#i would like gong yoo and lee dong wook to do the korean version of what did you eat yesterday?

[waitmyturtles]

Koreaboo would like to write a BL for us, for real

[fangindiegirl63]

Review: Goblin (KDrama)

This drama was everywhere! From mentions of its funny scenes to the popularity of its OST. Stay With Me and Beautiful were on my repeat playlists for like a month. I waited for all the episodes to come out so I could enjoy them all at once and it was really worth the wait. 

Cast: Gong Yoo (He just reminds me of a funny uncle), Kim Go Eun (queen of putting characters in their place), Lee Dong Wook (his reaction faces are so funny), Yoo In Na (she’s so pretty and charming), and Yook Sung Jae (my favorite little furball).

My Thoughts: For a fantasy drama it was really well thought out and put together. As a non-korean person I think the producers wonderfully set up the plotline so that it could be understood by anyone. None of the characters made me uncomfortable unless that was their purpose. I was just frustrated when Gong Yoo wouldn’t stop being mean to Kim Go Eun. She was just trying to find her purpose and place in the world. There was no need to be rude to her. The relationships in the drama were all balanced and intertwined beautifully. Even the youthful Sung Jae cared for the 300 year old goblin. 

The premise of the plot stretched over a very long period of time, so I’m going to try to do this chronologically. So Gong Yoo starts off as a commanding general in one of the Korean kingdoms. His sister is madly in love with a cute prince. I loved Kim So Hyun and Kim in Jae as the couple. However, something goes completely awry and the sister dies and the prince goes mad. From time to time the drama felt a bit like a historical drama instead of a fantasy one. In which no one has a happy ending. Gong Yoo is stabbed and cursed to live forever with a painful (and very large) sword stuck in himself. Does a bunch of good deeds and saves a girl that will eventually kill him and take out the sword.

Whew. My fingers hurt. The drama had a lot of exposition that it had to stretch out through the episodes. At least the plot was linear though. They didn’t throw any weird curveballs or anything new out of the blue. I like dramas that don’t dislodge themselves from the main plot by the end of the drama. Though this one had the lovely trope of “HE’S DEAD, PSYCH”. That was still not enjoyable. No matter how many times I’ve been fed it. 

Lee Dong Wook and Gong Yoo’s bromance was so good! They were like a more cognitive and less violent version of Tom and Jerry. I still don’t understand why Dong Wook would really want to live in the same house as the Goblin, but misery does love company. They had their literal power fights. Together they worked through the challenges of the 21st Century and relationships. It was so cute to see them bond and truly see how they were fated to meet each other. Their dynamic really worked because they were so drastically different. Gong Yoo was more mischevious and annoying, while Dong Wook was more dreary and content. Their hatefulness was more playful than anything. They both really teamed up when it counted.

There were times that I didn’t understand Gong Yoo’s feelings towards Go Eun. I don’t know if he was just terrified of her or something, but I felt bad for her a lot. It was nice to see him pretend to be like her boyfriend and everything, but still, things were off until halfway through. Sung Jae was so awesome in this drama and had a lot of character development from a playboy to philanthropist. In-Na’s relationship with Dong Wook was so cute as well. She always knew what he wanted and what he was nervous about. By the end, I was really heartbroken by what was revealed about their past selves. I wanted more of their happy ending to have been shown in the drama. However, it just didn’t end up that way. 

This drama was really about how much you should care about others and the people in your life. When Gong Yoo was going to die, he said goodbye in the most caring way. Even though he returned, it was still touching. Dong Wook learned the mistakes of his past life and how much he should have cared for In Na. It really sucked the Gong Yoo was reborn and still had to live forever. I mean why couldn’t we just have him die? Also, I was really intrigued by the whole grim reaper system. It was much more fleshed out than in High School Love On.

Skip Rate: There were only like two

My Rating: 87%

[bygosscarmine]

Guardian: The Great And Lonely God

or like any reasonable English-speaking fan would call it*

Goblin

*DramaBeans referred to it as The Lonely Shining Goblin, as usual tracking toward fandom needs with utter disregard for what official outlets say

an aesthete review

SPOILERS ABOUND BUT THERE IS NO CUT you know you’d scroll by without reading if you didn’t care anyway so it doesn’t matter

So. It feels like even longer ago that Goblin came out because there was so much lead-up hype, and also, a lot has happened in my life since January 2017. This is the first fresh Korean drama I’ve watched in possibly that long or longer. I picked it up in the last month or so because I’m studying Korean and wanted to reconnect with it in a more natural context. And I hadn’t forgotten that though there were issues in the story premise, and mixed reactions to it as it aired, I had wanted to see Gong Yoo in a drama like this really badly.

Looking at Gong Yoo’s filmography, I can see why I feel like he’s been in hardly any dramas. After Coffee Prince, which is one of the dramas that really sold me on Korean TV as particularly interesting) the only other project he’s done was Big. This was a drama that was also highly anticipated and panned by most of the reviewers I knew. I had loved him in Biscuit Teacher Star Candy the way one loves a particularly gifted actor in an early effort--he’s charismatic and pretty (and 26 though playing a teenager).

I’m sure preference comes into play with the weight of movies in his career, but also he’s a little less of a mutable person than some major players in drama. Try to imagine swapping him for Lee Dong Wook in roles, for instance. Lee Dong Wook can be playful or dead serious or just incredibly dumb, because in some ways he’s a clean slate. I’m not sure why this is true, but it enables him to move from secondary leads to lead and back again with a variety of characters.

Gong Yoo is in a class with Kim Sun-Ah or Hyun Bin: he can embody characters in ways that feel immediate and real, but there is a certain core to them that comes from his own person. It’s a strength, but one that requires a character to fit in a certain way.

The Goblin, fka Kim Shin, needs an acute actor who can carry off both the kind of inner intense conviction that would fuel a hero to the kind of death and rebirth the character suffers, as well as a softness and hopefulness that makes a love story work.

Even considering my bias, don’t think it’s too much to say Goblin works because of Gong Yoo's abilities in that regard.

While fantastic elements are fairly common in Korean dramas, getting a full-fledged fantasy that treats its fantastic elements with the sort of care a procedural would matters of law or a hospital drama would matters of medicine is not as wide-spread.

Goblin both creates a consistent world of fantasy and does not overdo answering questions. The important points are clear, the ambiguities are not plot-breaking. While in the case of what happens once the sword is pulled out, one of the rules does seem to be broken by the drama, for the most part, all promises are kept. I have my issues with Kim Shin continuing on in an immortal form when I think a normal human life span from here out could do (barring the fact that they force him to wait for another reincarnation) but this is me as a fantasy specialist critiquing a choice the writer made, not a point of the mythology not working.

The main sticking point of the drama for most critics is the age gap.

In a way, I’m not as bothered by age gaps when it comes to immortal beings--there’s not a huge difference between being 19 and 30 when your partner is 396, right?

I’m sure I’m not the first to say this, but the writer could have worked around this, and almost seems interested in doing so with the time-skip--only to have their second lifetime meeting also happen when she’s in high school.

I’m at a college right now and I’m 33 with a lot of classmates who are between 18 and 21. They are having adult relationships, but in real life I do give a look askance when the dude seems much older. And younger than 19 is really young.

If 29 was a fine time for them to be together in the end, with a much more intimate relationship, how long does Kim Shin wait the second time around?

Anyway, let the man die and come back as the same age, is what I’m trying to tell you.

Overall, the writing did a good job of allowing our heroine to be her age, and the romance to develop according to her pace. If there hadn’t been a second advent of her as a teenager in his life, with his years still running on ad infinitum, it would have seemed fine.

The fact that Ji Eun Tak, Goblin’s Bride, is a sort of classic Cinderella figure could have been an issue, too. However, I felt like she was given a lot of dimension so I rarely remembered that she was embodying a trope. Her clear memories and relationship with her mother help with that--she may live with uncaring relatives, but she has known herself to be loved and that centers her.

I also liked that her will was so important. In the back and forth between her and Kim Shin before it’s truly established that she is his destined bride, she gets to make choices about her relationship with him and while he withholds information a good deal of that is to allow her more choice.

This is a deployment of fate that feels full-bodied--the fate isn’t just something determined from the outside, even though we hear the voice of the gods in the actual narrative. Because of who these people are, they choose what has been predicted for them.

And the story is largely from her point of view, even as Kim Shin’s perspective and history shape so much of the plot. Her obsession with candles takes over the house Goblin and Reaper share, so at the end, Reaper has candles in his room. Her relationships are what center the story so much that the reminder that Deok Hwa doesn’t know her yet comes as a surprise before AND after the memory wipe. Everyone else connects in spokes around her--even Kim Shin and the Grim Reaper have to find their friendship footing around her status between them, where before they were just odd roommates.

What Ji Eun Tak wants is very important to this story, even when it is initially denied to her.

She is the only one who says no to the tea of forgetting, and gets no word of argument or explanation from her Reaper.

Altogether, I really enjoyed this show. Even the ending (which I had gotten vibes about that warned me of disappointment) which I didn’t love made sense in the logic of the rest of the story, including its failures.

It was a beautifully shot series, though with erratic editing in some of the chapters, and the intensity of the storyline carried off the high drama that might otherwise have turned maudlin.

If I were to watch it again, I’d be tempted to skip the last part of the last episode, leaving it in my mind that Kim Shin finally grew old, that by suffering his absence without memory was enough heroic suffering for Ji Eun Tak, and that when Reaper has done his duty and escorted Sunny into the afterlife they all come back together as childhood friends in a Reply 2079 reboot story.

...At the same time, the time inversions of the opening matching up with the first and last episode are pretty sweet, and I wouldn’t have missed that little bit of clever resonance just for a less messy headcanon version.

[too-broken-to-fall-again]

The Aftermaths of Goblin: The Lonely and Shining Guardian

So wow, may time na din ako ngayong gumawa ng blog. Hahahahahaha. 😂 Feeling ko kase ngayon lang ako hindi masyadong busy unlike the past weeks after the sem started dahil defense season ngayon sa department namin and ang profs ko ngayon eh mga major profs na so walang klase dahil busy sila sa panggigisa ng higher years sa thesis nila. So ipupush ko na to, since limited lang naman ang internet ko dahil wala na kaming internet connection and I have to rely on prepaid internet. Yes beshiewaps, Third year second sem is real. And it's so fuckin' real all I do everyday till this last week is to cram for requirements and review and draw plates and stuffsssss. Oo bes madaming stuffs talaga lol. Bale konting pasilip lang talaga tong blog na to sa thoughts ko about Goblin and mostly kwento to ng life ko until midterms of this sem. What? Midterm sa March? Oo. August kase nagstart ang year namin so technically nakapagbakasyon ako ng 4 months. Oo teh bakasyon lang talaga as in wala akong ginawa and nasayang talaga yung bakasyon kase yung mga classmates ko nakahanap ng parttime job tapos ako humilata lang. I felt so bad about myself pa naman nun since last sem eh di ako scholar dahil sa Stat2A ni Brigidang dinaig si Nostradamus. Di pa ako tumulong sa gastusin ni Mother Earth. Hayst. But anyway, dahil dun, our last day of the first sem became December and the semestral break came on a holiday season na isa din sa pinanghinayangan ko ng slight. Like, beh given na holiday yun tapos dun niyo pa tinapat yung sembreak? Char ang tamad ko talaga. Hahahahaha. 😂 Then after that syempre January 2017 nagsimula ang second sem namin (the current sem) and here I am, gumagapang papuntang prefinals and sembreak! Char. May pa daw ang sembreak so wala pa akong karapatang magpahinga ng 2 months. 😭 So my week goes on this cycle this sem: I always have classes from Monday to Thursday, lahat ng araw 7 AM ang pasok. Ang hirap ng section 1 sa Cavite State University like myghad wala kang maayos na pahinga. Then my typical dismissal times are 5:00 or 6:00 PM on Mondays, 6:00 PM on Tuesdays, 4:00 PM on Wednesdays and 3:00 PM on Thursdays. Thinking my weekend's getting lighter? Think again. Every Monday binibigyan kami ng assignment plate na gagawin namin over the weekend. Course requirement siya ng CADD class namin. And may on-the-spot plate drawing naman and assignment plate over the weekend sa Building Design. Those two happen every week, except when major long exams are approaching. When long exams approach naman, problem sets naman ang kalaban ko. Every major subject na engineering science ang category ay nagpapagawa ng 30 problem sets as reviewers and course requirement na din na ipapapasa nila every long exam. And because wala na akong minors ngayon at tapos na ako ng math subjects (though may advanced math pa kami ngayon pero trivial engineering science subject na lang siya so yes beshie tapos na ako sa maths wooooohh yeeeeessss todo na tooooh!), may five engineering science subjects akong inenroll ngayong sem namely Strength of Materials (Strema), Dynamics of Rigid Bodies (Dyna), Engineering Economy (Econ), Fluid Mechanics (Fluids), and Advanced Engg. Mathematics (AdMath) as dagdag majors, at dahil required tong itake agad ng mga regulars. Of these, Strema, Dyna and Econ give problem sets na papasagutan, because pinalitan ng annotated bibliography ang probset namin sa Fluids and tamad ang teacher namin sa AdMath so di na siya nagpapaprobset at kami na din ang pinapagturo niya (or should I say pinapareport niya) ng AdMath (technically ako lang din nagrereport kase ako lang tinutulak or tinatanong ng mga kaklase ko kapag AdMath and wala naman akong magawa but to answer their question 'coz they either go inside the room unprepared or unknowing about the topic kase by section ang grading ng reporting). So that leaves 30 × 3 = 90 problems na lang na sinasagutan namin every time may exam, excluding the review time. Buti na lang mabait yung dyna prof and 15 lang binigay niyang probset last major exam so 75 lang binuno namin (pero mahirap pa din kase pinapowerpoint pa niya after namin isulat). Ewan ko na lang this coming sem. Because kailangan ko nang magstudy every night on weekdays for the subjects for the following day, ang time ko na lang para gumawa ng plates tuloy ay weekends. So because of that, I sit on our computer desk the whole weekend or sit in my bed and set up my drawing desk near me in order to finish either a CADD plate or a BD plate or both. Yes minsan nagsasabay pa sila men. Saya. 😂 I even experienced na mage-FB lang ako every night sa sobrang busy, but all I'd do is to check GC chats and notifs in order to continue on what assignment I'm currently at kase I have questions about the specifics of the assignments to my classmates. Ayun nawalan ako ng social life. Hahahaha. 😂 Anyway ok na din kase I see positive results on grades, though I think I'm on the edge of glory for Strema and Higher Surveying (Higher Surveying is one of my majors) so medyo nanganganib ang buhay ko. 😂 And ganito kase ang nangyari. I was introduced to watching Goblin when I went to Los Baños last December dahil inaya ako ng HS classmate ko sa dorm niya sa UP together with my beshies din nung HS para magwalwal at tumoma. Oo beh naglasingan kami though di naman gaano since soju lang naman ang ininom namin (mga feeling koreans kase sila amp. Ang kinain pa namin nung lunch after arriving was korean food, though masarap tbh). We watched the series while drinking soju. O diba kpop na kpop ang adventure. Enjoy ko naman kahit playing cards lang talaga at kwento at movie marathons and gala and simbang gabi and inuman at lamon lang ginawa namin hahahaha. Then I got to watch until episode 12 I think before the sem started. Kaso natigil siya after ko maging busy and di ko natapos eversince. Natapos ko siya last week lang dahil di rin ako busy last week masyado. And my verdict? *drum roll* . . . . . Bitin! Oo bes bitin. *sabog confetti* Sobrang lungkot ng ending kase pinatay din lahat ng characters except sa Goblin dahil kamamatay niya lang 3/4 bago matapos yung series. Tapos pinagtagpo-tagpo rin sila sa next lives nila para magmahalan ulet. Medyo feeling ko minadali na lang din yung ending and di masyadong fitting na pinatay pa yung female lead role (her name is Ji Eun Tak played by Kim Go Eun), tapos pagtatagpuin din sila after a few minutes ni Kim Shin (siya yung Goblin, played by Gong Yoo, oo bes yung cutie hot dad sa Train to Busan charot) sa isang episode lang. Duuh. Mas naenjoy ko pa yung wasakang story ng supporting roles. Mas nawasak buong pagkatao ko sa story nung supporting kase parang mas lonely pa yung naging buhay ni Grim Reaper na si King Wang Yeo din pala in his past life (played by Lee Dong Wook) habang minamahal niya si Queen Kim Sun na naging si Sunny sa next life (played by Yoo In Na). Tapos ang lungkot pa ng theme nila everytime. Hahahaha. Fave song ko nga siya today eh kase sobrang lungkot bagay sa wasakang playlist ko hahahaha. 😂 I love You by Soyou yung title. Siguro If I'd have the chance to repeat the story with my own version I'd let Kim Sun forgive Wang Yeo so they can be happy in that life too (pero kase punishment ni Wang Yeo galing kay Kim Sun na di na sila magtatagpo pa ever in that life bilang kabayaran ng kasalanan niya in the past life eh so wala din akong magagawa). Then I'd let Ji Eun Tak and Kim Shin be happy after Ji Eun Tak remembers him again. Pero syempre masisira ang essence ng story at ang sense of order na inoobserve ng higher deity sa story so wala akong magagawa. I'd mess up the plot with my suggestions. 😂 Maganda naman siya and I can't really move on hanggang ngayon kase iniwan din akong wasak nung kdrama. And you know naman na how fragile I am when it comes to moving on, picking up the pieces and getting over on what happened. Tangina si Kent nga feeling ko moved on na completely ako binabangunot pa sa what ifs eh hahahahaha (oy I don't feel anything na about it ah baka akalain mo pa char hahahaha. That's like magto-two years ago na duh). 😂 Would I recommend anyone to see it? Definitely! Matatawa ka din kase sa story with a mixed of 2/3 crying. Medyo bromance din pati si Gong Yoo and Lee Dong Wook that I randomly wished na sana magkatuluyan din sila charot hahahahahaha. 😂 Wala lang. Nagandahan din kase ako sa story though unusual siya. Kasing unusual ng pagkakatagpo ng Goblin at ng kanyang bride. Watch ka na lang din kung di ka pa nanonood para makarelate ka naman sa mga sinabi ko lol.😊😂