#drama asks

hi! @midnight-sun16! Thanks for these asks!

1. name a drama and I’ll pick my favourite scene in that drama:

Kieta Hatsukoi - I'll go with the scene on the swing set (apparently I have a thing for scenes on swing sets?) where Aoki and his friend Hashimoto realize that they don't actually have a crush on the same person. I just thought it was very cute how they had resignedly agreed that they were love rivals and then when they finally said the names of crushes out loud they figured out that the eraser had erased part of the name. It was funny and cute and a good depiction of a sweet friendship.

In my drafts there's a gif of the scene where Aoki spill juice on Ida; that one is also very cute, so maybe this is a good excuse to post it. Honestly, while I enjoyed Kieta Hatsukoi a lot, the details didn't really stick in my mind. Perhaps if I rewatched a different scene would stand out.

Theory of Love - There's a scene in a train station in episode 11. I don't want to give spoilers so I won't say more, but... yeah.

9. name a drama and I’ll pick my favourite character oh, these two are both hard ones. I could have so many favorites from each, for so many different reasons. 

Cherry Magic - ok. I've decided I'm going to use this opportunity to go on a mini version of my rant about Cherry Magic that I've been meaning to write. So I will pick Kurosawa, for who he was and who the story wouldn't let him be. He had so much interesting potential - this "perfect" guy who had a crush on the awkward one, the guy who thought he always had to be perfect and please other people... It's such an interesting character, but the show never allowed him to change. We got a glimpse at his own struggles in that flashback about the dinner where he was being sexually harassed, and where Adachi helps him catches Kurosawa's eye. But then it felt like that thread just got dropped, and Kurosawa never got to have his own story, it was all about Adachi.

I mean, it's also possible that Kurosawa was less static than I thought and I just missed some stuff. If so, please let me know!

Basically I wanted to this aspect of Cherry Magic to be more like Blueming. I loved Blueming for subverting this idea of the "perfect" love interest. Da-woon was very similar - someone commonly considered perfect, crush on an awkward guy, feels pressure to please other people - but the story allowed him to be flawed and change and grow. I loved Kurosawa enough to want to give him the same chance!

(The longer version of the still unwritten rant includes stuff about virginity, the title and the lack of focus on sexuality, Kurosawa's thoughts as heard by Adachi, stories as fantasies vs. stories as stories... probably some other stuff too. I did like the show! It just also frustrated me in ways that detracted from my enjoyment. I possibly went into it with expectations too high.)

And if I was just going to pick a pure favorite, it would be Fujisaki, their aromantic colleague. I liked how here they subverted expectations of her being a love rival, or a overinvested gossip or something, and had her be a sweetly supportive friend, but also with her own story happening so that her world did not revolve around the main characters.

The Untamed - Look this is really hard. I'm basically throwing a mental dart at a mental dart board to choose.

Wei Wuxian. His whole... everything. Self-sacrificing, arrogant, loving, brilliant, teasing, playful, clever... I honestly don't know how to write about him or The Untamed right now. I watched it just this spring and was obsessed with it for a time, but in many ways that seems forever ago. I feel like it's sunk into my psyche in the place before words. Perhaps someday I'll have more to say.

14. drama you dropped within the first 2 episodes (we’ve all been there)  There have been several, but I'm going to say 2gether. This world, where everyone's approach to getting what they want seemed to be stalking other people and everyone ignores the word "no," just does not appeal to me. (Interestingly, this meant that the depiction of Green as a predatory femme didn't bother me as much as I expected, because a lot of people in the show seemed predatory.)

I ended up dropping it at the scene where Tine somehow manages to play porn on his classroom's projector; the secondhand embarrassment was too much for me on top of everything else. I had intended to pick it up again, and maybe I will someday since it seems to be one of the foundational Thai BLs, but it doesn't feel like a priority.

And yes! You were the first to ask for 14 :-)

Oh, anon, there are so many. Let me stick to some of the ones I think are truly less popular.

Youths in the Breeze is a set of three Chinese censored bromances. One is about a cat that can take human form and the brother of his owner, another is about an author who ends up in his own book and then with the character in his world as well and also there's one about sports.

Winter Begonia is an astonishingly serious and deep drama about an immature and spoiled tough boy that runs an opera as a deep talent and an even more spoiled young man with a wife and a child who turns into his sugar daddy.

The 8.2 Second Rule is a series of Japanese shorts about a young man who is determined to fall in love with a series of boys by making eye contact for 8.2 seconds and making them food to solve their problems.

Meow Ears Up is literally about a catboy who gets rescued by a manga artist who falls in love with him... and then his brother falls in love with a TA who has no facial expressions and then they meet a hamster girl and... yeah. Yeah. That's a real show.

Those are the wildest ones, I think? OH. WAIT.

Tien Bromance is a Vietnamese BL that goes through like five genres before truly becoming a BL including horror and mystery and it makes so little sense it's almost funny.

I am LATE but here we go:

1.) Name a drama and I'll pick my favorite scene in that drama

For LITA I think my favorite scene is when Rain comes to the garage after Payu tells him not to come by and focus on school. Rain was being such a lovable smart-ass and Payu couldn't resist his little cunning remarks. He really hit him with "I am doing my work, P'Payu." And Payu let him stay. Sooo cute.

8.) A drama that sounded terrible in its synopsis but somehow worked out

This one's hard because I never look at the synopsis. But a drama that was better than I expected it to be is 2gether The Series. People were HATING on it so much.. I watched it because I wanted to see JUST how bad it was. It wasn't even bad.

18.) Drama You Regret Watching

one: name a drama and i’ll pick my favorite scene in that drama 

oh my god, that’s so hard for uwma!! there are so many amazing scenes in this show. this is seriously going to be impossible, but i’ll try.

when dean and pharm realized that they we were korn and in. it was a huge build up and a turning point. and afterwards, dean gave pharm the cutest little tummy kisses, so extra points for that.

inkorn beach scene. the entire thing. both of them asking the other to be their boyfriend at the same exact time? it killed me.

dean being the biggest cuddle bug in the morning and not letting pharm go when he’s on the phone. cuteness overload.

dean and pharm cuddling together the morning after in episode fifteen. they were just so silly and light hearted and in love, and it made me happy and soft.

pretty much all of episode 17. like, all of it.

pharm’s break down in korn and in’s condo? fluke natouch deserves every single award for that scene, oh my god. it was amazing.

in thanking pharm before he and korn finally go off to rest.

THAT DEANPHARM REUNION SCENE? NO ONE TOUCH ME.

4 - Most ridiculous plot:

I’m pretty sure that would be whole MorkTee plot in My Boy. Y’all gotta agree with me, despite being cute, that show was a huge mess.

17 - Casting you wish never happened:

Uhm, this will probably make me sound like an asshole, and I absolutely love him, but I wish Drake had never been casted as Mil. He just does not sell the role very well, it feels lacking somehow.

1. Well you didn't specify which drama so I'm just going to pick one out randomly and i choose..... I choose an oldie but a goodie Coffee Prince. I would say my favorite scene would be either the confession scene where he's it says I don't care if you're a man woman or an alien I still like you or when they're on the phone before she leaves for Italy and he sings badly for her I just thought it was like the cutest

7. Drama that I wish I could change the ending to is one that I believe we all can agree on: History 3: make our days count. Like they really could have just handled that a whole lot better and we didn't mean to have a weird time skip jump. I also would have liked to change the ending to the Japanese Drama you are my destiny but for that one I feel like my feelings are heavily influenced by the fact that I saw the Korean version and in that one they had a happy ending unlike the Japanese one which was bittersweet

11. a trope/genre you’re kind of sick of  blushing maiden uke. please make it go away. although to be fair, BL as a whole does seem to be moving away from this trope.

I've never been a fan but I think the moment I snapped was the end of Theory of Love. How does that even fit the character?!!

I do distinguish blushing maiden uke from when the character has a valid reason to be reluctant, either because of personality or circumstances. So Amagi in Takara-kun to Amagi-kun makes sense as shy, he's young and inexperienced and feeling desire for the first time. Or, to take another OffGun example, the plot of Not Me gave a good reason for White to be reluctant at first.

Anyways, sex negativity, weird sexist heterosexual dynamics overlaid onto queer relationships, blah blah blah... We can pretend I wrote a brilliant essay about it all.

20. drama you thought you’d never watch but did (and liked it?) Hmm. Well four months again I never thought I'd be watching BL at all. (I barely knew what it was!) And obviously now I like it. So I've kind of dived in to it all, often starting things without even really knowing what they're about.

I guess maybe Young Royals? I wasn't avoiding it, but I had no plans to watch it until an anon suggested it to me, and I'm really glad I did. I liked it a lot! I expected it to be much more melodramatic and Gossip Girls-esque than it was, and, although dramatic, it's also very nuanced and grounded.