I just wanted to sent her huge shoulder pads and a little belt for the hell of it

I believe their jail uniform is beige, from what I’ve seen in dramas sofar. Googling, I see that, but also prettier, jeans-blue uniforms.

As long as she does NOT get a coord set I’m fine. Mis-matcheded jail uniforms only.

… anyone else in the present, and he learned that in just a week! That comes from the discipline you learn in the military!”
How the queen would handle sexuality would take second place to the story of going from a woman in a strict Confucian context to being a man in a modern context. That story was only inside my head, but I feel Park’s marriage has stolen the less interesting part of it. [Sigh].
There are probably K-dramas I have forgotten here, but outside of that I recommend the Thaiwanese “Marry my dead body” which is a totally sweet feel-good film and not as raunchy as it might appear on first sight.

I always found that Mr. Queen was a lovely example of genders don’t matter. Because when he gets used to the fact that he is in a female body and he starts building a connection with the King, he does learn to appreciate him for who he is and what he’s trying to do.
So, I didn’t quite see it as a transwoman experience. I think Bong-hwan is comfortable being gender-fluid, which is probably why he is such a big flirt in his time: he connects with people at an emotional level.

We are all very greatful to have this “safe place” in DB where we can express ourselves freely and know it will be “heard”. Nothing hurts more than being not heard or simply brushed off or shut down before we even start.

Thank you for raising such an important point and then discussing it so respectfully.

* whole genre

I’m just impressed that there are characters who are written as victims and who, in some ways, are glorified for being a perfect little submissive victim all along under the pretence that someone might come and rescue them. So Bong-soon, at least, sent a different message: Rescue yourself.

I’m leaving Nam-soon out of this because if there’s one thing we’ve learned is that she is, in fact, completely incapable of rescuing herself without having her family sacrifice themselves for her.

I know. He had so much potential and it truly infuriates me that he was so poorly used.

make it a drama that does not care one bit about his sexuality, like a crime story and please, for once, let’s try to keep him alive and happy. His life expectancy as a detective is very low, and he tends to be an unhappy character in crimes.

I want him happily gay and solving crime while wearing cute little necklaces and glorious blouses. And I absolutely demand a domestic LGBT kiss on screen.

Yes, that.
Or, Personally, I only watch crime shows if they happen to be the context for a rom com. But just — having the Mr. Oh of those gifs where he is just being a competent professional, in any story. And he can have a boyfriend or not – if there’s a couple’s dinner, it’ll be fine if he brings his partner, but I agree: Not the point.
The point is just a smartly dressed, smartly brained co-worker who moves their hips diligently around corners and sometimes paints their nails during boring meetings, or to infuriate people they don’t like. (Painting, blowing on the nails, and then looking the antagonist straight in the eyes, deadpanning the correct procedures for the context like they were Holt from Brooklynn 99.

He is very much like a somewhat senior co-worker – very much like “Destined with You” co-workers who obsessed over and were possessive of their good-looking CEO and harassed their meek new college.
It’s just that you will find a few of other characters being like that, but something like half of LGBT characters are shown as obsessive and aggressive, so another one of those piles on the representation as gayness as something that “they” force on other people.
And that belief is not only hurtful, it is also dangerous for LGBT people.

Yes, for a long time I thought it was just because of the ML. (Apart from the fact that both the ML and the SML are real snacks in Bong-soon).
But it’s more than that.
For example, the silliness in Bong-soon stays completely silly and does not promise a serious position on any societal problems. The police may be glorified, but not as absolutely as in Nam-soon. The SML policeman with the perfect butt nose does not break the limbs of prisoners in his custody.

You do have a point there. It is as if in Nam-soon the writer doubled down on the sillies. Then decided “oh! I have to make a serious statement” then as it happens in all dramas she “lost the plot”. It almost seems as if episode 1 was written by another person altogether. 🙄

I am a fan of using special ways of telling a story that align with the message you have. My heart soared when I finally saw a filming of Dickens that took seriously how wild and surreal that famous “realistic” writer is. (The David Copperfield version with Patel as the main character, where a boat-house was suddenly made out of paper and a big hand came through the roof and turned over all the inhabitants of that little home. That’s how Dickens writes, and I have never seen it acknowledged before. And I am a huge Dickens fans, so to me the only thing lacking in that film was six to ten episodes more, and Netflix streaming).
When Nam-soon started, I couldn’t help imagining all the silly elements brought together to represent absurd problems in the real world, told with fantasy elements like an Isabella Allende, a Dickens, and a Brecht.
You can imagine how far down there was to fall, when not only were all those elements left just at their silly beginnings, they were also super serious things that we apparently were just supposed to laugh at and get on with. “Silly” stuff like date rape, homelessness, sexual harassment of the people at the bottom of the hierarchy, fat-shaming and the creation of child (mafia) soldiers. (Okay, that last thing was not made laughable, but it wasn’t solved either, at all. We just killed off our main child mafia soldier).

Or, to me, she took up very serious questions early on, but in silly ways. I was expecting fantasy solutions.
But what happened was so much without any any story-telling norms that it was more like “Waiting for Godot”, where the play several times pretends to have a direction or a point, and sometimes the characters have long speeches that seem to lead somewhere, but they just don’t. They imitate purpose, so that you keep expecting that a point of some kind will appear, but it doesn’t. That’s how Nam-soon is, with the difference that it pretends to bravely take up very serious issues.

I love the sillies… and fantastical, magical stories are my catnip. While serious and frankly tragic incidents can and have been filmed with a comic lens rather successfully many a times, these are like sugar coated bitter pills. It works perfectly sometimes and sometimes its just too bitter to swallow. Not to lionize Bong-soon but yes it was as if the writer though “Ah! I can get away with this. Let’s amp it up.” The resultant train wreck was totally on account of lack of deft handling of source material. If it was bad through and through we would never be disappointed. This feels like that beautiful cake in My Demon which we had waited for so long being smashed before we could take a single bite.

I understand what you want to convey through your reference of Waiting for Godot. But this is definitely not what the drama or the absurdist tradition stands for.

I must say, I didn’t forget everything else when I watched Bong-soon. I was highly conflicted and even more mystified.
And I think Nam-soon was wonderful in the first episode(s), growing up in Mongolia and Arriving ready to do whatever task presented itself, like stopping a plane from crashing into a bus, for example. As she became and undercover agent who lied blatantly about what she would be ready to do, who deviously flattered an co-worker to get at her computer and information, and who, while representing the essence of innocence and rightmindedness, did not react at all to the more genuine and sad sides of the villain she was spying on, and a twin sister who ignored that her brother was crying out that their mother never loved him … bit by bit the fun leaked out of that character.
Bong-soon undercover would have worked better, because she was never an image of honesty. She had been playing pretend for many years already when that drama started and was used to looking dumber than she was.

Yes, I did read it. She was completely right in her predictions. But I loved the start of Nam-soon so much … My imagination was so ready for something really creative and intelligent.
Silly me!

I did not express well what I meant. I was repulsed by some parts of Bong-soon drama when I watched it. I find the part with the gangsters un-funny. Though I’ve seen worse mothers since, her mother is 100% bad taste.
But I choose to forget all this and kept only the good parts in my memory. My hypothesis is that many persons also choose willingly or unconsciously to forget all that is not working in the drama, and thus most have a more favorable view of it than what this drama deserves.