wow, a couple consisting of a sweet yet bitchy coward who's super smart behind his air of idiocy pining what he thinks is one-sidedly after his older and colder sex machine of a man who barks orders at him who also thinks he's pining one-sidedly after the aforementioned coward? and their whole miscommunication centers around one always saying too much, the other never saying enough, and neither of them saying what they need or want from each other? fantastic, gimme 15 of em right now
Do any of you have comfort food porn? A smutty book, series, or story that you go back to over and over again whenever the mood strikes? For me, it's Dakaretai Otoko Ichii ni Odosarete Imasu or "I'm Being Harassed By the Sexiest Man of the Year"
I'm trying to dissect why it appeals to me so much. Like everyone has their kinks yet I really like how:
Everyone is a working adult.
It establishes the main couple fast.
Love me some size difference.
Our pillow-princess bottom Takato Saijou is a famous sarcastic, spiteful actor who is a living example of "I want that twink obliterated." And then in almost every chapter, he gets obliterated into a sobbing, drooling mess. Very satisfying.
Our perverted angel top Junta Azumaya who is borderline yandere literally stayed an actor to get closer to Takato and loves, loves, loves him to death. Both in and out of the bedroom. Plus this horny puppy can cook.
There's no socioeconomic power imbalance. No master over slave, employer vs. employee, teacher abusing power over their student, or situation where one person has the power to completely destroy the livelihood of their partner. (Though nothing's wrong with those kinks in general)
It's funny as hell.
Affection and attraction aren't one-sided. There isn't a "Wait, am I gay?" moment. Though there are problematic issues with consent, especially at the beginning of this story, our bottom very quickly (in ch. 3) shows how much he wants to make this relationship work. Even making decisions to protect his partner at all costs. There's enough fluff to drown in.
Plus the sex is gratuitous and has some nice panels here and there.
It has a manga, an anime (that changes a few things for better consent), and a movie! If you want a fun time, check it out!
Hello there! Do you like social media fics, livestreaming fails, or celebrity-fan interactions? How about age gap relationships with some light idol/fan power imbalance? Relationships with a more experienced, forward, and slightly dominant top and an absolute terror of a bottom who deletes entire decades off the life of his coach but is suddenly "a fairly well-behaved kid" every time his captain is anywhere in the vicinity? Are you interested in an absolutely hilarious, fluffy novel where you get to see your soon-to-be-favorite pro gamers completely demolish another team in multiple League of Legends matches? And then get in trouble for publicly calling them trash.
Well then I have just the novel for you!
I Can Do It (我行让我来) by Jiang Zi Bei (酱子贝)
Jian Rong looks so sweet and innocent here. You'd never know he was Public Enemy Number One for literally every LoL player ever.
...Well, almost every LoL player.
Novel Updates Link
So guess who just read their very first danmei novel? 😊 Which is really weird to think about since I've been reading BL for decades, but I guess it's always been in comic form.
This was probably a bad novel to start with tbh since it was really unbelievably fun (and funny) and had so many tropes I liked, with said tropes being repeated over and over and over again.
Seriously I think Jian Rong gets caught in 4k simping for Lu Boyuan like 40 times, including 20 times by Lu Boyuan himself, and every single time it recharged my life battery for an entire week.
I've probably unintentionally raised the bar for the next novel far too high by reading ICDI before anything else.
That said, I totally recommend this novel if you're like me and adore reading social media AUs on AO3 or like seeing quick-witted, genuinely talented people completely own others (and then get owned in turn by their very own fans lmfao).
It's a really relaxed, cute romance with steady but slow progress (seriously this is a SLOOOOOW burn), where most of the romantic conflicts are pretty much always resolved in the next chapter, if not the same one. That said, the top is actually pretty dang forward and not really all that subtle about his interest (both to Jian Rong and to the world at large) and I loved that the "cool, aloof" character was openly asking his fans for the link to Jian Rong's secret Lu Boyuan simp account on chapter freaking ten.
I will mention that this is only an M-rated, possibly even just 15+ rated, romance so if you're hoping for some hardcore XXX smut to pay off the slowburn, you won't get it here. You will however get some really suggestive text that doesn't try to hide what happened offscreen, as well as being able to see Jian Rong's soul attempt to leave his body after Lu Boyuan buys him ointment for his poor abused you know what. Which Lu Boyuan gives him in front of his own mother. Because he really is that unrepentant.
Most of the tension comes from the actual LoL matches themselves, with the novel really focusing on Jian Rong, AKA Soft, becoming a pro player. So if you are a hardcore romance-focused reader this might not be for you since there are entire chapters dedicated just to describing matches. But trust me, if you're even remotely into that sort of thing they are so, soooo satisfying and the Tiny Salt team does an amazing job of explaining LoL terms for us noobs.
Speaking of which, this novel has been recently announced as being licensed, so if you want to read it on the website I linked, I suggest you get on it pronto!
Anyway, here's some fun scenes to help entice you:
(It was so hard picking just a few)
[Crap wait a sec, look at the first program on the streamer’s taskbar!!!]
Jian Rong stared blankly before turning to look at his own taskbar—[StarTV_R-ong’s Personal Homepage]
………it was the homepage of the side account that he had just opened in order to load money onto it.
Before Jian Rong could react, someone had already sent out a comment saying that they had successfully found the side account’s personal homepage.
Darkness flashed across Jian Rong’s vision. “Wait a moment, I can explain…”
(Narrator Voice) He can't explain.
Jian Rong wasn’t interested in group chats, nor did he know what to say. He swept a glance over the chat before he went to put down his phone and continue playing ranked.
[R: @R-ong]
[R-ong: Hello everyone, very pleased to meet you all.]
A few seconds later.
[R-ong: [rose]]
Instant change of attitude. 🤣
"R" is, of course, Road, AKA Lu Boyuan. As you can see, Jian Rong is very well-behaved... for at least one individual.
“You’re… still going to stream?” Ding-ge said hesitantly, “Maybe you shouldn’t stream for the next few days, and don’t look at all that stuff on Weibo or Tieba either. Right now, there are a lot of moronic antis who are stirring things up about you online.”
“I’m just going to casually cheat out some gifts.” Jian Rong skillfully adjusted his peripherals. “Also, why does someone else have to stir things up about me? I can do it myself.”
Ding-ge still wanted to stop him, but Jian Rong had already pressed down on the “start stream” button.
What the eyes don’t see, the heart doesn’t grieve over. Ding-ge covered his eyes and walked away.
Poor Ding-ge. He must have killed three people in his previous life to deserve Jian "I am perfectly capable of starting a fight on my own" Rong in this one.
Jian Rong had just typed out “dumbass” when the practice room door opened.
Lu Boyuan had draped a random jacket over himself, and he was wearing a disheveled short-sleeved shirt inside and loose pajama pants on the bottom. The string on the front of his pants weren’t even tied.
He stuffed both hands in his pockets and walked over to stand behind Jian Rong.
“Insulting someone?” Lu Boyuan had slept for a while, causing some exhaustion to seep into his voice.
Jian Rong: “…”
He blinked blankly for a moment before he deleted the word he had typed out and said, “No, it was a typo.”
Did I mention earlier that he doesn't only get caught by his fans? He gets caught by Lu Boyuan all. the. time. Doing all kinds of things.
Lmfao rest in peace, Jian Rong.
Yuan Qian: “Don’t worry, it’ll happen soon. Maybe Pine will bring a sister-in-law back for you tomorrow.”
Xiao Bai shook his head. “Not a chance. With his poker face, I bet he’ll still be an old single virgin by the time he’s thirty.”
Youyou said, “You could just find a girlfriend yourself, problem solved.”
Pine raised his eyes.
The side ship! It's not nearly as focused on as the main ship, of course, but it's so sweet and they even have their own little mini story about getting together in the novel extras. 🥰
Upon seeing how many comments Jian Rong was receiving in the barrage, Xiao Bai felt like this marketing tactic was quite effective. He was about to copy it when he saw the number of viewers in his stream suddenly decrease dramatically. In the span of a few seconds, over four thousand viewers dropped.
He turned pale with fright. “Damn, I haven’t even shown my socks yet, how come you all ran away! …oh, my ge started streaming? That’s fine then.”
The instant Lu Boyuan started his stream, the viewer counts in all the other LoL streams would always drop. Never mind the TTC members, even the other LoL streamers were used to it by now.
Lu Boyuan leaned back in his chair, eating his youtiao. His hair was disheveled, and he sat in a careless manner.
He was idling on the game client and clicked on the PC version of Happy Fight the Landlord as he chatted lazily with the barrage.
“Mn, a task assigned by our manager, marketing the merch.”
I included this one because ngl Lu Boyuan gave me vague "Yoo Joonghyuk getting to actually be a pro gamer" vibes and the feeling of reading a tilted ORV No Scenarios AU was one of the things that first drew me into this novel. (Though I can happily say that Lu Boyuan very quickly became his own person.) That said, I adore canons where you have something of an OP "Protagonist" who's just the best and so I was thrilled to see that ICDI really emphasized Lu Boyuan's fame, talent, and respect in the community.
“The things I said in the interview,” Jian Rong paused for a second. “Will I be penalized for it?”
Ding-ge hiked up an eyebrow, somewhat surprised. “Why would you be penalized?”
Jian Rong: “I insulted Rish and called him a dog.”
Lu Boyuan almost burst out laughing.
Jian Rong is a national treasure, your honor.
Lu Boyuan: “There are security cameras in the stairwell.”
Jian Rong immediately went silent.
He sucked in a deep breath and raked a hand through his hair. “Forget it then, let’s go back and practice…”
Lu Boyuan straightened upright. Before Jian Rong could turn around, Lu Boyuan gripped his wrist and pulled him over to the corner, pressing him against the wall.
Not much noise was produced with this movement, and the subpar sound-activated lights swiftly went dark.
I'm obsessed with the elevator pitch for Till The World Ends being: Serial Killer Gang put Sunshine boy on their hit list unbeknownst that Sunshine boys bf is a full fledged psycho himself
Have you ever wanted to desperately crave pancakes but in the softest, queerest way possible while watching a coming of age style narrative about a man approaching forty and his deeply thirsty but also gentle coworker who has a fantastic hamster cheek agenda?
Then you need to watch Old Fashion Cupcake!
And if you need more reasons... how about the story of an adult queer man rediscovering his joy in life by playing as a teenaged girl to give himself freedom to enjoy sweets on the advice of his younger coworker and watching them flirt and grow closer and get nervous and talk and cook for each other and be miserable when they have to pretend to fit into the heterosexual expectations of society?
How about a beautiful story about growing into a queer identity no matter what age you are centered in the idea of shared food and time and feeings?
How about a gorgeously told story about falling in love with someone who already loves you but being afraid to express your love because it goes against the life you've always expected and he's handsome and a decade younger than you and free and happy and you don't want to trap him with you but you still love him so much and he loves you and you don't know what to do?
How about pancakes and parfaits and candy and homecooked meals and a perfect pierced egg yolk and food as connection, food as love, food as lust?
Hello! I’m a huge fan of your blog; I devoured all of your posts on the industry and tropes that I could find, because I love the Analysis of it all, and then proceeded to make myself a watchlist from your top lists. It’s been a great ride so far! I’ve realized my favorite type of narrative is one where the two main characters are a unified team against an external threat (so Bad Buddy vs. the parents, Untamed (the book moreso) vs. politics, etc.). Any recs where the lovers are a united front?
Oh! That's...
Low angst high conflict BL!
Some of my favorites.
You've probably already seen a lot of them, low angst is not BL's strong point but lemme spit ball a list at you.
He's Coming to Me = boys vs cold case Thai style
HIStory 3: Trapped = boys vs cold case Taiwanese style
Manner of Death - boys vs MURDER + sex trafficking ring +...
Color Rush = boys vs society
Until We Meet Again = boys vs family & fate
Not Me = boys vs the world
Long Time No See = boys vs each other, but not in the normal way - with actual punching and knives and stuff
Not Quite BLs
3 Will Be Free = boys (and girl) vs assassins
SCI Mystery = boys vs serial killers
The Devil Judge = boys vs corruption
Word of Honor = boys vs... honestly who knows? robes mostly, sleeves occasionally, hair too probably
Binge read this manhwa called Sweet Guy today. I do recommend it! There is a lot of triggering content within it, so proceed with extreme caution. Warnings are: non-con, dub-con, blood, murder, violence, alcohol use ... I think that covers it pretty well? If you have podophobia there are a couple pages you won't like.
Anywayssss, Li-Da is Eddie and Ho-Sang is Richie. At least, that's how I'll cast it if I ever write a fusion. I would love to, so much, because it's a wonderful concept and also made me have feelings for like the first fic I ever wrote in this fandom that I couldn't finish.
