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Notes -
This was hilarious, in part because I recognize parts of it and partly remember that Chinese clampdown, but also because didn't you once go a great effort post on K-Drama culture? I remember my brief exposure to K-Dramas, and some of the, ahem, interesting male-on-male focus while female protagonist orbited in the plot background.
I don't think it was an effortpost as much as it was a snide/snarky observation on the tropiness of Kdramas and their specific deleterious effect on Asian women regarding expectation management. I do think it is VERY funny to see the specific tropes crop up over and over again and the common trends. one reason my wife got sick of watching these shows is that I ruined everything for her witb my meta commentary. This dude will die and have a secret twin brother! This secretary actually is the half sister! This car is just product placement and it will be that car that will crash!
For my own edification I did follow your stated path of Noticing the intense man on man melodrama and the diminishing centrality of the female MC.
It should be explicated that the main consumers of dramas are women, and that is true across all cultures all over the world. The difference I think is that the Asian women writers and producers lean in to the degenerate goblin woman energy fermenting in their writers room, leading to women following through in putting pen to paper their boiling emotions after seeing two hot men yell at each other. @FistfullOfCrows mentions that this shit is bait for women, and I think I can reliably tell when there is a goblin woman cackling in the writers room depending on how many opportunities for personal conflict are painfully forced into the character interactions. Men write action scenes with autistic attention to power levels and how smartly the characters will use the environment and the situation to their physical or social advantage, women will force these two guys to grab the retard ball together and smoulder/yell at each other as much as humanly possible.
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