fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #6046 ]

[ SECRET POST #6046 ]

⌈ Secret Post #6046 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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[The Sopranos]

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[Word of Honor]

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 01 pages, 14 secrets from Secret Submission Post #864.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
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06. https://i.imgur.com/CFOFzV5.jpg

Just tell them you gave it a try but it's not for you. You don't have to get into specifics if you don't want to, and if you do you can explain that subtext isn't something you're interested in any more, I think most people would understand that tbh. I happen to like some of the censored Chinese BL but I am more than understanding towards those who don't like that it can't be explicitly gay(and frankly other aspects of censorship in China really guts the teeth out of some of the adapted BL so it's not as if I'm fully on-board with everything either).

I think it's perfectly reasonable to say what you said here.

I think I imprinted on repressed Victorian/Regency romances when I was a kid because I *love* the subtext. Give me silent yearning and subtlety and ambiguous-but-intense...

Same. Though in some cases, it isn't all that subtle or ambiguous, IMO. I guess I don't think of it as very subtexty because in cdramas, het romances also play out a little weirdly and feels more on the down low if you're used to western/Hollywood romances.

(AYRT)

Yeah. A lot of it just suits my vibe.

(That said, I respect where OP is coming from. Just tell your friend you gave them a try and they don't work for you, OP? If they're your friend, they'll respect that.)

I guess that separates you from hockey fans, who absolutely thought that someone should risk imprisonment of both himself and his family to wear a Pride jersey, and wanted other players to intentionally injure him for his cowardice.

And now there are no Pride jerseys. The homophobes won!

SAME SAME SAAAAAAME

Listen: I am mild as fuck by fandom standards. I am CRAZY about many sexless stories. In fact my favorite BLs are often sexless. I don’t think a story needs to have sex to be good. Victorian imprints? Loved that as a kid, too. Mild is my jam!

And yet something about danmei turns me off SO hard. I am reading my third novel now, the first one I said “what’s great about it?” the second one I tried so hard to love but failed, and this one I am loving the setting but I realize that (again) by chapter 30 or 40 the feeling of “oookay … so … this is boring? Are you telling me I am not even halfway done with this story” is happening AGAIN.

It’s not simply because it’s sexless, but maybe it’s a matter of amateur writing + amateur translation and then the fact that nothing happens because it doesn’t even crosses the character’s minds that it COULD. And being sex-repulsed I know painfully well how the world works. People expect sex even when there isn’t a reason for that. But when characters start going internally “ohhhh no we can’t kiss because that’s GAY (= because censorship doesn’t want us to, so the author won’t risk their integrity unless it’s very much worth it)” it makes me have war flashbacks to sixth grade. It’s soooo bad. My bro. Ugh.

The tl;dr is probably: if homophobia made my dreams soar high I probably would go outside instead of reading novels damn

So... I read a lot of danmei novels and yeah, a lot of them are mediocre. But kissing usually is included, even if most smut is fade to black or implied for censorship reasons. (Not always though. Depends strongly on the site and time a story was published - there was a crackdown on all smut - not just gay- on one of the biggest CN webnovel archives but some translators still got their hands on uncensored versions/the novels were published on a different site that didn't immediately purge anything smutty).

The romances themselves are very often veeeery slowburn so 30/40 chapters in, I'm not surprised you haven't encountered any kissing. There also are tons of subgenres so it's entirely possible you just haven't found one that appeals to you. There are literal hundreds of novels out there. I'm not saying you'd definite,y find something you like, sometimes a medium/type of writing just doesn't appeal to someone and that's okay. But 3 novels hasn't even scratched the surface and maybe you were just unlucky with your choices. Not saying you totally need to keep trying until, you find one you like though, exactly because there is so much out there and slogging through to find a good fit can be pretty tedious.
Out of curiosity- which novels did you read?

Thanks for explaining, anon. Just to make it clear, none of them made me close the window or the book in a rage fit so I can see myself enjoying this if I have absolutely nothing better to do on a tired rainy weekend. It’s not horrible. It’s just I wouldn’t call it “slow burning” it’s more “applying heat and pressure to a rock and seeing how it goes” .

And the ones I have tried are MDZS, 轻狂 and now WYFO - which is VERY up my alley. But made me realize “oh, my issue is with the medium itself”. It’s not just sex I feel like nothing much of anything happens. Maybe it’s because I am not crazy about the cultural immersion either, others are entertained by it while I am like “when will SOMETHING happen? ANYTHING!” . WFYO I am enjoying because I like MMO so it’s entertaining to imagine them doing Whatevers in a virtual world, but it still gives me a huge feeling of “they would be fucking if the author could do that” .

Yeah, totally get that. I have by now read around 35 full novels and have roughly 20 on my "currently reading/waiting for update" list and I can count the ones that I completely loved on one hand, the others were just something between "it's nice enough" and "kinda meh but I've read this far, might as well finish it".
I haven't read WYFO because that's not my preferred genre but yeah, totally get what you mean. A LOT of these stories just aimlessly meander around for ages without much happening. Or even worse, certain tropes repeating over and over again. If I had a nickel for every "stupid misunderstandings leading to endless pining because these dumb fucks can't communicate like normal people and now repeat this twenty times" I'd be a whole lot richer.

Exactly, it feels aimless. Like the author just wanted to write some sexy times but can’t so they have to pad out for years. It’s not just “there’s no sex!” it’s more “there’s a presence through absence of sex”.

Please recommend your top 3, anon. Wanna give them a try if they sound interesting to me.

Yeah, it's also an issue with a lot of self-published novels - the lack of third party editing is pretty obvious in a lot of cases. And especially with webnovels, which usually get published chapter by chapter, it's pretty obvious to see when an author had a phase when they were in a rut/just had to publish for the sake of publishing.

Hmmm from those that have been fully translated, 3 of the novels I enjoyed the most are:

Joyful Reunion (https://www.novelupdates.com/series/joyful-reunion/) - I like the novels by this author a lot and they do partly include some sex as well, at least the characters tend to be pretty horny at times. Another one by him (one of the rare male BL authors) is Dinghai Fusheng Records (https://www.novelupdates.com/series/dinghai-fusheng-records/) - also quite interesting. Also, both are fully translated, so that's always a bonus.

Copper Coins (https://www.novelupdates.com/series/copper-coins/) was quite amusing for the most part and it was more of a mystery/almost detective story with added romance and it was more on the comedic side in a lot of places.

Another one I liked a lot for the characters is Golden Stage (https://www.novelupdates.com/series/golden-stage/) but the translation for this has been taken down because it was licensed for an official translation. Had the bonus of the top/bottom actually switching, even if it ended up getting censored, not sure what the official translation will include.

Honorable mention but can't reccomend fully: Those Years In Quest Of Honour Mine (https://www.novelupdates.com/series/those-years-in-quest-of-honour-mine/) - I mostly liked it and I liked the characters but damn it had a lot of that "misunderstandings to draw out the romance" issue that I mentioned so... yeah.

Bonus: I'm currently reading Qiang Jin Jiu (https://www.novelupdates.com/series/qiang-jin-jiu/) and am really loving the characters but it's not yet fully translated so not sure if it will stay great. Lots of political intrigue and all.

DA

I thought Nan Chan was interesting. Tightly plotted, lots of Grandeur.

So there's an injured immortal quietly cultivating in the mountains and there's a carp in a bowl obsessing about how much it wants to eat him or... well it really wants to do something but it hasn't much brain in its fish-body, and the story of how the two of them ended up in their reduced state and what they're going to do about it is pretty interesting.

(It is, however, from the There Will Be Rough Dub-Conny Sex era of danmei novels, and I don't know if that floats your boat.)

Nan Chan is still on my to-read list because it's the same author as Qiang Jin Jiu, which I really, really enjoy atm. So yeah, I might bump it up in my priority list (a lot of the novels I'm currently reading are kinda slow in updates or have been dormant for a while anyway so might as well start a new one lol).

AYRT - True, there’s that, too.

Oh I heard of this Golden Stage and maybe Joyful Reunion too (yes it’s wild how many I heard of since the BL novel fan crowd is at least 50% danmei fans AOL) too bad the Golden Stage tl isn’t around anymore but I will try to check this first author’s - NGL not sure if I will enjoy it since the themes aren’t my usual preferences but I am curious now… Thank you anon!!

Man, I don't know about danmei because I can't get past the "amateur writing + amateur translation" issue. The one time I managed to read a whole webnovel, it was Mo_Dao_Zu_Shi and honestly, it took effort to keep going because jumping back and forth between timelines drove me up the damn wall.

But on the other hand, there was sex? Mostly at the end and in the extra chapters, and it was hilariously bad (until the day I die I will never forget Wei Wuxian using Lan Wangji's sword hilt for a dildo OMG) but it was definitely explicit. I didn't realize other novels were more coy about it. I'm not sure how censorship rules apply to stuff that isn't TV or movies, but I assumed they rules were less strict because I've seen (and heard of) more graphic sexual content in other forms of the media.

MDZS is fairly old by now and was published at a time were censorship hadn't quite reached webnovel archives yet to its full extent. Probably because the old guys in the censorship bureaus weren't really aware of the impact of webnovels at the time. The big crackdown on all smut, even the het, on online archives came only a few years ago (wanna say 3-4 m&s but I'm not sure anymore) and a lot of authors preemptively censored to not get deleted or even charged with a crime. There always were smaller bouts of censorship as well though - every time an author's note refers to river crabs they are referring to censorship (it's a pun).

Some people still have the uncensored versions because they saved the old text/some of the non-domestic published paper version still had them but they are definitively not on the official archives anymore. And some author's do post the smut on other archives separately and give their readers sneaky links to it. Not that it's always worth it because yeah, plenty of bad old classic yaoi tropes and a lot of misguided "gay sex always has to hurt and leave the bottom borderline incapacitated for days afterwards".

AYRT - Maybe it’s just that I am used to the Japanese novels where there’s sex every other page. Some of my favorites have sex at the end (that’s 150 pages in, not 300) and people will complain that it’s too mild.

I personally wouldn't mind the subtext upon subtext but I don't like watching dramas/tv shows in general so while I read a lot of BL novels, I'm just not into the drama adaptations. I liked MDZS- the novel for The Untamed- but mainly fast forwarded through the series because I found it quite tedious to watch.
I think though the reason why you're not into a thing isn't that important, sometimes stuff doesn't click with you and that's okay. And those suckers usually have 50ish episodes, that's a shitload of time to invest into something you dont enjoy.

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[ SECRET POST #6046 ]

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