Spukhafte Fernwirkungen

Ah! Excellent. I'm glad you enjoyed it ^_^

Thanks. I've been planning on reading it, although I'm glad I didn't before watching the drama because I definitely would have been comparing the two the entire time. The drama was pretty close to perfect for me (and I'm starting to form the opinion that Shin Hye Sun is about the best actress out there right now), but I am curious what the webtoon is like.

As someone who quite liked 'Tomorrow' and considers 'See You in My 19th Life' to be the best drama to come out so far this year, I think 'Destined with You' is pretty close to unwatchable. I finally dropped it this week after trying my hardest to like it through 13 episodes. For me, both the writing and directing have been really bad - there are so many contradictions with the characters' fundamental traits that it feels like it was written by 20 different people who didn't bother to communicate with each other about the basics, and that led to me not having any emotional connection to any of them. As much as I love Rowoon, he was handed one of the worst written characters I've seen in a while with this drama - from my perspective, Jang Shin Yu has almost no personality of his own and has been written to fill the needs of the plot (which likely explains many of the writing inconsistencies for his character), so instead of being one of the things driving the story, he's been relegated to a device that either provides convenient explanations for plot holes or adds unnecessary filler. I think the chemistry between our leads suffers for this because he's sort of "just there" instead of giving me a substantial character to latch onto and root for. There are a lot more things that totally turned me off this show (including the FL's confusingly abrupt change of heart about which guy she was interested in), but those are some of the main things I had problems with. So, if your tastes are similar enough to mine, this may not be a very satisfying viewing experience.

For anyone reading this far into my critique who loves this drama: I'm genuinely happy for you that you do enjoy it. A lot of things obviously didn't work very well for me, but that's just me and my tastes. I hope you continue to enjoy the drama until the closing credits and that we all continue to find new dramas we enjoy in the future! ^_^

Maybe they were fine on Disney+, but Disney+ does not stream their Korean dramas in the US. Instead, Disney ships them over to Hulu for American audiences (usually months after they've finished airing on Disney+ in other countries) and streams them there, using closed captions for the hearing impaired with no option for standard non-hearing impaired subtitles like Netflix has. So, American viewers get things like "[melodramatic music playing]", "[phone ringing]", "[car door shuts]", etc. mixed in with the dialog as their only English subtitling option, which I find pretty distracting. It would be nice to have standard subtitles in addition to the closed captions for the hearing impaired, but I dont think Disney cares much about the American viewers interested in Korean dramas.

This has been driving me crazy too. Korean drama fans are obviously bottom tier viewers to Disney/Hulu. I also don't like the implication this type of thing conveys that Americans aren't interested/shouldn't be interested in anything that doesn't happen in their own country.

While I agree about the "funny faces" thing, that seemed like a directorial decision. Having seen Kim Sung Kyun in a few other things, that's not his normal acting style.

I can't recall too many Korean dramas like this, but there are tons of Japanese dramas that feel like this one did - Shinya Shokudou, Biblia Koshodou no Jiken Techou, and Haruka no Hikari instantly spring to mind, but there are many others. Shinya Shokudou also had a Korean remake if you stick mainly with Kdramas (but I didn't like it as much as the Japanese original).

Hahaha, yeah, we most definitely don't see it the same way 😅 At least it's nice to have a nontoxic discussion of differing opinions, which is kinda rare these days. Fwiw, I may have given the wrong impression when writing about Jae Hoon - I don't actually see either Jae Hoon or Ji Yun's actions as being "clingy". I think they both just put themselves in the most advantageous positions they could to try to sway the emotions of the one they care about.

And I guess I should add that the only couple I'm actively cheering on in this drama is Joon and Ji Wan 😆

Anyway, peace and happy viewing! ✌️

I'm still not seeing that much of a difference between Jae Hoon and Ji Yun. I mean, 20 years of friendship is 20 years of friendship, but when he confessed and she said no, that was that - everything he's done to simp for her after that has planted him firmly on the same ground as Ji Yun, in my opinion. We as viewers get to know what's really going on in Yu Reum's mind, but he doesn't, so I view him rushing off a bus to save Yu Reum from the horrors of a knee deep puddle as being arguably as clingy as anything Ji Yun did. I'm pretty neutral about both Jae Hoon and Ji Yun's actions - sometimes people find someone they want to be with and put forth their best effort to show that person what they mean to them, and it doesn't necessarily mean they have low self esteem or are clowns, it just means they found some spark in that person they want to have near them and want to give it their best shot. I mean, that's why we watch these kind of dramas, isn't it - to see characters doing what they can to hold on to the person they think is "the one". I guess my whole point with this is that if Ji Yun were the lead, people would likely be cheering her on in her pursuit instead of calling her clingy with low self-esteem. But, she's the SFL and the "love rival", so people view her actions with a far less positive perspective.

As far as Jae Hoon confessing right after the failed wedding.... yeah, definitely not the brightest or most sensitive move on his part. He really should have waited, haha.

But isn't "I'm not interested" exactly what Yu Reum said to Jae Hoon? And he's still been all swoony over her the entire drama. As Subash267 already wrote in this comment section: "She simply can't beat ml when it comes to simping."

I definitely agree with you about Chef John/Joon and Ji Wan. They're easily the most fun to watch in this drama. I feel like our leads only ended up getting together because the writer suddenly remembered it was what the audience was expecting.

The only couple I'm rooting for in this drama is Chef John and Ji Wan.

I think it's worth pointing out here that she has acted exactly like the ML has acted toward the FL for most of the drama.

I'd say it's definitely romance focused. If you're a fan of well-told law stories like Stranger, Beyond Evil, or Good Detective, you'll probably feel disappointed with a lot of stuff, especially in the last two episodes. The romance is really fun though, and it was a treat to watch our two leads in something light and fluffy after seeing them together in Bossam.

Idk what your idea of "way too old" is but seeing as how she's only 32, she's still got quite a while to play the lead in more historical dramas if she wants :D

The final episode was such a mess that I may have missed it in all the nonsense, but did they ever give a reason why the FL had to be frozen again instead of just going to the hospital to get operated on for the stab wound? I'm not talking about conjecture where us viewers have to fill in the blanks with our own theories, but an actual reason supplied by the story itself. As I said, I may have missed it, but I can't recall it being explained in the story.

I also went with that thought for a bit after I first watched it, but wasn't satisfied with it after subsequent viewings (which is how I ended up here now, haha). Anyway, all will be revealed soon. This drama has already pleasantly surprised me a couple times and I hope it continues doing that to very end... chances are quite likely it will :)

Hahaha, I feel a challenge coming on :D Yeah, I've replayed that scene about 10 times to see if there was some other explanation that satisfied me and didn't find one. K was sitting on the ground quite a few feet away from the woman, with the woman in question not losing her balance somehow and falling but actually flying over the wall to her death when K sneezed. So, yeah - sneezed to death. Unless this is all taking place in Kyung Yi/Yi Kyung's head, in which case you're right because no one would have actually died in that scene ;) Which is one of many reasons I'm going in that direction - because it really was an impossible murder.

Maybe you're thinking the "supernatural being/(now merged with) aunt spirit" pushed her? I could see that, except, if we're taking the story at face value as being "real" instead of all the events happening inside Kyung Yi/Yi Kyung's head, the supernatural element is presented more as K's delusion than an actual entity - K's the only one that can see it, and, aside from (possibly) opening a car door and (possibly) pushing someone off a roof, it's surprisingly hands-off for an apparently murderous spirit that can interact physically with people. If it can push a person off a roof, it seems like the body count would be even higher in the world around K because it would be occasionally pushing someone in front of a car or dropping some random heavy object on someone's head every now and then in addition to supposedly giving K the green light about who's okay to be the next victim. Its appearances have been far too brief and underwhelming to seem like anything more to me than K's imagination and an extra level of character depth in the story. I've been wrong before and I could definitely be wrong here, but, at this point in the drama, they'd have to play the supernatural element up hard to actually have it fit in the story in a coherent way outside of simply being a variation of Son of Sam's talking dog. For me, the more plausible idea for all this is what I wrote previously- that all of this is happening in Kyung Yi/Yi Kyung's head, with none of it real. We shall see... :D However it turns out, I'm excited to find out how they wrap up this enjoyable little drama.

No mention of the Oldboy reference in episode 10 here on MDL? I thought that was cool, especially with Lee Young Ae being the lead in the final movie of the "vengeance trilogy" :D

I'm thinking this whole thing plays out like the 2003 US movie 'Identity', where all the events are happening in Kyung Yi/Yi Kyung's head and none of it is real. The quirky coincidental things (both our leads having the same name in reversed order, the same doorlock code, standing on rooftops to try to get a lead in what they're trying to figure out, etc.) and impossible things (a sneeze causing someone to fly off a rooftop to their death? come on...) make it hard for me to buy the events as "real life" within the drama. I mean, the entire first episode was set up to make us think the Yi Kyung flashbacks were actually flashbacks to Kyung Yi in high school, so we've already been exposed to the idea they're one person (and I actually spent most of that episode thinking the students pulling out phones to take pictures of the kittens was a production error until the AlphaGo match was mentioned on the TV Geon-uk's father was watching and realized the flashback was 5 years ago instead of 25+ years ago and the whole thing was a beautifully executed misdirection, haha). Even the new intro animation starting at episode 9 has Kyung Yi turning into Yi Kyung a couple times. I'm very curious to see how this all plays out...

I will admit to being surprised in my brief look through this comment section that nobody seemed to mention anything about K literally sneezing somebody to death, haha :D

IKR? William Shakespeare ruined so many of his plays that way ;)