ShortCircuit

LOL, the novel IS German noir. It makes sense you have that feeling about it.

TBH, the adaptation is pretty good so far, except for some little hiccups in 3-4. Now there's a certain pace, it's going really well.

I'd say that Ha Seol is the breath of fresh air and she's straight out of skandi-noir too LOL.

She is most definitely not his friend and if you read the novel you know why.

RE why is everybody so ugly mean with him - well, he never DID say publicly until now he didn't do it - he accepted he COULD have done it, because he couldn't go through with the time in jail otherwise. Only now he's back and finding clues he's starting to realise he might not have killed at least one of them, maybe neither. But he wasn't sure before - and he still doesn't remember.

The regular people who only gossiped about it only know him as a killer. Those involved in the cover up got selective amnesia and fixed hard on him being the killer, despite rationally knowing it couldn't be him. But it MIGHT have been him so instead of serving up their own kids, they chose to believe it WAS him.

People's minds can do wonderful tricks of justification when they want to.

You're going by the wrong assumption that people who go on dating sites are actually going there for MARRIAGE (or at least long-term relationships) opportunities. I hate to break this to you but most dating sites are actually used for hookups and not much more beyond that (exceptions happen.) And when it's a hookup, they go for people who at least look attractive to them and not just anybody (same thing goes for men or women).

In other words, people want to have sex if they can, with whoever they can and maybe not even become attached.

Another problem is that for women sex is usually much more rational than instinctive, as seems to be for men. We don't easily go into a random sexual relationship (though it happens, I'm not presuming we're talking in absolutes here) when we want a REAL relationship. A lot of becoming familiar with each other, some tenderness, some romancing, are involved for us to consider actual partners. Men seem to expect things to progress very fast with casual dates, though and if it's not happening they move on. Don't put this on women - building a relationship takes time and involvment on both sides.

A good personality will shine through no matter how it's presented in the physical body. And if the woman that man is interested in isn't responding to that, maybe the man should change their intended interest.

Which is to say, "average young men of today who can't date", get the f out of social media and worshipping photoshopped virginal idols and instagrammers that don't even exist in real life, and try to look around you. If you're that good, there's a person right next to you you can actually talk to.

Women were freaking NOT more happy in older times. Very few women were independently wealthy and even IF they had wealth they had no status unless they were noble. The rest of them were just as unhappy, if not more, than any other time. I think THESE times are when we get to actually find our happiness as we can - and a lot of us, and in growing numbers, chose not to find it in a relationship. I am who I am and not a "half" of anything, better or worse.

Are you just assuming that women were happier because they were married to (average) men who made their lives better?! But WHY? Women had NO other way to make a living, unless they prostituted themselves one way or the other - they had no education, they couldn't even speak out in church, since that idiot Paul's voice is the one most ringing in men's ears about how women should be meek and obedient, until the WWs they couldn't even dream of getting much of an actual job for themselves that wasn't home-related - HOW could they do anything else but marry? It's like having to choose the preferred poison - you still get poisoned in the end.

As for the incels in this forum - just read through their comments. If you were a woman, you'd stay away too. Who would want to even spend a minute in the company of people who call women whores for having had a boyfriend, and men (drama leads) "eunuchs" for not having facial hair? If you initially reply to them in good faith trying to see their POV, it all eventually devolves into insults and body shaming and slut shaming and what not because they can't handle not being immediately approved and praised for their idiotic stances! Just do this - read through some of their comments. Then come and tell the women in here how they're just the average male frustrated with not being picked because women prefer better looking men.

TBH, this is a faceless topic. You can only judge people by their words, not their looks. And these people come through as extremely ugly on the inside. Nobody would ever care if s*it comes packed into glamourous paper - it still smells like s*it.

The leads in Meet You at the Blossom are from the mainland, I think. They're not really big names (I think it was their first lead roles) but still...

TOO had mainland leads until the new rules and the production team moved to Taiwan and changed most of the cast...

Priest's Da Ge got made into an uncensored Taiwan drama - Unknown. Granted, it's Priest, so you know she doesn't really write too many sex scenes anyway LOL (I think she's one of the very few danmei authors who realize they're not good at writing xxx hahaha~ though obviously there are some who are VERY good at it, too - like Tiang Jiu Qing... Just those scenes in Qiang Jin Jiu - wow!).

Shui Qiang Cheng's Professional Body Double got made into a (so much) uncensored Thai drama - My Stand-In, and also her Blooming Flowers Silent Sorrow got made into an uncensored Thai-Taiwan coproduction - Meet You at the Blossom. (My Stand-In is very good and so well-made, despite the extreme ML).

Those wouldn't probably be many people's absolute favourites (I like MuSuLi, not usually SQC, LOL), but they're a huge jump ahead when China doesn't allow even bromance-pretending very censored danmei adaptation to be released.

There's a remake of AH made by Thailand that will most definitely not be censored, so there's that, for anyone who likes AH.

There are rumours of other Taiwan-made danmei novel based dramas, so here's hoping they keep them coming.

This looks like reality, and all that came before might have been his brain's 4minutes of retconning everything that went wrong in his life.

Or if the writer wants to add some scifi flavour, maybe he (and the rest of them) will be saved. ATP I think he's going to die eventually, one way or the other.

This was the best episode so far - more linear plot, tighter action, perfect cinematography...

I think we're going to have a SE, after all... 4 minutes isn't a long time to survive.

It's a mistranslation. The word "dumb" USED to mean someone who couldn't talk (and usually couldn't hear either) and it eventually evolved into it's pejorative meaning. So maybe the translator isn't so certain about their English and thinks the word STILL has the original (older) meaning. I don't think they're trying to use a slur against the character, it's just lost in translation.

You're getting really boring with your incel drama imaginations. Block.

That's what I said it depends on region and availability, LOL. Those don't look like BlackBerries to me, though, and the screen is pretty big, so I still don't think they're from before 2012-2014 at least. And since it's in Taiwan, they're probably using some local name (and iPhone, LOL).

What are they using for chatting though? If it's LINE, it's only been around since 2011. Kakao Talk came in 2010. It's not Skype (2013), and definitely not Y!M ( I don't remember, I've been using it since Win95 LOL, but it's been gone forever, too).

... I think they're using LINE, so it has to be in the 2010s.

OK incel.

He's lying and you're gobbling it up. She has had three lovers in her 30+ years of life, the last of them being the one getting married in the first episode and she was with this one for at least a year. She didn't have "one night stands", LOL and NO sex scene is shown in the first two eps. She DID buy lots of condom boxes with her second lover, because he was a fast shooter and only satisfied himself, never her. It was a tongue-in-cheek joke.

It's not that difficult a story to keep track of. What the heck, why do romcoms make all incels gather as soon as a woman is NOT a virgin in the story and OMG, she had sex with more than one person in her whole life so far!!

If you want to see needless sex scenes watch the first ep of A Killer Paradox. That deserves all the talk about oversexualisation and too much nudity that doesn't improve anything about the plot in any way. This one - at least so far - isn't it.

I think they put those kisses in because the story IS slow (that's actually what I like about it, and about most of MuSuLi's novels too) and it IS a danmei-to-BL-drama adaptation. People have expectations and not everybody has read the novel or will. So they were maybe trying to reassure passerby-watchers that this really is boys-love, and not to drop it just because there's not much action YET. (And maybe to make a point on who's the shou and who's the gong, LOL, and establish that JT really is a sneaky and secretive one but he takes definitive action if he wants to).

I guess Thai BLs have kind of drowned the BL-watching scene into more and more graphic stories, and even though Taiwan is bravely going into it, there aren't all that many dramas where they go beyond simple kissing and aknowledging they love each other in the open. My Stand-In for example took the drama almost completely out of the (danmei) novel, xxx-rated sex scenes included, and that set a pretty high bar. ACS/TOO is not that kind of novel, too, and therefore not that kind of drama... Maybe they needed to spice it up just that tiny bit to create some more interest because of word-of-mouth.

Anyway - I just REALLY hope all danmei authors get the memo and start dealing outright with either Taiwan or Thailand, because dammit, there are SO MANY great novels out there that beg to be made into an uncensored drama!!!

Read the novel. It's not what the X users are trying to make it into. Particularly it's JT trying to save his mother the heartache, not that he himself is homophobic. Also it's his own dislike of his father's actions and how they impacted the family. In short, it's very person-specific, not a wide blanket.

Chinese fans of danmei are usually a bit over the top about adaptations. This drama had to change countries (a few years back when first rumoured they already had a cast of actually mainland actors and team, but the new laws kept interfering and eventually the whole thing moved over to Taiwan, including in setting up the story.) Taiwan isn't homophobic by large, they also legalised same-sex marriage and everything, JT being homophobic in Taiwan doesn't even have the same weight as him being so on the mainland. The part of that plot that is pretty reasonably being kept, probably, is JT's mom over-the-top reaction to her son being in love with a boy, and her mental breakdown leading to their being forced apart.

The change DOESN'T in any meaningful way change JT's character. Let's not be purists in an adaptation we're pretty lucky to get - now imagine what that would've been like in a censored Chinese drama. They probably would have brought that up as the most important part of the story, which it is not, and maybe given it a sad ending or a tragic one, just because Chinese censorship. IF they ever made it.

I am a non-Chinese fan of the novel and to me, the drama is staying pretty faithful to the story and characters. The only thing I really would have wanted to see in it and haven't is them using Sheng Wang's actual nickname - Wang-Zai, because it's cute and it's a link between the MLs that is played on later on, at reunion time. I guess it might be easier for the story to just use Xiao Wang and Xiao Tian, since both are also diminutives, but I really wanted to see Wangzai the cat and JT trying to explain his name, LOL. I guess we won't be having that after all :(

But other than that, so far, so good.

:)

Talk to your hand, as you usually do.

Someone said it was 2012 on the blackboard in the first eps (I didn't notice).

They will probably lengthen the time jump in the drama and have the reunion in 2023 or 2024, I think, depending on when they finished filming.

PS I got a button Nokia back in 2009, they were the norm. Touch-screens came about in 2010-2011, and "actual" smarthphones with all the functions and chat apps started to be widespread around 2014 or thereabouts, IIRC (BlackBerries, Windows Phones, etc - those were a thing until they lost the race). Obviously that might differ in different corners of the world (and prices, and availability). In 1997, they used to have those really big, brick-like phones (they looked like huge car phones, that weren't all that widespread either, LOL). They have actual smartphones in here, and everyone gets them, so it's definitely NOT 1999 LOL.

You lie. There is only one movie, only ONE!!!!!

Why do you have to remind me of the rest :(

PS Though the TV series was pretty good too. (Team Methos here).

Trying to get across to you is like trying to de-program a Tate clone, LOL. Take it however you want, I'll stop replying.

You are misunderstanding and misusing simple biology facts and trying to mansplain basic facts that you got wrong anyway... This is painful to read through.

Have a nice life (all by yourself.) I really hope there's no woman desperate enough to stand by you listening to all this crap...

From all you comments so far, it looks like you're a bitter incel who just can't understand much in real life. I won't be the one to educate you, your single brain cell will have to do the work, as hard as it is.

Just deal, you are not in the right and you know it, you just won't accept it. But I don't really care about your problems with women (in life or dramas, TBH).