Poppyfortea

I can't remember actually. I think it was something along the lines of she announced she would "have a baby FOR them", which would be surrogacy in the vaguest terms. I took it to mean she offered to be the egg and the oven. If the offer was to "have a baby WITH them" then that's a different family dynamic. Either way is complicated in Japan. Surrogacy is not illegal in Japan but is really frowned upon and complicated to navigate in terms of the legality and cultural stigma.

I second the Hidden Love, You Are My Glory, and Falling Into Your Smile recommendations. There are some small angsty bits, but no massive misunderstandings. Also When I Fly Towards You. They all have really good lead chemistry.
If you like FL you could watch Reset, which is a totally different style (scifi, time travel mystery). And ML was also in Love Like the Galaxy with Zhao Lu Si last year, again totally different style (historical political romance).

Loved this. I know some people prefer dramas with lots of angst, misunderstanding, love triangles etc. and they'd probably find this boring. But I like these types of drama as well as the really tropey ones, so this was a winner for me. No triangles, no breakups, no misunderstandings, no terrible exes. It was sweet, romantic, brilliant chemistry, and a nice stress free watch. I think the leads may have the best communication I've seen in a drama in a long while.

No I get it. It feels healing to see actual real struggles (especially ones you've experienced) played out on screen. It's sucks that it exists IRL still, but it's good to see it represented in media. Sometimes the fluffy romcom where the CEO falls in love with the bespectacled and secretly attractive pauper just depresses you more than a bit of realism.
But I know after watching something like this I need to go watch some romcom garbage and turn my brain off for a bit. 😅

I didn't realise before starting that this was Omegaverse based, and had to pause a few seconds in when I realised what was going on in that locker room, because I was like wait, what? What are these fumes wafting around? 😂😂
It was incredibly silly, not like comedy silly, and outside of the Omegaverse-ness of it all. It was really silly. Like how were any of these dummys running a business? They seemed to just be bumbling around the whole time.
And if all the evidence they were getting was Tony selling children when they were still children, meaning he made his money selling children while they were small, why were none of the main characters ever sold? Like he was selling Jeff near the end out of desperation, and the same for Babe. If it was a money racket why didn't he sell them? Surely they would've made more money? Why was he keeping a bunch of grown men around wo were constantly escaping? His security was a joke.

All that to-ing and fro-ing between the leads and the second leads. Both the leads were way too familiar with these secondary characters. No wonder everyone misunderstood.

Baby mama had 2ML absolutely pegged at age 18 as an unreliable and irresponsible fool, and she's still right. Just because he's well off and popular doesn't mean he's not still an irresponsible fool. He was all but throwing himself at FL because she reminded him of the ex, while still having enough self awareness to know he only saw her as a friend. Messy. She didn't like him either, she was just so attention starved from the disaster marriage that she passively allowed this to teeter at the point of going too far. Neither one of them did anything wrong, but it still feels icky. Thankfully he finally stopped lying to himself and made some progress with his family.

Then ML and the tomboy was just a more beige version of the same behavior. The entire universe knew tomboy was frothing for him, and his coworker was total shit stirrer constantly telling them they should get together. Like that knob was literally telling him to get with her while he was still married. He also did nothing physically wrong but him being passive to all the comments and egging on was so disrespectful while they we're married.

He love bombed her when they were together at the beginning, and the emotions were shiny and new for her, and they went and got the marriage license while she was still buzzing. They were very imbalanced affection wise, like she's all caught up in the excitement while he's basically married her in his head already since they were 6.

Then he takes her on a honeymoon without telling her, got mad that it didn't suit her work schedule (that he never considered), and then he stopped being kind after that. She kept saying she changed, but he changed by choice, and she changed to try to suit the expectations he suddenly had for her. He finally "got her" and he stopped working on them. She never put any work in at all.

His remodelling the apartment to be "their" home (complete with a kids bedroom without any prior discussion 🤮) had nothing to do with her. All the little flashbacks to their childhood and university where he followed her around secretly gifting her things. No. The fact she never ate the sweets he put in her bag (good girl, stranger danger), and he knew that, and he continued his nonsense is just more proof he cared only to make himself happy. He did things for her without regard to her wants or needs. When they got together he continued to do the same. After yeeeaaaaars of being a creeper behind a tree he forgot he had to be actually present in their relationship.

For her, she's messy af. She wasn't ready, but she got caught up in it and as soon as they were back from the weird safari hotel he had a perfect wife mold he wanted to pour her into, and she tried for a bit. And then she realised she was unhappy being the person he wanted, and she just ran away from it. If someone can point me to a single conversation they had about life goals, needs, wants, career goals, family choices...anything of consequence that would be great because I think they were married for a full year without learning anything new about eachother.

And at the end he suggests sailing around the world together, says he doesn't expect her to take him back while also hiding a ring in her cereal. And once again she's like "yeah seems like a good plan, me and the fetus are in!" Christ on a bike why can't they just try dating for a bit? Maybe chat, take up a hobby together, no? Of course not. They deserve eachother because noone else could handle that level of messy.

Oh definitely no fairytales here. I don't believe any of them are truly happy, not even dudes homophobic dad (how can you be actually happy in life being that much of a bigot and knowing you've got a gay son).
I think they're all really flawed people, and very young to be making life altering decisions that have effected them so greatly. It just so realistic it really bothered me. I watched this like 3 weeks ago and it still randomly pops into my head, and I'm still annoyed.

I'm only a few episodes in and I was wondering how they were going to explain it to avoid the usual Chinese media censorship on sci-fi. I knew it would either have to be a dream or some sort of science experiment. Curiosity satisfied, thank you!

The story was okay, a bit bland, and the relationship came really late.
The ex husband was a fool who should've faced consequences a long time before. It bugged me that the sister let him get away with stalking and physical assault for so long, when she had evidence. Dude was dangerous. And I know it's her choice to pursue it or not, but as we see after she does the video, outing him for the monster he is was really healing for her. It's a shame she didn't do it before.
The couple were cute together but really boring too. The romance kicked in and there wasn't that much change in their day to day tbh, except him being extra domineering as a boyfriend instead of as a boss.
I loved the dynamic between the little group chat colleagues, they were great!

Exactly, like I know precisely nothing about the world of publishing, but if a book is considered someone's career defining work, I imagine it had several reprints. You would assume they'd make a correction that important if they wanted to. And what competent publisher would knowingly credit the wrong author on a book and leave themselves open to all sorts of legal repercussions in future?🤷‍♀️

I have a really bad habit of just writing every single thought I had for the entire series all at once. 🤣🤣

Grandma Li was the only true gem of this whole thing.

This is a whole ramble....

As far as I could tell LX wasn't mad at CY for getting poached, she understood the motivation. But she was mad that they did it at such an important time, and felt hurt that he left her during this really important time for the sake of the other job with an equally important problem to solve. And the question of did XYC poach him or TX really doesn't matter because they both wanted to, but he made her do it so that he felt less guilty. They promised not to discuss work at home, so it's fair not to give her a warning, but it would still annoy the f*ck out of me, and maybe more so because I know I don't really have any right to be angry. But she was only acting like that's what the issue was because he would feel pressured if he knew the real reason, and she couldn't tell him anyway because they don't discuss work. She can't win, and he's sulky and totally unhelpful since his solution was for her to resign.
The main couple were cute and had good chemistry but they were bland together. Like I didn't really care if they split again. I love both actors in other stuff though so I'm blaming the story.
She dumps him so he wont sacrifice his future for her. Dumb af, but fine. He resents her but still loves her and spends 8 years improving himself to prove her wrong. Okay. But he also knows that the break up reason was a lie so like why resent her then? If he knew it was a lie why not just have little chat, resolve the conflict, agree to pursue your careers separately but together and do a long distance thing. Or maybe when he settles abroad drop her a little email. No? His speech at the bidding thing was a slap in the face too. He stood there and basically just went you right there, you are stagnant and obsolete. The rage would've been palpable had I been her.
The spoiled child and the army man were the worst though. I really don't get why we had to watch his marriage to the child bride instead of the leads. They could've at least shown us her becoming a functioning adult if they were going to make us watch her wedding. I couldn't see them as a couple at all. She lost me when she was sulky about him not checking her employee file to know her allergies. Babycakes it's your job to tell him as his girlfriend. And sulky because she didn't take the damn umbrella like the maid told her to. She was meeting his friends, but he never said where, so that's on her. It could've been a park, the beach, not just a basketball court. No reason to assume it'd be inside. Then at work she refuses the tasks given by her supervisor, takes a project that was assigned to someone else without permission (for which she is not authorised in her current department, which she knows), and runs home to her mommy to cry because he implied she's spoiled and overstepping her position (which she is) after he provides completely valid reasons for his decisions. I was genuinely surprised her mother told her army man was right (and then immediately annoyed again when she told her she was also right...no she wasn't).
But what can you expect with a mother like that. Cousin behaved like a spoiled adult baby because that's how she was treated. Her mother was a disgrace, and grandpa too. I'm still enraged with them both, and refuse their justification. Are we really expected to believe that in the space of two days the publisher changes the author name, sends to print, and has the book published with no communication? Did auntie not speak to anyone while at the fathers side in hospital? Could a publisher even do that without final approval? Why would they take a notion to just change the author name without permission for funzies? And if it was a genuine error, you correct it asap. You issue a little statement and you make some stickers and you stick them onto the cover where the author name is, maybe put a little explanatory bookmark inside to say there was a typo. You don't leave it for 30 YEARS without ever giving clarification, while stealing the praise, acclaim and any sales profits from the actual translator. And when the estranged family member is found and her husband and daughter reenter the lives of gramps and auntie, you don't think to say "oh btw that thing with the book was a total accident, can you tell your wife"... you just leave it to fester. Even without that gramps and auntie are just such hateful f*cks they aren't worth maintaining a relationship with anyway. Smug bastards acting like translation is some form of multi-generational free pass to be the absolute worst people. TBH I care more about this issue than the rest of the drama...😂 They just really bothered me. Excellent acting though, because I think next time I see them on screen I'll hate them instinctively.
Side note: I get that without them both being rivals in translation there would be no show. But why exactly did he spend 8 years abroad building his whole career to prove himself to her, focusing on a range of different areas... but when he comes back his entire focus was on making his love interest, her career and half her family's careers obsolete? Like he could've focused on the doctor robot or anything else. But he focused on trying to dismantle his love interests whole career worth, and pretty much everything she uses to define herself. It's her entire identity, and he's like okay but how about an app and some earphones that make you worthless?
Side note to my side note: Does that doctorbot only scan arms? It could perform other diagnostics, but we saw it do an x-ray on a broken arm... If I think I have a rib fracture am I supposed to slide myself under the little ipad to check? Ah yes it seems you've broken your tailbone, but would you mind straddling this ipad on a stool so we can check? Great.🙈🙈

I should've played Elegant Empire bingo and drank every time someone said "deepfake" 😂😂
Yeah CEO Tak was stood there at the perfect moment. Usually the brake failure trope kicks in right before a busy intersection, but they were in the middle of nowhere...did Giyun drive all the way out there not braking once, or did Tak have a little "push to break brakes" button in his pocket just waiting for the car to go past? 😂 He'd have felt like a fool if Giyun hit traffic or went a different way.

Even in the context of a daily drama (you know they'll always be a certain level of bad), this was genuinely awful. I know what I'm getting into with a daily drama. I really do. But this surprised me with the level of terrible it was.
If I'm watching a scorned woman revenge drama, I want actual revenge, and a FL with some semblance of intelligence. She was like the personification of a wet dishcloth just flopping all over the place, totally useless, weak, no follow through with barely a half a plan to her name. Like if you know how useless you are why go for a revenge you are obviously incapable of? And she was so smug about her revenge plot even though she had no idea what she was doing and her plan fell apart right away. If it weren't for Jaclyn she'd have been in prison or in the ground. Multiple times she was just sitting next to a bug or camera and listing out her whole plan (shit as it was) to either a dude with dementia or just speaking it into the air, like come on. Just a smidge of common sense. Stop saying all your plots out loud. TBF they all did it, but she really should've known better.
I must have missed the whole revenge thing because THERE WAS NONE. The main bad guy died without ever facing any consequences. Multiple murderers and criminals got basically no punishment. The assistant security dude went to prison, and the politician dad. That's it. Also no clue how the assistant security dude went from pathetic, homeless, penniless and vulnerable, to injured in hospital, to back in his spiffy suit, to magically transported to the side of the road miles ahead of any other character with no transport in sight to indicate how the f he got there and seemingly uninjured...I just had to laugh.
The whole thing with the prosecutor pretending to be the bad guy was unnecessary. All that double crossing to get his smartwatch data? Really? If they can scream deepfake at every other piece of evidence, why can't they just say that's fake too?
And Giyuns dad was the ultimate disappointment. What a shit father, start to finish. Ah yeah save him by throwing everyone under the bus even though he's murdered multiple people, cool cool. At least he was consistently a terrible father, just in different ways.
My condolences to all the actors and crew who had to suffer through 105 episodes of this absolute trainwreck. The original actor playing Giyun dodged a bullet when he dipped at episode 32, maybe he saw what was to come and fled before it got any worse.

I'm really struggling with how to rate this. I hated it, but it was wonderful. It's just too realistic. It's left me feeling hollow and angry.

I hate Eiji for his weakness, his inability to defend his love against his terrible parents, and how quickly he betrayed Makki in favour of Meiko. It seemed like it only took days from the ultrasound for him to abandon a 3 year relationship without a second thought. I hate Meiko for being so desperately lonely that she torpedoed her two closest friends relationship just so that she wouldn't be left out. The pregnancy was a truly terrible idea and we all knew how it would go. From the first attempt to conceive when Makki wants to back out and they continue, the relationship starts to crumble. He was no longer consenting, and that's probably why when they tried again he wasn't involved. If she had actually meant it as a surrogacy, then you have a contract, an agreement, you don't actually have sex, and you forego custody as soon as the child is born. From the second she conceived she considered the baby hers, which was a betrayal itself, because that's not surrogacy.

She may be happy in the day to day, and if she actually repairs her friendship with him, maybe she'll be actually happy, but if they don't repair it (and I hope they don't), in the quiet little moments when the kid's asleep or at school and she's alone with her thoughts I hope she feels empty. And the same for Eiji. I hope every time he's sat in traffic or stood in the shower, or waiting in line somewhere... those little moments when you get those stray thoughts... I hope he feels hollow and heartbroken. I hope they grow to resent eachother for the rest of their lives and I hope when he's in his last days he's still fucking miserable. I hope he holds that regret and wallows in it until he's in the ground.

I hope Makki and the hairdresser heal together and find happiness, with eachother or on their own. My heart breaks for Makki. He was very young and was betrayed by his family. He was traumatised by the experience to the point that his weakness is her and the baby. He believes his love fell apart basically because he didn't have a uterus. Not so. It fell apart because his partner was weak and never considered him when making decisions, when planning his future.

Lastly I hate that the parents won. That miserable fuck told his gay son to just marry a woman and have a baby, and he did. He threw away his happiness for that bastard, and because he did it so easily that terrible terrible man thinks he was right. He learned nothing. He's still a homophobic bigot, and he just gets to play grandpa. It makes me want to vomit.

I wouldn't be so angry if it wasn't so realistic. If I didn't know this is the real situation for so many LGBTQ+ people who are forced to conform at the expense of themselves. It's heartbreaking. I'm sat here heaving sobs onto my laptop thinking about how it's too real.

I had to overcome my hatred of the mother and the awful and varied love rivals so that I could enjoy the leads and their friends. 😅The leads were cute together and acted well, and their friends were all nicely fleshed out and likeable in their own way.
I'm glad they didn't give MLs self-declared childhood sweetheart any extra airtime because she was totally unnecessary. FLs childhood sweetheart was even more pathetic as time went on. He shat all over his friendships, the person he claimed to care about, his own reputation and moral compass. And he did it all by his own choice while acting like someone made him do it. He was forgiven way too easily.
And the instigator of the leak...he should be in jail not running a wedding business. Easy outs for literal criminals I guess, and the good guys have to crawl their way out of a hole dug by someone else.
Overall I liked the story even though it did feel draggy at times. Their school friendship was very cute. I hated that they did a completely pointless long distance thing right at the end. There was no need. It added nothing, it just made me dislike FL. She had started to show a smidgen of a backbone finally after being a doormat to her abusive mother, and then she just lay down again. As soon as she realised she didn't need the money she should've just backed out of the shitty deal with her mother. "Sorry ma, don't need your gift with massive strings attached". Job done. Then even worse she leaves without ever telling him, knowing precisely how much that hurts, knowing just weeks before she was waking from nightmares about them separating. Selfish. The overall act is selfless, as far as the self sacrificing drama tropes go, but to not tell him anything is selfish. At least when he did it he was a child, had no choice, and they weren't dating eachother. She's a whole adult, who is emigrating without ever discussing or informing her boyfriend OR business partner. It really knocked my perception of her character and left me disappointed in her. Telling him she had to go or her mother would never believe her again is bollocks too, because she mother never believed or trusted a word she said ever. Her mother never saw her as an adult, or even as a person capable of making her own decisions. To me this is just another way for an awful parent to pat themselves on the back and say they knew they were right. And the dad is a garbage person who allowed his daughter to go through all that growing up and did nothing to protect her in any real way.
This turned into a rant by accident. 😅 But I just hated that they did that to her character when they didn't need to invent another hurdle in the penultimate episode. If you pull the investment from the mother out of the plot, it changes nothing for the startup (they got other investment), nothing for the overall story (they would just work hard for 2 years building their company together, we only got a time skip so it doesn't matter for us anyway). The mother STILL doesn't approve of him, she's just resigned to it now. So it added nothing of value.
Final stray thought... Why the hell would you pick those two assholes to be your best man and bridesmaid? They're awful people, and they have actual friends who can fill those roles. Him okay maybe at a stretch because they forgave him for being the worst and he was a friend. But her? She did exactly one halfway decent thing, and a dozen bad things. And she was never their friend.

The leads are super cute together and their chemistry is great. No big secrets (except the obvious), no massive misunderstanding that spanned several episodes, no break ups, just sweetness and mushy gushy romance.
Sometimes 2MLs bother me when they try to shoehorn them in as a legitimate rival, but in this case it's like a weird uncle trying to get with her. Everyone's an adult, and age gaps aren't the worst or anything, but he just has a looming uncomfy energy, even though he's about as interesting as beige wallpaper. Like dude was never her friend at all, from the second he saw her he was just trying to do enough nice things to reach some magic quota where she'd suddenly like him. Classic nice guy. I feel bad for the actor but he just does it so well.
His confession on his birthday has to be one of the most selfish things he could do as well. Tricked her into going to a romantic dinner with him while knowing she's into someone else (she only told him then but he knew). Then telling her he loves her, and trying to propose?! Who proposes to a friend that they've never expressed any interest in at all, to her knowledge? He even looked like he thought she might accept...delusional. And a friendship ender if it were me. He basically sat there and told her he approached her over the course of years with this in mind. We knew that already, but now she knows their entire friendship that she values so much was just a means to an end for him. It's nice that it wasn't dwelled on and they didn't make him turn vindictive or nasty like in other dramas. And I know he claimed it's enough that he can just stay her friend, so long as he's part of her life at all, but he still just gave biding his time energy to me. Maybe the actor was just too good at it. 😅

The leads are super cute together and their chemistry is great. Sometimes 2MLs bother me when they try to shoehorn them in as a legitimate rival, but in this case it's like a weird uncle trying to get with her. Everyone's and adult, and age gaps aren't the worst or anything, but he just has a looming gross energy, even though he's about as interesting as beige wallpaper. Like you can tell dude was never her friend at all, from the second he saw her he was just trying to do enough nice things to reach some magic quota where she'd suddenly like him. Classic nice guy. Vom. I feel bad for the actor but he just does it so well. 100% creepy uncle, but also completely non-threatening...weird.

I've been binging this in small doses, and I swear when I last checked it was supposed to be over at 100eps today. Did they add another 5? Why? There's really no need for this shit show to get any more episodes.

Oh so Mountain God figures out he's cursed generations of FLs family for absolutely no reason, realises he was wrong about how Ji Ah's past life died, and he just walks away like it's nothing... Did he even lift the curse or are they all still cursed? They don't even have a way to know without going out and kissing some other person to check. Would it have been too much for him to just acknowledge he fucked up? Maybe a smidge of an apology for her family.
I know FL isn't totally blameless, I mean she did tell the authorities she knew were her lady was, and then led them right to her, but it seemed like they followed her and she's just an idiot, and when they found her she was holding the dog already who'd been with FL before so she had to be really near by anyway.
I had to laugh when he told Ji Ah not to dwell on her past life because the past is the past or whatever, as if he hasn't been tormenting generations of a family for their ancestors fuck up. And he deliberately traumatised a tiny child into having a life long fear of dogs just for the plot.
If only Mountain God had been standing in a slightly different spot to see what really happened.
Overall I liked this. Their chemistry was great, the acting was all good, the dogs were cute, it was sweet and funny and I liked that it's a school setting but not centered around the kids for once.
I gritted my teeth and waited to binge it until it finished airing, and I'm so glad I did because there's no way I could have watched weekly.