nini

I really do think this show was just too ahead of its time, lol, at least if it aired now, people would at least watch to see how the subject matter was handled. Somehow managed to predict the stifling loneliness and grief caused by COVID and the AI codependency that's come along with it, all without even being produced with that context. It's not that it's not beautiful, but to me, the defining asset of this show has always been that it's slow to the point of suffocation; it's a really great use of form, and a lot of writers forget that the advantage of television is that you spend a very long time watching the characters. You spend a LOT of time watching them here, and you can feel every minute, their misery is so abundant that when the healing starts, you barely notice. Such a shame it got cut down.

this is a show that is truly defined and elevated by its last third... those 4 episodes do so much with what felt like filler setup. in some ways its wish fulfillment, but this dramas commitment to feminist themes and its kindness to queerness and disability, both in a mental and physical sense, shows a level of intersectionality and care thats desperately missing from the kdrama sphere. often shows will try and reach for depth through struggle, but refuse to acknowledge that struggles systemic roots. i deeply appreciate our unwritten seoul deciding that its not only possible to want and hope for better, but showing that getting better societally and personally is a series of opening small doors for yourselves and others. theres so much love in this show that even its messiness slid right off my back, im really happy to see more heartfelt stories of women through generations again and i hope it continues.

i mean everyone is allowed to like what they want but the discussions in these comments are uncharitable at best and quite literally saying 'bromance' shows are better than shows revolving around legitimate queer anxieties which is homophobic by definition so

obsessed w u saying as a closeted lesbian like lmaooo if u read anything i said i think it becomes extremely clear i am also queer and also specifically a closeted lesbian. yall r dead set on this show being homophobic and atp theres nothing i can say

in my view seungwon was .. very obviously developed. he was restrained partly because of his personality but also partly because he couldnt break out of his shell due to his queerness. he had a very introspective personality which is why his fears chewed him up and he found it so hard to be open, he focused so hard on school and kept to himself not only because of family situation but also because hes a teenage boy whos alone most of the time and unused to reaching out. hes obviously snarky around jiyu and it comes out of him around heesu too when he teases im really struggling to understand what about him was boring and flat because i know and have known many young gay boys very similar to him lol. heesu is ostensibly not buried by straight people, in fact he is very very obviously the lead and his emotions are being mirrored by these scenes to drive in his general loneliness. you not being able to see it doesnt mean it wasnt there and is indicative of the very ways you watch media. the idea of saying "you people" when i discuss myself and my view on queer characters, and to say that my interpretation of a story that is Very overt just because you didnt get it and are hell bent on blocking your ears shows you're not a person i even want to be having these conversations with lol good day

i genuinely feel as if i watched a different show to you if you think seungwon had no character development and we knew nothing about him outside of his crush... the gay ml wasnt apologizing for coming out he was projecting his fears about his identity on his friends and deeply terrified of people knowing about his gayness. he apologizes to both chanyoung and seungwon for his feelings because its a manifestation of his own closet anxiety and fear. this is a kdrama, the show IS built around those two. side characters having plots is not a problem to me, and the side character plots arent throwaways theyre meant to mirror the anxieties the two mls feel. chanyoungs struggle in doing tennis without the approval of his father is a mirror for heesus fear of not being accepted, something very common for queer people, and jiyus inability to sing publicly is another mirror for both seungwon and heesu being scared to come out into the light even if only to the people they care about. by fleshing out the side characters, including the sisters, the themes of repression and being forced into line in a world unprepared to handle you and that you are also unprepared to handle are strengthened. they made this very clear in the narrative, heesus character is so fidgety and flighty because his anxiety over identity is literally trapping him. you cant have a story set in the Real World about real people and then say there dont need to be straight people because unfortunately that is just not reality! especially for highschoolers! families are straight and friends are straight and having a show where the character is this terrified to come out but the straight characters around him accept him regardless is not a thing that i think should be treated with this vitriol. they used a very famous ip to draw viewers in sure, but bl is a niche and this show is doing its utmost to make sure it can appeal to general audiences outside of the niche and that is very very necessary for the progression of overall queer stories. it is short minded and unkind to pretend this show was trying to erase queer stories or that it didnt care about its gay characters when in reality its discussing underwritten topics with clarity. wanting something different out of the show and the show being bad are two very seperate things, a bad adaptation of source material sure but a bad queer television show it is not.

extremely upset by the response to this... so much of it feels actively nonsensical for a show that actually cares abt what being in the closet and battling your own identity means for the characters. no kissing doesnt mean no explicit queerness and as someone who read and loved the manhwa before this aired, the idea that it being a 'kdrama' instead of a kbl is a knock instead of a sign that more productions are trying to depict queer characters as a part of the world around them. its reaching for a larger audience than the niche of BL as queer people in korea work to be accepted in the world around them. saying bromance shows are better than one where there are multiple discussions on the structural barriers and societal fears plaguing gay people in day to day life is legitimate homophobia and being unable to see that is why Actual Queer Narratives get pushed to the sidelines so often. this show had romance, but not all queer life is Just Romance. if you sincerely believe this show offered nothing new and didnt have anything to say you are either not the ally you think you are, or you're queer and need expand your palette very quickly. a kiss would have been great, and its very likely it didnt happen because of censorship and that is worth criticism, but this is a show that cares not only about its characters but also what being gay actually means. the hate train is misguided especially for such a kind show whos aim is VERY evidently to present a cute, and heartwrenching gay ml and allow him to live his life. even the straight side characters exist to serve as contrast, they can have the easiness and the public confessions because things are different for them. the show addresses this Many many many times and its an obvious metatextual struggle for not only the characters but a production that wishes the 'queer kdramas' everybody is speaking so unkindly about were as much a norm as the kbls coming out every year. the discourse is unkind and deeply misguided in so many ways that it makes me wonder what people even really want out of these queer stories, or if they even see bls as a medium for queerness at all.

i think my issue is that this season is so deeply average.. such a run of the mill action where season 1 grappled with so many themes and cared so deeply about its characters

lol the way you can feel netflix micromanagement alter the show and its emotional beats. not bad by any means but an ineffective follow up thats obviously scared of letting down its fanbase. its also funny to day that because the fanbase itself has altered how theyre telling the story and the way theyre approaching building new character relationships. it is what it is!

Well theyre not supposed to be paragons is what im saying, we've been led to believe theyre complex as well even if theyre not morally grey as everyone else is. But the show is afraid to have them make actual mistakes the way every other character does, instead they hear Cheng Yes issues and Both immediately fall into a lecture. The writing uses these shortcuts to show theyre so Good they dont fall into the potholes the other characters do and they can seperate their feelings from everything, which is a direct contradiction to the fact that Fan Yue is so deeply affected he upends his life and curses himself. If the writers dont want them to be morally grey then why was he written that way, capable of standing to the side as an entire city contracts a zombiefying disease. The underwriting of these main characters in service of moving the plot is my issue.

no shade but where did i even mention 2nd cp here...? if you read my comment you will see a big problem i have with this is that Fan Yue is not allowed to show even a quarter of the heartbreak at the information abt his family that even Cang Shan displayed, he loves them so much he cursed himself but he, as A Demon Lord, is so forgiving that he genuinely IS less affected than Cang Shan is. the stories dont really line up here. To bring up the 2nd CP highlights the fact that theres a lot of projection happening in these replies when all i was saying is that these main leads are not allowed to express any emotions similarly to their peers. Fan Yue is a Demon Lord and hes abiding by moral rules that dont even line up with his previous statements or his introduction, but the journey to his sudden moral clarity is unclear.. the characters are detached to Me Personally because everyone else is written such that their actions mirror the world around them. having two mains that are paragons of moral goodness when they occupy roles that are explicitly opposed to those ideas is a lack of care and something i wrote in my comment i hope they improve on.. very odd to see these responses when i wasnt spewing hate lol

This show is entertaining, at least the recent eps are, but i find it extremely difficult to not only understand but care for the leads when they seem so detached from the kinds of emotions other characters face.
The fact they both find it in them to righteously lecture in the recent eps while other characters are allowed to exhibit turmoil and grief and constant internal conflict...
Even chong zhaos obsession seems justified when you understand that the person he was raised with for a full decade suddenly cut him off, he lost his surrogate father and any concept of family he had all in one day. Yet bai shuo is unaffected in their bond? How is that possible?
Why are these screenwriters allowing their sides to be vindictive, heartbroken, annoying, and just interesting in general while the main leads feel as if theyve been written into a seperate world where morality rules above all and their only declarations of care can be with each other.
Id even like it if bai shuo was given time to unpack how her rship with her father has changed her perception of herself and how shes approaching these powers, but the narrative seems so disinterested...
I see a lot of discussion on whats Right and Wrong and Justified, but in many cases throughout the episodes ive found myself rooting against the leads simply because the people in conflict with them seem to care so deeply. Especiallyyyy in the case of qi feng, its disconcerting and my Big Hope for this show is they allow these leads to actually grow instead of simply fall in love.

almost cant believe there was a time where gmmtv was interesting enough to finance making something as excellent as this... when will we return...

i think my biggest issue with this one is that the writing is excellent at forming these bonds between characters, making the jokes and love feel real and earned every time, but terrible at any follow-through in the overarching plot and each characters arc. the conclusion to one of the main conflicts driving the story in regards to sanha and his mom being this lackluster and disappointing.. the romance writing just losing all steam for everyone by the end... having the name be family by choice and by the end they're all legally connected. it just doesn't work and its so disappointing because the first half and its insistence on the closeness of these characters was so charming :/ glad to see jihye and hyeonseong come out of this with a lot more love though!

they just dont have enough time to resolve all this conflict they spent time setting up... ik they tried making it so haejun is simply emotionally driven and just wants to refind his mom but the framing of 'he was never abandoned, he's realized that love is always there' is not only improbable but flat out wrong. he was definitely abandoned, and reasoning through it in his mind as a thirty year old man changes nothing abt his experience as an abandoned young child who had to grow up feeling like he was always on the outskirts of 'real' families. them being unable to contend with that and unable to make him angry, or even truly resentful, once he learns what happens ultimately flattens his previous experiences and reduces this show into sentimental wish fulfillment. there would be nothing wrong with that if the drama itself didn't seem adamant in being seen seriously, especially considering the source material. the lack of space to breathe for the characters completely flattens them into archetypes, and it shows in how people have been discussing the show online as well :/

a lot of the story work and messages the characters were learning undercut the progressiveness they were, assumedly, trying to achieve through frank discussions of sex. especially in ais arc. i think this is why yusen and yuehs arc worked better for ppl, bc it wasnt grappling w the emotional effects of patriarchy in regards to womens relationship to sex like yusens sisters and mothers, but even in that arc seeking punishment from the justice system of all things to start living a 'renewed life' is flawed and often completely the opposite of progressive narratives. overall i liked this one and thought the indv relationships were cute, if underwritten, but as a whole it just didnt gel together for the sort of message the drama believed itself as trying to present. i think had they let some of these characters truly betray each other, and let it actually get ugly in personal relationships it wouldnt have felt like a 2004 romcom w everyone paired off by the end, and it wouldnt have (maybe) unintendedly come off so shy.

some of the tightest fantasy writing i've ever seen came out in the last five eps, had a great time with this one and I thought the ending fit the show very well (as much as possible considering the circumstances they wrote it under).

omg i had the same qualm, she feels like a waif sometimes and in others like a scheming plotter. but i think ive attributed it to tzuchi being soooo deeply misogynistic and manipulative in his treatment of the women around him that he stripped her of all agency she previously held. she felt like such a strong character at the beginning, the way the minute aima hears her boyfriend wish against her success and then immediately leaves is a great character moment. seeing him lolita-fy her in his lens even impacts her view of herself, it sort of made me fathom how he did it to yachi whos the typical idea of a Strong Female Lead we see in dramas. i think the writing was more inconsistent when it came to this tho and that the sense of foreboding wasnt nearly enough for how truly awful he is.

she was amazing in born for the spotlight! excited to see what projects she picks up next

This is one that i think just isnt gonna work for some people. The pacing is uneven and plot threads arent all finished satisfactorily, but i unabashedly loved it. Its been a while since i watched something where i felt like each character stayed true to their emotional and mental core throughout. Also the lighting is consistently fun and interesting, and the blocking across the board is excellent, you can tell how much thought went into each aspect of production and design. One of my personal favs this year.