ShortCircuit

It's male-centric but not BL. At most it's bromance, of the really-really not-lovers kind.

It's a three-fold story,

First, the tax was initially paid by all the counties in the prefecture as raw silkweight (a tax in kind, basically, pretty primitive for a tax system but then it was supposed to cover for an emergency) for a few years, then, after a few years of missing registries from almost 100 years back, the tax remained, but paid as silverweight (a different kind of tax but with the same name) and only one county carried the whole of it. Which is definitely not right for them. So if JiaMo and BaoYu (and maybe Lawyer Cheng) manage to clear that up, they'll all be heroes of the county LOL.

Second, there's the land issue. If you measured incorrectly AND also exempted lots of land from taxation, it's going to become really, really messy as it goes on. Just think what it would mean to sell or buy a piece of land that's supposed to be agricultural and of a certain size, but then you want to pass it on or something, and discover you have a different size and it's not agricultural at all. And then you either are rich and powerful and steal from your less than powerful neighbours, or are poor and get robbed. But you also have to pay tax on a wrong piece of land, and they're expecting all kinds of stuff to happen on that land too, LOL. And that for 100 years.

I've been reading lots of Chinese webnovels, there are some stories about taxation and land ownership and borders changing in some of them, all fascinating. Because - just think of it. In Europe, in the Irish kingdoms, for example, one of the biggest stories in the Bronze age was the Great Cattle Raid of Cooley, or The Tain - also known as the story of Cu Chulain. It's about how in the first century CE, a bunch of people stole a bull and then there was a war over it. It sounds like a HUGE thing and there are gods and warriors and geasa throughout it, and it's amazingly heroic and inspired lots of Celtic folklore literature and high fantasy.

And they had like a few dozen people fighting throughout the whole story (and at one time, Cu Chulain is fighting off a whole army by himself too.)

Compared to that, take the beginning of Nirvana in Fire (a story set in the first half of the first millenium, if I'm not wrong), for example - it's a story about revenge for the wanton killing of a Crown Prince and his whole family (a blood prince, too, not someone who happened to be unrelated to the Emperor who ordered it done), and the total destruction of an army of 70000 people (with all its soldiers and captains and generals and everything.) That, just because of a distrustful Emperor, and even if that army had guarded the border, the Empire had plenty of other armies to spare.

What I'm trying to say is - the SCALE of it all is orders of magnitude different from an European - and generally a Western - frame of mind. For us, an army of 10000 is huge. For the Chinese, it's the vanguard of a regular kingdom, maybe not the greatest. (It took a while to get used to those numbers, let me tell you :D)

So ANYthing regarding land tax and land allotment and use, no matter how small in the greater scheme of things, would become a huge thing in enough time, for the Chinese kingdoms and empires.

And third - the story is also about JiaMo's parents and how they actually died. So on a personal level, he's trying to solve the mystery of their murder, which is closely related to the silk tax AND the land measurement.

So yeah, there's plenty to solve in the long run, but there's a chance for it, because it's still small enough to get solved, but also important enough to drag in important men to make political decisions about it.

Sorry for the long story, LOL, I get interested in such things and there are times when I feel like sharing what's interesting to me. :D

It's not the two of them, LOL, it's young looove. Or it sure looks like that, according to drama rules. It's not JiaMo either :D

But there are already signs that SleezyLawyerCheng.exe is starting to grip and give errors, and RedemptionArcForCheng.exe is starting to debug :D

I have no idea (they're not together in any way by ep 7.) I don't really think so, though, she's way too independent and he's much more versed in the ways of the world.

They could be friendly enemies though, if he ends up helping BaoYu and JiaMo solve the problems (that he helped cause, LOL).

So, uh, let me put ep 7 to song. *ahem.*

"I can see what's happenin'" - ""What?!"
"-And they don't have a clue!" - "Who?!"
"They'll fall in love and here's the bottom line: Our trio's down to two." - "Oh..."

And yeah I'm counting Lawyer Cheng as part of the trio LOL. Just for the sake of discussion, yes, I'm totally down for it. I like naive falling in love and someone's sister needs real help in handling the boy LOL.

Moment 3 re-visited: Wen KeXing yelling at Ye BaiYi, "Old Monster, are you trying to pick a fight with me!" while Zhou ZiShu and Chengling are looking on helplessly, and ZZS is trying hard to keep WKX and YBY separated LOL. Though ZZS seems kind of a little happy about it too :D

This took a bit to get used to, now I wanted for it to have lasted longer.

Does anyone have any idea if the BGM OST was ever released? I can only find three songs, and I really really loved the BGM theme (the OP, and its other versions). Pretty eerie, fitting the story.

I have come to really like Chen FeiYu for a while now, this drama presented quite a few other great actors I'll be on the lookout for from now on.

...And hopefully someone translated the novel, too :D

There's no actual FL in it so far (almost halfway through). There is a female character in a pretty strong support role (they're presenting it as main in the cast list, but IMHO it hasn't been, not until now anyway; there's still time for that to change).

But yes, she's a strong self-business-owning woman, who takes care of little silly brother and cares for his friends, and who's pretty rich by her own means, too. And she can hold her own in a brawl too (one that she started :D) I quite like her, She's interesting.

I did watch it. You can't trust anybody's motivations in this drama, LOL. Except, maybe, Feng BaoYu's, because he's so naive yet. And Mr. Fan's involvement is pretty heavily hinted at but at this point, there's no actual proof.

But I like the pace - and most definitely like the cat :D

I'll trust JiaMo's actions just because he's a cat person, LOL. And Lawyer Cheng managed to pet it unscratched, himself, too, there might be something worth saving in him (according to the laws of cats) :D

They realy take the cat everywhere, they should give her a place in the cast :D

I am starting to warm toward Lawyer Cheng, I think he can be redeemed despite his scumbag tendencies.

This new Regional Inspector guy looks pretty suspicious. Why would he help the prefect so easily? What's in it for him?

At this point, I kind of think Mr. Fan definitely had a hand in JiaMo's parents' death...

"Under the Microscope" just started, it's along this very alley. It's rather short, too, but well acted, and the cast, plot and execution are amazing!

Yup, he looked so frail standing in that doorway the first time he went back home... Even compared to Sword Snow Stride, he's much much thinner. He almost got the Lee Joon Gi jawline, LOL.

... That can't be healthy. I hope he went back to a normal weight after the filming ended.

The whole prison (guards included): "Turn a new leaf, never come back to prison!" ROFL

That was hilarious. And the cat is so loyal. Must have a dog soul inside it, LOL.

"your name." and "The Girl Who Leapt Through Time" are animated and they're pretty amazing. "Reset" is indeed a drama, and it's also very good.

They all have somewhat similar themes of time travel and redemption. If you're in the mood sometime, give them a try :)

I only had time for ep1, he doesn't seem to be pretending even when alone - so far. The ending of ep1 hints at childhood similar behaviour, why would he be pretending as a very young kid?

He might be calculating something, and express "normal" feelings, even with ASD.

This looks amazing. But it's so short :(

I'm loving the sister and hating the lawyer, if this was a Western drama, they'd end up together LOL.

Soo... After ep1, looks like JiaMo has high functioning ASD (probably Asperger's), he acts/looks/sounds like SRK in My Name is Khan.

I have a good feeling about this!

She started writing the clues to what happened to her when she first went back. He only had that journal to go by, so he tried to follow the timeline she indicated in it, in order to make sure they would actually meet.

It's a butterfly-effect type of time travel drama.

FL was in love with a man who died in a plane accident and can't let go of him, even years later. One day she falls asleep listening to the song in an old walkman she found and wakes up as a girl many years in the past who is deeply depressed and maybe suicidal, and who also might be the target of a killer. FL discovers there's a young man in the past who looks remarkably like her lover...

In that girl's body and using her older personality's wisdom she manages to turn around the destinies of a few people, until she and the girl switch bodies back. The ripples of the past changes keep moving back and forth in time, not settling down and causing larger and uncontrollable destruction, and she and the girl in the past switch a few times more, each time amplifying the effects of the time adjustment, until one day it all cames to a head.

I won't spoil the actual ending, because it's worth watching.

It's a bit like the movie "your name.", and also a bit like the cdrama Reset. Also a bit like "The Girl Who Leapt Through Time" (I've only watched the animated movie, though I heard there are more versions).

It's good, do consider it.

They kept 95% of the story in, and left out only the most blatant PDAs and the final few out-in-the-open actual 18+ scenes. (If we don't include the gore, but that's only my personal hang up, not everybody else's too).

The visuals are amazing, the chemistry is off the charts, the voice actors are the same who voiced them in the audio drama, the soundtrack is beyond belief, there are actual female characters who have arcs of their own and don't depend on men to be relevant, the raw drama is there in all its magnificent glory, and it's fun. Particularly when it involves the juniors - but WWX is always the chaotic god of well intent and strange outcomes, even if there were no juniors around. And they also nailed the Yi City arc, too.

And Xiao Zhan looks exactly like you think WWX should look like, up to and including that mischievous devil-may-care full-toothed grin.

The only interesting bit up so far is the reason of Gu DoHan's switch from lawyer to police officer and I have this feeling they're not going to expand much on it for now anyway.