does this villain show you're rbing fanart of actually have that much homoeroticism in it im curious

What, Scum Villain??? Um. Yes, yes it does.

SHIZUUUUUUUUN (eats him)

backless Mu Qing because I have free will

‘Danmei is mlm fantasy written by and for straight women’ is a lie. It’s written for transmascs and lesbians obviously.

Modu by priest was truly such a good read. If you like romance? It has a sweeping romance, with a well done bisexual and gay lead (and straight best friend) all written in ways that manage to feel realistic, it's got features people likely found it for when looking for a danmei - rich manipulative younger man, older investigator who's got a hero streak, and yet those categories don't really do justice to them (and of course tao ran is the more grounded detective story lead who keeps his theories to himself and worries about dragging others into his mess).

They're so much more... Fei Du is a traumatized young man who's worried he's as monstrous as the people who scarred him, who is preparing to take the leap and cross the line to become an even more terrifying version of himself if it will destroy the corruption poisoning this city and harming so many, Luo Wenzhou is a cop that used to want to be a hero and learned he will fail people and be unable to save people and holds onto Fei Du as someone who reminds him he DOES fail but also reminds him why he wants so hard to keep Trying to help people even when it seems impossible... why trying and putting in effort to care and help Even when its too late to fix things is Worthwhile. Tao Ran is a contrast to them both, Fei Du living in a world where there's only monsters and victims and Luo Wenzhou desperately trying to force the world to be a place where justice CAN prevail and win even as he sees it fail over and over, trying so hard to believe all people have the capacity for everything and are worth trying to save. Even though Fei Du doesm't believe that, being around Luo Wenzhou makes him want to consider it. Tao Ran, their contrast? Believing the world can go either way, and its up to people like him to create any justice at all, any structure at all, or else everything is just meaningless suffering chaos. As characters, the three of them serve to explore how the world works and views on it in terms of a detective murder mystery encompassing the whole city, the small scale version of the world. Modu is a romance, but its also fully commited to being a murder mystery that wants to tackle the kind of themes that come up in the setting it's created. Its characters are so much more than Insert Character Ship types here. These characters were made this way to explore these ideas (just as the villains are all made to parallel and contrast Fei Du to explord these ideas in comparison to our point of view Fei Du moments, our impressions of Fei Du from Luo Wenzhou and Tao Rans varied perspectives, all of them are different lenses to view humanity and how it works, if the world is just or if we have to make it good, if we can be inherently good and if good people will reach out to us if we just keep treading water to survive, if its luck and chaos, and how much... and much more frankly).

Modu is like. If you want a story about a corrupt city and its victims, symbolizing a corrupt world and all of us at its mercy, and you want to see the heart of the people doing something about it. First the main trio, but also every victim Fei Du recruits to help, every murderer recruited to the corruption, all the people in the cases swayed to some side. Thats what Modu is about.

The romance is just one facet of exploring that, the personal debate about what these things mean about the world as told through two people who view this world incredibly differently. Yet find some way to exist in the same space, same mutual world, when together. It hooks you in and doesn't let you go and youre wondering right there with them, left to draw your own meaning in the end. Hopefully that its worth trying, that doing something is worth trying even when its just the trying you can do and not the succeeding, at least thats what I got from it (at least in regards to Fei Du and Luo Wenzhou meeting each other, unable to live up to the pillar they put each other on but trying anyway, is what I felt from them).

Then like? Modu gives you THAT story, which in its own right is enough to make you contemplate.

And if you're like me and care about people, about characters? Well it gives you, like I said, those big themes and a city's nightmares symbolizing the world, and brings them down to an individual level. You read from the mind of the little girl who grew up in this (one of my favorite scenes and when I felt this novel was going to not shy away from dark psychological moments and bringing them to you). You read from the mind of Fei Du when he knows himself, when he doesn't. You read from the minds of all kinds of people, and the heart of much of the investigation is peoples motives and things they'd gone through and how that shaped what they'd do next. Why they'd do it. Leaving you to wonder who's right. Jaded idealist Luo Wenzhou who wants to believe in the goodness of the people he loves, but also is willing to risk that strangers may have good intent? Fei Du who thinks theres only victims and perpetrators and everyone is going to fall into one in the right circumstance? Tao Ran, who feels the world is too messy to dare declare predictable, who thinks even your closest can betray you and even you can accidentally hurt them, nevermind strangers, and the only thing you can control and rely on is your own choices? Some mix? None of them? The side characters as they come up, grow and evolve, do they understand the world better or worse, and is the world they experience different than anothers and justify why their worldview is likewise different? Modu gives you that up close and personal, over and over. Im still thinking about it. And the way its done, they all get to feel like lived in people. Not structures to tell the themes only. But on their own, there's a personal struggle between Fei Du feeling like a monster who'll destroy Lup Wenzhou if he loves him, like his dad destroyed his mom, and Luo Wenzhou carrying the guilt he could never save Fei Du and desperate to believe in Fei Du (and keep trying to save him in that way if only that way) as person who can do good despite not being saved and despite Fei Du's fears. You could cut the entire city's plot away, all of the crimes and make the city calm, and still that core of their plot would be carrying a Lot of weight. Theyre playing a game of "enemies" to lovers sure, or whatever romance story structures they fit into. But they're also made to be deeply rooted into each other, their personal beliefs tied into the outcome of what they hope or fear happens if they are close together. Modu made me care about that. Its like the fears many people might have, abiut theur own flaws, about getting close to others, about trusting and being unsure if that trust is safe to give. Its that and magnified into bigger form, in this landscape of a fucked up city and the tragedy of Fei Du and Luo Wenzhou's meeting and former lives.

Its like. Id love to to read another danmei (Ive got a lot on my to read list). But what's going to give me roo

shove over mo ran, it's my turn to wait five years for chu wanning

Just looked at the glossary, pronunciation guide, and terminology sections of 7seas tgcf and y’all were right, this shit is mad offensive lmao. (Not to say that I didn’t believe folks before, I’d just always skipped everything after the actual story content for the other mxtx books.)

okay this Xi Tian article is SO good

“Chinese BL as a highly interactive and adaptive genre has evolved significantly over generations of practitioners and has undergone a noticeable self-reflexivity.” (105)

“I therefore suggest that the trend of conflating BL with homosexuality and the deliberate homosexualization of BL in both texts and real life have ultimately extended the cultural identity of BL, as well as its political meaning, and in practice have created a porous culture that welcomes gender diversity and helps increase the visibility of the gay community, revealing a significant social and cultural shift that cannot be ignored or reversed.” (105)

“On the other hand, because of the heavy censorship on (re)presentation of homosexuality in literature and film, Chinese BL was born into and grows from a significantly different sociopolitical environment from that of Japanese BL and English slash.” (107)

“...I believe that BL should always be read queerly.” (107)

“Meanwhile, more BL stories are set in fantasy worlds, dynastic eras, or futuristic times, which have their own norms on gender and sexuality and in which characters live beyond real-life restrictions of sexual orientation and gender identity.” (109)

"...the reflexivity of the BL genre explicitly recognizes and normalizes male homosexuality, complements the exploration of female queer sexuality, and relocates BL in the larger scale of queer practice in the society, demonstrating that an increasing number of BL practitioners have realized the (possible) pitfalls of BL practice, responded actively to the shifting paradigms of sexuality in China, and used literary texts to better understand people who have been marginalized by heteronormative institutions and to change the society where they live.” (110)

IT'S HERE!!!

Heaven Official's Blessing

Is it surprising I giving you another #MXTX related review? Nope! Perhaps it's the Heaven Official's Blessing. Perhaps I'm dragging you down to hell-

If you don’t know how to continue living, then live for me. If you don’t know what meaning there is continuing to live, then for now, please use me as your reason to live, and treat me as your pillar to support you in life. Xie Lian was once upon a time the noble Crown Prince of Xian Le, a country that disappeared 800 years ago. He was born under a lucky star, yet after ascending to godhood at a…

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Lord of Mysteries Audio Drama || Theme Song, "The Song of The Fool"

承制团队：琅声工作室 作词：林白鹊 作曲：擎天sir 分轨混音：泡菜 人声混音：该帮主 PV：浮浮 演唱：陆深

空荡的 寂静的 雾的河 弥漫着 更晦暗的 血色 夜莺不敢高歌 等风声减弱 两个时空交错 那绯红的满月见证着 夜幕中坠落的异世者 向悬崖之上抓住第一张塔罗 牌面预示了什么

牧师未醒来 祷告向何人诉说 十字架倒转 危险里藏诱惑 谁颂唱愚者之歌 迷雾围困灯塔 罪恶悄然滋生 黑夜里该向哪里启程 占卜师询问过星空 那预言却比���咒更深重 ���谋编织牢笼 呼喊求援无用 终局降临 挣扎中下沉 溺水者求生

分不清是回忆正重播 还是梦向现实的影射 有树叶飘落 潮湿苔藓上印下 足迹一般的脉络 滔天雨幕下 秘密被浪潮淹没 当方舟翻覆 谁能有幸逃脱 颂唱这愚者之歌 迷雾围困灯塔 罪恶悄然滋生 黑夜里依然选择启程 旁观者端坐在云层 自救者狂风中点一盏灯 智者明哲自保 愚者天真赤诚 终局降临 向死而生

How swell it would be if the Lymond chronicles really were written as a danmei.

sometimes. it's not so much that i'm pissed off, it's more that the comment left a bad taste in my mouth

Person on reddit: danmei novels aren't romance because you can take the romance out and the plot will still make sense

Me: I mean you can take the romance out but then it's not a danmei novel anymore is it?

Sometimes I feel like by writing SVSSS, a (very apt and imo successful) parody of the danmei genre conventions first and then going on to write MDZS and TGCF, stories that heavily borrow from and adhere to those same conventions, MXTX kinda set herself up to be the very thing she swore to make fun of. I don’t mean this in a negative way I just find it really interesting how her tone changed from SVSSS to MDZS to TGCF. In fact I think it takes a certain intimate knowledge of the genre to level the kind of criticisms she brought forth in SVSSS and in her later novels she used that knowledge for her advantage in the exact opposite way she did in SVSSS.

Me reading the horror tag on a novel: well it can't be that bad hehe

Me, 40 chapters later with graphic descriptions of corpses, ghosts, and a cannibal: