xuexii

Halfway through and honestly as someone who actually likes the show past the cinematography and OST I got the idea that it will only land with you if you have been through similar trauma/abuse that the characters have and are a sentimental type of person. Lee Doona is not the inoffensive type of manic pixie dream girl that people who prefer lighthearted and healthy relationships or dramas would ever want to see with a show premise like this. She's a very broken and self destructive person, prone to emotional and mental breakdowns and easily relapses into bad behavior after years of the abuse and grooming that the idol industry comes with. SFL also has her own problems that I sadly related to on a personal level. When you go into the drama with these things in mind, a lot of their "frustrating" or "illogical" behavior makes sense. People who havent fully "gotten over" those types of trauma ARENT going to make good decisions. They arent going to communicate healthily or much at all. They will create their own problems to either punish themselves or make their already turbulent emotions and actions feel justified. And a relationship just isnt gonna fix that magically. You need to figure out who you are as a person first and heal from within first. Whether the ending will land with me as sad or happy honestly doesnt matter cause the show feels more like a recollection of Doona's memories wherein she got to experience being human for the first time, even if brief and even if she fell back into toxic "red flag" behavior by way of not knowing anything else outside of it. It is not a conventional love story in any way and its a drama where you can't treat these characters as "love interests" that are absolutely destined to end up together forever and ever. Theyre just people living in the moment.

i kinda find it funny how they don't even really try to make it a question of "who will she choose" and more just "how and when will she grow up and move on from him". halfway through and i swear all he does is yell at her in every scene they are together lmfao.

For anyone who is finding it hard to love FL and her "baby"-ish way of talking, thinking, and acting at the start of the story, pls try to give it a chance if you can. After seeing episode 31 (which, btw, had amazing cinematography and CGI, it was basically movie quality), I found myself genuinely starting to tear up at how her character developed and became more mature and selfless. Yes, it may come off as annoying or infantalizing at times, but I truly do not think LBFAD would be the story that it is, and have the chemistry that it does, without such a juxtaposition between the two leads: a sheltered innocent girl who wears her heart on her sleeve and only has a fairytale idea of romance, and a man beaten down by war to the point he has forgotten what it means to love entirely.

By that episode, her development truly felt like the actual culmination of her experiences that we see her go through and not just a plot point we *needed* to reach for the sake of fulfilling tropes. The show overall has a very anti-war message throughout, and Orchid stands out as a character specifically because she starts off detached from the bleak reality they live in. The interesting part about it is watching her character become a bigger part of that reality, living it out, and seeing how it breaks her down just the same as everyone else affected by the war. Meanwhile, she gives the inverse to DFCQ's character development by giving him hope and love and softening his heart in order to gain compassion.

I could write pages and pages about the reasons *why* Orchid is written and acted out to be the way she is and why it is justified, but tl;dr if you truly can't force yourself to watch something you dislike, you don't have to. Those who are on the fence, though, and would be willing, it is worth sticking around and finishing the story. Because it genuinely is important to her character arc that she starts off this way otherwise her destiny and development wouldn't make sense.

it's been yearsss since i first watched and now feeling an itch to rewatch lol, if there's one thing that i feel the need to point out that i don't notice gets a lot of praise is how brutal the fight scenes and anything involving weapons is. nowadays i'm too used to watching xianxia dramas where a twirl and light slap with particle effects is enough to make someone spit out blood but there's many scenes in this that make me think "omg how are they still hanging on after that just happened"

The sanitary pads thing is missing context. I believe they mentioned it because from what I heard he sought his wife's opinions and advice to tailor the pads to what an actual woman would look for instead of just trying to guess on his own and dive into the production blindly as a man, and he wanted to create something his wife could use as well. She's credited as having tested the products herself actually. So yeah, sounds random but if it were written more in detail it's just an example of their partnership.

groups don't really have longevity in the cpop industry or general chinese entertainment industry. people muchhhhhh more prefer solo artists and actors/actresses in terms of celebrities who have real star power and humungous fanbases who will pour money from their wallets. with how big survival shows used to be in china before they were banned, you would think idol *groups* would be all the rage but no, they're still kind of just an avenue to build individual fanbases. groups tend to follow a trend of initial hype that really falls off a few years in and usually it's not a gradual drop either, more like a plummet lmao.

an example of this is a survival show group like THE9 from Youth With You S2. their biggest sales for an album were in the 1million+ range when they were active. meanwhile when their center put out a solo album for her birthday after they disbanded it very easily skyrocketed to 5million+ sales and broke multiple records.

even companies like yuehua can't manage groups very well in terms of longevity and consistency (partially because they suck but it's a prevalent trend across most groups) when you look at a group like NEX7. Debuted in 2018 with multiple well known members (some who were in produce101 s2) but basically zero group activities since 2020 and considered disbanded and abandoned. within the span of 1 year they went from 800k+ sales to 60k+. whereas their more popular members can easily hit 1million+ sales with solo albums.

you could call it a miracle that they've even made it this long as a group but i do think it's largely due to them debuting so young so they still seem "fresh"(?).

tldr; popularity doesn't equate to longevity, sustainability, and sales. they're well known but that doesn't exactly translate to breaking records or bringing in profit to justify activities. hence why when xinlong himself talks about his reason for coming the very low youtube views and lack of actual promotion (ie. him saying it started to feel like they were practicing more than actually performing) are cited.

overall it was...meh. i think it's pretty funny though to see the reaction by other commentators and how split down the middle it is, with some puritans thinking it's the grossest thing ever and then people who are actually in the bdsm scene thinking it's way too sanitized and cutsey to properly portray the feelings behind it. as someone who's more open to it i'm leaning towards the latter opinion. it's not terrible; incredibly wholesome and fluffy and it does do a good job of explaining not only the practices and techniques behind it but the ideology itself behind why someone would want to participate in it, and the fact that it hinges on the consent of two adults who know exactly what they want, what they're getting themselves into, and what they don't want. its ultimately an expression of who someone is as a person. gotta say though that for a bdsm focused narrative it's less sexy and more slapstick if that's your thing, and the parts that are sexy are largely due in part to lee junyoung's performance. seo hyun does an okay job considering what her character represents, although there were moments that felt like it was less her being a sexually repressed first-time dom figuring out her emotions and more so just...her being bored ig? the current rating is reasonable.

it's great for people wanting something unconventional compared to other transmigration cdramas but i can see why people who are either fans of the novel or just jaded from so many dramas in this genre being censored in similar ways would just roll their eyes at it. personally I thought it was an interesting direction to take the show especially since they actually tried to build up towards it throughout the entire plot, and it made my bf cry gallons of tears as someone who had never watched a cdrama in their life before this, so I think a lot of people are just in that stage of being overly critical. I'm sure that in a few years the opinions and reviews of it will mellow out lol

lol you're quite literally right about to hit the start to one of first big arcs in the series that ties into pretty much the rest of the show. it really starts to pick up (action wise and lore wise) when they figure out the mystery

Wow, as someone who stopped watching cdramas for a while because of being burnt out from similar plots, I have to say this series has genuinely surprised me. I'm still quite early in but it is so rare for a show to capture my attention the way this one has, especially for a fantasy drama. There isn't a single episode in which the plot and/or romance doesn't advance in a compelling or interesting way, and characters actually feel like people with quirks rather than just flat archetypes.

you are not meant to support all of their actions or behavior. the point is that they aren't amazing people, but still made for each other. hence why FL and SML, as "fluffy" and "perfect" as their relationship may be, still won't work out.

how so? heung and jaemi ended their rushed and doomed marriage, heung's mother finally began to treat him as his own person rather than just an extension of her legacy, jaemi realized where her true feelings lie, and hae jo learned to let go of the hate in his heart and focus on what he had there the whole time before he passed. it's like he said before taking his last breath, the fact that jaemi was there to witness him die was proof enough that he lived a good life in those past three months.

i agree. i mean how many time do we see 19 year olds and even 20 something year old on programs like idol survival shows do completely immature things that damage their career because they're greedy and don't know any better? it happens every single time, because that's what happens when you put a young adult with no/lacking real world experience into stressful situations

is that not the point though? her entire arc is that she needed to learn how to stand up for herself and stop allowing for herself to be the beaten/abused woman in every situation. this is one of the few "jump to the past" dramas i've seen that are actually somewhat realistic in how the FL acts. she knows what she has to do but it doesn't change how traumatic the experiences are. it's like they said: "I chose to fight, and I will win".

just because you have a miserable life doesn't mean the rest of us should suffer for that lmao get your own issues figured out. sex is not a shameful sin nor should it be treated as such. that's how you end up with uneducated people who don't know how to treat their partner appropriately.

people always forgetting that personal ratings are subjective. there's many high rated dramas on here that i've watched but simply thought were ok, or even downright didn't like watching. i went into this drama with absolutely no expectations and after finishing i feel like it's no surprise at all that a lot of people enjoy it. it's a heartfelt story about something we can all relate to: not wanting to waste our youth and the sometimes strained relationships we have with our parents. it's competently written, shot, and directed. some people might think "that's it? that's nothing special. is it really all that it takes to satisfy drama watchers?" and the answer is yes. you literally cannot ask for much more when it comes to this show.

i mean you don't have to like her but she is entirely fitting as the female lead of the show. she's the result of everything the show warns us against. her personality is rash and unlikeable because her overbearing mother turned her into a younger version of herself. even cursed to have the same exact face, play the same instrument, and pursue the same passion. she grew up in a superficial and unforgiving world which makes her take it out on others, and since she has pretty much never been given any independence she's emotionally stunted.

won't be surprised if they combine babi and soonrok's arcs of the story into this single season. we didn't get to see much of soonrok in the webtoon compared to woong and babi anyways. it can def work but I'm a bit worried about pacing.

but this season actually makes sense for the leader to be red, cause he's supposed to be momotaro.

probably a kdrama for Lookism or Girls of the Wild's. Don't get me wrong, I am fully aware of the loose cdrama adaptations that exist for these stories but they can only be seen as "inspired from" the original stories at best. They lack a lot of aspects ranging from characters themselves, to story, to overall themes. I think proper adaptations would be a good chance to see actors and actresses fulfill badass roles and do amazing action scenes, and it'd be a great opportunity to see the talent of various fight choreographers and stuntmen/women come together. As for the story it would be great to see even just a few arcs of the original webtoons be brought to life without having to worry about censoring a lot of it or focusing too much on the school life side of the plot.