[Staff Spotlight] Get to know javabeans

[Staff Spotlight] Get to know javabeans

by javabeans

With so many minions contributing regularly to this site, we thought it might be nice to get to know everyone on Team Dramabeans in a more official capacity. It’s easy for us to forget sometimes that you guys don’t get a lot of chances to get to know our minions as people, and not just drama-recapping machines. They are very good at that—being recapping machines, I mean—but I can vouch for them also being very good at being people, too, and quite interesting ones at that!

So we whipped up some questions to put to the team, and will be posting these regularly until everyone’s had a chance in the spotlight. Hope you enjoy getting to know our minion army.

Me first!

Explain your username (and/or avatar).

I have no particular reason for picking javabeans; I needed a handle and it was coffee-related, which is always a plus. My avatar comes from the Dal Ja’s Spring episode that features several women struggling through their roles as women, professionals, mothers, and bosses, and “Wonder Dal Ja” was something of a symbol for an everywoman being admirable for doing her best job being herself.

What is the first drama that you watched (or the first drama that made an impression)?

Jealousy in 1992. I grew up with dramas always playing in the background because my parents watched them every day, but Jealousy was the first that caught my interest, and the first that inspired that excited, hoppy feeling inside that I would later come to know as drama addiction.

Tell us about a job or two that you’ve had in the past.

I once drove a KBS documentary PD around LA for a week as his personal chauffeur/errand runner. I was 19, and I had no interest in documentaries or KBS but was asked by a friend of a friend of a friend whose only contact in LA was me. I watched him scrambling to put together half-baked concepts and film snippets of scattered ideas to air in Korea as actual TV episodes. I now have a pretty low opinion of KBS documentaries.

Have you ever lived a moment that you thought belonged in a drama?

Being in an unrequited crush-o-go-round that would have been hilarious for how perfectly it misaligned everyone’s feelings, except for how much it freaking hurt at the time. If it had been a drama, it would have been the C-list kind that loses its way by being way too angsty for 12 episodes and then fizzles out without a resolution.

What’s your favorite drama that you recapped?

I try to enjoy each experience, but there have been a couple that felt a little extra special. Healer was a really satisfying experience thanks to the Dramabeans fandom that really embraced it with warmth and positivity. I look back fondly (now) at all the cracky dramas that caused Dramabeans to crash when the recap was posted (Boys Before Flowers, You’re Beautiful, Dream High, City Hunter, You From Another Star…). Coffee Prince was probably the one that really solidified the satisfaction of recapping as its own process, because it was so early and I didn’t know what I was doing then, or what I even wanted recapping to be. Amazing what it’s become.

What drama genres do you especially like?

I like romantic comedies so much I even like the bad ones. Also like campus relationship stories, comedies (the wackier and more screwball, the better), action thrillers, low-key indie-esque projects. I also love sci-fi, but only when it’s done very well.

What drama genres do you especially dislike?

I’ll try everything, but the threshold is low for strident makjang (the ones that actively strive to raise your blood pressure) and overindulgent tearjerkers, and I’m ambivalent to straight-up prodecurals, whether legal, medical, or police.

Is there a drama character you’ve ever strongly identified with, and why?

I’ve never been an abandoned teenager, rocker, or male, but I did feel a peculiar affinity for Sung Joon’s character in Shut Up: Flower Boy Band because I felt like his emotional reactions are what mine would have been. Withdrawn, seething anger that has nowhere to go but inward? Repressing feelings and facing everything alone? Ding, ding, ding. It didn’t necessarily make me like him more (I know what a flaw is when I see it!), but it made me really buy into the story and the conflicts. More recently, Individualist Ji-young. Who needs people? Humbug.

What drama character would you want to be?

Buki (Wang Bit-na) from The Woman Who Still Wants to Marry. So cool, self-possessed, no-bullshit, and totally content with herself. Striving to be like her would be an admirable goal. Lee Yuri in Father Is Strange is a more flawed version of rockstar professional woman (equally badass, though), while Buki is the more aspirational role model.

What was your major in school?

Japanese.

What’s a random skill you have?

I have a brown belt in Taekwondo, broke boards with my fist, and have lost 100% of the sparring matches I have ever attempted. I loved learning the choreographed forms and technique, but couldn’t apply those skills in action to (literally) save my life. I probably should have studied ballet instead.

Favorite non-Korean movie and/or TV show?

Singin’ in the Rain, Wonderfalls, and 30 Rock.

Which Hallyu celebrity would you actually want to meet and spend an hour with?

JYP, because I feel like he would teach me to be more productive and appreciative of every minute of my day and every opportunity of my life. I mean, I’ve already drunk the Kool-Aid on JYP’s eccentric brand of life philosophy, but a refresher course could be handy.

Which of the 7 deadly sins would be your undoing? (Pride, greed, lust, envy, gluttony, wrath, or sloth.)

Pride. I can readily imagine the scenario where I am too proud to ask for help attempting/doing/moving anything and am found weeks later, crushed underneath the bookcase I insisted on moving myself, to my eternal dismay.

Your favorite drama has an unholy alliance with your most hated drama and produces a mutant baby drama. Describe the plot.

A teenage girl is attacked in front of her helpless boyfriend, gets a new face, and comes back years later with a newfound talent for songwriting and rallies her ragtag rocker friends to win the battle of the bands and score a record deal. The most violently traumatic feel-good underdog musical of the year.