#which tbf has nothing to do with the ship or its writing and everything to do with the state of fandom rn

[daniclaytcn]

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[kuronekonerochan]

The laziest compilation of thoughts about the mess that was Alice (spoilers)

I finish a lot of shitty dramas. Like a lot. I could review them, but I won’t bc there’s too many and I’m too lazy (when you ff some dramas from 45min to 5 per episode it doesn’t really count as watching too many dramas bc it’s really a commercial break, lol). Some I watch for the so bad it’s good content, or love hate watching or just to have something to watch while I eat, even if they’re boring af. It’s also a tiny bit of ocd bc I need to see how they end (even the ones I drop I check out the finale). I only drop the ones that as Marie Kondo says *Do Not Spark Joy, more specifically...annoy me and make me cranky.

I sometimes bitch about it on DMs with ranty spoilers without structure and that reference other unrelated dramas or shows, because ADHD and my mind refuses to stay on topic, which would make it probably unintelligible except if you are in the niche who happens to have watched the other unrelated dramas, so it’s probably useless as a review.

That said, here are some random disconnected thoughts about Alice.

MAJOR SPOILER ALERTS BEWARE

(this is like partly copypaste of DM rants bc I am that lazy biatch. Also, fair warning I will seem super harsh or this drama because that’s the thing about a bitching dm versus a proper review... I am not bringing up all the points and talking about the good and what I liked as well as the bad, it’s just the bad...and although the drama is imo a mess, it does have some good in it. So if it were a review I’d always argue pros and cons...ranty thoughs who cares about pros? boring..I will not be bothered with devil’s advocate).

This was fascinating to watch, interesting but not good... but like a trainwreck.

I continued watching this mess despite the headache inducing convoluted plot (I watched a lot of timetravel stuff and I love it...encompassing all the theories about it, from butterfly effect, to effectively changing the future (with characters forgetting it or keeping it in memory because “eye of the storm” theory, the “efforts are futile and you can try to change it but the future is set in stone”, to “small changes can be made but big events are fixed points in time”, to “every change creates a new time line” and multiverse, etc... and trust me, all of them can be done well when well written or turn out a confusing illogical mess and that has nothing to do with the theory chosen, but with presenting how time travel works for that story and what the basic rules are and sticking to them...or when something happens that contradicts them, come up with an explanation as to why that happens.

 I don’t mean the drama should be an exposition borefest with too much pseudosciency jargon...but this drama gives you too little in the way of rules and the viewers sort of figure out how timetravel works (which is not bad per se, huge fan of show don’t tell...but there’s a limit to how much they cannot tell or the characters chose not to ask just for the sake of plot and not without any logic to it). Anyways, the little “rules” that we gather along the way...the writing doesn’t stick to them and keeps contradicting itself without addressing or explaining it and hoping we’re so confused we don’t notice. Some dramas you just say “eh, forget it, it doesn’t make sense, let’s turn off our brains and enjoy it”, but here if I wanted to try and follow what was going on at all it required “brain on” mode for their convoluted plot twists...which also made me aware of so may plotholes the time road should have looked like Swiss Cheese. I could go into them...but I cannot be bothered and the list would be extensive and still incomplete, so I will just put 3 here bc I can’t help it:

 1) Hot Daddy with emotional turmoil the entire drama of “Oh no, I abandoned her in 92 and regretted it, it happened 1 year ago for me, and now I find out she died in 2010. How was she, did she suffer? What did she know? Oh god, if only I were a time traveler eventually going rogue who could show up and talk to her any time in the timeline between 92 and 2010...Alas, I have to live in misery with the consequences of my actions...there is just ABSOLUTELY no way of solving this. I guess I’ll just keep making unauthorized time travel journeys from 2050′s time agency back to the year of 2020 and only 2020 to constantly be blindsided by murder attempts on everyone everywhere without having a clue to what’s going on when I could simply go back to before 2010 and talk to the one person who is proven to know what is going on.” Here is where there could be a bullshit reason as to why he could go only go to 2020 and not before, but the drama didn’t even bother.

 2) They say Tae Yi’s mom was originally a time traveler who settled with her physicist dad in the past, eventually making way for her to discover time travel herself. The mom is missing and this is never addressed again. 

3) The book...who wrote it? Because I have guesses but they never outright answer it... and if the biatch author knew that stuff why the alice in wonderland stupid analogies?

 Coward, or petty, or both.... or maybe just a chaos gremlin godlike entity who wanted to watch them all squirm, like the author from Extraordinary You...and that I could get behind, but sadly they don’t go that metaphysical/theological with the plot...which is honestly the main problem with this drama. It seems ambitious in concept but it’s never explored decently in any way, not in the pseudoscience, not in the philosophical sense of the meaning of time/space/existence, not even in its relationships, with the constant back and forth and weirdness of it.

Besides the timetravel migraine, we had the weirdest directing, that made the relationship between the leads feel a bit too incesty...which was the main reason I kept watching this drama...morbid curiosity of how they wrapped up this mess of a plot AND especially the relationship payoff...would it keep being weird with trope romance drama scenes like the female lead and second female lead facing off and being jealous, or that weird hair washing that felt more sensual than maternal? I knew it wouldn’t happen but my inner chaos gremlin wanted kdramaland to grow some balls and go full “predestination: oedipus edition” with this mess. Alas they sort of did, mostly didn’t. Even that angle was a whole inconsistent mess: there were times where it felt too romantic, then for a short minute I misguidedly shipped the journalist friend, then it seemed the dude was ace, then they calmed their tits with the whole weird romantic vibes and it got platonic cute, then with the memory merge thing finally motherly vibes, then I shipped the journalist again for 1 sec only...and then the ending:

Alice ended with the lead solving every problem by shooting himself (technically) in the head...and that's the second meta perfectly fitting ending for a drama with a good cast and terrible writing that drove itself into a corner this year, after the sleepless princess ended with the leads jumping off a cliff. I don't think it's a self aware choice of the writers, or an admission that they themselves know it was bad, but the irony is delicious.

Spoiler for the ending: he undoes timey wimey stuff from when his mom first got killed in high school and closed the time travel door. So he became an architect and new Tae Yi just woke up in her bed remembering everything, but in reality she had just come back from a conference abroad and had never met him. So mom TaeYi didn't die then, but never got back on screen after the time undo so who the f knows what happened to her. 

Also, if new Tae Yi remembers, does that mean hot daddy from the future does as well, but he is just stuck in the future without a time door to ever see them again? The drama doesn’t care answering that and forgets his character is even a thing...I will miss you, my fave who looked emotionally and literally constipated 24/7 (it doesn’t care answering much at all tbf... a little known fact about the time travel paradoxes according to the physics of this world is that besides doppelganger chickenpox it induces severe lazy writing).

Anyways new Tae Yi went looking for architect (? okay...I guess) ML after she woke up, at first he didn't remember her, but it ends with him meeting her, apparently remembering her and they stare at each other... you know, like any bad traditional romantic kdrama finale....so there is still THAT vibe. 

Honestly, the usual romantic ballad score for scenes between the leads WAS NOT the most intelligent choice for this drama in specific but boy did they stick with it (not to mention the ending song... that goes, in english “we be like Bonnie and Clyde we ride or die...which...k, sure)...so technically the ending was exactly the cliche post amnesia running back to each other and staring for the final scene while romantic music blasts trope. Take it as you will.

[sweettsubaki]

DnA Reviews/liveblog

Hi !

Because I am trash and haven’t been able to load season 2 of DnA on my computer in like…3 months (at this point I’ve decided it hates me…. I couldn’t finish it when it came out and I still can’t watch it now that I’m trying again wtf), I decided I’m gonna reread the series instead. If anyone’s interested, know I’ll start tomorrow.

Now, I stopped it two or three years ago (I was happier just reading DnB!! to be honest, DnA got very frustrating at that point and I just kept wanting to hit the characters all the time hjsbvzvqkqib). I caught up recently but honestly I skim read it to see if it was as frustrating as it was when I stopped. From what I gathered some things got better, others didn’t. So I decided that instead of playing a guessing game I was just gonna rewatch the series but then season 2 got in my way again [insert the “Old Man Yells at Clouds” Meme here], so I’m gonna reread everything and try to give small daily reviews at the end of every few chapters (2 to 4 most likely) and maybe a more thorough one after specific arcs? As suggested by the titles, it’ll look more like a liveblog than a review kinda like my One Piece and Young Justice posts. (I know I’ll relatively enjoy Act I, it’s Act II that scares me ‘cause I’m the type who can’t enjoy fanservice if the rest doesn’t follow up and that was my issue when I stopped).

So I’ll try to post one a day but… I’ll be honest there’s a 30-60% chance I’ll forget the reviewing and keep on reading… and because of my mix of classes and work I might not get to read for a full week here and there (unless I’m full on procrastinating in which case I might do more).

Things got a bit personal so I’m putting them under a read more. It’s just a bit of a disclaimer to explain why I might stop during Act II again so if you’re not interested you can pass it. I thought about deleting this but it is a fairly important part of my motivations behind the reread/reviewing so I thought I might as well keep it. I haven’t decided on the tag yet but it’s most likely gonna be DnA: Review with a side tag like DnA Act I: Review.

I’ll be honest, I’m doing this now because I’m too tired to be frustrated by writing tropes I dislike and I’m hoping it’ll get me into act II more easily because the reason I had to stop DnA was because my frustration impacted my mental and physical health and I don’t want it to happen again because characters like Eijun are a balm for the soul (that’s how bad it got, yes).

So if it goes anywhere near close, I’ll stop again. Now I’m in a way better state than I was at the time despite being basically a ball of exhaustion, so there’s no real risk but… I really love the characters, it’s rare that I get so emotionally involved with a story to its core and because of this DnA represents something special in my life. I even started to ship naturally - ok it’s like only one important ship but I usually get invested after thinking, reasoning, understanding and I am not an emotional person by Nature. Getting frustrated by tropes I dislike is nothing new but not to the point of impacting my health even when I was dealing with the full swing of my depression (though tbf, fiction has always been a way to help me emote bc I suck at it irl…like…I can reach Miyuki’s level type of sucking at emotions and depression is… yeah not gonna go there). So it’s kind of uncharted territories.

I decided to do the review thing because it will help me notice if things go too far and, if I do stop I’ll be able to analyse it later. And I thought sharing with others might be fun.

All this to give you a heads up Act II will probably have me frustrated but if it goes out of hand because of my emotional involvement I will stop.