DramaHeroine

DF was part of Warner Brothers which is owned by AT&T, and AT&T announced about a year ago that they are building a competitor to Netflix. DF was simply the first of what I imagine will be many streaming sites being shutdown by AT&T so that they can channel the money going to those sites to their new streaming site instead. They've already shut down two other niche streaming sites they own for this reason, one that stream classic films and onw dedicated to horror films.

DF was part of Warner Brothers which is owned by AT&T, and AT&T announced about a year ago that they are building a competitor to Netflix. DF was simply the first of what I imagine will be many streaming sites being shutdown by AT&T so that they can channel the money going to those sites to their new streaming site instead. They've already shut down two other niche streaming sites they own for this reason, one that stream classic films and onw dedicated to horror films.

I’m at ep. 13 of this drama and really enjoying it so far, but man. I got some feelings I need to work through, so I'ma write a long ass comment about them, because you are definitely care about what I think and feel, lol. City Hall is honestly so good I’ve been willingly overlooking that it does a pretty terrible job of balancing humor and angst. The angst is slowly increasing each episode and the humor decreasing, and I don’t like that. I miss the hijinks and goofiness the early episodes had, and I wish dramas didn’t do this so often, start light and fun before turning all moody. But boy do I Bloody Love Everything Else. I even like a lot of the angst, despite wishing there were a little more comedic relief sprinkled throughout, because it all feels very real, the situations the characters are faced with are ones I can empathize with, and having lived in South Korea for a year myself, can honestly believe could and would happen. (In fact, I know they do.) I’m also not feeling upset about the possible future ‘cheating’ the writers seem to be hinting at like I normally would. Cheating in dramas, in any stories, makes me livid. It's cheap and unnecessary, and if it's going to be written into a story, I need it to be handled appropriately. No justification or excuses or brushing it off like it's no big deal. If this were real life, and these were people I actually knew, I would definitely be upset with them. Mi Rae for not making it clear to Jo Gook that she won’t be party to cheating, because as far as she is aware, he’s taken and off limits and that should be the end of it. And Jo Gook for subtly, and not so subtly, pursuing her and creating the situation they’re slowly finding themselves in instead of taking stock of his feelings and doing the right thing by ending his relationship with his fiance. But there’s an underlying current to this situation that makes it feel very different from typical cases of cheating. It’s still wrong, and both parties have a responsibility to do the right thing, and at this point in the drama they don’t appear likely to, but it also just feels different. It's very clear that Jo Gook and his fiancé have no genuine love for each other and are only in the relationship for status and financial gain. Neither one is actually happy together, but they’ve committed to whatever end goals they have in mind, and don’t want to give those goals up or admit that they’ve made a terrible decision (multiple terrible decisions). And not once have I felt like Jo Gook was just putting on a show to trick Mi Rae into doing what he wants for his own gain. In fact, the thought hadn’t even crossed my mind until reading some reviews and recaps by other people, because every step of the way, his feelings have come across to me as very genuine. To me, it seems like he Wants it to be the case that he’s just using her and there’s nothing else going on, but he’s really just falling for her and failing miserably to hide it and all the political stuff has turned into an excuse for him to be close to her. Obviously (hopefully), this will come back to bite him in the ass when Mi Rae realizes just how he’s manipulated her, and good. I’m glad. He needs a wake-up call. He's playing with fire, playing with hearts, playing around with his own life, and is about to send himself down a one-way track to misery that he won't be able escape from. Someone or something needs to get through to him before it's too late. I'm sure, as time goes on, they will become more entangled and start crossing more boundaries they probably shouldn’t cross, and I’m going to become more and more frustrated with the cheating and probably even outright livid and screaming at my computer screen, but I don’t plan on quitting this drama because of it. I hope that my faith in it will be justified.

I can't help you with finding data like watch history, but there are sites that basically copy pasta'd articles and Dramaclubs, etc. from Dramafever to their site if there were any you wanted to save.

That might have been me, lol. I was a volunteer for the site until it shut down.

I know one of them personally, Coco from Kdrama Fighting, as I was a volunteer for the site, and she was one of our contacts. They walked in, sat down at their desks, starting working, and then were told they didn't have jobs anymore. They're probably not talking about it for a lot of reasons. Shock, have to focus on finding new jobs, maybe aren't allowed to or aren't allowed to talk about certain things, too upset to talk about it. Lots of reasons, honestly.

Considering they didn't care enough about the other employees or the volunteers or the userbase of the site to inform them of the shutdown ahead of time, I'm not sure why they would really care about changing emails.

I. Hate. Netflix. Search. Setup. HATE IT!

Realize now after reading comments that other people have already pointed out how AT&T is creating Netflix competitor, and that has more to do with the closure of Dramafever than anything else, and my comment might not be useful at all. Oh well, lol.

Yeah, they know literally nothing about the Asian drama fanbase. A large portion of us started watching dramas cause we were sick of Western media and wanted something different.

This. I know people who worked there up until the last day, and they weren't aware of any financial issues. Licenses had gone up, but the company wasn't in financial trouble over it.

Dramafever was actually doing well financially up until their closure. Adding things like the Bachelor and Spanish language programs didn't affect them negatively. The problem is they were a niche service, and there is a ceiling to how much money a niche service can make. An all-in-one streaming service came make a ton more, so AT&T decided to go that route instead.

I'm glad to hear people are actually getting refunds. I was really concerned about that.

I would absolutely pay for dedicated streaming services from the Korean cable networks, whether separate ones or packaged together. And girl, I was on the Dramaclub for 100 Days My Prince, so I feel you on that one.

I haven't done a deep search to see what they've grabbed. I'll need to go look now. Not that them picking up drama's from Dramafever makes me any less perturbed with them for picking up the sequel to Age of Youth while it was airing and then not uploading it until MONTHS LATER!

This is just saying that CJ ENM will be exclusively distributing WB products in Korea. It has nothing to do with what is happening to Asian drama distribution here in the states.

Yeah, it's just saying that CJ ENM will be exclusively distributing WB products in Korea. It has nothing to do with what is happening to Asian drama distribution here in the states.

Soooooooo I see why you've drawn the conclusion you have, and you've got some of the facts right, but you're overall conclusion is incorrect. The reason Dramafever was shut down doesn't have anything to do with their personal business decisions. AT&T, who owns Warner Brothers (who owns Warner Brothers Digital) who owned Dramafever (therefore AT&T owned Dramafever), announced a year or so ago that they were putting together a major streaming competitor to Netflix. This is an extremely expensive endeavor and one that they most likely did not have the funds for at that time. That meant they were going to have to come up with the money from somewhere, and one of the best ways of doing so is shutting down businesses they already own that aren't financially successful enough to keep alongside their new service and that would only act as competition to said service. As you mention, AT&T also shut down Filmstruck. They also shut down a third site within the last month which was dedicated to horror movies. All three of these sites were financially successful, provided a quality service, and had a dedicated userbase. Shutting them down says to me that AT&T didn't have any issues with each respective site's business decisions. They were simply collateral damage in AT&T's pursuit of the 'almighty Netflix competitor.' We all should expect to start hearing about other niche streaming sites owned by AT&T being shut down over the coming year. (Heads up to all you Crunchyroll fans out there. Start binge watching your favs/to watch list now, cause AT&T just laid off a bunch of people at Otter Media (which AT&T owns) who owns Crunchyroll.)

As heartbreaking as it is to say (as someone who was a volunteer for the site until the day of shutdown and who knows people who worked there), Dramafever's not coming back. It just isn't. AT&T will either put all of the dramas they currently hold licenses to on their new streaming site in some back corner somewhere, or they will just not do anything with them at all. The later feels more likely to me seeing as they cared so little about Dramafever that they didn't even bother giving anyone any sort of warning or heads up before shutting down, yet they gave the other two sites they shut down a warning a month in advance. That says to me that they see classic film and horror movies as financially viable and didn't want to totally anger those sites userbases so as to hopefully brings those users to their new site. But they don't see money in Asian dramas, or they wouldn't have screwed us over like they did.

As far as the email address handle goes, the tech side of Dramafever was actually consolidated into WB digital awhile ago, and those employees have been effectively working for both companies ever since. That's why they still use their Dramafever email addresses and probably will for some time.

I started this drama with a lot of hope and interest. While everyone else was complaining about the plot saying they were tired of these kinds of stories, tired of female leads changing themselves to get the guy, etc., I was looking forward to what the writers did with the trope. I love makeover stories and 'made beautiful by magic' stories, so I wasn't immediately bothered by the drama's premise. I believed there was just as strong a possibility for the drama to have the 'fat girl' get the guy for being exactly who she is as there was for her to only get the guy once she changed herself. (I even have a comment just a few down from this one suggesting that everyone should give the drama a fair shot before deciding it's not any good, because it might have something worthwhile to say about it's overall theme.)

At episode 5, I'm losing hope. That's really early in, and things could change drastically before the end, but my overall experience with Korean dramas is making it hard for me to be optimistic. My problem with the drama as it is right now is not the magical transformation. I'm just not sure if I can trust the writers to use the trope wisely.

A well-written drama wouldn't necessarily be set up any differently from this one. Part of exploring the idea of beauty and what makes someone beautiful often involves letting your character(s) get what they want and find out it's not what they actually need. Lee Seul Bi being granted this magical coffee that makes her look exactly how she wants to isn't automatically avoiding the question of what is beauty and how do we learn to respect and appreciate the uniqueness of our bodies. If done right, it's a tool of exploration and understanding. It's the means by which Lee Seul Bi comes to accept the shape her body is in, not the shape she thinks it should be in.

But do the writers understand this? So far, they haven't given me much reason to believe they do. The drama has made 'pretty Oh Go Eun' very vivacious and fun and interesting, and I really like her. I can totally see why Hyun Woo would fall for her. But while I really like 'fat Lee Seul Bi' just as much and sympathize with her struggle, I'm frustrated by how the drama seems to be sidelining her in a lot of ways and not giving me a reason Why. There's a wide difference in confidence level between both versions of the character, and I don't have a problem with that, because I can understand why she might feel more confident in her 'Oh Go Eun' body. But I need some sort of deeper discussion about why she doesn't have that same confidence in her real body.

If I had faith that the writers were setting things up as they are now in order to tear it all down later, I definitely wouldn't be angry or frustrated. Because there's a really good message here worth sending. The idea that confidence isn't dependent on how we look but rather on how we Perceive ourselves. 'Oh Go Eun' isn't confident because she's 'pretty.' She's confident because she Believes she's pretty.

I would really love to see that kind of story, and maybe that's what the writers have planned. But the way things are going in the story right now, I'm not confident that that's where we're headed. I'm not confident that Lee Seul Bi is going to find that inner confidence required to see yourself as lovable and worthwhile, regardless of how you look or others perceive you. And even if she Does get the guy at the end by being herself, I don't know that it's going to feel at all satisfying. Because yes, the girl he's falling for is Lee Seul Bi, just in a different wrapping and with a little more confidence than normal. But he wasn't interested in her until she changed the wrapping, and I'm not sure I'm going to feel like he deserves her when he strips the fake wrapping away.

Cause Did he get to know her? Did he really?

What's interesting about Sam Soon is the actress actually gained weight for the role in order to be more realistic. Which I both commend her for her pursuit of acting integrity and am saddened by, because she's such a normal, healthy looking weight the entire drama.