Joker

Quotes I nod along to

* Once you sit down at the gambling table, sooner or later you’ll have a chance to win at least one round.
 (This one is actually quite motivating to me. If you’ve decided to play, you’ll get a chance to win at least once, so just give it your all.)

* In the workplace, there are no protagonists or villains, only winners and losers. — Lumi

* In the workplace, you don’t need politeness as much as you need presence and confidence. If your opponent knows you’re gentle, they won’t go easy on you. — Luke

* If you never know how to do it, you’ll never have it.
(Luke told Flora to learn how to drive. Flora said that even if she knew how to drive, she didn’t have a car anyway. Then Luke said this, and it made me seriously put learning to drive on my list of things I need to do soonest.)

* The salary your boss pays you already includes compensation for having to endure all the grievances and frustrations.
  (This line hit me hard. So whenever work gets insanely stressful and I feel frustrated or wronged for one reason or another, I think about the salary my boss is paying me and grit my teeth and keep going.)

* If the road you’re on feels too difficult, it’s because you’re going uphill. It means you’re getting better every day.

* If a girl doesn’t receive flowers, it’s because she has a special quality — she already gives off her own fragrance. — Zhang Lei
  (I really loved this line from the landlord. He said it to comfort female lead, and to every girl out there: even if no one gives you flowers, you are already a flower yourself, and you already have your own fragrance.)

Another drama about love that makes me want to write something as *long* as their love story 😅
It’s a romance, but one that leans more toward mature love, healing, and growing together than the usual purely “sweet” romance.

And if I had to choose one word to reflect on this drama, I think it would be **GENTLENESS**.

I used to think that being gentle in love meant things that were easy to see. Hugging each other. Holding hands. Going somewhere together. Buying each other gifts. Being there when the other person is sad.

But real gentleness lies in something much harder: **the way someone treats you when the two of you don’t agree.**

Shang Zhitao had loved Luan Nian for four years. It wasn’t until she saw her older sister get proposed to that she started thinking more seriously about the future. She wanted a relationship with a clear answer.

And Luan Nian… well, he’s basically a professional smart-mouth :))
He gets jealous but won’t admit he’s jealous.
He has feelings but refuses to say them directly.
And when she asks him about their future, he drops a painfully blunt line:> “I’m sorry. I can’t give you what you want.”
So they ended things. They didn’t break up because they stopped loving each other. They broke up because, at that point, neither of them was mature enough to honestly say what they needed.

Zhitao didn’t ask about all the things she was uncertain about. Luan Nian didn’t tell her what he was actually afraid of or what he truly wanted. One chose silence. The other chose words that hurt.

And sometimes a relationship doesn’t end because the love is gone. It ends simply because two people don’t know how to love each other the right way.!!

There’s something about Zhitao that I really like: **“I still love this person, but being with them no longer makes me feel loved in the way I need to be loved.”**

I think a lot of people only understand this once they grow older. Loving someone and feeling loved are two different things. Someone can love you very much. But the way they love you may not be the way that makes you feel safe. And vice versa, you can love someone deeply while unintentionally hurting them through the very things you think you’re doing out of love.

When they meet again, after years of misunderstandings, putting their egos aside and apologizing, traveling together like an actual couple on a date, Zhitao says that she likes the gentleness Luan Nian shows her. I really like that detail. And honestly, what girl doesn’t like romantic dates and that kind of tenderness?

Because Luan Nian didn’t suddenly become a perfect man after a few years. He was still himself. It’s just that after all the clashes, losing each other, and taking a hard look at himself, he began to understand how to love the person he loved a little better.

Maybe that’s what love is like.
Just because two people love each other doesn’t mean everything will naturally work out.
Sometimes you have to take a very long detour before you finally understand what the person beside you actually needs.

I think gentleness sometimes isn’t a hug at all.
It’s knowing that something could hurt the person you love, so you choose not to do it.
It’s not trying to win at all costs when you argue.
It’s not taking the vulnerabilities the other person once trusted you with and turning them into weapons.
It’s remembering that the person standing in front of you isn’t your opponent whom you have to defeat just to prove that you’re right.
It’s not silently making sacrifices without saying anything, only to end up misunderstanding each other and then asking, **“Did you really think I wasn’t trying??”**
It’s being willing to share your own problems, so the person you love isn’t always the last one to know what’s going on with you.

Because of course there will be clashes when two people love each other. Being in love, getting married, having children, living together for ten or twenty years… none of that means the two of you will suddenly stop disagreeing.

What matters is **how you collide with each other.**
Sometimes you hold hands.
Sometimes you walk side by side.
Sometimes you turn your back because you’re angry.
And sometimes you have to stand apart from each other so you can look at yourself.

But after all those moments, if both people still want to turn back toward each other…

Then perhaps there is still a lot about that love worth holding on to.

And the older I get, the more I realize:
I don’t need a love that is sweet all the time anymore. I don’t need someone who always knows exactly what to do to make me happy.
I just need someone who, after all the times we’ve collided, is still willing to keep learning how to understand me better.
Someone who knows that some things I say are only because I’m angry. Who knows that there are things I don’t say, but secretly really need to hear.
Someone who knows what I need, and knows what they need.
And most importantly, someone who knows not to turn the person they love into someone they have to defeat.

After 30, I guess I don’t need a perfect love anymore. Just a love real enough for me to be myself. Mature enough to say the difficult things. And gentle enough that after all these years, when I turn and look at the person beside me, I can still think: “Yeah. This is still the person I want to be gentle with.”

*The drama is basically saying “you have to hurt before you can grow” kkk. Happy Ending.*

If something isn't built on a strong foundation, it's prone to fall apart.

I actually think that’s the fun part of watching movies or dramas when the director doesn’t tell us everything and leaves it to viewers to interpret. They give us clues here and there, and it’s our job to collect those pieces and make sense of them. It feels like actively engaging with the story instead of just passively watching. So it’s kind of a co-creation process, where the full story is made up of what the director gives us and what we infer, connect, and fill in ourselves.

It’s also interesting to hear different viewpoints from other viewers and see how the same scene, action or character can be interpreted differently depending on our own life experiences.

Why is Luke so insanely jealous and completely out of control over the most random things?

Because he’s inferior to her ex-boyfriend, and even snapping his fingers isn’t enough to one-up him, so he’s pissed?
Because they both know the same embarrassing habit of hers—kicking off the blanket in her sleep—and he can’t even compete there, so he’s annoyed?
Because he’s not the IT guy who gets to spend four eyes with his girlfriend six days a week, so he’s gone completely mad?

Surely not.

He’s the most effortlessly stylish man in Beijing. He’s got money pouring out of his ears, and he has everything: sophistication, kindness, thoughtfulness. Hell, even if he knows how to make other people “sizzle like shrimp in a wok,” a few random men are hardly going to intimidate him. The man literally charges straight at gangsters, laughing as he slaps them.

So what exactly is making him lose control like this?

He’s insecure.

Because in those hidden corners of the staircase where nobody can see, in the back of that luxurious Mercedes with the air-conditioning blasting, in those fleeting moments at the office when he overhears bits and pieces of conversation, his heart turns cold when he catches a glimpse of a completely different side of Shang Zhi Tao.

The effortless laughter. The relaxed, unguarded way she is. Those things only come out when you’re with someone you feel safest with—someone you feel loves you deeply, someone you regard as family—when you finally dare to let your guard down completely.

And yet with him, she is careful about every little thing. Hesitant. Nervous. Tiptoeing around him...

The most genuine version of a person, the most vulnerable version of herself—she has never let him see that.

And if we can’t show each other our whole selves, then aren’t we basically still strangers? In the end, she and he really are exactly what he once said they were: Just bed partners.

But therein lies the problem.

Even though that’s exactly what he said he wanted, he’s still pissed. Because somewhere along the way, without even realizing it, he started feeling restless whenever he wasn’t Shang Zhi Tao’s priority for the other six days of the week. Why can’t she just figure it out herself?!

Because he loves her, but he doesn’t dare admit it. So he takes all that frustration out on everything else.
Because he’s scared now. Scared that it’ll turn out exactly like his father said—that eventually people won’t be able to put up with him anymore, and they’ll leave. So he uses that sharp, obnoxious mouth of his to make sure he’s the one who leaves first... Maybe that way, it hurts a little less?

In the drama, fine, I’ll ship them. But if this were real life, I’d be ordering twelve rolls of duct tape and taping that mouth shut for him. 😂

People can’t change overnight or simply at will. It takes time, and it’s normal to fall back into old habits a few times along the way, especially when those habits have been with you for the majority of your life. We’re all like that, unless we go through some life-changing event or things get so bad that changing becomes the only choice left.

Thats the gist of the drama. 2 flawed people learn to love each other and change to make the rela work. Its in the intro "you dont have to be perfect to be worthy of love"

You asked that like the drama has already finished airing or we have some superhuman ability to predict the future lol.

And that is also only your experience, other people can have different experiences. Just this morning Ive seen a person saying that her rela is very similar to this and they have both grown and are happy now, but it did take a lot of work.

Attraction is simple, it’s either you feel it or you dont, and it can happen instantly, even at first sight. It’s not a science experiment or a checklist where, if someone meets a certain set of criteria, you’ll be attracted to them.
He’s attracted to her because she’s different from the women around him and from the people he’s surrounded by. The reason she got hired is because the company already has too many know-it-all people with their heads in the clouds, whereas she’s like a blank sheet of paper, humble, grounded and willing to learn. She’s also very kind, soft, and bright. And in the later episodes, you’ll find that her personality is actually very similar to that of his mom’s, which perfectly complements his personality (his personality is similar to his dad).

Well you can even find in this comment section some ppl shared their experience that their ex was even more toxic and a lot less good looking but they still fell for it. So its not far from reality though.

Not sure why so many ppl have been worried about the ending being rush. I think the writer has done a good job so far so we should have some trust in her.

Not always but some of it are true, depending on the rela and the people involved. One of the reasons the drama is so popular is because people can relate to it.

Because they dont see him as a red flag, just a flawed person with ego, pride, fear and communication issues. There are many comments down here that explain it very well. Why do you have to impose your opion on other people?

It appears to me as just another cliched, cutesy, troupy ceo romance drama. I feel like I have seen that male lead in 10 other similar ceo cdramas lol he needs to take a break. It feels like copy paste now, nothing new or exicting that makes viewers want to watch.

Maybe it’s from Luke? I know Luke gave her a lot of expensive bags as gifts. At the beginning of the series, she was carrying a backpack, though. Even if she bought it herself, I still don’t find it unrealistic. Many people are willing to spend a little more on an item they use frequently. Also, her job involves meeting clients and representing the company, so she needs to look presentable and dress appropriately for work.

I hope Chinese producers can learn from the success of this drama that audiences want mature, complicated romances. Hopefully, we’ll see more dramas like this in the future.

My colleagues are nice but they are all a lot older than me and have kids so we are not really interested in the same topics. There are also a few colleagues who are a bit pushy and straighforward.

Yeah, I’m so sick of the high-school teen romances, cutesy love, or cheesy CEO romances. And when it’s not that, it goes to the other extreme that is too dramatic and dark with divorce, cheating, and melodrama. This one strikes such a good balance between realism and romance.

One reason could be "normalize". When you grow up with something or are exposed to it for long enough, you can start to see it as normal, even when it’s objectively unhealthy or harmful.