(no subject)

[skygiants]

I've seen like three posts in the past week about the m/m romance cnovel Guide on How to Fail at Online Dating, so apparently I'm right in the zeitgeist, but for the record the first one I saw and the one that started me reading it was this one from littlerhymes!

The premise: Our Hero Jin Huan's cousin got her heart broken by a dirtbag online boyfriend in her favorite MMORPG, so Jin Huan decides! he must get revenge! by sinking all his free time into posing as a cute gamer girl in the MMORPG so that he can catfish the dirtbag and then break his heart in return!!! clearly there are absolutely no potential downsides for Jin Huan to this plan!!!!

Unfortunately for Jin Huan:

a.) he thinks he is far, far better than he is at pretending to be a cute gamer girl
b.) due to a misunderstanding, his target, Xian Huazhi, is not in fact the person who broke his cousin's heart
c.) but he is, it turns out, a perfectly nice upperclassman who goes to Jin Huan's college and lives up the hall from his best friends' dorm!

Obviously this premise as comedy has potential to verge on transphobic and, like, it's not great (in that there's no acknowledgment that trans identities are a thing that exists in any way) but it also could definitely be worse, given givens. Xian Huazhi actually finds out that his new buddy Jin Huan is the same person who's spent weeks following him around in game and professing her love for him relatively early on; his initial reaction: "boy, this kid must really be going through it if he's projecting all his queer feelings onto aggressively pursuing a safely unattainable cool gamer figure in this online space! I'd better make sure to be extra supportive and try to give him a safe environment to work through whatever he needs to!"

This is extremely sweet and Xian Huazhi is deeply endearing, but nonetheless the middle section of the book in which Xian Huazhi is earnestly trying-to-protect-and-support-while-falling-for Jin Huan was my least favorite. Normally I love identity porn but to be honest a fair amount of this made me squirm, partly just because contact embarrassment but partly also I think perhaps because of how the power-and-gender dynamics line up when Huazhi is the only one of the two of them who knows their real identities, AND also taller and older and physically and socially protective, AND also playing a powerful high-stats male character in-game to Jin Huan's low-ranked healer girl? The in-game marriage-and-pregnancy plot made me SO uncomfortable and I'm not even sure why ... like I realize it's literally just in the Sims, but still! I think it was the disconnect of Huazhi really earnestly thinking that he was playing along in ways that would make Jin Huan happy while Jin Huan was feeling increasingly uncomfortable and trapped by guilt and obligation ... and then Huazhi thought they were dating for real and was so happy about it while Jin Huan was still like 'AHHHH OH NO WHAT HAVE I DONE' and it got worse.

HOWEVER, once all the misunderstandings are cleared up and everybody knows what's what, the power dynamics even out a fair bit almost immediately! The last third or so of the novel is just an extremely cute story about two good dudes who love basketball and video games and also each other figuring out the romance thing, with some flailing but vast amounts of mutual enthusiasm, and I enjoyed it so much I more or less forgot all the contact embarrassment of the previous section. Deeply loved Jin Huan deciding straight away that agonizing about feelings was for the week, WE DECLARE OUR FEELINGS AND PURSUE THE HOT UPPERCLASSMAN WE'VE BEEN ACCIDENTALLY CATFISHING FOR MONTHS LIKE MEN; a good child! Honest communication is the best tactic and is justly rewarded!

(I also enjoyed Jin Huan and Xian Huazhi's college pals, who are all completely believable assholes in the way that college boys are assholes, but also, like, very supportive assholes when it counted!)

Comments

[flamebyrd]

Xian Huazhi is the sweetest, most supportive boy! He deserves his happy ending.

This post made me realise I completely forgot to address the whole pregnancy sideplot in my own post, which I attribute to subconsciously deleting it from memory because I dislike it so much. (I also forgot to address trans identities, probably because, as you say, the book doesn't seem to think about it at all, but I'd still like to apologise for the oversight!)

[skygiants]

He's so endearing! He tried SO hard and I was so anxious during the chapters when he was like 'score, I'm Doing Dating Right!' when in fact he had not yet gotten anywhere near achieving that through no fault of his own!

(THE PREGNANCY PLOT. WHY. I realize it's just a nonsense game pregnancy but the whole 'oh you can't do game battle things while you're game pregnant or you'll miscarry your game baby' is such an intensely gross game mechanic .... the only good thing about it was it gave them the excuse to start swapping game characters around, which I did enjoy and wish they had done more of.)

[flamebyrd]

On the bright side at least Jing Huan also thinks it's a garbage game mechanic... and a garbage game in general - wonder if that secret is ever going to come out? For that matter I kept wanting to see him drag out his old DPS account and see what he could do with it now. Or maybe I want them to find a new, less predatory MMO to play. One can but hope.

[skygiants]

I want them to find a new, less predatory MMO but I also want all their pals to come with them!

...well maybe not all their pals, they seem to be fine just hanging out with their roommates and college buds in real life while they all play different MMORPGS ... I really only care about Jing Huan's bff who taught him about tampons but I care a lot about Jing Huan's bff who taught him about tampons.

[feklar42]

I just finished reading this one. I loved it for all the reasons you state – especially XH's rather intelligent and sensitive analysis of what he thought JH was doing. I did like that in the end XH and JH didn't replicate oppressive male/female gender roles in their RL relationship. Sadly, this is pretty revolutionary for a Chinese web novel.

Actually, XH is pretty revolutionary as a non-asshole male lead in general. I think that enabled me to gloss over a lot of the other cringey things.

Despite the fact that a lot of the female characters fell into the stereotypical mean girls squad roles, I found it kind of telling that they were all "WTF?" about JH's portrayal of what he thought a girl was. Maybe I was thinking too deeply, but I thought it was interesting that the women felt like they had moved beyond being cloying and flattering accessories, but that is still what the men perceive them as.

I honestly thought the pregnancy subplot was because the author wanted to do MPEG but couldn't bring herself to be THAT RIDICULOUS.

[feklar42]

I also liked that when it came time to resolve the MISUNDERSTANDING, XH was not nearly as vindictive and punitive as romance leads sometimes are. I liked that there was some anger and hurt, but being relatively intelligent people they worked their way through it without someone having to be hit by a car to make the other realize how much they truly love them. LOL

[skygiants]

Yeah, I think my favorite thing about it is how little time it takes both of them to realize that despite all the wacky misunderstandings, they are SO into each other and there's no reason not to just go for it! Shoot your shot! Like neither of them is really held back for a single second by being worried about what anyone else might think of them, their only obstacle is misunderstanding of/concern for each other's feelings.

I also did very much extremely enjoy the number of actual human women in the plot who were just there to have a good time in an MMORPG and their extreme bafflement at Jing Huan, who has met one (1) woman in his entire life and has absolutely no conception of what it would take for a human to be attracted to one. There wasn't much of the lesbian guild leaders in the plot, but I really enjoyed that they were there in the background just doing their thing, and one of them was a chill lesbian and one of the was a drama lesbian and neither of them particularly cared about Jing Huan or Xiang Huazhi at all once it became clear that Jing Huan wasn't the particular person they had beef with.

The game concept definitely gave an opportunity for the author to play with all the nonsense tropes without actually having to commit to a universe where those nonsense tropes were real, and some of them ... worked better for me than others.

[pedanther]

due to a misunderstanding, his target, Xian Huazhi, is not in fact the person who broke his cousin's heart

Out of idle curiousity, does the actual heartbreaker ever get a comeuppance, or does he just vanish from the narrative once he's accomplished his part in setting up the premise?

[skygiants]

The actual heartbreaker literally never appears in the story and by the time Jing Huan has figured out that Xiang Huazhi is not the same person, he is far too busy attempting to deal with his own rom-com nonsense to attempt to identify him!

...which is probably for the best, because as soon as his favorite cousin does appear back in the story she's like "really it's fine? i'm COMPLETELY over it? let's just forget the whole thing??"

[wakeupnew]

becca i have started reading this and i love it SO MUCH SDJKFSDFSF

[skygiants]

ahhh I'm so glad! it's SO good, I read it once and I was like 'yeah that was pretty good' and now it's two weeks later and I'm like 'actually that was exceptional, what if I just read it all again?'

How far are you? :D

[wakeupnew]

i read the whole thing in a couple hours today, i couldn't put it down! you were totally right about the middle section being weird, and i didn't enjoy the back half of the book as much as i enjoyed jing huan being a truly terrible catfisher and xian huazhi being alternately competent and bemused at him, but it was still a DELIGHT overall!! i laughed so much, and i loved the two characters and all their buddies and all of the online guild stuff was just so very good for me!!

also this is a thing that has never occurred to me before but if there aren't SKKS mmorpg modern AUs where the jalgeum quartet is in a guild together, WHY NOT

yoon-hee enters a tournament playing under her brother's identity to avoid harassment and jumps through increasingly ludicrous hoops to avoid her new friends' requests to videochat bc she could be kicked out of the tournament for identity fraud

cho-sun figures out early on that yoon-hee's not a straight cis dude and is both highly impressed by this clever, funny, kind-hearted player and also has a big old crush on her

sun-joon spends long hours in audio chats with yoon-hee getting his privileged ass schooled, while knowing he's eventually going to have to fight "kim yoon-shik" if they both keep climbing the ranks of the tourney, and has a bisexuality crisis

yong-ha spends ludicrous amounts of money on all his gear and spins around the server flirting, collecting gossip, and avoiding fights

jae-shin and cho-sun are secretly the two best fighters on the server and somehow turn themselves anonymous and take turns solo-raiding shitty guilds and powerful server bullies (read: ha in-soo)

i can't write this, i know nothing about videogames, but i want it to exist!!!!

[skygiants]

I still don't understand the game pregnancy plot ... I mean I do, someone wanted to write mpreg without actually changing the laws of physics, fine, but why. >.< but everything else! so charming!!

...also oh my god, this is INCREDIBLE. PLEASE. they all end up getting recruited by game officials to investigate a cybercrime conspiracy, and yoon-hee is constantly in a panic because technically, she also is a cybercrime conspiracy! (yuletide request???)

[lokifan]

Deeply loved Jin Huan deciding straight away that agonizing about feelings was for the week, WE DECLARE OUR FEELINGS AND PURSUE THE HOT UPPERCLASSMAN WE'VE BEEN ACCIDENTALLY CATFISHING FOR MONTHS LIKE MEN; a good child! Honest communication is the best tactic and is justly rewarded!

Awww <3 GOOD FOR YOU.

Also your note in the comments that when the cousin reappears she's like 'I'm over it, it's fine??' is so charming!

[skygiants]

He's so good! Xian Huazhi goes 'oh, it was a revenge plot that misfired? ok no worries bye,' and Jin Huan is immediately like 'LOOK BRO I WANNA GIVE YOU TIME TO PROCESS BUT ALSO IT'S VERY IMPORTANT TO ME THAT YOU UNDERSTAND I'M SO IN THIS NOW.' A good child and worthy of respect!