A sasaeng fan is used generally in Asia but specifically South Korea to describe an obsessive fan. I got the idea for this novel when I was listening to many of my colleagues talk about BTS, a very popular South Korean boy band who recently released "Butter". As you can imagine, this story is about an obsessive fan who's more than a little off her rocker... with a plot twist.
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Character:
The present day protagonist is about a 17 or so year old boy. It seems that misfortune has followed him throughout his life in a series of suspicious accidents. His family wasn't well off in the first place, and his dad died due to a car accident when he was hit as a pedestrian as a car veered off course due to a nail placed on the ground that stuck in a tire when he was 9. The mom was depressed and overworked. She eventually fell ill with serious pneumonia after coming home late on a rainy day, and she prevented him from calling the hospital and kept working. She died when he was about 11, but he didn't know that she died and thought she was just tired. He left the house that day with money in an attempt to buy food, and met a nice rich girl who was 19. She took him in and let him share the apartment with her, but seemed strangely possessive sometimes(signs of a control freak). He didn't mind because of how grateful he was. She was also the one who helped him with his mom's death and getting over the entire issue. I didn't get the logistics of the ages quite in order, but feel free to change anything in your head. As for the setting, feel free to choose. However, I feel he should know Korean due to future setting needs.
Apart from the girl, the main character looks at people with a cynical, loner perspective. He loves music and raps/sings a lot when he has the chance(foreshadowing). The girl is very supportive of his passion for music, encourages him, and even bought him some recording equipment.
The girl is very sweet to the main character, but she has some weird habits that further develop during the story... I imagine her as the daughter of a rich family who moved out because of personal reasons, but still gets an allowance.
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When the plot begins:
The girl is very supportive of his music(strangely so), and helps him audition at an entertainment company in South Korea. He makes it in the audition and gets contracted. The reader sees the girl get more and more obsessive, but the MC brushes it off because of his gratitude once again. Meanwhile, a lot of people thought he was just crazy, but he felt that his parents' deaths were premeditated somehow. Later he investigates and catches the girl doing shady stuff - he ignores it because she was the one who saved him when he was only like 11. This continues on for years, and eventually he reaches the international level of fame. This is when her obsessive tendencies truly start to kick in - she does weird stuff like collecting bits of his hair, asking for his autograph everywhere on everything, etc. Finally, when he releases his latest, most famous music video, the girl breaks and traps him in the basement when he comes home. She acts like she hasn't seen him anywhere and acts super sad etc. when the investigative people come over. PLOT TWIST: From the dialogue, the reader figures out that she came from "the future" and arranged for all of those accidents when he was young, because she was a crazy fan from when he was famous in an alternate reality. So when she went back in time, her twisted mind somehow decided to "help" him along the way to fame by orchestrating all the accidents that had happened without external help in his previous life. Sort of like helping him recreate the "rags to riches" thing?
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My personal comments:
I don't know how to end it yet - a sad, angry, bittersweet, or happy ending? Should I even allow the protagonist to "triumph" over the sasaeng fan? Should I make her kill him to forever "preserve" and "possess" him(his corpse?)??? My favorite thing about this was the plot twist. Once again, it's not really fleshed out and I only have 4 or so characters... of which only 2 are big ones... Perhaps if someone chooses to rewrite this I would suggest adding a "best friend" character who supports the protagonist and serves as stimulation to the plot. The plot isn't really fleshed out, so plenty of available space for manipulation with this one. If you wanted more reads, you could even make this a BTS fanfic and make him best friends with BTS or something and they play the "best friend" character. If anyone does wish to write my story, please tell me!!! Personally, I would love to read something with this or a similar plot.