Critics often say romance is boring, cliché, and too formulaic. They scoffed at the genre as if it’s the lone TV genre out there that uses tried-and-tested formula. Breaking news: EVERY STORY USES A FORMULA. So whether you like crime-thrillers, a slice-of-life, or melodramas, expect that the writer for that follows a certain formula or…
I recently wrote a list of second couples we love in K-dramas. After finishing that listicle, it kind of felt like I haven’t released all my ~feels~ for these secondary pairings. And so, I have decided to make a relatively longer feature for our beloved second lead couples in K-drama because they DO deserve more…
A decade or so ago, female K-drama characters are usually described as friendly, lovely, and bubbly. While those with bolder personalities are called spunky and sassy. But they are never described as strong. It was as if the word ‘strong’ is reserved for male leads alone. Yes, we do have what we call the Strong…
Continue reading ➞ The Curious Ahjumma: Strong Female Characters
Telling a romance story is a bit complicated than one might seem to think. There’s a lot of elements to consider like the trope the writer would use, the setting, the narration style, and the most critical element is the main pairing itself. The other elements wouldn’t be useful if the main couple is in…
Continue reading ➞ The Curious Ahjumma: The Anatomy of Great OTPs
Gone are the days when the K-dramaland is dominated by Alpha Male Leads. These days, the spotlight is shared with the so-called Beta Males. Beta Males can be described in so many ways. Generally, Beta Males are the type of characters who put others before themselves. I don’t want to put them in a box…
A story being told inside a story. We encounter such ‘stories’ in K-dramas from time to time. Sometimes, these inner stories will be part of an episode while some series has one or more in each episode; like a recurring theme that bonds the whole series together. This literary device, which some called embedded narrative…
Continue reading ➞ The Curious Ahjumma: A Story Within A Story
There’s an emptiness inside of you that you can’t explain. You’ll try to go on with your day-to-day life but you somehow feel lost. Every song on the radio (or shuffled playlist) will trigger a memory be it sad or happy. You can’t help but relive those memories by once again pushing the play button…
Continue reading ➞ The Curious Ahjumma: Coping With Post-drama Sadness
We all love good stories. We consume them in all types of formats. Here, in this little corner of the Internet, we love our Korean-made dramas. The reason is a combination of storytelling, acting, and overall production. Among these, storytelling is the ultimate deal-breaker for me on whether I’ll like a certain series or not.…
As a celebration of our three years of blogging and sharing our love for K-dramas, we now introduce you to this new blog segment that we’ll call The Curious Ahjumma. This will be our commentary-like section about any topics involving K-dramas. Be it tropes, actors, writers, production team/themes. Anything and everything! As our first installment,…
Continue reading ➞ The Curious Ahjumma: Finding a Home in Cohabitation
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