monstersnroses

I guess, if you can call a man that looks like Toothless from How to Train Your Dragon, wearing a silk scarf and a brooch "gorgeous".

But yeah, I sense ZERO chemistry. Maybe she wasn't into the brooch.

That's so awesome.

No, if I was a simp I would be using broken english and a lot of emojis.

Your optimism is refreshing.

I love dark ML's. If I go in a comments section and see a bunch of screeching about "toxic" or "red flag", I immediately watch it. So when someone's like "Xie Wei is toxic" I'm like "Well sure he throat-grabbed her once, but so what. It's not like he falsified her medical records to make her think she has terminal cancer. It's not like he kidnapped her and tied her to a chair with a lie detector and chased her through the woods till she passed out from hunger and then dragged her back home. It's not like he's literally the devil. It's not like he's some fast food chain owner who puts poison in the fried chicken and watched FL's grandpa die in an arson he instigated. It's not like he's literally her brother."

I think the most stockholm thing he did was stab himself in the guts in front of her. And you can't really call that assault, per se.

Besides, she's into him. And who wouldn't be, he's so wicked hot omGGGGGG!!!! If it were me, I'd play hard to get for some of that forced kiss action. Wewwww LAWD!

She's high on 3rd wave feminism. It's a helluva drug.

I am literally at work rn.

Sure. Maybe he does send grieving families with good hearts to Hell for ALL ETERNITY. But he's just so funny and cute tho!!! Such a wholesome love story! I mean it's so heartwarming that he tells a 5 year old with terminal cancer "Hey kid, cheer up. Now you'll die when youre 15 instead of five And when you get to heaven, daddy won't be there because he will be burning in hell. But you will be comforted knowing he is burning for YOU. Isn't that great?!"

Since he's 200, and these people are about 40 or so, that's like a high school kid tricking a 4th grader out of his lunch money. But only instead of lunch money, it's their SOUL. But whatever. I dont' care that ML is possibly the biggest bully ever portrayed in a k-drama. The shower scene was really original and I love cake so I gave it a 10.

I think she gets paid to do it. I could be wrong. It might be a very young and very crazed fan. But I've suspected that with some shows - korean and chinese - part of the PR is to deploy "social influencers" and communications-major pre- and post-grad students whose literal JOB it is to sell products using fake personas.

I don't know if any of you have ever met someone majoring in a communications degree.... but I have. They get paid to do things like go to big parties or clubs and hang out with eachother and pretend to act casual and then say something like "This _______ energy drink tasts so f*cking good, omg." And then go back to normal conversation. They make dozens of twitter and insta profiles for fictitious people. They curate those fake-person pages, with pics of a hamburger they ate or a hike they took. To make those accounts look real. They do this for years sometimes. And then they sell space on their fake accounts to people for stuff like concert promotions or beverage companies.

I mean why is it with these hyped shows, they start out with such ridiculously high ratings, and then that rating steadily drops over time. I think that's because PR people are involved in artificially inflating the ratings when a show first comes out. But the PR budget for a show isn't infinite. They create the hype only for a certain period of time. The first week of a show, the first month of a show, something like that. Then they move on to a different project.

So first the ratings are being pumped. But then REAL people start watching the show and rating it with a REAL rating.

I've seen a lot of k-dramas, and they portray media PR people as exactly like this. Arent these portrayals of Public Relations departments drawn from real life examples?

Sylvie. Joined a month ago. Nothing on watchlist.
Dodo. Joined a couple days ago. Nothing on watchlist.
Harry. Joined today. Nothing on watchlist.

If their chemistry was insane, then in the back half of the drama, when they're cuddling on the couch together. you'd get this feeling like they are going to rip eachother's clothes off any minute. But I didn't. I got this feeling like they're going to just eat cake and fall asleep smiling inanely at eachother.

WHAT!? who!!??

Trying to find a green-flag "dark ML" is a tall order. I can't think of any that I've seen.

Touche.

We can't leave the kids alone in the house with stacy.

We've discussed extensively on the SoKP page if the ML is red flag or green flag. There is no real consensus, although most people walk away saying "gray". The 25% or so of people who didn't like the show, the primary complaints were: 1) ML is too toxic for me 2) I have 2ML syndrome and 3) The romance is taking too long to happen.

I come at it from the other end of the spectrum where I love all sorts of toxic ML's and so this one to me seems pretty tame. I'd personally call him a gray flag. He is controlling. That's his main "toxic" feature. Also there is a throat-grabbing scene, I HATE those... but at the time he is suffering from a specific type of dementia/ptsd. He doesn't do it when in his right mind. I wish the chinese would give up on the throat-grabbing thing it's so so awful imo. But so that's the worst of him.

FL is def not a doormat though. Their power dynamic is about 60% ML/ 40% FL.

This one is medium-high-end on the production value. I'm trying to think of a k-drama with similar film quality. Maybe Alchemy of Souls.

The acting isn't the cheesy style, i'd say it's kind of on par with That Winter the Wind Blows, Misty, or The K2. ML is lowkey and subtle, FL is Bai Lu.... she can get a bit hammy in some of her roles, but in this one she keeps it well reigned in, and manages to keep up well on matching tones with the ML. Side characters' acting is also kept reined in. Some are a bit hammier than others, but no one is outright overacting except FL's father and mother (slightly doing that chinese overacting thing. They don't have much screentime.)

Dubbing is imo highly tolerable. It's only dubbed in some parts, with the original actor's voice with no horrible flaws, and much of it seems not dubbed. I'm watching it right now to check the dubbing, and it's that kind of dubbing where you can't really tell for sure if it's actually dubbed and where, unless you pay close attention.

But I understand if you just can't. I mean, no matter how good a Thai drama is, idk if I could make it through.

I recc it here because it's the best "dark ML" I've ever seen. I figure if you went into My Demon expecting "dark" and aren't happy with the degree of levity and cartoony-ness they gave the show, SoKP might just be your cup of tea. It's not supernatural or wuxia though. But it definitely has this undertone of Twilight-vampy that I just totally love. Where there's shots in the snow, and at night, everyone's skin is made up slightly pale, with ruby lips and great hair and ML has very intense eyebrows, is powerful, somber and self-contained (most of the time), and likes the FL in that way where at first she thinks he despises her.

You're literally interacting with a sock acct. Aigoo.

I looked over your watchlist, you haven't checked out Till The End Of The Moon yet? To me, that's the only historical/wuxia that even comes close to having a similar feel to this one. But to be fair, some people here didn't think they were all that alike because the dynamic between the ML and FL is different in TTEOTM.

There's a short-length c-drama that's (obviously) not as good as this one, but has a similar feel to it (kind of) called Extremely Perilous Love. Even though it's not as good, it's just a small time investment, just a one or two day binge-session. I think the ML's have a similar vibe and somewhat similar look. EPL is a wuxia/historical type as well.

I liked A Dream of Splendor, another historical c-drama, with a dark ML. But that one has a slightly lighter tone to it, the ML is dark but not as dark as Xie Wei. I thought it was extremely decent. Again, nowhere near as good as SoKP, but still good, imo.

ikr, Xie Wei is the hottest ML I've ever seen, and considering their budget, it had such excellent cinematography. The story was clean, pacing was perfect, and the emotional tone of the show was consistent from beginning to end.... I can't find any fault with this drama at all. Except the throat-grabbing thing the chinese do that I'm not a fan of. But in his defense, he had snow dementia at the time, so even that isn't the worst thing ever.

Is it the accent? I can't make it through a thai drama because of the accents. I'm trying to think of good k-dramas with a dark ML, but c-dramas just have them beat on that, not even close. SoKP is probably the best thing I've ever watched out of like 250 dramas. If not best, then def in my top 5, easy.

Everyone who likes "dark MLs" and isn't having much fun with this show should immediately drop everything and go watch Story of Kunning Palace.