#tree with deep roots

[gidaryeong]

2023 drama roundup

Unchained Love: I still hum the unhinged flute intro on a regular basis, easily my fave intro of 2023! I didn't actually finish the show due to dwindling interest, but for the first 14 episodes or so I took a keen pleasure in it (and it made me go on a eunuch webnovel spree, expertly curated by @mercipourleslivres). I love it when heroines are allowed to be truly funny, rather than just quirky or ditzy. Also appreciate the goofy Lamp Prince turning into a brutal incel tyrant the moment he got power.

Six Flying Dragons: I don't think I can write anything succinct enough for the roundup format so I direct you to my "my sfd tag" if you want to access my enthused livetweeting. Show of all times, lives were changed.

Tree with Deep Roots: I literally can't think of a better topic for a tv show than Sejong the Great constructing hangul together with his band of nerds, one of whom he has a weirdly intense, vaguely erotic relationship with. Han Suk-kyu carried this entire show on his trembling shoulders. What an actor! What range!!! It was such a treat to watch him smugly debate his ministers, roleplay a farmer, and hiss half-mad soliloquies to himself in the dark. It took nuance and depth to portray the kind of inner conflicts and generational trauma that Sejong battles in the background of this drama. To be honest I didn't always enjoy the Milbon subplot which I felt got repetitive, and often found myself wanting to fast-forward the wuxia scenes. In a better world the show would have centered the whip-smart palace maids and their alphabet workshops. But I will definitely rewatch this soon. And maybe also write a fix-it where Sejong and Soo-yi fuck idk.

Quartet: Cute little murder mystery about a found family of freaks, liked it a lot.

My Country: The New Age: As entertaining as ever. Very fun to rewatch this back to back with Tree with Deep Roots, since Jang Hyuk plays diametrically opposite characters with the same vigor and commitment.

Gone with the Rain: Sometimes you watch something which you understand is technically a masterpiece but it doesn't do anything for you, and sometimes you watch a piece of campy silly fun and it makes you tingle with joy. This was the latter category for me. I liked the first and middle parts enough to make up for the lukewarm fizzle of an ending.

The Autumn Ballad: Has some fucked up elements that are difficult to stomach, but the parts that are good are really good.

Not Others: Bingeable! But imo they could have cut out the stalker/murder cases and just focused on the excellent family drama.

The Matchmakers: This surprisingly swooped in towards the end of the year as my favorite comedy of 2023, all thanks to a rec by @haraxvati. I adore Cho Yi-hyun in this role!!! She is so hot as a shrewd matchmaker with a fake mole and a twinkle in her eye. Love the virgin prince with his yearning-induced panic attacks (Rowoon didn't work for me in The King's Affection in a quite similar role, but he's so much weirder and lamer here, which is something I like in a man). I am obsessed with the side plot of the crossdressing romance novelist and the solemn police officer who is trying to capture her and ends up giving her free home renovations and smouldering looks instead. Also, Park Ji-Young and Lee Hae-Young are two of my favorite villain actors on their own, and here they are married!! Still have a few episodes to go, but I intend to binge them as soon as I post this.

Dramas I dropped or paused:

Our Blossoming Youth: I shipped the heroine and her cute maidservant a little too much to bear the dull prince they stuck her with. But I might rewatch it some day bc I want to write a Sherlock Holmes fic for the girls.

Little Women: A real disappointment, because I love Louisa May Alcott and I love Jeong Seo-kyeong. Once again, letting the women kiss might have solved much of it.

Island: Casting Kim Nam-gil as an expressionless cool-guy action hero offends me personally. (Yes Song of the Bandits I'm giving you the stinky eye also.) But Lee Da-hee and Cha Eun-woo were delightful!

See you in my 19th life: I couldn't, even for my most darling Shin Hye-sun, go beyond episode 1. There's something about a kid dating another kid even though she's a literal adult inside her brain that I can't really vibe with.

My Dearest: I do intend to finish this, but I lost the thread after the first half. It got a little too dark for me I think.

#you'll get my moving and minglan recaps in the 2024 roundup because i haven't finished them yet #(i like minglan too much to binge it and my husband won't let me watch either show without him) #unchained love #six flying dragons #tree with deep roots #quartet #my country: the new age #gone with the rain #the autumn ballad #not others #the matchmakers #our blossoming youth #tvn little women #tving island #see you in my 19th life #mbc my dearest #2023 recap #kdrama

[elderflowergin]

The next sageuk should be a slice of life nerd comedy/drama about King Sejong’s puzzle ladies. They’re allowed free reign of the palace which makes them perfect for solving low-stakes mysteries around the compound. There are baby court ladies who are busy brushing up their math and puzzle skills so they, too, can be Puzzle Ladies. There are romances within Puzzle Ladies! They have a whisper network all across the compounds. They know everything. When there’s something strange in the neighbourhood, who you gonna call? PUZZLE LADIES.

#okay i know this is joseon bletchley circle #but doesn’t that sound so fun! #tree with deep roots

[cere-mon-ials]

2022 in kdramas

*that I finished

I spent my January nursing all that The Red Sleeve broke (my heart), nourishing what it gave me (provocation to write, notes here), cursing what it did for my overall k-drama viewing expectations. I am still mad that Lee Se-young wasn’t recognised for what she did in TRS, a show that belongs to Deok-im and her alone. I had finished Good Manager a day before, a long-winded bromance between Namkoong Min and Lee Jun-ho. I didn’t think much and truth be told, I don’t remember much either. Happiness fell flat after three episodes; stayed for the remaining episodes because of the excellent chemistry between the main characters. I evidently watched Coffee Prince many years too late but I saw every reason why I might have never finished school if I had seen it earlier.

Run On kept me thrilled on occasion, became white noise otherwise. I loved seeing my two joys, running and translation, woven into the show, loved the miracle of found friendships and homes, and a defiant writing philosophy that healthy relationships are worthy of being probed. Despite how unbearable Our Beloved Summer was about Ji-woong’s unrequited love, I could see the good-naturedness of the story writer-nim was trying to tell. I loved watching why the two leads fell apart and what brought them together. I loved that this had something to do with communication but I loved even more, that it just had to do with having grown up and realising you can love something you’re not and that’s one way to experience life. Kairos is the most underappreciated show that tackles time-travel. Great writing with exceptional attention to detail.

February was spent with the duology of the Ahn Pan-seok—Kim Eun—Jung Hae-in universe, the k-drama equivalent of Austenian bliss. Both shows benefit from Kim Eun’s thesis that romance may be intimate but love, in a patriarchy, demands a public that must accept it. Ahn Pan-seok is the finest orchestrator of moments that feel like the time lapse that falling in love is, that thing that people often reduce to soulmatism or violins at first glance. In One Spring Night, it works. In Something in the Rain, it fails because Kim Eun was still finding her voice as a writer who is stumped by what makes for the ‘right’ kind of conflicts in a 16-episode arc. I don’t think that’s the only problem with SITR but it’s the one she solved with marvelous elegance in OSN. In both shows, the main leads are charmingly, refreshingly communicative with each other. But it is in OSN, where Kim Eun figures out that being vulnerable is not the same as talking about vulnerable things, and how to make it count for all relationships that matter. Son Ye-jin and Han Ji-min, I love you both equally.

In March, I began paying an honorarium to the guard of my Jang Hyuk horny jail. Deep-rooted Tree made me cry in at least 14/24 episodes. A Joseon murder mystery wrapped in a drama about accessible language as the beginning to breaking down class barriers and nation-building, with nerdy love for character interiority? I ate that up. Han Seok-kyu is the only reel King Sejong ever. Just like Jang Hyuk is the only reel Bang Won ever. My Country: The New Age is a shallow show with hilarously lofty dialogues and masterful action sequences. In my most generous reading, MCTNA attempted to ask if Bang Won’s modernity could have come at a lesser price; is modernity not equivalent to audacity? Woo Do-hwan is almost as good at portraying audacity as Jang Hyuk.

Having Park Eun-bin and Kim Min-jae play Brahms in a riveting duet is exactly what Do You Like Brahms? set out to do. Introverts are rarely done well on the screen and getting it right with not one, but two leads is an achievement too. If you are a person fuelled by that mystical "passion," the creative arts industry can be a cruel place. Chae Song-ah is, by all accounts, not as talented as the others around her, and this is not a story of stick-with-it-till-you-rise-from-the-ashes. Even the hope that it might be is wonderful writing because Song-ah is far more assertive than anybody gives her credit for, like a baby who holds onto your finger with shocking strength. In classical music especially, there is no such thing: you are good or you are out. Park Joon-young is great and yet, he is begging for an out, because being good is just the beginning. These two and the other characters are deeply in love with music and they want to protect that love. They all find out that in the end that love needs sustenance, not protection.

I binged Fated to Love You in April, in a private experiment to see how much Jang Hyuk brainrot I can take. (Let’s remember this is a summary of the shows I finished.) I came out of it with brainrot for one more Jang. Outrageous show, outrageous star power. Soundtrack No. 1 was a forgettable experience save for the fact that I am now a person who looks up Park Hyung-sik’s MDL page on the reg. I think everybody is right about Twenty-Five Twenty-One: (a) Baek Ye-jin and Na Hee-do were always going to break up (b) It was a terribly-conceived finale. Two other opinions I am going to leave here: (c) Ji Seung-wan, darling of my heart, should have been the lead for the show that writer-nim actually wanted to do. (d) More people would see this, and also may have responded with thoughts beyond ship discourse, if Na Hee-do was played by anyone other than Kim Tae-ri.

I think people were right about criticising Lee Soo-yeon’s Grid too. The science of time-travel took some leniency. I get why the finale would have been unsatisfying, even as a setup for a potential second season. But I offer that the thesis of LSY’s shows is never in how they end, because they are not moral science lessons for the future. Grid’s deeply introspective themes of time-travel and the greater good begins with the the sun, the most reliable force in a human's life, turning against mankind. This immediately takes away a human as ultimate antagonist, when it easily could have been. For LSY, the future is the darkest place with unknowable power and we have the task of paving a path of light towards it. Time-travel is not the science-fiction component with which to imagine our behaviour in an unrecognisable, but possible, place. It’s the fucking fantasy. Even if we got the chance to change the past, we really couldn't. The future is what we have got to change and the present to make the first move. Those dreams of going back, repenting hard enough, flirting with what ifs? Not going to cut it. LSY's meta elegance is in bringing the intensely personal version of this theme in parallel to the big one: divorce. FWIW, she had all these threads tie together by Episode 7. I get why she said Grid is the next iteration of her life's work—an exceptional mind.

Park Min-young could have chemistry with a rock, and thank god, Seo Kang-joon isn’t one. When The Weather Is Fine is the rightest show about life in the countryside. It nails the fine line of a tight-knit community that shows up for you and also, how easily they can be the first source of judgement, as people who know your secrets. Best book club in a k-drama. Very well done pining. Imo is my favourite character and she should publish that novel because “Hey. Who do you think killed my brother-in-law?” is a banger opening line. I first saw Lee Jae-wook in this show.

During the weekends of April and May, there was My Liberation Notes. I watched it like a scheduled therapy session, although I do not think Park Hae-young is aiming for catharsis with her works (despite it seeming like the most common outcome). I didn’t have the word “healing” in my everyday vocabulary so often before k-dramas. It’s a genre of k-drama that is meant to be comforting, to inject slowness into everyday life as an antidote for the ills of modern society. Bullshit. There are multiple wide shots of the Yeom family tending their farms, eating in peace amid the greenery, and they are claustrophobic. It might feel like complaints, and you’re free to think that. But PHY knows, as most people my generation do, finding an escape is actually really easy. That’s not the point. The point is to be less sad about being who you are; to know that who you are is enough to make a living, find love if you want it, make peace with your family. This show is about siblings as the real loves of your lives.

I don’t remember what I was doing in June.

Pachinko is not a k-drama strictly speaking, but let’s do it. I adore Min Jin Lee and I am afraid to admit how emotionally attached I am to the world of Kogonada’s eyes. In MJL's book, the linear structure is meant to make you feel like the history of a family can also be a history of the other themes that consume intellectual space. In the show, there is no such thing as a past, or a history. Nothing is done, nothing is over and under the rug. You see Sun-ja’s and Solomon’s stories at the same time because there's no distance that makes what happened then far enough from what's happening now. For this alone, Pachinko is a superior adaptation. I have a shrine for every woman in this show. Watching Yumi’s Cells 2 has been among the happiest experiences of my TV viewing life. Bloody Heart could have been bloodier. I respected that it reached a conclusion without feeling the need to give a neat answer to its central question of assertive power as driver of both unity and chaos—there’s humility in realising that the answer need not be determined in one generation. Jang Hyuk thirst got me into the show, Kang Hanna’s outstanding face and smarts kept me there. Lee Joon’s Lee Tae nearly made me quit. Park Ji-yeon, muah. I watched the back half of Signal in July. It is no fault of the show that I was zapped out of will to see women being killed. There were two scenes of Kim Hye-soo’s that wrecked me bad, I had to quit watching for couple of days. Thank you to the makers for giving a genre-defining template. (Kairos did do it better.)

Alchemy of Souls was super fun as a weekly watch. Daeho is boring to me as a setting and the plot ventures into territories worthy of critical thought once in a blue moon. But I admire the ambition, and the storytelling does have its moments. Lee Jae-wook is a menace. Inhaled Rookie Historian Goo Hae-ryung over four days; I enjoyed it. Extraordinary Attorney Woo tried. I also binged Reply 1997. Reply 1988 is always going to be my favourite and I am not going to watch R1994 for a conclusive test of veracity.

Between these shows, their endearing efforts at being fulfilling shows about love of different kinds, I nibbled on episodes of My Mister. I couldn’t watch two episodes together; it was so potent, so unbelievably demanding of my attention in every way imaginable, and I gave it willingly. I wrote about the show here.

October brought the best mystery/thriller show of the year: May It Please The Court. It was written with a clear idea of how much to bite, knew how to chew on it, and that’s why it also landed the best conclusion of the year. The show is astute about forgiveness and justice, and well, forgiveness in justice. I think the show’s success is in how it trusted both its characters and the audience to process what this means to them. Jung Ryeo-won and Lee Kyu-hyung have impeccable married energy from first scene. Lee Sang-hee is the best, the hottest, the finest.

Little Women is the mystery/thriller show with the most potential of the year. It wasn’t until episode 11 that the show lost me but I do think the flaws began revealing themselves a lot earlier. I didn’t appreciate the show’s insistence that the central crime of the show was Sang-ah’s murders and not the patriarchal cult that pretends to be a meritocracy. I thought the Vietnam War references were in conversation for a whole different reason: I viewed it as a nod to the first war where losing means more than winning. That war is the blueprint for the 21st century exertion of control for the right to capital and target audience, rather than mere territory and pride. But this symbolism wasn’t what came through and I understand those who pushed back on how the war's references, along with an exotic flower, rang hollow. LW did get characterisation right, particularly the way poverty alters how intelligence is perceived and valued. It’s ambitious premise—that Louisa May Alcott was wrong in deciding these sisters would taper their poverty with unusual politeness—is radical.

I will rewatch the first 11 episodes of May I Help You in several trying days of my future. Baek Dong-joo and Kim Tae-hee, butlers to the dead and the alive respectively, are companions, friends and lovers, in that order. What's not to love? The acts asked of them are rarely grand but they are delivered with emotional heft. I forgive all the detours taken from episode 12. I tend to find it dull when everybody and everything is connected to each other. In this one's ending, it's quite lovely. I see the vision in saying that we only know Dong-joo’s story because that’s the story we have tuned into. The miracles could be happening to anyone at all. I wish writer-nim wasn’t so Christian throughout—the throwaway line about suicide put me off. Best piggy-backing scenes in a rom-com and also, favourite kiss, I am going to say.

#little women kdrama #may i help you #my liberation notes #may it please the court #bloody heart #pachinko #disney grid #when the weather is fine #2521 #do you like brahms #my country the new age #tree with deep roots #one spring night #something in the rain #i love you my little dramas and you too my favourite drama-watchers #phew! #kdrama #notes #2022 in review #kdrama in review

[hyeonsooya]

Tree With Deep Roots (2011) - dir. Jang Tae Yoo, Shin Kyung Soo

#tree with deep roots #deep rooted tree #kim hyeon soo #kdramaedit #kdramanetwork #kdramadaily #chewieblog #userbbelcher #filmtvdaily #userstream #usersource #userboost #entgifs #dailyasiandramas #useroptional #tvcentric #cinematv #tvgifs #dramas #gifs #hyeonsooya

[accidentallyadramablog]

The entire first eight and a half minutes of episode 13 of Tree With Deep Roots was utter perfection

#tree with deep roots #deep rooted tree #ddol bok x dami #kang chae yun x so yi #kdrama #sageuk

[arizona-trash-bag]

my one complaint with TWDR - we didn’t get nearly enough song sam mun / park paeng nyeon?? the story of the sayukshin is so tragically captivating, and the characterizations of their youth in TWDR gave these real historical figures such life and depth. their shared dynamic was so cute too. I would’ve loved to see them get more involved in the creation of hangul and in the whole promulgation plot, there was so much potential with these characters. instead in the later episodes they just got relegated to standing around and shuffling paper.

#tree with deep roots

[kiseiakhun]

You know what fucks me up about trees. Their roots aren't actually that deep in the soil. Like you think they would go Deep to anchor the tree but most trees have roots that basically float on the soil because roots need air. And they anchor the tree because they get all tangled in the roots of other trees and it basically makes a tangled web of roots and that's what keeps trees stable. If a giant GIANT alien lifted one tree it can probably peel up a forest like a piece of tissue paper.

#last rb reminded me of this #the roots are just there. floating. #this does not apply to fig trees btw #why do you have so many roots. why are they so deep. they're like 2x the size of the aboveground tree and go just as deep into the soil #fucked up tbh!

[nothingexistsnever]

599

#original photographers #my photography #puerto viejo de talamanca #costa rica #original photography on tumblr #original photographs #original photography #when the roots are deep there is no reason to fear the wind #streetphoto #street photography #beach #cityphotography #travel photography #travel #pura vida #central america #palm trees #atlantic ocean #streetart #street art #my photos #photography #nature photography #nature pics #villagge #streets #art #beaches #treesandflowers #tree

[sinecosinewheel]

just found the ash lake in ds1 for the first time. god damn.

#wheeltext #dark souls posting #like i had found the great hollow but i forgot to actually gonna through it #its insane to me how there are still things i havent seen in ds1 like i know i havent finished the dlc but in the main game?? #anyway ash lake is fucking beautiful the environment is insane the hydra??? yhe fucking hydra????? i didnt know there was more than one in #the whole game!!! and its mobile???? the bitch jumps???? #THE ARCHDRAGON????? #im used to getting spoiled for everything in a souls game at this point so seeing this was nuts it made me so happy #i had also never seen the area in darkroot garden with the red frog mushroom things before which also blew ny mind on a much #much smaller scale #im numero uno thalassaphobe and deep water scares the piss out of me so this area was very effective #the roots/branches you see coming out of the trees way above you look just enough like the hydras heads and tails to make me wonder if #there were more floating above #the skull was kinda weird though #is it supposed to imply there was a before even before the age of the dragons? with big tooth guys #mixed feelings on that but still!!!! exciting!!!!!!!!

[gidaryeong]

for the WIP, sejong/so-yi if you would like to share from your brain-drive?

Happily, my dear!!

So what first enticed me about their relationship was their fucking weird dynamic (you know the scene, he's in some melodramatic rant mode, she's telling him again and again that it's not his fault, he tears her notes to pieces). I especially love the importance he ascribes to her opinions, even from the start, because it's their project, and because her only way of communicating is in writing and her language has no written language, so he's not just making it for the people to be able to speak to him but also, in a more concrete way, for her to speak to him. When it's all finished So-yi becomes less of a person in the show (imo). She's almost like a little Hangul deity, saintlike and omniscient, having absorbed this language in whole and making the decision to sacrifice her dreams, her body, even her life for it. But in the beginning, when they're still working on it, and she's still kinda angry with him and they're still making the characters and their relationship up as they go along, I was so enamoured with her (as Sejong says, she puts me in a flutter <3). So I would probably set it in those earlier days!! And plotwise ummm no plot just vibes, mutual pining, cameos from the other Language Ladies, maybe some erotically charged letters, ambiguous/bittersweet ending.

Idk, what do you think, Gin? Obviously all suggestions are very welcome in the brain-drive!!

#tree with deep roots #my writing tag

[napneeders]

I LOVE DIGGING A HOLE

#me 🤝 izzy #also me 🤝 stede in the literal sense but he did NOT have to fight his way through this many tree roots #I feel bad for cutting them so I'm trying to avoid it :') #anyway the removal of what I thought was a relatively small rock in the ground has turned into a fucking excavation site #I have regrets #but I'm in too deep now #hah_hah #personal

[justforthoughts]

Let's go! Others include Battleship Island, Obs & Gynae (I still didn't manage to learn the name lol), Penny Pinchers, Deep Rooted Tree, Will it snow for Christmas and Triple.

I might be missing some, I'm not sure.

THIS IS A VERY VERY IMPORTANT POLL FOR RESEARCH PURPOSES. WE ARE SPREADING SJK LOVE HERE.

#i got polls baby #lets gooo #song joong ki #vincenzo #tvn vincenzo #reborn rich #arthdal chronicles #the innocent man #a werewolf boy #space sweepers #battleship island #descendants of the sun #sungkyunkwan scandal #deep rooted tree #penny pinchers #triple #will it snow for christmas #running man

[shanedoesdoodles]

I love making the most horrifying aus for my Webcomic that's not even out yet

#Okay well most of them aren't actually that fucked up #One very much is though! #I don't have an official name for it yet so I'm just going to nickname it “The tree au” #or alternatively “Imagine Deep Root Disease but arguably worse!”

[accidentallyadramablog]

I have officially made it to the torture episode of Tree With Deep Roots. 🤣🤣 I just love how this writing team writes women. Seeing Se Kyung with the other court ladies working on this project reminds me of Rookie Historian.

#tree with deep roots

[arizona-trash-bag]

muhyul my baby😭

#tree with deep roots #ep 24

[mizldrizl]

Come to think of it, there are several "제일검"s in K-Dramas.

"xx제일검" is a combination of "xx (name of a region in most cases)" + "제일" and "검." "제일" literally means "No. 1" and can be translated to "the best/the greatest," and "검" is "sword." Therefore, "xx제일검" refers to someone who is the greatest swordmaster in xx.

Deep Rooted Tree

Six Flying Dragons

My Country: The New Age

The King: Eternal Monarch

The "제일검"s that appear in these dramas are:

삼한제일검 - The greatest swordmaster in the three "Han" countries (Mahan (마한), Byeonhan (변한) and Jinhan (진한))

조선제일검 - The greatest swordmaster in Joseon

대륙제일검 - The greatest swordmaster in the Continent

고려제일검 - The greatest swordmaster in Goryeo

천하제일검 - The greatest swordmaster in the world

It is interesting that Jo Yeong from The King: Eternal Monarch is living in the modern world and therefore never has to (and never does) fight with a sword, but is still called "천하제일검." Of course, it is more to do with Lee Gon giving him a toy sword and naming him so 25 years ago. (Yeong IS a kendo master though and also says himself that he is better than Gon with swords.) I think when Gon and other people use the title for Yeong, what they picture in their head is not exactly "swordmaster," but "warrior/protector." I also think that if Gon chose something other than "천하" for "xx제일검," it would have been "대한," which is from the name of the kingdom ("대한제국").

#Deep Rooted Tree #뿌리깊은 나무 #Six Flying Dragons #육룡이 나르샤 #My Country: The New Age #나의 나라 #The King: Eternal Monarch #더 킹: 영원의 군주