Rants and Weekly Raves (RAWR) #381

Anne: Hello Everyone! My head is about to explode trying to figure out what is wrong with an assay when all I can do is ask for second hand information. Without actually being in the space when the experiment is executed, I am having a tough time trying to figure out how to troubleshoot. It is driving me literally insane. For instance, I'm beginning to think one particular issue that has spread beyond just one assay is due to light bleaching of the fluorescent dye. The problem is that this shouldn't even be a problem!

Anyway...enough ranting about my increasingly workload. Now... to the dramas...

Luoyang

Ok...let's get down to the most anticipated drama at the end of this year! I've finished up to somewhere in the middle of episode 11. Pacing...pretty good. Camera work...very nice. The fight scenes...spectacular! Story/plot...interesting but I have a lot of questions. One, why is everyone so deathly afraid of the empress? Two, why is the empress called the saint? I watched it subbed, so I don't think I missed anything important...or did I? (If anyone can enlightened me, please do.) Third, is this set in the same world as the Longest Day in ChangAn? The reason has mostly to do with the use of certain word/phrases. Fourth, how in the world does a WHOLE part of town connected to the main city by a building entrance? Where in the world is this place? Underground? Fifth, it seems a bit overly complicated for the Joint Corp to have those machine "delivery" systems. They really do not make any rational sense, except for the stunning visual effect. There are spies and moles and some sort of big plot to overthrow the government.

Character-wise...I'm not exactly thrilled. I don't know why actually. Maybe it's because the only person I really like is Wu Si Yue, the female inner guard. Everyone else is really getting my own nerves! Gao Bing Zhu...is supposed to be smart...but does a lot of really stupid things. He is literally cutting off his own leads by his actions. Erlang (Baili Hong Yi, and this name sounds very very familiar... it seems I've heard this character name somewhere before?) is an ass with a lot of filial piety. He made a whole lot of stink about getting married and in the end, he caved because it made his dad happy. And he doesn't even take care of his home for goodness sakes! He just goes off and expects his house to be managed as if by a magic invisible elf. Which brings us to the last main character, Liu Ran, whose name is barely used in the drama. Almost everyone calls her Madam Eleven, due to her birth order in the Liu household. This is one obsessive female who actually married her target, which I guess is the only reason she isn't evil...yet? Ah...yes, almost forgot my second favorite character, Bai Lang, one of the few people who is actually logical. He seems so familiar, and upon looking him up, he's Xiao Qi from Fu Yao! 

Despite the characters...I do like watching it. The show is quite cinematic. Maybe the plot will get better or I'll start to like the main characters more.

Advance Bravely

Yes, I know this isn't new. This was the result of my YouTube recommendations into the BL world that started last week. I read the book AND watched the drama, and I feel like that I should talk about it...3-4 years after it aired. This came out after Addicted, and with what happened to THAT show, there was a lot of uncertainty about this passing censorship. I truly do not know how they did it, because I don't see how they managed to convince the authorities that this was a bromance. The story is fairly typical BL. Xia Yao is a rich 2nd generation who works as a policeman (in the drama, I have NO idea what his job was), and has a very avid admirer by the name of Yuan Ru. And because she can't get anywhere with Xia Yao, she asks her older brother, Yuan Zong, for help. Yuan Zong is the CEO of a company where he trains people to become bodyguards for very well connected cliental.  And the story is off to the races!

When Xia Yao first met Yuan Zong...

This scene took a good 30 seconds from his legs all the way up to his face! The man is completely dressed, with an overcoat, and Xia Yao still managed to check him out like he was wearing something more revealing. (But seriously, I would probably do the same thing...although maybe not so blatantly obvious.) Also, Gong Jun in this show is just SO pretty. I don't know if it was intentional by the makeup artist, but there is certainly no question which part of this pairing he will be.

And please, can we all just sit back and admire his hotness?

Now... why it was so surprising that this drama passed censorship post-Addicted...?

1) The drama actually put on screen how Xia Yao got traumatized in his late teens, so that he had an unusual fear of unbared legs. The drama filmed the entire masturbation scene when Xia Yao was chatting with a "girl" who was strip teasing online. 

2) His two best friends. One was in a relationship with a gay man, Li Zhen Zhen, as a way to get a girl to notice him. The second one, Da Yu, was in love with Xia Yao. Everything about these two side characters was crystal clear. It wasn't bromance we are talking about here. They even showed the scene when Da Yu and Xia Yao got drunk and somehow both were naked and one got tied up (not exactly to the bed) when they woke up the next morning.

I certainly appreciated the strategic placement of the sheet...

3) Xia Yao and Yuan Zhou slept in the same bed and they pretty much LIVED together for a while. Granted, the show didn't say that they were living together, just kind of showed them hanging out a LOT. And there was a lot of this...Why sleep so close when the bed if so big? And where are your pajamas?

4) Of course the BIG giveaway was towards the end, when Yuan Zong had Xia Yao on his shoulders to keep him out of the freezing water.

I purposely left out the subtitles of their voice over...I'll give everyone one guess on what Yuan Zong said...3 words in Mandarin and also 3 in English. As for Xia Yao...a bit less obvious, but 7 words in Mandarin and also, surprisingly, 7 words in English. Granted, I don't know if this was actually in the original, maybe it was added later on. 

The "ending" was kind of non-sensical. It ended with Xia Yao meeting the "man" he was masturbating to at the beginning of this story. I don't know if something got left out, but this ending actually was pretty much the ending in the book (because the rest was mostly Yuan Zong trying to convince Xia Yao's mother to approve of their relationship). What the drama didn't explain was, this man came to see Xia Yao at the hospital because he was the worker who fell into that well that led to Xia Yao climbing down to save him, which then subsequently led Yuan Zong to the same place in order to save Xia Yao.

Loved the show.

And this is all for this week. Hope everyone has a great rest of the week. and avoid the shopping chaos. Crossing my fingers that I figure out the puzzle of those assays!