ShortCircuit

Thank you. Summer's coming, I'm in the mood for light-hearted romance. This is a good list to choose from :)

Edit: Started "A Girl Like Me" and it's giving me strong "The Romance of Tiger and Rose" vibes (a positive note, that is). The ML is extremely cute but can become very manly at the drop of a feather, and the FL is chasing him with all her might and not for love, LOL.

That's a solid rec, thank you for it!

They're not married, they're a couple of barely grown kids who face the world for the first time. As compared to ITSAY, IPYTM is taking a more fragmented path, periodically skipping a lot of time and only showing certain things, like journal entries. The relationship has already morphed from their innocent first-love kind of story to a more multi-faceted one, where not having the same interractions daily and/or having misunderstandings are driving them apart.

What counseling?! For what? What did Oh-Aew do wrong? It's Teh getting infatuated with Jai, and if Jai hadn't refused him, he'd have jumped his bones then and there. TBH, I was expecting Oh-Aew to follow them into the stairway and be a direct witness to their talk, but I'm very glad he stayed put and let Teh make his own decision. And what did Teh do? In front of his actual lover, he starts eye-fucking Jai?!... What's there to be getting counselling about? When a relationship is not based on mutual interest, admiration and love, what's there to keep?... If only Oh-Aew is actually still in love all the way, and Teh is free to just browse around, looking for the next interesting person, it's not love any more, despite lingering feelings.

It's not their first trial - Teh had to be dragged into admitting his feelings, kicking and screaming, and his signals toward Oh-Aew were kind of screwed up a lot of times. Oh-Aew was already insecure (he is more girly, likes feminine things, he seemed to be the only one in love with his friend at a certain point, he was definitely getting depressed for not being perfect) - and then he gets to be judged for not wanting to become an actor after all, for changing his looks, for having way too many party-type friends, and so on and so forth. Teh always realizes he's going overboard only after he's spoken or acted - well, the hurt doesn't go away all that easily. Words don't break bones, but they do break confidence. Being someone's boyfriend doesn't mean owning them and getting to par them down to one's expectations and mental image of that person. Oh-Aew (and anyone, actually) is completely entitled to their own life, no matter how grand the love story might be.

It was already hard for both of them to be together - neither were making easy choices, coming out to their families, or getting intimate, and later facing the lack of time for maintaining their relationship and everything. But only one of them remained firm (and I'd argue he has many more friends and therefore opportunities to cheat, were he so inclined, but he never did, whereas the other basically had the one chance and did take it immediately, no pangs of conscience, nothing.)

What I'm saying is - they're young. They don't know any better, and shouldn't have to make compromises either. Teh could be forgiven, but that doesn't mean they should get back together. It's easier to forgive when you don't see that person each day and get to rehash their problems each time there's a fight.

Now speaking of their passions and eventual work immersion. There's no prize-race here. They could be passionate and quiet, or passionate and obsessive, etc. There's no way to be "better" at it - they each have their personality and act accordingly. Nobody needs to show they're crazily loving their actual/future work, what the hell. What, are introverts lacking passion for what they're working on or studying just because they don't like to show it?!

Ah well, Sorry I got a bit ranty here. It gets frustrating seeing comments on how one is more deserving BECAUSE they're more passionate, or that someone should return to a relationship because they're meant to be. This has nothing to do with forgiveness, or second chances and all. This is about both sides - and particularly the one who did nothing wrong - having a say in a relationship... and getting the chance to just break it if it's not working any more.

I don't care how it ends at this point. I just would prefer a more realistic split up instead of a fictional rainbow final happiness. I know it's fiction, but the time is too short to have a meaningful turn (IMHO, maybe they'll pull it off, I don't know).

You be you, I'll be myself, let's both have good, separate lives :)

That only happens in dramas, IMHO, and usually those characters who "forgive" are just begging for more abuse, too, but I agree we'll have to just disagree on that.

PS Your replies tend to be acid towards comments that don't fit to your own opinion - here's an unasked-for advice: chill out a bit, this is an open forum where drama watchers come to discuss a drama. Their opinions are just as valid as yours, no need to diss their tastes and/or experiences just because they're different.

Have a nice day!

I don't know about other people, but I remember being 20. I almost remember being a teen - but that's another story. At 20, everything was larger than life, all our reactions were considerably out of place (looking back with a more mature eye and enough life experience). We definitely would not consider forgiveness of such a betrayal, because it shattered all trust. Trust is the mainstay of a relationship. There's no redemption for destroying trust.

Now that I'm older, I wish we had the foresight or patience to consider that things change eventually. But that is NOT how life feels at 20. To have young adults be reasonable and patient and willing to let go of such deep betrayals is not really realistic, IMHO. For me at least it would feel contrived.

If they were in their late 30s or maybe 40s, yes, it would make sense to get your SO another and yet another chance - by then we grow cynical (or more realistic) and see more shades of gray than we used to.

But these are still young kids, they won't know how it feels to actually understand (or make a good try at understanding) how and why your lover could even contemplate having an affair. Hormones and immaturity are hell.

Teh actually did cheat on Oh-Aew - he went all in, kissing Jai and not setting up any boundaries. He didn't have to go all committed to kissing a (basically) stranger, just because Jai asked him to. He was in a long-term relationship, there were plenty of other ways to get the scene feeling. I didn't catch the lights-out before the kiss that was actually included in the actual play, but Oh-Aew certainly did. There was zero need for passionately kissing Jai, even if a certain feeling should have been included in the scene.

And oh, what's worse - he wrote in his logbook about forgetting how sex with Oh-Aew was in the beginning, so what does he do?! He gets worked up by lusting after Jai then goes home and has sex with Oh-Aew?! That's disgusting - if they were real persons and not characters in a drama, it would be beyond disgusting, IMHO.

I get it that Teh is a passionate actor who wants to improve his art, but he's quite judgemental of people who don't share his passion and nobody is owing him their life's choices. And his impulse control is quite poor - being passionate about things is not the be-all, end-all of everything. Having compassion and maturing a bit would enrich his character. So far he hasn't grown up much from the teen obsessed with acting.

As for Oh-Aew... he's quite subdued in this second part of the story, but he didn't start as a bubbly, confident character in the first part either. He's uncertain in his (mental and physical) body image, uncertain on how deep Teh's feelings actually are (as evidenced in his reaction to Oh-Aew's changing his major in university, in the clear divide between friends - they're all Oh-Aew's, Teh doesn't mix well with the group, in the very easy manner that Teh let go of everything they had together when the first temptation comes along.) To be able to push Teh away shows a good and strong mind, that seriously I didn't expect. I hope they don't take this away from the character in the final episode.

And to me he seems to actually enjoy marketing - he doesn't have to be all happy-happy joy-joy about it to be good at it and love it. As he was never too extrovert, him being quiet and getting the job done looks to be exactly in character.

As for Jai... I now don't wonder why his ex left him. If this is the level of conscience he'd shown him, somebody in his right mind wouldn't excuse his end-justifies-the-means approach to directing and would just let him go. Again, being passionate about something doesn't mean trampling over everybody who doesn't share in it, or manipulating people into doing your bidding. He is in great part guilty of leading Teh on... but Teh is supposed to NOT be lead, if his love is real. Just giving in to lust is extremely disappointing, and if it was more than lust for him, where does that leave his actual boyfriend?!

I seriously hope they don't get a fabricated happy end. I'd rather have another series if they're meant to end up together, so that nothing is rushed.

That doesn't work. Teh gave up his already won place at his favourite university because he wanted to comfort (and compensate?) Oh-Aew, and Oh-Aew VERY emphatically did. not. want. anything to do with that.

So giving up his offer of a role in a series for Oh-Aew would just show Oh-Aew that Teh didn't get it again: he doesn't want his sacrifices, he wants for himself to be Teh's true love, like Teh is for Oh-Aew. If the love is there, but not on the same level, then it's meaningless, no matter how much Teh gives up. They're not contracted to buy each other's happiness with personal sacrifices. If it's not truly from the heart, then it never was a relationship between equally involved people, Teh just went for the ride because Oh-Aew was always there and obviously loved him, so loving him back was natural... but not definitive.

What'll happen should they get back together and Teh gets yet another love/affair interest? Why would they stay together, when his heart isn't in it? Oh-Aew rightfully tells him to break up because of it - it feels like Oh-Aew's love is the comfortable space for Teh to come back to as soon as he's over his new love interest... so that Oh-Aew is always just the second best. That scene was almost as sad as the one with the bra and the mirror in the first series. Oh-Aew must feel like he's still not the first choice of anyone, still unqualified to become the one and only in Teh's heart.

That was heartbreaking for me. I hope they don't go the way of Teh sacrificing the offer in order to buy back into Oh-Aew's graces, or if he does, Oh-Aew doesn't accept it. They'd just cycle through the same things again and end up in a similar position in the end.

At this point, I want a clean break between them, unless Teh actually is able to change... just not by repeating mistakes showing he never understood Oh Aew's heart.

Actually you're right. Why have an on-hold list if I never actually want to restart watching those dramas any time soon? At least if I drop them I'll never have them hanging on to the back of my neck strangling me with anxiety.

Also, F the rules. If I don't like it, I won't watch it. If I happen to take up again some drama I've already dropped, and it still isn't delivering, well, life's short and then you die. One should watch dramas for the fun, not as a chore.

Thanks for helping me make up my mind LOL.

If he deletes those photos - even one of them - it's over. It wasn't enough to just get infatuated with some random dude (which means he could get infatuated again), but if he erases Oh Aew's existence from his past... he's unredeemable.

But I guess he won't delete them. He still doesn't get a pass - he particularly didn't care about Oh Aew's feelings even after he had promised there was nothing for him to worry about... If the director wanted a relationship, Teh would've been fine with it.

That's a level of trust breaching I myself could never get past. I hope in the last episode they won't smooth things over - better a clean break and some hope for the future than a relationship built on what-ifs waiting to happen.

PS Props to both MLs for their acting in this episode - I felt each of Oh Aew's tears (I noticed he cries beautifully even from the first series), but also Teh's level of hormones rising each time he saw the director. They're both rather good actors, and now I'm torn. I liked Krit better in the first one, but the script isn't too generous to him this time. Billkin was more lucky in that department LOL.

If things remain unsolved... could there be a third series?!

After ep 4....

No, there's a Flower Demon/Fairy (hopefully I don't mangle the actual title) that was attracted to people reciting beautiful poetry. She would reward those who recited something really good with a shower of flowers/petals, and chase off those who recited bad poetry. IIRC from the novel, WWX actually deliberately drove her out of her mind with bad poetry, LOL, because well - he's WWX. Also IIRC, she had one of the Yin Metal pieces, but it was taken from her by the Wen Clan at some point, and her garden where poets would be welcome was left barren as she fled.

In the drama, much of this is left out, and mostly the scenes are mixed with the drama of the clan that Xue Yang took personal revenge on. The most that suggests anything having to do with the Flower Demon is that rain of petals falling on LWJ while the people are crowding to hear some poetry recital.

The statue in the beginning is a qi-consuming goddess that people created through centuries of worship, she has nothing to do with the Yin Metal at all - or with the Flower Demon either. In the first two eps, she's not even there at all, actually, but as an illusion made up in order to create more chaos in the region by someone who really REALLY wants chaos to attract some rogue spirit to that place... in order to maybe get offered and accept a new body - *hint, hint*.

Have you watched the chibi donghua yet? It's called Mo Dao Zu Shi Q, and it's made up of really short episodes - some 3 minutes of actual content, and then the OP and ED songs. There's a whole episode dedicated to WWX annoying the Flower Demon and LWJ saving his a** yet again, LOL. It's very cute :)

Edit: this episode, actually (there's EN translation available). All episodes basically involve some kind of flirting between WWX and LWJ that had to stay out of the drama, because of censoring. You have been warned :D

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Heyn1-sKwBk

There are more than 3 (at least one more, is implied, is with Xue Yang, because he never gave it away - and there might be more, can't tell you in order not to spoil it.) One piece was with the Flower Demon (the one who would throw flowers / petals at poets who recited something interesting for her) but she was forced to flee and the Yin Metal was robbed by the Wen clan. I don't remember how precisely they put it in the drama (I guess they linked it with the destruction of the clan manor by Xue Yang and skipped the explanation about the poetess). The only part I remember is the petals thrown around Lan WangJi while he, WWX and NHS were looking for the pieces of Yin Metal themselves. Anyway, WRH never got all the pieces and he never stopped looking for more, but XY had disappeared at some point and he never really knew precisely how many of them there were, either.

I learned a few things off this article - one, that YT is a media channel for right-wing politics in SK (that wasn't something I really expected, given the supposed open-for-all media YT is supposed to be; is SK really all that right-wing? By which I don't mean alt-right or anything slanderous. It's just that I expected young people - who tend to be those who follow people on YT and/or have their own channels - to be more of a left leaning kind mostly due to them being young, I admit.)

And two, that I learned my maths wrong, LOL. If they were married in 2012, haven't they been married for 9 years now? Article says it's 6. Maybe it's a typo.

As to the rumours - all marriages have their rocky places. If anything of the rumours are true - either the infidelity or the divorce threats - it's their own problems to work through. I do expect this to be some kind of misshaped publicity stunt from someone. Oh well...

After the first episode - I was almost afraid to start it, because the first part/season was great and I didn't want it spoiled.

But it looks like it's going to be a good sequel, keeping fingers crossed. The only thing missing so far is a great song, like Skyline was for ITSAY. Skyline is on my permanent playlist, I hope we get at least a remix of it if not a new good song.

KYG is really on the point at the end. Someone who strayed once will stray again. If they ever make a second season of it, it'll probably be about the downfall of DCK.

I didn't expect to like this as much (even with the strange veer into action flick for two eps, lol, that came out of the blind side (eps 13-14 or thereabouts, when KYG started beating teams of thugs everywhere he went out of the blue - and winning most of the time too.) Which reminds me - it took me most of the series to think about how KYG's name sounds in English... I mean, Young Goon. Kind of funny, though there's probably no problem with it in Korean. When he started kicking people's a**es, his name kept coming to my mind, LOL.

Overall, I wish they'd stayed with the lone killer thing and not make it so over-reaching. It's creepier when it's one deranged mind, but becomes too improbable with a whole fleet of ready-made serial killers working inside the police as vigilantes.

But I liked it anyway, so there's that.

Second season, is there a chance of it? The acting - particularly from the two MLs - was phenomenal, I enjoyed the cameos, and I kept noticing how elegantly Kim Hyun Joo walks, which she did, so many, many times. I like her voice too. Too bad her storyline with the revenge on the thumb cutter got changed into a whole conspiracy.

So, I want a second season with the same cast... It's becoming all the rage lately, so there's still hope.

Done with it...

At this point in time I'm willing to bet the killer is the guard who keeps pestering KYG whenever he returns home. KYG remembered the face of the killer wrong when the memory was fresh and he would have definitely remembered his own father, I guess he could be remembering DCK's face wrong too after so many years.

But I like the story so far. If DCK turns out to really be the killer, props to the actor :D DCK really seems a committed do-gooder so far :D

After episode 8...

The Good Detective, Mad Dog, Nobody Knows (bromance isn't between the leads, the lead is a female detective - highly recommended, though!), Signal, Tunnel, Time Between Dog and Wolf, Midnight Runners (a movie) - for starters. I don't know if the bromance tag is used in their description, but this is an important aspect in these dramas/movies.

Myself, I like the found family trope too - so if you're inclined to branch out in that direction, then maybe give a shot to Healer, Save Me, Bad Guys, The Uncanny Counter and Life on Mars. TUC is more of a superpowers story than detective though - still good.

If you define romance by kissing and/or sex scenes, then yes, this is not a romance. If you define romance by everything else romance entails, then yes, this is one of the best romances in dramas yet.

One of TU's subplots is the subtle, sweet, passionate, painful, tragic, hopeful and soulmate-level romance, IMHO. But there's also a lot more than this to the drama - give it a chance to develop some. Or better yet, just in case, try the novel first, and if you like it, trust the drama fans that the adaptation rises to their expectations.