#i loved yoon's inner monologue this episode

[tomorrowcomesadaytoosoon]

OUR RELATIONSHIP ENDED BEFORE IT BEGAN - episode 2

[rebelsofshield]

Star Wars: The Clone Wars: Stories of Light and Dark- Review

One incredible story is not enough to make this mostly uninspired Clone Wars themed anthology worth picking up.

(Review contains minor spoilers)

It’s been a big year for The Clone Wars. Twelve years after the cult favorite animated series started, it finally came to a conclusion earlier this spring on Disney+. Lucasfilm Publishing smartly capitalized off the hype for this long awaited finale with an anthology comic series released through IDW Publishing and a young reader collection of short fiction, Star Wars: The Clone Wars Stories of Light and Dark.

On paper, the idea of a collection of short stories centered on the heroes and villains of The Clone Wars sounds incredible. I personally love short stories and From A Certain Point of View was maybe the most creative Star Wars book of the last decade. (I can’t wait for its sequel this November.) The talent assembled for this project is similarly impressive. You have veteran Star Wars writers like Jason Fry, Zoraida Cordova, and Rebecca Roanhorse alongside standout science fiction and fantasy writers such as Yoon Ha Lee and young adult stars like Sarah Beth Durst and Preeti Chhibber .

It’s disappointing then that Star Wars: The Clone Wars Stories of Light and Dark feels like a mostly phoned in endeavor. The editorial decision to make each story a retelling of an existing episode of the television series does a lot to hamper creativity to begin with. Rather than finding new tales to tell with these iconic and beloved characters, the writing talent assembled is forced to recant existing narratives and hopefully inject some life into them in the process.

The level of creativity in tackling this limiting editorial decision varies from writer to writer. Lou Anders, Tom Angleberger, and Rebecca Roanhorse opt to tell their stories in the voice of their characters through smart uses of first person point of view. Anders manages to inject his take on “Dooku Captured” and “The Gungan General” with the indignant haughtiness that made the series’ take on the Count Dooku so fun. Angleberger and Roanhorse have their characters (Bane and Maul respectively) recount their stories to another character and it’s fun just seeing the inner monologues of these different villains.

Others opt for more direct rewriting of their assigned episodes. These by and large make up the more boring or frustrating reads. While Jason Fry manages to turn “Ambush” into a discussion of Yoda’s relationship to the Force in wartime and Greg van Eekhout peppers in new bits of dialogue into the already jampacked “The Lawless,” most of these revisitings are unimpressive. The most frustrating proves to be Yoon Ha Lee’s take on season four’s incredible Umbara arc. Lee is a talented writer of military focused science fiction so his taking on this story makes perfect sense, but “The Shadow of Umbara” can’t help but feel phoned in. It feels less like an adaptation but instead a heavily truncated transcription of four episodes of content. The complex character dynamics are stripped down. The emotions are lost. The horrors of war are nonpresent. It’s beyond disappointing.

The most inspired take of the collection comes from Sarah Beth Durst who reorients the point of view of season five’s “Young Jedi” arc to Katooni. Katooni was already a standout character in this story and getting to step into this fledgling Jedi’s thoughts and really get to understand her fears, hopes, and insecurities adds a nice flair to the narrative. There’s also just a certain joy in seeing the next generation of Jedi in awe of Ahsoka. Very relatable.

It’s a bizarre product and it leaves you wondering who exactly this collection was targeted to. The stories feels so disparate and also dependent on the continuity of the series to make sense for a new reader and fans of the show are unlikely to get much out of this book due to the familiarity of the source material.

And then there is “Bug.” The final story in this collection is somehow a must read despite it all. E. Anne Convery spins an original Star Wars fairy tale out of the traumatic aftermath of “Massacre.” Centered on a nameless young girl forced to work for her abusive innkeep parents on a backwater planet, “Bug” feels instantly compelling in its deft weaving of familiar fantasy tropes with Star Wars back droppings. When a strange old woman arrives fleeing the war, our protagonist’s world begins to expand and strange magic seems to spill from every corner. Convery writers her Dathomiran visitor with the right amount of wonder and fear and she feels right at home alongside any number of fairy tale witches and sorceresses. “Bug” proves to be an incredibly enjoyable genre play but also a blast of a story in its own right. It feels like the kind of bedtime tale you could read to an adventurous child at night and it hints to a larger world just outside its doorstep.

It’s a shame then that I have trouble recommending paying for a $17.99 book just for one stellar short story. If the entire collection had showcased the same level of freedom and creativity as its final piece this may have been something really special. But unfortunately, what we are left with is a mostly forgettable collection with one diamond in the rough. I guess I have to wait until FACPOV in November after all.

Score: C

[overthinkingkdrama]

Old Souls

{A Scarlet Heart: Ryeo fan fiction}

Set immediately after the end of episode 20.

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Ha Jin felt she was adjusting to the present pretty well, all things considered. She hardly ever introduced herself to a stranger by the wrong name, or wrote down Hae Soo instead of Go Ha Jin, or used Chinese characters when she meant to use Hangul. Not more than two or three times since she recovered her memories had she let her house grow entirely dark at night and gone searching for a taper, before remembering there was electricity now and flipping on the lights. Yes, she thought she was recovering the best that could be expected.

She rarely daydreamed about the 4th prince. Not more than three or four times a day.

And there were so many things to love about living in modern-day Seoul, she’d started mentally keeping a list and running through it whenever she felt herself missing someone from the past. Having hot and cold running water was fantastic. The whole indoor plumbing thing, actually. Food had a lot more flavor and variety in the present. Spices were cheap and plentiful. Cold medicine. Air travel. The internet. Being able to call her mother on the phone whenever she wanted was immeasurably precious to her. All night cafes, for when she couldn’t sleep. Cafes in general. She found it didn’t take long before she was hopelessly addicted to coffee again, though she did miss the delicately balanced herbal teas she used to make in the Damiwon. The ones she could never quite recreate.

There were things she didn’t like though, things she couldn’t get used to.

Public transportation felt horribly claustrophobic. There were so many more people in the world now. The city air didn’t taste right. She missed the gardens and ponds and shade trees in the palace. She missed the quiet. She missed being able to see the stars at night. Stars that you could only see in Goryeo. She couldn’t seem to get back into the swing of SNS, of replying to text messages, of being expected to be in contact with everyone at all times. It was exhausting. She found it hard to talk to her old friends. Their interests and concerns seemed so different than hers, almost petty somehow. They seemed so much younger than she remembered. Slowly they stopped asking her to come out with them all together, but the worst part about it was that she felt relieved.

Her friendship with Ji Mong was the one oasis she allowed herself, the one place in her life where she gave herself permission to reminisce as much as she wanted without guilt. She hadn't considered the two of them particularly close in Goryeo. They had never been able to talk freely when they’d both lived in the palace. But here it felt like they had more in common than practically anyone, and it was remarkably easy to talk to each other. She knew this was counterproductive, but she would comfort herself thinking that eventually she would begin to forget things from the past, she would begin to think of Ji Mong primarily as Professor Choi Yoon Jung and she would outgrow the need for her oasis. At least, she told herself, she was moving in the right direction.

She was confident, she was almost certain, that she would have been just fine in no time if he would stop appearing around her and knocking her off balance. But it seemed like whenever she looked around there he was. That man with Wang So's face. Lee Jin Woo.

At first she would catch a glimpse of him on her way to the bus stop, in a corner table at the cafe near the boutique, or passing by the big store window while she was working her shift. She tired to write it off as a coincidence—Ji Mong had mentioned that he worked nearby—but it kept happening. And then she began to think he was actively seeking her out, lingering in places he knew she'd be. It wasn't just her imagination.

One day he came into the shop and looked around, clearly not intending to buy anything. She was working the counter, dreading every moment that he could come up and say something to her. Then she was little disappointed when he didn't. He talked to one of her coworkers near the perfume samples for several minutes before quietly leaving the store.

Later, when the store had emptied out her coworker came up and handed her a slip of paper with a phone number written on it. “He said to give this to you.”

“He didn't say anything else?” Ha Jin asked.

Her coworker shook her head, “Just to give it to you. I think he must be shy. Did you see him though? He was gorgeous.” Ha Jin said she hadn't noticed. But then, she hadn't needed to look at him to know. She had traced out the lines of that face with the tips of her fingers.

Later when she was alone she crumpled the paper into a ball and tossed it in the trash bin. She was more careful about avoiding him after that. If she spotted him somewhere she did her best to ignore him, keeping her head down to avoid accidentally meeting his eye. When she went into the cafe two doors down from the boutique and saw him already standing in line she left without ordering anything. Perhaps that was why it took him so long to approach her personally and try to talk to her.

She hadn't seen him around for almost a week when suddenly he materialized outside the boutique, just when she was taking her lunch break. He was holding two lattes and held them both out to her.

“This one is something very sweet with 'carmelicious' in the name.” He said, indicating the one in his left hand, “This one is is just an plain Americano. I didn't know what you would like so...”

Hesitantly she took the cup in his right hand.

“Uh...thanks.”

“Sorry if this is abrupt. I've been trying to get the courage up for a while. I'm not very good at this, as you can see.”

She took a sip and it was already nearly cold. She pretended not to notice. How long did he wait for me out here? She wondered.

“Have you...that is. I don't know if you recall, we met a while ago—”

“No, I remember you. From the gallery.”

“Yeah, I...I didn't think you recognized me. I left my phone number, but you never called...”

“The phone number. Right. I, uh, lost that.” She fibbed, wincing inwardly.

It was hard to look directly at him. Or rather, it was hard to look at him without openly staring. By modern standards he was really quite handsome, with fine, almost delicate features verging on the feminine. Very of the fashion. She had never been able to imagine what Wang So would look like in the modern era, with a nicely fitted suit and expensive haircut. Yet, here he was.

Of course, he was lacking the 4th prince's scar, his mask, his roughness. A certain hunted, hungry, wolfish quality was missing. Those sharp eyes, with their distinctive inner corners, in appearance exactly like she remembered them. Identical. But the look in those eyes was worlds distant from what she had known.

“Have you been well?”

“Very well, thank you. I wasn't myself that day, but I'm doing much better now. I'm sure I startled you.”

“Not at all, I mean...I wanted to ask you something—“ Not once in this whole interaction had he seemed comfortable, but now he stammered to a complete halt and looking down he made a face as though he were privately berating himself. Then with a grimace he blurted out, “Would you like to have dinner with me?”

Ha Jin felt certain somehow that this what not what he had been intending to ask her, and to her own surprise she found herself replying, “I can't tonight, I have other plans.”

“What about tomorrow?”

“That could work.”

“Can I pick you up here? After you get off?”

“Okay.”

“Great.”

And before she had time to process the fact that she'd just agreed to a date, he was waving goodbye and retreating for all he was worth with his cold coffee in hand.

The following day, before the start of her shift, Ha Jin picked out her outfit for dinner. She chose a flared skirt and a flattering blouse that would both survive being folded in her bag in the break room until that evening. Unconsciously, she picked out colors that So had always preferred to see her in, soft pastels with the echo of spring time about them.

All day at work she was anxious and unfocused. She watched the clock and time seemed to crawl by. After her shift was over she changed out of her uniform and touched up her make up in the bathroom. As she reapplied her lipstick, she caught her own eye in the mirror.

What are you thinking? She wondered, are you excited right now?

Lately, her inner monologue was more like a dialogue. Two distinct perspectives struggling for dominance. Sometimes she was more Ha Jin than Soo, living in the moment. And some times she was more Soo than Ha Jin, pining for the past, living in a memory that was more like a dream.

She knew it was the Soo side of her that wanted to see Jin Woo.

I just want to see his face. She thought, I used to spend hours painting on stones in Jung's garden just to look into his eyes. Never quite catching the likeness. It'll be like that. Like looking at a living image. I know it's not the real thing, so what's the harm in it?

She packed up her things and went to leave, her sunbae's exchanging confidential glances and teasing her as she went. Calling after her in sing-song voices, “Have fun!”

She didn't have Jin Woo's number, she realized, and all she could do was wait for him to come and pick her up. She loitered around the front of the boutique and continually glancing up the street to see if he was coming. She pressed her hand against her chest. The Ha Jin side of her was saying, If you really believe all that, why is your heart beating so fast?

I know it's fake, but let me have this. Only this.

Fine then, satisfy your curiosity and put an end to it. But don't say I didn't warn you.

Fractured as she was, she could carry on this kind of mental back and forth very rationally. It was just dinner, she thought. She could make it through dinner. Pleasant, polite. They would exchange small talk and at some point he would give her his card. She would say she had a lovely time before they parted ways, but she wouldn't call and no second date would follow. That would be that.

It was all so clear and straight forward, right up to the moment he rounded the corner and started coming down the street toward her. Spotting her, he waved by way of greeting.

“You weren't waiting long, I hope.”

“No, I just stepped out.”

“I'm glad. The restaurant isn't far, do you mind walking?”

“Not at all.”

She followed Jin Woo to the spot he had in mind, a sterile modern setting where he had a reservation for them. Everything was white and brightly lit, like an doctor's office or a exam room. They were led to their table, stiffly sat down, and left with their menus.

“Have you ever been here before?” He asked.

“No.”

“The food's good.” He said, frowning as he looked over the menu.

Conversation happened at a crawl. Rigid and artificial as the room they were sitting in.

“So what is it that you do? For a job, I mean.”

“I practiced law.” He seemed to catch the past tense and corrected himself, “Practice law. I’m a lawyer. Though I’m currently on…a sort of sabbatical to work on some personal projects.”

“They must really put a lot of faith in you, to give such a young lawyer so much free time.”

“Oh yes,” He said, but his tone was full of irony and made her think she shouldn’t pry any further.

“I guess you already know what I do for a living so…not much to tell about that.” She racked her brain for something interesting to say. Why was this so difficult? She'd gone on unwanted set-up dates with friends of friends where she'd been more comfortable. She kept reaching for her water glass.

In some ways modern people were more open with their feelings, freer. There was a lot to be said for it, and things were surely better now. But at least in Goryeo, with its strict social structure of precedence and status, you always knew where you stood. When to bow and when to stay silent. When to speak and what to say. But with Jin Woo, she was at a loss.

And yet, for all the uneasiness between them, they weren't like two strangers failing to make small talk. It was more like a tight wire act. While Jin Woo politely inquired about her family, her job, her interests, she couldn't shake the feeling that he wanted to say something to her. Something else. Something altogether unusual.

The waiter returned and they ordered. When he left the conversation again became a stalemate, but that charge hung in the air between them. Unacknowledged by either side, but undeniable. There was something in the expression of his eyes that said this wasn't an ordinary date. It was all a work, a play, a gambit. And the truth lied somewhere beneath.

Gathering up her courage she said, “Why did you ask me to dinner? It's not just idol curiosity, and it's not because you think I'm pretty. I mean, why really?”

She spoke with confidence, but his eyes widened as though with surprise, and she thought for a moment that her imagination had been running wild and she'd been mistaken. But he leaned forward confidentially and in an undertone said, “Do you want to get out of here?”

She said, “We just ordered,” but she realized as she said it that she didn't want to stay in that too clean, too-white room anymore. It was suffocating.

“Are you hungry?” He asked, and she shook her head. “Me either. I feel like I couldn't eat a bite right now.”

He stood up and tossed a couple bills on the table, looking around like they were trying to get away with something. “Let's go.”

He held out his hand and she took it. Then he smiled at her. That smile was just like she remembered it—radiant and all too rare—and his touch sent a familiar thrill through her. She was totally lost.

They nearly ran out of the restaurant, and wound up somewhere nearby. A second floor bar and lounge, dimly lit at all hours of the day, where they sat down in an out of the way corner booth. They looked at each other for a long moment, feeling breathless. Still he didn't speak.

He signaled to the bartender and ordered them a bottle of wine. When it arrived, he poured for her and then for himself. A generous glass that he drank down unceremoniously, clearly not drinking for the taste. Hastily, he poured himself another.

“Honestly, I'm not a good drinker.” He said, “People say I can't hold my liquor. I'm unpredictable and run my mouth off and it gets me in trouble.”

“Then why order wine?”

“Because I need to ask you something, but I can't seem to get the words out.”

Ha Jin watched him closely, unable to hide her curiosity and anxious to know what he would ask. She wanted to drink, but she felt that she couldn't trust herself with him even sober, and took the wine only in tiny sips. He finished his second glass of wine—a little slower this time—and by this point there was some color in his cheeks.

“Have you ever...”He paused, chewing his lower lip pensively before starting again, “That is, are you sure you don't know me from somewhere?”

“Somewhere like...?”

“I'm sorry, this isn't some kind of cheesy pick up line, I promise. I just wondered if you felt the way I do, like we've met before. Like we've known each other for a long time. Even though, I know for a fact that day at the gallery was the first time I've seen you in my life.”

His words struck her with a jolt, and she thought back to what Ji Mong had said on the day she had first seen Jin Woo. That he'd found Jin Woo before he'd found her. That the three of them, all meeting in that place, in that way, couldn't have been a coincidence. But all she said was, “I don't know.”

“It probably sounds crazy. It sounds that way to me too. It feels crazy. But I haven't been able to shake it, ever since that day. I wouldn't tell you this, but I knew instinctively that you could understand me. That you would at least try to understand me.” His eyes were bright and intense, the way they looked searchingly into hers. “There are these dreams I keep having. They don't feel like dreams when I'm in them, or at least no sort of dreams I've ever had before. And your face keeps appearing in them.”

“What kind of dreams?” She had had dreams too. Every night until she recovered her memories she had dreamed of So.

“There's this one in particular that keeps coming back. It's...it's an unbearably beautiful day in summer. I see you standing under a tree, dressed in white and blue. You turn and smile at me. There's an ornament in your hair. I know you've been waiting for me and that makes me happy, but something else is weighing on my mind. Something I don't want to talk to you about.”

Ha Jin felt keenly conscious of how close he was to her now, something electric prickling at the back of her neck, and the scene he described rose up before her recollection like she was there again.

“You're waiting to hear something from me, but I don't say it. I can't. I'm ashamed of myself.”

You say that you've forgotten.

“I say I can't remember what I was going to tell you. But you know that I'm lying. You're cross with me, you're worried. I want to see your smile, so I take to my favorite place.”

The boat. The lake.

“We row out onto a lake, golden with afternoon sun. It's dazzlingly bright. We listen to insects and marsh-birds. I say...what do I say? I say I'm sorry I forgot what I was going to tell you. You say that you know I'll tell you when I remember. You're the most beautiful thing I've ever seen. I wish the entire world beyond that lake and that boat would disappear. I wish I could live in that moment with you forever.”

I would have stayed frozen there with you, if I could.

Ha Jin thought of what Ji Mong had said, that he couldn't rule out the possibility that Jin Woo could somehow gain access to So's memories. Could that be what this was? These dreams. Did they mean he was on the edge of remembering everything?

Whether consciously or not, he was leaning in toward her. “In the dream, I nearly give in, and tell you what I meant to tell you. Every time I almost tell you that I...I...” His eyes were on her lips, and he was so near she could feel his breath.

Ha Jin realized that with the slightest push he would say it. What the 4th prince had wanted to say. He would remember what followed. If she kept on pressing him, he would keep on remembering until he remembered everything. Or if she just closed her eyes at that moment, he would kiss her, and that would be enough to start it all over again. That intoxicating downward spiral, where she never seemed to want to come up for air, and never seemed to reach the bottom.

Instead, she turned her head sharply away. Coolly she said, “And then what?”

That was enough to break the spell. Jin Woo cleared his throat, drawing back he said, “And that's it. That's where I always wake up.”

She looked at him again, and saw how lost he was, how he was looking for someone to guide him. Someone to explain what was happening. She could see, for the first time, that he was scared. That he wanted her help. But there was only one thing she could do to help him.

She looked at him without expression. Without empathy and without compassion. She looked at him as you look at a stranger.

“Forgive me. I shouldn't...I shouldn't have—”

“Do you remember what I said to you?”

“What?”

“That day at the gallery. Do you remember what I said to you?”

“You asked, uh, you asked me if I'd come to find you. You called me...” He stammered in his answer, suddenly shy, “You'd mistaken me for someone else. Your uncle—Professor Choi—he explained to me that you'd lost someone recently. Someone who resembled me.”

“Don't you want to know who you looked like? Why I was crying that day?”

He hesitated, but nodded.

“My ex.”

“It ended badly, I take it?”

“He died.”

“Oh, I...I'm so sorry.”

“We loved each other, but we'd hurt each other too much to stay together. And then before I got the chance to see him again or reconcile, he was gone.” She could tell by how pale he'd become that the words were having the desired effect. It was all true in the technical sense, although intentionally phrased so that he would misunderstand. He didn't need to know the details. Never mind that her eyes had started stinging.

She grabbed her purse as she stood up, “It was my fault coming here with you. You see, it's not you I want to see. It's someone else. I'm sorry, but I don't think we should see each other again.”

She walked away, trying to keep her strides steady as she went, hoping she looked resolute and dignified from behind. She made it out of the bar without stopping to look back. He didn't call her name or run after her, for which she was grateful. Her throat was burning from choking back sobs. Her eyes were streaming and she could barely see, but she made it into a public restroom and locked herself in a stall.

If only I hadn't come here today.

If only we hadn't spoken.

If only he hadn't told me about that dream.

If only I'd never seen him at all, then I wouldn't regret him this much.

She cried for a long time. And even when her eyes were dry she stayed there unmoving, thinking about the distant past. A painful memory was like a scar, she realized. Although it could fade over time, it would never fully disappear, fully heal, until it was totally forgotten. But she was learning that you couldn't simply wish to forget. Even if you buried it, even if you ran from it, a bad memory would seek you out. Like a dull ache that woke you in the middle of the night.

I can spare him that at least. She thought, If she simply disappeared. If he never found out about her, and he never knew the truth, their past, their ending, then it would be better. Far better than living this way. You never have to forget what you never know.

Keep our happy memories, and forget me.

[Chapter 4]

[eth-an]

short essay on k-dramas

Crash Landing on You, originally aired on the South Korean television network tvN and made available to an American audience in 2020 on Netflix, is one of my favorite romantic K-Dramas, and it serves a superlative point of reference for the metafictional, postmodern, and reflexive tendencies that have developed in the genre over the past two decades.

In the beginning of the second episode of Crash Landing, the viewer is placed in medias res, with the two romantic leads, Ri Jeong-hyeok and Yoon Se-ri, gazing into each other’s eyes in a dramatic and unexpected encounter. Se-ri, a South Korean woman who finds herself stranded on the wrong side of the DMZ after a freak tornado-induced paragliding accident, had previously attempted to run away from Jeong-hyeok but now realizes that she has stumbled upon his house. Jeong-hyeok, who is wary of Se-ri’s presence, contemplates killing her. Se-ri hilariously mistakes his gaze as desirous, as her inner monologue reveals that she thinks Jeong-hyeok finds her attractive. This moment, in which the inner thoughts of both romantic lead characters are dubbed over the scene, borrows its main formal device from romantic novels, which will often utilize free indirect discourse to a similar effect. In sum, dramatic and comedic irony builds from the disjunction between Se-ri and Jeong-hyeok’s perception of the situation that is revealed to the viewer through a narrative voiceover.

To understand the weight of this scene, it is important to understand how this trope has been employed more generally. In most conventional romantic novels, free indirect discourse is used to reveal the heroine protagonist’s fear of the hero’s rugged masculinity: although she wants to trust the hero’s intentions, she feels weak and powerless against his manhood. Then, the free indirect style of the novel allows the reader to see into the man’s first-person experiences as well, which invariably reveal his love and tender care for the female love interest. This revelation then allows the audience to continue reading without the fear that the male hero might hurt the heroine. The trope of free indirect discourse revealing and elaborating the conflicting emotions of two main love interests has been analyzed at length in critical studies of romance novels, like Janice Radway’s influential 1984 text Reading the Romance. In Crash Landing, however, the trope is updated from the merely textual to the voiceover narrative form: the montage slows down time to allow each character’s thoughts to be revealed along with close-up shots of their faces. Crash Landing also comically refuses convention in the content of the scene: instead of fearing Jeong-hyeok’s powerful arms that restrain her movement, the overconfident Se-ri mistakenly takes aggression as flirtation. The typical dynamics of power that were present in older romance novels are then turned on their head for a new viewership. This is just one example of how Crash Landingmasterfully modifies the form and content of the romance genre to reimagine new narrative possibilities.

The setting of the show in North Korea is significant, and there has been considerable academic study devoted to the accuracy of the show’s representation, with scholars questioning which stereotypes the show reproduces and which it unpacks. Personally, I am less interested in the historical or political material present in the show’s depiction of North Korean life, and I am more interested in considering the function that the North serves in the viewer’s own self-imagination. Even though I am not Korean, and my knowledge of Korean history is cursory at best, the construction of the North in the show allows for a kind of alternative cultural identification for the viewer to transiently experience for themselves. The setting of romance films in a far-away place (i.e. Westerns) or a long-ago time (i.e. period dramas) is not a new phenomenon, but Crash Landing allows for new cross-cultural imaginative possibilities in its careful attention to the construction of Korean-ness itself. As anthropologist Deborah Root has commented in her popular essay “White Indians,” the process of identifying with another culture can sometimes give us “the imaginary space that can save us from ourselves” (232). While this cross-cultural imagination is often imbricated with power and can at times cross over into outright appropriation, Crash Landing gives insight into North Korean life that helps the audience imagine themselves otherwise. When Jeong-hyeok is preparing dinner for Se-ri, he shows off his Northern kimchi cellar, where he keeps all of his chili pastes and fermented foods. In the second half of the season, Jeong-hyeok follows Se-ri to the South, and his comrades marvel at the amount of chicken that they can eat at a chimaek restaurant. Regardless of how “real” this representation is, or which stereotypes it exploits, the crossing of borders in the show builds on this process of cultural representation that can act dually as a window into another world and as a mirror for the self. As the characters reimagine themselves in different contexts, in different nation-states, the viewer is invited on this generative and reparative journey as well.

Crash Landing on You is incredibly inventive, against all critics of K-Dramas who might malign the genre as formulaic. As I mentioned previously, there is a distinctive metafictional quality of the show that draws explicit attention to the constructedness of its narrative. Kim Ju-meok, one of the soldiers that Se-ri encounters on her trip to the North, is obsessed with old K-Dramas from the 90s, and constantly compares the events of his own life to the overly-dramatic plot lines from his favorite programs. The character of Ju-meok effectively takes the mask off the naturalistic realism of the show, underlining every scene with a wink to the viewer. In episode two, a carefully timed cut jumps between a scene where Jeong-hyeok is facing his enemies in Pyongyang and a scene where Ju-meok demands to know what happens next in an old K-drama. This knowing satire of the dramatic edits that are all too common in K-dramas adds comedic relief while also building a reflexive commentary on the incredible influence that K-drama tropes have. Even though K-dramas are banned in North Korea, Ju-meok still is able to get access to those choice dramas that have been smuggled across the border. This attests to the power of K-dramas and their international success while also underwriting Crash Landing’s own success. The show’s sappy tropes are simultaneously ironic and sincere: the viewer can choose to roll their eyes along with Ju-meok or cry along with Se-ri and Jeong-hyeok.

Crash Landing also contains a careful reflexive critique of the commercial media practices that K-dramas themselves undeniably benefit from. As Fredric Jameson has commented in his piece “Reification and Utopia in Mass Culture,” Crash Landing is an example of mass culture that “remains implicitly, and no matter how faintly, negative and critical of the social order from which, as a product and a commodity, it springs” (144). Se-ri is a successful businesswoman from the South, and her character serves both as a kind of controlled fantastical wish-fulfillment for the viewer (Se-ri embodies the Korean dream of rags to riches, she is the Miracle on the Han incarnate), while also providing a commentary on the emptiness and alienation felt in the commodity-driven culture of the South. In the second episode, Se-ri dreams that she is back in her comfortable, luxurious Gangnam apartment, and walks around the scene, doting on each commodity in her house as she passes it. She hugs her candle and caresses her fancy porcelain bathtub. As the books on her shelves (she has many) sit there untouched, she is comfortable in simply possessing them, in knowing that they exist for her. Soon, however, her dream world begins to fade away, each object melting out of vision until she finds herself back in Jeong-hyeok’s tiny village in the North. Despite the fact that Se-ri longs for the material wealth of her Southern life, it becomes clear through this scene that the happiness she finds in her possessions is only transient. Later in the series, we learn that Se-ri attempted to euthanize herself in a care facility in Switzerland, and that she suffered from serious depression despite her privileged upbringing. In this way, the show remains critical of a commercial mindset that is unable to reconstitute Se-ri’s desperate need for affection. Despite the fact that the show is critical of commercialism, it ironically prescribes itself as the antidote as well: through re-watching K-Drama after K-Drama, you too can experience the melodramatic rise and fall of the characters. In this way, a paranoid critic might claim Crash Landing’s critique is shallow and toothless. On the other hand, I choose to view the show as performing what the critic Maggie Nelson has called “work[ing] the trap that one is inevitably in” (29). While Crash Landing might not be able to save its viewers from the ills of capitalism, or the trauma of the North-South divide, or the failures of their own romantic lives, it doesn’t have to. In the end, the show is perfect at simply being a shoulder to lean on, offering a laugh and a hug to the viewer—and that is why I appreciate it so much.