Kochase

I stopped at episode 8 to wait and binge the rest, but yalls comments are scaring me... T__T

Lol some of us still remember when connecting to the internet meant ' beeboopbeeboopbibibibidoooeewooeewoocshhhhhh'. And when fandom existed in the form of geocities...

C-ent is one singular space. Anything happening can affect everything else, even if there's no direct relation. So given the current energy is super negative, it'd be suicidal to air anything anytime soon. And that's not even getting into all the conspiracy theories of anti-fan motivations and stigmas of BL. It's just a bad idea. Also, Tencent is under heat from the gov for other things, so they can't afford more risky plays.

That baffled me too. Like, this isn't some 50 year old politician whose high school / college photos surfaced from some yearbook or physical photograph. This is 2018. On social media. How did it not blow up earlier before he got big? Doesn't excuse his actions, but definitely points towards disingenuous motivations.

It's everything, though BL has an additional stigma. You'll notice there will never ever ever be any sort of political drama, or dystopian drama set in China. BL / bromance is probably much safer compared to that topic. Yeah c-ent is something else entirely. Nothing is truly apolitical.

Yeah it's best to let heat die down. Otherwise it could get labeled as insensitive to current climates or something and antis will use that as an excuse to smear it down.

Please let immortality be perfectly mediocre in popularity so it doesn't suffer a hate campaign... and I really hope LYX and CFY don't have any skeletons in their closet.

The thing is, no company can be too big to fail in China. Tencent and Alibaba are both under a lot of heat from the gov right now... I'm not sure how much is bait vs they are scared of rocking the boat too much. Tencent is not huge enough (no company is) to be able to afford pissing off the gov. And HYX is probably still one of their more controversial productions as well as big budget ones that they cannot risk being dropped due to controversy.

I sympathize with the need to vent. Just sharing some perspective too.

Yeah, it's a bit of a self-generated problem though. China has not been generous to Taiwan or HK, when it could have been. Its treatment of Uyghers is also a major issue. The western media definitely has its own biases and blows some things out of proportion, but those groups of people have suffered / are suffering at the hands of the CCP. Like... it's kind of irrefutable. When the virus stuff broke out with anti-Chinese sentiment on the rise, what does China do? Claim that the US introduced it instead. Like... that's intentionally pissing off the US for the sake of maintaining its own image with its citizens. They're more concerned about holding onto power than the actual welfare of their citizens. And this was before covid too. Xi Jinping removed the term limit lol. If that's not the most classic sign of 'holding onto power longer than you should', Idk what is. And IP theft has been going on for a while too. So anti-Chinese sentiment can't be blamed solely on covid; it was just the tipping point. Chinese gov has little to no sportsmanship as a world player, so it's no surprise the world kind of hates China now. And people like us of Chinese descent are stuck as collateral. Here's to hoping the west maintains its more humane culture and understands the nuances.

It's tricky because... they're kind of being 'brainwashed' again. So ask them, and they'll think everything is fine and dandy and better than ever. It's a really weird paradox where on one hand, they continue to suffer injustices like unnecessary deaths from the pandemic, governmental screw-ups (see luoyang dam), entire industries being left hung to dry overnight (see the cram schools being shut down), but on the other hand, they still have extreme love and worship of the nation.

My parents' generation grew up in this exact scenario. And it's pretty eerie because they didn't think anything was wrong with spying on your peers / neighbors and reporting un-nationalistic ideas / sentiments. Only once they got out did it seem quite horrifying in retrospect. And now the same thing is happening again.

I'm Chinese American and am quite over this BS too. And it is a little scary where things are going as well. I love China, its history and culture, even with its flaws just like I love the US history and culture even with its flaws... but China's direction is really disturbing.

I just hope everyone who is not Chinese understand not to lump all the Chinese people in together with the Chinese gov... as China shows signs of potential isolationism again and starts positioning itself in an 'us vs them' mentality against the rest of the world...

Not spoiler, but putting under cut so people aren't spammed by political talk lol:

Even then, he's not totally safe. People can totally skew an out of context remark or even make something up entirely at this point. Definitely hoping it won't happen to him, but ah. I always think of that one thing they said in The Untamed - it doesn't matter what the truth is anymore. Once they've determined you to be the villain, they will bend whatever truths and reality to fit that claim.

China is in a state of increasing nationalistic fervor right now... people will find any excuse to be upset. They're even bringing back Mao (i.e. communistic) era 'nationalism education'. They've also started shutting down English exams because it's seen as detraction from Chinese values...

There's even theories that while the KW scandal was highlighted as a way of showcasing crackdown on sex crimes, it was politically motivated as well. 1, because on the day the scandal exploded (official investigation was called for), there was a massive govt screw-up in that the intentional blasting of a dam in Luoyang to relieve flood buildup killed 25 people due to lack of coordination with the subway lines. 2, because he's of Canadian origin despite being Chinese. And China is still holding grudges over Canada's extradition of Hua/wei CFO to the US.

Obviously, the above are very conspiracy theory like, so take it all with a grain of salt. But China is also the one global superpower that can probably enact that sort of thing. So, you should expect to see more and more people getting upset over the smallest seemingly anti-nationalistic gesture, intentional or not. At times like this, nationalism just then becomes a tool every person uses to bring down the people they don't like. Once they label you as anti-nationalistic, you're done for.

It's kind of terrifying really. We're regressing back into that era again, except now China is a global powerhouse so who knows what kind of ramifications that will have on the world. It sucks that ZZH encountered this... this is why it's better to not be top of charts in China. I continue to worry for XZ and WYB... but if not them, then someone else simply steps up to take the risk.

The future of cdramas is starting to look kind of bleak to me. The govt is seemingly blaming the declining marriage rate / population growth on consumerism content like video games (which I will admit kind of *can* be a sort of drug) and dramas. Hence all the bans on content considered too... ideal far-fetched. There is no such thing as too big to fail in China. So don't ever bank on such a concept. Something that has already been majorly invested in can be shut down by a mandate from the govt. Until Immortality starts and finishes airing, I worry lol.

Too true. One cannot look at China and expect them to act 'reasonably' and 'logically'. It's always the 'use a giant hammer to hit a tiny nail' approach. Any other 'first world' country and I'd say you can reliably count on the KW incident to not affect HYX. China is one where you never know. Anything always goes by the whims of the authority. *shrugs*

Lol so they definitely do capitalize on the bromance, so admittedly that's part of their motivations for 'playing house'. But that's not all that's happening, right? Gaon represents the all of us who upholds morals and are quick to judge. But he's also not stupid. He's been slowly wavering and going back and forth during his time with Yohan and Elijah. He can be very hypocritical too and begins to become self-aware. Gaon is the epitome of good intent, yet he will do things that hurt others too.

Are there fluffy domestic moments to be cute? Sure. But it's also a chance for Gaon (and us) to see the very humane, very 'normal' side of Yohan too. He might be cold and ruthless in public, but he's not without things / people he value. Without Gaon being in his home and having a more direct access to his personal space, how are we as an audience to see that?

In fact, using Gaon to pull that to the surface is quite brilliant IMO. Otherwise we either wouldn't develop much empathy / understanding for Yohan, or they'd have to go for something trite like 'voiceover thoughts' or 'flashbacks all the time' to illustrate what Yohan is thinking. And Gaon thus wavers as well, because he starts to see Yohan as a human worth caring about rather than a monster.

Logic rarely changes people's beliefs. It's emotions and stories. To reasonably have Gaon have that sort of perspective change isn't something office place conversations will achieve. He needed to have started seeing Yohan as a person first, and that could only happen in a more personal space. Ofc, the reason Gaon gives is he's trying to spy on Yohan, but it's still perfectly reasonable it ended up the way it did.

And Yohan also isn't entirely unaffected by Gaon. He might not be cocky about having morals, but he's kind of cocky about having control of the game. Gaon starts to remind him that some things in life cannot be amounted to 'rules', namely Elijah.

I'm probably repeating myself by now, but it's really too simplistic to chalk it up to only playing house. It's where most of the character development is happening even if plot-wise it looks like nothing much is happening.

There is still half of the drama to be aired though, so certainly, like you said, it could end up flopping because they don't explore it all the way through. I'm just basing my assessment on the current trajectory of story writing and character development.

The shows are technically all sequential, but the production over the years has been such an organizational disaster, it doesn't matter too much. Different casts, re-ordered scenes, etc.

I'd say you cant start with either a) The Lost Tomb (2015), which is the first in the main series, b) Ultimate Note, which is the fourth drama in the main series, but the best adaptation / bromance, or c) The Lost Tomb Reboot, which is actually a sequel to the main series, and is the main characters ten years later, but also has great bromance and Zhu Yilong, who is phenomenal at playing a mature Wu Xie.

If you're the really patient, prefers the absolute chronological order kind of person, then you can watch Mystic Nine first. But that does not star the main characters, as it's about the predecessors.

Haha I think that was very intentional. I, for one, welcome a female overlord for once as the Supreme Leader. Let's see how the world burns around her. (And don't forget the spoiler tag!)

This isn't your usual dystopian / justice drama. The real commentary is not that the 'system is broken'. I mean, that commentary is there, but it's not key. It's not a good minority fighting an evil / rigged system. The more meaningful commentary is about the farcical nature of 'morals' and the plague of hypocrisy. So if anyone think it's a simple 'fight the system' or revenge / justice plot... maybe watch it again and pay closer attention to Yohan's criticisms.

I wouldn't go so far as to consider it nihilistic, since we also don't know how it will end and which side of the morality fence it will land its message, but there's some degree of that sentiment there.

I get kind of annoyed at people labeling everything 'queer-bait'. Like, yes there are a lot of shows that stick in awkward, out of place interactions for the sake of generating some bromance imagery, but if they actually built bromance into the story, then what's wrong with them taking advantage and selling it? It's just like selling romance. They will promote / share certain scenes. No one calls it 'romance-bait', if it does flunk, then it's called bad writing.

I'm actually not sure why they categorized it as LGBTQ though? Like unless something is confirmed... or the original work was BL or something, there's no real qualifications to tag it as that?

Btw, might want to tag some of your stuff as spoilers. :)

But yeah the bromance so far is amazing. Hope it doesn't end tragically.

Oh. My god. I am so loving the female cast here (I'll usually love the male cast by default, but female is harder to love). All these powerful women oozing confidence and badassery and plain badness... never seen such a nice display of fem power! The little bits of gender role reversal are *amazing* and so refreshing. I may have come for the bromance, but wow the women are just as enjoyable to watch!

There's too many powerful / determined players here... someone is bound to lose out aren't they... *sobs*.

I honestly don't feel like it's queer-baiting. There's not awkwardly out of place interactions for the sake of generating screenshots. I mean, they certainly do take *advantage* of certain scene screenshots, but the characters also kind of just *are* that intense and it fits the storyline.

Lol who knows! Maybe the ultimate plot twist is that they *will* confess... wouldn't that be a shocker.

And yes the female rep! I'm loving the women here. The subtle not subtle gender role inversions are not lost on me. It's refreshing.