#whenever shin hye sun cries

[nbkdramathings]

25 minutes into episode 2 and Eun Ho/Hye Ri already has me crying.

[k-odyssey]

Using the holidays to watch all of the kdramas.

I like Mr Queen a lot more than I thought I would, mostly cause of the Shin Hye Sun + Choi Jin Hyuk’s voiceover combo. Also there’s a lot of fun dynamics, including between the queen and king. It gets strangely feminist at times, for a drama about an arrogant womanizing chef stuck in a joseon queen’s body.

It’s definitely a comedy, with well, a lot more dick jokes than I’m used to? Naive teenager waking up from a coma at 30 years old, cold-hearted broken ballerina and playboy in a joseon queen’s body mourning the loss of his “little dragon”, Shin Hye Sun can do it all.

I’ve also been watching True Beauty and Live On. Fun fact: I was thinking about how True Beauty has a similar premise to Gangnam Beauty and it did not occur to me once that the lead actor was the same. I found out from MDL.

Full disclosure, I’m not the biggest fan of Gangnam Beauty since imo it failed in delivering the message it wanted to deliver. I’m a little more hopeful about True Beauty. It’s also just a lot of fun to watch!! And self-aware. It knows it’s full of clichés. And it made me cry several times already, which took me by surprise tbh. But there’s this one scene I watched once raw and once subbed and I cried both times??? So they must’ve done something right. The themes are universal (wanting to be liked, suffering because you’re not, losing a friend, struggling to accept yourself as you are...). I always think I’m over high school dramas and then I watch another one and like it. (Btw I love the unrealistically matching outfits that Joo Gyung and Su Ho wear sometimes.)

Is it weird that I’m bothered by how short the school uniform skirts are though? 1. Aren’t you cold? I feel like you must be cold. I’m cold looking at you. 2. For a show about teenage years and struggling to accept your body as it is to never mention this as being uncomfortable feels strange to me. High school me would’ve definitely hated this.

Watching Live On and True Beauty at the same time is a bit confusing cause they’re both high school dramas with bullies and both ML have similar vibes at first + similar hairstyles. The Live On character is a lot more straightforward though. Once he knows he likes Ho Rang, he tells her so, which is kinda refreshing.

But for some reason, this drama feels a lot more like something I’ve watched before. It’s a mix of Radio Romance and every other school drama. Whenever they’re doing stuff at the broadcasting club I get a feeling that they’re playing pretend? Which would be fine if it wasn’t such a big part of the drama and it wasn’t supposed to look cool.

But anyway, still a pretty enjoyable watch and I do appreciate that a broken friendship is an important part of the story. FL has a cute, cuuute best friend who happens to be a guy and they’re just friends and I don’t think anyone comments on that. I love it. I’m soooo tired of the “girls and guys can’t be friends” line.

I just barely started Run On so no thoughts on this one yet. Except it reminded me how disappointed I get when a character has a (cool) hobby in the beginning but then you never see them do/practise it ever again. I don’t need you to make it a whole storyline but don’t drop it entirely please! That occurred to me while the ML was running and probably doesn’t apply here since he’s a professional athlete.