Suliabryon

I think it's kind of good for him to be the one yearning, lol. He's used to women kind of throwing themselves at him, so this is nice and humbling for his ego. But at the same time, I'm watching Flora do this and thinking "Girl, where is your head at??" 🤣 I guess the next 14 episodes will be the rollercoaster of them figuring out their feelings and getting on the same page....eventually.

Uh, no, I didn't forget? And SO FAR, Flora is the one putting all of the limits and distance in their relationship. Luke didn't break up with the stalker-ex because she was clingy; he broke up with her because she was too controlling, and then after the break up she started stalking him. IMO, he was only hesitant about Flora getting too clingy in the beginning because she's young and he didn't want her thinking the relationship was too serious too soon, but then she reacted by pushing him away instead and he did NOT like that.

As they stand right now, I do not see a future where he breaks up with her for clinging to him too tightly. In fact, right now I'm pretty sure he wishes she would cling to him. But that's just what I see.

Oh, yeah. He wants a real relationship with her where everyone knows she's his GF and he can date her openly, and he's only doing this because it's the only way she'll be with him. Flora is setting all of the boundaries and breaks on them. He's also been the one to let her make choices. He makes it clear what he wants, she says "okay, but only this way" and he goes along with her wishes. Flora has a lot of growing up to do, and unfortunately, I'm pretty sure she's going to break up with him because of assumptions she's making and things she's deciding on her own, without talking them out with him.

With no one to blame but herself! She's the one keeping him at arm's length and not communicating with him. Sigh. She is absolutely going to decide all on her own based purely on assumptions and deciding "they aren't from the same world, they don't belong together" to break up with him.

She doesn't...but it becomes a moot point. Very soon there are no teams and everyone is working together.

RIGHT?? She went to college, right? she said he had a long term BF at university but then they broke up, and somehow her karaoke girls' night b-day was 18....uh, what?

Right?? Yes to all of this! When we had to flash forward with her voiceover and she goes "this relationship makes me more mature.." 🤦🏻‍♀️ Oh, honey. Is that what you think? You think this what an "adult" relationship looks like??? No, the relationship makes you look very young and very insecure. And that's not on Luke.

I hated Fifty Shades and see nothing in common, other than people want to compare Luke to Christian Grey because they are both powerful men in suits who clearly like to be in control, but Luke wins hands down and also isn't actually an abusive POS. I've seen so many reels, memes, etc making the comparison and it's like fingernails on a chalkboard every time. Christian was actually an abuser and no one can change my mind. Luke has gone out of his WAY to give her choice and agency and get consent multiple times. But, just my opinion, and I'm sure people are going to disagree and come for me in the comments.

THESE CHARACTERS.

First of all, I don't care what the novel says about Luke, he's only in this "situationship" because she refused to be with him any other way. He pushed and pushed, and she wouldn't budge an inch until he suggested this. (And girl, WHY does this make sense to you to risk, but nothing else?? Okay, I get that keeping the relationship on the down low is necessary because the company has a policy about dating, but you were literally like "NOPE, being around you is too tempting and dangerous, I can't be with you, la la la...okay, this is fine. WHAT?) And basically, they are together, just keeping it a secret.

So people want to blame Luke but I see this as almost entirely on Flora, because she was so determined NOT to actually date him and be his GF, even though CLEARLY that is exactly what they both want.

Segue here to talk about how much I love their friends. I love his friend! "Flora likes you. You clearly care about her. What is wrong with you???" Yes, sir, preach! 🙌🏻

Okay, and now they're "together" but it's a situationship for REASONS 🙄, but after going back to his place and sleeping with him again, Flora's going to "sleep in the guest room".

Girl, WHAT?? Your logic defies all reason. You have already slept with him. No one is going to know you were at his place, much less which bed you slept in! He was clearly into being with you for the rest of the night. (Can we talk about how much Luke wants her in his space? He. Wants. Her. As. His. GF. He would have her move in. He is SO into her. Mr. "You WISH I was jealous." Uh-huh.)

Okay, rant over for now. I have to go back and finish episode 10 now, so I can watch all of the workplace shenanigans where they try to keep it a secret while sneaking touches and kisses and couple things every chance they get. Because you KNOW that's happening.

ETA: Luke: "Let's date in secret."

Flora: "Okay. but you can't tell anyone. Not even your friends or family."

HOW exactly is Luke the bad guy here?? Flora is the one continually putting limits on their relationship.

ETA2: YOU GUYS. HOW HE MADE SURE HER FLATMATES KNEW!!! 😂❤️🤣 He is sooooooooooo slick! Just made sure he walked her in, you KNOW he clocked them before her bestie made a noise. Ha ha ha! I love it. No one will EVER convince me that this man does not want Flora in a full on, public, accepted and known relationship.

ETA3: Okay, and I can tell from the trailer for ep 11 that she is going to make all kinds of assumptions and decide ON HER OWN to break up with him because of his friend (I think the one we saw way back in early eps who is clearly a platonic friend.) And her whole thing in this ep about getting upset because he scolded her as her boss...like, girl, you are in a professional environment. You did the right thing by taking the blame because you were in fact the project manager. He gave you HALF the consequence he should have becuse you came up with a solution and saved it. I get that it stings worse when your boss is also your BF, and n ice that you clocked that your emotional response made no sense, but then you should have gone to him and talked to him like an adult. Tell him you know it's unreasonable but it still hurts coming from him. Communicate! He's clearly hurting, too, because he didn't want to punish you but he had to as your boss and now he's been staring at his phone waiting to hear that you aren't mad at him! Ugh.

The FL is driving me a bit nuts right now.

Just my opinion after all six episodes but Luke is getting a bad rap from some people who maybe haven't watched the drama yet or something. I've seen multiple comments in places calling him a red flag, and IMO that is absolutely not the case.

Was he cold to her in the beginning? Blunt to the point of rudeness? Absolutely. But I also get his POV: she was too inexperienced in his view to work for one the biggest ad companies in the country, a fast paced, cutthroat environment where some young innocent with zero experience and thin skin is going to get eaten for lunch and spit out. I think he made some assumptions based on her resume, interview, and his initial impression of her - and he made it clear he did NOT want to hire her - and honestly believed telling her to quit was the right call. And that if she couldn't handle him making things difficult for her, she would never make it at Lime anyway. The other characters were saying things like "Luke, not everyone can start with experience." and "Luke, give her a chance." To me, it was very clear that Luke has very specific hiring specs, and HR disagreed and said "nope, you have to start hiring people from a broad range of experience levels, like it or not" and this led to someone being hired that he would normally never have placed on his team.

At the same time, you could tell even in the very first episode that she was already challenging those early impressions/assumptions, and that he liked her spine. She stood up to him, and he had to concede that she at least had "a little" backbone, and you could tell he liked that about her.

Me: "Sir, any other newbie being going through hat first day with you would have been hiding in the stairwell at lunch, crying. She has more than a 'little' backbone!"

I feel the attraction between them was mutual very early on. I think we saw it from her side in the very first episode, when they pass on the street and she looks back, when she sees him in the elevator, etc. His develops slowly as he comes to see more and more of who she really is, and I think he's self aware enough that he doesn't fight it for long. It's not instant, and IMO it's also not superficial. Is she young and beautiful? Yes. But he's also gorgeous, wealthy, successful, still young, etc. But he lieks her not just because she's a beautiful woman, but because he LIKES WHO SHE IS the more he gets to know her. He likes that backbone. That she talks back. That she steps in even when she's afraid.

By the time we get to the episode where she's drunkenly confessing things to him and he's trying to be a good boy, you see him wrestling with himself. Like, he's trying to just drop her off and ignore the things she's saying, but by then he's already been hooked for awhile and you see when he finally makes the decision - partially driven by her roommates not being home and not wanting to leave her vulnerable outside her place - to take her home. And even when he does that, he's STILL a gentlemen. He takes care of her.

But when she wakes up more sober, he also doesn't back away from what passed between them. He's already decided at that point that he wants her, he's just feeling out if her feelings were just drunken words or if she really feels the same. The entire scene was electric! You could feel the attraction, the chemistry. The pull between them was obvious to both of them, and he was testing it a little but still letting her make the decision, and she was running away. He let her. He let her retreat and when he saw that half wiped out word "STOP" on the mirror, he knew for sure how she felt and that she was trying to resist. And even after that, when she came out and it was clear she was going with this thing, too, he stopped and asked her twice: "Are you sober now?" "Do you know what happens next?"

That was a consent check. It was sensual and 🔥 and s3xy as h3ll.

And then we have the epic misunderstanding the next day. That was all miscommunication, two people navigating feelings they haven't talked about or acknowledged yet, assumptions and statements made by others leading them to thinking certain things...the reality is, they both clearly have real feelings and now those are complicated by intimacy. She thinks he wants it swept aside, kept secret and forgotten. He thinks she's drawing a hard line because he called her on "purposely" leaving her bag. (And, SIR. What gave you the idea that buying an expensive bag for a woman works as an apology for being a jerk??)

I'm guessing he's carrying some baggage from his stalker ex, and she's all kinds of nervous and new to relationships, s3x, and dating. Between the two of them, they are making a lot of mistakes navigating this, but it certainly hasn't stopped either of them from having FEELINGS!

So yeah, he's not a red flag! IMO, he's not really even a jerk. He's got all kinds of defensive walls up. And yes, that has led to some jerk behavior.

I know, the first thing I noticed coming here tonight after the eps was the poster change! WHY do people submit lesser posters to replace the ones that are 🔥and best suit the series?? I remember when the same thing happened to Speed & Love!

Thank you! IDK, maybe because I'm an author and I have some idea of the level of work that goes into any kind of creation like this, even when I am disappointed in some aspects of something, I also recognize the positive, and the efforts of those involved. Actors do not control the script. The production team can only work within the constraints they have, which includes everything from budget, to number of episodes approved, to companies/studio execs telling them what they have to include, and so on. There are so many moving parts, and Chinese BL, including those from HK, Taiwan, et al, are still a pretty new market working under the cloud of government censorship and interference to add an extra layer of difficulty. Actors who agree to star in them are essentially risking their entire future career and face at least some possibility of being blackballed from the greater c-entertainment industry, for example.

As for AI...I mean, people can get mad about it all they want, but it's not going anywhere. It's changing the landscape of entertainment, for better or worse. And I suspect this show did the best they could within the budget limitations they had. I'm just glad they only used it for background and wider sequences, and not for any of the actual actors. I cannot stand AI-made shows that don't use real actors, and I live in fear of a time when real actor shows become few and far between and AI "people" are used for everything, especially for a genre like BL that relies a lot of time on the mature content to pull in viewership. So, I get the backlash against AI, but it's a tool being widely integrated across not just this industry, but many others, and no amount of backlash is going to stop it.

Anyway, I am enjoying the show for what it is, and I hope it gets enough popularity and viewership that the actors get to work together again in the future...maybe with a larger production with longer episodes, a better script, and a higher budget.

Angst refers to conflicting emotions that usually serve to keep characters apart, such as anxiety, jealousy, resentment and other more negative emotions, which can be driven by either external or internal conflict...it usually serves to ramp up tension and make viewers anxious about what's happening for the characters' relationship.

If it follows the book, he will become obsessed with him and it will get very dark. He's not so much a love interest, as a villain. But we'll see what the show does, because it's so far very different from the novel.

😂 I'm glad I'm not the only one who thought that, LMAO! Yes, I am here just for the chemistry, honestly. Because they nailed that. And I'm not sad looking at either of them for 25 minutes every time an ep drops, but especially Leo Peng. My gosh he's so beautiful he's unreal.

Just a warning that the storyline in the novel is a much different, much darker tone!

So, I'm like 90% sure that is NOT happening in the show. The whole vibe of the show is very different from the book, and it already contains many plot changes that are huge. Also, the character involved in that non-con arc has been reduced from "major dark villain" to "standard corporate villain" at least so far. So, IDK. I just don't think that arc is happening, at least not the darker aspects. The "bad guy is obsessed with the cop" part might still be part of the story, but we'll see.

Warning: novel spoilers below!

Unfortunately, it seems the show suffers a lot from the short episode run - 9 episodes that are, what? 25-ish minutes each? - to accommodate that, it took the deeply psychological, tightly woven plot of the novel and changed and compressed it with a lot of hand waving and convenient plot points to keep the characters interacting and focus on the romance, sacrificing the detailed plot that gave the story all of its weight and the romance all of its complexity and tension. This results in major changes from the plot of the novel that remove the emotional depth of their relationship and replace decisions the characters made that were deeply embedded in who they are with a more superficial and "vibes" driven arc. For example, in the novel they are already a couple when MFF disappears from To's life with no explanation to take an undercover gig. Leuk To is a character who has lived his life as one of the powerful elite, who believes he is in complete control of every aspect of his life, and that sudden disappearance forces him to confront the fact that he actually controls nothing and sends him into a months-long search for his missing lover. For his part, MFF is a cold, jaded cop who is used to compartmentalizing his emotions and keeping his personal and professional life separate, and the story forces him to deal with the emotions he usually pushes aside.

That's just one example of how the show changed the novel plot. It's really sad because these actors are trying their best and I think you can see the potential of what could have been had they been given the kind of script that allowed them to truly sink into these characters and explore them. The ONLY change I like is that in the novel, HLT repeatedly cheated on MFF in the beginning...or at least had multiple lovers, but there is argument to be made that even that plot point was necessary because it shows his arc and growth - MFF's disappearance is a life shattering event for him, forcing him to confront that his selfish, arrogant behavior may have destroyed the relationship he truly valued and driven away the person he actually loves. When he eventually finds him working deep undercover in a dangerous situation, that, too, feels like he is at fault, that his behavior played a role in driving MFF to take such a dangerous job, and he never cheats again and instead embraces his feelings and becomes deeply possessive and protective of MFF.

Anyway, not to beat a dead horse here, but the show really took the novel and said "let's make the most surface level version of this story, remove everything that made it matter, and fit it into a short run, cutting any corners we have to make that happen". And if they'd gotten an episode count and run like Revenged Love, or even something like Deep In and a better script adaptation, it could have been truly great.

Right??? 😂 I noticed cuts like that in all three of the first episodes. I was hoping it would improve as the show went on, but it looks like editing issues are here to stay,

Ep 3: "You're blowing germs into the wound!" Someone FINALLY said it in one of these shows! It bothers me so much every single time! 😂

Man, I wish the editing was better on this show. And the storytelling. The actors are doing an amazing job with the material they have, but I just want the production value to be higher. The editing cuts that are so obviously wrong are really hard to ignore, like they're sitting on the bed together and MFF is talking and he crosses his arms, and the next moment you can see his arm is still around To's shoulders, and the next moment his arms are crossed again. Or he's getting into the car and holding the handle of the car door, then the next cut clearly opens it, then the next cut is still standing there holding the handle with car door shut. These are BASIC editing issues.

But I don't mean this to be a negative commentary on the show...I am enjoying it. I just see SO MUCH potential and I know the actors and likely the production team are trying really hard with the constraints like budget that they have, and just wish it was....more. You know? It could be so good.

The storyline between the two characters is compelling and the actors themselves are as I said, doing the best they can and they are both great actors (who are SUPER HANDSOME. I keep saying it. Kingston has a Dylan Wang look, and Leo Peng? Holy cow, he is SO handsome, I don't know how anyone acts opposite him and remembers their lines.)

Ep 3 is definitely starting the main conflict between our two characters. Now they are discovering they are truly on opposite sides of something, though I thing To already knew and that's why he is really pressuring MFF to quit being a cop.