I’m confused. The CEO of Disney in the 2000s: his whole thing was, “Let’s pump out sequels to our classic movies.” So we were one of the studios worldwide that was involved in the production of those. The story was completely written, storyboarded and voice recorded overseas, and we just used to receive that and bring our own magic to it through [Laughter] the power of animation. And it was hard to sometimes not be a bit cynical about the whole project.
But you find joy wherever you can in any workplace, and I just remember one guy saying, “You know, these are just really smart scripts: they’re appealing to boys, they’re appealing to girls, they’re hitting all these demographic marks. The stories are hitting all these notes all the way through. But you couldn’t help but feel that sometimes it was made by committee.”
So that’s why I really like this idea of a creator-owned show or comic book. The creator has their own vision. They haven’t exhausted their creative bank account. They’re still coming up with fresh ideas, and they’re not just turning it in because it’s a job and they have to put this movie out, because it’s in the schedule, and you have to put out Cinderella III or they won’t be able to sell it supermarkets.
But in terms of all-ages comic books, I really love Chris Thompson’s book, Space Dumplins. That’s one of my favourite ones. It’s about an intergalactic family. The dad is this lumberjack-type character and he travels the universe, harvesting space whale poo or something—it’s been a while since I’ve read it—and so the daughter has to get used to new schools and a new neighbourhood, and follows her mum around on weekends in outer space. So it’s a very relatable situation—the kid having to move home because the parents work. But it’s in this exotic location, and there’s poo, and kids—boys, especially—love that. Like my friend said, it hits all the notes: very smart.
KB: And it’s creator-owned as well. [Laughter]
RP: Exactly!
KB: I’ll have to check that one out for my youngest, who’s also a bit scatological. [Laughter]
KB: What about you, Louie? What are some all-ages comics that you recommend?
LJ: Ah, this is definitely something I love about being a parent at the moment, and the age that—my eldest is six and my middle kid is three. So they’re at good ages for reading comics—comics especially, because they can’t read yet, but they can read the visual storytelling that is there. So I’ve had comics lying around—I made an effort to have comics lying around and piles lying around for them to discover on their own, and for them to start flipping through on their own. My eldest has been doing it for years now, and I love when I catch them looking through stuff.
Also just being able to research and look at the new all-ages stuff or the old all-ages stuff or what’s coming out has been really fun. Fantasy Sports by Sam Bosma is one of my favourite comics that I’ve read that we continue to read. I think there’s three volumes out, and it came out from—I want to say it’s published by Nobrow. It’s about a young kid named Whizz who is a temple-raiding wizard, and they raid temples and look for treasure. There’s always conflict, but none of the conflict is fighting-based; it’s all sports-based. So they have to either beat this opponent in a basketball game or a volleyball game or mini golf. It’s all-around sports. And it’s beautifully illustrated—nice oversized—I think it’s the same size as Hilda, so more in the Asterix and Tintin vein. So bigger pages, beautifully printed, just really nice stories and storytelling. My son really loves that book.
What else have we been reading at the moment? Hilda is fantastic and I think everyone has clued in now on Hilda being this—
KB: Oh yes. Hilda’s wonderful.
LJ: —powerhouse all-ages story. This is Fantasy Sports here—I love it when I have stuff in reach. This is the third volume of Fantasy Sports—although—
KB: Oh wow!
LJ: —not very useful for the podcast element; just for you guys. [Laughter]
KB: It’s one of the ironies of having a podcast about comics stuff, because it’s just audio. [Laughter]
LJ: Well, like I said, I’ve got these boxes of comics that I brought from my dad’s—this is just a side note. But I’m looking through them all and I’m like, “Oh, I should do a podcast of me and my dad just talking about his comic collection, or me and Marcelo just looking through the comic collection, or something.” But then it doesn’t work, because you need to have it visually there as well. Anyway!
Other all-ages: me and my kids have been reading the Shazam! Jeff Smith book that he did 10 years ago now. But that’s really good. Jeff Smith is amazing. Bone is the other thing that I haven’t quite cracked with my kids yet, but we’ve gone into it a couple of times. I just have the omnibus, so it’s a heavy brick to read, and I can’t read it at bedtime, because it will just fall on my face and knock me out. [Laughter] But that’s one of my favourite comics of all time. It is so good.
KB: Yeah, I found with my eldest, with Bone, it took a while: I would leave it around the house. I would suggest to her she read Bone. And I’m not sure, but at some point—it would have been in the last two or three years—she finally picked it up, because I think it was the size that was intimidating. Whereas if it has been those shorter, stand-alone volumes—I think because they reissued them in colour—then maybe she would have done it a bit sooner. But yeah, she loves it now, and she’s been doing this thing over the last school holidays where she was trying to see how fast she could read it. [Laughter] And she kept timing herself.
LJ: Awesome!
KB: It was very funny. Anyway, I interrupted. Any other recommendations?
LJ: Trying to look around and see: what else have we been reading? Like, Hicotea—Nobrow does such incredible—Hicotea? I never know how to—
KB: I think it’s “Hicotea”.
LJ:Hicotea. By—I’m blanking on the author’s name now.
LJ: Lorena Alvarez! That’s right. Nobrow put out so much quality, quality work. The other one that I really love from them is The Gamayun Tales, which is these folklore tales that are done in these beautiful pencil illustrations. And again, the colouring and the presentation is just so nice, and the storytelling is so—and I often find my kids just flipping through those books and reading them themselves, which is great.
But, yeah, I’m not too—I leave some stuff around, which may be skews a bit older as well. But I’m happy for them to self-regulate a little bit. If something is not—if it’s going over their heads a bit, they’ll often just put it away and grab something else.
KB: Yeah. I think we’re lucky to live during a time where there’s just been this explosion of middle grade comics, which are often quite all-ages in nature, even though they are—they deal with middle grade concerns. Just thinking of Raina Telegmeier’s books. But some of them are quite universal as well.
A couple of series that we love is Zita the Spacegirl and Mighty Jack series by Ben Hatke. We really, really love them, and they’re adventure—kids learning that they can’t rely on their parents; they have to actually take responsibility—take action—that kind of thing.
KB: —by Mike Maihack. I think he only finished it last year, and that one—it has such great humour in it. But as well, it’s got elements of a space epic adventure story in it: Cleopatra—the Cleopatra—is taken. She touches an object and for some reason, it transports her in time thousands of years into the future, and there’s been a prophecy that she will save the world of these people who—it kind of looks a bit Egyptian—from a terrible fate. It’s very, very fun.
I’m just trying to remember—there’s been a couple of stand-alone stuff that I’ve really, really enjoyed recently. There was a book called Allergic that I found in the Scholastic Book Club catalogue, and it’s just this really beautiful, gentle story about this girl who loves, loves, loves animals, and when she turns ten, her parents promise her that she can go to the local animal rescue and choose a pet. But the minute she does that, she discovers that she’s allergic to all animals. And it’s just devastating in the way that only a ten-year-old heart can break. It’s so devastating. I really, really enjoyed that.
There was another one that I read recently called El Deafo by Cece Bell: it’s an autobiographical comic, and it talks about her growing up with—she’s not completely deaf, but enough that she needs hearing aids. And it’s really really clever, because there will be bits where the lettering is greyed out or smudged, or there’s only bits of it coming through, and you get a sense of what it’s like to be her and not being able to hear what’s going on around her. She eventually gets this—I forget what it’s called. It’s like an FM thing that helps her to hear. And then hearing becomes her superpower, because she’s able to hear stuff that other people can’t hear.
LJ: Yeah, that sounds great.
KB: Anyway, we could go on and on and on.
LJ: Yeah! Can I just shout out one more?
KB: Yeah sure!
LJ:Action Tank by Mike Barry—I want to give a shoutout, because my son absolutely loved that. It is a really great example of inventive, interesting storytelling that’s so accessible to a kid. It’s really interestingly told and laid out, and a bit experimental in that way. But really, really clear and concise. I think it’s a really good comic to give to someone who doesn’t read comics, who’s young, who’s going to get hooked on comics, I reckon.
KB: Good pick. Thanks for mentioning that!
LJ: No worries.
Making comics for kids versus making comics for adults
KB: That leads us into the next topic: so you talked a little bit, Louie, about how in creating stuff for kids, you try to make things a bit clearer and a bit less experimental, but it’s not that kids can’t handle experimental, as you’ve said. Are there any other things that you do that are different from when you’re making comics purely for adults?
LJ: I don’t think so. I’m going to say no. Like I said, I don’t want to dumb things down. I don’t want to think that I need to make things simple for a kid to grasp. Most of my approach is the same: I think it was just ensuring, for Haphaven, that we had very clear storytelling, so people wouldn’t—so there’s no way for anyone to get lost. And so it was as accessible as possible for new reader—new people new to comics who’ve never read a comic before—yet still engaging for people who love comics and have read heaps of comics. I think that’s a good approach with kids’ stuff, because if it’s a first comic—if it’s any kid’s first comic—I want them to be able to just be absorbed into the story and the world so that they get hooked and so that they can discover all the other awesome, amazing comics there are. So that’s the main thing I keep in mind—just making sure that my storytelling is clear and fun and accessible.
But when it comes to drawing style—the way I’m constructing characters or the way I’m using my colours, or the techniques of drawing and stuff, I don’t think I change my approach for an all-ages story. I think that just is something I might do on a project-by-project basis just to keep things interesting. But I think kids should read stories that are drawn in all different ways and see all the different ways of approaching and creating art, and all of these things.
KB: Yeah, sure, definitely. How about you, René? Are there things or different approaches that you take?
RP: Yeah, so I can’t actually speak from experience in terms of writing, because the only fiction writing I’ve done is aimed at kids. But I would imagine a lot of it’s to do with vocab and themes and whatnot.
I can speak from art style, because one of the projects that you and I collaborated on, Karen—and hopefully with another one that we’ve got coming up—the themes are a bit more grown up. And so, for those, I just took slightly more realistic proportions. For my kids’ stuff, most of the characters are really squishy and cartoony, and their bodies can do all sorts of things, and it doesn’t really matter. But I feel like for the more grown-up themes, you want to communicate a little bit more seriousness to reflect that.
Having said that, I do also have different proportions within my kids stuff. The different characters have different body types. So some will be massive and totally unrealistic, and others will be more normal person-sized—that seven-head-height drawing style. But having mainly done stuff for kids, I can’t do a lot of comparison of it.
KB: Sure.
RP: How about you, Karen?
KB: As you said, I think is more to do with the different themes and subject matter. I’ve only done the Monsters anthology for kids, and I did write a picture book, which hasn’t gone anywhere. But anyway. Just having those concerns and trying to think about what are the things that would be concerns for them. So with some of the Monsters stories, there’s one about food, because with my kids, food is a massive issue [Laughter]—less so for the older one, but definitely still for the younger one, and there are things that she will not eat. She does not want to even touch them. So I wrote a story about that.
Being a parent and being a comic creator
KB: So how does being a parent affect the way that you tackle such projects, if it does? And does it affect your artistic process at all? René, do you want to go first?
RP: Well, like I said before, just keeping it relativity clean and trauma-free is a good start. That’s the essentials. I think themes—in terms of fitting in and your place in the world—I think they really strike a chord.
Actually, I was going to mention before another great all-ages comic that I love: In Real Life by—
RP: Or something like that—a technology magazine or something. The artwork by Jen Wang really drew me to it. But the story is so profound. Again, it’s about a girl who moves to a new neighbourhood, goes to a school, joins the gaming club and learns that there are internet farmers who go into these live Massively Multiplayer Games and have to earn their living from farming gold in these games. So she begins a bit of an awareness campaign and draws attention to that, and becomes friends with a gold farmer overseas. So just those themes of fitting in, finding your place in the world and discovering that there are other people out there like yourself—those, I think, are big ones.
I don’t know if I’ve done that in my comics, but I’ll let you decide.
KB: Yeah. I can see it a little bit, I think, in the Sneaky Goblins stuff. But it’s interesting with Mythic Creature Trainer, the impetus behind that is more of an economic one, which probably doesn’t hit home as well with children.
RP: That might have been reflecting more my fears than my kids’. [Laughter]
KB: Yep, sure. What about you, Louie? How does being a parent affect the way you tackle all-ages projects, if it does?
LJ: Yeah, it definitely does. I will show my kids stuff that I’m doing to get their opinion on it. I’d be like, “Hey, what do you think of this? Does this look cool?” And kids are honest. Kids are brutally honest. So they’re a good sounding board to be ask things like, “Would you read a story about this character? What if this was happening? Does this sound like fun? Exciting? No? Okay, fine. I’ll go back to the drawing board.” [Laughter] But definitely becoming a parent just immediately drove me towards wanting to make more all-ages stories—to make stories that I could read with my kids.
Creatively, it’s been reading kids books. I think in my comics reading, prior to having kids, I was reading a very specific kind of style of illustration and story and comics. That all got expanded when I started reading comics and childrens books with my kids. And that really affected my perspective on drawing and creating illustrations and telling stories. So I’m really thankful for that aspect of being a parent. It does open up your inspirations—both just because they are inspiring little people, but also you’re exposed to so much more experiences and situations and people and books and illustrations and all that kind of stuff. So I try to absorb as much of that as I can, and hopefully it can come out in the work I create. I love the inspiration that being a parent can provide.
It makes it hard to create actual work [Laughter] because there’s hardly any time [Laughter] to do anything, and the time you do have is very short and often interrupted. But I that’s just means you—hopefully you get better at time management and problem solving, and all of these things. [Laughter]
KB: Yeah, yeah. I love that too—that they might bring stuff home that interests them that they found at the library—in the school library or something—or something someone’s lent them that just expands your world and exposes you to other stuff. And following their interests: I find, with my eldest, she is now discovering stuff on her own—reading webcomics as well. She was hugely into this fan PowerPuff Girls comic, which was drawn manga-style [Laughter]. I found it quite over-the-top, because the writing was very melodramatic and some of the situations were very melodramatic. But she loved it. She just ate it up.
It also changed her drawing style as well: I found that after that, I could see that she was mimicking some of the stuff she’d been reading. So that was really cool.
[Music]
KB: Well, that concludes Part 1 of my conversation with Louie Joyce and René Pfitzner about all-ages comics.
Thanks for joining us for this episode of the Hiveminded Podcast! For links, show notes, a rough transcript and some free comics, head to hivemindedness.com.
Audio editing and production was done by me. Our theme music is “I’m going for a coffee” by Lee Rosevere (which is slightly ironic, because I don’t drink coffee). Website design by Ben Beilharz. And special thanks as always to Rebecca Jee and Guan Un of the Hive Mind, whose undying support has made all of this possible.
