More Dramas That I Have Somehow Finished
Dec. 24th, 2025 02:50 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kiki_engA follow-up to this post.
I am still failing out of dramas continually or setting them down and forgetting to come back to them forever. (I am watching two right now that are both doing the "stupid character is manipulated into stirring shit up for the leads" and I can't with them. Like, everything else is fine, but that fucking trope. I'm like 4 episodes away from finishing another series and they've introduced a jealousy plot - we're like 90% of the way through? Jealousy plots are supposed to be short second plot arcs. Whyyyy. I have not watched episodes of those series in months and have started like 13 other shows and finished two of them in the meantime.) Finishing shows continues to feel like an accomplishment, so, a record:
Modern
Queenmaker (2023, Korea | 11 Episodes)
Female-lead political drama. Hwang Do-hee - an image strategist - seeks vengeance/justice on her former employers and aligns herself with Oh Kyung-seok - a brash idealist - arguing her way into Kyung-seok's Seoul mayoral campaign. Their chemistry is great; it's pretty femslashy. But, yeah: twisty election campaign, corruption, idealism. Do-hee is scheming and angry and has done terrible things and Oh Kyung-seok wants to change the world for the better, for the people. It's a really nice contrast, and you get like, Do-hee trying to shape Kyung-seok into a winner, with like clothing and body language and everything else and Do-hee taking some of it and fighting against some of it. ...and then there's like, blackmailing and the weight of all that corruption swirling around them.
Crash Course in Romance (2023, Korea | 16 Episodes)
I love Haeng-soon. She looks like a real adult woman and I love her. She was on a national sports team but had to drop out to take care of her family, raising her niece and looking after her brother, who is on the spectrum. Her niece is a teenager now and focused on studying, which brings Haeng-soon into contact with competitive study groups and the mothers and teachers and teaching teams for whom that is their world. Haeng-soon and the male lead start off on a bit of an adversarial foot and then learn to like each other and recognise each other's humanity and goodness. The relationship evolution is great. They are both super sweet as people but not so much to each other in the beginning, which is awesome. ...and one of the B-plots is a serial killer plot! (I know this is, like, a thing now, but I am not yet tired of a mild dose of murder in my romcom.) But yeah, the male lead has some CEO-type neuroses and I am a big fan of the bit where he is buying food from her banchan shop because it is the only food he will eat in quantity and attempting to hide it. There's a kind of nice gremlin in the attic aspect to it and it's a shockingly stalking-free impulse?
The School Nurse Files (2020, Korea | 6 Episodes)
It's like they stopped filming mid-production and then just stitched the show together from what they had. Like, there are so many missing scenes in this? But it's this really wonderful, strange, kind of ghostbusting set from the perspective of two adult high school employees, surrounded by children? Some of the spirit jellies are adorable and there's this whimsy to it that's a lot of fun. I really liked the dynamic between the two leads and the outsider WTF that In-pyo brings to Yu-mi's kind of unhinged appointed guardian vibe. A kind of chaotic comedy series with dashes of fear and seriousness to it. (I think I remember jelly-induced suicidal behaviours.)
Romance is a Bonus Book (2019, Korea | 16 Episodes)
\o/ This series combines my two great loves: batshit decision-making and scenarios, and hard-earned and logical character growth. Recently divorced housewife, broke and homeless, hides her troubles from as many people as possible. At one point she takes a job that her friend is hiring for and then she is, like, hiding that she's working for him. There's a point where she's squatting at her place of (secret) employment. Extensive hijinks, and then, like, skills development and standing up for herself and fighting to find her place in the world. There's also the thing where her friend has a long-standing crush on her and just- I like a little bit of pining alongside a relationship that isn't ready to develop yet. There's a kind of delicious tension/yearning there. They have other friends and relationships! Coworkers have rich interior lives and are people. There is drama outside of the romances. I enjoyed this.
Ready, Set, Love (2023, Thailand | 6 Episodes)
Sometimes my ambition is to watch a really fucked up dystopia that's filmed as a romcom. That is this show. In a world where the population of men has tanked, the answer to this has been putting them into tiny little golden prison communities and making women compete for their hands and that lifestyle in a nationally-televised physical gameshow meets dating show? Together some subset of people will try to take on the system and maybe find love on the way? At some point there's sneaking around and breaking into things. There's a lot of show-filming and competitions also. Like, the dating show has an elimination aspect and lots of different games? (It's been a bit and my memory is a little fuzzy.)
Everyone Loves Me (2024, China | 24 Episodes)
I barely remember this, but: I have a real weakness for when they include gameplay in television? And there's also secret identities and the thing where at some point he realises who she is and that he's fucked up, having rejected her in-person confession because of his crush on her gaming persona; it's delicious. I think they're in school but preparing to graduate and start their careers and they're lion dance partners for some mandatory and plot-convenient school elective requirement? There's probably an emphasis on wanting to release a thoroughly Chinese gaming product and needing to stick to their guns to do that? I think there are some, like, redemptive/glorious public victory scenes/speeches? (I think the age is upon me; this came out last year, I have no fucking excuse for just how subpar my recall of this is.)
I'll Go to You When the Weather is Nice (2020, Korea | 16 Episodes)
Ah! This is sort of like a Hallmark movie? In that she goes back to her hometown, yadda. But we get to see people be traumatised and awkward around each other and slowly, slowly grow. I really loved all of the awkwardness and how, like, gloriously cringe Eun Soep's sister is. There's a lot of watching snow fall from an improbable book store and wandering around in the dark trying to find people on mountains. The friend group dynamics feel pretty realistic, like you're in a small town so you're still hanging out with your high school buddies but the distance of adulthood has set in and you don't see each other as much any more and the relationships have all evolved slightly as you've grown as people? I feel like I'm not describing this properly but I really liked, like, restaurant scenes with Eun Soep's friends and some of their texting. Hae Won's aunt is compelling and frustrating. There are all of these dark things hiding away in people's pasts, casting shadows on their present (there's a murder, suicide ideation, depression and self neglect, child abandonment, domestic violence...) and a really supportive book club. Like, there's this underlying message on the importance of community and familial bonds, including family that isn't romantic or genetic. I put off watching this for a while and then timed it so that my watch would line up with the weather here and it was really great.
Nothing But You (2023, China | 38 Episodes)
Oh man, so the sports sport extensively, but I have the impression that if you are a tennis or badminton person you are going to have the rage. It's a noona romance, which I tend to enjoy because the power dynamics are a bit more level. There are a couple pieces of this, though, where I am absolutely furious with You An because she's out there smearing her past trauma all over Sang Chuan and he's more vulnerable to that shit because of his youth and inexperience. But! They both go through career changes! (I like a career change/life reorganisation in media.) They work towards common goals and support each other! Because this is an absolute noona fantasy he is more into domestic arts than she is. They have relationships outside of each other. Sang Chuan's father - holy shit - there is this whole arc and they are just- family and it is beautiful. The secondary romance is reasonably interesting! (I have been watching a lot of historical cdramas and wanting to set the maid/lieutenant secondary romance trope on fire lately.) They also go through growth and work together. People leave shitty relationships. It's nice. It's so nice. There's so much character growth and relationship development happening everywhere. There are training montages. I'd just watched Leo Wu in Love Like the Galaxy before this and it was jarring and delightful to see him emote all over the place and have all of this movement and a wide range of facial expressions.
Summit of Our Youth (2025, China | 23 Episodes)
This fucking show. Character development. Study montages. Enemies to friends to lovers. Time rewind. The implications. So many implications. And then fucking retconning the entire premise of the show and slapping a, like, go romance/maybe dream sharing is real on it. WTAF. I am so angry about this. They did the fucking pain on pinching means this is reality thing and she spent ten years working on being a better person and ruthlessly cutting bad shit out of her life and making better choices and then they have her fucking wake up from a coma with almost zero follow up. We get shared trauma handholding and like zero updates on other characters. I just- how dare they. How fucking dare they. They retconned their entire fucking plot. Like, I'm not even angry about the climax with all of it's OOC villainy. (Like, I'm fine-ish with the ex-boyfriend going off the rails, but her two other friends. Si Qi would never.) This is to say that you can watch this show, but you probably want to stop the last episode somewhere between 32:50 and 33:02 and just walk away and not watch them shit on everything in the last ten minutes. (What the fuck.)
The Yakuza Boss' Beloved (2025, Japan | 8 Episodes)
I watched this show when I was tired of every other show I was watching, basically, and it was a really lovely frothy change of pace. There aren't that may episodes. The episodes are short. All of the villains are over the top cartoon villains. The leads are cute. The tropes trope tropily. The male lead is the heir apparent of a yakuza boss and also the head of a medium-sized office. The female lead works in that office and has a few shit people in her life. They fall in love. Tropes. (Warning for copaganda and child abuse.)
Historical
The Glory (2025, China | 30 Episodes)
I love them. Han Yan arrives for her vengeance arc and Yun Xi looks at her and sees all of her vengeance machinations and plots and is like: yes, this is the ideal woman. He is also a twisty fuck and doesn't really take her into his confidence and sometimes works against or at cross-purposes to her but, like, esteems and values her to the extent that he will enable her working at cross-purposes to him because he, like, just really respects her hustle and thinks she deserves a chance. *hands* It is ridiculous. She tries to kill him multiple times and he's like, here's your murder weapon hairpen that I am returning to you as a token of my affection. ...and the hairpen was made for her by her one true lady love assassin and fellow outcast who she has amazing chemistry with. These events are not in chronological order. I love Chai Jing and Han Yan and Yun Xi and their relationships and also their familial relationships and I love them. Would watch again.
The Legend of Zhuohua (2023 , China | 40 Episodes)
So one of my favorite tropes is the completely insincere love confession designed to cover up your tracks by both flustering and catering to the vanity of a man who has no interest in you. I love it. It's great. When it's also followed up by them accidentally falling in love it's hysterical. This has that. Zhou Hua runs away from home to become a high-ranked government official. Liu Yan is a general and high-ranking royal and they end up working together, and, yeah, falling in love and hiding their romance to protect Zhou Hua's career, since she wouldn't be allowed to serve in the government if she married. There are shenanigans. There are plots. There are secrets. When she first meets him she thinks he's a prostitute that's on the verge of aging out of his career. I am *chin-handsing* just thinking about it.
Flourished Peony (2025, China | 32 Episodes)
There's a sequel to this that's out right now (In the Name of Blossom) that I am currently incapable of watching, because while it is absolutely essential to the wrapping up of the plot of this series, I enjoyed this series too much and must therefore sit with it. Chang Yang is loudly living it up as an openly corrupt official and playboy while being secretly smart and planning something possibly noble. Wei Fang is married to a turd and newly desperate to escape when their paths cross. He impersonates a god when they meet and then later she stabs herself so that she can blame it on him and blackmail him into helping her and when he points out that the angle of her wound is wrong, she goes, "thanks" and re-stabs herself correctly, and thus begins a beautiful friendship. And I do genuinely mean that. Wei Fang is fleeing and trying to build a new life for herself and he's spider-ing it up, building some kind of web for political purposes, and they become allies and then friends and relax around each other in a way that they don't quite do with other people and it's great. Her schtick is business woman attempting to rescue the rest of humanity and she's brave and clever. There's a lot of misogyny and domestic violence in this and stalking and scheming and I can't remember if someone is murdered or kills themselves in this. Both, probably: murder and suicide are kind of common in historical cdramas. There's lots of friendship in this. It's great.
I am still failing out of dramas continually or setting them down and forgetting to come back to them forever. (I am watching two right now that are both doing the "stupid character is manipulated into stirring shit up for the leads" and I can't with them. Like, everything else is fine, but that fucking trope. I'm like 4 episodes away from finishing another series and they've introduced a jealousy plot - we're like 90% of the way through? Jealousy plots are supposed to be short second plot arcs. Whyyyy. I have not watched episodes of those series in months and have started like 13 other shows and finished two of them in the meantime.) Finishing shows continues to feel like an accomplishment, so, a record:
Modern
Queenmaker (2023, Korea | 11 Episodes)
Female-lead political drama. Hwang Do-hee - an image strategist - seeks vengeance/justice on her former employers and aligns herself with Oh Kyung-seok - a brash idealist - arguing her way into Kyung-seok's Seoul mayoral campaign. Their chemistry is great; it's pretty femslashy. But, yeah: twisty election campaign, corruption, idealism. Do-hee is scheming and angry and has done terrible things and Oh Kyung-seok wants to change the world for the better, for the people. It's a really nice contrast, and you get like, Do-hee trying to shape Kyung-seok into a winner, with like clothing and body language and everything else and Do-hee taking some of it and fighting against some of it. ...and then there's like, blackmailing and the weight of all that corruption swirling around them.
Crash Course in Romance (2023, Korea | 16 Episodes)
I love Haeng-soon. She looks like a real adult woman and I love her. She was on a national sports team but had to drop out to take care of her family, raising her niece and looking after her brother, who is on the spectrum. Her niece is a teenager now and focused on studying, which brings Haeng-soon into contact with competitive study groups and the mothers and teachers and teaching teams for whom that is their world. Haeng-soon and the male lead start off on a bit of an adversarial foot and then learn to like each other and recognise each other's humanity and goodness. The relationship evolution is great. They are both super sweet as people but not so much to each other in the beginning, which is awesome. ...and one of the B-plots is a serial killer plot! (I know this is, like, a thing now, but I am not yet tired of a mild dose of murder in my romcom.) But yeah, the male lead has some CEO-type neuroses and I am a big fan of the bit where he is buying food from her banchan shop because it is the only food he will eat in quantity and attempting to hide it. There's a kind of nice gremlin in the attic aspect to it and it's a shockingly stalking-free impulse?
The School Nurse Files (2020, Korea | 6 Episodes)
It's like they stopped filming mid-production and then just stitched the show together from what they had. Like, there are so many missing scenes in this? But it's this really wonderful, strange, kind of ghostbusting set from the perspective of two adult high school employees, surrounded by children? Some of the spirit jellies are adorable and there's this whimsy to it that's a lot of fun. I really liked the dynamic between the two leads and the outsider WTF that In-pyo brings to Yu-mi's kind of unhinged appointed guardian vibe. A kind of chaotic comedy series with dashes of fear and seriousness to it. (I think I remember jelly-induced suicidal behaviours.)
Romance is a Bonus Book (2019, Korea | 16 Episodes)
\o/ This series combines my two great loves: batshit decision-making and scenarios, and hard-earned and logical character growth. Recently divorced housewife, broke and homeless, hides her troubles from as many people as possible. At one point she takes a job that her friend is hiring for and then she is, like, hiding that she's working for him. There's a point where she's squatting at her place of (secret) employment. Extensive hijinks, and then, like, skills development and standing up for herself and fighting to find her place in the world. There's also the thing where her friend has a long-standing crush on her and just- I like a little bit of pining alongside a relationship that isn't ready to develop yet. There's a kind of delicious tension/yearning there. They have other friends and relationships! Coworkers have rich interior lives and are people. There is drama outside of the romances. I enjoyed this.
Ready, Set, Love (2023, Thailand | 6 Episodes)
Sometimes my ambition is to watch a really fucked up dystopia that's filmed as a romcom. That is this show. In a world where the population of men has tanked, the answer to this has been putting them into tiny little golden prison communities and making women compete for their hands and that lifestyle in a nationally-televised physical gameshow meets dating show? Together some subset of people will try to take on the system and maybe find love on the way? At some point there's sneaking around and breaking into things. There's a lot of show-filming and competitions also. Like, the dating show has an elimination aspect and lots of different games? (It's been a bit and my memory is a little fuzzy.)
Everyone Loves Me (2024, China | 24 Episodes)
I barely remember this, but: I have a real weakness for when they include gameplay in television? And there's also secret identities and the thing where at some point he realises who she is and that he's fucked up, having rejected her in-person confession because of his crush on her gaming persona; it's delicious. I think they're in school but preparing to graduate and start their careers and they're lion dance partners for some mandatory and plot-convenient school elective requirement? There's probably an emphasis on wanting to release a thoroughly Chinese gaming product and needing to stick to their guns to do that? I think there are some, like, redemptive/glorious public victory scenes/speeches? (I think the age is upon me; this came out last year, I have no fucking excuse for just how subpar my recall of this is.)
I'll Go to You When the Weather is Nice (2020, Korea | 16 Episodes)
Ah! This is sort of like a Hallmark movie? In that she goes back to her hometown, yadda. But we get to see people be traumatised and awkward around each other and slowly, slowly grow. I really loved all of the awkwardness and how, like, gloriously cringe Eun Soep's sister is. There's a lot of watching snow fall from an improbable book store and wandering around in the dark trying to find people on mountains. The friend group dynamics feel pretty realistic, like you're in a small town so you're still hanging out with your high school buddies but the distance of adulthood has set in and you don't see each other as much any more and the relationships have all evolved slightly as you've grown as people? I feel like I'm not describing this properly but I really liked, like, restaurant scenes with Eun Soep's friends and some of their texting. Hae Won's aunt is compelling and frustrating. There are all of these dark things hiding away in people's pasts, casting shadows on their present (there's a murder, suicide ideation, depression and self neglect, child abandonment, domestic violence...) and a really supportive book club. Like, there's this underlying message on the importance of community and familial bonds, including family that isn't romantic or genetic. I put off watching this for a while and then timed it so that my watch would line up with the weather here and it was really great.
Nothing But You (2023, China | 38 Episodes)
Oh man, so the sports sport extensively, but I have the impression that if you are a tennis or badminton person you are going to have the rage. It's a noona romance, which I tend to enjoy because the power dynamics are a bit more level. There are a couple pieces of this, though, where I am absolutely furious with You An because she's out there smearing her past trauma all over Sang Chuan and he's more vulnerable to that shit because of his youth and inexperience. But! They both go through career changes! (I like a career change/life reorganisation in media.) They work towards common goals and support each other! Because this is an absolute noona fantasy he is more into domestic arts than she is. They have relationships outside of each other. Sang Chuan's father - holy shit - there is this whole arc and they are just- family and it is beautiful. The secondary romance is reasonably interesting! (I have been watching a lot of historical cdramas and wanting to set the maid/lieutenant secondary romance trope on fire lately.) They also go through growth and work together. People leave shitty relationships. It's nice. It's so nice. There's so much character growth and relationship development happening everywhere. There are training montages. I'd just watched Leo Wu in Love Like the Galaxy before this and it was jarring and delightful to see him emote all over the place and have all of this movement and a wide range of facial expressions.
Summit of Our Youth (2025, China | 23 Episodes)
This fucking show. Character development. Study montages. Enemies to friends to lovers. Time rewind. The implications. So many implications. And then fucking retconning the entire premise of the show and slapping a, like, go romance/maybe dream sharing is real on it. WTAF. I am so angry about this. They did the fucking pain on pinching means this is reality thing and she spent ten years working on being a better person and ruthlessly cutting bad shit out of her life and making better choices and then they have her fucking wake up from a coma with almost zero follow up. We get shared trauma handholding and like zero updates on other characters. I just- how dare they. How fucking dare they. They retconned their entire fucking plot. Like, I'm not even angry about the climax with all of it's OOC villainy. (Like, I'm fine-ish with the ex-boyfriend going off the rails, but her two other friends. Si Qi would never.) This is to say that you can watch this show, but you probably want to stop the last episode somewhere between 32:50 and 33:02 and just walk away and not watch them shit on everything in the last ten minutes. (What the fuck.)
The Yakuza Boss' Beloved (2025, Japan | 8 Episodes)
I watched this show when I was tired of every other show I was watching, basically, and it was a really lovely frothy change of pace. There aren't that may episodes. The episodes are short. All of the villains are over the top cartoon villains. The leads are cute. The tropes trope tropily. The male lead is the heir apparent of a yakuza boss and also the head of a medium-sized office. The female lead works in that office and has a few shit people in her life. They fall in love. Tropes. (Warning for copaganda and child abuse.)
Historical
The Glory (2025, China | 30 Episodes)
I love them. Han Yan arrives for her vengeance arc and Yun Xi looks at her and sees all of her vengeance machinations and plots and is like: yes, this is the ideal woman. He is also a twisty fuck and doesn't really take her into his confidence and sometimes works against or at cross-purposes to her but, like, esteems and values her to the extent that he will enable her working at cross-purposes to him because he, like, just really respects her hustle and thinks she deserves a chance. *hands* It is ridiculous. She tries to kill him multiple times and he's like, here's your murder weapon hairpen that I am returning to you as a token of my affection. ...and the hairpen was made for her by her one true lady love assassin and fellow outcast who she has amazing chemistry with. These events are not in chronological order. I love Chai Jing and Han Yan and Yun Xi and their relationships and also their familial relationships and I love them. Would watch again.
The Legend of Zhuohua (2023 , China | 40 Episodes)
So one of my favorite tropes is the completely insincere love confession designed to cover up your tracks by both flustering and catering to the vanity of a man who has no interest in you. I love it. It's great. When it's also followed up by them accidentally falling in love it's hysterical. This has that. Zhou Hua runs away from home to become a high-ranked government official. Liu Yan is a general and high-ranking royal and they end up working together, and, yeah, falling in love and hiding their romance to protect Zhou Hua's career, since she wouldn't be allowed to serve in the government if she married. There are shenanigans. There are plots. There are secrets. When she first meets him she thinks he's a prostitute that's on the verge of aging out of his career. I am *chin-handsing* just thinking about it.
Flourished Peony (2025, China | 32 Episodes)
There's a sequel to this that's out right now (In the Name of Blossom) that I am currently incapable of watching, because while it is absolutely essential to the wrapping up of the plot of this series, I enjoyed this series too much and must therefore sit with it. Chang Yang is loudly living it up as an openly corrupt official and playboy while being secretly smart and planning something possibly noble. Wei Fang is married to a turd and newly desperate to escape when their paths cross. He impersonates a god when they meet and then later she stabs herself so that she can blame it on him and blackmail him into helping her and when he points out that the angle of her wound is wrong, she goes, "thanks" and re-stabs herself correctly, and thus begins a beautiful friendship. And I do genuinely mean that. Wei Fang is fleeing and trying to build a new life for herself and he's spider-ing it up, building some kind of web for political purposes, and they become allies and then friends and relax around each other in a way that they don't quite do with other people and it's great. Her schtick is business woman attempting to rescue the rest of humanity and she's brave and clever. There's a lot of misogyny and domestic violence in this and stalking and scheming and I can't remember if someone is murdered or kills themselves in this. Both, probably: murder and suicide are kind of common in historical cdramas. There's lots of friendship in this. It's great.