assez

Betrayal. Obsession. Possessiveness. Manipulation. Non-consensual acts. Threats. The destruction of trust. People sacrificing themselves for someone who has hurt them. The possibility that love can mutate into something terrifying without necessarily ceasing to be love. = ashes, dust, and ruins
Now the house:


Too many things to say about that. It never bodes well.

Since some kind soul connected Double Helix with A Round Trip to Love, I'm going to treat it as such.

The problem is that with A Round Trip to Love, I saw the devastation in comparison to their youthful, careless, unconditional love versus the extent to which such passion, love, and devotion can destroy a human being. And then that human being is ready to destroy another human being without there being any evidence, without there being any justification for it, even on the emotional level.

Because if we say "rape" in a fictional world, it always and primarily should refer to some sort of symbolism and not a literal translation into what it means in real life.

And I'm just shocked that I did not recognize A Round Trip to Love in Double Helix. And in retrospect, since I finished both, I see why that is.

There was an incredible amount of love, passion, tension, and expectation if you watched it in two hours. The scale of a whole series is...

And here comes—I am going to altogether skip everything I wanted to say and any yapping I could have inserted.

What I lack absolutely in Double Helix is any sort of both/all-sided tension.

And what I mean by that is that I perceive (as a problem) both of the characters as very flat. The passion, the exaggerated emotions, the tension—it's all there beneath the surface, but the surface is so thick and flat. You kind of cannot get into it.

The series is literally "tell, don't show," while A Round Trip to Love was exactly the opposite. It was "show, don't tell." It was creating a visceral reaction inside of you through what you had seen, experiencing it with the characters.

And Double Helix is the exact opposite.

You were told everything.

Sometimes there was, like, scrutinizing details. I have a lot of forgiveness toward A Round Trip to Love just based on the emotional connection I had there. It spoke to me on a level where I could understand how this could create this reaction (in other characters).

In Double Helix, I feel nothing. Like, zero. Absolutely nothing whatsoever in terms of connectability.

They are so literally inside their brains, inside their logic, inside the logic itself, inside the descriptive level of storytelling.

Sometimes they break character, and it's very strange because you can see there is potential. If someone had directed it differently, it would have been such a roller coaster, as it's supposed to be.

But if I imagine rape, I imagine it the way A Round Trip to Love showed it, not the way Double Helix showed it.

And then, if we are talking about symbolism and how much BL series should be emotional—because this is the primary attraction for people who want to unwind and want to feel, not think—I cannot help but think about you telling me, not showing me, as a flat way around certain topics you didn't want to discuss.

I cannot help but think about it.

You had taken out of real life certain ideas about how not to do it and how not to mess with people, not make them angry, not turn them against you.

And I understand that feeling/need. Esp. as a creator.

But it's unforgivable for me in art, specifically.

So I get that Double Helix might be way more digestible than the aeons-old, two-movie-only A Round Trip to Love for wide audience who do not know what they are gouing into.

And I see that you could have worked with the actors differently, and I see an incredible amount of quality in the series, which is why it is so devastating for me that you opted for avoiding certain controversial topics.

Like, look, you could have skipped it altogether. People would have been much happier.

Or you could have done it in a very visceral way, as A Round Trip to Love did.

But this is somehow sort of halfway—not to offend anyone, not to please anyone—which is maybe why it has such a good rating, to be honest.

But it's nowhere near where I imagine pushing art, at least a certain branch of art, because I feel like it's highly needed and it has its place.

I mean, people these days are obsessed with not showing, only telling. And I cannot imagine not having these boundaries broken.

Something that is so supposed to be connected with love, passion, sex, gender—if you flatten it, you are doing a great justice to composed minds, and you are doing a great injustice to the animals we have inside ourselves.

I think it absolutely has its place - creating for composed minds.

I'm just not sure *this* story specifically is a great choice for doing it on.

So, in a weird way, I perceive Double Helix and A Round Trip to Love as absolutely separate—two units and two different stories, to be honest—dealing with the same topic, basically, doing approximately the same journey, but not really.

And I really appreciate that you did not devastate me (as thoroughly as you could) because I could not think of the things that happened in Double Helix as rape in a way that would give me a visceral reaction (and incapacitated me and my ability to do other things during the day).

I do know it is rape.

I see it as rape sometimes.

I know other people will see it as a rape.

Sometimes it's very questionable what it actually was though, which is how it was intended to be done.

But you never showed me anything over the top. You never went as far as Revenge Love in terms of kissing or showing anything physical getting together.

You never really showed me, without any doubt, maybe with one exception only, that a noncon/rape was non-con/rape.

And you never showed me—which is the greatest reason why I am even composing this whole freaking review—you never showed me a proper reaction to the insanity you had told me about.

You told me about and showed me the greatest injustices. You showed me things unforgivable, unforgettable, traumatizing— incredibly traumatizing. Sometimes more traumatizing for audience than for the characters themselves.

You spoke about them very lightly, in a very scientific (flat, distatnt, disengaged) way.

And it's not what I wanted from characters, to have such sterile reactions to it.

Especially with the second main male lead (in this case, it would be Cheng Yi Chen / Xiao Chen), I kept thinking: what is he like? What does he think? What does he _feel_?

I had a very hard time getting into his character.

I just don't know what that dude thought. How he perceived what was going on. If he even was into Lu Feng or not.

I don't know what he felt.

I don't know anything about that dude.

He looked like paper for the first main male lead (Lu Feng in this series, in Round Trip I would say the importance was equal or switched), who did all of the acting there (at least some very normal emotional psycho of them all).

And the minimalism of the second main male lead (Yi Chen again) —I just couldn't get him.

If these things were done to me, if they were even threatened toward me, I would definitely have significantly stronger reactions.

Even if I trusted that person, and loved that person and could forgive that person, I would have significant reactions to what was being done, said and threatened.

Some things didn't even make sense.

That dude literally endangered your brother's life on the stairs, possibly damaged his walking ability, and the thing you do after four years of being married to someone else and running away from him (Lu Feng) is return (crawl!) back and explain yourself to him, excuse yourself to him. Ask for understanding/forgiveness.

But on what grounds?

((...because you married, i know, but things were ambiguous between you when you left. So why? It's not how it would look like really.) He did not find you. He never did anything to help your brother. Things around him always seemed to get worse, and 3/4 of the times he did it to both of you.)

I mean, I'm sorry if it is in the original material, but here it is not shown or told properly.

On the bright side, it's the only shortcut I have any problem with, which is a very, very positive thing to say (the brother off the stairs thing).

It's even partially forgivable.

I would still love this to make more sense and be more rational (the brother off the stairs thing).

But...

I mean, you are dealing with non-consensual sex, you are dealing with rape, and you are dealing with two insane people who still, despite all of this, want to get together.

I cannot imagine this being set within the boundaries of logic.

If you want to do it, the only way to do it is emotionally.

But you skipped all of the emotions out of the story.

So it just does not make sense to me.

Despite all of what I have said and all of the complaints I might have about this—and there would be a shit ton of them—I love it.

I loved A Round Trip to Love.

I think I get it on a level that many people just cannot stomach or don't get at all, because they haven't experienced certain things in their life—or maybe because they did.

But it's such my blood type of story.

Again, most normal people would imagine it's all about the rape.

It's not.

I promise it's not.

It's not about the non-consensual stuff.

If not among two real-life people, if it is only me being affected by what I have seen through storytelling, it speaks to me volumes on a symbolic level.

No one wants to have anything to do with this shit in real life.

And I would be very saddened thinking or assuming that anyone who watches these types of audiovisual projects would then go and do something like that in real life—that they would take a lesson out of it, that they would somehow transfer it literally into their life or excuse themselves with it.

But on a very symbolic level, where there is only purity and symbols, it speaks so loudly and represents something so important to me.

I can't explain it.

But it's there.

And I believe it's the reason why we all return to something that today's youth would call toxic relationships, toxic dynamics, or toxic characters.

It's not only about that.

If it was only about that, we would refuse it, and it would stop working the moment we put a finger on it.

But this is not it.

So yes, I do love Double Helix.

I just think that if it had been done the way I imagined it and had taken lessons from the good examples of A Round Trip to Love, it had the potential to be a much bigger fire than even Revenge Love, probably.

Especially if someone had really written it with the loopholes it has.

And it has incredible loopholes beneath the surface level.

You could have dived into so many things with a depth I can't even explain.

But I do love it.

I love this type of storytelling.

I love this type of intensity.

I love this type of depth.

I love this type of meaning.

I love it.

And if this has a third, fourth, and fifth adaptation where they would actually show what I am talking about here right now, I would love Double Helix for what it is.

It's an abbreviation and a specific type of portrayal of how love, no matter how pure, can maim people to the point and level that they don't recognize themselves and still be slaves to, and sacrifice everything for, the person they love, no matter how much they hurt them.

And how the other side has an incredible amount within themselves for forgiveness, if it matters to them.

The capacity for forgiveness you have for someone you love—it might be parents, it might be brothers, it might be lovers, it might be a child—is vast.

It's endless.

The condition there should be that you both know the game, you both know the downsides and upsides of it, you know the boundaries, and you are able, no matter how much the other side is raging and at their worst, and no matter how much they need help—either yours or some professional's—you can still see them in it, in the animal that lashed out.

So, yeah.

I mean, if you don't have real-life traumas, if you are not overly sensitive, watch these types of series.

They really are no... They have their place, is what I want to say.

And I hope for more adaptations of this story because it deserves them.

Because there are so many unexplored places there.

Thanks.

Thank you very much.

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Perceived possibility that the described things are wrong on my side: 30% (scientist/analyst) / 50% (human) / 70% (creator).