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flamebyrdTitle: 网恋翻车指南 | Guide on How to Fail at Online Dating
Author: 网恋翻车指南
Raws: http://www.jjwxc.net/onebook.php?novelid=4074715
Translation: https://chrysanthemumgarden.com/novel-tl/ghfod/
Summary: A Chinese M/M webnovel about MMORPG gaming, revenge catfishing and online-dating someone you know in real life without realising it.
In short:
This was super cute! Both of the main characters are so good-hearted and nice. There's a decent amount of identity porn, which I always enjoy. A nice, slow burn romance. The gaming feels very real in a cynical sort of way, with account sales, login sharing, paid "booster" services an accepted part of the system. There's a bit of angst but it's short-lived, so this was a nice, long, relaxing read.
Content notes (non-comprehensive): There are some embarrassing moments but I managed to push through them. There's an ongoing theme of body-shaming (in the context of people who lie about their appearance online) that never really goes away. Treatment of female characters is so-so. One character spends several chapters concerned that he has been pressuring another person into a romantic/sexual relationship (he's wrong, mostly). Homophobia mostly takes the form of invisibility and ignorance/self-denial.
Spoilers below.
Tiny character guide, for context:
When I was live-chatting my reading tokiyoshi_chan I was using the MC/ML labels I've seen on Novel Updates, and once I was in the habit it was hard to break, so this post continues that trend (for better or worse).
MC=Main Character, Jing Huan: college student who has bought a female character in a large MMO in order to get revenge on a player who slighted his cousin/jiejie
ML=Male Lead, Xiang Huaizhi: college student and supremely powerful MMO player who is (unknowingly) being catfished by the junior he keeps running into around campus (spoilers: he wasn't the one who slighted MC's jiejie)
Reactions and notes:
- As soon as it was established that both of them were into basketball I knew there would be a homoerotic basketball sequence, and was proven correct a few chapters later
- However, I did *not* predict the homoerotic gaming sequence where MC admires how ML's hand looks on his mouse
- It establishes in the first few chapters that the reason MC is so devoted to his cousin is that he was once kidnapped to be sold(!) and she rescued him. This is never mentioned again.
- Similarly, it establishes that the reason for MC's terror of insects is that he once visited his hometown and was locked in an abandoned building for an entire day. This is accepted without question by ML... and never mentioned again.
- It's interesting that once you get past ML's "strong, silent type" front you realise he's quite trusting and generous, which explains some of his past bad experiences, and of course makes MC's job easier...
- Accordingly, the period as ML is figuring out MC has been lying to him but isn't certain why was simultaneously cute and painful. That poor boy.
- The period after MC realising he knows ML in real life but before ML finds out that he was being catfished and MC did not, in fact, have a secret crush on his MMO persona, was the most awkward thing ever. The angst that followed was completely justified and thankfully very short-lived. (Because they're just good nice boys who like each other a lot ;_;)
- Jiejie really needed to be in it more, given she's the catalyst of the plot! Even as a character MC is texting regularly would have been enough.
- The characters are 19-20 and to me they really felt like it, with all the good and bad traits of that age range.
- Their fumbling "first relationship"-type romance once everything was sorted out was so cute!
- The various cases of unintentional public revelations by way of live-streaming was extremely difficult for my embarrassment-sensitive brain, but the characters get over it quickly enough.
I particularly liked:
- MC is so bad at pretending to be a girl. The actual girl characters were so baffled by his efforts!
- The scene where ML, having realised he knows MC in real life, is chatting to MC about the "girl" MC likes, and MC says she is a bit of a bad person and ML is offended until he remembers his in-game character's "slag" reputation...
- Probably mostly as a result of the serialised web-novel format, it spends a lot of time establishing the characters and building their relationship and attraction to each other (both physical and emotional) before the truth comes out, which to me is so important in a romance.
- That both of them had in-game and real-life friends, and also parents and family members! It really added to the immersion.
- MC starts sending his friends cute girly emotes and they are terribly confused
- MC's complete failure to separate his social media between real life and MMO (catfish) life, which I was initially horrified at, is perfectly lamp-shaded and comes back to bite him.
This book reminds me of:
- Scum Villain's Self Saving System: The protagonist has a very low opinion of the MMO he's playing and frequently complains about it internally while in-character as a cutesy girl
- That one Inception fic where Arthur and Eames play World of Warcraft
PS: Many thanks toalias_sqbr for putting me onto this novel!
--
Aside: I'm still trying to figure out the tone/format of my reviews. Are they for people who are familiar with the canon? People who aren't but are interested in trying it out? Both? I think I want to strike a balance between the two but I'm struggling with it. This one leans towards the former.
Author: 网恋翻车指南
Raws: http://www.jjwxc.net/onebook.php?novelid=4074715
Translation: https://chrysanthemumgarden.com/novel-tl/ghfod/
Summary: A Chinese M/M webnovel about MMORPG gaming, revenge catfishing and online-dating someone you know in real life without realising it.
In short:
This was super cute! Both of the main characters are so good-hearted and nice. There's a decent amount of identity porn, which I always enjoy. A nice, slow burn romance. The gaming feels very real in a cynical sort of way, with account sales, login sharing, paid "booster" services an accepted part of the system. There's a bit of angst but it's short-lived, so this was a nice, long, relaxing read.
Content notes (non-comprehensive): There are some embarrassing moments but I managed to push through them. There's an ongoing theme of body-shaming (in the context of people who lie about their appearance online) that never really goes away. Treatment of female characters is so-so. One character spends several chapters concerned that he has been pressuring another person into a romantic/sexual relationship (he's wrong, mostly). Homophobia mostly takes the form of invisibility and ignorance/self-denial.
Spoilers below.
Tiny character guide, for context:
When I was live-chatting my reading to
kiyoshi_chan I was using the MC/ML labels I've seen on Novel Updates, and once I was in the habit it was hard to break, so this post continues that trend (for better or worse).MC=Main Character, Jing Huan: college student who has bought a female character in a large MMO in order to get revenge on a player who slighted his cousin/jiejie
ML=Male Lead, Xiang Huaizhi: college student and supremely powerful MMO player who is (unknowingly) being catfished by the junior he keeps running into around campus (spoilers: he wasn't the one who slighted MC's jiejie)
Reactions and notes:
- As soon as it was established that both of them were into basketball I knew there would be a homoerotic basketball sequence, and was proven correct a few chapters later
- However, I did *not* predict the homoerotic gaming sequence where MC admires how ML's hand looks on his mouse
- It establishes in the first few chapters that the reason MC is so devoted to his cousin is that he was once kidnapped to be sold(!) and she rescued him. This is never mentioned again.
- Similarly, it establishes that the reason for MC's terror of insects is that he once visited his hometown and was locked in an abandoned building for an entire day. This is accepted without question by ML... and never mentioned again.
- It's interesting that once you get past ML's "strong, silent type" front you realise he's quite trusting and generous, which explains some of his past bad experiences, and of course makes MC's job easier...
- Accordingly, the period as ML is figuring out MC has been lying to him but isn't certain why was simultaneously cute and painful. That poor boy.
- The period after MC realising he knows ML in real life but before ML finds out that he was being catfished and MC did not, in fact, have a secret crush on his MMO persona, was the most awkward thing ever. The angst that followed was completely justified and thankfully very short-lived. (Because they're just good nice boys who like each other a lot ;_;)
- Jiejie really needed to be in it more, given she's the catalyst of the plot! Even as a character MC is texting regularly would have been enough.
- The characters are 19-20 and to me they really felt like it, with all the good and bad traits of that age range.
- Their fumbling "first relationship"-type romance once everything was sorted out was so cute!
- The various cases of unintentional public revelations by way of live-streaming was extremely difficult for my embarrassment-sensitive brain, but the characters get over it quickly enough.
I particularly liked:
- MC is so bad at pretending to be a girl. The actual girl characters were so baffled by his efforts!
- The scene where ML, having realised he knows MC in real life, is chatting to MC about the "girl" MC likes, and MC says she is a bit of a bad person and ML is offended until he remembers his in-game character's "slag" reputation...
- Probably mostly as a result of the serialised web-novel format, it spends a lot of time establishing the characters and building their relationship and attraction to each other (both physical and emotional) before the truth comes out, which to me is so important in a romance.
- That both of them had in-game and real-life friends, and also parents and family members! It really added to the immersion.
- MC starts sending his friends cute girly emotes and they are terribly confused
- MC's complete failure to separate his social media between real life and MMO (catfish) life, which I was initially horrified at, is perfectly lamp-shaded and comes back to bite him.
This book reminds me of:
- Scum Villain's Self Saving System: The protagonist has a very low opinion of the MMO he's playing and frequently complains about it internally while in-character as a cutesy girl
- That one Inception fic where Arthur and Eames play World of Warcraft
PS: Many thanks to
alias_sqbr for putting me onto this novel!--
Aside: I'm still trying to figure out the tone/format of my reviews. Are they for people who are familiar with the canon? People who aren't but are interested in trying it out? Both? I think I want to strike a balance between the two but I'm struggling with it. This one leans towards the former.
no subject
Date: 2020-05-05 11:12 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-05-05 12:00 pm (UTC)I can credit you for telling me about this novel if you like (since I pre-empted your post and all) - I'm never sure if people like that sort of credit or not.
no subject
Date: 2020-05-05 12:22 pm (UTC)I don't mind with that sort of credit either way!
no subject
Date: 2020-05-05 12:48 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-05-08 12:02 pm (UTC)I don't mind if you don't bother, though I do always enjoy knowing my recs worked for someone.
no subject
Date: 2020-05-06 01:36 am (UTC)(The balance between writing for potential new readers of a book and existing readers of the book is tricky! I've found that my book posts have sort of ended up falling into three categories:
1.) this book is newish or little-known and I don't expect a lot of people will have read it/will want to discuss it yet, so I'm going to attempt to mostly describe it without spoilers in the hopes that people who are interested can then discover it
2.) I'm expecting that at least a few people who read this post will have read the book and will enjoy spoilery discussions so I'm going to post some spoilers under a cut in the hopes that people who are interested can then discuss them
3.) the book is either a.) obscure enough or b.) well-known enough and most importantly c.) wild enough that I'm going to discuss spoilers in loving detail purely for the sake of my own entertainment
In any case, I'm excited that you're doing them!)
no subject
Date: 2020-05-06 08:04 am (UTC)I really enjoy your reviews! I think you hit a great balance between the potential audiences, and they have a lot of fun personality to them.
no subject
Date: 2020-05-06 11:54 am (UTC)