starlit-dramas

I completely agree! It's something I found interesting and refreshing about Flower Of Evil, that the characters are already married with a child before the drama began – but I can't say that I've seen it in a lot else, even though I'd quite honestly love to.

I really, really do believe that the characters getting together earlier, and continuing to be a major source of support and comfort in each others' lives, is a main contributor to how attached I feel to their relationship.

Like, when Gu Won decides to go against his family's, and the company's desires, to be with her – and when she puts her trust in him to not ruin her life with the major social, economic, and power imbalance hanging over their relationship – I can really believe why they would. I can't help but believe in the strength and longevity of their relationship in the face of all of these obstacles, because of all the time they've already spent as a couple. In a way, it feels like it grounds the relationship, for it seems closer to showing what a mature, healthy, loving and stable relationship should be like when two people are all-in for each other, and are certain about their choice in a partner.

This drama's been a real source of light to me in these darker months, making me smile and laugh when there wasn't an awful lot else to smile and laugh about. I think I'll feel a little bereft when the last few episodes are out and it's all over, but I really do hope this will be a simple, sweet and funny story I can revisit time and time again in the future.♡

Loveeee this drama to bits💜it's got me smiling, laughing and blushing along so hard every week; I love its depiction of love through adversity. All of the intimate little scenes of mature and wholesome fluff and sweetness that we've seen all along has added such a sense of real strength and fortitude to their relationship.

I completely agree; that doesn't strike me as a very healthy watching habit, and it's a drain to watch it happening time and time again.

If you'd both read and understood my point, you'd understand that I wasn't calling all negative comments bad, hateful or toxic; I explicitly said that I wasn't objectively right in finding it interesting. I'm objecting to the kind of comment that is criticising the "lazy writing", or criticising people who are enjoying the drama. While I disagree with you, and find it pretty baseless when you say there's no substance (as I, again, outlined in my original comment), I'm not fighting against your right to leave a negative comment; I'm only against what I'm calling the toxic negativity, which I consider a different thing altogether.

Same here!! From complete start to finish, it was just so masterfully put together; I loved how it portrayed love. So, so good.

🫡

I completely agree. I think my tumblr's accidentally become a bit of a King The Land stan account recently, honestly😂 so many pretty GIFs on there! I like utilising the block button on there, too, if I'm encountering too much of what I don't like.

Right?? I don't go to just MDL to talk about dramas – the r/KDRAMA subreddit often does week-by-week discussion threads, or I go on tumblr, where there are often pretty GIFsets or meta posts; but when the toxic negativity is big in a place, I feel like it can drown out a lot of the love.

I've been trying to express how much I like it pretty openly, especially in the hopes people who agree with me with find it. I think this has been the one time I haven't done that, because – while I do believe people should be able to express negativity, but it's when people are rude about the people enjoying it, or rude about the creators that really gets me. That's overstepping a line for me.

Thank you! And honestly, I feel you massively on that. I watch a lot of different dramas to scratch a lot of different itches – sometimes I'm in the mood for something more violent, sometimes I'm in the mood for ✨drama✨or a riveting fantasy romance – but sometimes, all I need is a nice and fluffy romcom, and this drama's been serving me perfectly on that recently,

I've been loving your comments on this page – and am a fellow Call It Love enthusiast. Thank you; that's a really lovely thing to say.💜

Thank you.💜

Glad to be of service!🫡 Hope you find something closer to what you like!

I'm not sure if any of this is what you're looking for, or whether it fulfils the criteria you have for whump, but continual moments of support after hardship is featured heavily in both of the drama relationships – I can think of a few scenes in particular where the ML appears in times of crisis for the FL to look after her – he sometimes does it with quite the dramatic flair, too.

The second lead relationship I think, has a few more regular scenes that could be considered whump, where the 2ML especially takes care of the 2FL in moments of everyday and mundane, but pretty severe distress and harassment.

That's a huge compliment. Thank you so much!♡

As somebody who didn't really like it, I'll try and be honest:

1. Happy Ending – mostly, yes! Even if there were things about it I didn't like, the ending was upbeat and hopeful.
2. Good Acting – some very, very incredible acting talent in this.
3. Good Chemistry – kind of. I think the actors gave everything they could, and I got the "butterflies" sometimes.
4. Good Logic – I feel like it was a major downfall of the drama to me. There were many decisions I thought were questionable – especially when it came to the plot that wasn't in the original Webtoon. It bothered me, personally, but might not be an issue for many.
5. Romance – I personally feel like the idea behind the romance was better than the execution, but I did really, really love the premise – so much that I went on to read and love the Webtoon – and I did really like certain aspects of the story that they added to with this adaptation.

I'd recommend giving it a try!

As somebody who didn't really like it, I'll try and be honest:

1. Happy Ending – mostly, yes! Even if there were things about it I didn't like, the ending was upbeat and hopeful.
2. Good Acting – some very, very incredible acting talent in this.
3. Good Chemistry – kind of. I think the actors gave everything they could, and I got the "butterflies" sometimes.
4. Good Logic – I feel like it was a major downfall of the drama to me. There were many decisions I thought were questionable – especially when it came to the plot that wasn't in the original Webtoon. It bothered me, personally, but might not be an issue for many.
5. Romance – I personally feel like the idea behind the romance was better than the execution, but I did really, really love the premise – so much that I went on to read and love the Webtoon – and I did really like certain aspects of the story that they added to with this adaptation.

I'd recommend giving it a try!

I've tried to ignore it, and to enjoy the show on my own terms – sharing little things I've been enjoying about a drama I'm loving – but I'm getting annoyed by this comments section, because I feel like a lot of people are confusing "I don't like this", with "this is bad" – as well as "filler episodes" with scenes where the "main plot" isn't progressing, and there are slower and more intimate moments of relationship build-up.

Now, if you want stories where there's very little meat to the bone, and there's the pure structure of a romance or a romantic comedy, or you want romance along with some other form of sub-plot (like stalking, murder, revenge, medical, legal, or fantasy romance), or want one or more of those as the main plot, then that's great! I love those too, and I'm pretty sure I can point you to a few resources for dramas, books or webcomics you might like some more (r/kdramarecommends and r/RomanceBooks are some of my personal go-tos), if I can't recommend some myself.

But the arrogance of people who claim to know the genre well enough to say that it's "bad in its own genre" or that it's a "waste of good actors", as somebody who's been studying the genre for a while, and aspires to write in it, is grating on me.

I think that this drama, so far, has fulfilled a lot of the main structure of a romance story so far:
-two people who are well-suited to one another meet
-who want to be together
-and share moments of growing emotional, and often physical, intimacy
-but who struggle against internal and external obstacles
-that build up until there's a major complication
-which gets resolved happily.

And in my opinion and from my research, doing all of that in a broadly satisfactory way is, ALL a romance needs to be, to fundamentally have the potential to be a "good" romance, and is, I think, the closest you can get to objectivity when it comes to this common genre-specific story structure – everything else that determines whether a romance is good or bad is subjective, and based on personal opinion, interpretation, and the attachment and value you attribute to the story. Even if we're not fully there yet, I think we're well on the way with this drama so far to hitting all of those marks.

I think where a lot of people are getting mixed up is in this part – because, to some, sticking very tightly to a tightly-paced, momentum-filled romance formula is what brings the familiarity, and what makes them form an attachment to the story – but for me (and I'm assuming some others too) I find the scenes other people might consider "filler" or "draggy" to be important for finding the relationship and the chemistry between characters believable, and developing an emotional attachment to the story.

So with this in mind, I feel like there needs to be a lot more weight to the arguments I see than "the couple got together" (not all good romances are slow-burns), "it has nothing to say" (have you been paying enough attention to confidently say that?), "everything is repeating itself" (welcome to establishing a theme, or building a relationship between characters through different intimacy stages), "I'm losing interest" (I'm more interested than ever – neither of us are objectively right in this). None of these are proving to me why it's a bad show, why the writer's being lazy, or how there's no plot. People who are saying these things as if they are the absolute, irrefutable truth is becoming so, so frustrating to me.

Don't talk down to people who are enjoying something you're not, and don't be rude about the creators of something if all that's happening is you're not enjoying what they made enough. Just move on to something you know you'll enjoy better; please spare the rest of us, and spare me from writing another essay on this.

Okay. Rant over. I'm going back to unabashedly loving this drama now. ♡

I couldn't agree more! I've loved to see the leads actually fall in love in a way I feel like can last between them; not to say I haven't seen as much in other dramas – but I really feel like there's been an especially unusual organic build-up between two individuals who care about and respect each other deeply, and that's been an absolute joy for me to experience.

In terms of it being a pure, classic fluffy rom-com (yet still managing to successfully embed layers of depth and social commentary in there – with themes examining power structures and exploitation in wealth & employment, and the overlap with women's rights and exploitation in the home, and imbalances of power in personal relationships), I think this drama's really been excelling.

I'm smiling and laughing along so much with each episode, and I'm having a really great time. Counting down the days until Saturday.♡♡♡