MARS: better and better
Jan. 26th, 2006 12:46 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dangermousieYes, another MARS post. I’ll be done by the end of the week.
I’ve realized that the reason I am so hooked on the show despite its inherent limitations (after all, it’s a Taiwanese soap) is that it manages to do something that many objectively much better shows can’t manage: it utterly convinces me that its OTP is really not just perfect for each other, but wouldn’t work as well with anyone else in the world. They are both walking wounded, really damaged people (you only have to see Qi-Ling screaming in a high-pitched monotone relieving her abuse flashbacks, or see Ling’s violent rage) who save each other over and over from insanity and loneliness and mess. They are both freaks, and not really in cute ways, and I don’t think I could really deal with either in RL for more than a couple of days before being exhausted but they really work for each other and I love that.
Oh, and I did get to the Ling finds out Qi-Luo has been sexually abused part and it was really really well done, even though I had to ff her rape flashbacks because there are some things I can’t watch. I loved the fact that he figured it out for himself, after one of their make-out sessions ended up with her screaming. Of course, he stopped as soon as she started screaming and all she could do was “don’t hate me, please” and he looked at her in utter perplexity and told her he doesn’t but when he tried to touch her she flinched. Yup, certainly a clue. So he remembered when he first met her and people said that Qi-Luo can’t stand men and he went asking around and found out that she was chirpy in middle school but once she came to high school she was a ‘freak.’ And so he invited her over and I love him sitting there, destroyed, and when they had another make-out session he didn’t stop at once the way he usually does as a way to find out what happened to her (though this is a bizarre method to find out, whatever) and she flipped and started screaming ‘I don’t want to’ and he told her ‘I knew something happened to you’ and I love the scene of them both collapsed on the floor, and his holding her as she scream sobs into his shoulder.
And in the next scene they just sit on the floor not touching and he asks her very quietly if she reported it and she nods no, and if she knew who it was and she nods yes. And he asks her who it was and she tells him the whole story about her stepfather and how he kept sexually abusing her and she couldn’t say anything just weep and cry until finally mother found out and they left and she says she dreams of it every night and every night in her dreams she kills him over and over again using the most horrifying method, and I finally understand why she has never been freaked out by Ling’s tendency when he is in a rage to inflict one hell of a damage on his opponent, because that’s nothing she hasn’t done in her head repeatedly. He is acting out what she’d like to do. And then you see she’s left and he is still collapsed on the floor, and just crying quietly. And she goes to her friend and tells her that basically her ship is over and Ling won’t want her now and (that is why I love her) in the morning she wakes up and her attitude is ‘no matter how sad you are, you still need to sleep and eat, and everything moves on.’ But then when she is sitting in class, Ling comes in and takes her away in the middle of class and when the Prof. throws a fit he tells the prof that he has something more important to do and if he wants to punish him, that’s fine, do it later. And they go to the beach and she tells him she thinks he doesn’t want her now because she’s ‘abnormal’ and his response? ‘Funny thing, I am abnormal too’ (indeed you are). And he tells her that he can’t possibly pretend to know how it feels because he’s never raped anyone nor is he a woman, but no matter what happened to her, she is always the same to him (awwwww). And there is hugging and kissing and crying and her using his shirt as a handkerchief (yuck! :P) And she tells him that she actually met him (Ling) when they were both freshmen and he fished her keys out of the drain for her and was very sweet. And then borrowed money which he didn’t return :P And they build the world’s most fancy sand-castle and he tells her he’ll build as many of them as she’ll like if she wants it. Cute.
And then soon, of course, because it’s a soap and what’s soap without angst, her evil stepfather comes back (her mother has been sick for a long time) and Mom? She is all “I am exhausted, I need a man, he promised he won’t do it again” (ugh, the scene where Qi-Luo sees him again and starts screaming in pure high-pitched terror is painful to watch) and Qi-Luo, who feels guilty about her mother’s illness promises to cooperate and Ling hits the ceiling and they have the world’s hugest fight because he can’t believe she’d go back to a man who did that to her and that promises or no promises he’d try again and he offers her to move in with him but she doesn’t want to desert her mother and he just basically ditches because he can’t deal with this whole thing at all, understandably so (and understandably, they make up really quickly and she tells him he was the first man she kissed, even with the sexual abuse, and that he is the only thing that gives her courage to go back to that house).
But of course stepdaddy goes back to his old tricks and this time Qi-Luo hits him with the heavy candlestick and she keeps hitting him and hitting him and so Ling comes home from work to find Qi-Luo in a blood-stained shirt on his bed and it turns out she didn’t kill the stepdaddy and her mother tells her to come home and they should overlook this (!!!!!!) and so Qi-Luo hangs up the phone and finally gives up on her family. And she moves in with Ling.
And this leads into one of the best sex scenes ever even though the camera didn’t go below the neck. Because Qi-Luo is now staying at Ling’s house and it’s clear she’ll be living there from now on and he makes the bed for her and tells her that tomorrow they’ll get more furniture but tonight he is sleeping at the neighbor’s and she tells him she wants him to stay with her to which he replies that he wants her to feel safe, not to think as if all men are like her rapist stepfather and he never wants to hurt her. Guuuh. And she stretches out her hand and touches his cheek and finally raises her eyes and tells him she wants him to make her go back to the time before she was 16, and I guess in context it doesn’t mean buying her clothes 5 years out of date.
And then they end up on the bed and he is being really slow and she closes her eyes and before she begins to freak out (just as she starts) he tells her to open her eyes and see that it’s him and guuuuuuh. And she starts saying she feels horribly dirty and he whispers that he’s never seen anything as innocent as what she is now and it’s sappy and corny and cliché and I don’t care. There are sniffles in my house. And then it’s some time later and the camera pans up to her face and you see her have this very quiet, incredulous smile. Eeeeee. And then I had to run.
But of course, leaving aside the cute mushy/angsty stuff, this also had some severely freaky issues, mainly dealing with the creepy, psycho, Ling-stalker Tong Dao. Ummm, someone could have a field day with the twisted slash this would be (and could easily be, if it went the other way). Because Tong Dao has a huge thing for Ling, or at least his violent, psycho side, and he is unerringly good at bringing it out because he knows just what buttons to push, and the scariest thing? He gets off on it. There is a scene that made me go “aaaaaah, don’t do it, please” where Tong Dao finds Ling in a pool hall and after a certain back and forth Ling picks up a cigarette from a bystander and says he hates the smell of this brand the most so Tong Dao gets an ash tray and extends the palm of his hand with it with this really weird smile and Ling? “But the ashtray is already dirty” and as Tong Dao continues to smile he stubs out a cigarette on his hand. And the creepy thing? Tong Dao is definitely turned on. And later there is a scene where Ling basically ends up almost choking Tong Dao to death all the while describing to him how asphyxiation feels, and he meant to only scare him a bit but he lost control, and the only reason Tong Dao doesn’t die is because a glass shatters and Ling snaps out of it, horrified. And Tong Dao’s reaction? Ecstatic and sexed-up. Because he thinks he’s found someone like him. Ling of course spends a huge chunk of time after that freaking out whether he is like Tong Dao (though of course the fact that he freaks about it proves that he isn’t). Basically, if Qi-Luo is his good angel (because really he explicitly says that he’s found someone he wants to protect and that’s much better than anything else) then Tong Dao is the demon on the other shoulder, but big surprise, guess who wins? Yup, Qi-Luo.
Anyhow, probably enough for now.
And now,
Yay, no feathered hair!
I’ve realized that the reason I am so hooked on the show despite its inherent limitations (after all, it’s a Taiwanese soap) is that it manages to do something that many objectively much better shows can’t manage: it utterly convinces me that its OTP is really not just perfect for each other, but wouldn’t work as well with anyone else in the world. They are both walking wounded, really damaged people (you only have to see Qi-Ling screaming in a high-pitched monotone relieving her abuse flashbacks, or see Ling’s violent rage) who save each other over and over from insanity and loneliness and mess. They are both freaks, and not really in cute ways, and I don’t think I could really deal with either in RL for more than a couple of days before being exhausted but they really work for each other and I love that.
Oh, and I did get to the Ling finds out Qi-Luo has been sexually abused part and it was really really well done, even though I had to ff her rape flashbacks because there are some things I can’t watch. I loved the fact that he figured it out for himself, after one of their make-out sessions ended up with her screaming. Of course, he stopped as soon as she started screaming and all she could do was “don’t hate me, please” and he looked at her in utter perplexity and told her he doesn’t but when he tried to touch her she flinched. Yup, certainly a clue. So he remembered when he first met her and people said that Qi-Luo can’t stand men and he went asking around and found out that she was chirpy in middle school but once she came to high school she was a ‘freak.’ And so he invited her over and I love him sitting there, destroyed, and when they had another make-out session he didn’t stop at once the way he usually does as a way to find out what happened to her (though this is a bizarre method to find out, whatever) and she flipped and started screaming ‘I don’t want to’ and he told her ‘I knew something happened to you’ and I love the scene of them both collapsed on the floor, and his holding her as she scream sobs into his shoulder.
And in the next scene they just sit on the floor not touching and he asks her very quietly if she reported it and she nods no, and if she knew who it was and she nods yes. And he asks her who it was and she tells him the whole story about her stepfather and how he kept sexually abusing her and she couldn’t say anything just weep and cry until finally mother found out and they left and she says she dreams of it every night and every night in her dreams she kills him over and over again using the most horrifying method, and I finally understand why she has never been freaked out by Ling’s tendency when he is in a rage to inflict one hell of a damage on his opponent, because that’s nothing she hasn’t done in her head repeatedly. He is acting out what she’d like to do. And then you see she’s left and he is still collapsed on the floor, and just crying quietly. And she goes to her friend and tells her that basically her ship is over and Ling won’t want her now and (that is why I love her) in the morning she wakes up and her attitude is ‘no matter how sad you are, you still need to sleep and eat, and everything moves on.’ But then when she is sitting in class, Ling comes in and takes her away in the middle of class and when the Prof. throws a fit he tells the prof that he has something more important to do and if he wants to punish him, that’s fine, do it later. And they go to the beach and she tells him she thinks he doesn’t want her now because she’s ‘abnormal’ and his response? ‘Funny thing, I am abnormal too’ (indeed you are). And he tells her that he can’t possibly pretend to know how it feels because he’s never raped anyone nor is he a woman, but no matter what happened to her, she is always the same to him (awwwww). And there is hugging and kissing and crying and her using his shirt as a handkerchief (yuck! :P) And she tells him that she actually met him (Ling) when they were both freshmen and he fished her keys out of the drain for her and was very sweet. And then borrowed money which he didn’t return :P And they build the world’s most fancy sand-castle and he tells her he’ll build as many of them as she’ll like if she wants it. Cute.
And then soon, of course, because it’s a soap and what’s soap without angst, her evil stepfather comes back (her mother has been sick for a long time) and Mom? She is all “I am exhausted, I need a man, he promised he won’t do it again” (ugh, the scene where Qi-Luo sees him again and starts screaming in pure high-pitched terror is painful to watch) and Qi-Luo, who feels guilty about her mother’s illness promises to cooperate and Ling hits the ceiling and they have the world’s hugest fight because he can’t believe she’d go back to a man who did that to her and that promises or no promises he’d try again and he offers her to move in with him but she doesn’t want to desert her mother and he just basically ditches because he can’t deal with this whole thing at all, understandably so (and understandably, they make up really quickly and she tells him he was the first man she kissed, even with the sexual abuse, and that he is the only thing that gives her courage to go back to that house).
But of course stepdaddy goes back to his old tricks and this time Qi-Luo hits him with the heavy candlestick and she keeps hitting him and hitting him and so Ling comes home from work to find Qi-Luo in a blood-stained shirt on his bed and it turns out she didn’t kill the stepdaddy and her mother tells her to come home and they should overlook this (!!!!!!) and so Qi-Luo hangs up the phone and finally gives up on her family. And she moves in with Ling.
And this leads into one of the best sex scenes ever even though the camera didn’t go below the neck. Because Qi-Luo is now staying at Ling’s house and it’s clear she’ll be living there from now on and he makes the bed for her and tells her that tomorrow they’ll get more furniture but tonight he is sleeping at the neighbor’s and she tells him she wants him to stay with her to which he replies that he wants her to feel safe, not to think as if all men are like her rapist stepfather and he never wants to hurt her. Guuuh. And she stretches out her hand and touches his cheek and finally raises her eyes and tells him she wants him to make her go back to the time before she was 16, and I guess in context it doesn’t mean buying her clothes 5 years out of date.
And then they end up on the bed and he is being really slow and she closes her eyes and before she begins to freak out (just as she starts) he tells her to open her eyes and see that it’s him and guuuuuuh. And she starts saying she feels horribly dirty and he whispers that he’s never seen anything as innocent as what she is now and it’s sappy and corny and cliché and I don’t care. There are sniffles in my house. And then it’s some time later and the camera pans up to her face and you see her have this very quiet, incredulous smile. Eeeeee. And then I had to run.
But of course, leaving aside the cute mushy/angsty stuff, this also had some severely freaky issues, mainly dealing with the creepy, psycho, Ling-stalker Tong Dao. Ummm, someone could have a field day with the twisted slash this would be (and could easily be, if it went the other way). Because Tong Dao has a huge thing for Ling, or at least his violent, psycho side, and he is unerringly good at bringing it out because he knows just what buttons to push, and the scariest thing? He gets off on it. There is a scene that made me go “aaaaaah, don’t do it, please” where Tong Dao finds Ling in a pool hall and after a certain back and forth Ling picks up a cigarette from a bystander and says he hates the smell of this brand the most so Tong Dao gets an ash tray and extends the palm of his hand with it with this really weird smile and Ling? “But the ashtray is already dirty” and as Tong Dao continues to smile he stubs out a cigarette on his hand. And the creepy thing? Tong Dao is definitely turned on. And later there is a scene where Ling basically ends up almost choking Tong Dao to death all the while describing to him how asphyxiation feels, and he meant to only scare him a bit but he lost control, and the only reason Tong Dao doesn’t die is because a glass shatters and Ling snaps out of it, horrified. And Tong Dao’s reaction? Ecstatic and sexed-up. Because he thinks he’s found someone like him. Ling of course spends a huge chunk of time after that freaking out whether he is like Tong Dao (though of course the fact that he freaks about it proves that he isn’t). Basically, if Qi-Luo is his good angel (because really he explicitly says that he’s found someone he wants to protect and that’s much better than anything else) then Tong Dao is the demon on the other shoulder, but big surprise, guess who wins? Yup, Qi-Luo.
Anyhow, probably enough for now.
And now,
Yay, no feathered hair!
