(no subject)

[extemporally]

Heeey, what's up. It's only 10 a.m. over here and I feel so cranky already! I am mostly cheering myself up by thinking about how awesome Asada Mao is. She competed at the 2008 Worlds without a coach, you guys. And then she won! Is that not amazing! She is pretty awesome.

Additional pet peeve:

-- I dislike it when people refer to East Asian skaters by "given name, family name". That is not how it goes! I always twitch when I see mentions of "Yu-Na Kim", although weirdly enough I always catch myself calling Mao "Mao Asada" in my head. This is when I >:( at myself again.

But here are some things that makes me happy:

-- Mao is the South Koreans' favourite Japanese celebrity. Yu-Na is the Japanese' favourite Korean celebrity. :D!

-- They are BFFs. THERE CAN BE NO HATESEX WITH THEM. EVER. (Um, that came out a little cranky.)

-- Mao's pretty.

Comments

[athenejen]

*nod* I can see how that might be a good general rule of thumb (it would be a nice, relatively subtle pov marker), though if we're talking about Yuna specifically, she's spent a fair amount of time in Canada by now, so I could also see her having gotten at least somewhat used to given-family, especially as it's listed that way in her twitter profile, as well as on her official website and youtube channel. She does seem to write in Korean a lot on her twitter, though.

I don't know. I think I'm just going to have to re-evaluate every time I write a fic including East Asian skater (and skaters from other family-name first countries), and take into consideration the specific pov the fic is in, the skater's own history and whether or not there seems to be a personal preference indicated in their English-language communications, and the general context of the fic.

[extemporally.livejournal.com]

It's good to be mindful, I think! For my own part, I am less convinced of 'Kim Yuna' than when I started out, so. I think that I'd really like to see fic that -- well, not tackling that exactly -- but fic that takes that into account. It's pretty telling of the cultural shift that Yuna's gone through. If I'm not wrong she's attending university in Korea still! I wonder how many months in the year she actually spends in Canada.

[athenejen]

Oh, that fic could be amazing. I believe you're right about the Korean university. I guess it might depend on how intensely she's planning on competing in coming years, and as far as I know she hasn't decided that yet. So much up in the air!

I'm really glad we had this discussion -- I'll definitely keep thinking about these issues! :)