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Mar. 24th, 2020 12:00 amThese are stressful times, which makes it probably more or less inevitable that I would trip and fall facefirst into another gay Chinese webnovel.
The premise of Rebirth of a Movie Star is peak nonsense drama: in the first chapter, after a number of misfortunes and career crashes, low-level actor Bai Lang is dramatically betrayed by his terrible actor-rival boyfriend, mistakenly goes to accuse the hot gay billionaire gangster single dad who previously attempted to hire him as a kept man of ruining his life, and then dies tragically of betrayal and heart attack in the hot gay billionaire gangster single dad's arms!
... after which he of course wakes up ten years in the past with a chance at a do-over, has some vague memories of the hot gay billionaire gangster single dad being surprisingly decent to him while he was dying of betrayal and heart attack, and decides, you know what, why not become a kept man this time around! things can't turn out worse!
And in fact, somewhat surprisingly, things turn out very rapidly for the better, and in a much less cringeworthy way than I expected; by like 30% of the way in, Bai Lang and his hot gay billionaire gangster single dad have a perfectly adult and straightforward conversation about shifting their relationship over from 'transactional sex' to 'committed romantic partnership' and the rest of the book is, like, 50% domestic fluff, 50% Bai Lang expertly using his knowledge of the future and ten-years-more-advanced-than-expected acting skills to play the industry like a fiddle and advance his career while cheerfully collaborating with his hot gay billionaire gangster husband to crush all their mutual enemies.
(Please note: this is very clearly a work of pure id and as such has zero interest in discussing the relative ethics of transactional sex, using your knowledge of the future to manipulate financial marketplaces, or pre-emptive revenge on enemies who in this lifetime haven't actually done anything particularly terrible to you yet.)
To be honest, the domestic fluff levels honestly sometimes verged on the tooth-aching for me, and I also eventually got a little bored of the revenge plots, but I'm here for the devastatingly effective combination of time travel competence porn and entertainment industry competence porn. My personal favorite brilliant technique is when Bai Lang early on decides he needs to build a slush fund in order to stop a movie project from running out of funding, carefully consults his memories of his previous life, and calmly decides to purchase the Chinese translation rights to not!Harry Potter several years before the series explodes into popularity. This is using your future-vision with a vengeance, and I applaud it.
The premise of Rebirth of a Movie Star is peak nonsense drama: in the first chapter, after a number of misfortunes and career crashes, low-level actor Bai Lang is dramatically betrayed by his terrible actor-rival boyfriend, mistakenly goes to accuse the hot gay billionaire gangster single dad who previously attempted to hire him as a kept man of ruining his life, and then dies tragically of betrayal and heart attack in the hot gay billionaire gangster single dad's arms!
... after which he of course wakes up ten years in the past with a chance at a do-over, has some vague memories of the hot gay billionaire gangster single dad being surprisingly decent to him while he was dying of betrayal and heart attack, and decides, you know what, why not become a kept man this time around! things can't turn out worse!
And in fact, somewhat surprisingly, things turn out very rapidly for the better, and in a much less cringeworthy way than I expected; by like 30% of the way in, Bai Lang and his hot gay billionaire gangster single dad have a perfectly adult and straightforward conversation about shifting their relationship over from 'transactional sex' to 'committed romantic partnership' and the rest of the book is, like, 50% domestic fluff, 50% Bai Lang expertly using his knowledge of the future and ten-years-more-advanced-than-expected acting skills to play the industry like a fiddle and advance his career while cheerfully collaborating with his hot gay billionaire gangster husband to crush all their mutual enemies.
(Please note: this is very clearly a work of pure id and as such has zero interest in discussing the relative ethics of transactional sex, using your knowledge of the future to manipulate financial marketplaces, or pre-emptive revenge on enemies who in this lifetime haven't actually done anything particularly terrible to you yet.)
To be honest, the domestic fluff levels honestly sometimes verged on the tooth-aching for me, and I also eventually got a little bored of the revenge plots, but I'm here for the devastatingly effective combination of time travel competence porn and entertainment industry competence porn. My personal favorite brilliant technique is when Bai Lang early on decides he needs to build a slush fund in order to stop a movie project from running out of funding, carefully consults his memories of his previous life, and calmly decides to purchase the Chinese translation rights to not!Harry Potter several years before the series explodes into popularity. This is using your future-vision with a vengeance, and I applaud it.
