(no subject)

[skygiants]

Since it's Valentine's Day, I might as well write up a romantic kdrama I have been meaning to talk about for ages!



So these are the leads of Queen In-Hyun's Man. In case you are wondering why our hero Kim Boong-Do's hat looks like it has tons of hair stuffed up inside it, that's because Kim Boong-Do usually looks like this:



Yes, this is a TIME TRAVEL ROMANCE.

The basic premise is that Kim Boong-Do -- a mild-mannered scholar deeply involved in political intrigue based around restoring the deposted Queen In-Hyun to power -- has come into possession of a magical talisman that conveniently shoots him three hundred years into the future whenever he's about to die.

Meanwhile, he bumps into Choi Hee-Jin, a rookie actress who has just gotten her big break in a historical TV series where she plays -- guess who?



Hilariously, while Hee-Jin thinks her possibly-delusional time traveling friend is super foxy from the get-go -- and is totally happy to make up BS "futuristic customs" about kissing, because lady's got needs, man -- Boong-Do is politely incredulous that Hee-Jin could be considered as much of a beauty as she claims to be until he actually sees her styled like a lady of his century. Suddenly, he gets it! BECAUSE STANDARDS OF BEAUTY CHANGE IN 300 YEARS.

In general, while I came for the wacky acting hijinks -- of which there did not actually turn out to be that many -- I stayed for the AMAZINGLY well done time-travel. The first two episodes were a bit slow for me, but after that it picked up fast and fantastic.

Kim Boong-Do is, hands-down, the smartest Past Dude In The Future that I've ever encountered in fiction! No comical flailing and lulzy misunderstandings for this guy; as soon as he sees people wandering around in pants and sweatshirts, he ditches the robes, finds an appropriate hat, and is off to observe the customs of this new place without attracting attention. It takes him all of like ten minutes to figure out that he's in the future, and then it's off to the LIBRARY to determine exactly the best way to use this to his advantage. It's not that the show ignores the significant cultural differences between past and present, because it totally doesn't -- it's just that Kim Boong-Do is very intelligent, and very adaptable, and it gives him a huge intellectual thrill to realize how much bigger the world is than he'd thought.

One example of just how smart Kim Boong-Do is: once he has mastered time travel rules, he allows a political enemy to exile him across the country, then TIME TRAVELS to the future, TAKES A PLANE back to the capital, time travels BACK, and then cheerfully pops in to pull a political coup on his totally unsuspecting enemy. The coup de grace is when he reminds the bad guy that if he tries to tell anybody what just happened, Kim Boong-Do has the best alibi ever: he was seen across the country yesterday, and he'll be back there tomorrow, and as everyone knows, it's not humanly possible to get back in less than like three weeks!

SMARTEST. TIME-TRAVELER. EVER.

Hee-Jin is also really great; it takes her a little while to get used to the situation, but she's super charming and funny and playful, and she knows what she wants and is not at all afraid to go after it. And their romance is adorable, full of sweet mutual trolling. It is, also, like, the only kdrama romance that I have ever seen that eschews the Standard Kdrama Romantic Wrist-Grab! (At least from the hero; I think Hee-Jin's Jerk Ex might use it once or twice, but, I mean, he's the Jerk Ex.) Kim Boong-Do continually respects Hee-Jin's agency and never acts like a controlling douche ever at all! IT'S AMAZING.

But I also really appreciate that the appeal that the future has for Kim Boong-Do isn't just rooted in romance. It's not a story about Boong-Do wanting to GIVE IT ALL UP FOR LOVE. There's this great moment when he's explaining that after being in the future, and reading the history, the past feels like the past to him now; he feels trapped by it, he wants to live without that artificial knowledge. And -- yeah. Of course it would.

REALLY SMART TIME TRAVEL is so rare, guys. I mean, I feel like it's rare, anyway, I dunno. What are your favorite time travel stories?

Comments

[jothra]

...you have won me over with this plot description.

[skygiants]

>:D hey, you were going to need something else to flail at me about once you finish Tutu...

[wakeupnew]

JO LET'S WATCH THIS

(Becca, I'm so glad you wrote this up; I was already considering this show as my post-Arang and the Magistrate project, and then I saw this post pop up on my flist with the sentence "It is, also, like, the only kdrama romance that I have ever seen that eschews the Standard Kdrama Romantic Wrist-Grab!" and I'M SO SOLD!!!!)

[ellen_fremedon]

...where can a person get hold of this series? And how long is it?

[skygiants]

16 episodes of 45 minutes each, available streaming at viki.com! :D. It's a Korean cable show, which I understand means a.) shorter episodes and b.) way more onscreen makeouts

[bookblather]

Seconded. I'm making grabby hands here.

[alias_sqbr]

Oh wow, I saw a bunch of squee on tumblr which made me ponder checking it out, but that was before I knew there was TIME TRAVEL.

[skygiants]

REALLY REALLY GOOD time travel! Boong-do hits my competence kink so hard.

[gogollescent]

That sounds… amazing… especially the USING TIME TRAVEL TO REPRODUCE TELEPORTATION LONGHAND, that's something I've thought about sullenly while consuming many a time travel-based product but never seen done. /contemplates with horrible interest

My favorite time travel stories at the moment are probably Connie Willis' books about future Oxford historians who go hopping back through the centuries to interact directly with their topic of study, but sadly I do not like them for the smartness of their temporal shenanigans. More "in spite of". Oh! And I recently watched Looper, which was fun but even worse from a basic-logic-of-causality perspective, so.

[skygiants]

I was so amazed and impressed when it happened that I started describing this plot point to everyone I know, like, "YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND, HE WENT TO THE FUTURE AND TOOK A PLANE!" And they were like ". . . that's nice, Becca."

I love the Connie Willis time travel books! Well, I love To Say Nothing of the Dog and Doomsday Book, they were super important parts of my childhood. Blackout/All Clear and I had a more, er, complicated relationship that mostly involved me screaming at the characters about how stupid and panicky they were being about time travel . . . which may have directly influenced my appreciation of this series, tbh.

[rymenhild]

... that may be worth finally getting into kdrama. After I finish this Tutu rewatch, which mostly involves watching every episode twice, once alone before Mark gets to it, and once watching Mark curse in sync with the episode afterwards.

[skygiants]

Oh Rym. Oh Rym. You should never have confessed that you were starting to think about getting into kdrama, because now do you KNOW what Shannon and I are going to be doing when we come down? >:D

(hahahahaha yeah. I WISH I had time to watch every episode twice! I am barely keeping up as is, but on the other hand, when I am done thesis, there will be a whole archive of hilarious flaily reactions just waiting for me.)

[troisroyaumes]

I've been so skeptical about the spate of time travel shows, but you may have convinced me to watch this one. XD

Re: wrist grab...one of the reasons I loved Arang and the Magistrate was that the female protagonist wrist-grabs the hero and drags him after her! Unfortunately, I think he also engages in the same behavior, but it was nice to see the role reversal all the same.

[meganbmoore]

IIRC, she typically took him to task for it snd wasn't afraid to yank it back.

[kd7sov]

Oooh, my goodness. That is excellent time travel. I don't think I've ever seen past-guy-inna-future done as well as you describe.

[skygiants]

IT WAS SO AMAZING and filled me with delight!

[shati]

But does it have brain fetuses??

[skygiants]

ALAS, there are no brain fetuses to be found whatsoever. :( Not even any brain surge-

-- NO I LIE I think the hero does actually get brain surgery at one point. Some form of zomg life-threatening surgery, anyway!

[opusculasedfera]

Wow, I may have to watch that, it sounds glorious. Intelligent people! Even without the time travel, intelligent people making sensible choices are basically my kryptonite, and then you add time travel to that... ♥_♥

[skygiants]

Kim Boong Do's overall intelligence -- plus a sense of humor, minus a sense of douchebaggery, for extra amazing bonus points! -- was just so impressive to me. And, like, I don't even find his face particularly attractive, especially by the standards of kdrama leads -- sorry, Ji Hyun Woo -- but every time he demonstrated more competence I was just like WHOA HELLO THERE MISTER. *____*

[wakuchan]

...you had me at the part where he immediately hits the library for information. This sounds like an excellent time travel show!

[batyatoon]

Yesss. His geek fu is the superior form!

[kate_nepveu]

Time travel and I tend to be ships passing in the night or something, so I have no favorites, but this sounds great.

[skygiants]

I really enjoyed it! It was the last thing I managed to successfully marathon this summer before school hit me like a ton of bricks.

[rushthatspeaks]

The best time travel thing EVER is Homestuck, but it is very, very hard to explain anything about Homestuck at all in a way which does not sound completely insane and off-putting, and I have not yet found a way to do it.

I will keep this kdrama in mind! For it sounds as though it has many elements I enjoy.

[skygiants]

I have hit this weird dynamic with Homestuck where I have just enough understanding of it to know about all the stuff about it I don't understand, but there is this strange way in which I am enjoying my ignorance and confusion. I'm not sure I want to lose the feeling of enjoyable mystification I get every time someone flailingly posts about how LOOK AT THIS UPDATE, JADE KILLED HER OWN ROBOT ASTRAL SELF! FROM THE FUTURE!!!

[carmarthen]

*sobs* Every kdrama you review sounds SO AMAZING but I just cannot stay awake during TV anymore.

[skygiants]

I was going to say "some of them are available in bad fan translation in novel form!" but then I remembered a.) that's only one and b.) the novel form is largely unfortunate porn. Or at least those were the bits that the translator chose to translate . . .

[applegnat]

SOUNDS AMAZING.

[skygiants]

SO ENJOYABLE! (Also pretty, man, I love historical or part-historical dramas. COSTUMING *____*)

[qian]

Haha, I remember hearing about this drama months ago from my RL friends who had a lot of FEELS about it.

[skygiants]

Hee, that's where I first heard about it too! I mean, actually from Internet friends, but they happened to be visiting my apartment at the time, so I got ALL THE IN-PERSON FEELS when they described it to me anyway.

[marginaliana]

Ooh, wow, this sounds amazing!

[skygiants]

I would definitely recommend!

[minkhollow]

...*_________*
Somehow this is even more tempting than the Capital Scandal outfit polls.

[skygiants]

This comment gives me mixed feelings! Because I love Queen In Hyun's Man but Capital Scandal is my FAVORITE

[jinian]

I feel like most time-travel stories exclude a lot of smartness potential by not having travel be at the traveler's discretion. Either they're stuck there, in which case you get "what these people need is (a) a honky or (b) incongruously modern attitudes" way too often, or they're looking for the way back the entire time instead of enjoying themselves or taking advantage. And Doctor Who, which you'd hope would be clever about it once in a while, has hemmed itself in with linear causality rules.

For some reason, the post made me think of Household Gods, although it's basically the opposite: there's a lot to like but none of it is the protagonist, who fails at anything useful, socially aware, or self-aware. (Jo Walton describes it best.)

I am completely confused by Terminator canon at this point, but I like how it plays with the different concepts of time travel and paradox overall.

[skygiants]

Yeah, this show gets a lot of great mileage by having controllable time travel - but dangerous controllable time travel, with exigencies that can't always be predicted. (Because, I mean, at root, the cause of it is 'magic thingum!'). So Boong-do gets to make plans that center around time travel, but when he relies on it too much there end up being consequences.

I love the T:SCC time travel stuff and I really wish they'd had a chance to explore it more in the third season -so much interesting alternate timeline potential!

[mneme]

My favorite time travel drama is Bill & Ted -- because you start watching and and the chractters are total stoners, and you think it's going to be terrible -- and then the time travel story starts going, and you realize that the screenwriters actually know what they're doing and that it's the smartest script about stupid characters ever, with really well done, really well thought out time travel!

This sounds really cool, and I should definitely look it up.

[skygiants]

Oh man, it's been SO LONG since I watched Bill and Ted. I should fix that one of these days!

[pedanther]

This sounds really interesting, and even a bit tempting.

Hmm, favourite time travel (that hasn't been mentioned yet, like Bill and Ted)...

I really like Tim Powers' novel The Anubis Gates, which is about a literary scholar who gets hired to do the colour commentary on the world's first time-travel tourism experience ("See Samuel Taylor Coleridge live!"), and then gets left behind when the coach goes home.

Wait, that makes it sound like a wacky comedy, which it really isn't. Our hero is not the smartest Future Dude in the Past ever, and on top of struggling with that there's the villains of the novel, who want to get hold of him and learn about time travel for their own sinister purposes. Plus it turns out that there was more to the world's first time-travel tourism experience than he was told when he signed up.

It uses the same rule as Kage Baker does (at least in those of hers I've read), where you can't change the past but that doesn't something unexpected can't happen in the gaps between what got written down in the history books.

Or, speaking of time-travellers meeting Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency by Douglas Adams, which is a wacky comedy. (To be precise, it's a "detective-ghost-horror-who dunnit-time travel-romantic-musical-comedy-epic", according to the blurb on the cover.)

[skygiants]

Man, it's been SO LONG since I've read Dirk Gently. I know I used to own The Long Dark Teatime of the Soul as a teenager . . . although that one has less time-travel and more Valhalla, if I remember correctly.

[thirdblindmouse]

One example of just how smart Kim Boong-Do is: once he has mastered time travel rules, he allows a political enemy to exile him across the country, then TIME TRAVELS to the future, TAKES A PLANE back to the capital, time travels BACK, and then cheerfully pops in to pull a political coup on his totally unsuspecting enemy.

[...]

And their romance is adorable, full of sweet mutual trolling. It is, also, like, the only kdrama romance that I have ever seen that eschews the Standard Kdrama Romantic Wrist-Grab!

I was sent over here to be convinced to watch Queen In Hyun's Man, and I'm afraid it has worked.

If you like smart time travel, you might be interested in Charles Stross's Merchant Princes series. They aren't time travel, but the tricks involved in travel between alternate universes with different level of technology are much the same, minus any fears of accidentally changing your home time line. One caveat: the pacing of the first book is abysmal -- there's tons of cleverness about universe travel but very little plot between the very beginning and very end. When Connie Willis mentioned in the afterword to Blackout/All Clear that the tale grew in the telling, I decided that that was code for "I stopped listening when my editor told me to cut scenes," but Charles Stross blames the division of the first installment into two books on his editor, so I don't know who to trust anymore. /o\

I might have to follow this journal. Anyone who would devise a drinking game for Blackout/All Clear is good people in my book.

[skygiants]

HAHAHA MY EVIL PLAN HAS WORKED - I mean, hello and welcome! :D And thank you for the rec! I will go in braced for meanderings. It can't be worse than the bloated pacing in Blackout/All Clear (can it? CAN IT?)