L13

Sure, but I suggest that you watch the drama first before you decide if your critique applies to this character or not. For the record, I do think he was quite nasty to the female lead and needs to apologise and make amends. But I don't mind characters being nasty or unfair as long as it makes for good storytelling; if viewers see everything a character does as good or desirable simply because he's good-looking, that's their problem.

On that note, I think some people were blinded by the ML's good looks in the first 6 episodes and didn't notice that he was shown to be a cold and ruthless person from the start. Now that his conflict with the FL has come to a head, everyone realises he's in the wrong.

Being a woman myself, I like to watch shows whose plot is driven by complex psychological tension. I don't project onto the female lead and I don't treat the male lead as my imaginary boyfriend, so when they're at odds or pursuing different goals, I am entertained rather than upset.

If you had actually watched this show before commenting on it, you'd know the male lead has been mean to the female lead for two episodes and will stop being mean to her in the next two episodes, which is called conflict and is a core element of storytelling aimed at people above the age of 8.

Well, Jiang Xiaoyuan basically figured out why and confronted him with the truth: he feels guilty about standing up the original JXY all those years ago and thinks he's responsible for her life going downhill after that point and possibly for her disappearance as well.

He must also feel conflicted about how well he's treated the other JXY up to now, offering her support and affection that were meant for "his" JXY, and must be trying to distance himself from "our" JXY and to make up for being so affectionate with her, which feels like cheating on "his" JXY in retrospect, by being cold and mean. But what's already passed between two people can't be undone, which probably frustrates him further.

It's not right to be cruel to JXY because of these feelings, but we've already seen indications that Qi Lian is a pretty cold-blooded person normally—unless you're one of the very few people he values and considers to be "his" (like the original JXY and Xu Jingyang), in which case he's capable of going to any lengths necessary to keep you close. Right now, he must be thinking that he's been treating JXY as his person, but that's actually not what she is and she tricked him into showing her his closely guarded soft side, so he's unleashing the full force of his fierce personality on her in retaliation.

But of course, we all know he's gonna change his tune soon.

Of course she wants to go home, but she's also attracted to him; this is pretty obvious? She was charmed when he washed her hair, she's curious about him and his home and she keeps thinking/saying that he's really good to her. (Or at least this was all true before he finally accepted that she's not "his" JXY and changed his attitude.) This is also a romantic drama and a lot of their scenes so far were clearly directed with that in mind. 2+2=4.

It's not an insult to JXY to say she's become attracted to an attractive man who keeps being nice to her even if she has higher priorities that take precedence over everything else, like figuring out what is going on with the parallel universe stuff and how to go home. She's not "holding on" to QL or looking to be saved by him and no one is implying that she is; she's clearly uncomfortable with the idea that she's in his debt and keeps saying that their friendship should be more two-sided. At the same time, again, he keeps helping her and even if she *wants* to think of herself as an independent girlboss who needs no man, she would be homeless and jobless without QL, so her sense of pride (and your perception of her) is at odds with the reality of her situation.

They would make a charming duo, I think, but the plot summary sounds really underwhelming, like this is going to be one of those moralising legal kdramas with a stupid protagonist and a reactionary message.

Uh, no. There were always red flags about Qi Lian, like his ability and willingness to use violence, his obsession with JXY that led him to follow her around against her will and orchestrate her life behind her back, and the fact JXY has no idea what he does for a living, yet he’s seemingly rich and has a bunch of dudes treating him like their boss. Oh, and the serial killer room in his house...

I like his character a lot and think his emotions in the latest episodes make sense, but if people are surprised that there’s a darker side to him, they weren’t paying attention to the RED FLAGS (that’s what a red flag is: a sign that something may not be quite right, not a person you don’t like).

Yes, it is. IDK what the other person is talking about. Reset is a sci-fi drama with slight romance; this is a romance drama with some sci-fi.

I’m worried that even if Yushan gets into a top university despite her family’s net negative contribution to her life, they’ll just leech off her and continue to rely on her for everything and tell her what to do the way they’re currently using her as a maid and planning to marry her off to the first guy who offers money for her. Getting into university won’t be enough to sever Yushan’s ties with this family.

I’m really hoping that the stepfather’s sexual abuse will be exposed because that’s the only way her mother will wake up and leave him, I think.

Oh, sorry, I misread your comment and thought you said you didn't like any of them. If you like the genre, then definitely give Derailment a try! It's not QUITE as good as Reset and SOOD in my opinion, but it's still very good—definitely better than 7.9 by the standards MDL users usually apply to cdramas, so I have no idea what’s going on with the score on this page—and most importantly, it makes you want to keep watching. The leads are great and I think their relationship gets more and more interesting after the first 4 episodes. Derailment is more of a romance than Reset and less of a tragedy/melo than SOOD (at least so far).

If you didn’t like any of those dramas, you’re probably not going to like this one either. I’m a huge fan of Reset, personally, and this drama is pretty fun for me. So far the sci-fi element is quite limited, but based on trailers and teasers it will be a big part of the plot later on.

Your thoughts are all interesting and I’m not saying you’re wrong, but I had a different interpretation of the scene where she met her other self. I thought that was her rich self from her previous life. Didn’t she dress glamorously in the other world too?

I'm on episode 2 and I'm really liking this. I do have one question, though: is the Qingbei people keep referencing a real university? Sometimes Chinese shows will mention a university or city that I can't find on the internet and I never know if it's because they made up a fictional place for the show or because they're using a different name for a real place that the subtitles didn't translate well.

Yes.

I'm really liking this so far! I do hope we get some development between the leads soon, though. Either Jiang Xiaoyuan needs to learn more about what happened between her other self and Qi Lian in this timeline—does she even know his job or why he has such a fancy house or why he can fight? do we?—or Qi Lian needs to at least realise that the JXY in front of him really doesn't recognise him. Right now they're stuck misunderstanding each other and I'm getting a bit bored with their interactions. (Not with the show itself or with their characters, just with the repetitive nature of their scenes together!) They need to learn more information about each other in order to have more meaningful conversations.

It's fine to have such a relationship after 4 episodes, but as I said, I hope we see some progress soon.

I agree she's a bit annoying so far, but she's also funny and I do understand where she's coming from. She was dropped into a parallel universe out of nowhere and all she can think about is what the hell happened to her and how to undo it. Learning how to shampoo hair is a low priority by comparison. Plus she grew up rich, so she has no experience forcing herself to be nice and attentive to people. She realises she needs to work to make money, but it's one thing to know it intellectually and another to act in a way that goes against your nature.

That said, I do hope she'll start to change her attitude soon.

Parallel World is great, but it's about two very different worlds existing side by side and not about timeline-hopping, which is what the OP was talking about, I'm guessing.

I dropped this drama, but I remember having a lot of conflicting feelings about the leads' romance. First off, I gotta say of all the inappropriate age gap dramas I've had to sit through, this one did the best job demonstrating that there's actual chemistry between the leads even when there shouldn't be. Hye-jung's cocky delinquent persona was wild enough to render the power differential between her and her teacher almost irrelevant at times, and her exuberant youthfulness was undeniably charming, so I could see why he would be charmed by it.

HOWEVER! I still didn't want him to act on it! The only way for me to remain sympathetic to the adult stuck in this kind of ~forbidden love scenario is to be assured that they're a good person and would never act on the unfortunate chemistry they share with a HIGH-SCHOOL STUDENT. HJH should have remained a slightly antagonistic mentor to YHJ and kept a firm lid on the undercurrent of tension between them.

Instead of keeping the sexual/romantic potential between a student and her teacher suppressed in the opening arc of the drama and thereby allowing me to maintain some shred of sympathy/respect for HJH while at the same time heightening the suspense/drama of their separation, after a while the drama started to give their scenes the golden romantic filter treatment. They almost touched foreheads while studying together, they locked eyes meaningfully, she was jealous of his fiancee, he was jealous of her classmates, etc. etc. etc. NO! STOP IT! The moment he told her he was interested in her I became completely disgusted with him. Again, none of that romantic development should have happened while YHJ was a teenager.

And the moment of their reunion was so cringe too. He saw her for the first time in years and the first thing he did was ask if she was married, then nod to himself as if to say, cool, we're getting married then. This might be a romantic if douchey thing to do under different circumstances, but again, she was a student when he developed feelings for her, so acting so possessive right off the bat the first time he met her as an adult was insane.

Not sure if I'm expressing myself well, but basically I wanted to say that as gross as teacher-student romance is, I wouldn't have hated it if the drama had established some chemistry between the leads very subtly in YHJ's school days, given us an indication that JHJ was aware of it but realised how inappropriate it was and firmly squashed it because he was a decent person, and shown their romance develop in a more ordinary fashion after they met again as adults. There would have been just enough of that "am I a bad person for rooting for them?" feeling some people like with their romance, but without making the ML a possessive creep who gets mad that his female student gets attention from boys her own age (!).

I was making a joke about cdrama's obsession with pretending handsome men who save their first kiss for their one true love exist in abundance when in reality 99% of them are manwhores who will sleep with anything that moves. I don't actually care about who this actor's had sex with, so everyone can stop replying to my comment now.

You're telling me a man who looks like that is NOT a virgin and has in fact probably slept with more than one woman? Wow, cdramas have lied to me...

Taemin is the sleaziest, most entitled creep ever and I want to punch his face in every time he's on screen, but at this point I'm getting angry with Hyoshim too for not resisting his violations. He shows up IN A DIFFERENT CITY uninvited because he heard from someone else she was there and forces her to go on a pseudo-date with him when she should be with her colleagues and she just goes along with it and makes doe eyes at him all day long? BITCH, GET A GRIP! You didn't have to meet him in the first place! I get that she's worried about her work and is trying to treat him well despite his constant invasions of her privacy and personal space, but he's so far out of line she could have easily told him, "actually I'm on a work retreat and I'm busy, so unfortunately I won't be meeting you, bye," OR EVEN, if she was that worried about it, "oh great, my boss would love to see you, come over to say hi and then leave." Why did she move like him crashing their work retreat would be so much worse than her getting in his car and acting like his rent-a-girlfriend for hours? It's the opposite! It's better to diffuse the inappropriateness of his visit by only interacting with him in front of other people instead of silently going along with his harassment! And she was SILENT silent! Didn't make a peep in response to any of the absurd bullshit he was saying! He compared her to a child! He acted like they're in a relationship and she owes him hourly updates on what she's up to! She doesn't! Even if they were dating, his stalkery obsession would be a major red flag! BUT THEY'RE NOT!!!

I have to say the Taemin crap in this episode was so annoying I'm putting the drama on hold. Hyoshim is far too passive and forgiving toward her piece of shit mother too, and the drama frames it as a positive; her colleague was like "oh my mother was a narcissist too, but now that she's dead I just miss her," which was meant to suggest Hyoshim should understand where her mother is coming from and brush off her silliness. That's total bullshit! I know people whose lives were destroyed by demanding, possessive, narcissistic parents and when those parents died, their kids had a lot of complicated feelings about it! (And relief was definitely one of them.) "Parents suck, but they're your parents, so just accept their abuse as your lot in life and forgive everything" is a terrible message! And it's what Hyoshim is already doing anyway!

Again, I think I'm putting this on pause because I'm starting to dislike the main character, which is never a good sign.