#i fucking wish any of these novels were popular enough to have established tags but alas

[de-spawnhellspawn]

Okay, so I’m assuming that you would be wanting translated baihe. I gotta say that there just aren’t many xianxia baihe in the first place, even fewer that are translated at all (to say nothing of being complete).

I’m sorry but this got long, so TLDR:

100% recommend: The Dragon (见龙)

Thought was entertaining: Mistress I Was Wrong; What’s wrong with a snake that just wants to cultivate and transform; After the Full-Level Boss is Reborn

I love this but I can’t recommend it when it only has like 3 chapters TL tier: The Art of Taming the Dragon (降龙诀［穿书])

More detail beneath this cut:

The only (good) one I can think of at the top of my head is The Dragon (见龙). It’s pretty slow burn but well-paced with a happy ending that felt truly complete and not merely forced in. The second act is somewhat weaker and meanders a little but quite a few offhanded lines turn into great pay-offs here. It’s a tight read with a fairly compelling romance between a cold love interest that is learning how to express herself past her own self-imposed boundaries, and the MC who is a free-spirited ball of sunshine filled with the vibrancy of life. And you know what? ITS BEEN COMPLETELY TRANSLATED (NOT A MTL EDIT EITHER)

Link to the translation here: https://dragontl.net/story/the-dragon/

The same TL group is also going to be translating ‘What’s wrong with a snake that just wants to cultivate and transform’. I’ve read that one in chinese and it was a rather enjoyable read too. Soft and fluffy, though lacking in high stakes and suffering from weaker plot and character writing. (It is a transmigration story, just in case that’s a deal breaker). It never truly engaged me but it was a fine enough change of pace after reading a few tragic baihe so… keep an eye out if a more slice of life style beat is what you want.

—-

The other stuff I’ve read with English TL is… middling. Though if you just have a specific itch you want to scratch and a good few hours to waste, then why not.

‘Mistress I was wrong’ is one of those generic “Oh no I’ve transmigrated into a cannon fodder character who’s the nearest person I can seduce to save me” —sorta stories. It is exactly what it says on the tin and does what it advertises decently enough. Paced a bit slowly for my taste but a half-decent time waster. I did drop it about two/three hundred chapters in but I don’t really remember why.

‘After the Full-Level Boss is Reborn’ has a half-way original premise that was executed quite well actually. The author of the novel themselves transmigrate into the book they wrote and have to deal with the tragic fates they wrought for these characters. Characters that they increasingly care about too. It had jokes that landed solidly in the first quarter. A plot twist that—though somewhat predictable—changes a reader’s understanding of the whole plot in the middle. I haven’t read the english MTL though, so I have nothing to say on its quality. Maybe give it a few chapters if you’re interested.

—-

The Wildcard: The Art of Taming the Dragon

See I love this novel to bits and it’s genuinely one of the most well-structured and engaging baihe novels I’ve read. But at the same time, its translation barely started before it’s sputtered out.

Though it starts out as a generic (if well-executed and really funny) rendition of the ‘ah fuck I transmigrated into the MC’s sworn enemy’ trope, it becomes an unravelling mystery of both the circumstances of the Dragon Clan’s massacre AND the hidden details in the original novel. There are so many plot twists that pull the rug out from under you and shatters your heart. It’s the slow realisation of the full-scale of the tragedy originally written in the book. That it is and has already become unchangeable.

The unfolding romance between Luo Qingci and her disciple, when there’s a blood debt running deep as the seas underpinning the circumstances of their meeting. How would that be reconciled?

Its funny. Its sad. It is tragic at many turns.

It is something well-worth reading.

(Which is why I’m starting to translate it myself. Though as an amateur, that is going to take a while.)

There’s probably few more on NovelUpdates, but I haven’t read any of them personally and (in light of the general poor standards on the site) am hesitant to recommend.

(Though if MTL or it being untranslated is not a barrier then I have quite a few more that might be interesting.

Also, are there any good baihe xianxia series?? I love the gay boys but where are the gay girls?

[kachinnate]

these are a few of my faaavorite fics ✨

not that anyone asked for my opinion BUT these are a couple of my… fav deh fics of all time!* they’re all linked to ao3 and i think i have all the authors tagged that i know of that has a tumblr so

*i made this list especially for fics that aren’t, like.. as well known as some of the Popular Fandom Fics, partially bc everyone’s already read them and knows how awesome they are and partially bc otherwise this list would be ten pages long hehe,,, also sorry if you’re seeing this twice, i had to repost bc the links were all broken ?? 

throwing under a readmore bc this is a chunky boy!!!!! keep in mind that these aren’t in any particular order:

in the in-between - chchchchcherrybomb, vinegar-and-glitter (x) [tree bros] – Connor’s turning 27. Evan’s sitting the bar exam. Over and over again. – itsa timeloop au!! i’m not sure if this is a common au or not, but i’ve never read anything else like this before, and ohhhh my god. each chapter is a switch-off from connor’s pov to evan’s pov, and i assume the authors each wrote for one character (?), but oh my god their writing works so well together?? they both have distinct styles and ways of writing but it flows together perfectly,, without spoiling anything, ev and connor’s dynamic in this universe is a lot different to anything else i’ve personally read before, partially because they’re quite a bit older here than in canon (which, while is obviously portrayed, they still are easily recognizable as the characters they are in the musical), and partially because it strays away from the common ‘they’re both misfits/not doing great, but connor is worse for wear and evan has to save him’, which i think is rlly nice.. (also, like, never have i ever considered that evan would want to be a lawyer, but after reading this fic not only am i sold on it but i’m convinced 100% that him being a lawyer could genuinely be fuckin canon) (also also, the evan characterization in this? hands down my favorite out of any fic i’ve ever read tbh) the world building is really incredible too - like, i don’t even want to consider this one a fuckin fic bro because it’s like highkey just this incredible novel?? it also has a completed sequel called it’s always been you (x) that i haven’t finished that takes place after the events of this fic, and so far?? also fucking incredible 15/10 i definitely recommend

lapse - cecropia / @wildflowermonet (x) [tree bros] – “For what it’s worth,” Connor says casually, “I don’t think you should die tonight.” – welcome to another installment of ‘kayla read this and immediately couldn’t think about anything else for a solid consecutive 12 hours’!! evan and connor have really wonderful characterizations in this one too - i’m pretty sure i’ve elaborated on it before but literally my favorite thing is when people actually write evan as more than an anxious kid, and omg this author did that perfectly asfjkdsg - you can see the subtle Growth as he gets more comfortable with connor and jared (and all the other deh characters too bc this fic has a lovely fOUND FAMILY FINISH AT THE END EEE) and it’s just. aaaah. *heart eyes emoji*. it’s set in their senior year, and they form an unsteady friendship and learn to lean on each other and figure out the whole ‘having friends’ thing, midway through evan realizes he’s a-pinin’, it’s just. Great. this fic is relatively new too i think so u def def def should go give it a read and give the author some love!!!!!!!!!!!

to have a friend - demistories / @transanabeth (x) [tree bros] – Pretend to be friends with Connor Murphy, who yells at people and skips class to smoke and pushes people and threw a printer in the second grade, for twenty dollars a week.

Evan closes his hand around the bill and then stuffs it into his pocket.

“I-I’ll do it.” – ok this is one of, if not, the first fic i’ve ever read coming into the fandom, so it of course has a rlly special place in my heart!! it’s a classic ‘fake dating au’, also with switching povs between chapters. connor offers evan 20$ a week to be his fake friend, almost follows through with the events of the musical but doesn’t, finds out about evan’s own attempt, and they just sorta… cope together. it’s a lot of second guessing bc neither of them knows if the other considers the other a friend or not, and ofc when the fake dating part comes in that gets amplified by 10 asdfghj. honestly i think it’s a cooler approach to the fake dating au troupe (the chapter titles are increments of 20$, which honestly is equally cruel as is creative) and is so!! heartwrenching!!! it’s been a while since i’ve read it but i’m pretty sure that i bawled at the twist so >’D

the only thing is that this fic isn’t finished and there isn’t an intention for it to be finished from what i know of(?) - the author included a brief synopsis of the ending to tie loose ends and give a sort of closure to the fic, but that absolutely doesn’t take away from how freaking incredibly written it is and doesn’t mean you shouldn’t give it a read anyway !! i kept up with it while it was a WIP and honestly every time i got the email notification that it updated i dropped everything to fuckin read that shit 😤😤 when i think of deh fics, this is honestly just one of the first that comes to mind for me just bc it was one of the first ones i’ve read, and it just… was so good that i still think about it months after i read the last chapter safkjasf

no comfort in the truth - @nothingunrealistic (x) [kleinsen] – Like everyone in the world, Evan has the last words his soulmate will ever say to him on his skin.

Evan hears a lot of last words during his senior year. – okay if this were an accurate list i’d literally have every drabble soph has ever written down on here but that is entirely beside the point

literally knowing beforehand that this is a kleinsen fic and then reading the summary, u kno this shit is going to be painful ,, honestly this style is one of my fave fic formats (especially when it comes to writing in the canon deh universe) because like ,, it’s simplistic but works really well as a story-telling method?? not everything has to be perfectly strung together and every day doesn’t have to be written out for it to still convey the same like.. impact as a super long fic would, and honestly writing it in like flashes or snippets makes the build up that much more anticipating? bc again when u write within the events of the musical it’s not like u don’t know what’s going to happen,, u can focus less on worldbuilding bc hey, it’s already done for u, and instead write more indepthly about the topic of the soulmate au!! but uhhh REGARDLESS soph is literally the kleinsen matriarch in my eyes, they always write evan and jared w/ Perfect characterization and dynamics and just Ah! this one is angsty, but it has a v nice and hopeful ending, and i *clutches heart* love,,,

nowhere else i’d rather be:  nosecoffee / @nose-coffee​​ (x) [tree bros] – A fake dating au where they’re next door neighbours, Evan bakes, and Connor’s already a little in love with Evan anyway – this one is a series - the first fic kinda Establishes stuff and the second one gets into the whole fake dating thing!! they live in apartments next to each other, evan bakes for connor, they go campin with connor’s family, it’s just….. rlly sweet and i love it

also, it contains this hilarious bit that i haven’t been able to forget about despite finding this fic months ago:

do me a favour - can your heart rate rise a little? - nosecoffee / @nose-coffee​ (x) [treebros]

an au where the hansen family owns an arcade….. honestly what more can i say?? it’s slowburn and treebros and i p much love everything that nosecoffee has written ever so this is no exception obviously

jared and connor vs. the mortifying ordeal of being known - caswell @techconsigliere , puglebug @puglebug (x) [kleinphy] – Jared is admitted to group therapy following the divorce of his mother from his asshole father. What he doesn’t anticipate is that Connor would be there, too. – THE KLEINPHY CONTENT WE ALL DESERVE BEING PROVIDED TO US BY CJ AND EZRA!!! it’s a one-shot with just enough slowburn to keep you 👀 , jared is working through some stuff and after some fumbling connor is w/ him to help him thru it, the end of this fic has my heart aching the entire way through every time i read it and it’s just… *chefs kiss* (i even drew some fanart for it if you’re ever so inclined)

forever going with the flow, but you’re friction - lizzy_stardust_18 @delightfullyanachronistic​ (x) [band trees] – Zoe knew that of all of the things that her mother had expected from the evening, Evan Hansen showing up at her door with his arms full of her drunken daughter was not one of them. – big bet i wasn’t getting through this list without including fiona’s fics, are u crazy??? BUT this one is set a year (?) after the events of canon, zoe’s at a party and evan finds her, and they talk about stuff n’ things - there’s also a sweet moment in there between zoe and cynthia (in which cynthia is Rightfully Skeptical of evan) which is v wholesome and Refreshing because honestly the murphy parents never get written in a good light and fiona does it ~ perfectly ~. lotsa metaphors. evan and zoe are big dorks. evan is a taylor swift stan. what isn’t there to love

i can’t call you a stranger, but i can’t call you up - lizzy_stardust_18 - @delightfullyanachronistic (x) [kleinsen] – Jared fiddled his thumbs. He wished more than anything that he could move to a different seat, but causing a scene at Heidi Hansen’s wedding reception wasn’t exactly high on his to-do list. Besides, he was an adult. He had a job. He ate ramen only three times a week. He could handle a simple social interaction like a real human being. He was lucky that no one else had found their seats at his table yet. It gave him time to gather his wits about him. He drummed his fingers on the table nervously. – jared and evan are forced to talk after the events of canon via sitting next to each other at heidi’s wedding. they argue a bunch bc jared is still rightfully hurt, they discuss TCP and jared’s treatment of evan over the past couple years, they fight it out and then we learn some jared backstory and then there are tears and it ends on a fluffy + hopeful note!! good shit !!!!

[taz-writes]

10 Questions Tag Game

@micastarsandmirrors tagged me on my main blog for this, but I’m posting it here because it seemed more appropriate. :>

1. Which author(s) inspires you the most?

Oof, hard question! Recently I’ve been really inspired by Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series--I love how he deconstructs fantasy as a genre. Guards! Guards! is one of the best books I’ve read in a very long time. 

2. Someone from a different world asks you, “Show me the song of your people” which earth song would you play for them?

Madeon’s Pop Culture. It’s such a genius reimagining of SO many other songs, and it encapsulates modern pop musical culture in a way that’s really fantastic. I love it. It’s not actually my favorite song, but as an example to an alien of what Earth music is, it’s a pretty good case study. 

3. How did you get the idea for your current WIP?

Feilan is drawn from the mythology of a recess game I used to play with my friends in elementary school. My friends and I would team up and LARP as our super cool powerful fairy avatars and fight the annoying boys from the classroom next door evil! As we grew up, the lore of Fairyland grew darker and more complicated, and I borrowed bits and pieces of dozens of other stories to glue them to my self insert and my friends’. We grew out of the game, but the paracosm we’d created stuck with me. Around sixth grade, I started putting those old recess games into writing! 

4. Which of your characters is a lover not a fighter and which is a fighter not a lover?

Honestly, most of my characters are both! Feilan is an action story and the majority of the cast is prepared to throw down at any time. I think Lavender is the lover-not-a-fighter. She’s a healer, after all, and she prefers to avoid conflict. The fighter is definitely Amalie. 

5. Do you listen to music while you write? If so, what do you listen to?

Sometimes! It depends on my mood, and what kind of scene I’m trying to write. Usually, I prefer instrumental music. I have a class at school where the homework is just listening to a few hours of classical music, so I’ll do that a lot while I write. Otherwise... video game music is the way to go. Undertale has a freaking amazing soundtrack. Also, I’m still quite fond of the Homestuck music albums.... They have a lot of great songs for setting a mood. 

6. What’s the best way to piss off your main OC?

Tell her she’s not good enough to be worthy of something. Bonus points if you imply her opinions don’t matter, or bring up her birth status. That’ll get her riled up in half a second flat. 

7. What inspired you to write your current WIP(S)?

Oh boy here we go, here’s the novel. Feilan’s backstory is long and very emotional.

When I was growing up, I could never find stories to read that actually gave me what I wanted. I was raised on that early-2000s strand of Girl Power(tm) that was really obsessed with characters who are girls fighting the patriarchy and everyone cares that they’re girls because there’s clearly nothing more important about their characters........ Either that or they were just straight up annoying. I adored Winx Club but every time the girls went shopping another piece of me died. I had a well-established Not Like Other Girls complex but at the same time reading characters who thought like that was really annoying? There were a lot of things I hated in the stories I read growing up: inescapable love interests, tiny sparkly boring fairies, the anti-sue genre of Plain Modest Protagonists who aren’t allowed to be powerful or even aware that they could be, female characters who can’t do anything without reminding us that they’re girls and girls can’t normally do this but I can and look how special that is!!, the inevitable Girl Media Shopping Montage... et cetera. 

I didn’t want that. I wanted Lord of the Rings, but with girls, and maybe a cute boy!Galadriel. I wanted a story where girls being heroes wasn’t a big deal, or even worth questioning. I couldn’t find those things, so I decided I’d make my own, drawn out of my shameless childhood power fantasies. Feilan is an aggressive defiance of pretty much all the tropes in the last paragraph. I’ve stuck to it so doggedly because even now, I still have trouble finding stories with the kinds of characters I want to read about. I’ve always been super invested in stories about characters who are Like Me, who are girls with feminine and masculine interests, who have ADHD but are still smart anyways, who are short and built strong instead of slender. I used to refuse to watch cartoons unless there was at least one blonde girl that I could latch onto who wasn’t a stereotype Popular Girl. More recently, I want to see characters who are bi like me, where nobody makes a big deal out of it. I don’t even like romance stories, I don’t understand why it has to matter if X likes girls and boys! Just let her do that and get her girlfriend and get back to saving the world! And I fucking hate stories that pretend to be progressive by driving in over and over again how X character is a girl, X character is so gay--the ultimate result is just reminding me that I’m weird somehow. By... being a person, I guess. I hate those narratives so much but especially in mainstream YA, they’re practically inevitable? 

So I wanted to write Feilan so I could have the story I wanted to read but never found, about characters who are like me and dealing with my problems and my strengths and my fears. And I’ve kept writing it because I still want that, and I want Feilan to be that story for other people too, because I don’t think I’m alone here. It’s also a major outlet for my emotions. 

This is a long answer, but I think it’s pretty clear why. :)

8. What is the last book/series you finished reading?

The last book I read was an English translation of Ghost Opera by Mercedes Roffe, which I read for a class I’m taking right now in the art of translation. It’s very far away from my usual fantasy genre, but I really enjoyed it! If you like neat artsy poetry, give it a look sometime, especially if you speak Spanish and can experience it in the original language. 

9. What finally made you say, “Wow! I really like writing, I’m gonna keep doing this”?

When I was in fourth grade I won a local writing contest with a cute little poem about nature, and I got to go to a book fair event and read it out loud in a fancy auditorium, and I was SO UNBELIEVABLY STOKED. My mom was really proud of me, too. A couple people complimented the poem to me afterwards and it made my year. I decided that I wanted to win again the next year, and started taking poetry more seriously. 

10. What’s your favorite thing about writing?

Rereading my work. It’s so incredible to me sometimes, because I can and will cry over events in my own story, and I get so happy reading over the triumphs of my own OCs that I wrote out with my own hands and there’s something so beautiful and powerful about seeing these ideas that I created in my brain grow wings and fly. I cried a lot, when I printed out the first draft of Feilan’s book 1 and held it in my hands. That’s mine! I did that! I did all of that, and now I can hold it and see it and show people! 

I’m now tagging @pumapauus @greenhousewriting @jaidynwrites @hklunethewriter and anyone else who’s interested to answer these 10 questions, then write your own and pass it on! Feel free to ignore if you don’t have the time :) Anyone else who sees this and is interested, you’re welcome to answer too and say I tagged you!

1. What does your workspace look like? Do you have a designated ‘writing area’? 

2. Do you prefer to write solo heroes or ensemble casts? 

3. Which of your characters reminds you the most of yourself?

4. What’s one trait your main OC has that you wish you had, too?

5. Have you changed or removed any major elements of your current WIP since its original draft/concept? What was the biggest change, and why did you make it? 

6. If you had to give your main WIP a theme song, what would it be?

7. What’s your favorite non-writing-related hobby?

8. What are some of your favorite books? 

9. What’s your favorite trope to read and/or write? What’s your least favorite? 

10. What do you love most about your own work and why?