Battle of the Writers (2024)

Some good ideas, but an absolute mess

Battle of the Writers was not a drama that particularly caught my attention. I’d even go as far as saying I had absolutely no interest in watching it. But after seeing TutorYim in Love Upon a Time, I wanted to discover them a little more. Unfortunately, while the pairing went far beyond my expectations, the story itself left me feeling pretty conflicted.

The first episode actually seemed extremely promising. We are introduced to a young writer juggling two jobs who, in the span of a single day, gets accused of plagiarism, loses his second job, and gets kicked out by his roommate. The tone felt fairly dramatic, and I genuinely thought the story would follow that path with a one-sided enemies-to-lovers setup. I expected O-baun to resent Shan for everything happening in his life before eventually falling for him after realizing Shan had always been supporting him. Add in a stalker, literary scandals on social media, career struggles, and you have something fairly classic but effective, with a romance naturally growing in the middle of all the chaos.

The problem is that while we definitely got plenty of events, coherence somehow got lost along the way. Everything feels fragmented and disconnected. I can’t even say the story itself is bad because honestly… it isn’t. It’s actually pretty engaging. But the storytelling is absolutely terrible.

I still struggle to understand how you can start with such amazing foundations and somehow end up with such a mess. The drama keeps throwing ideas at us nonstop, completely out of order, with little development and almost no payoff. We get a plagiarism storyline that lasts one episode without really knowing how it was resolved, a stalker who seems completely obsessed and disappears for nine episodes before randomly reappearing just to end up in prison, five writers who barely know each other suddenly becoming best friends while writing a novel together, and a protagonist moving into the ML’s house after meeting him twice… well, twice in real life anyway.

And on top of all that, the story is constantly interrupted by imaginary wuxia sequences from the novel being written, which somehow take up almost 80% of the drama.

As someone who absolutely loves this type of universe, it surprisingly did not work for me at all here. I would have much preferred a slow burn development for the main story and side couples without being interrupted every five minutes by scenes from an imaginary novel that, at some point, I honestly stopped caring about. The drama throws both time skips and imaginary jumps at us constantly, often during important moments. It becomes exhausting, especially with episode endings building up cliffhangers only for the next episode to suddenly throw us into the future instead. The story is already a walking narrative disaster, so taking away one of the few genuinely interesting elements certainly doesn’t help.

Because yes, the romance was very clearly the thing keeping me invested. Beyond the absurd comedy of certain situations, like the bathtub misunderstanding or that episode involving hallucination mushrooms that had me literally crying from laughter, my attachment mainly came from the characters and their relationships. The cast is adorable, likable, and has fantastic chemistry together. If we ignore the narrative train wreck happening around them, I ended up falling for almost every character, especially the main couple who gave us an incredibly green-flag relationship based on communication, softness, and mutual understanding.

Well… soft, at least until Tutor and Yim’s chemistry enters the room.

I already knew this was a Domundi production, but somehow they still manage to surprise me every time with their intimate scenes. Everything feels extremely choreographed and artistic while balancing sweetness and passion at the same time. So honestly, I definitely got my money’s worth because things got very hot very quickly, especially when Tutor and Mark apparently decided that clothing was optional. This production company truly refuses to leave us starving.

I also thought it was pretty interesting how the drama only switched between worlds during intimate moments. The scenes in reality start off soft, sweet, and fairly restrained before transitioning into the imagined wuxia world where things suddenly become much more passionate and intense, with less music and much heavier breathing. Personally, I would have expected the opposite, but it creates a really interesting contrast between reality and fiction that I ended up enjoying a lot.

And honestly, Tutor and Yim completely won me over. It’s official. I’ve adopted them.

Overall, it would be a lie to say that watching this drama was painful because my viewing experience worked on two completely different levels. My analytical side found itself walking through an endless field of scattered Lego mines with absolutely nothing connecting them. Structurally, the drama is a complete disaster that somehow feels understandable only if your brain decides to split into multiple personalities for the day. Nothing feels properly connected or fully developed despite the fact that the story had enough potential to become one of my favorites.

Meanwhile, my emotional side was completely satisfied by the characters, the romances, and the explosive chemistry between the actors. So as usual, if a drama gives me a strong enough emotional experience to overpower an apocalyptic storyline, my overall feelings toward it will naturally end up more positive than negative.

Still, I can’t help feeling disappointed because seeing so much wasted potential hurts even more when the starting point was genuinely great.

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excellent visuals, actors deserved better writing/editing (watch suggestions)

Overall: there was quite a bit of potential but the choppy storytelling/editing hurt the series a lot. The last few episodes were better so that week break seemed to help. Aired 12 episodes about 45 minutes each. YouTube cut version https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLzTP1IMPICl6R_dsvgKnBAMp6htoQwswK (episode 1 uncut was 47 minutes 29 seconds which is what I added up the cut parts on YouTube minus the breaks between parts so there wasn't a difference in episode 1, later cut episodes removed NSFW) and iQIYI Thailand only uncut version with delayed English subtitles https://www.iq.com/play/battle-of-the-writers-episode-1-21ue1zzg12c?lang=en_us I rated the cut version a 7 and uncut 7.5.

Content Warnings: non con picture taking, threat, stalking, non con kissing, drugged, non con touching?, injured/clubbed, violence/blood, manipulation, sexism, homophobia

What I Liked
- aesthetics/visuals
- good/realistic that she wouldn't give out his phone number
- tropey falls but they were cute
- supportive group of friends
- sweet moments
- good intimacy/NSFW scenes were well done

Room For Improvement
- with dreams, flashbacks, fast jumps, re-telling scenes from a different perspective, etc the series feels extremely choppy both in modern day and in the Xianxia parts
- the writing felt very contrived, the characters didn't act like real people and what people would say/do, also inconsistent characterization with the guy in black who started by being self assured and then suddenly was nervous/anxious, a character who was multilingual chose to speak a language that no one else could understand in the beginning
- having the panda face paint/jammies on the Chinese character felt a bit iffy
- completely not needed to character assassinate an established queer couple, there were multiple other ways the writers could have achieved what they wanted
- comedy sound effects detracted from the humor, the magic mushrooms in episode 3 were cringey and not funny
- the manipulation/lying by a character in episode 9
- random marriage in episode 11
- wearing socks (on feet) in NSFW scene
- no international release for the uncut version, only available in Thailand (deducted a half point for this as the uncut was better)

Watch Suggestions (it was really challenging in the beginning episodes so I included the Xianxia parts and then also included some sweet/steamy scenes)
- episode 1 part 1 beginning to 2 minutes (zero explanation of why one was blindfolded...)
- episode 2 part 1 beginning to 2:15 (pinned against tree, sword won't harm soulmate)
- episode 3 part 1 beginning to 3:10 (got something in his eye), 6:43 to the end (seem to be in school???)
- episode 3 part 2 beginning to 3:05 (talking about a character, gets a royal decree to kill the other guy? then flash forward then flashback???), 4:13-4:45 (2 other random characters talking to the guy in white), 10:10-10:30 (short fight)
- episode 3 part 4 10:50 -13:12 (introduced a noble genius character who becomes the demon guy's master???)
- episode 4 part 1 beginning to 1:25 and then jump to episode 4 part 2 at 2:55-3:12 to see the end of this scene (flower from his hair)
- episode 4 part 1 8:10-end, roasting a chicken blew out dust from his eye (same scene as in episode 3 part 1)
- episode 5 part 1 1:50-4
- episode 5 part 3 beginning to 3 minutes, 5 min to end
- episode 5 part 4 6:17-6:32
- episode 6 part 1 3:30-6:45 and episode 6 part 3
- episode 7 has a random couple introduced but they kiss at 16:30
- watch episode 7 uncut 29:50-33:15 steamy scene and then 33:30-42:30 for Xianxia kissing
- watch episode 8 part 1 3:45-7
- watch episode 8 part 2 2:40-4, 6:15-end
- watch episode 8 part 3 6-7
- watch episode 8 part 4 4-5:50
- watch episode 8 uncut 16-18:55 for a steamy scene
- watch episode 9 uncut 27-36:20 for a very steamy scene and then 43-end
- watch episode 10: part 1, part 2, start part 3 at 7:45 and part 4 at 4:30 (watch ep 10 uncut around the steamy parts for more steam)
- watch episode 11: part 1, part 2 beg to 3:30 and 11:45-13, part 4 beg to 1:45 (the elevator kissing might be a bit longer in uncut)
- watch episode 12: part 1 (watch the uncut until 10:30, they cut 4 minutes of NSFW here), part 2 and part 4 5min to the end

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