Burning Desire

evenly matched MLs

Overall: I really enjoyed the mutual attraction and evenly matched MLs (it wasn't one was constantly abused and the other the abuser or one was super innocent and the other wasn't). Seems to be patterned off the Chinese BL vertical "Caged Bird". 55 short episodes (vertical). Aired on iQIYI app or Shortime app (can eventually watch for free by watching ads, My referral link is https://playground.shortime.en/invite/NKNIWI (all letters) and it should get you a bonus. You can view the first few episodes for free on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C0vtefTLhn0

Content Warnings: past murders, attempted murder, attempted rape, torture, violence (including choking, slaps, hits), manipulation, drugging, kidnapping/held against will, non con recording

What I Liked
- the characterization of the 2 MLs, I didn't feel that one was a horrid bully and the other a victim
- intimacy, pretty spicy for a vertical (and included mutual want)
- cliche evil woman who wanted to be his wife (but I did not see how that would end so bonus for doing something different)
- the reason for the past split made sense and their actions based on the information they had in the present

Room For Improvement
- nonsense plot stuff, but that's kind of baked in to this style of vertical so I didn't really take off points for it

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I don’t smoke weed, but I imagine this is what it feels like

Okay, I just finished this show, and I have mixed feelings about it. I am gonna give it a 7.5 out of 10, then say what I liked and what I didn't, and then call it a day because it's a short drama, and I don't need to add that much to it (too late).

Before I start, I am gonna write this review a little differently: I'll talk about the main points and what I liked and didn't like on those, so yeah.

The Plot:
Okay, so the overall plot of the show is that this guy's ex-boyfriend breaks up with him and then 5 years later comes back and GETS WITH HIS DAD. Of course, there is more to it, but that's like the gist of this show. So knowing that, you understand where my mixed feelings come from. The dad owns a drug company, I think, and the son and the ex-boyfriend want to kill the dad, but for separate reasons. The son because his dad caused his mom to overdose and die, and then the ex because the dad sent men to kill his father. Yeah, wild ride. For the main part of the plot, while I do think they could have written it out better and stop fucking skipping around, I liked it. And I really didn't think I was going to. I think it's a good plot and definitely fun for a short drama, and they did it pretty well because I was really into it, and the whole thing where there is always a bigger fish to fry and pick sides to stay alive, I could really get behind that, so that was good on their part. For the parts I didn't like about the plot, as I mentioned earlier, they jump around a lot, and it feels like not much is happening, but I am still really confused. Does that make sense? This is also in part due to THIS BEING SO LONG. I swear to God, 55 episodes is usually nothing, why the fuck was this one so long, my God? We started to do the same thing over and over again, like, oh, I'm gonna lie to you even though we are on the same team now, oh no, you got drugged, oh, somehow our rival is on the same team as your dad now, like what? Just bullshit. We could have made this shorter and gotten rid of the repetition, and it would have been fine, but noooo, we just wanted to be fucking different because we are holding our FUCKING BALLS at the drawing board, foaming at the mouth trying to come up with more bullshit and make our show even more terrible. Like, don't piss me off. There was another thing that was one of the most pressing plot points, but I will talk about that in problematic quirks lmao. Overall, the plot is good, but the bad outweighs the good in my opinion, making it a long, annoying, but fun watch.

The Characters:
There are a lot of characters in this, and it makes it really hard to remember everyone, but there 3 main ones: the guy, his ex, and the guy's dad (I am not gonna put names because I could not give less of a fuck about this shity ass show). Okay, so regarding the characters, I hated everybody. They were all dirty bums and had no decorum. I think our main character's mom died of an overdose, and he is the victim in this situation, even though he is low-key a bitch-ass. Imagine your mom dying because of your dad, and then your dad getting with your ex-boyfriend. That is low-key insane. I feel like he has the right to be crazy, but I also do not know. Regarding the love interest, he is low-key a dirty bum, and I mean survival of the fittest, but at what fucking cost? He has no spine, and he is like on the good side, but not really, because he is low-key just betraying everyone. He is like, oh this, oh that, and I am like, bitch, be fucking for real right now. You are going to make me so fucking angry right now. Like, you betrayed your man at the end of the day, and you got with his dad. What line did you even cross there? Because that is fucking gnarly, dude. Just overall, like, I was trying to understand his character, but I feel like his background and lore just felt ignorant and dumb, and like, oh, his dad got shot by these guys, so he got with the leader of the guys who killed his dad. That does not make ANY sense. I am really confused. And then finally, for the dad, he was just evil for the love of the game. There was no reason behind what he was doing, and I could not understand his character very well. I think because it is a love story, his character was not very fleshed out and was just kind of ass. I kind of understand if it is like, oh, he took the mom's company because of this, or he was jealous. Something. Give me some substance, but no. He is just evil for the love of the game. He hates everybody, and he is just money hungry, I guess, but I do not know. They could have done that better. I just thought that was poorly written. Yeah, overall, there are some more characters, but I feel like they are not really relevant to talk about, and they are just kind of one-offs. I feel like that is the problem with short dramas and a lot of different shows: you pack in all these characters and want me to empathize with them, but you do not flesh them out at all. So I am just like, okay, there is this guy on the screen. There are also 8 trillion other guys. Why do I give a fuck about this specific guy? I will answer that point. I really do not give a fuck about that guy. Overall, I did not really like any of them, end of story LMAO.

Problematic Quirks:
For problematic quirks (this whole show), my main thing with this is the stepmother thing. That was so fucking weird, and it wasn’t even like cute romantic or anything like that. It was just flat-out weird. Like, why are we calling our ex-boyfriend's stepmom? That is weird. Am I crazy for that? I feel like I really cannot get behind that, because it just felt like somebody's weird fetish that they used AI to write. I'm like, babe, this is not real. And there's another show on IQIYI that has the same plot. Is that like a thing? Like, ooh, I like it when I call my man stepmom. Dude, are you high? Am I high? Are we all high? What are we smoking in this goddamn show? Just weird, just plan fucking weird. And I want to say, it gets better. It does not. He does this to the very end, even when the dad is dead. He's like, well, stepmom, stepmom. No! Stepmom not. You are weird and incestual, and I hope you die, to be honest. I literally hope we kick rocks, do three backflips off a tree, and die. For the second and final quirk, in episodes 30 to, I think, 40, I do not know which episode it was, but it was around there. There was a rape scene, and I was like, okay, maybe if we had more lore, but no, it was just terrible. He kidnaps his ex to keep him from his dad, even though he does not want the dad, and he has made that clear. Then he rapes him twice, just unnecessary, dude. I do not understand. What are we doing? What's going on? It is just pissing me off for no reason at all. We are just being silly goofy to be silly goofy. Like, girl, bye. Okay, that is all the hate I have for this bum dum-ass show, so yeah.

In the end, I am not really sure I would recommend this. The plot is good, but some of the problematic quirks are VERY hard to ignore. So maybe not because of that aspect, but overall, if you are bored and you already pay for the streaming service, just watch it. You do not really have a lot to lose besides your dignity. Okay, bye!

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