Spill the Beans: Real-life drama support groups and spreadsheet conversions

by HeadsNo2

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Rosedalian may have one of the most interesting tales yet on how media has shaped her life:

It is no secret that my life has been largely shaped by my love of films and TV. A teenage obsession with Braveheart led me to my Scottish husband. Indiana Jones? A career in archaeology! Goodbye, Lenin? Hello, PhD in Eastern European history! And K-drama? Well, needless to say, my love of K-drama changed my life.

It all started when I was working on my dissertation, and I foolishly (gloriously?) took a break to watch Boys Over Flowers on Netflix. It was awful. It was wonderful. It was the beginning of at least a three year extension to my writing process… after all, who wants to write about communist waste water systems when you could be watching City Hunter? Unfortunately, my PhD started taking so long that my department threatened to throw me out if I didn’t finish within the year. I clearly needed help. So, I got myself an academic coach, and with her assistance, I found a way to balance my love of dramas with my love of not destroying my life. I finished my PhD. (Phew!)

After graduation, my previous K-drama, er… drama… led me to take a job at the university learning center where, among other things, I run a program for students on academic probation. Unsurprisingly, a significant number of these students are on probation because of K-dramas! That’s right. I now basically run a K-drama support group. (I know you all were wondering if such a thing existed—well, it does. Possibly at your university.) And that is how K-drama changed my life and led me to a much more satisfying career in student support, rather than a life discussing 1960s rural hygiene. (No seriously, people actually do that for a living…)

 
Learning when to put a drama addiction on hold is a skill I’m sure we all wish we had. Mary shares her story:

Hello Dramabeans,

I guess that most drama addictions either start by watching Boys Over Flowers or You’re Beautiful. Mine was no different. I started getting addicted to the beautiful world of Korean dramas after watching You’re Beautiful, which my sister got from her friend.

In no time, I had watched every single drama that aired until 2012, and didn’t wait to watch the currently airing ones, too. I was totally taken into this perfect world, mainly because it was so different from what real life is… well, taking into account me being Indian. Korean dramas were an escape, an escape so good that I often forgot I had a life other than that.

It did not take much time for my studies to mess up. I did really poorly for three years, which is when I had to prepare for the medical school entrance exams. Because at that time, the only thing that gave me hope was my dramas.

But thank God I came through at the last minute and pulled myself together, and got into a medical school. Till now I have watched more than fifty dramas, and I even watch variety shows. Even my morning routine starts by checking into drama news sites like Dramabeans. I have loved the Korean language so much that now I can understand the dramas without subtitles—though there are blanks here and there, I am pretty proud of it.

And even though I am still an addict, I know when to shelf my addiction.

 
September may have one of the coolest friends ever:

So I’m a pretty recent K-drama convert. In high school, I had friends who liked them, but me and my BFF, we had our own stuff. Mostly American TV shows and horror flicks. But I think around 2014, after deciding to brush up on her Korean language skills, my best friend (who is Korean, “whitewashed” by her own admission) started to become more interested in Korean culture, which soon naturally extended to K-dramas. And, well, she’s never been the type to half-ass anything.

She went full-on K-drama fan. Soon she wanted to share her obsession with me too. I wasn’t particularly keen on it. And I can be pretty stubborn about my likes/dislikes. I dodged her pleads for a while. But my best friend can be very determined. So determined, that she wrote me a goddamn 250-word essay about why I might enjoy K-dramas, accompanied by a spreadsheet where she listed her favorites (organized by genre) with a brief summary, a rating out of 10, pros and cons of watching it, reasons why I specifically would love it, and how long a time commitment it was. Yup. There was nothing else I could do.

I told her she was completely nuts, and then I picked something to watch from the spreadsheet: Healer. So at first it was weird getting used to subtitles. And remembering Korean names. And, uh, sixty-minute-long episodes TWO times a week? But so so so many good things: a fantastic romance wrapped up in compelling action, complex heroes and villains, multiple awesome female characters who are awesome in different ways, so much cuteness, surprisingly excellent cinematography (lighting, lens quality etc were all far better than I expected), a complete and cohesive story, and sixty minutes TWO TIMES A WEEK.

So yeah, I loved it (even with the slightly unsatisfying ending). And I had such a fantastic time, (and even though my best friend was absolutely insufferable about being right) that I decided to give another drama a try. And like, ten dramas, a lot of “I told you so’s” and many many coffee-fueled late night Skype discussions later, here I am. And, well, I’m not even halfway finished with the spreadsheet, but my friend’s evil plan has succeeded. No one could have predicted it, but I have been converted. Actually, right now she’s blowing up my phone about the last episode of W. (JULES I LOVE YOU.)

 
It wouldn’t be an awesome community without readers like you, appie!

Hi Beanies,

So I got introduced to dramaland in my 9th standard which was three years back. My sister introduced me to it. My first drama was Boys Over Flowers, and even though I make fun of it now, it was addictive as hell. But in two years—that is, till the end of 10th standard, I had managed to watch only three dramas as I had no one to gush about them with.

Last year I changed schools, and there I met my best friend who was also a K-drama fan and reintroduced me to it. It was You From Another Star that totally did it for me, and hence my life as a fangirl began. It was also during this stage when I discovered Dramabeans, and I can never thank you guys enough for this site. Seeing fangirls like me and having people to gush about K-dramas with is really a blessing for me, as not many friends of mine watch dramas.

By now I have watched around 30-40 dramas and made my sister a total fangirl too. Now I address her as “Unni,” and even made our parents learn a few Korean words. I don’t know whether the K-dramas are boon or bane for me, but I am really thankful to my best friend for introducing me to dramaland, and to Dramabeans for being an awesome community.

 
Dear yhang, please send us pictures of the Running Man puppies. The world needs to see them.

My love for K-dramas started casually, I think back on 2003. A local network here in my country aired a dubbed version of Successful Story of a Bright Girl, where Jang Nara was the lead. I was only nine years old. It was a breath of fresh air during that time because most of the foreign shows on TV back then were mostly Mexican dramas and some Taiwanese dramas. (Fact: K-dramas are known as Korean novelas here in the Philippines.) From Winter Sonata to Dae Jang Geum, Goong, and a lot more, I was able to watch them from our TV, in my own language. Let’s just say that that was the phase of my life when TV and I were one. That appliance was as good as my first love.

But during my teenage years I somehow fell out of love of television ’cause I met the internet. My dad bought me my first laptop and finally had our home connected to a decent internet. Everything went down for real after that, especially when I learned that you could download videos from the good ‘ol internet. At first my mom didn’t understand my hype. She found it odd (and actually irritating) that I liked watching shows that were not of my own language. She knew that I spent too many sleepless nights watching, and that just ticked her off. That and the fact that I was able to drag my siblings with me.

Aside from dramas, I also discovered Korean variety shows. I first watched Running Man while it was only on its fifth episode, and I’ve seen every episode that came after since then. I made my siblings watch it once, they binge-watched the previous episodes, and it has become a weekend routine since then. Right now, 1 Night 2 Days has also become part of it.

Eventually, my mom got curious about what we’ve been watching every Saturday on our TV (I download Running Man episodes), complaining that we were being too loud, and decided to sit down with us. And months after, my dog gave birth and Mom named the puppies Haha, Kookie, Kwang-soo and Ji-hyo. (Do you know how weird it is to call your own dog Haha? I do.) After that I slowly introduced K-dramas that I like to her. And now I have a list of dramas that I’ll tell her to watch. The latest one ticked off my dramas-mom-will-probably-like list was Oh Hae-young Again. It was currently airing then, but she watched the first five episodes in one sitting. For the rest of the episodes, since I just go home every weekend, she’ll bother me every time for the new ones. I learned then to see to it next time that I’ll make her watch something after the last episode’s broadcast. Or else I’ll face the wrath of the impatient mother.

My dad, too. He works mostly overseas, but he easily bonds with us when it comes to what we watch. He loved the Korean movies I recommended most, and I remembered well how much he laughed when I made him watch Cha Tae-hyun’s Speedy Scandal. Just a few weeks ago, my mom told me that she watched the copy of Salute D’Amour that I gave to her with him, and they find it sweet.

It’s not odd anymore when friends, aunties, and cousins approach me if there is already “a new one,” referring to the raw drama episodes I get online. It’s like I’m the friendly neighborhood dealer who’ll help you feed your growing addiction.

Before K-dramas and K-variety, my family mostly spent the weekend in our own rooms, minding our own business. But now, we learned that the best way to watch something is when you are with family. The laughter is louder. I was able to find out their likes and dislikes through the shows. And we even get to hate on the show together if it turned out to be boring in the end. We found a common ground that everyone enjoys, even if it’s not anything Korean-related. As long as there is the monitor, a decent sound system, shows to binge-watch, and some snacks to nibble, our weekends will never be boring again.

 
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