ShortCircuit

Yay, my favourite jump scare drama is back on! Let's see the ghosts! Let's see the blood!! Gimme jump scares!!!!!

Sing: "Your family is me" - over THAT theme.

Okay, nobody needs jump scares. *sigh* Sing's such a good boyfriend. Let's clone him.

She gathered everything up in a hurry, it was all thrown together before she brought him home.

And her house was his temple, LOL. It was bound to be a lot of DRI/GB merch.

Actually, what he spread on the floor was quite a lot less than what I'd expected, LOL.

It's way too serious, though. He has a lot of trust issues, and warranted - his own MOM sells him like a piece of merch - his only friend in this world (as he knew him) was just murdered, he never got to live his own life according to his own wishes since he became an idol, his freaking LOVER told him when they broke up that she didn't even see a genuine person behind his idol public mask, and he has sasaeng fan issues (they break into his home, harass him at signings and fan-meets, even play with his car in revenge - WATCH HIM AS HE SLEEPS IN HIS OWN BED?! Yeeesh. When they said that in the first ep, I gagged).

So now the person who he thought was the only one who doesn't KNOW his public persona, so he could think she only sees the "real" DRI, is actually a fan, maybe a sasaeng too, who can SEE how he struggles, how he's drowning, how he has nobody else so SHE gives him a hand up... in order for him to trust her completely.

I totally get him. It's bone-deep betrayal, especially since he never had a chance to properly meet anyone else who didn't know him as a human, before. She was the one, and she turns out to be someone who also knows his idol persona best and maybe never registered his existence as a person outside the idol mask (I think that's his thought line).

He seems to have quite a naive personality, to boot, so maybe he IS kind of simple and not considering the complex behaviours people could exhibit.

Oh well. It's a drama, things get to be dramatic. (And TBH I love myself some makjang :D)

ETA Though now that I think about it, a proper makjang needs way more outside-of-marriage kids, a few spurned ex-lovers and maybe he turning out to be the secret son of a chaebol heir who just couldn't take him in the family because of reasons. I'd be expecting AT LEAST that much :D

...It's definitely the CEO, right? 'Cause if WooSeoung had taken the band with him, the company would have nothing much. Now, with WS dead, he can just keep DRI and make a fortune off him solo or in any other way. He seems okay with losing the rest of the band.

And he'd have a way to blackmail DRI into it - if he doesn't agree and sign (maybe he already signed), he could just not admit that he knew DRI didn't intend to switch management and hadn't signed with the other co. thus giving the prosecution a motive for the murder.

With an extra suspicious side of the last band member, who might've been roped into it or had told the CEO on WS, who knows.

Caught up. So...

TBH it took me half the drama to get caught by it. But now it did catch me and I have to pace myself to have some eps left before I'd have to wait-watch LOL.

I can even tell why it happened - they're finally getting a bit more meat on the main overarching plot and it feels like we're getting somewhere and it isn't just Qi SiZhe being obsessed with something that happened to him.

For the third case - applauses for Cao XiYue, playing Ding YouMei - she really sells it.

For the fourth case (I'm after 11 now) - my money's on the little kid. Little kids in police dramas are all the rage in criminal material LOL.

PS Each and every modern drama LYX does, I get hypnotised by his shoes. Just how big his shoes are, LOL? (And by that I obviously mean his foot size, hahaha~) His feet are HUGE! Or is it the contrast between that lithe silhouette and regular-sized feet? Anyway... I like that contrast, LOL.

Her husband was abusive towards her, though. IIRC he had been a suspect when she disappeared. Yes he should have at least had seen her, but then there was a lot of back story there and maybe he didn't deserve to be at peace after all. His obsession was not for her, I think, more like, for himself. 'cause she was his and disappeared on him.

BHS the killer let her go because killer-dad had just died and so if another case was to appear, it would tell the police there was either someone else, or that they didn't have the right killer yet. And then he had his mud-accident coma and couldn't do anything about it.

ABO Desire was funded by the writer, IIRC, who also scriptwrote, directed, and even composed some of the music for it. And while they had a whole-Chinese cast, they didn't air it in China at all.

TU was produced by Tencent, aired and distributed by them, went through official approval (read censorship), was generally applauded, not for the main pairing (or even acknowledged as danmei) but for the aesthetics, music, plot, etc. It was so good that they doubled or more the number of subscribers to Tencent. It got lots of awards, the cast went on to fan meetings and concerts, there were two movies based on the general setting produced and sold. They knew what they were doing.

There was a little bit of relaxation of rules in China re: danmei adaptations for a bit, until WoH hit them over the head with a hammer. Then they also got rid the one-child policy and started pushing in the opposite direction, what with discouraging anything that disrupts the hetero world (by now they're even taxing contraceptives and safety items) in order to get the Chinese youth to have more children. I expect the danmei adaptations, while wildly popular, won't have an easy way anytime soon, sadly. UNLESS they take this new road and make them elsewhere or in co-productions that don't get aired in the mainland (like My Stand-In or Meet You at the Blossom for example).

I am just mad about dramas that were already filmed, and so their rights are soundly bought and paid for but the dramas won't ever air now (like 2ha and TGCF...)

Dunno, let's see what BS will he use to explain his actions now he's back. *throws hands in the air*

He couldn't even fake some BS to save his own life, though...

But like, seriously, he goes back and becomes judge, jury and executioner?! He already had the case against the serial killer, since he knows where the bodies are at, he just had to go through the motions of convicting him. Why hit him with his car - and how would you even excuse something like that?! "I hit him as he was running from a prosecutor who wanted to arrest him - for nothing specific - while I had the main witness in the car with me, since she didn't want to stay with the freezer in which his victim's body was in"?!

That's... crazy?! Or is it just me?

Future LHY has a checklist of things he should NOT do in case of being wrongly accused, and he goes through it marking each and every one of them LOL. Was he really a good judge? Or was he a corporate/administrative affairs judge so he wasn't familiar with the penal code and penal convictions or something?

Anyway, the second part of ep2, after he goes back, is extremely funny. Not in the cases, but in the manner he's behaving so unhinged. Don't they give judges drug tests or psychological tests when they're hired? I'd have called the emergency line immediately LOL.

I'm in the middle of the body parts case. I could bet the killer mixed and matched the victim's bones with cadaver bones she stole from some cemetery and/or medicine faculty lab or something. It's usually how these things go.

Though props for her - she's smart to throw them in all directions at once, LOL.

I'm at the beginning of ep8 so far. This has to be one of the most relaxed police dramas ever, LOL. Nothing feels tense. And I'd love to see our ML more often doing things unrelated to his work. Actually, I'd love to see ANY of the main cast doing more things unrelated to their work. It feels like they're mostly living inside their work schedules, have no families (either / all of them), have no other interests...

I love me some police thrillers but usually there's a bit of a characterisation going on by the third of the drama.

Here's hoping they get more involved later on.

PS Who played Wang QiLong? That's not a man, LOL. I can't find her in the cast...

JC could be both - to Jin Ling. He could be a shishu because he IS giving Jin Ling some training (JL is always hanging about with him, since all the clan kids his age don't like him - until he joins the duckling squad, LOL). It's just that, since they're not in a direct martial relationship, he IS considered the bio uncle first and the shishu after, if at all. BUT at the same time... if one chose to look beyond the blood relationships, they are also in a martial clan together with all that means.

Unless you mean how come XXC is JC's shishu - which he's definitely not. I meant XXC was WWX's shishu.

The Coffin Town/Yi City Arc does come before, sooner than in the drama. There should be some mention of the Yin Iron ('cause that's what the sword WWX finds in the XuanWu Monster is made of and he uses that metal to forge ChenQing).

Myself, I still prefer the way they did it in the drama - it's clean, the flashback makes sense on its own, once it's done, it's done. Then again, the way they did it in the donghua is also good - they made these transitions that are amazing and perfect for the storytelling (at least for 2.5 seasons of it).

So yeah... novel it should be after all :D

ETA Now that I think about it... nobody mentioned WHO exactly is Jin Ling's shifu after all. And he does have a core, so someone did give him that training. Maybe it was Jiang Cheng after all? In which case, he'd be his nephew's shifu and not just shishu.

Anyway now that WWX is back and taking all the ducklings under his wing, JL is set for a new master LOL.

It's a rebirth+revenge story involving a dirty judge. AML had a righteous prosecutor going back in time and re-doing things in order to save people and convict criminals that had gotten away the first time around.

We'll see how similar the storylines are - but again, with rebirth+revenge, the difference will mostly be in how it's acted and how well it's plotted. There are tropes for this sub-genre...

That's because NF played it safe and adapted some of the Chinese idioms to what a Westerner would more easily understand. IMHO, it takes a bit out of the fun of watching it, since the subs are so cleaned up a lot of innuendos just get lost in translation. (Because it wasn't just that one time, sadly).

It's an inter-generational thing for cultivators. Despite his young age (he came out of the mountain in the 16 years since WWX died), he IS Baoshan's disciple just like Cangse and that makes him immediately WWX's shishu (martial uncle) because he is Cangse's shidi. It has nothing to do with age, just with ranks referring to their master.

WWX is also Jin Ling's shishu, for example (despite the no-blood connection). Jiang Cheng is his bio uncle, but one could argue he's a shishu too (but since they're not in the same clan, the bio relationship is the one recognised immediately).

Here's a terms map for Jianghu, LOL.
https://immortalmountain.wordpress.com/glossary/terms-of-address/

And then there's the Sword Saints and the like, LOL, who might or might not be immortal-level but are definitely way above everyone else. There are a few Saints in Joy of Life (wuxia+xuanhuan) and immortals in Word of Honor (xianxia). The one in WoH came about his immortality the regular way, too, LOL. (And he's a sassy old bastard, hahaha~)

I liked it. A strong start. And it's right up my alley, letting me connect the dots and not spoon-feeding every little bit of info to me. I approve :D

I do wonder how it's going to go after the rebirth - is it going to be separated cases in his new / refound career? Or is it going to be a long revenge arc? (Going by the support cast, I think revenge is definitely in, LOL).

PS DO NOT GIVE SAMSUNG IDEAS, DRAMA, YOU HEAR ME?! I can't even afford the foldable phone yet, and you're making it transparent already? Get out of here LOL.

Again, that's drama plot, not novel/OG story. I don't remember if Lan Yi is even mentioned much in the novel, maybe not? And still, while she was guarding the Yi Iron in the cave, she was already a ghost, so there were other rules over her, LOL.

I think the production didn't make a fuss over cultivation because it's a setting everyone knows (from wuxia and xianxia). Generally, once the cultivator joins a clan (or is born in one) and manages to forge a Golden Core (usually with the help of a master/shifu), the aim is to keep improving as much as possible and their talent, if any, allows. There are a lot of cultivation levels and as they keep getting higher, the levels get harder to pass. The ultimate goal - at least in xianxia - is reaching immortality, which is EXTREMELY hard and needs Heavenly Tribulations over all the cultivation they do. In MDZS not a lot of fuss is made over the separation of the Jianghu (Cultivators' world) and the regular people, either (no emperor, no state, no general wars and normal politics), but then, each author can choose what they show of the setting according to the needs of their stories.

Be warned, if you keep watching xianxia/wuxia/costume dramas, you'll keep encountering KNOWN/CAST IN STONE settings that won't get too much explanation because they are the norm. Like for example in xianxia, there will usually be three realms - mortals (which would usually include the Jianghu), immortals (gods) and demons. And a lot of the plots will be about wars or clashes between these realms. Again, not a lot of explanations will be given other than the specifics of those respective stories, because everybody uses the same background, LOL.

Xiao XingChen and Song Lan are also special - XXC was a disciple of Baoshan Sanren/Wanderer, who cultivated alone on their mountain and was specifically warned not to leave because he'd not be allowed to return. He still left, like Cangse had. The whole story about XXC, SL and XY is twisted - the drama makes them contemporary with WWX and LWJ, but they were already dead (not XY obviously) when everything went down - after WWX's return - and never met WWX and LWJ directly. The only thing WWX knew for certain about XXC was that he too had been a disciple of Baoshan and that was it. (Which reminds me, Baoshan's goal WAS to reach immortality and that's why she didn't want anything to do with the troubles of the mortal world).