Kim Yoonmi 김윤미 金潤美

The chemistry between Deng Kai and Sun Yi Ran is very good. The problem is the later half of the writing ruins it with a melting female lead.

She passes the three feminism tests: Bechdel (talks about business and their mother), Sexy Lamp (she does make contributions to the plot, though she skirts close to being replaceable in spots), and the Mako Mori test (she does want other things than a man.). But her agency falls without reason in the latter half of the drama where she suddenly gets dumber in service of the drama. This is what I term melting female lead. Mostly, I think the female lead was too smart for the writer, so in order to get the events to unfold like they needed they made her dumber.

I was kinda hoping they'd pull one of those double take things, but they didn't. The writing logic forced forward the events and had to sacrifice character to do so.

I'd like to see Deng Kai and Sun Yi Ran in another drama with better writing.

Cheesy would have more logic than this drama. It's literally one line that makes her go all heart-eyed.

Up to then, she' goes on about how she's not sure she could marry him. And then he recognizes her writing in someone else's report and then she's all weak-kneed and says she'll marry him. Is there a build up before then to make them feel for each other? No. Are they getting to know each other? No.

What's worse is that the writing is self-aware of that fact which is why they add in SFL to harass her over the fact the cdrama over the 8 episodes gave neither of the main characters a real personality. LOL SFL: Do you even know his favorite color?

It's the kind of bad romance you watch to openly mock it. The writing is terrible. The acting is only passable in places, and the directing makes me raise my eyebrow. But the mockability is high.

If this was a dish, it's more like, you went all the way to a county fair to get cotton candy and only got 3 airplane peanuts. Lactose-free. There is no cheese. If it had cheese it would probably be more enjoyable.

She's not a stranger, because he met her ONCE and fell in love with her, but she had a boyfriend, but he couldn't give her up... has stalkerish feels.

Good ending, but can you bite down and get to that ending??? Main female lead is vapid, the "romance" is basically, OMG, you recognized my writing, so I now love you and will marry you. Male lead is I met you once, fell in love with you because you gave me wanton encouragement, but you had a boyfriend, not you didn't, which is why I slept with you without protection, but now I know you're pregnant, let's get married because I love you for that one encouraging time. The progression is terrible. Can you get through that?

Never happens. If you're expecting quality, you've come to the wrong drama.

There is no eroticism, though, lol. It's basically him lowering her on a bed while they are backlit, fully clothed, and that's it. BTW, this is not a spoiler since it's episode 1 and they replay this ad nauseam, just in case you forgot along the way as they say, maybe we should forget that night, like this was the most expensive scene they had to shoot.

Japan also has condoms in hotel rooms by default... but let's ignore that.

I did not use caps in my post at all. I get you are passionate and all of that, but I didn't disparage or say anything personal about you in the post. I said a general statement. Maybe take a step back and breathe? It's a drama and a commentary on the state of Korean marriages and the pressures on women in an allegorical sense. It's also a commentary on how things have changed over time and how things used to be and now are. She literally says in the first episode asking for support from extended family members from her husband, who then ignored her.

Adding cultural notes are things to reflect on. It shouldn't make you that upset.

People have a sub/dom kink in every culture... but in this case, it's not particularly man/woman thing or a particular cultural thing. There is a K-movie about subs and doms. The attachment of certain traits to masculinity isn't true or consistent across cultures, but pulling out my anthropology hat since I have a degree in it.

The idea that masculine is strong, independent, earns a lot of cash and is dominant isn't always true.

All I know is that the husband isn't reading asexual.

Some men like that... but that's more of a kink. She should have gotten a sub as a husband.

The description says he's asexual, but he's not clocking asexual to me, since he seems to have sexual attraction. ED=/=asexuality, though. *sighs* Korea bungled it again. libido and sexual attraction are also not the same thing. Koisenu Futari (Japanese drama) got the Black stripe part of the spectrum right and represented it fairly well in that range. Though both were also aro as well.

Statistically, in general, women are more likely in a het marriage stand to lose more than a man in marriage, with the man's life more than likely to vastly improve. So men are more likely to lose more in divorce—not through alimony, but because they lose resources the woman provides. The only way around this is to set clear boundaries around chores and find a man that can actually do them decently and communicate well. That or go for a straight woman's commune and swear to raise children together without men... I've heard those exist too. (Commune, not cult).

Korean moms/parents might sleep in the same room as their children up to the age of 5. There's a crib designed to sit next to the bed for that. It's not that unusual. Separate rooms for the kids is a luxury of usually the US, not as much in all of Europe. Because independence isn't emphasized as much as warmth (social and physical) for Koreans. Also, generally, the whole lock a baby in a room by themselves thing in US socialization is an invention of mostly industrialization. (Also the rhesus monkey experiments split the US in half along if you should isolate like that.) Even so, swerving that husband makes a lot of sense. (Yoon Park is excellent at playing oblivious AH types. I understand why they hired him, even though he's 10 years her junior in RL.)

But people often judge socialization from other nations as "wrong". Even with that, I think she's still indulging her kids a bit too much but I agree it's due to her being burnt a lot with her husband not taking the slack up and also the dissolving of the extended family unit in Korea where Aunties, grandmothers, etc would take up the slack before, but now it's gone more *cough* nuclear*.

Thanks. Was able to watch with a VPN. And now I'm about 95% sure I watched it as a kid. Probably with my Aunties. Wild.

Black don't crack, Asians don't raisin? There was a medical study about how white people age faster, actually. BTW, I'm Asian.

The award is that's not the worst part of the drama... it gets steadily worse. Haha. Even the characters you semi-like turn into WTH--that action made no sense.

Animal lifetime came first in the drama. Then prime Minister's daughter, then the Sect lifetime, The demon lifetime (added to the drama) is near the end. But really, I preferred the book... The Princess and General lifetime I found super frustrating. I LOVED that one in the book because it had a body swap and some silliness with him? giving birth. I knew it wasn't going to survive to TV, but I thought they'd keep it going for longer... but I suppose too many trans questions came up for the CCP.

You can mostly skip-watch the Mulou tribe stuff and still get it. Felt like Nepotism adds. Some people liked the romance on that side, but I wasn't one of them.

Are there Japanese Closed captions? My Chinese isn't that good. It'll make it easier to translate. But I do understand the Japanese, but I want to not have to do the timing. ^^

Super cute though. lol "She's going to be a work slave to the end."

The plot summary is pretty simple too. lol No kiss at the end.

In New Life Begins they pitched him as ignorant, rather than straight up abusive. and took him to task constantly. Here, they are like, OMG, this abusive behavior is so hot--you know, him secretly and in her face sabotaging her. And that's where I cut out. There isn't any pointing out that his behavior is odd and out of place. This is the opposite of the majority of male leads in stories--they are supposed to be secretly helping the female lead secretly, so I don't get the framing.

BTW, to be clear, I don't mind harems either, like a man being with multiple women, it's the women backstabbing each other part plus him being an AH I dislike. Why are these women fighting for an objectively terrible person?

I mean I fully enjoyed Oh My General with the cooperative wives. But here, it's like... he's not that great, and so there doesn't seem to be a point in fighting for him. If anything, they should be helping her escape the harem so there is no threat of competition.

BTW, the abusive husband take down in New Life Begins was also great. I enjoyed that.

Occasionally in c-dramas you have... well, last night you were very energetic. Also they've flipped the trope, such as with the Eternal Love (Not the ten miles of Peach Blossoms one.)

Occasionally, they also put in, see you again tonight. lol