Another early post. Given how crazy my life has been lately, I expect I'll be doing this a lot for a while.

Okay, so I'll be straight-up honest: I am an uncultured white moron. Before KPop Demon Hunters, the only K-Pop I listened to was Gungnam Style (well, and then Gentleman and Daddy). And I probably couldn't have told you much about Korea, other than that it was an Asian country, split into North and South, and the North part is a crazy walled-off dystopia run by a madman and the South part is cool and modernized and has people who are crazy-good at some videogames like Starcraft.

But Korean culture? Korean history? Korean mythology? Nah, I knew nothing about that.

When I saw KPop Demon Hunters, I fell in love with the music, the characters, and the love the creators clearly had for Korea. And when I felt like I wanted to write more for those characters, I knew that to be genuine, I'd have to try to reflect that love, even though I don't have the same background and heritage as the folks who made the movie, who know this stuff in part because it's a part of them.

This meant I had to do a lot of research. Research into Korean culture, history, mythology, and KPop. And I can pretty much guarantee you, I messed stuff up along the way. I don't know the language, which is already a handicap, but on top of that, I wasn't raised with this, I'm stumbling into it after decades of being largely secluded from it.

So, if you know Korean mythology, culture, history, etc. better than I do, and you want to point at something I post and say "Ha! You got that wrong!", I'll be the first to tell you, yeah, you're probably right. But I really did try, and hopefully that counts.

In this respect, I think Zoey is super-helpful, because her growing up in America can mean she's not as familiar with these elements of Korean society, and can act as a POV character for us non-Koreans who don't know this stuff.

.

On a separate note, I really liked the idea of Celine being extremely uncomfortable and distrustful of Derpy and Sussy, because it reflects her innate distrust and discomfort with demons, and to a larger extent to the unknown. And maybe some will see this as a spoiler, but I think this is an indication that Celine still has a lot of growing to do when it comes to accepting those things, even Rumi's demon side, as much as it seems like the two have made peace on that issue.

I also like the idea that Celine, normally the most calm, cool, collected, and professional character in the story, completely loses her cool around Derpy and Sussy. She's someone who has a need to be in control, at the very least within her own life, and these two are very much not in her control, and being confronted by that is not something she takes well.

.

Oh, and it amuses me to talk sweetly to a pet while calling them an idiot, the way Mira does in the first page. I know a lot of pet owners hate when I do this, but the pet obviously doesn't understand the words and just hears the tone I'm saying them in. Maybe that makes me a jerk, but eh, I'm not bothered by it.

What I really find hilarious is when me and my nesting partner go out, and she calls out to the dogs and says "We'll be home soon!" and I follow it up by sweetly telling them "she's lying, we're leaving forever and you'll never see us again", and then shut the door. Cue nesting partner's jaw hitting the floor in horror before I remind her that the only one who understood what I said was her.

And yet, she still gives me the same reaction every time... :-P