(no subject)

[skygiants]

I've been wanting to try an f/f cnovel for a while, so last month I read Female General, Eldest Princess on the simple basis of the facts that a.) it's the one I've read most often and b.) I have never said no to a cross-dressing heroine in my life and I don't intend to start now.

The premise: teen Lin Wanyue's entire village was slaughtered by the Huns, so she's taken the identity of her dead brother 'Lin Feixing', joined the army, and dedicated her life to revenge. Because of her intelligence and her single-minded dedication, she quickly rises to prominence despite her humble origins!

Meanwhile, Li Xian, teen Imperial Princess, has dedicated her life to out-scheming her various half-siblings so that she can deliver the Imperial succession to her beloved but still moderately useless baby brother. When she encounters Lin Wanyue on a field trip to the front, it's love more or less at first sight ...

...well, it's love or at least crush for Lin Wanyue, who encounters the impeccable image of a perfect princess and is immediately ready to become the lionheart to her queen, no questions asked. Li Xian, meanwhile, sees a talented and besotted young officer with no inconvenient connections and the baby beginnings of a brilliant tactical instinct to nurture and is delighted to have discovered such a useful pawn: with a few significant nudges, she's pretty sure she can eventually place 'Lin Feixing' in a position to command the entire border, and that's that army's loyalty sorted.

(As long as Lin Feixing never finds out enough about the various morally questionable things that Li Xian has done for that loyalty to shake, obviously, but it's not like that's going to happen! What is this, amateur hour?)

I dug the course of the romance in the book: intense potentially-misplaced loyalty stuff is very much my jam and I really enjoyed the very slow and difficult shift in Li Xian and Lin Wanyue's relationship from manipulation/hero-worship to genuine partnership, as Lin Wanyue levels up in savvy and Li Xian levels down in ability to crush all her human feelings. Also, I am a simple individual who likes to see a cross-dressing general and a scheming lesbian respectively be more competent than everyone around them, and Female General, Eldest Princess gets top marks on this score.

I liked less the extremely dehumanizing depiction of the Huns (there's one sympathetic and intelligent antagonist-turned-ally at the very end of the book and before that they are more or less ravenous horde video game villains about whom Lin Wanyue has some extremely genocidal fantasies while embarked her Revenge Quest). Also the ending is ... hmm. It's a happy ending overall, it is just also OUT OF LEFT FIELD WILD AS HECK.


OK, so it's the end of the book and Lin Wanyue has been betrayed and captured while attempting to put down a rebellion by Li Xian's stupidest and most homicidal brother, who has unexpectedly been joined by Li Xian's smartest and most sympathetic brother. Li Xian rides out to try and rescue her and:

LI XIAN'S MOST SYMPATHETIC BROTHER: All right, so you're probably wondering why I betrayed you. Here's the thing: I'm in love with our stupidest and most homicidal brother.
LI XIAN: ...
LI XIAN'S MOST SYMPATHETIC BROTHER: But don't worry, it's not incest! I'm secretly not the Emperor's biological son! It turns out my dad is someone completely different. Not important to the story, do not worry about it.
LI XIAN: ....
LI XIAN'S MOST SYMPATHETIC BROTHER: So anyway, sorry about capturing and torturing your wife -- hey, congratulations on the wife, by the way! Love to find out I'm not the only gay sibling! -- but at this juncture I'm really happy to just take the inexplicable object of my affection and ride away into exile if you're cool with that? Sorry again about the torture, I really hope your wife recovers and there's no hard feelings.
LI XIAN: .... I'll accept this on the condition that I can torture the stupid homicidal one to the exact same degree that you tortured my wife.
LI XIAN'S MOST SYMPATHETIC BROTHER: You know what? That seems fair. That seems fine. Happy to accept this deal on his behalf!
LI XIAN'S MOST HOMICIDAL BROTHER: ?!?!?!?!?!
LI XIAN'S MOST SYMPATHETIC BROTHER, THROWING HIS BELOVED, LI XIAN'S MOST HOMICIDAL BROTHER, INTO A ROOM WITH A FURIOUS LI XIAN AND HER TWELVE FAVORITE NINJAS AND LOCKING THE DOOR: you'll be fine! it's for your own good! you didn't need all those fingers anyway!

It is impossible for me to emphasize the degree to which none off this is foreshadowed. I'm trying to come up with a comparison ... it's like if Lion in Winter was resolved by Richard suddenly declaring that he was adopted, and also in love with John and riding off into the sunset with him (after generously allowing Geoffrey to break a few of John's fingers)? Except less foreshadowed than that, actually, because at least we already know Richard is gay and has bad taste in twinks -- anyway. It's hilarious, is my point. Glad about the gay sibling solidarity???

Would love recommendations for other f/f danmei if anyone has them!

Comments

[whimsyful]

cross-dressing general and a scheming lesbian respectively be more competent than everyone around them
This is so much my jam it's not even funny (the only pairing type I like more than Machiavellian Schemer/Lionheart is the Machiavellian Power Couple), though I'm :( about the stereotypical depiction of the Huns. And just plain lol/wtf at the spoilers. If I were the homicidal brother I'd have serious second thoughts about my relationship after that. Are the scheming plots at least decently written until the very end??

Not danmei, but there's an upcoming Republican era F/F cdrama about an author whose husband is cheating on her and a female shop owner/secret murderess: https://whimsyfulwanderings.tumblr.com/post/645579527704166401/a-chinese-wlw-drama-featuring-two-female-leads-has

[skygiants]

The plots are decent right up until the end, and then suddenly everything speeds up to the point of mild incomprehensibility -- it's like watching 90% of a show at normal speed, and then at the very end you hit the fast-forward button and it's impossible to watch everyone zooming around without mentally inserting a 'yakety sax' soundtrack.

yesssss I've heard about that F/F cdrama and I'm SO EXCITED

[slashmarks]

Every element of this is both wild and completely, entirely everything I have ever wanted in an F/F novel so I think I'm going to have to make a go at this.

[skygiants]

loool I hope you enjoy it if you try it!! It was very exciting for me, I think this is the first time I've encountered this dynamic in F/F and I really dug it.

[aella_irene]

Who becomes Emperor? I am extremely worried about their succession.

[brownbetty]

Cannot overstate the degree to which the author does not care about what happens there.

[skygiants]

The little brother does become Emperor ... not really any indication of whether he'll be competent at the job, but nonetheless his sister is like 'WELL my work here is DONE time to flee the court and never interact with politics again!!'

[aella_irene]

Oh! I thought that smartest and most sympathetic brother was also little brother, and had thus abandoned the throne for homicidal I-really-think-it's-still-incest sex.

[thawrecka]

I was very underwhelmed by the ending on this one. It seemed like the author kept most of the plot for the last chapters! And it didn't make much sense! I kept wondering what was supposed to happen to the adopted child!

[brownbetty]

The adopted child! Like, they're like "Have fun, or uh, not because politics is terrible, which is why we're leaving! Goodbye!"

[skygiants]

Oh I was SO mad about them leaving the daughter behind for like ten years. And then they see her again for like a month and then send her off AGAIN!

[skygiants]

Oh it made NO sense. I actually didn't feel like the previous sections were lacking in plot -- the measured pacing up to that point was fine by me! -- but the last ten chapters really felt like an entirely different, much more .... not intended to be slapstick but still definitely slapstick .... novel!

[shadaras]

Every time I try and ask people for f/f cnovel recs I get like... FGEP, "That author's written other things too!" (mostly: this), and basically nothing else. xD This is the one other f/f cnovel I've been told about, and I completely forget what the pitch was because I marked as 'look at it again later' and figured I'd come back to it when it was fully translated.

I have read exactly half of FGEP! As in, to wherever they meet again post-timeskip/in part two, I think? Something like that. And then I stopped reading because for all that it really should be exactly my jam it just kept not quite working for me. (I think it just kept running into my 'aughhhh communication pleaseeee' second-hand embarrassment squick, mostly. it's been a while since I last touched it.)

That ending is wild, amazing, I am cackling.

[skygiants]

lol yes, I've had that bookmarked, but after finishing FGEP I truly did not feel ready yet to embark on another one that was (as far as I could tell) 3x as long! Someday I'll give it a try .... Thanks for the link to the other one, though! That translation looks like it's progressing pretty fast, I'm making a mental note to come back in two months.

[osprey_archer]

THAT ENDING THOUGH, oh my God. Sympathetic Brother is going to have some 'splaining to do to Homicidal Brother if Homicidal Brother survives Li Xian and her twelve favorite ninjas... (I also like how it's only her FAVORITE ninjas, like, Li Xian has MORE, these are just the very very best ones.)

[skygiants]

The last we see of them, Homicidal Brother is feebly attempting to be homicidal in a caravan, and Sympathetic Brother is like "babe chill out, I drugged you because I thought you would probably try to murder me or run away before you were healthy, why not heal up and try to murder me later? :D" ROMANCE.

(There are various ninjas and assassins throughout the story but Li Xian has an ELITE ALL-LESBIAN NINJA TEAM ranked one through twelve. Good for her and for them!)

[lirazel]

I so want to read several danmei novels (both m/m and f/f) but why are they all so looooong?

[skygiants]

TBH I feel like they're kind of the equivalent of the western Big Fat Epic Fantasy Trilogy, but because of the different form of publishing/serialization it all ends up one long book ....

[lirazel]

That's a good point!

[larryhammer]

Oh, yays, the translation is finished! This has been on my TBR list for a while, and the last time I checked it was still in progress. Thank you for letting me know! And for assuring me that it's as tasty as it has looked.

[skygiants]

I hope you enjoy it if you read it! It's not a flawless work by any means but for me its particular charms were very much worth it.

[brownbetty]

Literally had forgotten about/repressed the ending because of the degree of lolwhut. I enjoyed the character dynamic but definitely had the impression the author DID NOT CARE about the plot (listen, fair enough, who among us, etc.)

[skygiants]

I do genuinely think she started out moderately interested in the plot -- she sets up some of the early long-game fallout stuff like the disappearance of the caravan so carefully! -- and then the longer the book went on the more she was like "you know what, screw this, incest falls, everybody bangs."

[brownbetty]

I do have a great deal of sympathy for the author, because all her notes are like "I'm running a fever and have inflamed all my joints from my non-stop job dishwashing job, but don't worry, there will definitely still be two chapters this week, because I too crave this gay nonsense!"

[skygiants]

lol yes SAME. There seems to be a certain degree of inverse correlation between the density of author's notes and degree of caring about the plot beyond the gay nonsense, And Who Can Blame Her.

[brownbetty]

Her authors notes that are just "stop criticizing the plot unless you're willing to come here and draw me a plot diagram, okay???"

Like, okay, fair.

[bemused_writer]

Ohh, definitely sounds like it's worth checking out! Thanks for the write up. (^^)

[skygiants]

Hope you enjoy it if you check it out!

[pengwern]

Holy shit I've got to read this for that ending, that sounds AMAZING, WOW???
I've definitely read f/f but there's less, for one, also tends to a lot of CEO or entertainment circles (same proportions but overall decrease in numbers) which bores me, also there was this one where the author at around ch 70 so the midpoint of an otherwise very fun webnovel goes "so I've never actually understood how girls...reach during?" and some of the answers going "I think it's spiritually/mentally 精神上的" and then one stalwart gallant answering 'fingers' to half the threads, bless.
http://www.jjwxc.net/onebook.php?novelid=4083613 this one was good, at least the first story of the collection!
http://www.jjwxc.net/onebook.php?novelid=3539441 and this one was also cute
...but they don't have translations yet, sorry >_<
on the non-f/f side, I have read SO many crossdressing girls webnovels and some of them are very happy about it and some are angstier - I should get back and find some of them.

[skygiants]

sdfk;lsj spiritually/mentally ....

I would also gladly take recs for good crossdressing girls webnovels at any time!

[pengwern]

...tragically now that I think about it, most aren't translated >^< But there's really a lot. So the thing about cross-dressing girls in cn narratives is 1) Mulan ofc, but lesser known overseas if more well known in China is s) the classic Butterfly Lovers, basically the romeo and juliet equivalent in China, which has the premise of "GIRL MEETS BOY while disguised as a male student at school" -- so you can imagine the /wealth/ of 'girl disguised to attend school, leap through the imperial examination, becomes an official with all the ton of plot that entails."

There's one I really enjoyed where (if not for the fact that I do NOt want to contemplate people's attitudes towards more formal gender identities over there) I'd honestly say had a MC who was at least non-binary. Unbelievably hilarious school (academy for royals basically) misadventures, which differentiates itself charmingly from regular school aus (although ofc all of these are historical and the end goal being officialdom via either the bureaucracy exam or direct attention from the top) through a ton of assassination attempts and power intrigues. This is overlapping in the majority of a venn diagram with "girls as officials" which has one of my favorite books from the last few years, whose title one might localize as "Seven boyfriends Lu Qiluan threw in gaol and one she didn't." But that's probably a longer reply >_>

There was a bunch where the FMC disguises herself as an eunuch in the palace - there was a good one which collapsed into compulsory het-ness at the end but was hilarious previously. I had a favorite in the Mulan vein though, Ah Mai joins the army, although that one is a little old, maybe written a decade ago.There were a lot of these but now it's out of fashion - sometimes it blends into the wuxia genre as well.

And then the third subgenre is girls needing to be disguised as male so as to maintain power/self-determination, which, especially when mixed with royal inheritances...lots of duke/princes/wangye trying to maintain their peerage for another generation/emperors fighting their way out of being puppeted, and also as (as in this book) the fuma/consort of imperial princesses secretly being girls, which moves very easily from f/m to f/f.

....I realise there's basically no names here /o\ which I will remedy once I find some, but off my head there is one visual novel My Vow To My Liege, which is a fairly trim historical/fantasy. It's bronze age/pre-warring states China during the very famous Wu-Yue contention (a generation/a few years after the Art of War's author was there) and MC is actually rather unhappy to have to crossdress to be the king, buuuut she looks so handsome.....so responsible......such a teenager...

One of the ppl you can date is the famous apocryphal beauty of that era who shames the fish into sinking from beauty, now the most boyfriend material of all these jerks, one is the foe who canonized the term for"revenge is best served cold", a spicy green tea boy fraught with neediness and drama, and one is the responsible but once wild chancellor who is totally willing to die for his king (who is the *other* source of the phrase for revenge), and there's even a lovely fiancee who really needs a route, and some random person in booty shorts during this game set three thousand years ago (???)

[skygiants]

Oh, I've had "My Vow To My Liege" open in a tab for a while after seeing it talked about on tumblr -- I've had difficulty playing through visual novels in the past, but the story looks a thousand percent up my ally!

[brownbetty]

Imagine being that person just c&ping "fingers" with eighteen tabs open sd;lfajsd!!

[pengwern]

A hero!

[qian]

Shrieking at that ending. I want to read this but know I probably won't so as always I greatly appreciate your reviews!

[skygiants]

It's so important I think for everyone to know about the star-crossed love of the brothers who Probably Weren't Actually Brothers Don't Worry About It!

[pengwern]

At some point during the rounds of censorship you could no longer write about actual "德国骨科german orthopedics"* and now it's always this "it's ok, they were secretly adopted/ exchanged at birth"....
*from an apocryphal story about someone who did and had their legs beaten and broken by elders etc and then they went to germany for medical attention??? It's the current internet slang, so you see stuff about orthopedics since the actual term gets censor-boxed most of the time.

[skygiants]

jdka;sdfljs thank you for this information also

[dhampyresa]

That seems fair. That seems fine. Happy to accept this deal on his behalf!
This relationship is off to a great start!

[skygiants]

After the torture Sympathetic Brother thinks fondly to himself about his sister like "wow, you know, rough on my beloved I guess but who can help but respect such passion and dedication! I always knew I liked that kid!"

[reconditarmonia]

Bah, I really need to try to get back into this. (I read a few chapters but I'm not great at reading long things online, especially translated.) It should be my jam in every way.

[aurumcalendula]

*shows up three years later with a rec*

Purely by Accident is is shorter novel (about as long as The Beauty's Blade) that involves a female bandit chief ending up engaged to the emperor's eldest daughter.

tbh I think all of the PDL novels I've read so far have had endings that felt kinda rushed.