Kochase

For whatever reason, Off does not look like himself in the poster so I was so confused for the longest time like 'wait Gun is paired with someone who's not actually Off but Off is in here huh?'

Lol the pingxie ship is like... tacitly canon. As in, it will never be confirmed by canon, but at this point it's extremely unlikely NPSS will canonically break the ship too. It's his primary cash cow after all, and he veered away from his original intended ending because of fan wishes.

TBF there's still a bit of a divide on Eastern / Western entertainment. I'm not sure how many people in Asia have heard of La Casa de Papel let alone watched it.

It helps when the government is the main 'producer' hahahaha. One does not turn down that offer...

Honestly, what the truth even is doesn't even matter at this point. The most concerning and ridiculous thing is that there's now such a power of mob justice anyone can wield to bring anyone down. It's guilty until proven innocent, after all. That you can be entirely blacklisted for things taken out of context, not yet substantiated. This is exactly how the Cultural Revolution decades ago went down. Anyone who wanted to get ahead and saw people they didn't like in the way could report 'anti-nationalistic' behavior (e.g. religion, liberal ideas, anything that might undermine central authority). And there was no due process, no proof required... people were just stripped of their ranks / titles, publicly shamed, abused by the collective masses. And hey, now they're trying to downplay the depth of chaos and bloodshed that happened during that time by rewriting or 're-phrasing' history books. Depressing thing is, it's working. That's why you're seeing this effect today. People have forgotten the lessons learned during that time. The entertainment circle hasn't become competitive... the way Chinese governance is set up in conjunction with cultural values (strong deference to authority, winner takes all) means this will always be the result. We had some glimmer of hope of breaking this cycle when the previous administrations established and respected the two term limit and tapered their own powers but... whelp. This is the natural state of things when you have absolute power like that with no process.

Yeah it's a bit of a shame since everything leading up to it was so very good! I'm not sure how the original novel ended, and tbf this whole transgender topic doesn't have a clean exit. It's kinda doomed to be messy. He still identifies as a man but is trapped in a woman's body, but he is attracted to a man now due to experiences, memories, and the biological changes. If memories make a person, does that mean he's losing himself when he gains more and more of her memories? (The show was certainly trying to promote their merging as a good thing). What is an identity? What makes a personality? What attracts people to one another?

It's kind of a philosophical landmine, and they don't leave it open-ended enough to keep the audience thinking for themselves. They definitely tried to spin this as a 'happy ending'. Not even bittersweet. I feel like the premise was comical, then development into thoughtful... and if they kept it a bit open to interpretation instead of concluding it as an 'all for the best' kind of thing, it would have hit a home run. I would have liked to see Mr. Queen struggle more with losing more of himself to her memories and then perhaps ultimately embracing it, and I definitely would have had him stay. Maybe leave a little hint at how in the future, he can share his full secrets with the King. Or, if he really is due to return to his own original body, then at least a nod to the King realizing the person he loved has changed would have been nice. Like... him not noticing anything feels cheap. They are not the same person after all, even if they did 'merge' somewhat.

They kinda shot themselves in the foot with this Catch 22. If they're indeed claiming the two have merged to become interchangeable, why did they change back? And to have that kind of ending to be better? But by having this be the 'happy ending', they're basically saying this is for the better. But if they say this is for the better, they're implying the two souls are not the same. But then if they say they're not the same... then the fact that Mr. Queen and the King loved each other... they're basically splitting them apart and forcing in a different pairing. So it can't be that happy.

Again, it was still a great watch though. Just the ending felt forcibly happy.

I'm loving it. Gimme more quality stories with romance sub-plots. TBH I couldn't care less if they manage to kiss or not. Depths of relationship are portrayed through shared experiences, not skinship checkpoints. BL fans aren't a monolith... the ones who are most basic and clamoring for skinship are just the loudest.

I'm not feeling the ending. I know they tried to make it so that the personalities were merging, but it felt like the Queen we came to know and love died in the Joseon era. And the King would notice too. They're different people still. I feel bad for the King. So hyun got her wish entirely, Jang Bonghwan probably lost something as well, though one could argue being away from that body may numb it a bit. But the King... the woman he came to love is gone.

Loved this lots and really enjoyed it overall! But...

Lol true. I’m loving this WZT rendition too. She doesn’t always have to have a femme fatale look; just being self-assured AF is so great. I hope she doesn’t go all power crazy on us here, but we’ll see.

I kinda really love that the women here, while gorgeous, are not your usual porcelain doll pretty. They also all contribute in their own right! And THANK YOU, that despite the women often dressing the same as men, people can still tell they are women. It always bothered me in all those cross-dressing dramas that someone with such a tiny frame and porcelain face could ever possibly be mistaken for a man.

Character crafting, motivations, and development are all great. Ironically, while I came partially for WYB, his character so far is the weakest (but he also has the least air time). Curious to see how he develops though... hopefully he does see some development beyond the 'brains but no social skills' personality he has so far.

Mystery / political intrigue can't be evaluated as of yet. There's definitely some common story / plot elements... but it's still fun. Compared to Longest Day in Chang'An, I think it's a more well-rounded / better balanced production. Chang'An, I couldn't quite get past the first few episodes because it was a bit too breakneck pace in plot without getting us acquainted with the characters as people. Here, there's plenty of good humorous moments too.

!! Why have I not heard of this before? Everyone keeps talking about all the school based Thai BLs which I can't differentiate at all because everyone looks the same (I mean that school uniform / white shirt look) and the identical step-function romantic 'developments'... no one mentioned there were other genres??? This is honestly much more my jam. A non-romantic plot is necessary to further character development in a mature / sensible way. And I'm loving this so far.

I love this! Finally a high school BL where the MC isn't a meek, doe-eyed boy... Aoki is adorable, but still very much a believable teenage boy. We're finally seeing Japanese BLs that aren't one of two options only 1) Realistic and depressing or 2) Cringeworthy cheesiness in the name of 'romance' / 'humor'.

Side note: Some of the fansubs are very very odd? Like they're totally off in some regards...

Haha the energy folks have here is amazing... Here's my two-cents, as someone a bit more tapped into Chinese culture / politics. No, Immortality and like works aren't 'permanently unable to air'. (Things like 'permanent' aren't really in the vocabulary of the CCP. It's one thing today and another thing tomorrow lol.)

However, understand that the CCP's relation to businesses is very different from any other 'developed' country's authority to its businesses. There is no 'fair play' or 'Tencent has spent way too much money on this so they must air' or 'it makes logical sense for them to try to xyz'. Every company is answerable to the government in the most direct of ways. Not the 'we must adhere to established regulations' way, but as in 'the government waved a mandate today, so we must comply overnight' way. The companies are way more powerless in the face of authority compared to their Western counterparts. Don't assume there's logic or fair ground to any of this.

That said... 2023 is Xi Jinping's 're-election' year *cough cough*, so I'm hopeful a lot of the tight regulations might relent a little after he secures his 'term'. Set a reminder for 2023 everyone? Hahahaha.

Omg this is legit my favorite kdrama of all time now. I don't know what people are talking about... the story was very well laid out. The characters were all very true to their ideologies and beliefs, and all the conflict that arose between all of them were very believable as a result. I think Gaon's 'naivety' was absolutely believable, as frustrating as it might have been at parts. His struggles were actually very well portrayed. In fact, I feel like audiences have become too accustomed to the monotonically progressive character build in kdramas. In real life, people progress and regress continuously. One step forwards, two steps back at times.

Ugh. None of these characters were boring, and each of these characters represent very real personalities and perspectives. Anyone jumping firmly on one side of the fence (whether it's Yohan's or Gaon's or whatever), writing off a particular character as totally unbelievable or stupid, is kind of missing the whole point of this drama. Each of these characters stood for a perspective on justice and morality, along with all its flaws and irrational attachments, and my god what a gorgeous symphony of social commentary this all was. Kim Gaon being a 'goody two shoes' is *supposed* to irk you. His naive ideology, innocent hypocrisy, and sanctimonious is *supposed* to grind your gears. But it's also what helps balance out Kang Yohan's perspective on justice.

The drama isn't trying to tell us what true justice is. It's meant to just shed light on how everyone's notion of justice is flawed in one way or another.

Even the normal fans are unnecessarily harsh though. The entertainment culture in China is extremely... entitled, so fans get really unfiltered and obnoxious about their opinions. It's also why authorities have kind of started cracking down idol culture.

I know people who are just like 'yeah XL is so ugly'. I'm like 'Well, let's wait for the full costume and proper scenes before passing judgment. He definitely doesn't look as on point as HC right now, but we don't totally know until we see it.' and they're like 'No he's just so ugly'. And then I'm like '...' There's no use arguing lol. Even after they did away with his mantis / whisker bangs, which I thought made a world of a difference and XL looks way better now, they were still like 'he's still ugly'.

Welcome to the world of c-dramas, where entertainment and politics are perpetually married, and anything anyone does may affect everyone else! You'll always get lots of rumors and theories, but rarely anything confirmed. Chinese internet is a place where conspiracy theories *actually* may have real weight to them, but there also are so many nonsensical ones. Reason is because there's 1) Chinese entertainment is a singular space. There is one social media system (Weibo), and so everyone follows / sees the same news and thus are vying for the same group of audiences - i.e. everyone. 2) The gov is the final authority in all industries, entertainment included, so if there's stuff related to their policies going on the background, you'll see the effects rippling through the entertainment industry but you might not ever get real confirmation. 3) Mob culture in China is insane and frickin' terrifying, because the people are many, but they're relatively easily leveraged / manipulated (not a comment on intelligence, just it's part of the cultural pressure). So yeah, some random person with a grudge can indeed leverage the power of the masses to pass judgment and roadblock / cancel something entirely. Hence, any theory is viable haha.

So this particular theory... who knows where it came from. And why it got perpetuated. We can make a lot of guesses, but like... eh. Won't really get an answer. Personally, I think the real movement is the crackdown on idol culture that manifested the Kris Wu and Zhang Zhehan incidents. (Please note I'm making no comment on their guilt / innocence.) There's a movement to reprioritize family values and boost the declining population growth: approval of 3 child policy and encouragement to have more children, shutting down a lot of private / cram schools because they're deemed too costly and a reason why people refuse to have more children, curbing usage of games because they're seen as a distraction, etc... and the toxic idol culture that drains so much attention from young people. I guess BL is also 'bad' because, well, gay people can't have babies, but I'm not sure how targeted it is vs. just an across-the-board 'cleanup' effort.

But who knows. Like I said, anything can be possible when any single person who says the right thing at the right time can trigger a monsoon of mob judgment. *shrugs*

Hiding under cut to make it less spammy:

Well, given people like and follow actors, it's not so different from liking / following a ship. Just because they're real people doesn't mean there's no appeal in watching their interactions. We like it in fiction; why wouldn't we like it IRL? The problem, however, is the same as anything else - blurring fiction and reality and having unrealistic expectations. Whether it's that a celebrity should not date / have a private life, or that a celebrity should definitely be with another celebrity... these are all the real issues. Ship wars and celebrity wars is definitely immature nonsense.

I think plain shipping is not what's harmful, just like plainly being a fan of a celebrity. You're just being a fan of a ship instead of a single person. What's bad is when you start having expectations, making demands, excessively rewarding them pretending to be someone they're not. Ships can be many types too, IMO. It doesn't have to be romantic. Fans should just be exceedingly cautious in delineating fiction from reality, and keep wishful thinking purely in the realms of fandom and away from their expectations of the actual person. This goes for both ship and person expectations.