#just between lovers

[kdramaspace]

POTW #98: LOVE AT FIRST SIGHT vs. SLOW BURN (as voted by our members and followers)

A Piece of Your Mind (2020) | My Liberation Notes (2022) | Just Between Lovers (2017) | Run On (2020) | The Eighth Sense (2023) | One Spring Night (2019) | Do You Like Brahms? (2020)

[thaempo]

Just Between Lovers 그냥 사랑하는 사이, dir. Kim Jin Won @asiandramanet august bingo: comfort

[khaoray]

@asiandramanet july bingo: animation @userdramas get to know me bingo: drama or tv series

(★ ☆ ★)

[seodongjae]

does it taste good? you fired me and refused to pay me, and now you're drinking here? i shared the burden of hardship, but you benefitted from it. these days, bad guys live well and sleep easy. what kind of shit is that? don't you think? ahjussi?

LEE JUNHO as LEE GANG-DOO Just Between Lovers (2017-2018)

[kdramaxoxo]

I need someone to do some research about how many times there's a scene in a k-drama featuring the lead couple riding a carousel AND wearing animal ear headbands.

I'm guessing 57

[dailyasiandramas]

dailyasiandramas’ sunday throwback ★ [WEEK 12]

JUST BETWEEN LOVERS 그냥 사랑하는 사이 [2017] Dir. Kim Jin Won

[xiaolanhua]

LEE JUNHO as LEE KANG DOO Just Between Lovers 그냥 사랑하는 사이 (2017) – Ep. 1

[haeyeongs]

JUST BETWEEN LOVERS (2017-2018) dir. Kim Jin Won KING THE LAND (2023) dir. Im Hyun Wook

[baek1nho]

kdramas over flowers 2023 | a love so beautiful

my favorite couples

[lurkingshan]

Talk to me about noble idiocy! I know it is one of your most beloathed tropes... what makes you dislike it particularly? Are there examples or variations that you find more tolerable? Or ones that you feel are especially egregious?

Wow, what a gift. Thank you for inviting me to rant about my beloathed, noble idiocy.

So first, what is it? Noble idiocy is a very well worn drama trope that in its barest definition means that a character does something stupid for ostensibly noble reasons. In most dramas, it shows up in the form of one character destroying a relationship for the other person’s “own good.” It is usually justified under the notion that the noble idiot is trying to protect their beloved, and it most often shows up as the final act conflict in romances. As a drama viewer, I hate this trope for so many reasons.

Let me count the ways:

The trope is predicated on the notion that the noble idiot knows what is best for their partner and is entitled to act in their interest, usually without their consent or knowledge

It’s also a trope based in a failure or outright refusal to communicate, which is always a frustrating thing to watch

Committing an act of noble idiocy is a breach of trust in a relationship that is hard to believably come back from, as it requires deeply hurting the person you claim to love and feeling righteous about it to boot

It’s also just infantilizing and shows deep disrespect for one’s partner and their agency to make their own choices

Most dramas don’t actually hold the noble idiot to account, uncritically accepting the notion that they believed they had a good reason for what they did and thus should be easily forgiven

Consequently, an act of noble idiocy often destroys any faith the audience has in the relationship and the inevitably tacked on happy resolution falls flat

The trope is very often used cheaply as an easy shortcut for conflict when a drama is running out of steam or isn’t sure how to fill its runtime, and thus tends to feel false and sometimes even like a complete violation of character

So yes, noble idiocy on my screen is an automatic groan for me and usually takes a drama down in my estimation because it’s just such a lazy, overused trope. But there is a spectrum and some versions are more palatable than others. For instance, if the noble idiot has extremely well-established reasons to think they are not good for their partner, the drama has been naturally building to a break, and the partner is well aware of what is happening and why, I find that much easier to swallow.

A good example of this take on the trope is Just Between Lovers, a kdrama about healing from a traumatic incident and its aftereffects. Gang Doo, the male lead, feels he is holding his girlfriend back, and so he takes a job that will send him away for awhile to give her a chance to move on. She doesn’t want him to leave, but she is fully aware of where he is going and why. So while she’s frustrated and hurt as she watches him go, she isn’t left wondering what went wrong or thinking this is about anything but his trauma, which she already knew about. She knows it is because he loves her so much that he is leaving. As a result, their reconciliation was believable.

The next step down is the just plain stupid variation, in which the noble idiot doesn’t realize there will be fallout for their failure to communicate their intentions when they decide to abruptly leave their partner. This version showed up in Because This is My First Life, a kdrama about a contract marriage, when the heroine, upon falling in love for real with her husband, decided she didn’t want a fake marriage anymore. She decided to end the relationship and take a short time away so they could start fresh. The problem? She didn’t tell him that’s what she was doing, she just left him with no explanation. The male lead, a neurodivergent person who had struggled to open up to her in the first place, was deeply damaged by this abandonment. It’s an act a person claiming to love him would never do. Because of that, I can never love the drama wholeheartedly or trust in that relationship, which really pissed me off because until that final act of noble idiocy, it was a lovely and thoughtful romance.

By far the worst version of this trope is what I call the needlessly cruel variation, where the noble idiot outright lies to their partner about their feelings and intentions as a way to make a clean break. This usually takes the form of claiming not to love them anymore, and it is fucking infuriating. Plus and Minus is a great exemplar of this version of the trope, and it’s the reason I start hissing every time it comes up. After pursuing a relationship with his lifelong best friend, Li Kung bows to homophobic familial pressure and ends their relationship by claiming he misread his feelings and does not love Tse Shou after all, leaving Tse Shou confused and destroyed, having just lost both his lover and his best friend with no warning and in the cruelest way imaginable. It was out of character for Li Kung and absolutely untrue to their relationship dynamic. That the show then tried to tack on a fluffy happy ending after that unbelievable breach of trust just made me even more angry and I will honestly never forgive it.

There are others that fall somewhere along the spectrum—A Boss and a Babe, for instance, lives somewhere in the gray space between the second and third variation, as Cher told Gun he was leaving him because they were not compatible and told him not to look for him, and failed to communicate that his intention was to finish his degree so that they would become more compatible. It was cruel in that there was zero reason for him to not just tell Gun what he was doing, but it was based in Cher just being low (high) key stupid about other peoples’ emotional needs rather than him intentionally setting out to break Gun’s heart.

And then there’s something like We Best Love, which starts out giving the impression that we are dealing with noble idiocy before peeling back the layers to reveal that both Shi De and Shu Yi had been tricked into thinking the other abandoned him, and it was actually Shu Yi’s dad who interfered to keep them apart and confused. Shi De was definitely an idiot for never talking to Shu Yi to confirm the breakup and trying to defeat his dad on his own, but he never actually nobly dumped Shu Yi in the first place. It’s an interesting twist on the trope that starts as infuriating and becomes more sympathetic as it’s unraveled.

In conclusion: I really do despise noble idiocy narratives on the whole. But that doesn’t mean it’s a completely useless trope, and there are dramas I love that have deployed milder versions of it. It can and has been used effectively in a way that supports character and leads to relationship development. It’s just so rarely the case that I instinctively recoil from it, and I wish drama writers would stop and think 12 times before deciding if its use is really necessary or compelling in their stories.

[dramaism]

🎁 KDRAMA SECRET SANTA 2022 — for Lilly @bareums ❤️

[kdramasource]

You stayed with me. Thank you.

Just Between Lovers (2017) | Ep 12

[dramasauce]

@userdramas 2023 secret santa: for @bareums @asiandramanet ❤꧁ღ⊱♥ 𝐻𝒶𝓅𝓅𝓎 𝒽𝑜𝓁𝒾𝒹𝒶𝓎𝓈! (𝓈𝑜𝓇𝓇𝓎 𝒻𝑜𝓇 𝓉𝒽𝑒 𝓆𝓊𝒶𝓁𝒾𝓉𝓎, 𝐼 𝒸𝑜𝓊𝓁𝒹𝓃’𝓉 𝓂𝒶𝓃𝒶𝑔𝑒 𝓉𝑜 𝑔𝑒𝓉 𝒷𝑒𝓉𝓉𝑒𝓇 𝒸𝒶𝓅𝓉𝓊𝓇𝑒𝓈!) 𝐵𝓊𝓉 𝓉𝒽𝑒 𝓈𝑒𝓃𝓉𝒾𝓂𝑒𝓃𝓉 𝒾𝓈 𝓉𝒽𝑒𝓇𝑒! 𝐼 𝒸𝒽𝑜𝓈𝑒 𝒶 𝓉𝒽𝓇𝑜𝓌𝒷𝒶𝒸𝓀 𝓉𝑜 𝒸𝒶𝓅𝓉𝓊𝓇𝑒 𝓉𝒽𝑒 𝓌𝒶𝓎 𝓉𝒽𝑒𝓈𝑒 𝓉𝓌𝑜 𝓁𝑒𝒶𝓃𝑒𝒹 𝑜𝓃 𝑒𝒶𝒸𝒽 𝑜𝓉𝒽𝑒𝓇 𝒾𝓃 𝓉𝒽𝑒𝒾𝓇 𝒿𝑜𝒾𝓃𝑒𝒹 𝓉𝓇𝒶𝑔𝑒𝒹𝓎. 𝐵𝑒𝒸𝒶𝓊𝓈𝑒 𝓌𝒾𝓉𝒽 𝑒𝒶𝒸𝒽 𝑜𝓉𝒽𝑒𝓇… 𝓉𝒽𝑒𝓎 𝓌𝑒𝓇𝑒𝓃’𝓉 𝒶𝓁𝑜𝓃𝑒. ♥⊱ღ꧂❤

[khaoray]

You don't need another human being to make your life complete, but let's be honest. — Emery Allen (★ ☆ ★)

@asiandramanet event 04: love is in the air @asiandramanet january - february bingo: animation

[justkdramathings]

i like more depressed male leads cause not everyone watches that show and not everyone falls in love with the male lead that way. for example lee jun ho in just between lovers was such a cutie. i mean hes cute in king the land too but like hes everyones mans now 😂

[kdramaxoxo]

Nam Da Reum is Baaaaaack!

Everyone's favorite younger version is back from the military! I can't wait to see him as a lead in a a bunch of dramas, cause you KNOW that's what's gonna happen - our babyboy is all grown up :D

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