#baihe recs

[sillysistersusi]

So, I have a question to everyone out there who likes baihe novels. I've been thinking about starting to read one (I only read danmei so far) and I wanted to ask you all about your opinion.

I wanted to start with 'the beauty's blade' since it isn't a really long book and this way I could find out if I like baihe or not (I think I will, since I'm a not really straight girl yk), but I'm afraid to start it and then end up not liking it.

I also thought about reading 'female general and eldest princess' but I heard from a lot of people that it drags on a lot and that the princess is very manipulative and toxic ... I, however, have no idea how much of this is true and what I should do now.

So I would like to beg the baihe fandom for their help😅🥰🥰

[lady-of-the-spirit]

C-drama fans are there any good series that are like. Lesbians. Or lesbians but not explicitly so but it's obvious they're lesbians in subtext.

I prefer fantasy series but if you've got anything, I'm open.

[dragonji]

mutuals im getting desperate have any of you read 2ha. what is the general consensus if so... is it worth the trigger warnings all over the nu reviews or am I better off sticking to my 'so obscure theres Maybe 4 pieces of fanart on here. if ur lucky' type series

[guidaozongshi]

illustration for Reading The Remnants (问棺 - Wen Guan )

It's a Xuanhuan Baihe novel with supernatural elements.

[obstinaterixatrix]

Dai Yi is a female geography teacher who has just transferred to high school. She has a crush on her colleague, the popular female teacher, Zhang Guo, and she was about to grow closer with her crush. However, Zhang Guo unexpectedly announced that she was engaged.

happy femslash february, this one's a bit of a cruel rec--it's been on hiatus since 2022, so it's stalled for the foreseeable future at 11 chapters... but I think the art and writing is really fun

also, I do like how the love interest gives very Weird Vibes throughout this whole thing

this is a charm point. To Me. I hope someday the creative team comes back to this series…

[kirbysorbet]

Trying so hard to finish clear and muddy loss of love but i stg if they talk about the salt tax ONE MORE TIME

[aylinaliens]

reading 2+ danmei every week has skewed my perception of how long books truly are. what do you mean this book is only 300 pages? that’s too short. i’m in the mood for a book 2k+ pages or longer

[auberginenikki]

finally finished reading jwqs! and err its good, its really good but i also remembered why i had it on hiatus for so long.. the last 20-ish(?) chapters were just not as good as the rest of the novel imo, and obviously thats not saying much since the novel is like 300+ chapters.

it might just be personal taste but the angst just got too much (like i stopped feeling sorry for the characters and just got tired) and most of the cool scheming, plotting and political intrigue was done by then, which was my favorite part of the novel. actually even the romance wasnt as good anymore cause they were just miserable the whole time.. lol idk the resolution of the main conflicts wasnt really as satisfying as i thought it would be and the last few chapters just got reaally long and really slow to me.

plus some plot points just didnt feel resolved..? we dont even know know what happens with the main antagonist. and the last 2 guy to get revenge on.. well its not satisfying at all, pretty much mentioned in passing at the end

it's still a great novel and i'd totally recommend it. but im the type of person who won't ever return to a story if i did not like the ending, even if i love 90% of the book. idk it might just be me because every review ive seen has been really positive so its more down to personal taste.

[merinnan]

I am in the mood to read dog blood webnovels that are HE. Anyone have any recommendations? Danmei or baihe preferred, but not required.

[dangermousie]

Ok reading Princess Agents gave me a hankering to read a novel with what the original set up of it was - warlord with a grudge x capable assassin or soldier OTP.

Pls give me your web novel recs. I don’t care if they are het, danmei or baihe.

Don’t care if there is a translation (tho if there is, that is of course awesome.)

Thank youuuuu!

[thegreymoon]

Hey, wlw c-novel friends!

I just got hooked on the potential of a f/f ship in a drama where nothing even remotely satisfying will ever come of it and am feeling frustrated and sad.

Does anyone have any baihe recs for me? My criteria are that it's a) good, b) translated into English and c) completed (but I'd settle for regularly updating).

I've mostly been reading danmei so far and I have no idea where to start.

[web-novel-recs]

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1. About Me

Web, Sunnie

Pronouns: he/they/any except she/her or it/its (masculine in non-gender neutral languages)

Main: @weepingfireflies

Other Blogs: @web-novel-polls & @incorrect-web-novels

Icon - Taemi from Heavenly Archive's Young Master

Header - Kim Dokja from Omniscient Reader's Viewpoint (made by @/oskmey)

My Reading List

Mastodon: @/weepingfireflies@/blorbo.social

Hablo muy mal el español. Soy solo un niño pequeño 🥺

2. Tags / Las Etiquetas

In English – En Español

Overall - En General

not a rec - no es una recomendación

web speaks - web habla

recs - recomendaciónes

translations - traducciones

unread / reading / read - no leído / leyendo / leí

my recs - mi recomendaciónes

Type - El Tipo

novel recs - recomendaciones de las novelas

drama recs (includes cdramas, kdramas, jdramas, etc.) - recomendaciones de dramas (coreano, chino, japonés, etc.)

webcomic recs (includes manhua, manhwa, manga, etc.) - recomendaciones de cómics 

fanfic recs (includes any fanfiction from a web novel source) - recomendaciones del fanfiction

Genre - El Género

Action - Acción

BL / Boy's Love (includes danmei)

General 

GL / Girl's Love (includes baihe)

Harem

Horror 

Mystery - misterio

Sci Fi - ciencia ficción

Romance

Origin - El Origen

CN: Chinese Web Novels, manhua, cdramas, etc.- China

KR: Korean Web Novels, manhwa, kdramas, etc. - Corea

JP: Japanese light novels, manga, jdramas, etc. - Japón

3. Read Alongs

[lizhly-writes]

does anyone have some baihe novel recs

[stormblessed95]

Thanks for answering me, Storm (from the anon that give BL rec and asked about shipping)...Also thank you so much for your kind words....

If you don't mind me give another rec, this time about GL. Have you read :

*) Clear and Muddy Loss of Love (JWQS) by Qing Jun Mo Xiao [Baihe Novel]

*) Her Tale of Shim Chong (story by Seri & art by Biwan) [Manhwa]

*) Doughnuts Under a Crescent Moon by Shio Usui [Manga]

Hope you can find something that you like, Storm.

Sorry if you don't like some or any of the works above.

Hope you have a nice day...

I haven't read them, but I'll look them up!! I'm always looking for more good Sapphic reads!

[gaywatch]

Hi, I just wanted to let you know I really appreciate your reactions. I have been feeling sad because of my exam results and your videos and reading streams (yes I'm a huge mxtx and priest stan, also pdl for baihe) always cheer me up. I'm an introvert and while I do rec stuff to people, I feel like none of them feel about it the way I do. And you DO! I'm so glad I found someone who loves EVERYTHING as me! Really grateful that you make after dark public too as those are my whole personality lol

dsjkldfskdflsjfkdljv I appreciate this so much anon, I really do. Can we hug? We need to hug.

[mejomonster]

I'm reading a research paper on 同志文学 and it was written around 2010. I'm really curious how the literature landscape has changed. The paper makes no mention so far of 耽美, so I am wondering if perhaps it was less big back then? But also I know there's fairly old danmei stories online.

Tongzhi stories specifically seem to be majority written by queer writers, and read by queer readers (when this paper was written about 30% of readers were straight and referred to as zhi tongzhi straight comrades, or 腐女 which I'm pretty sure nowadays is used similar to fujioshi - a term to describe or insult danmei/BL readers). Danmei in contrast seems to have a majority straight readership, in the sense that it's more widely popular generally (queer people read and many straight people widespread read it). So I'm wondering if when danmei got an upswing in popularity, which it did by the time we got multiple danmei show/donghua/manhua/audio drama adaptations in recent years, did tongzhi novels become more niche? Becoming more of a separate section of the online literature landscape, more closed off and read by primarily queer people staying out of the limelight of public popularity (compared to danmei)? Or did tongzhi literature partly get taken by wider audiences as similar? Because when I looked up the difference between tongzhi xiaoshuo and danmei I'm apparently far from the only person who Google that lol (I got a lot of chinese results I'm about to read through). And when I looked up tongzhi xiaoshuo on its own, I didn't see sites that specifically were posting tongzhi fiction, instead I saw a lot of tongzhi/danmei combined rec lists and sites that include tongzhi within their wider collection of stuff. (Though this research paper lists sites at the end so I'll be able to go find them eventually - I couldn't find BoySky 阳光地带 though which is what the research paper listed by name). So far based on the paper, tongzhi literature seems more like realistic setting queer literature in America (so maybe Heartstopper, maybe Call Me By Your Name, not so much Sarah Waters novels since she goes more multi genre with both queer romance and thriller historical). I'm curious if there is thriller historical tongzhi literature. I'm also curious how to find the lesbian tongzhi stories, because they are mentioned as existing in this paper, but when searching tongzhi xiaoshuo like I mentioned mostly danmei-related stories are coming up which are men/men.

Then there's baihei, which I'm not sure was as popular for the Last 20 years as danmei was, if it's like other parts of the world and GL just generally being less widespread. Baihei also has kicked up in popularity as of Very Recently - we saw Couple of Mirrors this past year, baihe webnovels so popular English donghua reviewers mention them and hope to see them adapted as much as people were hype about mdzs, more short form Baihei web shows, inside and outside of China more GL shows are getting started period. So like... danmei has some historical context. I'm not sure when baihe popped up, and I'd love to find out (I'm going to Google it) but so far history of queer women in Europe, America, or China I've struggled to ever find any fucking info (except victorian women marriages that's about all I've found). So I worry there will be little research on baihe and when it started and how it evolved. I'm curious if it's connected to tongzhi wenxue, since tongzhi wenxue includes lesbian fiction. Or if it it's a completely separate genre (in the sense that like.. danmei with its focus on beauty and that it does not strictly need to include queer realism makes it a separate entity from tongzhi literature, although some danmei does cross the line into feeling a bit like both danmei genre specific qualities and very queer literature general qualities... sort of like how Manner of Death and Not Me thai dramas both contain BL tropes but also just feel generally like thrillers with queer romance in them). So yeah, I'm curious when baihe started online and what got it growing. (I would guess to some degree it grew as danmei grew, since both bring in straight audiences along with queer audiences so it's a bigger general audience of readers, and as danmei gets bigger people expect more care given to baihe, which in some way has been happening in most countries that start with queer men stories in media then gradually more queer women stories start getting produced).

Feel free to ignore. If anyone has links to development of tongzhi wenxue, danmei and baihe, I'd be very curious. Articles can be in chinese. I'm looking for these discussions right now but I'm not particularly good at searching for information in chinese.