Woot! It is time to chat about tropes and the dramas that got them right! So come join us as we discuss all things trope for Day 8.
Day 8 – Your favorite drama trope and which drama used it the best
Kdrama Jen:
CLKYTTA:
I love a good gender bender and no drama has done it better than Coffee Prince. We all know that Yoon Eun Hye is gorgeous and there is no doubt she’s a woman, except in this drama she is completely believable as a young man! From the way she dressed to the way she walked and talked; there were times when I had to remember she was really a girl. I honestly haven’t seen another Kdrama that has been up to the Coffee Prince standard, but the Taiwanese drama Bromance comes really close.
Kmuse:
I love both gender bender and cohabitation dramas, but I am going to branch off and go for the trope of birth secrets. I know it is such a classic trope, but I just can’t get enough of them. And when it comes to picking my all time favorite birth secret drama it would 100% be King’s Daughter Soo Baek Hyang. Not only do you have all four leads with multiple levels of birth secrets, but some of those secrets totally make the various romances just wrong….so deliciously wrong. Which of course adds the wonderful angst that I love in a drama.
CLSunbae:
I love the forced co-habitation. Love it to the moon and back. It’s used in almost every drama I’ve ever watched and I yet I never mind it. Because let’s be real: unless you spend serious amounts of time with someone, it’s not believable that you’ve fallen in love with them. Love takes time. Lust only takes a second. This is
I love the forced co-habitation. Love it to the moon and back. It’s used in almost every drama I’ve ever watched and I yet I never mind it. Because let’s be real: unless you spend serious amounts of time with someone, it’s not believable that you’ve fallen in love with them. Love takes time. Lust only takes a second. This is one-way Korean dramas are miles ahead of Americans. They get that and so the relationships, built from such wholly implausible circumstances, still feel more real than any American TV romance that was born from a steamy look across a crowded room. One of my favorite examples is SungKyunKwan Scandal. It has the added trope of the gender bender, which I also rarely mind. Watching the boys who know she’s a girl react to sleeping by her — priceless!
Other “forced to live together” classics are Playful Kiss (there’s NO WAY he would’ve fallen for her unless forced to); Another Miss Oh (um… same.); and Kill Me, Heal Me (they used this trope to brilliant, hilarious and heartbreaking effect.)
Be sure to let us know if we picked your favorite trope/drama combo in the comments. Also, check out our other posts for 14 Days of Fangirling HERE.
Til next time,
The Fangirls
I like “Enemies become Friends” (Protect the Boss, 1 % of Anything, Empress Ki, Cheese in the Trap, Fated to Love You) but “Friends become lovers” is probably my favorite.
My Number One Drama that I can watch all the way through anytime is “In Time With You” – a classic Friends Become Lovers drama – but when that trope pops up, I know I’m going to enjoy a show. I think it’s a more common plot point across regions than you would think – you can see it in Reply 1997, Heroine Disqualified, Memoirs of a Teenaged Amnesiac, Mr. Right Wanted, Paradise Kiss and even lakorns like Ton Ruk Rim Rua or Sapai Jao.
I’m a sucker for contract dating/marriage plots. Watching the leads slowly developing feelings that they cannot openly acknowledge is endlessly entertaining.
I like all of these tropes, but my most-loved-when-done-right and most-hated-when-done-wrong trope is amnesia. Just considering Ji Hyun Woo’s work, I loved the way amnesia was used in Queen In Hyun’s Man and hated it in Trot Lovers. Lee Joon Gi has been in three dramas where it was used well–Time Between Dog and Wolf (Lee Joon Gi as both good guy and bad guy), Iljimae, and Arang and the Magistrate.
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