Your Intrepid Blogger Has Been Reverse Isekai'ed

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The author embraces nihilism at the local dive.

Is there a word for finally learning the word for something? Not just “petrichor is the smell of earth after rain” or “tsundoku is the habit of letting unread book purchases pile up around the home,” but “transmigration is a genre I’ve loved deeply my whole life, and I didn’t realize there was a better word for it than ‘portal fantasy,’ which doesn’t remotely capture the full hilarity of the device.”

The term I’m really looking for is isekai, which (I think, in its modern form, barring folktales) originated from manga but applies well beyond Japan. Protagonists are either magically transported into another world, much more fantastical than our own, or reincarnated there. An excellent parody of that genre and many others is the hilarious serialized novel The Scum Villain’s Self-Saving System by Mo Xiang Tong Xiu, also the author of what became on film The Untamed. The unreliable narrator to top them all (or not, as the story reveals¹) is Shen Yuan, an obsessive hate-reader of and troll commenter on a long-running webnovel who becomes so enraged at its conclusion that he chokes to death and wakes up… in the body of a formative antagonist of the webnovel’s overpowered and vengeful stallion hero, Luo Binghe.

Posing as the outwardly respectable but vicious cultivator Shen Qingqiu, our narrator tries desperately to ensure his own survival by treating the young Binghe kindly, rather than triggering the messy revenge on him portrayed in the original timeline. The process is mediated by an RPG-like “system” that constrains Shen Yuan’s character continuity, ensuring his peers don’t suspect their colleague has an entirely new person inside him. The system also sends him on quests that both mirror the original novel’s plot points and reveal how Shen Yuan is changing outcomes simply by being himself.

The reverse of an isekai story is, of course, a character from a fantastical world rocketing into our own. You’ve probably seen this in any Marvel movies with fish-out-of-water conceits, like the early appearances of Thor or Steve Rogers. Mr. Bad is a fun cdrama take on this trope, in which a writer struggling to complete her own webnovel accidentally summons the villain of her story, who’s been the most interesting character she’s invented for a reason. The time-traveling acupuncturist kdrama Live Up to Your Name! also plays with this genre, rocketing a Joseon-era physician to the present and a modern doctor trained in Western medicine back to the acupuncturist’s “normal” world in the past.

I can relate. Around the same time I started this newsletter, I also began part-time work with a local news organization. It was 20 hours a week of self-paced tasks, and I appreciated both the money and the way it left space for other projects and clients. However, at the beginning of October, a really exciting opportunity came to me for, effectively, a full-time role doing things that I love on a team that absolutely rules. It’s not permanent (yet, fingers crossed), but it is certain through the end of the year. Of course, there is a huge difference between four hours a day of one or two relatively easygoing tasks and eight hours a day of continuous close attention and task-switching. When you’ve been out of the 9-to-5 for a while (or in my case, the 10-to-6), locking back in takes a lot out of you.

The world can also yank you out of your comfortable, hopeful trajectory on its own time. Of the election, the less said by me right now, the better. On the crisis of antisemitism gripping the world while only Jews seem to notice, I’m furious and ill at ease. This newsletter will not give harbor to either of those troubles at great length. It’s important to have your retreats. I’m relearning how to organize my time and energy in a number of directions, one of which is recalibrating how to inhabit this space, which I love.

I have missed thinking about these dramas and writing about them here, and everyone who stuck around while I suddenly went quiet has my gratitude — thank you, especially if you’ve maintained a paid subscription. I may effectively have a full-time job now, but my take-home pay does not come with benefits, nor is my credit card looking much lighter, so I still need and appreciate all the support I can muster.

My goal here is to still publish these deeply researched, media-rich essays twice a month at least. We’ll see what the new year brings. For now, I’ve been watching some shows that I really want to tell you about.

Pop-culture Goryeo mages

I have a history of bouncing off and then loving dramas with abrupt tonal shifts, chief among them Mr. Queen. That show is now one of my most beloved favorites, but the first episode does slapstick in a way that really did not spark joy when I first encountered it. Something similar happened with Alchemy of Souls, my first series by the Hong Sisters, who have developed their own oevre with signature style. I came in expecting a standard-issue epic fantasy about bodyswapping and chosen ones. What I got was a charming, rowdy, sometimes farcical, often heartbreaking subversion of YA-style storytelling, set in a Goryeo era–flavored kingdom with cheerfully anachronistic aesthetics in the vein of A Knight’s Tale or Bridgerton.

It makes for compelling stuff, especially if you love what a friend dubbed “identity trouble.” In a world where souls can move from body to body, soul-shifting is a dire crime. A feral assassin who calls herself Naksu — the sound of heads falling to the ground — is forced to evacuate her own body; to her horror, she lands in that of a blind beggar named Mu-deok. With neither strength nor power, she protects herself as best she can, by becoming the maid of an indolent noble named Jang Uk. He’s the only young man of his age and station who can’t cultivate magic — and it is interesting, how much this kdrama draws on Chinese world-building and xianxia convention. Right off the bat, Jang Uk figures out that Mu-deok is really Naksu, and he’s looking for a master who can open his gate of energy. If he helps her regain her powers, she’ll help him attain his.

There are two of them!

If you dig secret identities, infiltration, double-crossing, disguise and cascading acts of vengeance, you will keel over for The Double. Short pitch: The Count of Monte Cristo in Tang-dynasty China, with incredible genre play and style. It’s Gothic, it’s camp, it’s vicious, it’s hallucinatory, it’s about the most incredible women and a few men who try to catch up. Xue Fangfei thought she was happy and secure in her marriage to the rising young scholar Shen Yurong. So when she’s framed for adultery and, regretfully, buried alive by her husband, she comes back to life furious. Two young girls in what can only be described as prisoners of a Confucian juvie hall rescue her, but one is beaten to death for being out after curfew. She begs Xue Fangfei to make her own family, who sent her there for a crime she didn’t commit, pay for the injustice of her short life.

Xue Fangfei, with the help of the girl’s maid, thus becomes Jiang Li, finally returning to the capital after 10 years repenting for her sins. She methodically, brilliantly sets traps for the Jiang family for each individual’s comeuppance, all the while desperate to learn why her husband killed her — and who ordered him to do so. As the cuckoo Jiang Li, she catches the attention of an equally brilliant, conniving duke who also has his own designs for revenge. As their paths continue to intersect, each must decide how much they’ll accept being pawns in the service of something greater, for the privilege of getting justice for themselves and those they’ve lost.²

Exorcist who is also a realtor

To me, there is no finer means of storytelling than taking an outlandish premise and treating it seriously. So the fact that Sell Your Haunted House exists and is freaking great is further proof that you can make absolutely anything work if you’re not a coward about it. The title really does convey the premise well: An exorcist who owns a real estate agency, Hong Ji-ah, clears haunted properties that can’t attract a buyer so she can sell them at market rate. One problem: Lifelong scammer Oh In-beom is also running this con, with the help of persuasion and an array of tech toys. One further problem: In-beom is actually a powerful medium, someone who is easily possessed by ghosts — a crucial part of the exorcism process. The final conundrum: Hong Ji-ah’s mother haunts their home-slash-storefront, and Ji-ah cannot find a medium strong enough to help her mother pass over.

Obviously the two hate each other at first sight. Obviously they make a perfect pair in the exorcism trade. I’m only a few episodes into this, but I’m so impressed by the complications and intricacies woven into this simple story engine. It’s also operating in a line of kdramas about real estate speculators and exploitation, like Bloodhounds and Local Hero. Stay tuned — I’m looking forward to how this one turns out.

An impressively illustrative example

I started drafting this newsletter weeks ago, but could not find the headspace to say what I wanted to say with the energy I had available. Lucky for all of us, that allowed a brand-new isekai comedy to barrel-roll onto Netflix, starring the multitalented Esther Yu Shuxin. It’s called Love Game in Eastern Fantasy, and if you’re not sure about diving into Scum Villain just yet, it hits every genre node right off the bat: Overzealously escapist webnovel fan Ling Miaomiao finds her favorite writer’s latest a sloppy, lazy and unbelievable mess. She vents her frustrations on a message board and… finds herself sucked into the story, as the villainous second female lead who makes trouble for every character Miaomiao likes and fears!

I’m also only a few episodes into this one, but it’s fun as hell and the special effects are killer. If you liked Yu Shuxin’s cheery Orchid Fairy in Love Between Fairy and Devil but also her stone-cold assassin in My Journey to You, you’ll enjoy her bumbling turn as the surprisingly genre-savvy Lin Yu. Opposite her is a tightly wound Ding Yuxi, who delighted in a similar role in another transmigration comedy, The Romance of Tiger and Rose. The previews promise some fabulous twists and big emotions, not to mention plenty of A+ fights. I’m excited for the rest!

And one more thing…

There's nothing better than having brilliant friends!

About a year ago, I got an email from a stranger who’d seen my name in a tweet by another client. Her memoir needed a fact-checker and I needed a gig — not to mention, deep fact-checking is probably my absolute favorite task in journalism and publishing. Eiren and I met up for brunch to talk about her book, and I instantly became obsessed with her. She’s so brilliant and so big-hearted and so cool, in addition to being a just staggeringly good writer.

The book is finally out in the world, and I am so honored to have had any kind of hand in it. The Mourner’s Bestiary combines a quest to understand a hereditary family illness with the natural environments Eiren treasures most and the climate change that is throwing them out of balance. Because she’s just that incredible, she’s also got a novel coming out in January, about a group of scientists trying to rescue the contents of the American Museum of Natural History from rising floodwaters, and you should pre-order it.

Back when I lived in Brooklyn, a mutual friend introduced me to someone who lived in my neighborhood. I was eager-to-desperate for friends you didn’t have to travel 60 to 90 minutes on the MTA to see, and as it happened, Louise is just the most fantastic, hilarious, never-want-to-stop-talking-with-her human on the planet. We immediately discovered a shared love of freaky shit and King of the Hill, and leaving her for my best beloved Chicago is one of my few regrets about no longer living in New York.

Louise has been talking about her debut novel for ages, and we finally, finally can see it too. Hungry Bones teams up a girl who can see ghosts with a ghost who needs to eat — and move on. It’s written for middle-grade readers, but Louise’s command of story and vast, empathetic knowledge of Chinese ghost stories, death work and traditions makes anything she creates worth inhaling. I love our long phone conversations about our respective novels, projects, love of handmade bookmarks and reading lists, and I’m thrilled to pieces you all get to see how awesome she is too.

If you buy any books from these links or through my Bookshop.org recommendations, you’re supporting me in addition to independent bookstores and phenomenal authors. We’re all going to be taking care of each other for a while, and the best way to change something enormous is (and always has been) little habits that stick adding up. ✶

What Korean or Chinese show have you been enjoying recently? Let me know in the comments or on Bluesky. I love recs and growing my teetering to-watch list.

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Thanks for reading Excited Mark! If you’d like to support my work, please share, toss a few bucks at my Ko-Fi or become a subscriber, free or paid. I’m also available for hire as a fact-checker, editor and journalist — visit my RealName.com for clips, services and more.

1. Truly, I just want to emphasize: This story is gay gay homosexual gay. It is literally about the power of queer yearning and self-discovery saving lives and also the world. It is also a send-up of outrageous and explicit sex capers written for overly online horndogs. One season of a donghua is extant, and in theory, a second exists, but given the novel, it will probably never see the light of day. If you are chill with those things, though, you will absolutely love it.

2. I will certainly be writing more about The Double in a later newsletter, but I just want to say that the ending of this story is both inevitable (and probably correct), given the patterns it’s been setting up the whole time, and infuriating, so much so that I had trouble sleeping after the finale!