This is who I am now. Just so you know.

When teasers like this exist, how can I not end up casting the members of my ridiculous boy band as spies? I mean, really. They were just asking for it.


( follow the cut )

Here on tumblr

So I started this almost a year ago when I stumbled across a couple of pictures of Hailee Steinfeld and my mind started churning. This is one of my favorite movies of all time, and it's very driven by the gender roles and expectations of the time in which it was set. So the idea of swapping all the genders around excited me, since it raises all sorts of questions about how we relate to each other (if you'll forgive me for getting pretentious). Plus: this is one of my favorite ways to waste time, if you haven't figured that out already.


I finally finished it today, hemming and hawing to the end over certain roles (Lester Bangs, why must you be so difficult to cast?), but I'm pretty satisfied with the end result. I hope y'all enjoy it!


( does anyone remember laughter? )

“In 1955 Pan American World Airways began recruiting Japanese American women to work as stewardesses on its Tokyo-bound flights and eventually its round-the-world flights as well. Based in Honolulu, these women were informally known as Pan Am’s ‘Nisei’—second-generation Japanese Americans—even though not all of them were Japanese American or second-generation. They were ostensibly hired for their Japanese-language skills, but few spoke Japanese fluently. This absorbing account of Pan Am’s’“Nisei’ stewardess program suggests that the Japanese American (and later other Asian and Asian American) stewardesses were meant to enhance the airline’s image of exotic cosmopolitanism and worldliness. As its corporate archives demonstrate, Pan Am marketed itself as an iconic American company pioneering new frontiers of race, language, and culture. [This is] the story of an unusual personnel program implemented by an American corporation intent on expanding and dominating the nascent market for international air travel. That program reflected the Jet Age dreams of global mobility that excited postwar Americans, as well as the inequalities of gender, class, race, and ethnicity that constrained many of them.” – the blurb for Airborne Dreams: “Nisei” Stewardesses and Pan American World Airways by Christine Reiko Yano

( check out the casting )

So sometimes I watch Korean dramas. And sometimes I develop unhealthy obsessions with them. My favorite is Goong (which means "Palace" but is often referred to as "Princess Hours" in English), and because I am me, I couldn't resist casting an English language version. The plot revolves around a royal family, so I couldn't think of any way to transfer to America. Besides, I love British people! So: a British show it is!



Summary: In an alternate version of Korea that has a constitutional monarchy, the king is dying. His family’s keeping it a secret, but they’re worried because the monarchy appears to be weak. What if when the king dies, the people decide that monarchy is just too old-fashioned and decide to do away with it altogether? That just will not do. So the king, queen, and queen mother hatch a plan: they’ll marry off Shin, the crown prince. (Somehow this is supposed to restore stability. I don’t know either. Just go with it!)

Shin proposes to Hyo-rin, his girlfriend, but she’s a dedicated ballet student, and she doesn’t want to sacrifice her future, so she refuses him. That doesn’t stop the adults, though: they remember that the former king (Shin’s grandfather) had a BFF, and the two of them had promised that the king’s grandson would marry the BFF’s granddaughter.

So one day the authorities come knocking at the door of Chae-kyeong. She’s just an average girl, but apparently her grandfather was secretly friends with the former king! Pretty crazy! And now they want her to marry the prince! Chae-kyeong isn’t too pleased by the idea—she’s only 19! She’s still in high school! She’d have to leave home! But then her family gets into some money trouble, and like heroines throughout the ages, she agrees to marry so that her family will be taken care of.

Meanwhile, still more trouble’s brewing within the monarchy. The current king’s older brother had been the heir, but he died fourteen years before. There’s an inexplicable rule that only the heirs can live in the palace, and so the original son’s wife Lady Hwa-Young and his son Yul have to leave. Lady Hwa-Young is pretty pissed and sweeps off to England where she raises Yul and ~plots her revenge~. Now that fourteen years have passed and Shin is getting married, she decides it’s the time to act. She packs up Yul and brings him back to Korea. And she’s bent on getting him to be the crown prince again.

What follows is lots of shenanigans involving plotting for the throne, Chae-kyeong trying to adjust to being a princess, a love square that’s less annoying than most (since it actually feels like it’s character driven and not just for the sake of drama), and people learning and growing together. And most of Lauren’s bulletproof narrative kinks being hit left and right. GOOD. TIMES.

( and now for the cast! featuring many of the usual suspects because I am nothing if not predictable )

Contrary to the way I tend to rant whenever I hear that one of my favorite shows/movies is being remade, I don't think all remakes are a bad idea. In fact, I think taking the premise of one story and going in a completely different direction with it can result in something pretty awesome. It's just that this so very rarely happens.

So when I heard that the Syfy Channel was remaking Being Human, I wasn't entirely furious...until it became clear that they'd just changed the names and dropped the Britishness but otherwise had reshot the entire pilot with far less endearing actors. Then I was not pleased. And being me, I started casting (yes, this has been waiting to be posted since before the US show aired. Sorry it took me so long).



So think of this as what could have been.

The premise is the same: a vampire, a werewolf, and a ghost all live together and try to have a normal life, which proves difficult considering that their supernatural natures keep getting in the way. But that's where the similarities end.


( cast here )