Love Destiny

I am not satisfied with the ending but enjoy the show

Oh wow, I really liked it, but I feel like I'm not satisfied with the ending. It feels unresolved to me. What happened to Dech in the other world? They never explained it. And who is the other surgeon who looks like Dech in the modern world? If they make a Season 2 or a continuation in movie style, I would change my rating.

Anyway, I still enjoy this series overall, especially the plot and storyline, although there is some similarity with "I'm the Most Beautiful Count," "IFYLITA," and I think other series from DMD (haven't watched those yet). What I love the most is the chemistry between the actors — it doesn't feel forced, it feels natural, and Leng's acting has improved compared to before, when he was paired with Ohm. He's so cute paired with a more masculine guy.

I'm giving it 8 because, aside from the fact that I love historical BL dramas, I did not force myself to watch the whole show. I was not just satisfied with the ending 😂

Read More

Wasted potential.

It's really such a shame that this series started off so strong and then got diverted into half a dozen subplots and left the main couple in limbo for most of the series.

I really enjoy slowburn romances and shounen-ai series so I wasn't upset by the lack of intimacy between Great and Dech. I honestly felt like the pacing of their relationship made sense considering how their relationship is at the beginning of the series. Watching it develop from enemies to lovers over such a long period made their love seem more organic and natural which is something I really liked. Leng is such an endearing actor and he played Great so well it really was impossible not to grow fond of him and August did such a great job portraying Dech as stern, but never overbearing or antagonistic. I think both actors did such a great job. I also really enjoyed the initial episode layout, spending the bulk of the episode in the past, but then taking 10-15 minutes at the end to dedicate to the present timeline. I really liked seeing how the present drama was unfolding while Great was stuck in the past, but unfortunately the writers chose to switch the format and we got too see less and less of the present storyline and the writers sidelined nearly all of the character in favor of showing more and more of Sri.

People like to throw around the word queerbaiting a lot on this website (usually targeted at shounen-ai series) but if you ask me this is what queerbaiting is. We were promised a time travel BL but instead we got a historical drama about a guy hung up on married women. Sri is an interesting character, but I didn't come here to watch a series about him. I came here to watch cute boys making out. The writers spent so much time on this one character who had nothing to do with the main plot that the show really suffered for it. All of the other side couple relationships were incredibly rushed, the subplot with Falcon was never even finished, and the ending was by far the most haphazardly put together ending I've ever seen, barely anything was explained.

For me this series could have easily been an 9 or even 9.5, but the obsessive focus on Sri bogged down the whole series. If you happen to like historical dramas and slowburn romances like I do than you'll probably like it about as much as I did or if you're a fan of the original hetero Love Destiny series and are interested in seeing the story include Sri than you might find this series worth the watch. But if you're here for yaoi and smut and couldn't care less about the historical figures being depicted here than you're not going to like this show. (Also just fair warning the ost for this series is hella overplayed, it's not that great of a song and it was on repeat for every single episode which was really annoying.)

General info for anyone wanting to know:
• Is the series spicy/nsfw? Yes, there are a few spicy scenes with the side couples and one them was really well done (you'll know it when you see it).
• Is there a love triangle? Randomly enough there is. Why it's there I have no clue, it had no bearing on the plot.
• Is there violence/noncon? Yes, there are fighting scenes with swords and guns, some of which lead to bloodshed, and there are also scenes depicting animal cruelty.
• Is the original Love Destiny series and/or book worth watching/reading? Wouldn't know, haven't read or watched either of them. I know they're not BLs so if that's what you're after than the answer would be no.

Read More

What Could've Been

I was so looking forward to this series when it was first announced. Little did I know the disappointment that would soon follow. The cinematography and costuming were really well done, as well as the sets things of that nature. Other than that, that is where things start to go down hill for me. I have watched projects with majority of this cast, so I know they can give very well done performances, but here I cannot confidently say the acting was on that same level and that is okay to admit. The writing left lots of plot holes and it often felt like we were jumping between characters and scenes in inconsistently. I won't even discuss that ending. I want to say it overall was a good show, but I want to be honest. It had some very good moments, but it sadly didn't save it for me.

Read More

What the hell was the ending?

It tried to be LUAT so bad, yet failed miserably. I was so dissapointed.
First ep was decent, but the moment the durian episode came... I knew this show is not gonna be good.
And this is also why I'm mad at the ending. I was expecting one more episode, because it felt so incomplete... BUT NO! This is it!
So they rushed the ending... but had time for wasting an ENTIRE episode ON A FAHKING DURIAN AD? WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT?! And what happened with Dech? What did he do? Did he perform the spell on himself and was brought to the future? Or was it a reincarnation?

I don't even want to talk about the acting and non-existent chemistry. The only couple that was kinda ok was the doctor and the male nurse.
When the main leads had to do a slightly romantic interaction, they looked like they would rather be anywhere else.
Acting 101: If you're playing as lovers, you can't pull disgusted faces. (Looking at you, Leng... sorry)
Ok, they did try in ep 9, but the kiss was still very... uncomfortable looking?

Also the story... many characters had no purpouse... Plots that went nowhere... What's up with Falcons storyline? Guess we'll never know? And his "girl" Marie? Why was she there... like... at all? I could think of at least 5 characters that could be deleted and it wouldn't impact the story.

Read More

And with Ep 7, I'm Out

I am dropping this series and I'm really upset about that fact. This had the makings to be a really great show. The cast is all very attractive and for the most part can act very well. The storyline was interesting, the sets were gorgeous, but the chemistry proved to be non-existent. Also, and this is kind of a spoiler I guess, there is a random SA scene thrown into episode 7 that already had me feeling uncomfortable with the series and then the major dead fish lips (IYKYK and ya'll know) let down happened at the spring and I was done. I didn't even finish the episode and I probably never will.

Read More

Was Promisinig Until it Wasn’t: Dropped after ep 5

I’ll just start off by saying that I have dropped this series after 5 eps (gave it half the series), and idk if I will ever finish this

====================================
Initial Thoughts:
I didn’t really see any promotions for this series and I just found it on iQIYI and decided to watch it since it was another Thai BL period drama, especially since I absolutely loved Love Upon A Time (LUAT) so much. When I first started this series, I tried not to compare the two, but they were just so similar that I couldn’t help it and this series fell far short of LUAT, I’m so sorry, but this series has been boring and disappointing. The plot has so many holes and just things that don’t make any sense whatsoever and it gets annoying and infuriating.

*******WARNING: This reveiw contains SPOILERS for BOTH Love Destiny AND LUAT***********

====================================
The Plot: (very similar start as LUAT, but just not as good)

The story follows a surgeon, Great, who gets shot back in time, approx 300 years into another body, Gaew, and Dech, the second son of the High Lord of the region. Gaew was taken in by Dech’s family as he is a relative of Dech’s mother (are they blood related? I’m foggy on these details, so forgive any errors here) when they were young b/c his was orphaned. Gaew would grow up alongside Dech and his older brother, but when they are adults, Gaew is a mischievous troublemaker, who seems to cause problems for Dech (who watches out for him) and Dech’s mother, who is an annoying ass character, who for some unexplained reason, has always wanted to kick Gaew out of the manor without showing him any love or care that we (the audience) are able to see.

One day Gaew and his close servant, Yam, knock over Dech’s Mother’s boat, causing herself and the people aboard to fall into the stream. They lost a servant in the water and when she came back home, she immediately accused Gaew of the ‘crime’ and urged her husband, the high lord, to remove him from the household, which they refused (*****Side note: the stream looks fairly shallow and shouldn’t everyone know how to swim since they frequently travel by boat and live right by the river, so how did they lose a servant??? Also how did no one on the boat see or try to stop Yam from tipping over the boat, like HE WAS LITERALLY OUT OF THE WATER holding onto the side of the boat, like HUH?????******). So the high lord and Dech, instead, decided to perform a spell at the behest of mother, that doesn’t harm the innocent, but kills those guilty of the crime. (**Side note: so Dech and the father both didn’t want to kick him out, but were willing to perform a spell that could kill Gaew?? makes no sense*****) Anyways, Gaew obviously dies, b/c he guilty and this causes a lighting strike to hit Great (in the present time) sending him back in time 300 years into Gaew’s body.

That’s all ep 1, after that, the plot just slows so much and becomes boring. They introduce some characters, but the plot mainly consists of Great (Now as Gaew) trying to repair Gaew’s relationships and reputations and for some reason, he always seems to end up in jail or in trouble. They introduce Dech’s older brother and a powerful and rich foreign lord, but they don’t seem to be adding to the story. Great doesn’t seem to have any goal nor does he seem to do anything, other than help a person here or there with his medical skills. He tries to go home for like a split second, but then gives up?? (I think), they don’t really make it clear if he wants to stay or go back home?? Anyways it just got so boring

==================================
Plot holes / Things that just pissed me off:
1. I didn’t like how similar it was to LUAT, at least they could have done something a little different. Things that were basically the same:
- someone gets sent into the past (gernally same era) into the body of a lord’s son (so they themselves are lords)
- Has a close servant who helps them with everything (Chuai v. Yam)
- Has a close relation and will end up in a relationship with the respected Lord’s son who liked them first (Phop v. Dech)
- The annoying mother figures and their servants ( the second and third wives of Phop’s father v. Dech’s mother and servant)
- It’s the lord son (Phop v. Dech) who finds him (Klao v. Gaew/Great) and looks for him first
- After time traveling, the ML has to solve a case (Klao with his father’s execution and Gaew/Great with him as the accused murderer case)
- also both casted the same actor (Dech’s father LD and Meng LUAT) which made it even more difficult to not draw the similarities between Love Destiny and LUAT

This was just the similarities off the top of my head, but there are a lot more, and sadly, LUAT surpassed and outperformed and out-scripted Love Destiny in every aspect.

2. anytime any boat was being shaken to capsize, no one ever saw nor tried to stop them from tipping over the boat. LIKE the boat has no walls, it is in an open space, and NO ONE can APPARENTLY see the person ‘jumping’ up and down on the side of the boat???? Like be for real, seriously

3. When Great woke up in Gaew’s body, he ran out and ended up saving a servant who had a large cut in his thighs and was bleeding out. He would end up saving him. First off, this servant has a large cut in his thigh and has been bleeding for a while since he got there, that servant SHOULD BE DEAD BY THEN, how did he live, who knows????!!?!?! Second, when Great/Gaew was treating him, no one seemed to act when any sense of urgency at all, Like are you kidding me?? If this guy is still alive, which he shouldn’t be, he surely ain’t going to survive much longer and no one has any urgency??

4. Aren’t Gaew and Dech related through Dech’s mother??? so how can you have romantic feelings for each other, you were raised as brothers. (At least in LUAT, it was made clear there was no familial connection and that they all grew up as close friends, not as siblings under the same roof and parents)

5. Why doesn’t Great just say that he is Gaew, like come on, everyone thinks you are different and that you are acting suspicously, just tell them you are from the future and that you are no longer Gaew (this would also solve the previous issue, as Dech could have developed feelings for Great) though that would still be weird as he would look like his ‘brother’

6. In the assassination attempt of the Foreign lord guy, after the lord won the fight, why did he just yell and scream at the assasin to reveal who he was and how sent him instead of chasing him, HE WAS LITERALLY STABBED and was walking out of there, like the Lord could have just run after him and caught him, but NOOOOOO. This entire sequence of scenes made absolutely no sense

7. Continuing from 6. When Great/Gaew was accused and arrested for being a murderer, why didn’t Dech just say that Great/Gaew was passed out drunk last night and that he watched over this the entire night b/c Great/Gaew was asleep, OMG an alibi, who would’ve thought that was important and excused him from being a suspect??? Like DUHHHHHH (to which there was no reason or evidence to even accuse him btw)

8. one of the eps (forgot which) literally had no plot and was just a Durian fruit advertisement for no apparent reason, just was HUHHHHHHH

9. One of, if not the most annoying thing, was that they included long LONG end credits which showed the scenes in the future (so instead of like LUAT, returning to the same time, they left, Love Destiny decided to continue the present / future time plot alongside the past). I wouldn’t mind the dual plots, but I didn’t like how they put all the future scenes which were long and important at the VERY END of the ep, I think i missed the first few. It just made it feel disconnected from the series as if it wasn’t even a part of it. For me, I also didn’t like how EVERY person who was in the past, is SOMEHOW in the same hospital the Great’s body is unconscious and being treated in. It just made it feel weird.

10. Dech’s older brother and this entire plot are entirely useless, they add nothing to the story, and should be completed erased from the series. We didn’t need to see him anymore, they could just have written him off as working in the capital or something (also just my opinion, but i didn’t like his visuals)

Keep in mind: These are only the issues I have found 5 eps (halfway) into this series

===============================================
The only good thing was Leng, August, and Na’s visuals. Dech for me, was the only interesting character and only character worth watching.

===============================================
Overall Rating: 5.5/10. (expected a lot more from this series)

Read More

Love Destiny & The Butterfly Effect

This is another in a long-line of time travel BLs that gets on a treadmill and simply does not know how to get off it. From the very beginning, one always wonders how will the modern individual return to his present time and how will his love (which is inevitable) follow him? The unfolding must fill that all in and make logical sense but unfortunately, this story does not. It does venture off into so many tangents that one wonders why there was not a ‘butterfly effect’, since the present-day person does seem to know so much about the time and people, he transported back to. And he definitely introduced change. For me, this story, and thus, series, was directionless. I say this because they continuously used what I call side stories as fillers. For unfathomable reasons, these side stories become so tangential that I lost interest in them. They were banal and mundane because they never concluded or are only cryptically outlined. And there are so, so many of them. The ending of this series is really, really disjointed and ineffectively finalized. It is astonishingly rushed. This had a good premise but was used much better in previous time-travel BLs, that just did not know how to end, let alone figure out how to get there. I am guessing this was all linking to a potential Season 2? It all just seemed like just another side story.

Read More

What happened??

The comeback of Leng on the BL screen, and now with a different partner, August. This one is kind of different since it’s not under GMMTV.
Alrighty, starting with Ep 1, it gave me a good first impression. Leng did a great job showing his “bad Gaew” character. In my mind, this is not the same Leng I saw in Kidnap. 😂 He and August have good chemistry. Maybe those soft-launch posts on IG and then the hard launch really helped build the chemistry they have. The other actors who appeared in the series are somehow familiar if you watch a lot of Thai series, and they did a good job too.
Now to the storyline. Who doesn’t love a back-to-the-past genre? I personally love this genre. I already knew I’d be expecting some yearning and angst from this one. The first few parts of the story had a good introduction to the characters, and I liked the progression of the relationship between Dech and Gaew (Great).
However, that’s it.
In the middle of the series, I started noticing some flaws. The story of Dech’s brother, what was that for? I honestly think the series could have progressed even without that part. Yes, it might have been there to show the viewers that Great can’t change the past no matter what, but there was just too much screentime spent on that idea.
Usually, series where someone goes back to the past develop a purpose for why it happened to them. So what was Great’s purpose? There might have been something to do with Falcon’s villain story, but that wasn’t highlighted very much. Imagine it was solved just by burning everything? That’s it? 😭
So storyline-wise, it started good but fluctuated downward until the end.
The romance part is a slow burn, but it was so slow that they had to squeeze the Falcon conflict toward the end, which ended up giving us no good closure. And I have to admit, the kissing scenes and NC scenes felt like they lacked a bit of workshop. Or maybe the actors were awkward? I don’t know. 😂 I was also looking for more romantic lines with depth, especially since most period series are known for those kinds of lines.
On a lighter note, I like how connected the characters are in the present time. I also loved their scenes at the end of every episode.
But the ending... was it rushed? Was it really supposed to end like that? I don’t know again, but it honestly didn’t really fit my liking.
Overall, I don’t think this was a bad series. It had a really interesting premise, a strong start, and a lot of potential. I just feel like some parts could have been developed more, especially the storyline and the romance toward the end. These maybe just wasn’t completely my cup of tea.

Read More

The timeline confused me more than it changed.

Honestly, I don't really see the vision with the whole timeline-changing plot. I kept wondering why Great had to go back in time in the first place, and by the end I was just confused. It felt messy, and I don't think the time-travel aspect was explained well enough.

I also didn't really feel the chemistry between the main leads. Surprisingly, I found myself more invested in the second male lead because they had way more chemistry. I especially loved how Dech yearned for Gaew. Their relationship had so much potential, but it wasn't developed enough to become a proper romance. Honestly, I would've eaten that storyline up.

Read More