Keeping Up with the K-Dramas: Syllabus Day
I give everyone a little intro to myself and what you can expect by subscribing!
Welcome to Keeping Up with the K-Dramas by me, Alison Sheppard.
If you are like me, a complete and utter psycho for Korea’s greatest export — dramas — this is going to be the place where you get my extremely hot and unfiltered takes on everything from the best that Korea has to offer like Crash Landing on You to the worst like Start Up (not actually the worst, but an unpleasant experience from recent memory). But before we get to any of those, I suppose I should explain who I am and why I exactly decided to start this little project.
Well first of all, as you may have noticed, my name is Alison and it is very nice to meet you all! (Imagine a courteous bow here) In terms of things about myself that are worth mentioning, I’m afraid there aren’t a lot! I currently have no career or really career ambitions at the moment as my life was kind of put on hold last year when I came out as transgender and started transitioning, but that being said, even as I near the end of my transition, I still am utterly lost and unambitious. I only mention actually being trans because I feel that it actually does feature pretty heavily on my road to K-Drama fandom and why they seem to resonate so deeply with me. I’m sure that I will be relaying some more stories about how those two things are intertwined in the future, so I’ll leave you with that little teaser :)
But to get back to me, before I started transitioning, I was actually living in Japan working as an English teacher. I know what you’re thinking, “Why is this weeb gonna talk about how much she loves K-Dramas?” A totally fair question with a rather simple answer of me being interested in many things —Oh! and I’m not a weeb! I moved to Japan, essentially because I really wanted to enhance my ability at speaking Japanese, which is still something I am doing even back here in the States and I hope one day to make the jump to Korean cause for now, Japanese is enough!
To speed round a couple of other things about me, I’m currently 25 and living outside of Richmond, Virginia — though I’m hoping to move to New York when this whole pandemic thing blows over. I have a BA in Film and Media Studies (useless, I know) and as I said, no career!
That naturally brings me to the why of this whole thing: Why am I doing this? Well for starters I’m a narcissist who wants attention from strangers! This is only a half joke because my love for K-Dramas is something that I don’t really share with anyone. I have one friend who I can talk to about them but she currently lives in California, and apart from a weekly Facetime, I have no one. I had originally conceived of this idea as a podcast because I’m insanely funny to talk to — and as I said, a narcissist —but podcasts benefit from having multiple points of view and with it just being me, it’s pretty easy to see why that would be a failing idea (for now). So that brought me here to another creative outlet that I’ve enjoyed in the past: writing. I have no idea if anyone will like this or if anyone even wants this. Overall, I’ve definitely noticed Western media has largely overlooked Eastern Media and K-Dramas are no exception and I certainly do not think I will fill that enormous hole that is there, but I do hope and think that there might be some people out there that may find my musings on the subject a little interesting.
So who knows? Maybe a lot of people will like and want some loser to gush about Run On (seriously, so good) or whatever — might as well try!
I just want to close on what can be expected from me — your intrepid, humble leader — if you plan to stick around and subscribe to this little thing here. I, Alison, hereby do commit to publishing at least once per week. That’s right folks, I’m holding myself to this one. I’m not a super busy person at the moment and I honestly have no idea what to expect out of this, but I think I can definitely make this commitment and if I mess up or whatever, well you have the right to scream at me in the comments assuming that any of you care enough to even read this.
Furthermore, I’m not sure how many of you all have ever even heard of Substack or what it does or anything. It’s still new to me, but basically you can sign up by hitting the subscribe button and there you can put your email in and get each weeks issue sent right to your e-mail! Easy as that! From what I understand, there is also a pay function on this website, I suppose kind of similar to Patreon if any of you are familiar. But for now, due to my extremely low expectations and uncertainty about anyone’s interest in something like this, I will be keeping it free! Perhaps in the future, if interest is high enough, I may introduce some sort of very small monthly subscriber fee, but as I said, until further notice, you can keep up with all your favorite dramas right here!
And as a little sneak peak about what you can expect in the first issue of Keeping Up with the K-Dramas, I will be talking about how K-Dramas have, in a small way, filled a void in Western film and television as a result of the death of the Romantic Comedy in popular culture. You can expect that some time within the next week, but until then, I hope everyone has a good week :)
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In the meantime, tell your friends!
Looking forward to hearing your thoughts on Kdramas. Also, I’m living in Japan now (have been for the past 5 years) so if you ever need someone to chat with I’m here.
I look forward to reading your opinions. I love KDramas and lack ambition, so we have heaps in common already! I watch on Netflix and Viki and am in Australia. Good luck!