jpny01

You better be careful - whenever I say something's missing I get gang-piled by the chastity police.

It's a pity they've stopped offering subtitles - I was enjoying this series. I'm surprised - I would think it would be worth the effort to reach international audiences. Actually, don't they need subtitles to reach all Filipino audiences?

Here's my theory. Most likely they had to film at locations before hours, probably fairly early in the morning. Korean culture is stiflingly authoritarian, and heating hours are X:00 to Y:00, PERIOD, even if the cold will cause a zombie apocalypse, because rules are rules are rules. You want to pay for additional heating time? TOO BAD, it's NOT DONE. Or if it is, you'll need to submit a request that needs to be circulated through an unnecessarily complicated approval process wherein even the most trivial expenditure has to be signed off on by the CFO.

As for the coats, COATS ARE WORN AT ALL TIMES FROM NOV TO FEB. Violators will be prosecuted. And you must have a scarf or you will be shot on sight.

I'm exaggerating slightly, and my personal experience is probably a little extreme (best friend's family is Korean 7th Day Adventist and I worked at Samsung), but I don't think this is the most flexible culture I've encountered. That all flies out the window once the soju is out, though. Then there's a lot of shouty singing and lots of rules are violated.

This is not a criticism, just curiosity, but what about the characters didn't you understand properly? To me they were consistent and well-drawn.

I'm kind of confused by all the comments about the length. It was film-length (a fairly long film), which is plenty of time to tell a story. The pacing was good, the relationship development economical and effective, and it took as long as it needed to and no longer. It's better than the mess most BLs are where you end up FF through all the parts that bore you and the side plots you have no interest in.

Maybe we become used to the formula used in most BL, and that becomes comfortable, and so when a story doesn't follow the formula, it seems off? Most of the criticisms I'm reading below are generally about ways this doesn't fit the formula.

Anyway, I thought the chemistry was great, the acting very good, the production quality high, and the story coherent with consistent characterization and well-paced development.

Thank you! When something strikes me negatively like this, I try to distance myself and think about it before commenting. In this case there were so many things that I didn't really need to think about to recognize that it was a little easier.

Thinking about what you said, I think you're right - Tian's character was a bit weak. It's hard to see him being so passive about everything, although because nobody had any follow-up questions to his incredibly vague statements, there wasn't much room for him to do anything. I just can't accept that nobody would ask for clarification about what he meant by "I have her heart." Wouldn't you assume a figurative meaning? Is the first place you'd go be "Oh, he must mean he has the beating heart ripped out of her body in him." That sort of implausibility is more problematic than the time inconsistencies, which were only an issue because they kept piling on.

None of his private parts will suffer anything but friction burns. OK, sorry, that was crude even by my standards.

I haven't read the book, and the only thing I've heard is that none of this Torfun stuff is in it, which would have been much better IMO - but GMMTV is not happy unless they can have a woman interfere with a m/m relationship, apparently even if she's dead.

I think the disconnect I feel is because characters actions are not driven by their characters, but rather by the needs of the plot. Obviously there needs to be both a plot and characters, but good writing still drives the plot through the characters and not the other way around. So it seems a given to me that Doctor Nam is he were behaving in character would have discussed the situation with Tian himself, rather than grossly violating professional ethics and irresponsibly given Pha incomplete info. But because the plot needed Pha to reject Tian, that what the Doctor did. But that also required Pha to jump to a negative conclusion and become a different person than he's been, who would want to know the full truth, not just assume the worst and refuse to hear what Tian had to say - not to mention there's no way he would do that in front of the whole village.

The plot needed Tian isolated, so nobody in the entire village asked "what do you mean by 'I have her heart'?" or "What do you mean by 'I'm responsible for her death'?" If you knew nothing about what had happened and someone said that, would your assumption be "Oh, so you murdered her and stole her actual heart and it's now beating in your chest." or would your reaction be, "wait, she was in love with you? Or were you in love with her? Did you reject her and she killed herself? I don't understand, please explain."

That they all jumped to the conclusion that Tian murdered her and took her beating heart makes zero sense. There was way too much of that this episode. In the rest of the series, almost all the drama has been generated by organic interaction between consistent characters. Here it was all driven by external factors and character reactions were shoehorned into those factors rather than reacting naturally.

I'm actually not all that bothered by the time dislocation - it's just that it was part of an excessive pattern this episode, including Pha teleporting to Bangkok, Langtae easily finding Tian in the dark, and the rangers getting there that fast.

OK, let me try to distill my problem. Remember that nobody present except Phupha knows Tian has a heart transplant, and only the rangers know Torfun is dead.

So Tian says "Torfun has passed away, I have her heart, and I'm responsible for her death."

Do you think it's remotely possible that nobody had a question? Like "What do you mean by 'I have her heart?'" The first assumption you'd make is that it has something to do with love, not that her actual heart is beating in your chest. Or "What do you mean by 'I'm responsible for her death'?" Or forget that - how about "How did she die?" or "When did this happen?"

100 people are not all going to jump to "Oh, I see, you murdered her and stole her actual beating heart." It's implausible to the point of ridiculousness. People want to understand people they care about and give them the benefit of the doubt - or at the least don't want to believe the worst. Over 70 million people voted for Trump a second time, so that's clearly a thing.

I don't hate the show or anything, I'm just deeply disappointed that they took such an overly dramatic and ham-handed route and didn't take advantage of the opportunity to have really powerful interaction between Earth and Mix - and now the rest of the series will be taken up climbing out of this hole rather than spending it on the relationship we're all here for. What is spectacular about this series is the subtlety and nuance of Earth's performance - they abandoned that here and we only got to see the quiet power he has in that last scene.

But they're also near the equator, so even in the winter, the day isn't very short like it is in N America or Europe. In any case, that would barely have registered with me if it weren't part of a long series of implausible elements, like why was Phupha at Torfun's grave just then? Does he take a weekly shuttle to Bangkok to lay flowers there? How did Longtae find Tian in the dark? How did the rangers get there that fast? Just a few too many hard to explain issues like that in too small a period of time. It took me out of the story. It's always a bit cheap to have someone cocking the gun unnecessarily slowly to be shot by the hero with not a second to spare, and they did it more than once in this ep. Also, It makes sense that Tian is upset about a certain shot, but don't you deal with the guy with the gun first before turning your back on him and dooming you both?

GSD understood that Shu Yi would never be happy without his father's approval, so he made a misguided sacrifice. I know it's a little implausible, but it's not as ridiculous as the whole things seemed to me last ep.

The plot hole is that GSD could have told Shu Yi everything and they could have come up with a plan to deal with dad. You could argue GSD is a man of honor and kept his word, but I think there's plenty of legitimate reason not to in this case.

But the saving grace may be that Shu Yi say GSD with the woman, and GSD didn't know that, so there was an added impetus for communication failure. I'm not defending the plot - it's still fairly silly, but it at least has a veneer of plausibility now.

OK, I'll admit it, that sort of worked for me. I've been really unhappy with this show, and that was still a bit weak as far as explanations go, but it did at least make sense - the line that was essential was "Without your approval Shu Yi will never be happy". That gave the whole exercise a degree of needed credibility. I think unless you can watch this as happening within the context of Asian culture, it won't work for you, because the plot is too implausible by Western standards. Its implausible by Asian standards too, but by not quite as much.

And I was so happy the humor was back - and I really like the dad's character. Misguided but not evil, and a bit of a doof. That his father made him play basketball to try to make him taller cracked me up. Also, the "OK, I'M LEAVING NOW" scene.

The author has a fetish for man-handling, and I can't say I don't like it, When GSD holds Shu Yi down, it's makes me feel things. At least this time he wasn't forcing him to have sex.

That might be a little worse -actually, it's not a little worse, it's a lot worse. Ouch.

But they aren't mistaking PSY & GSD's relationship - Zhen Xuan is correct - PSY has always been in love with GSD.

My father's ears stuck out as a child, so my grandmother used to tape them to his head to "train" them and make him go through the day like that.

That might be more appropriate.

It's funny, I think Earth is gorgeous - stunning, perfect, porcelain skin, beautiful face, radiant smile, everything. But he's not really my type . I wouldn't kick him out of bed for eating crackers, however.

I think he's by far the best actor in BL, though. Well, maybe Billkin from ITSAY is close.

Given your concept, I would like to volunteer my services as the wardrobe manager. Tee's wardrobe will be sunscreen which will have to be carefully and completely applied.

I have the same reaction as you about WBL2. I actually would have really liked it if they had just started a whole new show with new characters instead of making it a continuation. It's a great story in itself, it just requires the characters to abandon who they were to be totally different people, and that ruins it.

Brothers is not on the caliber of 1,000 Stars, but it is very enjoyable and very cute, so if you want to watch something pleasant and sweet, it is worth it. Cupid Coach has a terrible opening episode (except the main character shirtless for the last section, which is not a disappointment), but it does have some redeeming features, like a main character that is explicitly and unself-consciously gay, a strong female character, no toxic females, and no stereotpyical seme/uke dynamic, which to me shoehorns characters into archetypes rather than allowing them to be real people, and the plot is totally unpredictable - usually you know everything that will happen in the first five minutes. I'm on ep 10 of 12 and I still have no idea how it will end. I can't go so far as to recommend it because it won't be for everyone.

1,000 Stars maintains the seme/uke thing, but blurs it quite a bit and allows the characters to breathe, so it can be done right, it just often isn't.

Thanks. You could just replay that shower scene with Phupha. Or any shower scene that Earth has done.

The issue is that Phupha didn't know that Tian did or did not hit Torfun and didn't bother to ask. He just assumed. Dr Nam didn't know what happened and he wanted Tian to be asked (another plot issue being I don't understand why he didn't just come over and ask Tian himself, but to spare himslef five minutes of effort, jettisoned his professional and personal ethics so completely), so Pha jumped to a very uncharitable conclusion about the man he loves. As did 100 or so villagers, none of whom seemed to have the slightest curiosity about what happened. The plot wanted Tian isolated, so the plot gave us implausible failure of communication.

I'm in. We should set up a crowdfunding page. Actually, skip it. Who do I write the check out to? How much do you think Tee will require in order to go along with it?