njjang

i really enjoyed this show overall, but i agree that it dragged a little around ep 7 which is crazy for a show with only 10 eps to begin with. nailing the right pacing is one of the things so many shows seem to struggle with.

while how the plot played out was more realistic, part of me was definitely hoping for more closure with se jun's character - since mirae's loneliness & hesitation to open up to someone in reality all stemmed from what he said to her during their breakup. i wanted a scene where mirae & gyeong nam are on a date & run into sejun with yumi so they could acknowledge each others' happiness without each other.

i think this show is really topical with all the AI boyfriend content going around these days & many of the cameos had me squealing. it seems like people are judging this show too harshly. there are ways it could have been better, but it was perfectly fine for a romance drama! i feel happy about the character arcs generally & the acting was not bad.

even though this show wasn't without miscommunication, i loved miyata's honest outbursts. in any other show a character would have those moments & then they'd show us it was just in their head, in this show i appreciated that they never faked us out like that.

i have so many feelings about this show that i don't know where to begin.

i never read the webtoon, but seeing the comments about that ending - i do understand why people prefer it & i agree. the ending could definitely be better, but at the very least it did not negate the impact of the entire show which sometimes happens for me.

although the writing was not perfect, i don't think anything could convince me to hate this show. the acting, the cinematography & the editing were all TOP NOTCH. the whole time i watched this show, i kept thinking any actor with a deep love of the craft would kill to do a series like this. i'm sure it took a lot out of everyone to depict these characters.

👏👏👏👏👏 all the cast & crew worked hard!

personally i don't think the last few episodes are inconsistent with ah jin's character or sociopathy for two reasons:
1) i feel ah jin has made it clear that in her twisted mind, what she wants is someone who accepts the bad things she's doing & loves her anyway. it's why jun seo knows jae oh is actually a better choice for her, because he does that with no questions asked. ah jin just never had a parental figure to do that before & i think she felt it with in gang's grandma for the first time, only for that to be quickly taken away. the whole end of ep 8 was about how she let herself get hopeful she could finally have that but then had those feelings crushed.
2) sociopaths can form emotional bonds with some people & choose not to harm them. i think audiences (including myself) strongly want ah jin to only "hurt" people who are "bad," but that's not how sociopaths work & it's not how ah jin has been functioning either.

i think what you said is very accurate & it also matches the way many experts explain the difference between psychopaths & sociopaths. it is generally accepted/believed that psychopathy has a genetic component (like you said, ka young was born that way even though she grew up in a loving home) while sociopathy is "made" from trauma/environment.

also while a lot of people are criticizing some of ah jin's decisions as being dumb, i think they are doing a good job of depicting the "impulsivity" that is known to be associated with sociopaths, even though she is still being extremely manipulative. not all of her plans work out well because she is being very reactive instead of calculated, which is the way that a psychopath is expected to be.

lol what. there's literally a whole part when wooju is eating with jingyeong where they talk about wooju's ex girlfriends always complaining to her after they broke up??

this one was truly great. i laughed, i squealed & i cried. am i too biased because i love meng na & zhang ji jun? possibly lol. they definitely elevated the script though, A+

this was a masterpiece to me. i am definitely someone guilty of skipping parts of dramas, but this was a no skip drama for me. also i genuinely was interested in ALL the characters, which can be difficult when there's so many (particularly in palace ones). but they fleshed out everyone pretty well. i've never really seen a character like ji yong in a drama, so i really enjoyed him. i also really love dramas where it's like the couple against the world together. i feel like that plot is not as common as i'd like & it's even more rare to occur for the majority of a show. i loved it so much.

i felt exactly the same way as you. in other genres it's normal to have unlikable / morally grey characters or even villains, but it's so weird that every character in a rom-com was so terrible? i appreciated kang baek ho's flirting & their kissing scenes were always nice, but that was literally it lol.

i especially could not get over that scene with baek ho & hee jin where she talked about how she was immature & selfish but said "i would make the same decision again" like it was meant to be profound. i felt mostly neutral to hee jin at that point, but instead of demonstrating growth & learning from a terrible experience like you'd normally see at the end of a show, it made me move from neutral to despising her. also the fact that she was implying her karma was that she couldn't settle down anywhere - immediately struck me as a wildly privileged thing to say. am i supposed to pity hee jin that they literally ruined someone's life for no reason but poor her has to travel all over the world which is often a luxury in itself? ridiculous lol.

i think i liked baek ho more than i should have just because he was kang tae oh - but when mi kyung initially found out he was responsible for everything that happened to her, i couldn't help feeling like it was weird that she was focusing on the fact that he did that to HER & being like "ok, he was just following orders!" cause i'd consider it a pretty glaring red flag if my loved ones had no problem with mentally & financially hurting someone they KNEW was innocent for such a stupid situation. i am happy he developed some empathy though, so at least he had more growth than some of the others.

anyway, glad it was only 12 eps & that it's over now :)

a lie is not just a false statement. a lie is a false statement with the intent to deceive. hyperbole, by definition, is not meant to be taken literally. so there is no intent to deceive. you called it out as hyperbole, so clearly it is recognizable as such.

if you think the same scene setup 5 times in one show is fine, then that's why you like this drama. that's what is called a "preference," which every audience member is allowed to have. if someone doesn't like that, then they can leave a comment saying so for other people to see. then people with a preference toward disliking drawn out misunderstandings will avoid it.

personally, i don't like watching long melodramas. that doesn't mean there aren't amazing, superb quality shows that are melodramas? but if i go in the comments & see people talking about how much angst is in the show, if there's a tragic ending, etc - then i'm not going to watch it. i'm grateful for those comments giving me that perspective since it's not my preference to sit through something i won't enjoy.

the communication between these characters are not good for a large majority of the show. that is just a fact. the "character driven" part of the drama is that they're not good at expressing themselves. if someone prefers dramas with good communication between couples, then this is not the drama to turn to for that.

so your response is that because there are targeted attacks on douban no regular watchers on other sites can point out things they didn't like about this story? i specifically disregarded the "flaws" you're referring to because they are not issues to me. my issue was the writing going in circles.

hyperbole is not an attack; that's how a drama made someone feel. there was not "zero" communication for 20 episodes, but considering that the main misunderstanding of shi yan's niece being her ex boyfriend's new girlfriend is not resolved for 26 episodes - which is longer than the length of many full dramas - why would you be surprised that some people feel that way?

i'll tell you what i am referring to about the "same mistake 80 times" from my my memory. unless a show is slice of life, generally the scenes have a purpose to drive the plot. but this show liked to show the same situation way more than once. how many scenes were there of guan ji realizing ruo shan saw him with other girls, but he was literally unable to explain one single word? how many scenes were there of ruo shan telling shu yi that of course shi yan misinterpreted what she said or shu yi herself feeling stupid for bringing up the digital article exclusives/work in romantic moments, but she never once tries to clarify it with shi yan? how many times after realizing she did have feelings for shi yan, did shu yi say that she "needed to tell him the truth" but ultimately never did & it was revealed out of her control? of course that last one is the norm for a plot with a "misunderstanding" at the center, but many people's negative opinions are just that it dragged on TOO LONG which is valid. if you feel it was paced well & did not go on too long, that is also a valid opinion. both are subjective so neither are objectively wrong, which means they're not "lies" like you're claiming.

i'm curious if you consider any criticism of this drama valid? based on your comments, it seems that anyone who disliked even the tiniest aspect of this show is quick to find fault, but you still mention there are flaws in this show. what type of flaws are you referring to when you say comments are acting like they only afflict this drama?

i laid out multiple negative issues i heard about this drama & determined that they would not bother me, so i went in with an open mind. if i were quick to find fault, then i wouldn't have even attempted to watch this show & form my own opinion.

i totally agree with you & i think the way their relationship is depicted is so weird. they show them as distant, they both lied to each other about their lives in the past & they're never sharing with each other what's happening in their lives right now? but then they keep repeatedly telling other characters that they can only be honest around each other & that they're best friends lol.

absolutely this!! i understand why people don't like jihan, but i actually think the show has done a good job of showing us jihan being a brat & then following it up with a scene reminding him that he has so much trauma. he's being ridiculous trying to control his older brother & dohan is struggling for his own reasons, but it's also so sad every time dohan pushes him away since jihan has no one else.
i also don't get why so many comments think ah jung is "cheating" or being romantic with jihan. so far i felt like (maybe with the exception of the busan scene when he was sleeping) she has been kind of motherly. she's protective over him because she feels bad seeing him hurt & she's concerned about the relationship with the brothers. i don't think she sees him romantically yet (maybe next episode lol)

hahah no, i enjoy all the rambling! i definitely think they're hinting at more for do han - it seems like they're going to delve into the relationship he had prior to NY & how his partner was hurt by his family. i am hoping that do han's character growth is about getting stronger & protecting those around him. i don't think this has to mean he runs the company, but we've just started & he seems completely exhausted already. he pulled ah jung in basically knowing he can't protect her because he ran to NY after what happened to his ex-boyfriend. & because he's so defeated, he can't be there for jihan either.

i hate that the half siblings keep implying the mom died because of jihan... those types of plots drive me crazy, especially when the person involved was usually also part of the traumatic accident. but we'll see where they go with that i guess.

i honestly thought the half siblings' dad was dead before he showed up in episode 4 lol. he seems terrible & the grandpa definitely regrets forcing that marriage.

i think you meant chae won, because seung ah is their half sister.

good candidate in whose perspective though? the whole reason dohan chose ah jung was that he doesn't want to take over the business. they said multiple times that if he was with chae won, it would help dohan look better to the shareholders & give him more support as the successor. dohan wants the opposite.

i do think ah jung got super pissed in the moment & agreed to the marriage to spite jihan, but i also think part of why jeon jong seo is amazing here are the scenes where she's "acting" as ah jung. they keep showing us that when ah jung acts, she's still incorporating truth into what she's saying. so i think that the explanation she gave do han's grandfather for why she changed her mind is actually true. because do han & ah jung did have multiple check ins that both of them wanted to go through with this after her anger-fueled phone call to him.

i wish ah jung & do han would communicate better as "best friends," but they did establish that they've been in the habit of keeping things from each other for their entire friendship so i guess it's to be expected lol.

i decided to watch this drama knowing that there were some negative comments since it was airing, but i felt like most of the criticisms i heard are not things that would bother me (like dylan's voice, the camera angles, too much business talk, bai lu & dylan being convincing as a journalist & CEO respectively). i really love them both & miles wei too, so i thought i would just watch at face value.

however, the issues with the plot are valid to me & i definitely felt as frustrated as many of these comments do. i was getting so confused by the communication in this show that i kept switching between 3 streaming platforms in the beginning to see if i was missing something due to the subtitle translations. i'm sure some of the problem is due to my ignorance with chinese, but some of it is definitely the writing.

it's completely normal for drama characters to have flaws & be like regular humans, but that doesn't mean i have to enjoy a character making the same mistake 80 times. i think people would have been more open to this plot if it was 24 or even maybe 30 episodes, because the amount of times it was like "FL does X, ML interprets as Y" "ML says A, FL interprets as B" was seriously maddening & way too much. sometimes it wasn't even just misinterpreting things, but the (way too frequent) moments of characters saying WEIRD things that not only sounded terrible out of context with other characters overhearing, they also sounded terrible WITH context? even when others pointed out to ML/FL (more so FL) how their comments could be perceived the wrong way, they never did anything to correct or clarify themselves to each other until the end. my final small pet peeve for this show was the fact that even when someone got a call & held the phone to their ear, they acted as if everyone in the room could hear the person on the other end. this was so strange to me? LOL

the most understandable part of this drama to me was bai lu being endlessly bothered by other guys hahahah. no matter what role bai lu is playing, it's always believable to me that she's being pursued nonstop. there's many times when it makes no sense why multiple people are into a ML or FL in shows, but it always makes sense to me for bai lu!

that concept about the souls being genderless is an interesting one; i get your point! it's sad to look at my own biases & think i'm that stuck in the gender construct LOL i'm not really sold on the idea that he's been preparing for years to live as a woman, but i guess we'll see if that's where they take it.

i'm with you. i just watched ep 19 & was like.... what. lol. i don't even understand what emotions they were trying to convey at the end of that episode. it does seem a little wild that there hasn't been character growth for... literally anyone this entire time. besides our leads, yumi, jung woo, the higher ups, even underdog team - no one has really had any breakthroughs. curious how they'll wrap everything up. we're almost to the end!