Mira:
Right, usually I love reading danmei and I read a few baihe as well, but there are way too little translations! Luckily, this year, I got into the uni I want and am majoring in Chinese, I even took the exam and skipped the first year! So when I learn it well I will start translating baihe myself, people deserve to read some good Chinese yuri!
I'm so lax on my chinese studies. I can only read like 300 characters, but I have 8 books in chinese 😭
I wish you all the best in your studies. ❤️
Right, usually I love reading danmei and I read a few baihe as well, but there are way too little translations! Luckily, this year, I got into the uni I want and am majoring in Chinese, I even took the exam and skipped the first year! So when I learn it well I will start translating baihe myself, people deserve to read some good Chinese yuri!
This is the kind of action the world needs, a true lesbian missionary!
chiha:
Is it a good story?
Thanks for taking the time to give me such a detailed reply. I checked the links you provided and read the synopsis of many of the novels on the linked pages. Today I learned what G!P means :)
Anyway, I don't think those novels are for me. I've never been a fan of the fantasy genre, and I most definitely am not a fan of non-consensual plot elements.
I think I'll go back to MEB and find something feel-good and fluffy, which is more my thing these days. But again, thank you for the information you gave me.
MarkWasHere:
Anyway, I don't think those novels are for me. I've never been a fan of the fantasy genre, and I most definitely am not a fan of non-consensual plot elements.
I think a large part of the point of abo is usually to explore how consent works (or doesn't, or partially does) given such strong power differentials and biological imperatives, no? It's a way of exploring the ways in which consent is also influenced by systems/cultural pressures and not completely under the control of the two people in the relationship. I'm not into abo myself, but that's what I've heard from people looking at it with more of an academic lense. It's a way of picking apart the sexism of the real world by magnifying it to absurdist levels and twisting it in 200 directions, and then just having fun with it. I think that's fascinating as a concept, but I think I'm also usually too squeamish for it myself.
As an ace person the idea that consent should also be looked at systemically is one that appeals to me, because, y'know, the whole compulsory sexuality thing. The ace couple podcast recently did a really good episode on how our current conceptualizations of consent don't take systems into account, and how that fails certain demographics.
Today I learned what G!P means :)
I have no idea what that means and Googling it gives me unrelated things. Is it appropriate to share? Or does the ! in the middle mean that it's a bad word or...?
juelkkk:
New Taiwanese gl is coming! She & Hers is based on a novel and looks really interesting (I also terribly miss Taiwanese gls and I'm so happy we're finally getting one!!! + Lin Pei Yu is the screenwriter which makes me just more excited)
the first trailer just dropped:
Oooh that looks neat! In the PtW-list it goes lol
Is it a good story?
Thanks for taking the time to give me such a detailed reply. I checked the links you provided and read the synopsis of many of the novels on the linked pages. Today I learned what G!P means :)
Anyway, I don't think those novels are for me. I've never been a fan of the fantasy genre, and I most definitely am not a fan of non-consensual plot elements.
I think I'll go back to MEB and find something feel-good and fluffy, which is more my thing these days. But again, thank you for the information you gave me
I completely get it and advocate for reading what's safe for you! But you absolutely must share fluffy abos here (and the non-enthusiasts must forgive us!)
Ryn:
I have no idea what that means and Googling it gives me unrelated things. Is it appropriate to share?
Here's the search to do if you want to know. Be aware that it involves adult concepts.
https://www.google.com/search?q=What+does+G%21P+mean+in+ABO+novels
I have no idea what that means and Googling it gives me unrelated things. Is it appropriate to share?
Here's the search to do if you want to know. Be aware that it involves adult concepts.
https://www.google.com/search?q=What+does+G%21P+mean+in+ABO+novels
The search is showing that both are related but they're not. G!p and abo evolved separated, G!p can be in any story.
Abo pretty much evolved because women wanted male pregnancy in bl. It took almost a decade to reclaim them into sapphic fiction really
If anyone wants to read baihe, jjwxc is the place to look, I think most browsers have built in translation features nowadays, and those that don't have add-ons if you look, so as long as you're ok with MTL you can access the whole library. If you want proper translations there's still a fair amount to be found on NovelUpdates. There's quite a lot of abo on jj, but 1) the whole site is (theoretically) censored (depending on how much individual authors get reported), so spicy scenes depend on the authors literary metaphor ability and 2) chinese netizens seem to really hate any semblance of masculinity in their lesbian characters (I once saw a whole comment section just saying the fl read like a man) so most authors when writing abo will go out of their way to state that "alpha has no pendants" because otherwise they risk alienating the majority of their audience - alphas are often written as extremely henpecked in a "not like other alphas" lack of dominance, probably for similar reasons, although this isn't always the case.
Some authors I'd recommend are Qing Jun Mo Xiao, Re Dao Hun Jue, and maybe Jin Ke, Youqing Ke (lovecraftian), Xiao Wu Jun and An Xiao Su Su. Fyi at least some of these authors also write straight or BL romance, so check the type when choosing a novel; if it says "romance" where the first example says yuri, that means it's het, "pure love" is BL.
The site divides content by fanfic/original, orientation, time period, genre, and primary perspective (top/bottom/switch/dual - there's also male/female but that's kinda obsolete for gay shit).
[cont]
To be honest recent history (I think it's designated as the last century) is relatively uncommon, since it covers some extremely controversial periods for the current Chinese government, which can make it hard for authors to navigate political censors. Mostly it consists of at least one protagonist being sent to the countryside, where they meet their love interest, and together study hard while everyone else has given up on exams ever being reinstated, thereby making a dramatic comeback with the help of the totally not private business they've been building this whole time when the exams are announced and they move back to the city, without so much as mentioning the red guard or the cultural destruction caused by the "cultural revolution" (also not mentioned, or even really alluded to).
Even novels set earlier, around the time of the world wars aren't exempt, as the country was essentially shattered into a civil war, so there are vague references to a people's army, and often the protagonists have studied abroad and can therefore design/manufacture guns (as you do), earning them merit, but never any explicit action taken beyond supporting the "right side" - it's never even mentioned what the conflict is, or who the enemy is, just that times are dangerous for a brief period.
If you're unfamiliar with reading MTL, particularly from mandarin, you should probably avoid ancient era novels at first, this covering things like court dramas and xianxias - particularly the latter, with its fantasy concepts - as a lot of things get literally or inconsistently translated, so if you're not familiar with how both the translator and language work it can be quite confusing. For example "orc" is a poor translation of beastman, which can further be anything from a weretiger to a mermaid: A character may "sacrifice a sword" when they're actually just giving a slash, not destroying their primary weapon.
Most sci-fi seems to boil down to alphas in mechas fighting zerg, and it's rare to find a novel that doesn't include at least one of those things, although that doesn't necessarily make them bad. I once read a novel that seemed to be a political/assassin wuxia novel set in ancient times but then halfway through the protagonist turned out to be a long lost demi-alien princess and then the whole planet was invaded/infected by the zerg while she went off to fight an intergalactic war in place of her injured twin sister - not a plot twist I saw coming, that's for sure.
If any of that put you off, don't worry, I think the majority and greatest variety of content has to be in the modern era, from horror games, to entertainment industry, to rich family drama, to rebirth stories, to campus romances, to zombie apocalypses. There's also Kuai Chuan / Quick Transmigration, where a protagonist travels through multiple worlds and by extension tropes and genres, which seems to be pretty popular.
ElementalStar:
Right, usually I love reading danmei and I read a few baihe as well, but there are way too little translations! Luckily, this year, I got into the uni I want and am majoring in Chinese, I even took the exam and skipped the first year! So when I learn it well I will start translating baihe myself, people deserve to read some good Chinese yuri!
I'm so lax on my chinese studies. I can only read like 300 characters, but I have 8 books in chinese 😭
I wish you all the best in your studies. ❤️
Haha yes, I have a lot too, a lot of them too hard for me as well! TT
Thank you very much <3
