#they're not even comics they're like. the manhua of the entire thing

[schoenht]

update is spectacular as usual bestie🙏everytime I see jamil in this smau the only thing I’m thinking is my man my man my man like I love him fr🤭🤭 -🧃

JUICE ANON MY BESTIE !! ty ty i take pride in my acrobatics of stupidity at 1 am hang on i just sneezed so hard rn i think i lost my sight for a sec, but yes you are SO right !! JAMIL JAMIL JAMIL !!!! WE STAN HIM

[welcometothejianghu]

Welcome to another round of W2 Tells You What You Should See, where W2 (me) tries to sell you (you) on something you should be watching. Today's choice: 大理寺少卿游/White Cat Legend.

White Cat Legend is the 2024 live-action adaptation of a funny historical manhua about a country bumpkin who winds up working with a bunch of mystery-solving officials led by a beautiful boss whose tragic past means no one can know he's also a kitty.

This is one of those cases where television comes in to adapt something that has both unfilmable elements and a very non-cinematic storyline that hasn't even been finished yet, and as such mostly just takes the characters and the basic conceit, then creates an entire vaguely nonsensical 36-episode AU fanfic of it. To call this show tonally inconsistent would be an insult to shows that are only merely tonally inconsistent. It is full-on tonal whiplash, the kind you should go see a doctor about. This shit is all over the place. It has arcs and situations that are genuinely emotionally moving, and then smash cut! to wacky nonsense happening with the B-plot. It does not know if it wants to tell a Serious Story or just have bonkers antics, and it will deal with this indecision by doing both at once.

So if you're in the mood for something fun with charming characters that won't tax your brain parts, let me give you five reasons this could be exactly the junk food you're looking for.

1. Just a family of all boys

If you're looking for a show rife with female characters, go watch Legend of Fei or Story of Yanxi Palace. Over here, it's Boys' Night Out.

The show is set in the Court of Judicial Review, which solves crimes. The boy in charge of all of them is Li Bing, who is secretly also a cat for reasons he doesn't understand. He picks up naive yokel and total sweeheart Chen Shi and brings him back to work with the Court's current occupants: a sad-eyed scribe with catastrophically bad luck, a former soldier who wishes he'd been born recently enough to be into Crossfit, a generic "foreigner" whose superpowers are spending his parents' money and pronouncing things badly, and the 8th-century Chinese equivalent of a mediocre white man.

And I'm going to tell you right now, up front, above the cut, that these boys' character interactions are the #1 reason to watch this show. You watch it because you like to see them bounce off one another like the unsupervised toddlers they are. They all love and care for one another in the best ways they know how, which sometimes aren't very effective, but darn it, they're trying!

What's especially cute is how they're so touchy with one another -- and not in any kind of sexual or creepy way, but in a sincerely affectionate bro way. There's lots of hugging and supportive arms around waists. Sometimes when they get scared, they hold hands. They grip one another when walking across unsteady ground or climbing over walls to break into yet another house. There's never any gay panic or no-homo reassurances. It hits that sweet spot right between brothers and boyfriends, where you can read their interactions as fraternal and/or romantic as you like (see below).

I mean, who needs a plot when you have half a dozen charming boys canonically working, eating, and sleeping side by side? That, my friends, is quality television.

2. Jam-packed with goofball nonsense

White Cat Legend is a show that will make you laugh out loud, and mostly even on purpose.

About 2/3 of this show is silly, and the other 1/3 is trying so hard to be emotionally resonant. But you know what? Screw emotional resonance for the moment -- let's embrace the antics!

There's a lot of silliness happening even at the production level. The show also starts out doing some very cute visual things, like breaking shots into multiple "panels" that give everything a real comic feel. It's especially effective during fight scenes and other visually confusing setups. ...And then about 1/4 of the way in, it forgets about this gimmick and stops almost completely. This is a shame, because I liked it! I liked that VFX tomfoolery that paid homage to the story's webcomic roots! (Also, someone behind the camera clearly got told that the way to make a scene more visually interesting is to slowly pan in during every shot. Once you notice it, you can't unsee it.)

The main villain is ... well, he's a lot. He's just a whole lot. I'd call him Evil Garfield, except Garfield is already kind of Evil Garfield, so this guy's Eviler Garfield. He's not chewing the scenery, but is instead treating it like a cat with a vendetta against some drapes. He's just hilariously over the top at all times. It starts out vaguely entertaining, then gets annoying, then wraps right back around to entertaining again.

Also, his wig is terrible -- and it's not even the worst wig in the show! White Cat Legend has decided that the way you style foreigner NPCs is just to jam unbrushed women's wigs on extras' heads and call it a day. There are indeed a lot of foreigners in the show, and the show has chosen to handle them by assuming everything beyond the borders of 6th-century Chinese territory is a great undifferentiated vaguely Persian-flavored mass. Who's that shady-looking guy? Oh, he's Foreign. What country is he from? A Foreign one. What language does he speak? You know, Foreign.

You are not ready for the score. This is a show that spent its entire musical budget on a handful of middling pop songs, realized it still needed ~40 minutes of music to put in each episode, and decided that it could just pull things at semi-random from whatever the Chinese television equivalent of the YouTube royalty-free sound library is. The result is some laugh-out-loud hilarious soundtracking. Do you know why they usually pay people to do things like score television shows? It's because when you don't, it sounds like this.

True story: During one antics-filled scene, I frowned, listened a second, and asked my wife, "Is that ... 'Deck the Halls'?" It was!

The mysteries are -- and I'm quoting myself here -- the celery that gets the cute boy peanut butter to your mouth. Not only can you, the viewer, not solve them, I don't actually remember what most of the resolutions were. Hell, I barely remember what most of the actual setups were. The individual storylines are mostly unimportant pieces of fluff that kinda sorta tie into the big mystery of the show: Why is that boy a kitty? ...And if you think you're going to be satisfied by the resolution to that one, honestly, you haven't been paying attention to what I've been saying in this post.

Basing this on absolutely nothing but vibes, here is my guess: The original vision for this series was as an ongoing thing, something that might hew a little closer to the comic storyline in later seasons. At some point in the production, the decision got made that there would be no further seasons made. The resulting drama is something that's technically self-contained, sure, but has a lot of little lingering weirdnesses that look like foreshadowing.

As just one example, the way they frame and shoot the empress is bizarre, and she might as well have a big SHE'S GOING TO TURN OUT TO BE EVIL neon sign above her head. ...Except that, no, she's fine! Perfectly fine, mostly normal empress, mostly normal levels of evil, nothing to see here. She is, however, evil as heck in the source material (and that's not a spoiler, she's a little pink thing who's clearly sinister all the way from the get-go), and I have to wonder if the showrunners weren't planning some future heel-turn villain arc for her. Well, we'll never know now, so whatever you choose to believe, the show won't contradict you on it!

Your reaction to all of this will 100% depend on how charitable you are feeling toward staring down a firehose of (mostly) intentionally slapdash shenanigans. If you go into this demanding coherence and substance, you will wind up disappointed. If you go into it expecting nothing more than a fluffy good time, you'll probably enjoy yourself tremendously -- and you'll maybe even be moved by the rare times it does work out to being something of substance! Such as...

3. We are never ever getting back together

The first thing you can tell about Qiu Qingzhi and Li Bing is that they are as divorced as two dudes in a c-drama can be. They aren't just a little divorced. They are nuclear divorced.

Except -- and this is the juicy part -- they obviously still work really well together. If it's just the two of them head-to-head, they will be assholes to one another with no mercy. If circumstances change and they have a shared target, God help that shared target.

The unspoilery version of their backstory goes like this: They were adorable little tween besties who grew up into adorable little teen besties, until Qiu Qingzhi went off to join the army and came back a real cold bitch, and Li Bing has no idea why. Now the two of them control state agencies that should work together but actually wind up competing more often than not (think the FBI and the CIA), a competition not helped by how the Jinwu Guards (Qiu Qingzhi's group) are actual professional soldiers in very nice armor, while the Court of Judicial Review is, well, [gestures to points 1 and 2].

And yeah, baby, this right here is The Ship.

I spent a nonzero amount of time while watching this series laughing out loud because Wei Zheming's face is just too beautiful to be believed. With his sculpted jaw and his perfectly practiced looks of disdain, his Qiu Qingzhi looks like a damn Disney prince. His face could not be more perfect if you'd assigned a team of animators to draw it. This actor is the reason I found this show in the first place -- he was so beautiful in Word of Honor that I found myself wondering what else he might be getting up to. Turns out, he is again being a smug bitch and capturing the heart of a doe-eyed younger man.

Don't let me oversell how much these two are together in the show, because they're not. Qiu Qingzhi is not part of the main crew, so he's not in most of the episodes. Most of his screentime comes in flashbacks during the last story arc, to a time in his past when Li Bing wasn't even around. But when they're together, oh, the sparks do fly.

I think it helps that the actors seem to have understood the ship, even if in that video, Ding Yuxi (Li Bing's actor) is trying so hard to do the Please Do Not Cancel Us dance of plausible deniability. I honestly don't even think this is the show's doing; after all, the source material (see the section near the end) is not BL in the slightest. I'd believe the show meant to create a normal platonic bro-relationship between these two. I'd even believe that it thinks it succeeded.

Still, if you're not the biggest fan of Lovers To Enemies? That's fine! Here's the relationship that's the real core of the show:

4. Here comes a special boy

All the boys of the family of all boys are special and wonderful, but truly, Chen Shi is the specialest and wonderfulest of them all.

He is your everyman character, the little country bumpkin overwhelmed by all the big-city dealings he's stumbled into. With his cute little twang and his natural inclination to trust everyone he meets, he's the perfect cinnamon roll, too good, too pure. I want to pinch his angelic little cheeks.

Fun fact: I have been informed by someone who speaks with the same dialect he does that said dialect is very sweary, which brings to mind the wonderful image of Chen Shi just casually and sweetly dropping f-bombs while everyone else stares in shock.

In a show where the characters are way more important than the plot, having a good POV character is key. Your audience lives or dies entirely on how much they want to see that POV character put into situations. To me, Chen Shi is a rousing success at this. He's not stupid! He's just extremely sheltered and on his own for the first time in his ife. He's the bravest little toaster, the goodest boy who's not going to let the little things stop him -- like, say, illiteracy, or a lack of familiarity with city living, or an inability to give any substantial details about the brother he's looking for beyond 'he looks just like me.' That's why he's got his friends help him out!

You better believe that when it comes time to save the day, Chen Shi will do it through the power of how everyone loves him.

And he and the kitty are ... romance? Kind of romance? Romance-adjacent? I could burn even more wordcount explaining the dynamic, but @uovoc has already said it best:

cdrama Li Bing is like: I've taken an inexplicable liking to this simple country boy so I'm going to entrust him with my life's greatest secret because I'm whimsical like that. And cdrama Chen Shi is like: this man is the most beautiful cat I've ever seen.

No matter how romantically you slice it, it's a dynamic I absolutely love: where a guy weighed down by his own past meets another guy who could not care less about that. Chen Shi is Li Bing's chance to figure out who Li Bing is, without the burdens of his family history, connections to the court, job, status, or any of the other things everyone else sees when they look at him. Chen Shi looks at Li Bing and sees Li Bing, whiskers and all.

I mean, Chen Shi makes Li Bing an entire office full of human-sized cat toys. If that's not love, I don't know what is.

And if you're not into besties-to-worsties or the pure and purrfect love between a man and his cat who is also a man? That's okay! I've helpfully made a chart to demonstrate the many flavors of exciting relationship dynamics White Cat Legend makes available to you:

Imagine the possibilities! Make your own fun! And then get over to AO3 and share it with the rest of the class! The White Cat Legend tag is sparsely populated and mostly not in English, and that's a shame, because there's so much smooching potential.

5. Not as dumb as it looks

Wow, that's kind of a backhanded compliment, isn't it? Well, no, not actually. You saw my earlier points about what a bag of goofs this show is. What's easy to miss, though, is how unexpectedly clever a whole lot of its dumbassery is.

A lot of this, I'm going to chalk up to the actors, who on the whole turn in some comedic performances way better than they have any right to be. That's the thing about comedy: to do stupid well, you have to be smart. They're all very funny, and they've got some great chemistry in combinations and permutations. It's a testament to their abilities that you can take any two of them, give them a scene together, and get something worth watching out of it.

Of course most of this is the main boys, but the major supporting characters largely have the same clever sense of comedic timing. Their actors know they're not performing some great work of literature, so they've decided to have some fun with it. I'm not going to praise anyone's performance here as particularly great, but by and large, the recurring cast members are doing solid work.

The aforementioned goofball nonsense also does a fair job of distracting from how creative the show can be. For example, the fact that many of the fights and chases are comedic makes it easy to miss how the fight choreography is often really tight. I don't think the show is trying to hide its moments of cleverness, so much as it's just grabbing them where it can without drawing attention to them.

I know a lot of people gave up on this show only a few episodes in, and I suspect I know why. It's not even that it just takes a while to find its footing -- it never quite finds its footing, on account of being such a patchwork creation. It's an adaptation of an incomplete story, forced to make changes because of budgetary limitations, promising things it's not allowed to deliver on, and further cut down between filming and release. That's what you call having the deck stacked against you. The fact that the final product is not only watchable but downright enjoyable is a testament to how the production got some critical fundamentals right.

In short, it's not just dumb fun -- though it is a lot of dumb fun. But it's dumb fun with just enough to sink your teeth into that it eventually becomes a compelling ratio. I don't blame the people who bailed, but I'm glad I stuck with it.

bonus: It comes in other flavors!

If you like the series and you want more, you're in luck! There's a whole ongoing comic and animated series!

The comic is the original version of the story: a tall vertical webcomic with a cute, distinctive style. It's still being published, and it's very different from the drama. There's a great ongoing translation project at @whitecatlegend, so if your Mandarin skills are as bad as mine (or worse!), you can follow along in English as well!

The donghua is a pretty close adaptation of several parts of the comic. You can find the whole first season at this YouTube playlist, though please note that the playlist is out of order, so you don't accidentally start with episode 8. The translation is ... eh, it's a little rough in places, to put it charitably, but it also makes some charming localization decisions, so I'm all for it. Oh, and here's the second season! It's even prettier and better-translated than the first!

Also, hey, furries? Li Bing's a perma-kitty in both of those versions of the story, so have fun with that.

The drama's casting is spot-on. Whoever picked these boys went out of their way to keep the original artistic vibe as much as possible, to the point where if you'd told me the drama had come first and then someone had drawn a comic starting from the actors' likenesses, I would've believed you.

(And yes, if you've read it, Qiu Qingzhi and Lai Zhongshu aren't technically Qiu Shenji and Lai Junchen, but I'm declaring them close enough for the purposes of this demonstration.)

I have heard that some fans of the comic are unhappy about the live-action adaptation, and I get that, I do -- they are not the same thing. There are plenty of things the drama leaves out where, okay, I understand why that person/event/factor got cut, but at the same time, dammit. In the end, I like them both as very different stories featuring the same(-ish) characters. Still, the drama is definitely not one of those situations where you get to tune in to watch the same things you loved on the page, just in a different medium. The delightfully accurate casting is about where the similarities end. Everything beyond that is its own legend.

Kitty.

Here, kitty, kitty?

The drama's an iQiyi exclusive, so that's where you'll get it.

It's a fun show, not a perfect show. It has some captivating elements and lots of promising nonsense worth thinking about. And like I said, it's a tiny-ass fandom -- a paltry 277 works on AO3, a mere 44 of which are in English. Somebody get in there and make some combination of those boys kiss!

Also, it is criminal that Kitty Li Bing has fabulous red eyeliner that Person Li Bing does not get to wear. Call makeup and fix that.

[murasaki-cha]

I've recently gotten into web comics but I don't like most of the male characters in romance comics, they do some really creepy things that seem to just get swept under the rug. Do you have any recommendations for some good romance comics?

*cracks neck* I've trained for this day for years

This is going to be a combination of manhwa, manhua, webtoons and probably some manga too, of all kinds of genres, most are my favorites and I'll explain why so pick whatever catches your interest.

Post is going to be super long so:

I Stan The Prince -> starting of with a strong one, the fl writes a fanfiction about the notorious ex crown prince and raises his popularity. Now she has to work with him and write another book all while dealing with political drama and dark royal secrets. This manhwa rescently just came back from an incredibly long hiatus, it has no novel it's an original manhwa and the main couple are literally the cutest most in love mutual pining idiots ever they're married they just don't know it yet

Hidden Love -> Warning this has a 7 age gap! The story starts when the fl is 13 and meets her brothers dormmate and falls in love with him but keeps it a secret and they lose contact. Years later when she's in college she reunites with the brother's friend and old feelings start to resurface and he slowly falls for her now that she is an adult. I am going to repeat this only once, no grooming, no weird underage romance, ml never liked her like that when she was a child her romance was one sided back then, both are consenting adults now. The fl helps ml with his struggling past and makes him realize he is worthy of love. The fl is strong and confident and she's the one saving the ml multiple times. The ml is literally such a green flag even if he's a big flirt when "courting" her. It's an incredibly touching story and it even has a drama

Eternal Love/First Froat -> set in the same universe as the story above, this is about the love story of the prev fl brother and the mc, his high school classmate. Both had a crush on each other back then but the fl pushed him away coldly and they seperated. Years later they met by chance and by chance yet again ended up as roommates. Slowly they realize the feelings never went away and they keep getting drawn to each other but the horribly tragic past of the fl and the reason she pushed the ml away slowly uncoveres too. This is a beautiful story of a love that never stopped. The mcs are literally meant to be and the fl is so strong after everything she's been through. And the ml is the most patient, caring mam ever everyone deserves a man like him. Literally the standard. Both these books can be read as stand alones but there are some hilarious moments that can only be completely understood if you read them both

Savinvg My Sweetheart -> You will cry so hard while reading this. Fl is the saintess' daughter and after the death of her husband who she was politically married to, she goes back in time a few months before their marriage and only has one goal, to save her kind husbad from her mother even if it causes her death. Both the fl and ml love each other so incredibly much but both think the other hates them because of the forced marriage yet that misunderstanding doesn't stop them from being the literal greatest cople ever! The are such a healthy couple and both are incredibly fleshed out and not just making romance their entire point of existance. Fl slowly gathers powers in order to stop her biological mother who is evil incarnate and save everyone. Ml works together with fl and on his own in order to strengthen his kingdom. And the link that connects them will literally have you crying for the next 20 years. The story is more of a found family/romance and it's one of the most well written stories ever, you will almost never find one loophone everything is planned to the T

Caught By The Villain -> the ml might start bad here but I'm telling you his character development is simply 👌 ✨️. Fl gets transported into the world of this novel she read as the twin sister of a minor villain. Later she has to join knighthood disgusted as her brother and somehow gets chosen as the personal guard of the crown prince, aka main villain, but also with the og!ml which is somewhat different from the story. Ok I'm going to start by saying the title is literally the greatest clickbait ever because almost everyone but the villain catch her and discovered she's a girl. The story has great representation and discusses about a lot of topics like gender and sexuality which you almost never find talked in manhwas. The ml starts bad but slowly by spending time with fl he realizes his mistakes, sincerely apologises tho does not expect forgiveness, promises to change and does keep his word, genuenly loves and cherishes her and is an all round little meow meow and I love him. He's a bi disaster too. Fl is strong and under lots of stress. She slowly gets closer with ml and realizes he's not just the big bad evil villain from the novel and the closer they get and the more genuine their friendship becomes, the more she feels guilty for hiding her true identity from ml. And the og!ml is a special case that I don't even wanna touch with a 10 foot pole so theres that. The development all these characters go through is slow and so perfectly written you don't even realize how much they changed until you go back and realise they're not the same as the beginong

Even If You Split My Mouth -> manga with japanese urban legends which means it has some gore and body horror. The story follows a Kuchisake-Onna and her contract fiancé, a 17 yo boy who has the power to strengthen her legend with his words so she won't disappear. She doesn't want this engagement while he is in love with her so they form a pact, if she can scare him within a year the engagement is off, if not than they get married. This is one of those stories that start all silly goofy but end up having some of the deepest lore ever. The fl is super cute for a yokai and she blushes a lot every time ml flirts. Ml is completly unphased by her scare attempts and loves her to bits. They're such a dumb cute couple and their love story is so fun and sad sometimes. All the side characters are entertaining and lovable. Really there's not one bad thing I can say about this manga, it deserves more love

You Are My Desire -> high school sweethearts and later uni sweethearts. Fl moves to a new city and school after her parents messy divorce and her father's remarriage. While looking around she stumbles upon a tatoo shop and amazingly embarrasses herself in front of the tattooist. On the first day of school she happens to end up as deskmates with that same tattooist who's coincidentally the school tyrant but slowly it becomes visible this tyrant doesn't act like a tyrant at all and so a weird relationship is born out of the two of them. The two mcs are one of the best couples I've ever read. They slowly heal heach others wounds and teach each other that they love them even with their scars. I don't wanna say a lot since the manhua only has aroumd 20 chapters and there's so much story from the novel that hasn't been told yet. There's slso a drama that was rescently released

Daytime Star -> modern manhwa. An actress who has been cast as nothing but an extra for almost 10 years lands a small role where she gets to play along one of the best male actors in the industry. After that they both can't stop thinking about each other and that's how their love story begins. One of the healthiest modern manhwa couples ever! They're literally so cute they will call you single in all languages pf the world and more. I also loved that the fl slowly rose to fame almost all on her own using her own strength and talent with very few minor moments where others helped. It's a great story and it talks about the struggles of working on the korean entertainment industry too

Villains Are Destined to Die -> oh where do I begin with this masterpiece! Fl gets transmigrated into a dating sim she was playing as the villaines and she's currently in the hard mode which makes it super dificult for her to clear the game. She has to increase the affection percentage of the capture targets so she can go back to her old life and avoid the bad ending which always results in her death. This is literally one of those stories that gets you hooked on the very first chapters alone. Fl goes through so much and she's such a tragic character. All she wants is a peaceful life and she works damn hard for it. Her family is just exhausting but they slowly develop besides SOME who shall not be named. The ml, which you'll probably figure out who it is lile halfway through because he's just that iconic, is literally THE BEST, THE STANDARD! I love him so much and it might not show it in the begining chapters but he's is just perfect. The romance is more secondary tho and the story focuses more on the fl's struggles to survive and the discovery of the secrets that can change the fate of the entire kingdom.

See You In My 19th Life -> this rescently got a drama and I recommend watching that too. Fl is a reincarnator who remembers all her lives besides the first one. In her 19th life she resolves to find a boy form her 18th life who made her enjoy life again after so many reincarnations and made her wish she was reincarnated once again. She manages to get a job in the hotel he manages and immediately asks him to date. Thus begins the story of her following and flirting with her love from the prevous life without him knowing it's her and slowly healing his scars and traumas while also solving the mystery of her reincarnation. The story us full of mystery and absurdly cute couples. The ml is traumatized by fl's death since she died quite literally right in front of his eyes when he was really young and he also has a crap ton of family drama to deal with. The fl loves the him so much and tries her best to help him not just physically but emotionally too. She's like a breath of fresh air for the ml and their love is just so selfless. He loves her even when he doesn't know she's his first love reincarnated. The side couple is literally amazinv too and I would need an entire paragraph to talk about them too. The mystery of the webtoon always keeps you on the edge. Overall amazing webtoon and has an amazing kdrama!

(I'm getting tired and I have to wake up early tomorrow so I'm just gonna drop some titles with no explenation now. There might be some shounen ai in there fyi)

A Stepmother's Marchen

How To Win My Husband Over

Death To Lady White Ferret

Positively Yours

Business Propsal (Also has a great kdrama)

Sasaki to Miyano

A Good Day To Be A Dog (kdrama rescently started)

Till Debt Do Us Apart

Shoujinkou Nikki

Hirano to Kagiura

Given

The Reason Why Raekiana Ended Up At The Duke's Mansion (also has an anime)

Once More

Love Like Cherry Blossoms

Tsuiraku JK to Haijin Kyoushi (it's a student x teacher but honestly it's more of a dark comedy manga and it's hilarious so I recommend it)

I Raised Cinderella Preciously

The Perks of Being A Villainess

Ajatsuki no Yona

My Secretly Hot Husband

Ok that's all I can squeeze out of my brain for now. Hope you enjoyed the recs