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waitmyturtles · 8 months ago

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Turtles Catches Up With Old GMMTV: KinnPorsche, and Analyzing the KP Cultural Zeitgeist Edition (Part 1)

[What’s going on here? After joining Tumblr and discovering Thai BLs through KinnPorsche in 2022, I began watching GMMTV’s new offerings -- and realized that I had a lot of history to catch up on, to appreciate the more recent works that I was delving into. From tropes to BL frameworks, what we’re watching now hails from somewhere, and I’m learning about Thai BL's history through what I’m calling the Old GMMTV Challenge (OGMMTVC). Starting with recommendations from @absolutebl on their post regarding how GMMTV is correcting for its mistakes with its shows today, I’ve made an expansive list to get me through a condensed history of essential/classic/significant Thai BLs produced by GMMTV and many other BL studios. My watchlist, pasted below, lists what I’ve watched and what’s upcoming, along with the reviews I’ve written so far. Today, in a two-part series, I offer my thoughts on KinnPorsche, my very first Thai BL, and the impact that I think KP has had on the Thai BL industry since 2022.]

Hot damn! It has been a MINUTE since my last OGMMTVC review, so I'm glad to be back. I've been very much looking forward to writing my thoughts about my recent KinnPorsche rewatch: I enjoyed this ENTIRE process, especially in regards to watching KinnPorsche in the context and chronology of past Thai BLs, and man, did I ever see KP WAYYYYY differently than the first time I watched it.

Why's that? Welp -- *KinnPorsche was my first-ever Thai BL*. (Not my first BL drama ever; that award goes to the GOAT, Kinou Nani Tabeta?/What Did You Eat Yesterday?)

But when I joined Tumblr officially in July 2022, just about a year and a half ago (in the heat of passionately obsessing over Old Fashion Cupcake), my dash was awash, AWASH, in KP posts. AWASH.

I had no idea what the fuck the algorithm was telling me.

I went into KinnPorsche knowing absolutely NOTHING about Thai BL tropes, the history of the genre, the actors in the roles, what made KP so innovative by way of its storyline, NADA. Dudes -- I'm half-Malaysian, and I had never even watched a show from the Southeast Asian region, let alone Thailand, and I was unaware of how prolific the Thai drama industry was (at least compared to the Korean drama machine).

When I first watched KinnPorsche, my perspective was that I had watched a pretty good show, and I was left surprised back then in particular by the No Homophobia Bubble (well, almost no homophobia, Big) that I now know is so much more common in Thai BLs than I realized.

It was through KinnPorsche that I discovered Thai BLs, and it was subsequently through Bad Buddy that I realized that I NEEDED to understand the development of this national genre -- so back to the history annals I went, through my OGMMTVC project, starting from 2014's Love Sick, and here we are at this moment of the timeline, the hot hot late spring and summer of 2022, enjoying the ✨vibbbeeezz✨ between Mile Phakphum and Apo Nattawin, and leaving me wondering why there was a national shirt button shortage in the midst of a Thai mafia crime drama. I'm glad I have history on my side now as I think about KinnPorsche as a standalone drama, and as I also think about the impact it has had on the Thai BL genre and fandoms prior to its premiere, up to today's moment in time.

I took my time to draft this piece partly because I was busy watching Be On Cloud's second and latest serial drama in Dead Friend Forever. I think BOC is doing something very interesting by way of their acting and contracted scripting choices, which I want to ponder by way of the context and aftermath of KP's airing. As such, while I had intended to write just one post about KP, I have a bunch of thoughts that'll spill over to tomorrow. So here we go, a quick overall outline for the lovers for today and tomorrow on my ruminating thoughts:

1) My critical thoughts on KinnPorsche as a standalone drama in the context of the history of previous Thai BLs, 2) My thoughts on how new arrivals to the wider Thai BL fandom shaped the perception of KP vis à vis older Thai BLs, 3) How I think KP has impacted how other studios approach, market, and write Thai BLs now, and 4) A quick passing thought on BOC's own continued influence on the Thai BL genre and industry since 2022, particularly by way of Dead Friend Forever.

I'm going to concentrate on numbers 1 and 2 in this piece, and they're actually going to be a touch conflated, because I want to lean into a now-obvious fact that the BL Elder community knew all along about KP when it first aired in 2022: there was not much that was new about what KinnPorsche was doing. (This is not necessarily a bad thing, as I’ll get into below.)

When I was a newbie on Tumblr, and the algorithm was feeding my dash, I remember seeing posts about how Be On Cloud, the studio behind KP, was doing things differently than the rest of the Thai BL field -- I recall posts about the studio hiring the best acting coaches, how the cinematography was nothing like what we had seen in other shows, and how Be On Cloud was committed to creating safe environments for its actors, particularly Apo Nattawin, who had reportedly faced discrimination in his past acting career, reportedly leading him to leave the Thai drama industry for a number of years.

While some very early Thai BL studios were known to not have the safest or friendliest environments (the filming of What The Duck comes to mind by way of this lore), by the time of KP's airing, GMMTV had strongly established itself as the leader of Thai BL productions, and other players, including New Siwaj and Cheewin Thanamin, had produced quite the number of dramas under each of their respective studio outfits. The industry, by 2020 and 2021, when KP was in its development origins, wasn't new anymore. Acting coaches, such as Aof Noppharnach, were now also regularly writing, directing, and producing original shows, and major BL studios had introduced workshopping as a regular step to production. On the artistic end, studios and writers had established expected artistic tropes -- 2018's Love By Chance is the first example that comes to my mind of when the Thai BL genre crystallized in a structurally derivative piece of art by way of containing and using prior trope references and dynamics.

Be On Cloud, in picking up the KinnPorsche script from Filmania during the pandemic (I use these posts here and here for my non-primary sources of KP lore) clearly knew it had something innovative on its hands by way of producing the genre's first mafia-based BL romance.

But 2020's Manner of Death had already introduced crime and mystery to BL, and 2021's Not Me continued a multi-genre perspective somewhat successfully around romance. And regarding sex and heat: KinnPorsche didn't do that first, either. MaxTul brought it first in 2017's Together With Me, and MAME has owned this corner since 2018's Love By Chance and 2019's TharnType. (Props to MaxTul for being in both Together With Me and Manner of Death; MileApo owe those dudes some beers.) By way of cinematography, which KP does extremely well: we had already begun seeing prestige cinematography in 2020's I Told Sunset About You, and 2021's I Promised You The Moon and A Tale of Thousand Stars.

It was natural, I think, for much of the KP fandom to think that KP was innovative in a lot of these categories, because, like me -- KP was our first-ever Thai BL. By way of money clearly spent on the show, the directorial purview of the show, the utterly gorgeous cinematography (man, that nighttime pull-away shot when the guys are in the roof pool, oof, why couldn't I find a gif), a new fan might think, geez, this has never been done before! But it had, and not just in Thailand, but for years prior in Japan, and more recently in Korea.

This is ALL not to say that KinnPorsche “suffered” because of what I'm uncovering by way of KP's misunderstood innovation. I think a perception of KP being entirely “new” in the BL field has contributed to its lore and enduring influential status. On this rewatch, I appreciated the mafia-based storyline as a support system to the central KinnPorsche romance. Yok being centered as an important mentor to Porsche, played by the inimitable Sprite Patteerat, was refreshing to see. Porsche accepting his bisexuality, especially with Yok's support, without the typical BL head-spinning queer revelation, was a welcome element to the show. And, frankly -- I had, on my first watch, missed, of course, the clear references to Thai BLs of the past in this show, references that I really loved seeing this time around.

From the old school, we got Kob Songsit, the OG BL dad, no longer Tong's dad in the seminal movie, The Love of Siam, nor Dean's dad in Until We Meet Again. This BL veteran is now a damn dad don, weapons and all.

We've also got Na Naphat, who played important side characters in IPYTM and UWMA. We have former BL lead guys in Jeff Satur and Perth Nakhun. We've got guitars and singing, we have underwater smooching, we have a cute-cute first date. We arguably have questionable kabedon in Kinn's and Porsche's first intimate moments. We have cooking for your lover, we have feeding your lover, we have the towel-drying of the hair. KP, by 2022, keeps up with Idol Factory's Secret Crush On You in prominently featuring a femme-presenting side character in Tankhun, PHENOMENALLY ACTED by Tong Thanayut, who we had seen previously in TharnType.

KP was, in part, directed by Pepzi Banchorn, who served as an assistant director on 2019's Dark Blue Kiss and 2021-22's Bad Buddy, and had a quick guest spot in 2022's The Warp Effect. KP was also, in part, directed by Khom Kongkiat, who played Uncle Tong in Bad Buddy, and subsequently directed The Promise in 2023. AND, finally, one of the KP screenwriters is Bee Pongsate, who has co-written so much flippin' BL: Last Twilight, Bad Buddy, Dangerous Romance (😬), Vice Versa, My School President, A Tale of Thousand Stars, 2gether and Still 2gether, and that's not even scratching the list -- you get it.

KP's supporting cast and crew was simply stacked with BL vets, who clearly knew the scene, and who helped to support Mile Phakphum's rookie acting and Apo Nattawin's return to the screen. I'd posit that this group of people knew EXACTLY what references they were putting into KinnPorsche, from actors to tropes, and also knew when, where, and how to innovate around those references to still make this show unique.

Certainly, KP's approach to sex and heat -- by way of Kinn's and Porsche's first drunken encounters (hi again, MaxTul), the uncut intimate scenes between them, and Vegas's and Pete's union by way of, well, semi-torture and/or kink -- was bold enough to be overall quite notable. But again: Thai BLs had been pushing that envelope for years past, and it has continued to do so in shows like MAME's Love In the Air and GMMTV's Only Friends.

In other words: after this rewatch, with the history of the older Thai BLs I've watched under my belt, I don't see KinnPorsche as firstly innovative. But I appreciate the show differently now, in particular for how very obvious it worked to include past Thai BL references in its production, and I actually gained a different appreciation for it.

I also want to made a quick tangential note about Apo and Tong specifically by way of innovation. Dr. Thomas Baudinette, a long-time BL fan and academic researcher on Thai and Japanese queer media, notes in his book, Boys Love Media in Thailand, that an ideal trajectory for a Thai BL actor is to debut in BLs in order to transition to more popular primetime het Thai dramas, as Gulf Kanuwat of TharnType, and Ohm Thitiwat and Kao Noppakao of UWMA and Lovely Writer, respectively, are notably doing at the moment. Apo Nattawin did this the other way around: he had established his career in het lakorns, most notably in 2015’s major hit drama, Sut Khaen Saen Rak, and subsequently left the Thai drama industry after reportedly being discriminated against for his skin tone and fashion choices. And his way back to the industry was through BLs. Taking the lore of Mile Phakphum recruiting Apo for KP out of the picture for a moment: I think this indicates a shift in how BLs are increasingly perceived in Thailand, and even globally, as being a career-worthy genre of content on its own for actors. (Apo's exploding fashion career is proof of this.) And BOC has now recruited another lakorn vet in Jes Jespipat for its third upcoming drama, 4 Minutes.

As well, Tong Thanayut’s very public coming out after the conclusion of KP’s airing is notable for how Be On Cloud has continued to center Tong in its productions after that fact, most notably in 2023’s film, Man Suang, while other out BL actors are not as lucky by way of guaranteeing and attracting future work.

I have a lot more to say about KinnPorsche's and Be On Cloud's impact on the current Thai BL industry, and how I think that impact has affected the marketing and creation of more recent shows like 2023's Only Friends, and 2023-24's Playboyy. But this first post has gotten long, and I actually haven't written much about the actual show itself, HA. So let me say this:

I think it's notable that the first shows that played around with themes outside of romance, like 2020's Manner of Death, and 2021's Not Me, were not perfect shows. We see now how multi-genre BLs are just exploding, what with Dead Friend Forever and the upcoming slew of vampire BLs that are going to drop (and let's not forget the first omegaverse BL drama in Pit Babe -- or should we forget it, I dunno). Not all of these shows are perfect, but the genre has only been around for a decade. There's a lot of time, and a tremendous amount of interest and funding, that upcoming shows can leverage to become better, especially these multi-genre shows that we're seeing more of.

KinnPorsche as well, was not a perfect show. I have some thoughts particularly on VegasPete to offer tomorrow, and I think, overall, that KP could have easily been a shorter series with more impact.

But I'll still give the show some of its flowers, because I think, unlike MoD and Not Me, that KinnPorsche did a better job of centering the Kinn and Porsche romance for dramatic effect, particularly by leveraging comedy. Were there many moments of hibbly-jibblies? Oh, totally. Dudes, also, Kinn fucking forgot about Pete! Pete coming back to the house and reminiscing about Vegas while holding his neck? Eeeeyikes, no thanx. There were a number of these weird bumps that I think could be explained by way of intentional camp (which I think KP did pretty well), but I do believe the show could have been tighter with more editing.

But, I gotta admit: I had a great time re-watching KP. That says something. Was it the heat that tiddled my dopamine cycles? Probably, somewhat. (No shame in my game.) Or -- a more reasonable theory, ha, is that Apo, as a veteran actor, demonstrated more range than I originally remembered. He can really do comedy well, and he timed his comedy perfectly for the absurdities that peppered KP through the series (the bread crawl, the constant throwing of hands, the jumping-on-Kinn when the ghost of Pete showed up, oh shit we're in the forest now, etc). Apo and Tong, in particular, stayed true to the bit many times during the show, and I think the series benefitted greatly from their collective comedic talent and timing -- which I thought was nicely refreshing for the genre.

With that, I'll have more ruminating tomorrow about the show itself, about how I think the impact that KP and BOC have had on the genre after KP's airing, and other thoughts about the cultural moment that KP demarcated when it aired -- see you tomorrow!

[MORE MORE MORE KP tomorrow! And I'll have more thoughts about the watchlist then. But for now, here's the classic OGMMTVC list for you to chew on!

1) The Love of Siam (2007) (movie) (review here) 2) My Bromance (2014) (movie) (review here) 3) Love Sick and Love Sick 2 (2014 and 2015) (review here) 4) Gay OK Bangkok Season 1 (2016) (a non-BL queer series directed by Jojo Tichakorn and written by Aof Noppharnach) (review here) 5) Make It Right (2016) (review here) 6) SOTUS (2016-2017) (review here) 7) Gay OK Bangkok Season 2 (2017) (a non-BL queer series directed by Jojo Tichakorn and written by Aof Noppharnach) (review here) 8) Make It Right 2 (2017) (review here) 9) Together With Me (2017) (review here) 10) SOTUS S/Our Skyy x SOTUS (2017-2018) (review here) 11) Love By Chance (2018) (review here) 12) Kiss Me Again: PeteKao cuts (2018) (no review) 13) He’s Coming To Me (2019) (review here) 14) Dark Blue Kiss (2019) and Our Skyy x Kiss Me Again (2018) (review here) 15) TharnType (2019-2020) (review here) 16) Senior Secret Love: Puppy Honey (OffGun BL cuts) (2016 and 2017) (no review) 17) Theory of Love (2019) (review here) 18) 3 Will Be Free (2019) (a non-BL and an important harbinger of things to come in 2019 and beyond re: Jojo Tichakorn pushing queer content in non-BLs) (review here) 19) Dew the Movie (2019) (review here) 20) Until We Meet Again (2019-2020) (review here) (and notes on my UWMA rewatch here) 21) 2gether (2020) and Still 2gether (2020) (review here) 22) I Told Sunset About You (2020) (review here) 23) YYY (2020, out of chronological order) (review here) 24) Manner of Death (2020-2021) (review here) 25) A Tale of Thousand Stars (2021) (review here) 26) A Tale of Thousand Stars (2021) OGMMTVC Fastest Rewatch Known To Humankind For The Sake Of Rewatching Our Skyy 2 x BBS x ATOTS (re-review here) 27) Lovely Writer (2021) (review here) 28) Last Twilight in Phuket (2021) (the mini-special before IPYTM) (review here) 29) I Promised You the Moon (2021) (review here) 30) Not Me (2021-2022) (review here) 31) Bad Buddy (2021-2022) (thesis here) 32) 55:15 Never Too Late (2021-2022) (not a BL, but a GMMTV drama that features a macro BL storyline about shipper culture and the BL industry) (review here) 33) Bad Buddy (2021-2022) and Our Skyy 2 x BBS x ATOTS (2023) OGMMTVC Rewatch (Links to the BBS OGMMTVC Meta Series are here: preamble here, part 1, part 2, part 3a, part 3b, and part 4) 34) Secret Crush On You (2022) (review here) 35) KinnPorsche (2022) (tag here) 36) KinnPorsche (2022) OGMMTVC Fastest Rewatch Known To Humankind For the Sake of Re-Analyzing the KP Cultural Zeitgeist

...interrupting the OGMMTVC list here to watch War of Y (2022) (watching) in chronology to decide if it gets listed...

37) The Eclipse (2022) (tag here) 38) The Eclipse OGMMTVC Rewatch to Reexamine “Genre BLs” and Internalized/Externalized Homophobia in GMMTV Shows 39) GAP (2022-2023) (Thailand’s first GL) 40) My School President (2022-2023) and Our Skyy 2 x My School President (2023) 41) Moonlight Chicken (2023) (tag here) 42) Bed Friend (2023) (tag here) 43 La Pluie (2023) (review coming) 44) Be My Favorite (2023) (tag here) (I’m including this for BMF’s sophisticated commentary on Krist’s career past as a BL icon) 45) Wedding Plan (2023) (Recommended as an important trajectory in the course of MAME’s work and influence from TharnType) 46) Only Friends (2023) (tag here) (not technically a BL, but it certainly became one in the end) 47) Last Twilight (2023-24) (tag here) (on the list as Thailand’s first major BL to center disability, successfully or otherwise) 48) Cherry Magic Thailand (2023-24) (tag here) (on the list as the first major Japanese-to-Thai drama adaptation, featuring the comeback of TayNew) 49) Ossan’s Love Returns (2024) (adding for the EarthMix cameo and the eventual Thai remake) 50) Dead Friend Forever (2024) (thoughts here) 51) 23.5 (tag here) (2024)]

#kinnporsche #kinnporsche the series #be on cloud #mileapo #mile phakphum #apo nattawin #kinn x porsche #porsche x kinn #tong thanayut #bible sumettikul #turtles catches up with old gmmtv #turtles catches up with thai bls #turtles catches up with the essential bls #the old gmmtv challenge #ogmmtvc #pond krisda #dead friend forever #kinnporsche meta #kinnporsche the series meta

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the-conversation-pod · 2 months ago

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Summer 2024 Lagniappe (A Minisode)

AND WE'RE BACK!

Summer didn’t give us a lot to say, but we ALWAYS got something to say. Ben, NiNi and Shan talk a highlight of the season, Twig reports from the field, and we award summer’s Girl Who Tried.

Timestamps

The timestamps will now correspond with chapters on Spotify for easier navigation.

00:00:00 - Welcome 00:01:15 - Introduction 00:02:21 - Twig’s Dispatch 00:14:24 - Spotlight: Tadaima, Okaeri 00:20:34 - Girl, You Tried 00:27:08 - Celebrating 50 Episodes

The Conversation Transcripts!

Thanks to the continued efforts of @lurkingshan as an editor and proofreader, we are able to bring you transcripts of the episodes.

We will endeavor to make the transcripts available when the episodes launch, and it is our goal to make them available for past episodes (Coming soon thanks to @wen-kexing-apologist). When transcripts are available, we will attach them to the episode post (like this one) and put the transcript behind a Read More cut to cut down on scrolling.

Please send our volunteers your thanks!

00:00:00 - Welcome

NiNi

Welcome to The Conversation About BL, aka The Brown Liquor Podcast.

Ben

And there it is. I’m Ben.

NiNi

I’m NiNi.

Ben

And we’re you’re drunk Caribbean uncle and auntie here sitting on the porch in the rocking chairs.

NiNi

Four times a year we pop in to talk about what’s going on in the BL world.

Ben

We shoot the shit about stories and all the drama going into them. I review from a queer media lens.

NiNi

And I review from a romance and drama lens.

Ben

So if you like cracked-out takes and really intense emotional analysis…

NiNi

If you like talking about artistry, industry, and the discourse…

Ben

And if you generally just love simping…

NiNi

There is a lot of simping on this podcast…

Ben

We are the show for you!

00:01:15 Introduction and Summer Season Recap

Ben

And we're back. We have reached the end of the summer season. It is hot as hell and hurricane season is active, but we at least still have our shows to watch.

Shan

Wow, what a way to set the mood.

NiNi

That is [laughs] one way to start, for sure. [NiNi and Shan laugh]

Ben

Girl, I’m stressed! [laughs]

NiNi

I feel you. I feel you. I feel you. We are here. The summer has been… it's been a lot.

Let's just dive right into what we came here to discuss. Shan is here. Say hi, Shan.

Shan

Hi!

NiNi

We're going to talk a few things that we didn't talk through this season. Twig’s gonna come in and leave us her dispatch, and then we're gonna round it up and award the Girl, You Tried. There are a lot of girls who tried this season. [laughs]

00:02:20 Twig’s Dispatch

DISPATCH! Thank you for having me back. [music]

While folks were lamenting having nothing to watch this quarter, I was as busy as ever!

In the skip section: Sadly, Korea really dominated this category last season, starting with Blossom Campus. Honestly, this was the biggest disappointment this season for me. This was my–the Korean independent team Strongberry, who I normally love—they released a full length Kdrama that, I don’t understand how it went so wrong. The story is about a university transfer student who works at the library and ends up in a few interactions with a taekwondo major and they fall for each other. It was boring, the story didn’t really flow, the chemistry was flat.The only good thing I can say for it is that when they do kiss, they kiss well. But it was not worth watching to get there.This was the least queer Strongberry has ever felt, and to add insult to injury it ends on a cliffhanger. This is a pass from me, friends.

Love is Like a Cat. Mew of the newly public MewTul relationship stars in this hybrid Thai/Korean production that did not manage to retain the good qualities of either country. It is bad. And not even in a fun way. The premise is a famous Thai actor is blackmailed into doing a Korean reality series in which he has to work in a dog cafe, despite being afraid of dogs. That sounds like it would be cute and fun, and somehow it was neither. Poor acting, cinematography, chemistry, story, everything was mid. Also, content warning for animal death—way to alienate your target audience.

Gray Shelter was a Korean short series that barely felt like BL? Honestly, it was trying to walk a trauma narrative and BL line and I don’t think it did that successfully. The romance felt rushed and the trauma part felt like it was being sad for the sake of sad rather than having anything to actually say about trauma. Also had another cliffhanger ending. Not my fav.

Moving away from Korea, Lady Boy Friends is a show that has a high barrier to enjoyment, so judge for yourself. It’s a remake from 2015 and the premise is an ensemble show in an all boys high school in which a good percentage of the cast are actually trans girls in an all boys school. There is a lot of infighting amongst the trans women, they are extremely catty and mean and clique-y to each other. That part I honestly found kind of fun, and I did enjoy them banding together against a common enemy. Unfortunately that common enemy is another trans girl who is looked down on for transitioning “late” which calls her authenticity into question. This show also has sexual assault played as comedy which is honestly the main reason why it’s in this section; there was also a gay couple who got the bulk of the focus in the last few episodes, and while that storyline will likely be the most appealing to this audience, I didn’t particularly like that the trans characters got short shrift in their own show, so. I didn’t fully love it.

Kiseki Chapter 2. This was a production by 9NAA. They have a history of not paying and exploiting their actors, and they’ve done it too many times, so I didn’t watch this one. Pay your actors and hire intimacy coaches and then I’ll talk about your shows.

The last one in this section is actually a GL Thai channel that I wanted to shout out. It’s just not to my taste, but I don’t like gatekeeping GL ‘cause there’s so little of it and it’s so hard to find. So, if you’re a fan of the melodrama and older, toxic relationship type tropes, give these guys a try. Last quarter they put out “Friend with Benefits the series” and “Sea [as in S-E-A] you soon”, and my favorite of the three was “You Are My Star the series” which I enjoyed because it retread a lot of BL tropes so I watched it and played, sort of, spot the BL parallels. JPC Media Channel on YouTube.

Now onto the shows that you might actually want to consider. There were a few genre BLs this season that were varying degrees of hit or miss so I’ve grouped them together. I love genre stories, so I don’t want to be too harsh on shows that push the boundaries of the BL genre, but all of these had at least one fatal flaw that makes me not able to recommend them without caveats.

Memory in the Letter is a Thai BL sci-fi/fantasy in which a student falls in love with a stranger in the mirror. This is a short series that had real high highs and low lows for me, including some of the best chemistry across a pane of glass I’ve ever seen. But also, the ending was so poorly handled that I had to call poor Ben to watch with me just so that I’d have someone to share my psychic damage with. Without spoiling anything, this show involves an age gap with actors not age-appropriately cast to hide the fact that the age gap is so large? It also doesn’t treat the age gap seriously or engage with the very serious problems that it raises in its own plot, and I found that very frustrating. So. Make your own choices on that one.

1000 Years Old the series. This show is a Thai vampire show that spends the first three quarters being an extremely low stakes series in which a vampire owns a pork blood soup stand and a glorious umbrella collection, and is in love with a man obsessed with searching for alien life. It is exactly as silly as it sounds. But then the last few episodes everything turns into intense melodrama, and I’m going to spoil this because I don’t know how not to: We find out that the vampire stays friendly with another vampire who murdered his human lover across multiple lifetimes. I was vibing and then I was really not.

Two Worlds is another Thai series, and a MaxNat vehicle. The premise of this one is as it says on the tin: There are two parallel universes connected by a glowing body of water. Our protagonist loses his love interest and travels to the parallel universe accidentally while grieving, to realize he has the chance to save his boyfriend’s doppelganger in this new world. While he does that, he finds himself falling for someone else instead. This series is a relatively slow burn show. Whoever made this show, they did the most bewilderingly good job of undercutting every dramatic moment so that it had no stakes or impact that I’ve ever seen. This show was almost impressively boring considering how much was happening at any given moment. I liked that it seemed to be saying people weren’t interchangeable, but then in the end the show undermined its own message. Watching this show was informative for learning about pacing and how narrative tension works or doesn’t in shows.

Last in this section is The Spirealm. This is a chinese danmei adaptation that we almost didn’t get because of censorship; it was heavily adapted so that rather than magic, the core of the unnatural happenings are a Virtual Reality video game in which our leads have to puzzle through dangerous mysteries to figure out the secrets of each level. It’s fun in an “oh this does feel like a video game” kinda way, and I enjoyed puzzling through the mysteries alongside the leads. But the mysteries drag on too long and they’re repetitive, and the ending of the book is actually really undermined from the adaptation choices. Also, if you’re watching for romance subtext, this is a VERY tame story even for censored cdrama. They barely touch, the shipping moments are few and far between in a long series. So, be forewarned.

Moving away from the supernatural and back to more standard QL fare, A Secretly Love. This felt like a very old-school Thai series, a feeling that was helped by the horrifically bad subtitles; about an engineering student who has been in love with this senior for years and watched him fail miserably at romance over and over. This heavily relies on the viewer enjoying the lead pining over someone who treats him badly for most of the series. So, in order to enjoy this, you have to find someone showing affection by being grumpy, rude, jealous, and demanding cute. No judgment, just giving you the information you need to no. Worth watching if you’re nostalgic for 2020s Thai BL.

Please Teach Me This is a vertical-format microseries from Korea about an aspiring idol trying to attend college that you have to grind through ads in order to watch. Honestly the series was fine, very middle-of-the-road KBL, but the microseries format and the barriers to watching make it not worth sitting through, in my opinion.

Blank the Series is a Thai GL is in the same universe as GAP, so if you miss Sam and Mon the characters, they do appear, though portrayed by different actresses. The main couple in this story have a 16-year age gap and the romance starts when the younger one is in high school, though due to plot reasons she’s of age. I know that’s a barrier for some, so I wanted to mention it off the jump, especially because she acts young. That’s the part that I actually struggled with most. This story is very lakorn-like in terms of it being very high melodrama; it also, especially in part two, gets quite sexy. The height difference is also really something. It’s in two parts and both are complete, it does have a happy ending with a cute timeskip. So, you know, manage yourselves on that one.

Jazz For Two. High school Korean music BL in which the main couple really fell flat for me and the side couple were a bully-turned-love-interest that I also really did not enjoy. This show tried to incorporate internalized homophobia as part of its main storyline but didn’t engage with characters overcoming it, so everyone feels kind of like they suddenly switch from being in a drama to a romance and it was both jarring and honestly, a little offensive. Trigger warnings are also important for this one, so take care of yourselves if you’re deciding to watch it.

Boys Be Brave. Another KBL in which a man who can’t say no tries to get the person with a crush on him to ask him out, to no avail. This felt like it was trying to be a manic pixie dream boy meets an autistic-coded grump, but they didn’t quite calibrate either of those characters right. The side couple also ended up landing kind of badly in terms of class politics. But it was pretty, and they were cute. I actually had fun with this one despite everything I just said.

Deep Night is a Thai BL in which the son of a club owner is against the host/club business model until he falls for one of his mother’s hosts. He decides to start working there to get closer to him. You might imagine that a setup like that would involve class and power politics, but you would be wrong! That being said, this show has a lot to recommend it: The main couple has great chemistry and the side couple is a canonical throuple, and there is another side couple of older sapphics to enjoy, as well. It is also very prettily shot.

Lastly, Close Friend 3: Soju Bomb is a beautifully shot and cute friendship drama, another Thai/Korean joint series this time about Thai boys in a Korean band who go on a bender in Korea after their contract is canceled. Honestly, my only caveat about this show is that it is absolutely not a BL. There isn’t a romance subplot at all in this show. I spent the entire time it aired so confused waiting for the romance to appear! It does not. If it hadn’t been advertised as Close Friend 3–a series which was previously all BL shorts–I would have enjoyed this for what it was. As it stands, I hold a grudge for being misled. Go in knowing what you’re getting and you’ll be fine.

Finally, let’s get to the shows that you might have missed that I actually recommend. To Be Continued, a Thai second chance romance of a famous person and a doctor who were friends when they were in high school. This one tells a lot of the story in flashbacks that are poorly paced at the beginning, so the start of the show really drags. But the reveal for why they broke up was satisfying. The pacing is the barrier in this one–if you can power through the first few episodes it ends up being a good little show. They have great chemistry, the story holds together, and I had fun.

Gym Affairs is an absolutely bonkers but cute mainland China BL in which a guy gets a personal trainer and sparks fly. This show is a silly comedy that is also surprisingly earnest. It goes by extremely fast and I really enjoyed the ride. That one’s on YouTube.

Blue Boys/Lonely Girl. SUKFilm is a Korean YouTube channel putting out short series. Blue Boys was a little disappointing, the couple had too many issues that they cycled through so fast. The GL though, Lonely Girl, was much more focused with a single main problem between the couple and so it worked much better. And both are really beautifully shot and have some great kisses.

Fake Buddies is another YouTube miniseries. It’s a 7 episode Korean series about a girl and guy who are dating, ostensibly, but really both using the other as a beard because they’re both in a gay relationship. The first few episodes are very funny comedy as the two of them try to make the other realize what’s happening; and then we get prequel episodes for how the gay couple and the lesbian couple both came to be. It’s a fun use of 45 minutes on the guynextdoor YouTube channel if you’re bored.

To the X Who Hated Me is a Korean GL produced by Red Q. It’s a series of microseries, there’s two out so far with 2-3 episodes each. They’re both GL and solid short second chance romances that are very fun.

City of Stars is the last one I’ll be talking about. It’s, in my opinion, the best hidden gem QL from this quarter. A charming celebrity/regular guy romance that tackles shipping, toxic fans, and the unreasonable expectations on people in the spotlight. Acting is a little rough, and it’s not perfect, but it had some really good things to say and it very smartly sandwiches those things among some pretty good sex scenes. The two leads are my communication kings. And there’s some decent trans side rep as well. This show really uses BL as a vehicle for having something to say and I appreciate it. And the story really holds together in a way that’s a little refreshing in Thai BL, too, so I really liked it.

And that’s the dispatch for this quarter! Thanks again for having me.

00:14:25 Spotlight: Tadaima Okaeri

Ben

It's time to talk about my favorite show of the season that no one else watched except for Twig. [NiNi laughs] We're going to talk about an animated BL from Japan called Tadaima, Okaeri. It is the best show of the season and I'm begging you, please, to go watch this show.

Tadaima, Okaeri is a 12 episode BL from Studio Deen that aired on Crunchyroll. Studio Deen is actually fairly important in the BL space. Pretty much all of the BL anime that we're probably going to recommend to you offhand was produced by the studio. In this particular one, they're adapting a manga series about a gay couple in the omegaverse that is trying to raise their kid in the suburbs. Our protagonist's name Fujiyoshi Masaki, that is actually his name, and his husband, Hiromu. Masaki is an omega, his husband is an alpha, and they have a son named Hikari together. He is a little baby and they are living in the burbs away from everybody else because they had a very difficult time getting together.

The show was not so much about the difficulties these two had getting together, it's about them building a life that they love and are happy with after going through what they did. So, like, this is your favorite leads, married and trying to raise their family now and working on healing some of the relationships that were damaged over the course of them getting together. There's a great deal of healing and growth in this. There's healing between Hiromu and his dad, who was not keen on their romance in the first place. There's the fact that these two guys love each other and love being parents. I am very often amused by how much my dad is still obsessed with my mom. And I really liked seeing that in a gay couple here. It was really restorative in a lot of ways, ‘cause we don't ever really see dads in BL.

This show was so healing. This was such a peaceful experience of a show to watch. What I like the most out of fluffy shows like this is for there to be a nice arc about what life we’re building for our family and a strong thematic thrust of, we're not trying to get back at anybody who hurt us. We just want our kid to grow up in a world where he—and eventually their daughter too—are loved by the people around them. Each episode was about a specific sort of challenge that the family was facing, and some of them were really huge. Like, how are we going to reconcile with the kids’ grandfather who wants to be part of his grandson's life? Even if it's something as small as, Hikaru is getting older and he wants to run an errand. Okay, we're going to let him deliver a letter to his grandfather to the mailbox, and getting a two year old to deliver something [laughs] successfully to a mailbox was a production unto itself, because he kept getting distracted.

It was genuinely one of the most delightful and wholesome experiences I have ever had in the genre. I have said for a long time that I've wanted a married gay dads show. I was not expecting it to come from the omegaverse of all places, but this was everything I ever hoped it could be and honestly, so much more. If you can handle omegaverse nonsense, including mpreg and the alpha omega pheromone shit, and rutting behavior. This is one of the best shows I have ever seen.

Shan

Oof. [Ben laughs] You just said so many words that upset me.

Ben

I know. I know!

[all laugh]

NiNi

I was like, “if you can handle” I can handle none of those things. I'm sorry.

Ben

If you're gonna be in genre, you gotta take your shit seriously, and I think that's why it worked. This show was not embarrassed about being an omegaverse show. It's not like [funny voice] we're going to do this in omegaverse because we know the girls will fucking show up for it. It took the conceits of its own genre seriously and incorporated it into the emotional context of their characters.

And so like I totally get it, mpreg is not easy for a lot of people. The rutting behavior stuff, it's not easy for some people. The way that omegaverse is used to perpetuate some of the heteronormative kinds of misogyny that women face is not for everyone, truly and sincerely. When I say that these are caveats to watching this, I am not being funny. These are real things that are being dealt with in this show, but they're not half-assing it. These are not normally things I enjoy. Tell a good story and take your shit seriously and we can show up for it. And that's what happened for me here.

So, I wholeheartedly recommend this show, but I do think it's important to not downplay that this is very legitimately an omegaverse story.

Shan

I appreciate that.

Ben

It's a 10, baby! Perfect execution of its own premise, and genuinely, it's the kinda show that was so fun to watch with other people.

Shan

I have been so intrigued by the conversation around this show and I really regret that it has so many of my hard lines in it [laughs[ because I would like to see it. I don't think I'll be able to, but I have heard nothing but praise and love from the people who've watched it.

Ben

I love the show with my whole heart. I do not recommend it at all. [Ben and NiNi laugh] This show had really strong ideas and it wore its whole heart on its sleeves the whole time. Mm mm mm. What an experience. Great show.

00:20:32 Girl, You Tried

Ben

Let's hand out our favorite award on the show: Girl, You Tried.

NiNi

Our nominees this season for a Girl, You Tried are Unknown the series from Taiwan, Love is Better the Second Time Around from Japan, and Living With Him from Japan. Does anybody wanna do propaganda here?

Ben

Ooh…

Shan

Let's start with reminding folks how we think about Girl, You Tried.

Ben

The Girl, You Tried for me is meant to reflect on a production that missed the mark, but we felt like the core work and the intent was there to actually do something good, and for whatever reason stumbled.

Shan

There's different ways that shows can stumble. There are shows that can be very well told and very confident up to a point, and then a mistake is made that is hard to recover from. There are shows that never quite nailed what they were trying to do, but did clearly have aspirations. There are shows that have a solid idea of at least the beginning and endpoints and something in the middle just got messy. So, those are different categories of ways that shows can go sideways. And all of these different ways came up in this season.

For me, a show like Unknown is not a Girl, You Tried because they actually did succeed at what they were doing for the vast majority of their run. So I wouldn't call that a Girl, You Tried. They made a mistake right at the end—and it was a big mistake—but their level of execution was so good through most of the show that I can't really consider that a Girl, You Tried.

For our two Japanese BLs here, Love is Better was really solid through about the first four episodes, and then it kind of veered off in a very strange direction that I still don't really understand why that happened. Versus Living With Him had a solid start, had a pretty decent end point that it was trying to get towards, and then got kind of messed up along the way trying to stretch out the story.

So for me I think I would want to give the Girl, You Tried to Living With Him out of these three, because I do think they had the bones of a good story. They executed parts of it really well. But in their effort to stretch it out into a longer format than the story really supported, they kind of lost track of some of their threads and got a little confused in the way that they landed at the end. So for me that one makes more sense as a Girl, You Tried because I see what they were trying to do. And I think that they just made some execution errors that got in the way.

Ben

An interesting analysis; one I will be pondering. It feels mean to say that Unknown is a Girl, You Tried because they rushed to their sex scene. It ignores how good the family story was around all of that, but I am also torn now if I'm going to choose between Love is Better and Living With Him because I feel like my angst for Living With Him is it doesn't release the implied sexual tension that really irritated me more than anything else, which Love is Better absolutely did.

Man, this is hard.

Shan

Have we ever had a Girl, You Tried tie?

Ben

We have not.

NiNi

There's usually a fairly clear cut winner once we talk about it, but I think part of the problem is that Love is Better and Living With Him sort of failed in similar ways, so it's hard to choose.

Ben

If I have to choose between the two of them, Love is Better the Second Time Around knew exactly what it was doing and it made very bad choices, and there's a difference between making stupid choices and struggling against something you couldn't do, in my opinion. I will give it to Living With Him because there's so much hang time, it's overly reliant on actor charm to hold itself together, and I do like how well the cast was able to hold this flimsy project together.

I think weaker actors would have made this a more irritating experience than it was, as opposed to just being kind of disappointing. So if I'm backed into a corner and have to choose [Shan laughs], it's going to be Living With Him.

Shan

[laughs] You do. Good job.

NiNi

Oh no, I'm about to throw a spanner in the works because I'm going to go for Love Is Better. [laughs]

Shan

This is very exciting! This is Conversation pod history!

Ben

Go ahead, give us your reasoning.

NiNi

For me, the original premise of Girl, You Tried was always ‘a strong idea that failed in the execution,’ and I feel like the ideas from Love is Better were stronger to me than the ideas in Living With Him, just in terms of, A, what I was interested in seeing and, B, what they wanted to do. I feel like those ideas were stronger in Love is Better. So the failure of the execution part is not the part that I'm looking at in terms of comparing the two, but the strength of the premise part.

Ben

Because both of these shows had really strong gay themes in them that I was really compelled by, I am going to allow them to tie and both get a Girl, You Tried, because I think both these shows were trying to do something really cool. I think by episode 3 and 4 both of these shows, I was like, “This show's got something in it. This is a real contender!” And then it was like, “Oh no, what happened, girl? Come on.” [laughs]

NiNi

So our first ever Girl, You Tried tie! Girls, you both tried.

Ben

Congratulations to Japan for getting your first Girl, You Tried awards.

NiNi

Is it?

Shan

And the double at that! Japan, always overachieving.

[Ben and NiNi laugh]

00:27:02 Celebrating 50 Episodes

NiNi

I think we have exorcized the demon of the summer, so let's wrap this up. We are wrapping our summer lagniappe and wrapping our summer season. See you in dot-dot-dot weeks for our fall season beginning as soon as I can get my shit together and edit.

Shan

NiNi, should we shout out that this is the 50th episode of the podcast?

Ben

Oh shit!

NiNi

[gasp] Oh my God, we didn't even talk about that! Yes, congratulate us, guys. This is episode number 50 for The Conversation!

Ben

Oh my God. [air horn sound]

Shan

There ya go.

Ben

If you are one of our listeners who has listened to us talk for all 50 episodes, please—

Shan

Wow.

Ben

—shout us out on Tumblr. I would love to talk to you and see how you're feeling about what we're doing after all this time.

Shan

You're a trooper if you actually did that.

NiNi

[laughs] Please, please, please. If you love us and you're hearing this, we are 50 episodes old today. Send us a note. Either send us a note on Tumblr if you know how to do that, or send us something in the Spotify down below—whatever…answer the thing thing.

Ben

[laughs] In the doobly-doo.

NiNi

Listen, okay? Auntie's old, okay? She don't remember what things are called.

We out! Say bye to the people, Shan.

Shan

Bye, people!

NiNi

Ben, say bye to the people.

Ben

Peace.

23 notes · View notes

ahundredtimesover · 2 years ago

Text

Belong (05: Post-Credits) | MYG

Pairing: Yoongi x (f.) Reader

Genre/Tags: exes-to-lovers-to-exes-to-lovers; actress!OC x basketball coach!Yoongi; summer romance; “long” distance relationship; parallel timelines; angst, fluff, smut

Chapter (Series) Warnings: foul/explicit language; alcohol consumption & passing out, family drama, sport injury; dreams & moving away; allusion to depression; basketball and acting talk; 2014 and 2022 Yoongi; shy and nonchalant cocky whipped Yoongi; almost drowning, sexual content (kissing, oral, penetrative sex) (18+)

Chapter Word count: 5k

Series Masterlist

Status: Complete

Series summary: Being an actor has always been your dream. Pursuing it meant many things - leaving the town where you grew up, distancing yourself from your family that had fallen apart, and saying goodbye to the man who made you feel what home was like. When you decide to finally return after being away for so long, you meet Min Yoongi again, and you’re reminded of the summer romance from 8 years ago with the college basketball superstar whose broken dream pushed you away. As you find yourself spending time with him, you’re left to wonder if love changes, if it gives second chances, or if it’s just another illusion that will hurt the both of you the second time around.

A/N: Wrapping up this story and this world now, as I keep its meaning close to me, where this Yoongi was a source of comfort. Thank you to those who took a chance with this one. Please know that in the midst of deciding to stop writing, you told me I could keep going. 😌

It was nice to be able to write about a sport that I deeply love (yes, I am manifesting with the NBA game featured here 🤞🏽) and about a theme I’m personally experiencing. Yoongi told us to live in the present and that we can dream simple, gentle dreams, too. Let’s cheer each other on! 💜

Listen to: For All You Give (feat. Lucy Rose) by The Paper Kites || Playlist 🎶

1.5 years later

You walk past the hallways to head outside the airport, large luggage in one hand and a small one on the other.

Your phone rings and Jimin is on the other end, asking if your flight was alright and if the weather is good. You give him a lowdown of the past 18 hours, including your lovely encounter with a Korean-American family during your Minneapolis layover. Their 6-year old is apparently a fan of yours after you did a stint of hosting her favorite Korean variety TV show, and your heart soared when she told you that she wants to be funny and beautiful like you. You found it amusing that doing cute poses and laughing your way through every episode was entertaining enough for her.

“That’s adorable,” Jimin chirps. “I love how your fanbase gets younger every year. You started with grandparents and now you’ve got 6-year olds under your spell.”

“It’s amazing, isn’t it?” You laugh. “I just hope these kids don’t watch my latest movie because it’s gonna terrify them.”

“Yeah, at least keep the variety shows to entertain the babies,” he chuckles. “I already told Hoseok that you want to guest-host again. There are a couple of shows that want you onboard.”

“Ah, that’s great,” you beam. “I need as much joy and laughter in my life after that last project. That took so much out of me.”

“It did, didn’t it?” Jimin hums. “But it’s got the media buzzing about you again. So much for that one so-called journalist who claimed that you’re one-dimensional and can’t do anything other than romance because you’re only good at being in love. Let me smack her face with all the good reviews about your latest role so she can shut her one-dimensional mouth.”

You giggle at Jimin’s words, his protective nature soothing you like it always does. You remember when that article about you came out after you starred in a mini-series, a project you had after the show you filmed in Paris, which did turn out to be your biggest break then. Your role in that drama had you falling in love with someone from a rival family, one of the show’s major plot points, and that journalist went off about your supposed versatility being premised on the emotions of being in love. You can’t really do much outside of it, she said, and it was that same day when you got the lead role for a psychological thriller, with the industry’s eyes on you to see if you’re able to handle a character that’s so different from what you’re used to.

And well, it’s safe to say you blew their minds. Even you didn’t think you could do that well, but you pushed hard, not only to prove yourself to them but to challenge yourself, knowing that there’s more to learn and showcase even after 10 years of being in the industry.

The reviews showed that you delivered. Critics praised your acting, saying how disturbed they felt during specific scenes, and that was a compliment for you, knowing that was the goal. The movie was even shown in a recent foreign Film Festival, and the praises are still coming; Jimin’s been the one sending you every article and post he could find, and he’s been nothing short of amazing when it comes to encouraging and praising you himself for another successful project.

It wasn’t without its difficulties though, as getting into character meant you had to immerse yourself in its darkness, in the disturbing themes that ate away at you sometimes. It was Yoongi who’d been the one to bring you out to the light every time - sending you flowers while on set, giving you a bath after every filming so you’re not left in your own mind, holding you close whenever you slept, and driving you out during days off. It was hard but it was worth it, as you felt liberated from all the negative emotions once filming wrapped up.

Yoongi was supportive all throughout - including all the promotions you had to do and the moments of doubt you’d have about your performance. He held your hand during the premiere and took you to the mountains for a weekend to escape it all for a while. Other than the amazing sex you had and the time away from everyone, you both spent those days wrapped up in each other’s arms, easing back to your normal lives that didn’t include you randomly crying at night or losing sleep from your tiring schedule.

You’d just wrapped up your promos for the film in Seoul and you’re also waiting for the next project while working on some endorsements and guesting on the side. But after the exhausting couple of months, you deserve a break, and you want nothing more than to focus on Yoongi, knowing he’s the one who’ll be needing your love and support this time.

Jimin breaks through your thoughts and asks if the car he’d arranged has arrived.

“Not yet, but Yoongi messaged that he’s 5 minutes away,” you respond. “Thanks, by the way. I know you had to arrange all this in such short notice and had to work with Hoseok to push back all my other schedules. I know it was stressful for you, too.”

“And who said I ever minded?” Jimin replies. “I’ve spent enough time with Yoongi to know how much he takes care and supports you, and that also means I know just how much his career means to him. I’m sure you already know but nonchalant and cool he may be, he’s incredibly nervous. I just know having you there is gonna make all the difference.”

“I know,” you smile, feeling emotional at the thought. “I’m just so happy for him. He’s been sending me photos since he got here and I could just see his eyes sparkling. I’m so excited to see him in action.”

“Me, too, at least from here. We’ll be tuning in and I’ll just pretend I know shit about basketball and the NBA,” Jimin laughs. “I guess it’s weird to be cheering for the commentator and not the players but oh well. Just tell him we’re rooting for him; Jin’s gonna host watch parties in his house. We’ll invite Jungkook and Namjoon so there’ll be people who can actually explain to us what’s happening.”

You laugh at Jimin’s rambling. It’s touching to know just how much your friends have come to support Yoongi as well. You’ve to remind yourself that not long ago, they were all wary of him, given the 2 times he let you go. But they’ve seen in the past year and a half exactly what that love you treasure really looks like. You always said it was transformative for both of you in different ways, and they’ve come to witness that, too.

They’ve seen how tough days for you were always made better whenever Yoongi was around, how negative voices were always drowned out by his gentleness and encouragement, how bouts of insecurities were easily mended by his belief in you.

That love got you regularly going home to Daegu to see his dad and to be with yours, and to make an effort to heal the wounds with your sisters.

That love also got Yoongi to be braver, to take chances and to make the most out of every opportunity he could find. It’s that love that supported him throughout the months that he wrote for that online sports magazine, until he became a regular guest at an online sports show. It’s what encouraged him to apply for a sports channel’s basketball analyst position; you remember the smile on his face when he got the job and the first time he appeared on TV to talk about the sport he’s loved for most of his life. It’s your shared love that got him to dream again - maybe coach a professional team in the future, perhaps become a household name in sports media. It doesn’t matter what form, you’d remind him, as long as it was in the world of basketball.

It’s that same love that’s going to hold his hand through the next 2 or so weeks, as Yoongi lives out a dream he didn’t think he’d have. As a 10-year old who’d imagined himself playing for the NBA too many times, he didn’t think that 20 years later, he’d be reporting on it as part of the South Korean media. He thinks it’s just as much a dream as any. This is the sport he loves, and he told you once that he can’t imagine his life without it.

“Oh, I think that’s him!” You tell Jimin, as you spot the maroon car that Yoongi said he was in. “Thank you again.”

“Just call me for anything, okay?” He says on the other end. “And enjoy Boston!”

You bid him goodbye and rush to the car that stops not far from where you are. Yoongi exits and you hug him immediately, falling into the warmth that you’ve missed this past week. You were at a promotional event in Busan when he left Seoul for the US a few days ago so you didn’t get to say goodbye, but it appeased you that you could spend your break with him here.

But more than anything, it’s the fact that you get to be part of his new world this time, and nothing makes you happier than being able to see that sparkle in his eyes that made you fall for him that first time all those years ago. There’s that confidence again, that drive. Yoongi is all kinds of beautiful everyday, but seeing him do something he loves has always been special. You’re glad you get to witness that again.

“I missed you, jagi,” he hums in your ear. How was your flight?”

“Good. I got a bit of rest,” you reply. “And I missed you, too.”

Yoongi smiles and gives your luggage to the chauffeur who loads them in the trunk. You both enter the car and sneak in a kiss for the seconds that you’re alone, and he smiles against your lips before turning to you.

“You seem excited,” he states.

“Of course, baby. It’s the big day tomorrow. Aren’t you?”

“I’m terrified, actually,” he chuckles to mask the nervousness. “But Mr. Chan called earlier to ask how I’m feeling and he’s been so supportive, saying that his sprained ankle must’ve been a blessing in disguise if it meant I get to take his place. I did the reporting the other day during Media Day and he said I did really well, asking the players and coaches really good questions. He said if I sustain this during the entire championship series, I could be well on my way to reporting more big games even in other sports.”

“Baby, that’s huge!” You beam, turning to him to see his shy smile. “You could be reporting on the Olympics, who knows! But the NBA… this is huge for you. The fact that you’re who they thought to replace him is a big deal. It means they really see something in you.”

“I still think it’s a fluke,” he sighs. “If Mr. Chang hadn’t gotten injured, it would’ve been him. It just so happened that the other guys are either on leave or on another assignment and I was… there.”

“Then you just saved their asses! It means you get to show them how good you are, and I know you’re good. I wouldn’t be paying attention to basketball if you weren’t calling it.”

“You’re biased though,” he laughs.

“Duh. Name one other sports commentator who knows his shit, is incredibly handsome, has such a soothing voice, and looks hot talking about people shooting balls?” You exclaim. “No one! Just you! Baby, you’re saving the industry!”

Yoongi thinks you’re adorable when you go off like this. He always knew you didn’t actually pay attention to his games before because your eyes were only on him. Whenever you’d both watch on TV, you’re often curled into his arms, remarking that he does that same jumper smoothly or that the players are either boring or too cocky. You understand the sport, though. He knows you’re interested because you get basic terms and ask him questions. Sometimes he thinks you just want to hear him talk or analyze a play; sometimes you just giggle when he’s pulling his hair or yelling over a stupid call or when his team’s losing, but regardless of your level of appreciation for the sport, he knows you love it because he does, and that means more to him than you’ll ever know.

He gives in though, knowing you feel strongly about his basketball commentary skills.

“Thank you, jagi. I at least know that if I completely fail at this, you’d still think I’m hot.”

“Baby, I think you’re hot all the time. You could even model or act, you know? The industry will benefit from this pretty face,” you wink.

“Let’s say hypothetically, I do act. What happens if I have an intimate scene with someone? What would you do?” He asks, arching an eyebrow because he can almost predict what you’re gonna say.

“I will cry,” you pout, causing him to laugh.

It’s all hypothetical, but he can tell you’ll really be upset even if it’s something he has to live with all the time. It’s something he’s gotten used to, though. He did survive watching your scenes with Pablo where you both cuddled “naked” in bed, although he admits looking away so many times. He also made it through your mini-series where you had multiple sexually tense scenes with your co-star. He admits he likes it when you’re more clingy and affectionate after each filming and episode, and he won’t complain.

But knowing how affected you’d be if the roles were reversed makes him a little soft. He remembers those summers years ago when you’d eye the girls who’d cheer for him during his games and how you always ran to him after to hold his hand and then kiss him intensely in the bathroom or his car. You would deny the jealous girlfriend allegations and he used to just laugh through it. It seems like nothing has changed.

“These lips are for me only,” you say, cupping his cheeks to hold him in place for a deep kiss.

“They are,” he smiles. “And I know at the end of the day, your lips are only for me, too.”

He kisses you again, no longer minding the chauffeur in the car who doesn’t seem to care that you’re being affectionate in his backseat.

“They are,” you hum. “They’re for your neck, and your chest, and—” you palm his cock — “for this.”

“Jagi,” he laughs, already used to your antics.

You’re usually like this after being away. You were apart for a few days and it’s been a while since you’ve been separated for longer than that.

“I just miss you,” you sigh, hugging him now and liking the comfort of his touch as always. “No one would massage my feet after walking in heels for hours and have a bath with me, no one would make me cum to sleep or kiss me goodnight.”

“Nice to know that’s all you miss,” he teases, earning him another pout.

“You know what I mean.”

“I do, and I miss those, too,” he hums as he kisses your forehead. “Thanks though, for coming here. I know that Jimin and Hoseok had to push back some of your schedules.”

“No issue at all. I wanted to be here, babe. This is a big deal and I’m… I’m just so happy for you,” you say against his chest.

“You know I wouldn’t have gotten here without you, right?” He replies, emotional now at how far he’s come.

It’s been years but the memory of his injury and his subsequent fallout from the sport comes and goes sometimes, so was losing you in the process. And then losing you again. But he’s here now, with you, the night before an important moment of his young career as a sports analyst, and he’s never felt more secure in his life.

“You’ve always been a fighter,” you look up at him. “And you’re here because of you.” You kiss him softly. “But I can also take credit, that’s fine,” you laugh. “But really, thank you for not giving up on your dream, babe. I hope you know that it gives me courage, too.”

That night, you climb into bed with Yoongi, the exhaustion from the long trip overtaking you. There’s warmth in his eyes when he looks at you, and he chuckles when you try to stay awake. It’s his soft lips against your forehead that bids you goodnight, and you fall into his arms, knowing that this is what you’ll be waking up to in the morning.

The next evening, you walk inside TD Garden, Boston’s sports arena, where Game 1 of the NBA finals between the Celtics and Phoenix Suns are being held. The energy is insane, something you’ve never felt before, and it’s making you giddy and excited. You can only imagine what it’s like for Yoongi, and the thought makes your heart warm.

You did see him taking long breaths earlier after he’d dressed up and prepared to leave, and much as you’d been so tired, you just had to hug him to calm him down and tell him that he’s gonna do great. He’s just excited, he claimed, but he’ll look for you in the arena; knowing you’re there with him will be enough to calm his racing heart.

He had to go earlier to cover the press conference and film for their segment in Seoul’s morning news channel. It’s just him, Hee-soo, and a small production crew but it’s all they need. As commentators, they get to call the game but also interview the players and staff, report it, and then write about it. It’s tough and stressful but it’s the kind of buzz that Yoongi lives for now, you can tell, as you eye him in his designated analysts’ table, looking around and taking in the energy of the arena. His smile is priceless. There’s pride in it, there’s acceptance. It looks like the smile of someone who fought hard to have a new dream, and someone who worked to achieve it.

Yoongi’s eyes go to you and you wave. You’re thankful for the connections you have that got you this ticket last minute, and even if you won’t pay attention to the game as much, being here to witness Yoongi call his first NBA match is too special to miss. You can’t imagine being anywhere else.

The game is an exciting one. You get into it with the crowd even if you don’t exactly have a team you’re rooting for but you cheer just the same. Your eyes constantly flit to Yoongi though, whose position isn’t far from where you’re seated.

You listen through the online channel so you can hear what he’s saying, and the way he describes the energy inside is on-point. He narrates the plays effectively; you could be looking away from the court and still feel like you’re watching because of how good he is. His voice is calm and measured, except towards the end when the game is close and his pitch increases and he matches the excitement of what’s happening. It’s intense and exhilarating, and when the final buzzer sounds, you turn to him and see that smile on his face again.

Tears form in your eyes as you feel overwhelming pride. Perhaps it’s similar to what he felt when he was with you during the recent Film Festival where your movie was shown and the audience gave your entry a standing ovation. He knew what you had to go through for that role and seeing your hard work paying off meant so much to him, as he got to hold your hand and tell you he was proud of you.

That was special, he said. So many times in the past, he wanted to tell you all that, and that you did well, and that he’s looking forward to the next big thing you’ll do, but he never had the courage to. That’s why he’d send flowers, he told you.

He also revealed how that came about - how he’d driven to Seoul for your first movie premiere with a bouquet of daisies but that he’d seen you with someone, and how he decided to leave it at the agency for you to receive. He almost took it back but you seemed to like it so he just continued with the tradition. You cried then, and he said he didn’t want you to feel guilty. But you were emotional because he still looked out for you and his care for you never wavered. The flowers gave you strength, and you’d told him you wanted to be like those daisies for him, too.

Seeing him now gives you that sense of fulfillment, that not long from now, you’ll be able to hold his hand and tell him you’re proud of him, and the chance to do that for someone you love is special beyond words. You’re glad you can finally do that for each other now.

Gentle dreams, you think. This life with him and all the simple things you do for each other and together are some of the biggest ones.

It’s quiet in the car on the way to your hotel, the fancier one you booked for both of you instead of the mid-range one they got for him. Yoongi is focused on his notebook, jotting down notes from his memory that he’ll have to write up later on.

He’s then glued to his device once you get to your room, with him seated on the couch and agreeing to your orders for room service for your dinner. It seems he’s going through the messages of praise from his colleagues and his friends. A lot of people tune in to the channel’s coverage of the NBA, and other than you, no one’s prouder than his dad and his brother.

You watch him from the bathroom door, appreciating the joy he exudes. It’s different from what you’d seen all those years ago. This is a man who went through various kinds of pain and had other people suffer because of it, something he still burdens himself with every once in a while. But he did the brave thing of dreaming again; sometimes you think that’s probably harder than when he gave up on the first one.

Yoongi shows you everyday that courage takes different forms. Sometimes it’s letting something go, sometimes it’s fighting for them. Sometimes it’s loving someone from afar and sometimes it’s flying thousands of miles to a foreign country and asking for them back.

But it’s always picking up your broken pieces and learning to love yourself despite and because of them. It’s finding something or someone you can’t live without and offering what you can, trusting that they’ll take you into their world because you deserve it. Courage is dreaming again, it’s loving again even with the possibility of getting hurt. It’s trusting yourself enough that you’re going to be okay if things don’t go your way.

You hear him call your name. You realize you’ve been gazing at him for longer than you intended, and so you walk towards him as he looks at you questioningly.

“I was just admiring how happy you look,” you say. “It suits you, and I’m just so thankful I get to see it.”

His face softens and he reaches out his hand, one that he kisses and he doesn’t say anything else. He just looks at you tenderly and your heart races at the sight.

You bend to capture his lips on yours, your movements gentle yet wanting. But it builds as time passes, until you feel him undoing the knot of your bathrobe, with him sighing in satisfaction when he feels you bare underneath. Your breath hitches when he cups your breast and you want nothing more than to have him right now.

You pull away then remove your robe, liking the way his eyes roam around your naked form and how he gulps at the position you’re getting into, as you get on your knees and spread his legs apart. His slacks get off first, and then his briefs. He removes the rest of his clothes as you take him in your mouth, his cock heavy and wanting as it reaches the edge of your throat.

You take your time, wanting him to feel good after what he’d done tonight, but he’s the one who pulls away, wanting instead to bury himself inside you. It’s what he does, as he directs you on the couch, entering you from behind while his fingers do their magic on all parts of your body. But he lets you both come together, on the bed as he hovers over you, his head no longer buried in your neck, with his eyes looking straight into yours as you both come down from your highs.

He kisses your lips tenderly as his I love you, and the way he holds you later that night says everything he can’t say.

Loving you is what he wants to do in his life. Loving you is courage.

You didn’t realize just how tiring covering the NBA finals would be. Considering their small team, Yoongi and Hee-soo work double time to get all the information they need to cover the games and write about them within a short period of time. They also have to fly back and forth depending on where the game is and you’ve liked tagging along, enjoying the amenities of your hotel and exploring the nearby area. It’s what you do in Boston and then in Phoenix.

And while a game 7 is great for the league and basketball fans, you can tell it’s taxing for Yoongi. He doesn’t complain though. It’s part of the experience; the first one tends to be very memorable, he says.

Both of you find yourselves in Boston's public garden the afternoon after the final game of the series. It’s been a crazy 24 hours, as Yoongi and Hee-soo had to do interviews and then report and then write about the game. You stayed by Yoongi’s side, attending to his needs and helping whenever you can.

It’s early morning in Korea by now and work can resume later, perhaps right before or during your early morning flight back home, but you’re both at what has become one of your favorite spots in the city. It’s nice and simple and quiet. The garden is also accessible. It reminds you of the park in Paris, the one where Yoongi had come to meet you, and you cried in his arms at the sight of the man you didn’t think you’d be able to be with again, but he braved through his fears to be with you.

“I like it here,” you say, as you walk past one of the many statues.

“It’s nice, isn’t it?” He hums. “The pond reminds me of Paris.”

You turn to him and smile, letting him know you were thinking the same.

Yoongi watches you lovingly look at the flowers. Your head turns when you hear toddlers squealing on their parents’ shoulders. And you perk up at the dog that stops to sniff his leg. They’re all simple but they’re so unabashedly you - soft, charming, and everything he needs.

He thinks about all the things he loves about you as you smile and laugh at your surroundings. He’s been thinking about a lot of things, actually, constantly pinching his arm to remind himself that this life he’s created with you isn’t just some dream he conjured in his mind to get over losing you twice. You’re actually, truly next to him, living his new dream with him, as he dreams your dream with you. He doesn’t think he can get any happier than everyday he gets to live like this.

You told him a few times that he’s brave for dreaming a new dream. It’s scary to do that, you’d said, so are other things, like loving again and again, accepting the broken pieces of himself and loving every one of them. You’d said that he was brave for flying to see you and asking for you back, and while he agrees to some extent, he doesn’t think anyone can be braver than you.

You love intensely and genuinely; you love so certainly. You love like you heal, and you love yourself and others so you could heal as well. The way you loved him all these years has been filled with courage - you loved when it hurt, when it didn’t feel like he wanted to fight for you, when it felt like your love wasn’t strong enough to carry his burden. You loved so hard that there would be nothing to regret if the world ended the next day, and your love is so transformative that it created a home in his aching heart so that it could be strong enough to love both you and him after everything.

You turn to him and reach out for your hand as you head towards the exit, and he jogs to where you are and intertwines his fingers with yours - not loosely but securely; he wants you to know he’s never letting you go.

There’s no version of life that he’d let you go another time. And so when he gets a message from the jeweler that his order for a customized daisy ring is ready, Yoongi’s heart soars to know that he could at least give you - ask you - something that will let you know that he’ll choose this life over and over again as long as it’s the one where he gets to live the rest of it next to you.

You’ll both go back to Seoul, in the home you both created, in each other’s arms where you both belong.

Series Masterlist

Permanent Taglist: @sherlynxx @di0rgguk @thequeen-kat @fan-ati--c @cravingforhotchocolate @adoraminie @helenazbmrskai @weasleyswizarding-wheezes @gukssunshine @nch327 @kookxin @petuliii @yoursthv @libra04 @fancycollectormoon @twixxxpie @ignoretheskies @ohmydarlin-g @bids97 @minyoongiboongi @bangtansmauyeondan @bora-bae7 @investedreader @petalsofink @moonchild1 @jvngkooker @starbtslove @jungoomoles

Series Taglist: @wobblewobble822 @shydestinyyouth @nk01119888-blog @ktownshizzle @curryshesus

#yoongi fic #yoongi angst #yoongi fluff #yoongi smut #yoongi x reader #yoongi fanfic #yoongi x you #yoongi fanfiction #min yoongi #bts suga #yoongi series

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nozunhinged · 28 days ago

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Love In The Big City reviews are raging everywhere - now what?

Or: why I think a 8.7 rating on MDL won't help anyone

If you're less of a reading person and prefer watching/listening, I made a post with various videos that are easily digestable.

disclaimer: this post is mainly an expression of my frustration over this crushing feeling of helplessness and the general fucked up political climate all over the world but also about how I truly believe that the most important thing is to think critical and never stop learning. Also I'm not south korean, but spent the majority of my academic studies on the topic of the post-imperial developments of Japan and Korea. And because I'm fundamentally tired of academia I will not proofread this for grammatical errors sorry - this is mainly a stream of consciousness.

Let's get this party started.

Because this is such a deep rooted issue, we need to do a teeny tiny, very brief excurse into korean history to properly explain my thoughts.

South Korea is a very young country

Before the republic of south korea we know today, Korea (North included) was ruled by one of the longest standing empires, the Joseon dynasty. The South Korea we know today is one of the youngest developed countries in modern history, first (brutally) colonialized by Japan and then taken over by the US.

The official end of the Joseon dynasty was in 1910. Thats a little bit over a hundred years ago, which is nothing if you think about how the Industrial Revolution was only 250 years ago and Korea has already overtaken many, many benchmarks the west set in the beginning in only less than half the time. The official founding of South Korea was even later, in 1948.

But that's only one important part about Joseon - this dynasty was also one of the most peaceful and stable empires as well. And how was that achieved? Well, confucianism and its very rigid patriarchal structures.

Joseon lasted over 500 years.

South Korea is only about 80 years old.

Their economic rise only took about 50 years.

Please remember those numbers for the next chapter.

I like to call it "The Patriarchy on Steroids"

Why am I throwing all those numbers around? Well first of all I suck at keeping it short but most importantly, I want to highlight how a country was turned upside down within the mere timeline of a few generations.

The South Koreans who spent their childhood in the Joseon empire, were teens during Japans brutal annexation, were adults when Samsung Electronics was founded and grew old with the first financial cracks of the democratic reforms, they raised the generations we have today. Let that sink in for a moment.

Central part of Confucianism is "Samjongjido", the expected devotion of the woman to her father first, then her husband and later her son(s), which exists in various forms in every asian country that was influenced by Confucianism. Essentially, women were expected to be nothing more than caretakers while the men were left with the "big pants" stuff.

Those structures can't be erased overnight.

But the bigger problem is when capitalism and "western culture" comes into play. In my opinion, it's a very deadly mix and there are countless examples of this.

You see all those "funny" conflicts in K-Drama and wonder "why is she expected to stop working after marriage", "why do they care so much about the family status of their spouse", well, that's how it worked for many, many generations prior.

The 4B-Movement (not dating men, not getting married, not having sex with men, not have children) is not just a dumb little feminist movement happening online, it's a literal, very real threat to South Koreas entire economy. It's not just a protest, women have literally given up on fighting these steroid patriachy structures that were only reinforced even more by capitalism.

And do you know what South Koreas solution to that problem is? Backing a right wing-conservative president who wants to get rid of any progress of equality politicians made in the last decades.

I repeat: You cannot erase 500 years of Confucian Patriarchy overnight. There's a reason so many historic k-dramas exist (sorry).

Fun fact: South Koreas economic rise made child mortality decline by almost 60% in only 18 years only to now have the lowest birthrate in the whole world of 0,7 children per 100 women.

Well done men, well done.

So what the heck does that have to do with that one gay show?!

Well, the backlash about LITBC shouldn't have come as a surprise. This show - openly and unapologetically queer - is attacking everything the steroid patriarchy in Korea represents. It hits exactly where it hurts the most. It's authentic, it depicts men not fucking women but other multiple men without the goal of having kids but oh - without just any goal that contributes to The Prosperity Of The Republic Of Korea. /s

The BL shows we got from Korea so far were all pretty tame and probably "tolerated" like the filthy smut that is BL manwha. That's easy to ignore and hide behind dark curtains, but a show that is distributed internationally with a famous actor in it??? That's going too far! /s

The most important point I want to make is that we need to think about the big difference between a countries culture and the economic interests they export. We all heard of the word "soft power".

But we often forget that what we see as international audiences is what they want us to see. We can't read Hangul, we don't speak Korean, so every translated article will always be lost in translation and not transport important nuances that make a culture their own.

K-Pop was made palpable for international audiences, as well as K-Drama and also - ultimately - Korean BL. Of course all of them play a big role in Korea as well, but what we get to see is only exported because it is made suitable for international audiences.

And I don't mean to diminish the work all the companies, writers, producers and actors put into these shows - they are all part of an important change that is absolutely necessary. But that's not the point here.

Big platforms like Viki, IQIYI, Gaga - they're not Korean, they're platforms from various asian countries with the goal of exporting media to international audiences. Shows are produced with that goal in mind. If it wasn't, none of the shows you can watch would be available without a VPN. They want to cater to international markets, that is literally their business model.

And they all know their domestic markets as well, which is why IQIYI is regularly pulling chinese BL - they can live very comfortably without the numbers from other countries but they definitely cannot ignore their domestic political climate.

And the same goes for LITBC. And many, many countless other examples like the one k-pop boy who was forced to leave his group due to massive backlash inside south korea.

And now what, smartass?

Like I said in the beginning - never stop learning. Start by reading Korean history 101 (or watch all the videos I compiled here). Learn and tell others about the horrible things happening - especially to women - in south korea. Unfortunately it's not all just fun and comfort shows/music. The 4B-Movement is still standing firm thanks to more and more education on it. (sorry not sorry men, get your fucking shit together)

Try to understand where the protesters are coming from, that's the only way to find a middle ground. But as long as the political climate in korea is getting worse and not better, hyping the show with huge numbers and raving ratings will not only have positive effects. It even has the potential to make it worse for south korean women and queer people as its success will only result in even more hardened fronts.

But at the end of the day, we have nothing to do with South Korean politics. We should also all be a little more humble, respect differences and not put our views on opinions on issues that we have nothing to do with. All we can do to help - again - is to never stop learning and never getting rid of your critical lens.

#love in the big city #korean bl #boys love

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kverything-official · 9 months ago

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10 Free Kdrama Sites That Nobody Will Tell You About

Let’s be real here, even though most of us want to watch Korean dramas all day, not all of us can afford high price margins of streaming platforms. Given the fact that a big part of Korean drama fans are still students, it’s only natural to look for affordable ways to keep enjoying Kdramas in the best possible way.

This is why I decided to share these 10 free Kdrama sites that no one will tell you about. I have personally used these sites before and these work just fine. But you will need a little guide on how to use these and I am here to teach you the hacks.

So, read the blog till the end and discover the wonder that free Kdrama sites have to offer. Without further ado let’s get into the list.

10 free Kdrama sites for streaming

10. Dramafire

Starting with my least favorite site, Dramafire, this one is quite complicated and I myself don’t understand how to navigate through it properly. Nonetheless, it can be one of the best free Kdrama sites if you know your way through it.

The very first thing that upsets me is that there are a ton of different versions of the same site and if you don’t know which one is the real one, you are bound to get lost (just as I did). The next negative point is that there are both videos and blog posts, so you need to filter through those if you want to land on the dramas.

Another thing is that I don’t know yet, if there are any options of downloading or not, as it was quite difficult for me to navigate through the site. But again it’s better to have something other than having nothing.

So, you can bookmark this site and use this if your favorite free Kdrama sites aren’t working properly.

9. MyAsianTV

Next in the list, we have MyAsianTV. Even though I haven’t yet used it personally, the interface of this website looks promising. Unlike most of the free Kdrama sites, this one is organized and has different sections, where you can find the most recent Kdramas and the most popular ones of recent time.

There are very minimal advertisements, which is another plus point. You can also search for the dramas you are looking for through the search bar.

Not only Kdramas, but there are also movies and shows that you can easily find out by browsing through the different tabs and the search bar. Downloading here is very easy. However, just as the other free Kdrama sites, it will redirect you to different websites, which you need to be aware of. Other than that MyAsianTV is a standard free Kdrama site that you can use as your permanent choice for watching or downloading Kdramas for free.

8. Dramahood

Next up, we have Dramahood as our 8th free Kdrama site. Honestly, I didn’t like this one. It has a clean interface but that is rather glitchy. The dashboard took quite a lot of time to load, which means you shouldn’t expect much of an user-friendly experience.

The dashboard has a list of some of the most popular dramas and movies of all time, which would be better if replaced with the on-going series and movies.

I haven’t downloaded anything from this site, so I can’t review that experience but beware of the ads. Everything you tap will redirect you to another site, which is certainly very annoying.

But again, if your favorite free Kdrama sites aren’t working then this can be plausible choice.

7. Amazon Mini TV (For indian fans)

Amazon Mini TV is a very special feature as one of the free Kdrama sites for the Indian Kdrama fans. You can watch Kdramas for free, that too, from a trusted provider such as Amazon. But there are cons.

First of all, Amazon Mini TV is not an official streaming platform, it is rather a small inclusion to the Amazon ecommerce application. Hence, you can not expect the quality that Amazon prime Kdramas offers.

Secondly, the limitations of Kdramas are striking. There are very few Kdramas that you can browse through and watch. So, there is a bigger chance of you not finding the drama that you are looking for.

Thirdly, all the Kdramas are dubbed in Hindi. Many of you might like it but I prefer watching Kdramas in the original version (as it keeps my Korean under practice).

So, Amazon Mini TV might not become the kind of free Kdrama sites that you are looking for. However, it doesn’t hurt to try, right?

Read more at: 10 Free Kdrama Sites That Nobody Will Tell You About

#kim soo hyun #kim jiwon #queen of tears #kdrama #netflix kdrama #korean drama #free kdrama site

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vibinwiththefrogs · 11 months ago

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2024 Language Goals

The focus for 2024 is going to be immersion in media without formal study. I've been testing out comprehensible input in the past few months and I plan to design my language learning around it. Turns out this is mostly already how I study Japanese and Korean because I'm a higher level in them, the real challenge will be doing comprehensible input with German, which I'm a much lower level. Here's the series/books I would like to check out or continue in 2024, purple ones are what I'm starting with:

Japanese

Reading: コーヒーが冷めないうちに (小説）, 満月珈琲店の星詠み（小説）, One Piece (a monumental task, I know), ダンダダン, 君は放課後インソムニア、ヲタ恋、文豪ストレイドッグス.

There's another two novels I want to read (JR上野公園口 and 乳と卵) but I don't currently own them. So I won't add them to the list until I do.

Listening: Honestly I was just going to browse around and see what I can find. I start and stop a lot of dramas because I end up not liking them a few episodes in lol. Japan can be pretty strict with media pirating so it gets hard to find (non-anime) TV shows without English subtitles without paying for a streaming service. If I don't find a live-action TV show I like in January, I plan on starting Jujutsu Kaisen (because I can't find the full manga raw).

Korean

Reading: 전지적 독자 시점, 날씨가 좋으면 찾아가겠어요, 강철비

Not adding a lot of reading projects for Korean because I get intimidated easily, I already started 전지적 독자 시점 in early December.

Listening: 커피 프린스 (actively watching, about halfway through), 여신강림 (I already watched, but going to rewatch for more focused comprehensible input), Reply 1997, 힘쎈여자 도봉순, 시카고 타자기...maybe 괜찮아, 사랑이야; Its my favorite drama so maybe I'll do a little rewatch

German

Reading: Boyfriends (Webtoon), I've heard mixed reviews for it but its available in German and looks easy and engaging enough for my level.

Listening: Die Heiland, Der Tatortreiniger, EasyGerman (YouTube). I don't know many German shows but these two looked most accessible without a VPN. I found some episodes of Die Heiland for free with German subtitles. I'm going to check out other things once I brush up more.

I'm going to try to post regular updates as well whenever I finish/switch series and resources. I'm hoping to be more active on langblr in 2024

Currently media can be found with the tag: #languagemedia

#Of course I'll be listening to music and such as well #language goals #language goals 2024 #2024 goals #langblr #Japanese langblr #Korean langblr #German langblr #If anyone wants the romanized titles of the Japanese and Korean media lmk

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bootstrapparadoxed · 11 months ago

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creative works & links

AO3 - Ko-Fi - YouTube - Patreon

Novel

adult sci-fi; a queer, existentialist space adventure

Summary:

In the distant future, humans live in a utopia where even death is not the end—for everyone except Amber’s parents. At 25, she is a cynical, aloof Ph.D. in history who resents her sheltered life at home and yearns to find her place in the world. Then, an exciting job offer comes her way—the chance to uncover the mystery of a civilization that disappeared thousands of years ago. Teaming up with the archeologist Lullaby, Amber embarks on a hitchhiking quest to find the fabled Aquamarine Moon and, perhaps, some much-needed meaning in her life.

Publisher’s website | Amazon

You can get a free ebook copy in exchange for an honest review on goodreads or storygraph! Send me a direct message or ask for details.

Current WIP

"Offspring of (Un)happy Days", a dark academia horror with a M/M romance - WIPintro here, I tag posts about it as #FrankensteinWIP

Video Essays

"Science Has an Accountability Problem | Dumpster Fire Data"

Do you know how many researchers anonymously admit to fabricating data? The answer is not a number of individuals, it is a percentage. As scientists, we like to believe that we are the pinnacle of accuracy, honesty, and accountability. In reality, we are no different from any other human, just as capable of making mistakes. And it’s time to fully admit to that. Welcome to Dumpster Fire Data, a series in which I analyze the hell out of crumbling institutions.

“Representation DIY: What Headcanons Can Teach You About Autism”

On why representation of minority groups in fiction has such a powerful influence, why I prefer headcanon autistic characters over canon examples, and how headcanon discussions can improve the public dialogue and be an additional push for better diverse media.

“Night in the Woods: Cosmic Horror and Optimistic Nihilism”

An exploration of themes and narrative threads of “Night in the Woods” through the eyes of an exhausted Gen Z anarchist. On the terrifying world that young adults of today were born into and how it affected us, the two ways in which NiTW explores cosmic horror, why humans always look for stories, patterns, and meaning, and whether you can be sane and happy without meaning altogether.

“Disability and Capitalism” 2-parter

A deep dive into the intertwined history of ableism and the capitalist economy, starting from the dawn of humanity and ending with a hopeful look into the future. Featuring a shitton of citations/research and generously sprinkled with science fiction.

“Squid Game and the Gamefication of Capitalism”

"Squid Game" is a South Korean survival drama that explores themes of class disparity and inequality with a Hunger Games-esque, thrilling plotline. Is the reality show / video game aesthetic of Squid Game just another compelling visual element, or an additional metaphor?

"Is Phylogenetics a Proper Science?"

Birds are dinosaurs, whales are cousins of cows, and fishes do not exist – these are the kind of things you learn in phylogenetics lectures as a biology undergrad. I have compartmentalized this knowledge in my head for years without giving it a second thought. Then, I fell down a rabbit whole of weird philosophy of science papers, and it broke my brain a little.

"Pokemon Evolutions Are Real... Kind Of"

More people have probably heard the word "evolution" in a pokemon game than in a high school biology class. And they aren't even actually evolving, they're going through metamorphosis. Probably. Well…

Short Stories

Short Story: "Satisfied", cyberpunk horror, in HyphenPunk Magazine Issue 7

Selected Fanfiction

One Septendecillion Brass Doorknobs: AO3 - Royalroad - Rebloggable Link

Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency S3 as a full novel length (82k words) fic written in my best attempt at the style of Douglas Adams

where fire and ice collide: AO3

30k long/novella length doctor who and good omens crossover with Tenth and Rose and all the GO characters; mostly focused on the mystery/adventure plotline but it also has tenrose and ineffable husbands tones in the mix

when it’s time: AO3

good omens 20k ineffible husbands slowburn. you know the cold open of E3? it’s 20k more of it. with mutual pining and angst and an eventual happy ending

#video essay #youtube essay #writeblr #bookblr #fanfiction

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watashiistired · 19 days ago

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A Final Review of Judge from Hell What a ride!

It's been a week since I watched the last episode of Judge from Hell and I haven't moved on one bit. This is undoubtedly, the best Korean drama I have seen this 2024. It was just such a great delivery from start to finish. With how it ended and the rave reviews it received, I'm already expecting a second season.

The ending is by no means dull; in fact, the writer sticked the landing. But there were definitely more to uncover. I am especially curious about why the real Kang Bit-na ended up in hell since it was teased in a much earlier episode. It was pretty clear she had committed a sin, but what? Curiosities aside, I'm very glad actor Kim Jae-young who played Han Da-on finally got the recognition he deserves. I'm also thankful to everyone who made this masterpiece of a show possible. I am sure Judge from Hell will be living in my head rent-free until Season 2 comes out.

#judge from hell #kdrama #review

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sputnik422 · 2 months ago

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aespa's SYNK: PARALELL LINE Solos: Review and Appreciation

Dear Reader,

On October 6th, 2024, it was announced that Korean girl group aespa would be releasing a special single comprised of the solo songs each member had debuted during their SYNK: PARALLEL LINE tour. It wouldn't be the first time that the girls dipped their toes into solo endeavors, as their previous tour also featured performances from each member accompanied by original songs. It would, however, be the first time that every single aespa solo had such a big impact on the wider K-pop fan sphere.

Let's just be honest here, these songs are infinitely better than their predecessors in every shape way and form. The upscale in quality was obvious from when the first fancams from the Seoul concerts began to drop. These songs are a different breed and in honor of their official release on all streaming platforms I wanted to take some time to talk about all of the reasons why I love them.

P.S: I don't know anything about musical genres, and I'm actually pretty bad at picking them apart, but I'll do my best for this post!

UP - KARINA

Starting off with the one I have the least things to say about. "Up" is a track that fuses old school hip-hop and R&B elements with electronic pop. It's a complete turn around from her last solo, "Menagerie", and its dark, psychedelic ambiance. It sounded as if you'd just entered the lair of the unbeatable final boss and they were monologuing to you before eating you for dinner. "Up" is dark too, but Karina's rich vocal tone and tasteful delivery elevate the song to a level of class above the former's brash exterior. Where her first solo was rough around the edges, the syllables of her rap being spat into your ears, Karina rides the waves created by Up's prominent bass and makes you want to hear more. Honestly its the best she's ever sounded.

The lyrics aren't anything revolutionary. Karina talks about how she's letting loose, not caring who stands in her way because she's going to get what she's owed. She's not the type to stand back and let the world have its way with her, Karina takes charge in her life. She knows that this confidence is attractive and urges the listener to come closer, being entranced by her. There's nobody else that could ever measure up to her and everyone knows it. The singer herself has been very vocal about how happy she was to be able to write this song and be apart of the development from the start and it shows. This track was tailor made for her. My favorite part about the entire experience is how the power of her deeper vocal tone gets to shine, taking me back to some of my favorite vocal moments from her (her part during the second pre-chorus of Drama, her chorus in Spicy). If I had to nitpick, and I will, I would say that the bridge doesn't really do anything for me. It kind of disrupts the flow of the song in my opinion. Other than that, it's a 10/10. A real testament to the strength of these tracks that something this good could end up as my least favorite. The performance, both her actual stages and the ARTi film, were cool as hell. Mob boss Karina, chef's kiss.

BORED! - NINGNING

Ningning is the member who had my favorite solo from their previous set. "Wake Up" is just as commanding as the title would have you think, with Ningning blatantly provoking the listener. It's a game of cat and mouse, the classic tale of a puppeteer and her craft. There's no use in trying to escape—she knows your every move and you will end up as her plaything—but she doesn't seem to hate the chase either. That fight, the sweaty face and thrashing heartbeat, it just makes the inevitable end so much more satisfying.

"Bored!" is very much in opposition to these themes. The lofi R&B instrumental serves as the backdrop for Ningning and her crazy situationship. In this song Ningning is someone who loves fast and loves strong, feeling drunk on the feeling of infatuation. There's just one problem and I'm sure you could guess from the title: Ningning tends to get bored. No matter how much she may love this person she's never truly going to fall for them, and she doesn't really want to. Just like this we've entered a similarly twisted yet way more lighthearted game. The lyrics lay this plot out for us with feather-light phrases like, "feel the caffeine kicking in / episodic visioning" and "paradise on venus in your eyes". That second line in particular caught my attention when I first heard the song and was even singled out in the behind the scenes recording video. My mind immediately went to the goddess Venus, otherwise known as Aphrodite, who is known for her short yet passionate bouts of love and lust. Perhaps Ningning feels similarly about the subject of the song. Lyrics like "I'm so pretty in your head boy" and "tell me where it goes out of my body / whisper "Pretty" in my head" make it clear that Ningning wants to indulge in their powerful mutual attraction while never intending to commit. It's just not in her nature. It could also be a way of saying that, whenever they're together, the love interest makes Ningning feel like she's on a different planet, floating along the milky way because of his love. Whatever the deal is, Ningning will take the attention and she'll easily hand over her own love too, but the listener can't expect her to stick around. Only until she gets bored.

I'm obsessed with her tone, the sweetness really compliments the lighthearted and playful vibe of the song. It makes everything feel so detached in a way, ungrounded just like the narrator's approach to relationships. I loved her first outfit for the actual performance, the white(?) shirt with 'Bored!' branded across the middle and sparkly black shorts. I hope she'll consider using more lighter colors and pastels in her outfits going forward, I think it fits the song and the concept better than her newer all black ensembles (outfit one, outfit two). The lighter colors make her look unassuming and innocent, heightening the sense of surprise when she turns out to be a bit of a player. Overall, another 10/10. Very well done, (Ning)²!

DOPAMINE - GISELLE

Giselle was the member who I was the most nervous to hear a second solo from. Call me dramatic, call me an over-exaggerator, but "2Hot4U" has to have been one of the most superficial songs ever conceived. Giselle curated an image as "aespa's hot girl" basically since debut and SM very much knew that. What they didn't seem to know however was that the image worked because of her distinctive style and aura, not because she physically had to tell you that she's hot for about three minutes and twenty six seconds. It feels like when a politician mentions a popular meme and suddenly its not cool anymore ("Pokemon GO TO THE POLLS!"). Giselle's line delivery is nasally, making her character feel like a petulant mean girl rubbing her rejection of you in with extra salt and lemon. The song wasn't good and it just didn't suit her at all.

So you can all imagine just how high I jumped for joy was when Dopamine ended up being a masterpiece.

"Dopamine" is a delicate pop R&B track that details a very similar situation to that of Ningning's "Bored!". Where the former has no intentions of committing to a relationship, messing with people as she sees fit, Giselle is very much in denial. She portrays herself as cold and detached "(I don't need a man, just accessories") meanwhile on the inside she is spiraling. HARD. Giselle knows that she's falling in love but she's been burned before and is afraid of being vulnerable with this person ("lock it up inside, I gotta hide the way I feel"). So, she keeps them at arms length, never letting them in and in turn never allowing them the chance to hurt her.

That first line in the chorus, "Be my little secret / Keep it hush hush, but I think I'm in love", it just hits. There's so much emotion rolled up in her delivery of the line combined with the narrative of the song as a whole. Giselle could very well tell this person how she feels, she could even cut them off and never see them again if that option is too hard (and from the look of the lyrics it would be). But still she stays, addicted to the rush of dopamine that she gets from every encounter. Since she can't or won't let herself have love, Giselle will take jewels, diamonds, anything to help fill the void created by her self-isolation, a void only made more prominent by the subject of the song. Its all just so toxic and tragic, the way she wants this man to be choking on his feelings the same way she is. How, deep inside, both parties know Giselle will never open up, yet they choose to act on their desires every time. That is, until the end.

The bridge into the outro itself is better than the entirety of her first solo. The music quiets down as Giselle talks to herself, only able to spill her true feelings when she's alone. She casts away her mask, admitting that her supposed heart of ice has been bleeding this entire time, that even the heavens know she needs this person in her life. She charges up this admission into a beautiful high note, allowing the incoming storm of synth to represent her emotions. Its that final seventy seconds or so, right after the 2:43 mark, that really makes this song for me. The art of the release, when everything falls into place and all of the feelings you've been holding so close to your chest burst from your body. "Dopamine" is gorgeous and mature and paints the picture of a fully realized human being. It's so much more suited to Giselle than the song SM gave her for their previous tour, and I mean gave in the most derogatory way. The subject matter is so real and you feel every drop of yearning in her vocal delivery. I'm glad she got the chance to work with the producers on this one and reinforce the fact that, when they allow her to carry out her vision, she's a very capable artist. The stage performance? Insane. I heard that the couch she used sold out after the first performances in Seoul, that's so hilarious to me.

I want to briefly mention the special version of it that she performed in Tokyo, which switches up the big release at the end for something more subdued and playful. The original outro goes full steam ahead to emotional catharsis while this one, with its very electronic alarm type noises and little metallic tinks, feels much gentler. Like maybe she's learned to be a bit kinder to herself, she's a work in progress after all.

10/10, tens all around. This song was initially tied for first place as my favorite but with the official release I think the scales have begun to shift.

SPARK - WINTER

I don't remember Winter's first solo. I know it was a ballad, and I'm pretty sure it was called "Lips", but that where my knowledge of the whole affair ends. In one of their behind the scene videos for this tour Winter went on to say this about her new solo song: "Last time I did a ballad but this time I wanted to show off more of my dance. I like dancing too, you know". Well, she got me with this one. Boy, did she ever get me! I did not see this triumph coming.

If "Bored!" represents cheeky self-serving apathy and "Dopamine" is self-sabotage, "Spark" is self-actualization and the honesty that comes along with it.

From the very first note of you're left waiting, wanting, anticipation building alongside the beat. Winter's lines are delivered in this airy and sort of crooning tone, it's such a change up from how deep and robust we know her voice can be. In this self written track she urges the subject to tune in to her wavelength, study her down to the very last molecule and accept access into her soul. Winter doesn't shy away from her desires, unafraid of seeming desperate or being too much. She embraces the intensity of this love, this connection with the song's subject, and is practically begging them to acknowledge what is going on. These feelings that have been born between them are about to bear fruit and she knows it. Its only a matter of encouraging the subject to let loose, coaxing them into the headspace where nothing else matters other than the goddess in front of them. Winter needs to push the subject to their limit, until the build up becomes too much and they have to either take action or suffocate on this tension.

They both know what they need and what it takes to get it.

"One little spark and you set me free / Now one becomes two".

I urge you, if there's any part of the song that you choose to blast on full volume, let it be the build up into the chorus. Once again the art of the build and release comes into play here. The song has been steadily building throughout the verse and pre-chorus but as soon as Winter sings, "Now one becomes two", cementing the union between herself and the song's subject, something magical happens. Those four words become an incantation, a spell to open a portal to a technicolor dimension. Winter pushes you in and as you're left to freefall the colorful tunnel begins to churn and collapse in on you. Infinite shades of pink, purple, blue, and blinding white strobe violently; entering your system, charging through your veins and building on top of the already unbearable attraction. The force reaches your eyes as they begin to project a rainbow, different colors flashing into place in time with the quickened beat.

Winter is in front of you again and, holding out a singular matchstick. You both know she can't light it by herself. What is one to do when placed on the precipice, where the stable ground behind symbolizes everything you've ever known while the open air out front symbolizes everything you have ever wanted. Perhaps this was destined, written in the stars. After all, when faced with the latter conditions, is it ever really a choice?

You light the match.

"Only takes one little spark / And we're igniting"

The portal spits you out above a kaleidoscope of a city. You soar, high on the sheer intensity of your connection, the joining of two souls within a space illuminated by a myriad of brilliant colors. "Spark" is an invitation to face your feelings, face your truth. Should you choose to take the risk you'll be swiftly rewarded, sucked into Winter's world and warmed by the eternal flame that burns between the both of you. The moment your souls meet, that critical turning point where one becomes two, there's no going back. It's just so alluring and intimate and sexy and ughhhhhhh.

The live performance is everything I could have ever wanted from Winter. She's always been such a sharp and powerful dancer, the elements of vogueing really suit her and the piece overall. When I saw this fancam of her for the first time I was gagged, speechless because of her beauty and stage presence. That opening sequence with the shadows cast on Winter and all of her dancers as they move as one machine, it's so coooooooool. Her initial outfit is lovely but for the debut of the special version she wore a lilac corset style top with detached puffy princess sleeves and this long veil with flowers sowed onto it, I wanted to die. The special version also plays with the chorus drop, adding in a long moment of silence before the second chorus in order to build even more anticipation. They power walk towards the back, Winter looks back toward the crowd but the lights go out. Cue the lights and the big reveal: the dancers have formed a blooming sun shape around Winter. She flicks a hand and the whole thing implodes, sending the dancers away as she basks in the moment, in her power.

I am not exaggerating when I say that I need this song engraved in the grooves of my brain. The studio recording pushed this one to the top of the rankings for me, I was not prepared for the religious experience I would be faced with when we hit the pre-chorus and beyond. The genre of synth pop has so much potential for conveying the most powerful of emotions, truly one of my favorites. I think this song is single-handedly helping me come to terms with the fact that I'm very much Winter biased, something I've been steadily ignoring since Drama Era. I BOUGHT A TICKET TO GO SEE THEM IN FEBRUARY SIMPLY SO I COULD SEE THIS (and Dopamine, and Drama, and a couple other songs) LIVE!!! I think I might actual perish that day, we'll just have to wait and see.

Glad SM was able to scrape together some brain cells, read the room and actually release these songs to the public. I'm gonna have a blast with these leading up to my concert date. Credit to JUST, Timing, Tsuki, and Jiunan for the pictures that I struggled to make a collage out of. I'm kind of bad with technology sometimes.

Cheers,

˗ˏˋ ★ ˎˊ˗

#kpop #kpop gg #aespa #aespa giselle #aespa winter #aespa karina #aespa ningning #kim minjeong #ning yizhuo #aeri uchinaga #yu jimin #aespa solos #song appreciation #lyric analysis #lyrical narrative #synk parallel line solos #song analysis

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misscrawfords · 2 months ago

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Hi, I am going to start watching k dramas, so could you recommend some good ones? Which ones do you like best?

Ooh an excellent life choice, if I may say so!

Honestly, what I'd recommend would depend on what you enjoy. My personal tastes are for:

romcoms very low angst

romances with deeper characters, a bit more realistic

thriller/spy stories, usually light-hearted, romantic subplot

fantasy, romantic subplot

For gateway kdramas, I'd recommend:

What's Wrong With Secretary Kim (romcom, a classic)

Hometown Cha Cha Cha (romcom, a few angsty moments)

Crash Landing on You (romcom... ish... angsty!)

Strong Woman Do Bong Soon (romcom with adorable female superhero and serial killer subplot)

If you like predominantly romances, I'd recommend in addition:

Her Private Life (Park Min Young (also in Secretary Kim) is basically a romcom goddess - HPL is v similar to Secretary Kim)

Because This Is My First Life (surprisingly relatable and thoughtful take on contract marriage trope)

Romance is a Bonus Book (less well known as some but just so charming if you like books and bookish people)

Rookie Historian Goo Hae Ryung (not usually a fan of historical kdramas and this is light on the romcom and heavy on the palace drama but it's genuinely interesting)

Our Beloved Summer (second chances romance, slow burn)

Weightlifting Fairy Kim Bok Joo (cute university sports romcom

Business Proposal (only watch when you are well-versed in romcoms - it's hilarious because it makes fun of all the tropes)

No Gain, No Love (still airing but doing something similar to Business Proposal but a bit more subtlely)

Dali and the Cocky Prince (had some flaws and some painful moments for the FL but overall excellent)

Love Next Door (still airing and I had to stop watching because it suddenly got serious and I need to know it ends happily before I force myself through the difficult episodes but really excellent up to that point - so I'm hopeful)

If you like your romcom with a twist:

Healer (another PMY drama, lots of rom but also main plot is a thriller - really excellent)

Marry My Husband (look, I just love PMY... time travel and revenge plot and swoon-worthy rom with plenty of com)

Vincenzo (the Ultimate kdrama for me - I adore it; mafia, revenge, hilarity, romcom- got everything)

My Roommate is a Gumiho (kind of forgettable tbh but I really enjoyed it a lot at the time - fantasy romcom)

Crash Course in Romance (romcom between middle aged people, crash course in the messed up Korean education system and a serial killer - IDK what is going on with this drama but overall it worked?)

Terius Behind Me/My Beloved Terius (a rather obscure one but A+ if you like spy comedy shenanigans with subtle romance)

The King: Eternal Monarch (mixed reception for this fantasy parallel universes romance but I had a Good Time)

And finally, standing all out on its own:

Alchemy of Souls Parts One and Two: just brilliant. Pure epic fantasy. I want 10 seasons in this universe and the novelisations. Should be bigger than Harry Potter.

Something to bear in mind is that most kdramas are 16 episodes and around episode 11... bad things tend to happen! Sudden illness/death/betrayal/breakup/white truck of doom... And while some of them deal with this well, others... don't. Usually it's worth getting over the hump episodes but I have to admit I have a lot of unfinished kdramas. I do keep meaning to finish them... but then another one comes along and I start that instead!

I also recommend getting onto MyDramaList to get recommendations and read reviews and find new dramas to watch as well as keep track of your watching. My list is here.

Enjoy! :D

#kdrama #kdramas

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waitmyturtles · 1 year ago

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Turtles Catches Up With Old GMMTV: The Bad Buddy Rewatch Edition, Part 3a -- BBS and Asian Cultural Touchpoints

[What’s going on here? After joining Tumblr and discovering Thai BLs through KinnPorsche in 2022, I began watching GMMTV’s new offerings -- and realized that I had a lot of history to catch up on, to appreciate the more recent works that I was delving into. From tropes to BL frameworks, what we’re watching now hails from somewhere, and I’m learning about Thai BL's history through what I’m calling the Old GMMTV Challenge (OGMMTVC). Starting with recommendations from @absolutebl on their post regarding how GMMTV is correcting for its mistakes with its shows today, I’ve made an expansive list to get me through a condensed history of essential/classic/significant Thai BLs produced by GMMTV and many other BL studios. My watchlist, pasted below, lists what I’ve watched and what’s upcoming, along with the reviews I’ve written so far. Today, I offer the first half of the third (ha!) of five posts on Bad Buddy. I'll look today at themes that myself and fellow Asian fans of Bad Buddy have caught and related to in this wonderful show.]

Links to the BBS OGMMTVC Meta Series are here: part 1, part 2, part 3a, part 3b, and part 4

As a lifelong viewer of Asian dramas, and as an Asian-American myself, I know why I'm drawn to Asian dramas. We all have our reasons for belonging to this widespread fandom, whether you're watching queer or het Asian dramas, consuming Asian music, all of it.

What are my reasons? The first and foremost one is relatability. Especially in Asian dramas, I relate to the spoken and unspoken communication of the dramatic characters as they navigate life's highs and lows. I relate to the way Asian dramatic characters engage with their families, their partners, their children, their colleagues, the world and societies around them. I relate to the ways in which societies are drawn and constructed, to the economic and emotional pressures that characters face. As an American -- I don't fully relate to the majority of experiences that white American characters face dramatically, because I'm not a part of the majority. As an Asian? I get almost all of what Asians are going through in dramatic art (save for, say, Korean or Japanese historicals, ha — but I do indeed get Asian patriarchy and sexism).

I'm not queer -- I am a cishet Asian woman -- but what I appreciate about queer Asian media is, very often, the media's tendency to not be shy about the various and intricate ways that discrimination, sexism, trauma (intergenerational, emotional, etc.), and many more social and emotional phenomena interplay in an individual's life.

When I first watched Bad Buddy, I had the strong sense that what I was watching was incredibly relatable to much of my upbringing and life as a young adult, working out issues vis à vis my family and my eventual partner. Bad Buddy, thematically, captured a tremendous amount of the realities of everyday Asian life for young people.

Bad Buddy exists in the GMMTV bubble of No Homophobia (cc @bengiyo and @lurkingshan, as we have spoken about the GMMTV bubble). However, what Bad Buddy didn't shy away from were explorations of many other social/emotional/cultural themes and frameworks of everyday life, from sexism, to youth bias, to boundaries and enmeshment, and many, many more.

I wrote in my first-ever Bad Buddy thesis that the framework of intergenerational trauma was the main theme I identified -- and identified with -- in the show. But, as I was contemplating writing this series of Bad Buddy meta posts, I wanted to know: what did my fellow Asians pick up in this show that they saw, and that they related to? In other words: what makes Bad Buddy particularly special to Asian fans of the show?

So, I did a thing. I gathered together a few BBS Asian stans, like myself, for a lengthy (and still ongoing!) discussion about what we related to in Bad Buddy. I want to thank, from the bottom of my heart, @telomeke, @grapejuicegay, @recentadultburnout, @neuroticbookworm, and @lurkingshan (who's not Asian, but has Asian relatives, and gets us!) for being up for creating a spontaneous mini-village together to talk Bad Buddy and its inherent Asianness.

It sounds redundant to identify Bad Buddy, a show made by Thais and set in Thailand, as an "Asian" or "Thai" show. It's definitely not a show that steps back to take a look at itself and say, "oh hey, this is really 'Thai,' what we're doing here." When I asked @recentadultburnout directly about what they might have identified as uniquely Thai about Bad Buddy, RAB thought about it and said -- maybe Pat's ranak ek (Thai xylophone). Other shows of Aof Noppharnach's, including He's Coming To Me, Moonlight Chicken, and even the start of Last Twilight, highlight many facets of Thai life, from the spiritual to the everyday-cultural (even Gay OK Bangkok does this a bit, too). But Bad Buddy doesn't really go there by way of overt symbolism and/or specifically Thai spiritual/cultural practice.

The Asianness of Bad Buddy is far more inherent. It is rooted and coded in the way people interact with each other.

An overt example occurs in episode 10, when Dissaya confronts Ming in the Jindapat home, and announces that she will reveal Ming's secret, dropping the effort she has made her entire life to "save face" -- her reputation AND Ming's reputation.

During my first Bad Buddy rewatch, I was so moved in fury by this scene that I had to blog about it as if I had never seen it before. There's so much encapsulated in this moment: the pressure that Dissaya has put on herself to keep the embarrassing secret that she lost a scholarship; the effort she made to keep Ming's theft of the scholarship a secret, to save his face, and the secrets she kept from Pran to save her face, and to keep up the façade of rivalry between the Jindapats and the Siridechawats. She was letting a whole hell of a lot loose in this moment, because the eternal pressure of saving face in Asian societies is, frankly, never-ending.

"Saving face" is an incredibly important notion in many Asian collectivist cultures. Saving face is about an individual or a family projecting an image of calm, cool collectedness and success, in order to not make waves within a collectivist society for any reason. If you are not working to seem like you are going with the flow of life, if you're not keeping up with the Joneses, the Kardashians, whoever -- you are not saving face. If you are in poverty, and are projecting an image of poverty, instead of pretending to be more wealthy than you are -- you are not saving your face or your family's face. If you allow yourself to get publicly defeated -- you are not saving face. Dissaya gave up a lot of her hard-earned reputation in the moment she confessed the truth in front of Pat and Pat's mother.

My Asian friends and I can click wordlessly into understanding the pressure of saving face; say that I didn't get good grades in school? I wouldn't be saving my parents' face. This kind of pressure to keep up with particular social dynamics within and external to family, within Asian societies, is a neverending drumbeat of pressure.

Besides saving face, there are many other Asian cultural touchpoints that were contained within Bad Buddy that my fellow Asian BBS stans and I noted. They include:

1) intergenerational/inherited trauma, 2) the unique nature of secret-keeping in Asian cultures/societies, 3) enmeshed family boundaries, 4) setting up children to compete against each other for the sake of familial pride, 5) patriarchy, sexism, and the reversal of sexism among next generations, 6) the inset/assumed roles of family members based on patriarchy and elder respect, 7) Assumed community within and external to one's family, usually based on where you live and where you go to school, 8) How one's identity is defined based on patriarchy and individualist vs. collectivist cultures, 9) How various cultures within an Asian nation live peacefully (or not) together (for example, what makes Pat and Pran different by way of Pat's Thai-Chinese heritage vs. Pran's ethnic Thai heritage),

and many, many more.

It'll be impossible, even over two posts, to analyze all of these cultural touchpoints, but a few of them engendered quite a bit of conversation among the BBS mini-village that I want to highlight. In this post, I'll focus on the continuation of my first BBS thesis on intergenerational/inherited trauma, the nature of secret-keeping in Asian societies, and will return briefly to the touchpoint of saving face.

One of the most devastating scenes for me in Bad Buddy is in my favorite episode, episode 10, when Pat (after he's learned, throughout the episode, of the extent of the lies that his and Pran's family have shared with their children) confronts his father about his father's demands to literally control Pat's emotions, the way in which Pat related to other people -- specifically Pran. Pat sums up a lifetime's worth of control in one sentence.

@telomeke noted in our ongoing group conversation that this notion of inherited trauma vis à vis Ming is particularly present in Asian societies, not just by way of familial expectation that we, as Asians, embody it and "take it" throughout our generations, as Pat realized up above -- but that ALL family members present are responsible for playing their roles within the framework of the inherited trauma. @telomeke noted in particular that exactly what Pat was doing to hate Pran, FOR his father? That was what Ming HAD to do for MING'S dad, when Ming schemed to get the scholarship from Dissaya. AND, Pat's mother, in consoling Pat, had to play the role of explainer -- which, as we know now, Pat ran away from to meet his beloved Pran on the rooftop before running away to the eco-village.

Pat running away from that moment? That was a huge symbol of the breaking of the inherited trauma that was given unto him by his parents both.

(@telomeke has actually written about their theory about how the Jindapats and Siridechawats ended up living next door to each other -- which seems SO STRANGE on the surface, consider Ming's and Dissaya's boiling hatred for each other -- and the theory links nicely within the framework of inherited trauma. Tel theorizes that Ming's father or grandfather may have actually gifted the house to Dissaya's family as a means of apologizing for Ming's deceit. In which case: the presence of the Siridechawats is a reminder, on an everyday basis, of Ming's folly to steal from Dissaya, which may explain why Ming in particular went so hard on Pat to triumph daily over Pran.)

We as a group unwound quite a bit on the nature of secret-keeping in Asian cultures. We know Bad Buddy relies on this cultural touchpoint at the end of the series: Pran and Pat have a full-fledged and committed relationship as a transparent secret, under the noses of Pat's and Pran's parents.

Secret-keeping....oh, man. I could not have lived a fully authentic life in America if I didn't keep a million secrets from my family while I was living out my own independent choices. I actually, literally, could not have gotten married, because the rule of my household was that I wouldn't date. I would just... get engaged. So I'd get engaged through, what, magic? Match-making? No: I'd have to find my partner through my own battle of social and familial conventions, literally against my family, to get to where I wanted to be in life, which was (gasp) married.

@neuroticbookworm illuminated more on this particularly from our shared Indian lens. She wrote,

Keeping your relationship secret from parents is sooooo ridiculously common in India (and I'm sure we can extrapolate to other Asian countries like Thailand). And the justification the children give themselves is always rooted in how they have a "duty" towards their parents, and that they will reveal their relationship after they have fulfilled their duties.

God, I LOVED that NBW brought up "duty" in this conversation. Because! Assumed within the coded language from Asian parents to children, and vice versa, is a sense that children MUST follow the dictates of their parents. 100%, full-stop.

The duties that NBW clarified in this particular conversation specified life demarcations such as "[w]hen I graduate, I'll tell my parents about my partner," and "[w]hen I graduate and get a job and can financially support myself in life, I'll tell my parents about my partner."

What's coded in these statements is a fear that the children will have to reveal to their parents that they were disobedient in the rules their parents set, that no dating shall occur until the time at which the parents rule it's okay. And at least within Indian frameworks, that period of it being "okay" is, more often than not, the period in which arranged matches are examined. Because, yes, that's still the rule in the high majority of Indian culture.

The revelation of that disobedience? That's bad-news bears. It indicates... everything: a lack of loyalty to the family; a lack of understanding the meaning of a child's role to listen to the parents as the parents are elders and therefore are the moral authority of the household; a lack of self-control (which is a huge deal -- that relates to saving face on behalf of the family); a lack of understanding the morals and ethics of saving oneself, in love and sex, before marriage, etc. Even if a family seems fully progressive on the outside, as an Asian, I'm conditioned to question that progressiveness -- as parents may hold different standards of acceptance for their children vs. other young people.

@telomeke expanded on disobedience for us -- connecting it back to the very important notion of "saving face."

I think there's something quite related to secret-keeping, but it's also to do with the ability of Asians, but also human beings in general, of being able to live with duality in life... and secret-keeping is part of it. This also ties in to the East and Southeast Asian preoccupation with the concept of "saving face" [as noted above]. A lot of families are able to live with the knowledge of dirty secrets, unsavory truths, as long as it's not brought into the light and confronted. I'm constantly reminded of this whenever I rewatch BBS Ep. 12 because it's clear both Ming and Dissaya KNOW their sons are in a relationship but it's not overtly admitted. In that way they (and more Ming I suppose) get to "save face" and not have to deal with the truth that their sons are being disobedient, consorting with the enemy, and because it's not in the open -- there is no dishonor brought to the family and to the elders.

God, I love the way Tel put this. That disobedience on the part of Pran and Pat would actually bring dishonor to their families -- because their families have put SO MUCH EFFORT into building their public AND private enmity their entire lives! It affected Chai's relationship with the families as an employee of both families. EVERYONE AT PAT'S AND PRAN'S SCHOOLS knew the guys were the "legendary rivals." And, of course, by being in rival faculties at the same university, the boys could continue this public enmity as well -- keeping up with the roles that were literally assigned to them by their parents.

If the boys disobeyed, they would bring dishonor to their families. Think about that -- and connect that with the heaviness that Pran walked away with after the rooftop kiss in episode 5, AND the weight of Pran's breakdown at the end of episode 10, when Pat assured him that they would run away together.

No matter what a Western viewer (and maybe even Asian viewers, wanting to see a dismantling of these paradigms) would want Pat and Pran to have by way of full openness of their relationships with everyone in their lives (because, in individualistic cultures, that self-driven openness is a given), Pran and Pat themselves knew that that couldn't be their reality vis à vis the social worlds they belonged to. So they kept their relationship a secret, in the end.

The secret that Pran and Pat keep about their relationship is strategic. It's certainly also a stress point: an older Pat asks an older Pran, at the end of episode 12, if he'll ever be able to walk through the front door of the Siridechawat house.

But this is the compromise -- within the larger-scale culture of secret-keeping in Asian societies, AND the private frameworks of the enmity that Dissaya and Ming established between themselves and their families years and years prior -- that will work best for Pat and Pran to preserve the sanctity of their relationship, which I talked about in part 2 of this meta series.

Pran and Pat do not have to publicly appear disobedient to the demands and pressures of their families. They do not have to make their families engage with each other. They do not have to make their families confront the mistakes that their parents made earlier in their lives. They can protect their families from their private and public follies. They can help their families keep and save face. And by doing all that? They can prevent their relationship from being threatened.

I feel this very deeply in my heart as an Asian-American. For the sake of my American spouse, I wanted to protect him from a lot of these pressures, and so I insisted on keeping a lot of our relationship secret from my folks. If I demanded full-blown, public acceptance from my parents? If I brought my "boyfriend" to parties, and introduced him as such with aunties and uncles -- especially if it wasn't indicated that we'd be permanent one day? Damn. No. I'd be embarrassing my folks, with the aunties and uncles saying to my folks, "dang, you can't control your daughter, huh? You let her do what she wants." That would mean my parents would lose face over their ability to control the lives of their children, and that's no bueno in our cultural terms. It would be on ME, as THEIR child, to uphold THEIR ability to save face, as much as its their own work.

Dissaya refers DIRECTLY to Pran doing this FOR HER when, in episode 10, she asks him, "did you forget to save my reputation?" It's brutal, daily work. And Pran goes BACK to keeping secrets in the end, because it would have been impossible, ultimately, for Dissaya to save face, AND for Pran to save Dissaya's reputation/face, if Pran were out with his relationship with Pat, thus proving his disobedience. It would be -- JUST -- better to keep the secret for all those involved.

As this post has gotten long, I'm going to continue talking more about these touchpoints in a second post. I'm driven to talk about this because I think much of the Western fandom might miss what us Asians are reading into shows like Bad Buddy through this coded language and engagement. I very much posit that Bad Buddy -- while it is first and foremost a queer show, made by queer Asians, about queer young men -- is so relatable to so many of us because we've faced similar struggles of survival, and we've faced threats to the sanctity of the love we have for other people by way of needed to fit into the roles set before us by previous generations.

So! With that, thank you for reading, and see you tomorrow, when I focus on competition, enmeshed family boundaries, patriarchy and sexism in Bad Buddy, and more if I can fit it in!

(Tagging @dribs-and-drabbles, @solitaryandwandering, and @wen-kexing-apologist by request! If you'd like to be tagged, please let me know!)

[Alright! Stay tuned for more, many more ruminations from the BBS Asian station tomorrow!

Here's the status of the Old GMMTV Challenge watchlist. Tumblr's web editor loves to jack with this list, so mosey on over to this link for the very latest version!

1) The Love of Siam (2007) (movie) (review here) 2) My Bromance (2014) (movie) (review here) 3) Love Sick and Love Sick 2 (2014 and 2015) (review here) 4) Gay OK Bangkok Season 1 (2016) (a non-BL queer series directed by Jojo Tichakorn and written by Aof Noppharnach) (review here) 5) Make It Right (2016) (review here) 6) SOTUS (2016-2017) (review here) 7) Gay OK Bangkok Season 2 (2017) (a non-BL queer series directed by Jojo Tichakorn and written by Aof Noppharnach) (review here) 8) Make It Right 2 (2017) (review here) 9) Together With Me (2017) (review here) 10) SOTUS S/Our Skyy x SOTUS (2017-2018) (review here) 11) Love By Chance (2018) (review here) 12) Kiss Me Again: PeteKao cuts (2018) (no review) 13) He’s Coming To Me (2019) (review here) 14) Dark Blue Kiss (2019) and Our Skyy x Kiss Me Again (2018) (review here) 15) TharnType (2019-2020) (review here) 16) Senior Secret Love: Puppy Honey (OffGun BL cuts) (2016 and 2017) (no review) 17) Theory of Love (2019) (review here) 18) 3 Will Be Free (2019) (a non-BL and an important harbinger of things to come in 2019 and beyond re: Jojo Tichakorn pushing queer content in non-BLs) (review here) 19) Dew the Movie (2019) (review here) 20) Until We Meet Again (2019-2020) (review here) (and notes on my UWMA rewatch here) 21) 2gether (2020) and Still 2gether (2020) (review here) 22) I Told Sunset About You (2020) (review here) 23) YYY (2020, out of chronological order) (review here) 24) Manner of Death (2020-2021) (not a true BL, but a MaxTul queer/gay romance set within a genre-based show that likely influenced Not Me and KinnPorsche) (review here) 25) A Tale of Thousand Stars (2021) (review here) 26) A Tale of Thousand Stars (2021) OGMMTVC Fastest Rewatch Known To Humankind For The Sake Of Rewatching Our Skyy 2 x BBS x ATOTS (re-review here) 27) Lovely Writer (2021) (review here) 28) Last Twilight in Phuket (2021) (the mini-special before IPYTM) (review here) 29) I Promised You the Moon (2021) (review here) 30) Not Me (2021-2022) (review here) 31) Bad Buddy (2021-2022) (thesis here) 32) 55:15 Never Too Late (2021-2022) (not a BL, but a GMMTV drama that features a macro BL storyline about shipper culture and the BL industry) (review here) 33) Bad Buddy (2021-2022) and Our Skyy 2 x BBS x ATOTS (2023) OGMMTVC Rewatch (The BBS OGMMTVC Meta Series is ongoing: preamble here, part 1 here, part 2 here, more reviews to come) 34) Secret Crush On You (2022) (on pause for La Pluie) 35) KinnPorsche (2022) (tag here) 36) KinnPorsche (2022) OGMMTVC Fastest Rewatch Known To Humankind For the Sake of Re-Analyzing the KP Cultural Zeitgeist 37) The Eclipse (2022) (tag here) 38) GAP (2022-2023) (Thailand’s first GL) 39) My School President (2022-2023) and Our Skyy 2 x My School President (2023) 40) Moonlight Chicken (2023) (tag here) 41) Bed Friend (2023) (tag here) 42) Be My Favorite (2023) (tag here) 43) Wedding Plan (2023) 44) Only Friends (2023) (tag here)]

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mountainhaunt · 2 years ago

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top 10 bands/artists let's goooo. i was tagged by @findusinaweek (bless you) so here's a loosely ordered list.

1) Hoppipolla. i could, can and have written literally a 2k+ word review on Hoppipolla's second album that turned more into a love poem from me than anything. y'all really don't want me doing this here.

B U T suffice it to say this timy little korean indie melancholia quartet has touched my soul in ways nothing else has. a few of their songs mean more to me than most things in this world do.

also!! world renowned cellist!!! hong jinho!! in the group!! seriously gorgeous, poignant magic these four create together.

the best/worst part is they dropped into the world, released two 10/10 heart stopping albums and then vanished again as if it were nothing.

2) Radiohead. i heard 'in rainbows' for the first time when i was 15 and it's what started me down the road of truly loving music and not just listening to it. radiohead is my baby and were my number one until hoppipolla came along a few years ago. ive been lucky enough to see them twice in concert and both experiences changed my dna i swear.

3) the Mountain Goats. the goats are like placebo in that i couldn't listen to them for a long time because of His Voice and i know that's like a trope at this point.

that was back in high school. now, john darnielle is hands down my favorite songwriter of all time and i unironically love his voice. no one writes lyrics and tells a story like he can and i constantly find myself turning to their music.

4) The Postal Service. death cab for cutie? eh, not bad, but can take or leave. ben gibbard + dntel? masterpiece.

their one and only album, give up, is my number one favorite album of all time and as much as i love it/them, i am SO glad they didn't release another. nothing could compare. anything that tried would only cheapen the debut album.

5) Hozier. i want to lay in the moss and cry and fall in love with a sweet lil cottagecore girl and i get to do that every time i listen to a hozier song

6) My Chemical Romance. my first loves. i was OBSESSED as a teen when they debuted and will still defend their honor today. although suddenly they've become really popular and not something for middle school bullies to pick on me for, so... defense unnecessary.

7) Margot & the Nuclear So and So's. they are so dreary and melancholy and nostalgic and gorgeous. i came across them by accident in high school because i was obsessed with the name margot, saw their name somewhere and immediately went home to totally not pirate them and see what they were about. "my baby (shoots her mouth off)" is one of the songs i send people when i talk about having bipolar, lol. the other being "lovecraft in brooklyn" by the goats.

they just evoke a special kind of feeling that is hard to replicate, and it transports me somewhere when i listen.

8) Erasure. i didn't know they even existed until i moved in with my partner and now i feel like every older queer ive ever met over the course of my life who didn't introduce me to them failed me, honestly

9) Modest Mouse. 'the moon and antarctica' came into my life around the same time 'in rainbows' did and also furthered my realization that music was to be experienced and not just heard. i never get tired of them (except strangers to ourselves. i listened to that album 3/4 of the way through one time and never touched it again sorry)

10) Rammstein. i love the drama!! i love the ferocity!! i love the taboo!! and they are also the reason i studied german so they deserve a spot here.

i'm still getting this account off the ground and haven't really chatted with many of you so im afraid to tag anyone lmao but obviously feel free to do this if you see it

#hoppipolla #radiohead #the mountain goats #tMG #modest mouse #margot and the nuclear so and so's #the postal service #rammstein #erasure #my chemical romance #mcr #hozier #tag games #txt

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stuffnonsenseandotherthings · 1 year ago

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Castaway Diva - Wrap Up Review

I'm not quite sure what it was, but something about Castaway Diva felt like something of a throw back to the K-drama golden age of the early 2010s. Perhaps it was the plot(s - there were a lot of them), perhaps it was the characters (who were both deeply traumatised and wonderfully carefree), perhaps it was the way it was a simply just very fun watch (as long as you didn't think about it too hard, once you started asking questions things got a little holey).

Overall I did have a good time watching this; I liked the characters, I enjoyed their different dynamics, I even liked some of the songs, which is not normally the case for me with musical dramas but Dream Us is now on a playlist and I've looked up a few of the other songs too. The story itself was a relatively fun ride too, although it did suffer from being, for lack of a better phrase, very over stuffed. Domestic abuse, identity theft, the politics of the Korean entertainment industry, a social re-intergration plotline, a love triangle, and more all jostled for screen time and dominance and there were definitely times when it felt like were two completely different dramas going on at once, ones which just happened to be sharing sets and a cast. That feeling only grew as the drama progressed, unfortunately, along with the suspicion that, because Castaway Diva couldn't decide on what it wanted to be, both major plotlines suffered as a result.

One thing I did really enjoy the whole way through was the cast. Park Eun Bin was as stunning as always (although for the first 2 episodes it did sometimes feel like she was trying to shake off the last vestiges of Extraordinary Attorney Woo); it was great to see Chae Jong Hyeop in a lead role again; and Hakyeon impressed a lot as the second male lead with an actual heart of gold. I also really enjoyed Kim Hyo Jin as Kim Ran Joo, it was my first time seeing her in any role and she definitely left a very positive impression, so positive that I'm planning to keep an eye on what she does next.

Equally impressive as the adults were Lee Re as young Mok Ha and Moon Woo Jin as young Ki Ho, both of whom put on such compelling performances that I almost wished we could have had a drama solely dedicated to their lives on the island. Their performances and plotline were some of the highlights of the entire show for me and perhaps therein lies the main problem: the first episode was so impactful but so different from everything that came after it that my mind kept drifting back to those first 60 minutes and wanting more, wanting it so much that the fact that there wasn't more felt like a genuine loss, the loss of a very different, much darker, much more serious drama-that-could-have-been.

TLDR Stats

🎧 Music: 7.5/10 - Dream Us is on repeat and the other songs weren't skipped.

🎭 Acting: 8.5/10 - They carried the many plots and they carried them well.

📑 Story: 7.0/10 - The writers should have picked one story to focus on instead of trying to shoehorn two very different it's into one drama. The bits we got of each drama were pretty good and would only have got better if the focus was solely on them.

👩‍⚖️ Overall: 7.5/10 - I enjoyed it while I was watching it but I doubt I'll be watching it again.

🙆‍♀️ Rec for: People who are looking for a relatively light, uncomplicated watch with highly enjoyable chemistry between characters although be warned the first episode is anything but light.

🙅‍♀️ Wreck for: People who like to ask the question "why?" when watching dramas.

#k-drama #castaway diva #k-drama review #castaway diva review #wrap up review

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unnursvanablog · 1 year ago

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My Dearest / kdrama review.

This is just my opinions on the kdrama My Dearest pretty much spoiler free.

What both stunned and impressed me the most about the kdrama My Dearest, right at the very start, was how focused it was on the ordinary people and how they deal with war. And what the war does to them. It makes it less of a war epic and more of a human tale of self-preservation and hope at a trying time. which I found to be quite a fresh approach to this kind of historical drama, although many will no doubt find it rather slow and dry in its execution and style.

The story is ruthless in its realism and harshness with how it seems to paint the world. The narrative is very willing to comment on several aspects within society that it tells it's tale, the nobility and their uselessness, the lack of care that a certain position within society seems to push into you for the people that live around them, as well as society's attitude towards women in wartimes and just their position in society both outside of that as well. The way it uses these elements to shape itself, the details it shares throughout the story is very tangible, interesting but also poignant. It is incredibly well thought out and effective within the narrative to stir up further emotions both with the characters and the viewers.

These are not the heroes that poems are sung about, but seem to be more everyday heroes of the common folk. Most of their influence is not great within the grand scheme of things, but it is the people who knew them who will always remember them with kindness and love. They are the ones who will tell the stories about them until they disappear from human memory and are forgotten.

At some point, despite their intelligence and strength, as the war and the hardships seem to tighten more and more around them, the characters seem to wear down a bit. But they never lose who they are, their will to fight but how they go about fighting, how they deal with situations changes a little. All that happens very slowly and works very realistically within the story. It's a really well-handled look at character, as well as how normal people deal with such situations.

The characters do feel sharp and manage to be both a fresh take on the traditional characters that we get in a Korean historical dramas, but at the same time they have quite a bit of the characteristics that we are used to seeing; Jang-hyun may come across as smug and aloof, and Gil-chae may come across as snobbish and somewhat self-interested. But there's a lot more to them and their flaws are very presant within the story. Overall there are plenty of multi-layered characters that make My Dearest a rather worthwhile and heart-wrenching watch. Everyone has something to say in their own way and all have some point to emphasize within the story. The story touches your heart from beginning to end if people just allow themselves to enter this cruel, realistic world with these characters as a guiding light.

The plot itself goes through its ups and downs, and it does hit a bit of a lull within the second half where the story tends to repeat itself quite often. Characters almost miss each other a few times over the course of few episodes in order to create tension and longing within the viewers, and since the story is already slow by nature it might make some people really struggle. It makes it seem like the story has lost steam and doesn't really pick up fully until right near the end. But if the characters manage to grab you and make you completely fall for them in the first half of the story, it's perfectly tolerable.

The story never seems to fall into being too epic or too grandiose in its approach to the narrative, as some costume dramas tend to do to make their heroes seem bigger. Much rather My Dearest seems so focused on being realistic and grounded in reality like it has a bit of an obsession with the human spirit and the lengths to which people will go to survive. It run through the very heart of the series. And the love story, which is really successful on its own, reflects that. It's very slow and down to earth and it's quite unusual for a kdrama in lots of ways.

The story takes its time, sometimes excessively so, and repeats itself a bit too often, but even if it takes the story a good while it manages to underline every point that the drama set out to make really well. The story always seemed to know what it wanted to say. And the humanity that this series carries with it and manages to reflect within the narrative does make you cry many times. It's gorgeous, it's heartwarming and filled with hope for brighter days that is always enveloped by a little bit of sadness.

#my dearest #kdrama reviews #kdrama review

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coreancitizen · 2 years ago

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2022 Year in Review: My Korean drama recommendations

2022 went by so quickly, and I think that's partly because almost every week I had new episodes of shows to look forward to. I'm a bit of a contradiction: I don't have the patience to wait for a new show to be completed so I could binge it, but I (maybe not-so) patiently wait for episodes every week, haha. TBH, I find I'm more invested in a show and its characters when I watch a drama weekly. And there were so many characters worth the investment in 2022: Woo Young Woo, Queen Im Hwa Ryeong, the Oh sisters, Kim Yumi, Jin Do Jun and Jang Uk, to name a few.

I just want to make clear that, as in previous years, this is by no means a list of the best Korean dramas of 2022. These are merely my favorites among the ones I watched that premiered in 2022 (or ended in 2022).

You can find my previous roundups here:

2021: Year in Review 2020: Year in Review

YUMI'S CELLS 2

New season means new love for Kim Yumi (Kim Go Eun) as she begins a romance with co-worker Yoo Babi following her breakup with video game designer Goo Woong. TBH, I wasn't quite sure how I'd feel about the new pairing — I have a soft spot for Ahn Bo Hyun — but Jinyoung charmed me even before the series started. He and Go Eun have a sweet and natural chemistry that made me root for Yumi and Babi, even knowing how the relationship ended in the webtoon. Another thing I love about the series is its portrayal of Yumi's pursuit of her dream to be a writer — from the frustrations of earlier rejections to keeping it positive while faced with criticisms and the satisfaction of another job (book) well done. That shot of her jumping on the bed toward the end of the series was cathartic and the perfect cap to Yumi's growth. (Viki)

LITTLE WOMEN

This is NOT Louisa May Alcott's famous novel though it does share some themes and puts sisters at the forefront of the story. The Oh sisters — In Joo, In Kyung and In Hye — just want to live a life not steeped in poverty. So when 2 billion won falls on In Joo's lap, their problems are over, right? Nope. A multitude of troubles arrive as the sisters get entangled with a rich, powerful and corrupt family with a lot of unscrupulous allies. This series got me on the edge of my seat from the very first episode and the thrills and tension never let up until the end. I absolutely love how messy and chaotic the sisters and their relationships with each other are. They love but they also fight, annoy and block each other, LOL! Now please cast Kim Go Eun and Wi Ha Joon in an action comedy series or film and give them the ending on the sunny beaches of Greece that their characters deserve. (Netflix)

BULGASAL: IMMORTAL SOULS

This is the first drama that caught my attention last year, a fantasy with monsters, past lives, immortal love and families. It's the story of how the lives of a man (Lee Jin Wook) who was turned into an immortal monster 600 years ago and a woman (Kwon Na Ra) who has been dying and reincarnating for centuries have been intertwined. The world building is quite interesting and the central mystery keeps you guessing until the very end. Keep an eye out for familiar faces as people from the past emerge in the present. (Netflix)

A BUSINESS PROPOSAL

This romcom is adorable with a capital A. Shin Ha Ri (Kim Se Jeong) shows up to a blind date pretending to be her best friend and does her best to turn off a potential match by behaving outrageously. It's a schtick she and her chaebol best friend had cooked up a long time ago to discourage suitors. Unfortunately, the blind date turns out to be Kang Tae Moo (Ahn Hyo Seop), the young president of the food company where she works. And even more unfortunately, he's interested and now wants to marry her! Hilarious chaos ensues, abetted by the couple's adorable best friends (the second couple), her zany family and his kdrama-loving grandfather. You'll never look at an archaeopteryx (bird-like dinosaur) the same way again. (Netflix)

TOMORROW

This is a lovely, heartbreaking, oftentimes cathartic drama about people desperate enough to consider taking their own lives and the team of resolute grim reapers who work very hard to prevent their deaths. Comatose Choi Jun Woong (Rowoon) is the newbie in the Risk/Crisis Management Team led by Koo Ryeon (Kim Hee Sun). Lim Ryung Gyu rounds up the team. Head of the Soul Collection Team Park Joong Gil, despite being a fellow grim reaper, is a thorn on the team's side — he has a special animosity for Ryeon that may have something to do with the past. Fortunately, the team has a stalwart supporter in the Jade Emperor (Kim Hae Sook). (Netflix)

MILITARY PROSECUTOR DOBERMAN

Legal action drama with a touch of comedy is probably the best way to describe this series and it's the perfect leading man vehicle for Ahn Bo Hyun. Do Bae Man passes the bar with basically just a GED and so finds himself unable to find a spot in a decent law firm until he gets an "offer he can't refuse" from corrupt lawyer Yong Moon Go: Serve in the military for five years as a prosecutor and then join his prestigious firm after. The plan is going swimmingly until he crosses paths with another military prosecutor, Cha Woo In (Jo Bo Ah), who is targeting some members of the military brass for revenge after her beloved father's suspicious death. After long-buried secrets begin to emerge, Do Bae Man finds himself reevaluating what it is he really wants to do with his life. (Viki)

EXTRAORDINARY ATTORNEY WOO

Woo to the Young to the Woo! The series follows Woo Young Woo, a young lawyer on the autism spectrum. She's got a brilliant legal mind, able to see different angles of a case but struggles with day-to-day interactions. Fortunately, she has the people looking out for her, like her dad, her boss/mentor, her law school friend and, of course, the handsome support team member who might just have more than friendship in mind. Park Eun Bin is brilliant as Woo Young Woo, she truly gets you invested in her challenges and triumphs. The legal maneuverings are fairly interesting, especially when they involve a rival law firm and somebody from WYW's past. (Netflix)

ALCHEMY OF SOULS

In the land of Daeho, an assassin trapped in a blind woman's weak body encounters a young lord from a powerful family who needs help to unlock his powers. Interesting lead and supporting characters, solid world-building, fantastic sword and sorcery action? I was sold from the very beginning. At the end of the second ep, I was absolutely in love with the feisty Mudeok and her rather bratty young master/pupil Jang Uk who just wants his gate of energy opened so he can do what everybody can — cast spells and use a sword. There's a twist at the end of the 20-episode first season, and I guess your enjoyment of the second season would largely depend on how much you accept the change. But in both seasons, the crown prince remains quite the scene stealer and he's possibly my most favorite character of all. (Netflix)

UNDER THE QUEEN'S UMBRELLA

A truly female-driven drama — from the queen and the queen dowager down to the concubines and, yes, even the court ladies. The series begins with Queen Hwa Ryeong's biggest problem being the four grand princes' rather relaxed approach to their education, lagging behind the other sons of the king via his numerous scheming concubines. But tragedy strikes and the queen and her sons suddenly find themselves fighting to make sure they don't lose not just their positions but their very lives. Kim Hye Soo makes it so easy to root for the embattled queen who wields her position and her eyebrows skillfully to thwart ministers, concubines and her mother-in-law, the queen dowager. I also love that her sons, the four grand princes, are unlike other royal brothers in sageuks — they are close, affectionate and loyal, leaving the dirty tricks to their half-brothers. This series probably has the most satisfying ending among the ones I watched last year. (Netflix)

REBORN RICH

Yoon Hyun Woo is a hard-working, loyal, no-questions-asked employee of the powerful Jin Family, which controls the Soonyang Group. One day, on an overseas errand to retrieve some secret money, he is betrayed by someone in the family and murdered — but promptly finds himself "waking up" in the body of the youngest grandson of the Jins, back in 1987. How, you ask? I finished the series but that part is still unclear. What's clear is how charismatic and believable Song Joong Ki is as the twentysomething investment whiz Do Jun. And what an amazing actor Lee Sung Min, as Soonyang chairman and patriarch Jin Yang Cheol is. The push-pull in their relationship is what made the series work for 15 episodes. Not that the supporting cast members are slackers. This is one of the best ensembles I've ever seen, the actors really working to make these characters ones you'd love to hate. Some of the business stuff might put off viewers but I found the whole thing fascinating and easily understood. I cheered when Do Jun/Hyun Woo used his knowledge of the future as well as his relatives' greed to take pieces of Soonyang. I'm recommending this series but with a caveat: I found the ending a bit of a mess and rather unsatisfactory. BUT the previous 15 episodes are fantastic and definitely worth a watch. (Viki)

Bonus recommendations

I recently started dipping my toes into Chinese dramas, even though I'm still intimidated by the episode count. "Love Between Fairy and Devil" is sweet and hilarious and has fantastic special effects. (Netflix and Viki)

But my heart truly belongs to Li Wei and the sixth young prince of Xin State as they figure out family, politics and love as their "New Life Begins." (Viki)

Last but certainly not the least, "Pachinko," which even though it stars some of the biggest names in Korean entertainment is not considered K-Drama by its creators. Based on Min Jin Lee's critically acclaimed novel, the series — Youn Yuh Jung, Lee Min Ho and Kim Min Ha are key parts of the ensemble — follows the trial and tribulations of a Korean family over four generations. The story begins in Korea, moves to Japan and eventually spreads to the United States. The story is rich and emotional, the direction precise and the acting superb. It has been recognized in a lot of year-end lists and recently won the Critics Choice Award for best foreign language series. (Apple TV +)

#kdrama reccs #yumi's cells 2 #tvn little women #bulgasal #military prosecutor doberman #mbc tomorrow #a business proposal #extraordinary attorney woo #alchemy of souls #under the queen's umbrella #reborn rich #love between fairy and devil #new life begins #pachinko

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