How I Came to Be

Last week I wrote about the actors and where I first saw them. Our first meeting was about how far the actors have gone since then.

It got me wondering how I stumbled upon kdramas, what I was watching before and did my watching habits change that much.

(Also for the past week I've been on holiday, so I didn't have time to watch dramas. So, this post will be quite simple)

When I was younger most of my watches were American and British shows with a bit of Latin American telenovelas on the side, a bit of German series too.

Whatever was on TV and looked good, I was down to watch.

When I became a bit pickier about the shows most of my obsessions were dominated by fantasy or horror stories. Supernatural, American Horror Story, The Walking Dead just to name a few. Of course, in between those there is Icarly and some light stuff which still helped me to contain some variety.

But one day in 2016 my friend suggested watching a kdrama. It might pique my interest because it was about journalism, which I wanted to do, at the time.

The suggestion was good because I love Pinnochio and it will always hold a special place in my heart. But it wasn't the reason why I decided to watch it. The main reason was seeing reaction videos of Korean actors. It had a scene from Pinocchio with Lee Jong Suk crying his eyes out, and I understood, I needed to watch it.

Watching kdramas came with quite a lot of culture shocks. Students cleaning the classrooms, having so many side dishes with the main, what does Oppa even mean?

What I liked the most about it was the length of the drama. You can quickly move on to something else and the story unravels itself within that time. There are dramas where I would want to see another season of or I don't want to let go of the character yet. However, it was quite refreshing after having 10 seasons of something that was not even good by that time.

That is probably also the reason why I have such a hard time dropping dramas. I'm better at it now than I was when I started but there is always a thought "It's just 16 episodes". With shorter dramas going around nowadays, the thought keeps lingering even more.

Another thing is that dramas have so many genres in it. You can watch fantasy, romance, mystery and everything you like. I do think it lacks a bit in the horror area but we still get them once in a while.

The kdrama community was also fun to be in. Everyone wanted new viewers to see 'the classics' and share their opinions on dramas.

I'm not saying the space now is different, but nobody watches the older dramas and knows only the popular ones. Of course, it is not a necessity it's just laughable when fan wars start because something copied one drama when it's literally a common trope.

What I want to emphasise is that we should let everyone have their thoughts. If somebody doesn't like the drama you love doesn't mean you have to dislike it or the person has poor taste.

Maybe it also works differently because I'm also not in the same space as I was when I started.

I still haven't moved on from this kdrama phase and not even a slump can take dramas away from me.

The kdrama world has changed in a lot of ways - shorter episodes, shorter dramas, having more than one season etc. I'm not very keen on some of the changes, but one thing that I do appreciate is having dramas translated so quickly. You would have to wait for at least a day before the subs are good but now a few hours, and the episode is ready to watch.

This has pushed me to learn Korean, and I'm happy to say that I would understand now a simple high school drama. Nowhere near the level to understand something more than that.

It's always interesting how one or other obsession leads to knowing something a bit more. I don't know if I would know English that well if not for One Direction and kdramas were a stepping stone to learn about Korean history and the language.

By this point I have seen a lot of dramas, more than I expected to see. There was always a thought in my mind, to watch all the dramas in existence, (another reason why I can't drop dramas). I understand now that I can't do it but I want to try watching way older dramas, talking about early 2000, or 90s even if I find one.

This was kind of a spoiler for the post in the future but it is interesting to see the difference, right?

For now, my oldest drama is probably Coffee Prince (2007). I had to see the classic.

My habits are pretty much the same now as when I started watching kdramas. Less binging and more watching what is airing, so I can keep up with it better.

The watch preferences are quite the same, basically no historical dramas, maybe one in a while and I still dislike slow pacing. (I'm not going to watch every drama in Korea with those standards am I?)

Maybe what is different is that I have a little schedule, so I won't forget what I'm supposed to watch but that's also been around for a while now.

Let me know about your drama journey, what was your first or oldest drama to watch?