Starmy
This review may contain spoilers
A weird sugar baby hostage situation turned romance with lots of rich people problems
Oof. This was a struggle for me to get through.
The plot is non existent. Basically if any of the characters would have just communicated like normal people, even a little bit, every issue could have been solved in a single episode, maybe two. But the "plot" relies on the characters to adamantly refuse to talk to each other, and instead to lie and dodge questions. Any other "problems" are literally just rich people problems which are hard to sympathize with. Oh no, I can't ride my Ducati bike because my arranged marriage partner (that won't even be legal? why did the elders even arrange this?) doesn't want me to.
The relationship dynamics here for two of the main CPs are...kind of gross. Both of the main couples (Kuea/Lian and Yi/Khondiao) have the same weird dynamic of two rich dudes pursuing two younger submissive men who are somewhat trapped (both reasons are stupid) into these relationships.
Kuea and Khondiao are comically naive at times, and other times seem to get out of their weirdly submissive Hia-pleasing but quickly go back. Both are constantly infantilized by their Hias by being called "naughty" copious times, being controlled and not trusted to do literally anything on their own. Even to chop up eggs?!
Somewhat of a saving grace is the chemistry, mainly between Zee and Nunew, but it wasn't enough for me. Kissing scenes are sometimes so gratuitously long that I got bored, which I didn't think I'd ever say with a BL. After the first 3-4 make out scenes, there was no range to them, it was the same scene over and over.
Consent was muddy sometimes - Kuea said no or stop to Lian multiple times and was ignored. Though it seemed playful it still gave me the ick. There were multiple scenes where Lian was pushing him to have sex and he did not seem willing at first. No thanks.
Syn and Nuer were the only relief from the toxic relationship drama - the soccer scene finally got a laugh out of me. This couple should have got infinitely more screen time to lighten things up. I got to the point in the last few eps where I was skipping by ten seconds because I was so bored of the characters lying or avoiding each other just to pad out the episodes.
I don't think it was any of the actor's fault that this show was such a disappointment, they did what they could with some extremely shallow and problematic characters.
The plot is non existent. Basically if any of the characters would have just communicated like normal people, even a little bit, every issue could have been solved in a single episode, maybe two. But the "plot" relies on the characters to adamantly refuse to talk to each other, and instead to lie and dodge questions. Any other "problems" are literally just rich people problems which are hard to sympathize with. Oh no, I can't ride my Ducati bike because my arranged marriage partner (that won't even be legal? why did the elders even arrange this?) doesn't want me to.
The relationship dynamics here for two of the main CPs are...kind of gross. Both of the main couples (Kuea/Lian and Yi/Khondiao) have the same weird dynamic of two rich dudes pursuing two younger submissive men who are somewhat trapped (both reasons are stupid) into these relationships.
Kuea and Khondiao are comically naive at times, and other times seem to get out of their weirdly submissive Hia-pleasing but quickly go back. Both are constantly infantilized by their Hias by being called "naughty" copious times, being controlled and not trusted to do literally anything on their own. Even to chop up eggs?!
Somewhat of a saving grace is the chemistry, mainly between Zee and Nunew, but it wasn't enough for me. Kissing scenes are sometimes so gratuitously long that I got bored, which I didn't think I'd ever say with a BL. After the first 3-4 make out scenes, there was no range to them, it was the same scene over and over.
Consent was muddy sometimes - Kuea said no or stop to Lian multiple times and was ignored. Though it seemed playful it still gave me the ick. There were multiple scenes where Lian was pushing him to have sex and he did not seem willing at first. No thanks.
Syn and Nuer were the only relief from the toxic relationship drama - the soccer scene finally got a laugh out of me. This couple should have got infinitely more screen time to lighten things up. I got to the point in the last few eps where I was skipping by ten seconds because I was so bored of the characters lying or avoiding each other just to pad out the episodes.
I don't think it was any of the actor's fault that this show was such a disappointment, they did what they could with some extremely shallow and problematic characters.
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