#but here u go for anyone wanting to hear me ramble about eft

[lesbiancarat]

i finally finished exclusive fairytale and i want to give some thoughts/a review! (contains spoilers)

honestly modern school/coming of age dramas usually aren't my cup of tea, i wouldn't have picked up this type of drama if jun weren't in it. but i was determined to enjoy it for what it was even if it's not the type of story i usually find compelling, and i definitely did

i really appreciated the humor, i'm a sucker for 4th wall breaks and record scratch moments, even if it's kind of cheesy humor i thought it was well done. they didn't overdo it, i think they kept a good balance of humor and sincerity throughout the show

i also REALLY like how realistic most of the relationships felt in the show. a lot of dramas will create over the top/dramatic plots with big misunderstandings or jealousy or these very dramatic romantic moments that just don't happen to most people in real life. and there's nothing wrong with dramas that are like that, dramas are meant to be entertaining and dramatic plots make them so. but especially when it came to xiao tu and ling chao's relationship it felt really refreshing to see a very quiet and gentle romance that develops over the years

like after they got together they didn't dramatically change their personalities or how they acted around each other, even when other's commented how they weren't being "romantic enough". because they were already comfortable with each other from growing up together, and the drama just let them be comfortable in their relationship from the get-go. and how xiao tu kept "forgetting" she and ling chao were together at first when she was making plans, honestly that's a very realistic thing. like moving through the world as a single person is different, and you really do have to adjust your mindset and your habits to accommodate another person when you're in a couple and that switch doesn't flip overnight

and there were misunderstandings and moments of jealousy but they were all handled pretty realistically too. when xiao tu and ling chao had misunderstandings they would just talk about it and resolve it. and even between characters that had a conflict, like liking the same person (eg. ling chao and yin zihan or xiao tu and xu linglong) they were still able to be civil toward each other and even friends rather than treating each other as mortal enemies (and on the topic of xu linglong i won't spoil her character arc but i really appreciated how it ended up)

like there's a thousand other examples i could give but i really was very impressed with how realistic the relationships were. it really felt like the author was writing from experience and not writing an idealized version of a romance or over dramatizing it

the one relationship/plot point i didn't really like was the whole thing with ling chao's father. imo given the fact that ling chao's father as far as they told us had NO contact with him or his mom for like the first ~16 years of his life so he could start a business to support his family makes no sense to me. like why did he need to move out and cut off contact completely if he still cared for them and was doing it for their benefit? it would have made more sense to me if he was still living with them but wasn't a good father when ling chao was a kid bc he was busy with work. or if he was always on business trips, or making some effort to be a dad but failing bc it wasn't his priority. like it was an active choice for him to not contact his son for his entire childhood. or alternatively, the dad could have left when ling chao was a kid bc he fell out of love/separated from ling chao's mom and then have them fall back in love again when ling chao's in highschool. idk the motivation they gave him for being absent but apparently still being a really loving and invested dad just seemed like lazy and unrealistic writing. like i didn't need them to spend longer on that plot and i was fine with ling chao forgiving his dad relatively quickly bc that's not the main point of the show i just wish the logic behind him being an absent father for the first part of ling chao's life made a bit more sense lol

on another note, i've seen some people complaining about the dubbing, but from the perspective of a regular c-drama watcher, it's actually not bad. there were some scenes where the dubbing was more out of sync but it was all pretty standard. it's actually on the better end of dubbing i've seen. of course it's not the same/as ideal compared to not dubbing, but if you watch c-dramas it's just something you have to get used to lol

overall i don't think this show is super groundbreaking, but it is very well done for the coming of age, childhood friends to lovers show that it is. it's a really light and easy show to watch. not something with a lot of excitement but if you want a show that's relaxing and easy to digest then exclusive fairytale's got you covered!