Mr Queen, and Crash Landing on You
May. 6th, 2025 03:44 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
nineveh_ukI am completely failing to write up a short fic that is a lot of fun in concept, but like pulling teeth to write. Character voices are not cooperating. Possibly if I ignore it for a bit, I can wrench a mini version out of it. In the meantime, I've been meaning for absolutely ages to mention some TV series, so I'll do that instead.
Mr Queen
In which a modern chef and a bit of a playboy finds himself bodyswapped with a depressed nineteenth-century Joseon era queen. At its heart is a terrific performance by lead actress Shin Hye-sun as our deeply confused protagonist, but the whole thing is just great fun. Can Jang Bong-hwan/Queen Cheorin navigate the pit-of-vipers court, avoid having sex with the king, and get back to his own time, hopefully having sex with his hot maid first? He may not know too much history, but he does have one useful skill: he can cook.
On a cultural ignorance note, this would have been a lot less confusing as my first Korean drama had I been aware that nineteenth-century Joseon attitudes to cousin marriage were not not those of nineteenth-century British literature. It turns out my "Ah, so the king can divorce his wife and she can marry her hot cousin and they can all end up happily" has a degree of wrongness as an interpretation up there with "Aslan is really Satan."
Crash Landing on You
Wealthy South Korean businesswoman Yoon Se-ri gets blown off-course while paragliding and lands in North Korea in a Netflix success. Technically, the North Korean section of the MMZ, but she doesn't realise this until too late, and now she is stuck. Rescued by handsome, highly educated, sensitive pianist North Korean* army captain Ri Jeong-hyeok, can he and his battalion hide her until they can return her to South Korea, or will they be betrayed? Whether they will fall in love is, obviously, not in question. It's not all romance or North Korean army scandals, there's an extensive plot around her family's business, which she was going to take over before she went missing, and a family drama with various terrible relations.
There's so much to like about this drama. It has engaging characters, good acting, and a great plot concept. The visual design of the North Korean settings is fantastic, and it does not, in any way, make one think that it would be good to live in North Korea, despite the warmth with which some of the characters are portrayed. Unfortunately, it has sixteen episodes each about 70 minutes long, and once we got into the second half they felt longer. It felt as if approximately 50 minutes of plot has to be wrapped in an additional 40 minutes of romantic glurge, sometimes with graphics of pastel hearts and rainbows literally decorating the screen. Obviously a lot of people felt differently, but I don't think South Korean romantic TV drama pacing and I don't quite gel.
Also, I feel very aggrieved on behalf of the secondary romance couple. They deserved better, damn it!
*No, I wasn't entirely convinced by this, either.
Mr Queen
In which a modern chef and a bit of a playboy finds himself bodyswapped with a depressed nineteenth-century Joseon era queen. At its heart is a terrific performance by lead actress Shin Hye-sun as our deeply confused protagonist, but the whole thing is just great fun. Can Jang Bong-hwan/Queen Cheorin navigate the pit-of-vipers court, avoid having sex with the king, and get back to his own time, hopefully having sex with his hot maid first? He may not know too much history, but he does have one useful skill: he can cook.
On a cultural ignorance note, this would have been a lot less confusing as my first Korean drama had I been aware that nineteenth-century Joseon attitudes to cousin marriage were not not those of nineteenth-century British literature. It turns out my "Ah, so the king can divorce his wife and she can marry her hot cousin and they can all end up happily" has a degree of wrongness as an interpretation up there with "Aslan is really Satan."
Crash Landing on You
Wealthy South Korean businesswoman Yoon Se-ri gets blown off-course while paragliding and lands in North Korea in a Netflix success. Technically, the North Korean section of the MMZ, but she doesn't realise this until too late, and now she is stuck. Rescued by handsome, highly educated, sensitive pianist North Korean* army captain Ri Jeong-hyeok, can he and his battalion hide her until they can return her to South Korea, or will they be betrayed? Whether they will fall in love is, obviously, not in question. It's not all romance or North Korean army scandals, there's an extensive plot around her family's business, which she was going to take over before she went missing, and a family drama with various terrible relations.
There's so much to like about this drama. It has engaging characters, good acting, and a great plot concept. The visual design of the North Korean settings is fantastic, and it does not, in any way, make one think that it would be good to live in North Korea, despite the warmth with which some of the characters are portrayed. Unfortunately, it has sixteen episodes each about 70 minutes long, and once we got into the second half they felt longer. It felt as if approximately 50 minutes of plot has to be wrapped in an additional 40 minutes of romantic glurge, sometimes with graphics of pastel hearts and rainbows literally decorating the screen. Obviously a lot of people felt differently, but I don't think South Korean romantic TV drama pacing and I don't quite gel.
Also, I feel very aggrieved on behalf of the secondary romance couple. They deserved better, damn it!
*No, I wasn't entirely convinced by this, either.
Crash Landing
Date: 2025-05-06 04:44 pm (UTC)Which is the secondary couple you're thinking of? His ex-fiance and the person she actually loves? Female lead's not very bright younger brother (not the slimy one) and his doting but also not very bright wife? The North Korean couple in which he is the reluctant spy and she's the loving wife and mom?
I liked Mr. Queen. Having now watched very many Kdramas including all variations of time and gender shift, what I really want to know is why a body of water is often the conveyance for the shifts. Mr. Q is by no means the only one.
Re: Crash Landing
Date: 2025-05-06 05:24 pm (UTC)That's interesting about the role of water in shifts - more Korean cultural context I lack. I think it is probably time I watched another Kdrama soon, I've not seen very many.
time travel via water
Date: 2025-05-06 06:38 pm (UTC)https://youtu.be/JvjWy4saR08?feature=shared
Splish splash love
https://youtu.be/418dtIM6iLU?feature=shared
Rooftop prince
https://youtu.be/mKVTR5RyIgU?feature=shared
another one
Date: 2025-05-06 06:43 pm (UTC)https://youtu.be/6Igm5g1lhyc?feature=shared
Re: another one
Date: 2025-05-07 03:48 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2025-05-06 08:07 pm (UTC)Mr Queen is an amazing show. I've watched it several times now and don't think I'll ever lose my appreciation for it (I was never tempted to ship Queen/Hot Cousin, though - I find that Korean sexual dimorphism really off-putting. I get used to all the tiny little women running around, and then wham! there's a scene where two massive males duel and all I can think of is bull elephant seals. But I hadn't realised Queen/Hot Cousin wasn't merely Not Romantic because of his possessiveness but actually Rong. Possibly 19th century British lit is the outlier here?)
I have the beginnings of a short fic somewhere on my laptop in which Cheoljong figures out that Bong-hwan really was a man from the future and has presumably now gone back there, and so pulls the funny face in his portrait in the hope that one day in the future Bong-hwan will see it and know that Cheoljong believed him in the end. But it wasn't very good so I never finished it.
(no subject)
Date: 2025-05-07 04:01 pm (UTC)Britain started getting very flexible on cousin marriage early - essentially by Liz I the former Catholic restrictions on marriage on kindred and affinity are dumped (formalised by Matthew Parker, I did a uni project on it), and first cousins were fair game. I don't know when other places in Europe liberalised, though all did, and some other cultures are likewise open to it (common in parts of the middle east and south Asia). Korea, OTOH, is at the other end. Not only are cousin marriages banned up to third cousins, but prior to 1997, marriage was prohibited between people with the same clan name and region, even if any blood relationship was very distant. So Kim Byeong-in very much should not be thinking about his cousin Kim So-yong. I'd love to know more, but unhelpfully have not yet seen a detailed fandom piece on it (possibly I should actually look).
That is an excellent fic idea, but sometimes they don't work out. My current struggle is with possibly having a concept rather than a plot, and that I find it far harder to get a voice right from tv than a novel, and even more so from tv not in English.
Hyun Bin
Date: 2025-05-07 08:29 pm (UTC)https://youtu.be/sjwzViH0fMA?feature=shared
The two of them were married in 2022 and have a toddler son.
(no subject)
Date: 2025-05-06 09:47 pm (UTC)*grumbles* I hate this trend of overlong episodes! I still remember a time when kdramas were 1 hour max, or even a zippy 45 min per episode, and the pacing was so much less bloated and more enjoyable! I blame the Answer Me/Reply series for starting the trend. Crash Landing on You is definitely on my watch list, though it looks like I'll have to use the fast forward button through some parts given what you said.
(no subject)
Date: 2025-05-07 04:05 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2025-05-09 01:26 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2025-05-10 05:35 pm (UTC)