TianQi

It's a special episode, apparently.

As someone who dates a Taiwanese who always makes fun of the Thai language when seeing me watching Thai BL, it was quiet satisfaction to see Marco get made fun of for his accent in Thai. But about the show: I'm liking the story so far. Yeah, Ait is childish, but he has always been that way. Ever since he gave James those big doe-eyed stares at the beginning of the last season. Now, he's become childishly annoying. My heart is aching for Bas and hats off to Michael for his portrayal of him. He genuinely looks like he's in shambles in every single scene. LOVED the beach trip part of the episode too (minus the puke).

I’m also expecting it to clear up the last scene with the USB.

I also think reference to a Chinese idiom with the main leads' names was cute too. Jin means gold and Shi means stone or rock. The idiom is: Jing cheng suo zhi, jin shi wei kai and it basically means: you can overcome anything if you work hard, but literally it means: with sincerity, you can break metal and stone (which is literally their job).

The only thing that stood out to me is how the ex is incorporated into the story. The rest is fluffy and cheesy, but very sweet at some points. One or two of the songs were good. I didn't hate it.

"So there is nothing silly or lazy or scathing about saying that "everyone" who grew up in Korea carries some degree of psycho-conservative, inhuman cultural baggage. You can't grow up inside a culture and be 100% free of its bullshit."

That kind of sidesteps my point, though. This drama is made in Korea and is about Korea. So, that you would imply to someone that their being Korean is clouding their perception about a Korean drama is weird to me. Maybe it's your being American that's clouding your own perception about what's happening in spite of you claiming to just view it as a human being? Maybe consider your own possible misperceptions as an American when perceiving a non-American show and contextualize that a bit before condescending to someone else about a show made in their own country about their own people.

"I hate when people call the U.S. "America." Canada, Mexico, Guatemala, Brazil, Argentina and many other countries are in and part of "America"'

It's always been colloquially called "America", though. Even when during colonial times when the official name was "British America". It's not some grand misnomer and everyone's aware of what a continent is. We should have chosen a more unique official name, but we didn't, so here we are.

" This country is also chock full of the most stupid, deliberately ignorant, religiously insane, stubborn and just plain hateful people"

No argument from me there.

I live in China now, but I'm American too. I was born there. I grew up there and moved years ago, but would still visit often until the virus.

Indeed haha

Yes. It was a big dildo. lol

Because America is an exceptional and young country filled with people from all over the globe. So, being aware of diversity of thought, culture, etc. can be a little bit more readily obvious in a place like America. I guess in places like Canada and Australia too. There's also a great sense optimism that America seems to have/promote. That's why I said it's a very American thing to say. And you also made a sweeping statement about Korea saying that *everyone* carries psycho-conservative, *inhuman* cultural baggage. My generalization wasn't quite as scathing or as silly as that. Both could be said to be lazy though, I suppose.

My prediction is that Shin Woo and Namgoong are going to have to be the ones to pull everything back together between them. Up until this point, Daon, Namgoong, and Shinwoo have all been close friends for years. They know each other well and care about each other. Next episode, Daon is probably going to try and cover up his feelings about Taekyung to the public. Depending how he goes about it will determine how I judge him going forward. If he tries to throw Taekyung under the bus, I'm gonna be really disappointed, if he takes it all upon himself, I'll feel bad for him, but at least he didn't manage to have someone else hurt even more.

Daon's friendship isn't the one I think we should be questioning how to deal with as Daon hasn't done anything truly THAT horrible to deserve severing a friendship. I think we should be questioning how we would look Sohee in the eye without wanting to push her into oncoming traffic.

Where you grew up colors your perception of the world and we can and do become more objective with age and experience. Totally agree with that, but this still is a Korean show in Korea made by Korean people, so it's gonna reek of that pyscho-conservative cultural baggage anyway, without anyone needing that social conditioning to see it that way. Also, on a lighter note: saying something like, "I don't consider myself an American, I am a citizen of the world." is one of the most quintessentially American things someone can say. lol I don't mean that as an insult btw.

I think people can "discover" or comprehend things later in adolescence, but I understand what you reasoning toward Daon if you don't believe that. Shinwoo told Taekyung to his face that he didn't like him...more than once, he's not always been honest either. He's made up for it in more ways than one though and I love him for that.

That’s true too. Daon was always around, but yeah, Shinwoo telling Taekyung straight to his face that he hated/really disliked him while 100% liking him was starting their relationship off on a terrible foot.

I'm 90% with you if we're talking about grown adults. I'm about 75% with you if we're talking about university students, but high school students? :/ I feel like that's different.

I personally think Taekyung and Shinwoo would have admitted those feelings sooner if Daon weren't there. Namgoong already knew Shinwoo had a thing for Taekyung since like ep. 2 and he actually told Taekyung that (albeit indirectly). Sure, Shinwoo probably still would have made the same awkward mistakes in communication, but I think there would have been more opportunities for him to quickly make up for that if Taekyung wasn't distracted by having a crush Daon.

I'm not certain that he's gay (could be bi, pansexual, or anything else for all we know), but I think it might be clear that he's developed feelings for TK. Whether or not they're 100% nobody doubts romantic feelings (which I think they are), this hasn't been confirmed yet because we haven't seen Daon take the time out to really explore and express these feelings yet. Maybe next episode we'll see.

Daon did push Shin and Tae together quite a bit at the beginning. He encouraged them to spend time alone together and even gave Tae advice on how to talk to Shin. Shin, even though he's liked Tae this whole time, didn't actually treat him nicely for the first half of the series and Tae actively pursued Daon, not the other way around.

Same experience here. But hey, what if there were a storyline in which a girl really likes a guy, but then she finds out guy she likes secretly likes her best friend (who's also guy) and then she gets overwhelmed by how sweetly her crush takes care of her best friend and goes full-fujoshi and tries to bring them together? I feel like that or some variant of that would accomplish two things at once. It'd be more true to life while still giving us BL fluff, not to mention avoiding misogyny and a really weak plot device. As long as she's not an invasive, posts random pictures all over social media type of fujoshi, I'd be on board.

The really don't miss a beat. You can tell most everyone from age 13 to 50 pays close attention to how they're dressed. Even conventionally "ugly" still have very good fashion sense. I think it's because while Seoul is dynamic and has such a presence on the world stage (especially nowadays), it's still a relatively small to average-sized city, so fashion trends spread so quickly...especially with all the shopping EVERYwhere....another thing I like about Korea. I wish this we could get through this whole virus thing so we all can get back to traveling.

Ahh! Three more movies to watch! lol Didn't catch these ones before. Thanks!