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#i'm drawing another birthday thing rn and i think it's gonna turn out a lot better!!
sizhui · 1 year
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hi angie!! im jjst chilling today but today i plan to go out n buy my bday books!!!
anyways as a fellow bl intellectual i would like to ask u what u think abt general bl stock characters / archetypes!! also as someone whos doing shakespeare this year im curious abt how u would blend currently existing bl story formats w like more traditional lit genres / conevtuons IF YOU COULD!! WOULD U!!
how do u think bl being a mostly Not white people thing has affected its conventions like idk emotional intensity, typical tropes idk!!
looks at u like this 🥺
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HELLO DEAR LAB!!!! i saw your birthday books, very good choices, i hope you'll enjoy! Now let us discuss one BL intellectual to another ^_^ as usual, I'll stick to danmei, since I'm simply not well read in Japanese and Korean BL to speak confidently even though I have experience with them...!
When googling people's favorite tropes, most people mentioned Enemies to Lovers. I do like a good conflict, but I like very specific shades of it... I like characters who are ideological opposites, but still hold some affection for each other since early on... Although i have been interested in thousand autumns in which the two leads start as straight up bitter enemies, so I'll see how I'm going to like that! Now, something slightly different that i really enjoy is characters being thematic opposites - demonic cultivator and orthodox cultivator, god and demon, soldier and librarian you name it! I have seen people call this the yin yang trope i don't know if that's a widely used term? I also enjoy slow burn - see Golden Terrace disappointed me in that regard cause they started sleeping together in like chapter 30 come on where is the drama the intrigue :(? I don't care for friends to lovers much unless it's written really well but i really much prefer strangers to lovers!!! A lot of people sigh at the trope of one Character being like "I don't like men it's..only for you ❤️" but i honestly think that's a convention you just have to accept when diving into the world of BL. I like badass shous that aren't annoyingly shy and talkative, charming gongs (sorry lan zhan is ok but strong and silent gongs usually piss me off) I'm probably one of the 5 western fans who actually like the gong/shou dynamic because like. Let's be honest there's nothing wrong with seme/uke in JPN bl either other than ukes being drawn as shotabait often, but since novel art for CN novels usually draws everyone looking like adults I really don't see anything problematic with gong/shou, heteronormativity my ass... i also kinda like when they call each other husband and wife SORRY. I also like the trope of the couple adopting a young boy. I'm not gonna call it found family I'm not gonna even try. I hate master/disciple and i hate school settings. I usually prefer the characters to be rougher men already hardened by life! I like reincarnation and revenge but i don't like Isekai ... Ummm what else is there? Nothing comes to mind rn , if you have some specific tropes you want me to rate, I'm here :)
NOW YOUR SECOND QUESTION HAS ME REALLY INTRIGUED...if i could, i would merge literally every literary genre with BL to be honest. Since you specifically mentioned Shakespeare, i think it would be fucking amazing to see BL adapted into stage plays - i don't mean those funny anime stage plays, i mean straight up tragedies on Hamlet level. Oh i would kill to see that!!! I would also love to see like, someone with an interest in narratology and metafiction write a super meta BL novel like enstars but like really properly yaoi. I don't think that danmei novels written by amateurs have "bad writing" - they simply exist on a different terrain and seek to communicate different ideas from traditional published novels, but i would love to see the two merged in some spectacular novel that takes inspiration from classics!!
Now your third question i would rather turn into a discussion with you, because while I've consumed a lot of East Asian media since a young age i don't claim to have such a good understanding of the cultures to be able to trace how the culture influenced BL literary conventions, but I would love to hear your thoughts on it and compare to what i know! I definitely find it interesting to compare East Asian BL with LGBT media made by white Americans and Europeans, cause they tend to rely on very different things, with American and European gay content being very focused on the issue of homophobia and stuff like family and cheating and coming of age, while Asian BL, despite tackling those sometimes, is more internal conflict-driven, less focused on orientation. I actually prefer it a lot for that - there are only so many coming of age homophobia stories i can watch -_- boring! I see some western fans annoyed that Asian BL rarely discusses orientation and stuff like LGBT solidarity and such, but i like, don't care cause i feel like they're too focused on realism and forget that bl is a genre not meant to perfectly mirror irl gay relationships, but rather provide romantic fantasies for women! Something just came to mind, i recently chatted with a classmate who is a white American, and she said that she finds Asian media confusing because emotional intensity seems amplified to her in anime and donghua, and that she just feels that emotions are expressed differently than in the American media she's used to. I think she's weak and stupid for giving up on watching just because it's different from what she's used to, but since you mentioned emotional intensity, i would like to hear your thoughts about it!
I hope my answer wasn't disappointing, and looking forward to hearing back from you!
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parientou · 3 years
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(gives him burger)
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