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thedramanotes · 1 year

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What are they doing to Naksu in Part 2??!

When Alchemy of Souls dropped its first trailer back in June, a lot of viewers were very taken with its assassin female lead. We were told that she's the greatest, most feared assassin in the land. The concept of such a person temporarily finding herself trapped in the body of a gentle country girl was hilarious and we couldn't wait for the show to start.

Cut to the end of season 1. While a large section of the drama's viewership were bummed out that Jung So-min would no longer be portraying Naksu, a seemingly larger segment were thrilled to be finally getting the athletic, lethal Naksu they were promised in Go Yoon-jung. After all, it was her introductory scenes that really sold us on the calibre of this character way back in episode 1.

Between stunning visual effects and a perfectly choreographed fight scene, we watched as Go Yoon-jung flew and danced in battle with an army of mages. A few minutes later, a wounded Naksu entered Jung So-min's body and all of us settled in to watch the comedy of errors that would surely ensue. We were satisfied to wait, since we were sure that when Naksu returned to full glory, we would get action scenes worthy of the assassin from the opening scene.

Alas.

We did not. Season 2 (or Part 2) is now underway, and the great assassin is once again in a weak, new body - although this one looks like her old self.

At this point, the audience probably expected that she would be slowly getting back to full power after such a long period of hard lessons and heartbreaks in another woman's body. But, Naksu is now permanently caged in a new identity, with an untrained body, and no memory of her old self.

She is Jin Bo-young now, because her new body was formed from the real Jin Bo-young's flesh (Mudeok), using Naksu's magic. (There is a whole other essay boiling in my stomach about the erasure of another woman's identity with nary a thought, but we won't go into that right now.)

Alchemy of Souls is a 30 episode drama spanning two parts. We had exactly 10 minutes with the original Naksu, portrayed in gallant form by Go Yoon-jung, and then over 19 episodes where Jung So-min won our hearts as the intelligent and witty Mudeok.

Regardless of my affection for the series (and my affection runs ridiculously deep), I can't fathom why the writers are determined to keep Naksu hobbled until the very end. One reason that struck me early on is related to story arcs. An over-powered character quickly becomes dull since they can solve all their problems by using their powers.

Just look at Jang Uk with his ice stone magic. There is no problem he can't solve with brute force, except his own heartbreak.

Giving Naksu her powers and athleticism back would likely make it harder to keep the story going for 10 more episodes in Part 2. But that's a problem of limited imagination.

There is a lot of conflict the writers could plumb between two powerful main leads. They could be put on opposite sides for one. Imagine a scenario where Naksu is brought back in Bo-young's body not by Lady Jin but by the evil Jin Mu. And with her mind wiped clean, he gets to re-create her identity as an assassin - but this time an even more powerful one, with Jin Bo-young's divine magic running through her veins.

And as Jang Uk faces off with this new improved Naksu with no memory of their time together, it falls on him to remind her and bring her back to the side of good.

Meanwhile, Naksu is piecing clues together and regaining her memory by bits, and with each charged interaction with Jang Uk, and every fight where he uses moves she had once taught him against her, she falls back in love with him.

Like, come ON!

What we are now getting is not a continuation of the embattled Naksu's storyline. We are getting a whole new love story with a whole new love interest.

Think for a moment, how the plot for Part 2 would have gone if instead of Naksu coming back to life, the real Jin Bo-young was the one waking up with the assassin's face after being possessed. The beats for the first 4 episode would have been the same, however, the stakes of the game would have been completely different!

If the real Bo-young had met Jang Uk while escaping her over protective mother's clutches and fallen in love, and then found out that the man was still pining over the assassin who had possessed her body for months...

Just. Think of the pathos there for a moment! But to bring Naksu back in Bo-young's identity through Frankenstein magic and then have her go through useless pangs of jealousy towards her old self that will be resolved in a couple of episodes is the biggest waste of opportunity in such a situation. Not to mention what Naksu has been reduced to at this point.

The great assassin of Season 1, episode 1 is now a lost child, desperately waiting to be rescued by a man, unable to fight, unable to use her magic, unable to act in her own interest without help.

She's become inexplicably soft in every way. Visually, she's draped in pale pastels and layers of gauzy materials. She calls herself "unparalleled in beauty but not very intelligent". She seems even less physically adept than when she was in Mudeok's body (which is unsurprising with the heavy skirt she now wears). And she's easily hurt by Jang Uk's coldness, since he's the only one she looks to for affection and guidance.

This is not the Naksu we have come to know. Even at her weakest, the woman would never insult her own intelligence. She would also rely on her own strengths first, not on a man.

Someone pointed out on twitter that it was nice to see Naksu without her traumatic past, but we become the people we are because of our past. By erasing her self-reliant past, the writers have changed the character entirely.

And so we come back to my conclusion that Alchemy of Souls: Light and Shadow is not a continuation of Naksu's character arc, it is the story of Jang Uk finding a second love. And she happens to have Naksu's old soul.

I realise that writing this essay 4 episodes into Part 2 may be pre-emptive. Perhaps, they are planning to give us Naksu with all her memories re-instated next week.

But I don't think that will happen. Because they have laid out the foundations of a new romantic dynamic. They want Jang Uk to be pulled towards Bo-young as she is now, because that indicates how they are fated.

If Naksu is to regain her memories in full, it won't happen until the last 3 episodes. At which point I expect a separation trope to kick in just because it can.

And even then, she can't be what the original Naksu was since by the show's own explanation, she no longer has the original Naksu's body (which was said to be taller and more athletic).

I just want to know what the writers were thinking when they created her at the very start. What was the point of this character?

Was she supposed to be a cynical, lonely assassin learning the truth of her past and finding family and friends after she lost her powers? Or was she supposed to be a beautiful love interest who existed first to help the male lead mature into a powerful hero, and then came back from death to reward him for being a nice powerful hero, who didn't turn into a tyrant even though he could have?

Alright. I'll stop here. Let's talk more once the show is done.

#naksu #jang uk x naksu #alchemy of the soul #alchemy of souls season 2 #alchemy of souls: light and shadow #Go Yoon Jung #Lee Jaewook

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thedramanotes · 1 year

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MORE THAN FRIENDS is a disgrace to the friends-to-lovers trope

I rewatched bits of More Than Friends recently and have been thinking about its main thesis for two straight days.

Initially, I was just floored by how accurately they showed the magnetism of the elusive crush who is hot and cold, kind and hurtful, intense and distant, some times almost painfully close, but never quite caught.

HOWEVER, even more interesting for me was the complex, underlying question that the drama kind of-sort of tried to ask - who is responsible for the feelings felt and evoked?

For the Second Lead, Joon-soo, who asks the Female Lead, Woo-yeon to "test" him out even though he knows she pines for another guy, the drama seems to say that he's responsible for his own feelings.

But for Woo-yeon who pines for the Male Lead, Lee Soo, even after being firmly rejected several times since she first confessed at 18, the drama places the blame squarely on the Male Lead. Why did he behave affectionately towards her if he didn't want her to misunderstand? His clearly worded rejections didn't matter.

And finally, the drama makes the case that Woo-yeon was right in ignoring the Lee Soo's rejection and constantly drunk calling him and making repeated unwanted confessions because Lee Soo only needed some time (10 years) to realize he couldn't get away from her loved her too. So, it was all worth it!

This is one of those story lines that would make us collectively cringe if the genders were reversed and the Male Lead had been ignoring the Female Lead's clear rejections and pleas to just stay friends for years. Because we can see that there's a history of him disrespecting her choice.

See, it's not that I don't empathize with the FL or understand why she would stay hung up on the guy. She absolutely tried to move on. But the drama didn't really let her. They so badly wanted her to get with Lee Soo, that they basically undermined her arc of growing a spine and cutting him off cold to save her own sanity.

And for what? This couple barely understood each other!

It's particularly galling to watch Lee Soo guiltily admitting that he didn't really know much about her even after 10 years, when Woo-yeon hadn't really made any effort to know him.

Some major conversations that give clues into who he was and what informed his perspective only happened after she'd spent a decade blaming him for being unattainable and cursing him for being a witch.

I found both Lee Soo and Woo-yeon quite insufferable. I go a bit more into this and which drama I found did the same trope amazingly well in a video here.

I know a lot of people who couldn't finish More Than Friends, not the least because it goes into seriously stupid territory after episode 12 with the forced separation bs, but if anyone watched the whole thing and loved it, please drop a line and let me know what made it work you!

Thanks for reading my rant! <3

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#More than Friend is a disgrace to the friends-to-lovers trope #lee soo #woo yeon #friends to lovers #bad kdrama relationship #do not act like this towards your friend #friendzone is bullshit

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thedramanotes · 1 year

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@userdramas EVENT 01: FAVOURITE @kdramaladies 1ST YEAR ANNIVERSARY ↳ feat. @hansomang‘s favourite female characters and words of worship

If You Wish Upon Me (2022) Under the Queen’s Umbrella (2022) Extraordinary Attorney Woo (2022) My Liberation Notes (2022) Twenty-Five Twenty-One (2022)

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thedramanotes · 1 year

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...a few minutes later...

MINATO SHOUJI COIN LAUNDRY (2022) vs KIETA HATSUKOI (2021)

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thedramanotes · 1 year

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Naksu in Season 2

There is an unexpected conflict brewing between what the writers want to do with Naksu's arc in Season 2 and what the audience wants to see.

We never got to see Naksu BE Naksu physically in Season 1. So for a lot of viewers the return of Go Yoon-jung heralds a return of the badass assassin.

But so far everything I've seen in promos and this trailer makes me think that the Hong sisters aren't thinking of audience experience here. They're looking to tell the tale of an assassin who fell in love, learned to act on her empathy for other people, and no longer has the hard edge she started the story out with.

And that's brilliant from a story point of view.

But not when done with two different actresses spanned over two seasons.

Writer-nims, you haven't let us LEARN what the original Naksu was like while she was fully in control of all her powers WHILE being clever as hell.

This is increasing my worries that Go Yoon-jung's Naksu will be hobbled from the start.

It looks like they're giving her amnesia too (😳) and if the story is now about how she lost her identity AFTER the first season was about how she lost her body... I'm going to hit something.

We need her back in full form, please.

The 3 scenes in the first episode of Season 1 (while memorable) were NOT enough.

With Jang Uk walking around like an over powered hero, if Naksu is the only one who keeps being asked to play with two hands tied behind her back... this story starts to get frustrating.

Okay those are some of my worst fears for the show. I hope I'm wrong. 🤞👀

#jang uk x naksu #jang uk x mudeok #lee jaw wook #go yoon jung #jung so min #alchemy of souls: light and shadow #alchemy of the soul #alchemy of souls season 2 #naksu

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thedramanotes · 1 year

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#11:39 AM and #how to write my next youtube essay about a drama that is not just me ranting about the frailties of writers with a god complex and actually gives people a nuanced take on a story

do me a solid and just reblog this saying what time it is where you are and what you’re thinking about in the tags.

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thedramanotes · 1 year

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youtube

OMG!!!!

#future of alchemy of souls #alchemy of souls #alchemy of souls: light and shadow #jang uk #naksu #lee jae wook #go yoon jung #jung so min #netflix kdrama #alchemy of souls season 2

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thedramanotes · 1 year

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I swear Hashimoto and Aoki are the sweetest puppies and the most healthy support system for each other.

This is great! That means we’re no longer rivals. So now I can cheer you on. But I can’t. No matter how I see it, me and Ida together would be weird. Liking someone isn’t weird. You have to cherish these feelings. So let’s do our best together, Aoki!

#my love mix up #jdrama bl #wholesome teen bl #hashimoto x aida #aoki x ida

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thedramanotes · 1 year

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The rest of us just say stuff, Aoki goes and finds the perfect props to TRULY express his feelings properly. 🤣

KIETA HATSUKOI (2021)

#my love mix up #the most wholesome teen love #best teen bl drama #aoki x ida

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thedramanotes · 1 year

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The Great Misunderstanding Trope From Ye Olde K-dramas

Hello. So, I wanted to chat some more about this well known trope in Korean dramas from the 2000s and early 2010s.

Or if you ever picked up a romance novel from the eighties or nineties, this was one of the major tropes used there too.

I'm talking about the Great Misunderstanding trope.

Not that it ever went out of fashion exactly, but in the late 2000s, early 2010s, this had quite a resurgence and was used in pretty much every dramatic romance drama.

A drama that really exemplifies how dramatic this trope could get was secret from 2013, which had Ji Sung and Hwang Jung-eum.

There was a LOT of misunderstandings in that drama.

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Now, typical of this trope is that the hero would be drawn towards the heroine despite believing the absolute worst of her. And the heroine would be in a situation where she can't clear up his misunderstanding for one reason or the other. Maybe she doesn't know that he believes the worst of her, or she's trying to protect somebody.

Maybe she's even trying to protect him.

And the hero's behavior gets really egregious, because on the one hand, he is terribly drawn to her almost helplessly. But on the other hand, he believes she is a really horrible human being. He's constantly experiencing inner turmoil because of her, and this crisis of feelings and beliefs makes him lash out at the heroine.

Since he believes the worst of her, his behavior towards her is the worst, and this is a key point of this trope.

The hero is constantly horrible to the heroine at this juncture of their relationship. While the heroine is either helpless to resist or hit back, or unwilling to hurt the hero in return.

Maybe because she's just a genuinely good person and she just has a high tolerance for pain, like Hwang Jung-eum in Secret or she is protecting him, like Han Ga-in in Moon Embracing the Sun, when she comes back into the life of the king and the king believes that she is an imposter sent to like mess with his head because she looks so much like his first love and throws her in the prison for three days where she doesn't even get like a drop of water.

And while she is barely alive, he's just going about his life feeling disturbed that the situation happened, but not really thinking about her condition. And of course then her character goes through several other trials, which he could have put a stop to and would have put a stop to if he knew that she was indeed his first love and not an imposter.

But, of course that would completely skip over this period where the heroine suffers at the hands of his enemies and he just lets it happen. But because of this period of suffering, the hero later on feels abject remorse towards the heroine. He is utterly guilt ridden because she had to suffer so much because of him.

And added to that aspect is the fact that she never hit back at him. She was never horrible to him in return. This heroine is usually extremely Gandhian in her approach to the hero, turning the other cheek and all that. She is virtue herself.

And once the hero realizes that about the heroine and he grovels at her feet and the she gets a moment to be like, "I don't hold anything against you, but I may need two years abroad to rethink life and to come back more deserving of you."

That's a whole other trope, but the point is that she gets a moment to sort of get the upper hand in the relationship. Now, this is an interesting aspect of this trope, this upper hand. The relationship dynamic between the hero and the heroine is such that the hero usually occupies a higher position in society.

He is richer, more powerful, maybe he's a celebrity. Either ways. He's in a different, entirely different strata than the heroine. And the heroine is really weak. Maybe she has been emotionally devastated by something that has happened in her life. She's definitely financially in a weaker position and probably also socially from a different class.

This huge class gap is one of the major reasons that this trope exists, and we'll come back to that in a second. The heroine starts the journey in this really weak position, but at the end of the story, the heroine is barely the hero's equal, and the way she becomes his "equal" is by getting the moral upper hand.

And the upper hand doesn't really put her in a higher position than him. It's not like for the rest of their life, they're going to have arguments and she'll bring up what he had done before and he'll be like, yes, you win every argument ever. No, that's not what the story is going for.

The story is making very sure we understand that the gap between them at the start of the story is so huge that the hero finally understanding the heroine's true virtues and how good she is, and that she had never done those awful things he believed of her and that she had suffered in silence while he tortured her - all of those things and the hero's guilt barely brings the hero up to be kind of his equal, at least equal enough that now they can have a relationship.

The heroine comes up in the world, hero doesn't go down at all. He loses only one thing, and that is the right to look down on the heroine, and that is an important aspect of the Great misunderstanding because as you might have noticed till now, I have been specifically telling you about how the hero is the one doing the misunderstanding, the heroine is the one being misunderstood. This particular trope usually flows in this fixed direction. The genders are pretty much fixed.

Occasionally they try to flip it, but the dynamic immediately becomes weaker and the story isn't as interesting.

I'm sure the dramas of decades before this period also had the great misunderstanding used liberally, but it was used to an excessive amount during that period, the late 2000s, early 2010s.

And the reason for that was that the class difference was still quite huge. And women still had fewer opportunities. They were coming up, but they were not quite there yet. And you have to understand, Korean dramas were primarily written for middle aged women who were housewives and/or working. And for most of them, their economic strata was kind of fixed.

There wasn't really a lot of opportunity to come up in the world in the decade after that. Even though the real world wealth gap hasn't exactly decreased, but you must have noticed that dramas no longer tell the stories of really poor women and really rich men. They tell the stories of really rich men and women who are middle to upper class, but don't feel inferior to these rich men.

Their upbringings, even though there is definitely a difference in wealth, no longer makes the two feel like they are from different worlds in terms of the education they got, the exposure they have in the world.

So, from the heroine's perspective, the gap between the two of them doesn't seem so impossible to bridge anymore these days, but back then it was HUGE. The heroine wouldn't look at the hero and think, hey, that's a guy I want to date. The hero would look at the hero and be like, I am drawn to her, but I cannot date her.

We saw examples of this in, let's say in Secret Garden where Hyun Bin was drawn to Ha Ji-won's character. He pursued her, but not for a relationship. He just pursued her heedlessly, but then anytime she reciprocated, he would be the one to point out how much of a gap there is between the two of them and how they could never be a permanent thing.

He was willing to offer her the position of his mistress, but not his girlfriend.

Another Hyun Bin drama is, my name is Kim Sam-soon, where you also had elements of the great misunderstanding, but it was essentially that class divide that made Hyun Bin's character again look down on Kim Sun-ah. Who was poor, clumsy, supposedly overweight and definitely from a different world class-wise than Hyun Bin's character.

So the class divide really is ultimately the reason why the great misunderstanding trope existed.

But you didn't always need the great misunderstanding trope to exist in a story to talk about class. Like I just said my name is Kim Sam-soon and Secret Garden both did that really well.They actually faced the question of class divide and how two people from two different strata would overcome that.

Those stories were directly challenging the idea of the class divide.

The stories that employed the great misunderstanding didn't really want to directly talk about the class divide. They wanted to solve that problem, the problem of the woman being from a weaker section of society, and also just having like a weaker position within the relationship with the hero without really underlining what the problem was.

So why was the trope so popular at the time? Because the class divide existed in reality and the drama watching audiences wanted more stories about it. And this was a morality play where the virtuous heroine has to go through this traumatic trial by fire to prove herself.

But once she has proven herself, the hero can never doubt her again.

The hero would now forever be so grateful that she has forgiven him for his big mistake in not knowing how wonderful she is, that he will never abuse her, he will never mistrust her, he will never doubt her.

Once their love is affirmed in this way, she emerges, virtuous, victorious, and having secured the love of this man.

And if you haven't figured it out yet, the great misunderstanding trope ultimately is not about the hero being a jerk to the heroine. It's about the heroine going through a hero's journey. To finally land up in a place where she is powerful enough to be the hero's equal morally. This is a female empowerment fantasy.

This was all we wanted. We wanted the hero to acknowledge the heroine's goodness and never doubt her. And of course, we as the audience absolutely love this. We loved that the heroine was sort of the personification of goodness. She may be clumsy, she may be silly at times. She may make poor decisions. She may make us extremely frustrated because she refuses to tell the hero the truth, whatever the truth may be.

But ultimately, we absolutely love the fact that the hero, once he figured out how wrong he was, how terribly he had treated her, and how much he owes her, once that moment struck, that's when the real payoff would happen. And of course then we had dramas like Secret where they would use the great misunderstanding to create some of the steamiest moments between the hero and the heroine.

Seriously, Ji Sung and Hwang Jung-eum had the most messed up dynamic in that story, and yet it's like seared in my brain. That was crack.

Now, something else to keep in mind is that the great misunderstanding has been used in modern day romances quite liberally as well. But this - what is used these days - is the great misunderstanding lite.

Like, you have Our Beloved Summer where the hero doesn't actually know why the heroine had broken up with him and sort of misunderstands her intentions, and then years later finally figures out why she was forced to break up with him at that point.

Or you have Love Is For suckers, where the heroine realizes that the hero has feelings for her, but she's still feeling conflicted. And she also knows that another woman deeply loves the hero and she doesn't want to come between them. So, she lets the hero misunderstand her, which creates a chasm between the two of them.

So you do have these instances of misunderstanding. It's not that dramatic because there really is no great payoff. There is no groveling hero. There is no guilt. There is no internal misery. There is no irresistible attraction that is constantly pulling the hero and hero in together. And they are just dying inside because they can't be together.

It's not that dramatic anymore. It's simpler.

Which on the one hand is a good thing. It's a good thing, but it also makes for less memorable stories.

I was trying really hard to think of more instances where the misunderstanding lite trope has been used in dramas recently, and I know there have been tons.

I just don't remember because, it was not that interesting. I just think, if you have to use that trope, it's maybe worth it to go full fledged, like modernize it, make the woman less of a dish rag or flip genders, but really commit to the trope. Don't just use it as this one throwaway thing that happens for two episodes.

That is a waste of a trope that could genuinely create a lot of heat and trauma, but also, I'm sure in the hands of good writers create moments where the hero and heroine could really talk about their differences - whether it's moral, ethical, political, religious, economic, or a clash of egos - actually get into the depths of why the two of them felt so torn asunder despite being attracted to each other.

I am sure we can modernize it and still keep the drama aspect of it.

It doesn't have to be this morality tale that requires the woman to be a saint. So that she could just barely be equal to the spoiled rich hero.

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This essay was originally published as a video on The Drama Note YouTube Channel.

#misunderstanding trope #old kdramas #kdrama scenes #kdrama tropes #secret garden #ji sung #secret 2013 #hwang jung-eum #hyun bin #kim sun ah #my lovely sam soon #the moon embracing the sun #kim soo hyun #han ga in #kdrama nostalgia #our beloved summer #hero misunderstands the heroine

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