Rants and Weekly Raves (RAWR) #383

Anne: I am SO looking forward to having a 4 day weekend. What am I looking forward to the most? Sleep! Next week, I would like to do a review of the year's dramas that made an impression. Let's see how much work I can get out of the way so I can concentrate on trying to remember what I have watched in the last 12 months. With my memory issues, it's probably a good thing that I have history on all the apps. It hasn't happened with dramas yet, but I have been known to re-read novels twice that I didn't remember. The worse one was when I was about 250pages in; I read a particular scene and was hit by deja vu. I found the same book buried on one of my book shelves. 

Speaking of books. I did not realize that there are actual "published" English translations of some of my favorite BL novels (okay they are all from a single author). 

The only unfortunate thing is that all 3 are split into 3 books. Heaven Official's Blessing (--part of me wished that they could have made heaven into an adverb--) is, by far, the longest novel of the 3. I have no idea how they extended the other two into 3 books. I bought it mostly because the covers look so pretty. Does anyone else think that this can be a start of a stream of properly translated BL novels into English? Or rather, I'll take any novels that were turned into dramas. (I read the 3310 novel, but the drama was way better! And so was Ashes of Love.) I'm one of those people who love to read the original work, mostly to see what the author originally intended versus how the script writer/director interpreted on screen.

The King's Affection

This was the only drama I watched this week, and I cannot be happier at the ending. 

For a moment there...it was close. In the end, when she knew she could not fight against the secret army her grandfather built to overthrow the throne to put his new favorite potential puppet, Won San, on the throne, she surrendered. And then proceed to agree to her grandfather's terms while sitting down for tea. Do you remember that scene in Princess' Bride where the "genius" was competing with the Dread Pirate Roberts to guess which cup held the poison? It was EXACTLY like that.

I have never been so happy to see someone die miserably. Her grandfather would have never thought that she would poison herself too in order to kill him. 

And it's not just a happy ending for our main CP. The entire supporting cast was in on the celebration.

Her cousin who was secretly in loved with her since she was 10, Hyun (the one walking out front), became the king. I'm still not that clear on why she bothered to bring back her half brother to be her successor. Even from the very beginning, as the audience, I kind of figured that the eventual king would be Hyun. Because one, he was an adult and despite not being great at martial arts, he is still stronger than a child. Two, he was moral and not power hungry like his older brother. And third, his dad was the crown prince before Yeon Seon's father took the throne. So what else could the writers do to make way for Hyun? They had to kill off her half brother. That was quite brutal.

Her body guard (Ga On), who was there for revenge on the king because of his father's death, eventually learned who really framed his dad (I figured that I don't need to spell it out for our intelligent readers who are VERY familiar with Korean drama formulas) because a royal guard for the current king. And there is a little bit of a romance developing between Ga On and the younger sister of the Ji Woon's pharmacy pals. 

I enjoyed the story a lot. I liked the fact that they didn't just have her "disappear" after her cross-dressing was revealed. She faced the consequences. What I still CANNOT get over is how she survived the poisoning. Did anyone catch if Ji Woon was developing an antidote at the same time he was searching for the poisonous plant? There was NO explanation of how she survived. But I guess I shouldn't dwell too much on it. Happy Ending!

Sword Snow Stride

I just want to do a quick comment on this new show. It seemed like a very long growing up story. The plot summary didn't actually sound that exciting, and the first 40 minutes was just so so. The first feel of this drama is actually kind of like My Heroic Husband and Joy of Life. If anyone has gotten pass the first episode, please let us know if it is worth the watch.

And that's it for this week. For next week, I would like everyone to think about the best and worst dramas of the year to keep the tradition going. We will discuss next week.