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May. 29th, 2020 07:05 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
skygiantsOne of the kids in Technically, You Started It is a gamer and there's a fair bit of gaming discussion, which got me nostalgic for Guide To How To Fail At Online Dating, so I decided to try out another gamer-romance cnovel, You Boys Play Games Very Well.
This book was fine, but mostly it just also made me nostalgic for Guide to How to Fail at Online Dating, which I had caveats about initially seem to get fonder and fonder of the farther I get from having read it the first time ...
You Boys Play Games Very Well is a very straightforward story: Ling Meng, a medium-good gamer who's known for his sass level, accidentally becomes a meme for the quip he delivers after he gets defeated by moderately famous streamer Mangosteen live on air, who also turns out to go to his same college. They cycle rapidly through a (one-sided) rivalry through to friendship; Mangosteen flirts aggressively with Ling Meng on-air; Ling Meng cheerfully assumes that Mangosteen is just queerbaiting to gather points with his fans; eventually Mangosteen gets tired of this and explains that, no, he is genuinely trying to hit on Ling Meng, would Ling Meng be interested, yes or no. And then they are dating! Meanwhile, both of them attempt to figure out to what level they want to go pro in the gamer/streamer world and make it their career or stay casual. It's all very sweet and chill and low-conflict but it was hard for me not to compare it against Guide to How to Fail at Online Dating, which had significantly richer and more endearing characterization for the leads and also felt in the end like a much more balanced relationship.
The other thing that was sort of fascinating for me about this story, though, was how much of the romance is constantly framed and commented on by the gamers and fans hanging out in Mangosteen and Ling Meng's livestreams -- Ling Meng, especially, starts to see a degree of professional success because people come to see the cute gamer boys romance unfold -- and this is never a point of conflict or discomfort; like, Ling Meng makes some noises in his chat about wanting people to focus on games in his stream rather than talk about how cute he is/how cute he and his boyfriend are but this is in no way borne out by his actions as they both continue to be very public online ... and it seems clear to me that the reader also to some extent is intended to identify with the people commenting in the livechat about what's going on, we're all here enjoying this fanservice together. And, like, I'm very interested in fiction about the difference between public and private personas, and public and private relationships, and calculations about what makes sense to present for a camera/audience and how playing those roles impacts how you feel about them in reality! But that isn't at all what this book is; despite Ling Meng's early assumption that Mangosteen is playing their flirtation up for the fans, there really is no depiction of calculation or critical assessment here. Instead, the book seems to assume that we, the reader, would like to assume that really there is no difference at all -- that what's presented on camera is one hundred percent exactly what's going on in reality and the act of observation does not change the thing observed in any way.
This book was fine, but mostly it just also made me nostalgic for Guide to How to Fail at Online Dating, which I had caveats about initially seem to get fonder and fonder of the farther I get from having read it the first time ...
You Boys Play Games Very Well is a very straightforward story: Ling Meng, a medium-good gamer who's known for his sass level, accidentally becomes a meme for the quip he delivers after he gets defeated by moderately famous streamer Mangosteen live on air, who also turns out to go to his same college. They cycle rapidly through a (one-sided) rivalry through to friendship; Mangosteen flirts aggressively with Ling Meng on-air; Ling Meng cheerfully assumes that Mangosteen is just queerbaiting to gather points with his fans; eventually Mangosteen gets tired of this and explains that, no, he is genuinely trying to hit on Ling Meng, would Ling Meng be interested, yes or no. And then they are dating! Meanwhile, both of them attempt to figure out to what level they want to go pro in the gamer/streamer world and make it their career or stay casual. It's all very sweet and chill and low-conflict but it was hard for me not to compare it against Guide to How to Fail at Online Dating, which had significantly richer and more endearing characterization for the leads and also felt in the end like a much more balanced relationship.
The other thing that was sort of fascinating for me about this story, though, was how much of the romance is constantly framed and commented on by the gamers and fans hanging out in Mangosteen and Ling Meng's livestreams -- Ling Meng, especially, starts to see a degree of professional success because people come to see the cute gamer boys romance unfold -- and this is never a point of conflict or discomfort; like, Ling Meng makes some noises in his chat about wanting people to focus on games in his stream rather than talk about how cute he is/how cute he and his boyfriend are but this is in no way borne out by his actions as they both continue to be very public online ... and it seems clear to me that the reader also to some extent is intended to identify with the people commenting in the livechat about what's going on, we're all here enjoying this fanservice together. And, like, I'm very interested in fiction about the difference between public and private personas, and public and private relationships, and calculations about what makes sense to present for a camera/audience and how playing those roles impacts how you feel about them in reality! But that isn't at all what this book is; despite Ling Meng's early assumption that Mangosteen is playing their flirtation up for the fans, there really is no depiction of calculation or critical assessment here. Instead, the book seems to assume that we, the reader, would like to assume that really there is no difference at all -- that what's presented on camera is one hundred percent exactly what's going on in reality and the act of observation does not change the thing observed in any way.
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Date: 2020-06-09 08:26 pm (UTC)Boo, I wouldn't like that. The chance of the book being about that is what made me go "ooh" when I started your review! Hank Green's An Absolutely Remarkable Thing is partly about that and it's one of my favourite things about it - but then he's also a Youtuber/internet famous person who can afford to discuss the gap between persona and reality.