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Discussion Friday + Some updates
Time for discussion Friday~
Discussion Topic
In the past weeks here and elsewhere, I had some fun talking about tragedies (spoilers: I love them).
So, I want to hear from you all! What do you think of tragedies in your novels? What makes it work for you and when does it fall flat (e.g., when you feel absolutely nothing). Do you check if the main CP in a baihe/danmei have a happy end before reading? Will you read a novel if the main characters/main CP die at the end of the story?
Updates
Discussion Topic
In the past weeks here and elsewhere, I had some fun talking about tragedies (spoilers: I love them).
So, I want to hear from you all! What do you think of tragedies in your novels? What makes it work for you and when does it fall flat (e.g., when you feel absolutely nothing). Do you check if the main CP in a baihe/danmei have a happy end before reading? Will you read a novel if the main characters/main CP die at the end of the story?
Updates
- I am probably going to run dry on discussion topics if I do this every week, so I'm reducing the frequency to once every two weeks. Please feel free to post up any discussion topics any time though! If you want to submit topics but don't want to make a post for it, you can suggest them here.
- For the weeks we do not have a Discussion Friday post, we will have a general chat and Q&A post. Let's call them Friday Chats (I am not very creative with names, haha). Chinese learners, feel free to use the Friday Chat posts to practice Chinese if you wish!
- Related to point (2), there are two communities that may be helpful to Chinese learners:
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guardian_learning: Despite it being called guardian_learning, this is not limited to Guardian the novel/drama~ It's a comm that updates with a grammar point and word a day, with sample sentences from Guardian.- chinesestudy: This is a comm for Chinese writing practice
You can check them out!
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(... this is also related to QJJ/Ballad of Sword and Wine)
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re: QJJ, Highlight for spoilers! *I believe both Shen Zechuan/Xiao Chiye and Hua Xiangyi/Qi Zhuyin get happy endings and there's a side m/m couple that gets a tragic ending.*
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re: your spoilers
yes! I really like the second pair =(
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Yes, I love tragedies! I love deaths (but the deaths need to have an impact or at least not feel "cheap"). I love the hole in the heart left behind when a favourite character dies. I'm also always chasing after the high of reading/watching a Good Death (e.g., character did what they wanted to do and die) or the Inevitable March to Death (e.g., character is dying so you know they will be dead by the end of the story, or there's no way out of the political quagmire besides death). I love it when characters are torn up between duty and love (family/friends/romance, etc.).
But if it's done in a way that I feel emotionally manipulated (I don't have a good cnovel example for this, but hm... some Violet Evergarden episodes), then it does nothing to me. I just feel neutral. But the balance of constructing a good tragedy vs. being too explicit about the emotional manipulation vs. too much drama is probably different for everyone, I think.
also yes, I will totally read a story where the main CP dies (or one dies, the other stays alive).
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This so much!
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A lot of international fandom seems to reject queer romance that ends tragically, no doubt due in part to the Bury Your Gays phenomenon. This doesn't seem to hold at all for Chinese c-novel fandom. Another aspect of comparative literary reception I find fascinating. Someone should write a fan studies piece about this instead of the nth 'I interviewed some people who get into flamewars about idols online!' article.
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I'd love to read an article/some fan studies on this phenomena. XD And not just CN vs. EN, but also other languages, other lit!
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I'm super interested to read about the overlaps and influence of Bl/Yuri on danmei/baihe as well... The former I have more knowledge on, the latter I need to dig.
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(if all fails, guess will have to read the history of yuri, and then the history of baihe, trope conventions, and then do own comparison, ahaha)
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As for tragedies... I love some good old angst but I am afraid of pain. 😂 I've only read one novel with a "bad" ending, but from that character's PoV it was a happy ending, and it tore me up in a good way.
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Which novel is that?
And haha, I get you! My friends and I sometimes joke that the Bad Ends in JP visual novels are sometimes actually Good Ends (because they are painful in a good way)