#symk

I'm glad you're enjoying SYMK! It's a fun series for what it is, and I love Mimi/Zhang Li and Veelaveesa/Evtiti. There's some pretty art and neat ideas in it, a lot of fun humor, and it explores trauma from sexual assault in interesting ways. Also it's just fun when Mimi is thirsty over Zhang Li. And I'm glad you appreciated my summary of the censorship problems!

I'm not particularly sure what "proportional" means in this context. Wen Yuan is generally a good artist, though their art does have some issues (mostly Akinatton's design, it's just... mmm... Imu is also kind of strangely drawn).

I'm also not sure what a flag system is meant to mean for fictional characters. Red flags are for real people and situations, not folks who don't exist (e.g., I got into the situation and there was a red flag, so I left). Like... I'm not interested in dating or hanging out with or working with the characters, I'm interested in reading about them, so what is the value of a flag system here? The goal is to see how the characters interact with each other. And antagonists are meant to be antagonists. Generally, the best characters are messy. They make for great stories. I know this flag system is popular on booktok, which is one reason I avoid booktok. If everyone was squeaky clean for that green flag, whatever that means, the story would be boring.

I am writing the following while full of love for the series, as someone who's written three fics for it, bought a lot of merch for it, including the first three volumes of it in Chinese, and buys episodes of it on Kuaikan and Tappytoon. I've promoted it on multiple platforms, and suggested it to a number of people I know. It's a good series. If you don't like criticism of it, I would stop reading this post now. Here's a panel from Episode 93 of The Bois looking prette for buffer.

There's a lot of reasons I think the fandom is unfortunately small, and I'm not quite sure how those issues will be surmounted before it's complete or just outside the passage of time for the fandom to grow more, though I think the fandom is bigger than it looks, at least in China and Thailand. I've been in the fandom since October 2022, and at least from my perception, it hasn't grown much in that time, though it helps that there's a lot more story and an official English translation now.

Part of the issue is tag hunting. The most popular tags are SYMK and See You My King and seeyoumyking, but people who only read in say, English or any non-Chinese language, are statistically less likely to know that, especially if they find it through Tappytoon or Tapas, where that is not its English name. It's the official English name on Chinese merch, but that's not the name that English licensors use for it. So a small fandom is dispersed across many different tags (e.g., the three English names, the Chinese name, the transliteration of the Chinese names, the initialism, an assortment of versions of the name with and without spaces, on top of tags grabbing anything with "king" in it). This hasn't been an issue for other danmei, but at least every tag gets decently popular in a lot of those danmei. There's one particular danmei that is so popular that the accidental misspelling of a tag is ridiculously populated. On Blue Sky Social, of all places. But SYMK can't even really populate one tag, let alone a misspelling.

It seems to have a decent audience on Weibo (from what little I've seen), but even then, that's a drop in an ocean (though I think the signed copies of the books sell pretty fast in China, which speaks to fandom power). What little fandom I find outside Weibo is mostly the same small handful of people sharing screencaps and a couple cosplayers. It has less than a dozen pieces of fanart floating around and it's not spoken of much on the danmei servers I'm in (though I did end up in one server for Europeans who seemed really into it). It's got something of an audience on Instagram, but Instagram is a pain in the ass to navigate, especially because it's even more full of people just spamming screengrabs. (But I mean if you're looking for people to talk to about it... maybe try Instagram? I guess?)

But I think the central issue is that there are (to my knowledge) only really two big boys love comics based on Egyptian stuff, SYMK and ENNEAD. There are other boys love comics based on Egyptian history, culture, and mythology, like Cairo and エジプト神の恋人, but ENNEAD and SYMK are the two big ones that I know of, and there's little else outside Cairo and エジプト神の恋人; and Cairo is the only other one with an official English translation. Most other Egyptian comics I'm aware of aren't BL and/or aren't romance at all. Dear Monster, which is the next best thing, only has one Egyptian god romance in it, the other characters are just non-Egyptian fantasy creatures, and it's a visual novel. Pantheon by Hamish Steele, Oh, Suddenly, Egyptian God! by Yuka, 災禍の神は願わない by 尾羊英, and Legends of the Nile by Dooyong Jang and Bohyun Kim aren't BL or romance.

Why this matters is that comparison is unavoidable. ENNEAD has an older fandom (SYMK started in like 2022, ENNEAD existed in some form in 2017 or slightly before), which is larger, and, much as I do really love SYMK (again, I have like two shelves of merch, I've written three fics for it, and would love to write more, and recommend it whenever I can), ENNEAD is just, on all fronts (writing, art, character development, plotting, dynamics, the various themes it discusses, drama, and focusing on Egyptian mythology), the better comic. And I think most people who find out about SYMK can tell, and thus SYMK looks worse by comparison, and so folks have no interest in what SYMK has to offer as a result. Which is unfortunate, because I think SYMK is enjoyable on its own merits and even if you also like ENNEAD. There have been a number of folks in ENNEAD fandom who've recommended SYMK (myself included), particularly for folks who want more at least vaguely similar things to ENNEAD (I originally found out about SYMK through an ENNEAD fan Discord), but it's led to very little, at least in my experience.

I am also notoriously bad at getting people into new fandoms. I have very few followers/subscribers whom I've gotten to try other fandoms I write for (though I'm grateful to every single one who gives other fandoms a chance!). But I'm decently popular or at least well-known in ENNEAD as a writer and I think I've seen... a couple of my followers at best give any of my SYMK fics a try. Folks will try my other Korean fandom stuff, or my other popular danmei fandom fics, or my Japanese fandom fics, and even stuff from outside Asia. But not SYMK.

SYMK and ENNEAD are also very different comics, not just because the former is Chinese and the latter is Korean, but also because SYMK is an isekai story focusing on cross-cultural clash and political corruption, while ENNEAD focuses more on the failures of justice systems, how families enable abuse, what it means to be human (or at least how you find your purpose in life), how we engage with mythology (of the supernatural and political kind), truth, and responsibility. There are similarities (e.g., both stories focus on power dynamics, trauma from assault, sibling drama, anxiety and self-hatred, and how people who have been hurt can find love). And there are some very odd direct similarities to the point that I kind of wonder if Wen Yuan has read and/or is a fan of ENNEAD...

But my point here is that even though I think SYMK is not as good as ENNEAD, it's still good for what it is, and people should be able to appreciate it (like it's just more kind of Egyptian BL, what's not to like?). But... that's where SYMK's other issues likely come into play. Centrally, despite the fact it does go to dark places, many of which are also in ENNEAD (e.g., sexual assault, cannibalism, slavery, brother-brother incest, how strong men struggle to be viewed as victims of assault and find help as a result), it's just... too fluffy. The dynamic between the leads has, generally, been too boring. Near the end of the last season, it got pretty decent (around when Narcissus was really screwing with both Mimi and Zhang Li). But before that it was just kind of back and forth going nowhere, and the characters were inconsistently written.

Like people promote SYMK because it's, according to them, "everything ENNEAD fails to be" or whatever because they hate the dark stuff in ENNEAD and just want fluff (or at least think complaining loudly that this is what they hate and what they want makes them a better person). Or it's so much "better", and yet, despite the fact there's a lot of comic for SYMK now, very few people actually read or care about it outside China (and parts of Europe, and Thailand). Like, a popular criticism of ENNEAD is that sexual assault in narratives is fine, but not as much as what's in ENNEAD. And okay, fine, I say: read SYMK. It's got less of that.

-cue cricket noises-

So it seems like people prefer all that awful, awful non-con overload in ENNEAD after all. -pretending to be shocked because actually ENNEAD is well-written, well-drawn, and fun, lots of people do like that stuff, and people are just shoving their personal shame onto others-

Don't get me wrong, I know SYMK appeals to a lot of people who aren't satisfied with ENNEAD or just don't want what's in ENNEAD. But SYMK had a faster English translation during its publication cycle than ENNEAD did. SYMK has 93 episodes. The leads are together, it's got merch out the wazoo. People complained that it took forever to get an English translation of ENNEAD, that it has no merch (which isn't true at least now), and there's not enough romance in it. ENNEAD even had a month hiatus in Korean recently. And that led to no jumps in SYMK's fandom that I noticed. Something is keeping people from getting into SYMK and I can only conclude... it's at least some of the stuff people insist SYMK does "better" on, because people (myself included) disagree SYMK does better at it.

Or at least the things SYMK allegedly does better at aren't enough to surmount its less great aspects.

And we're not getting into how, because SYMK is Chinese, it's way more censored than most things. Like in a way I haven't seen even on other danmei. I admit I haven't explored all that many danmei manhua, but it's really egregious (not surprising; people get arrested in China for this kind of stuff due to the government's homophobia). And I think that bores a lot of people. It's too fluffy, too safe, too censored. Will-they-won't-they tension with a bit of humor just isn't grabbing people. And while I love Veelaveesa and Evtiti and find them cute and funny and love every single panel we get of them the best (like I both hope for and fear more Evtiti merch, it is my kryptonite, save my wallet), there's just not enough tension in their relationship to appeal to most folks, either.

Like let's compare: ENNEAD had a kiss between Seth and Osiris in S1E11, the Horuseth kiss in S1E14, and a sex scene that started in S1E29. SYMK had some hand holding and cuddling between Zhang Li and Stone early on... a maybe almost kiss in Episode 4, and then... nothing really until Episode 19, when Veelaveesa and Evtiti kiss and lounge in bed together (which is wonderful, but it's not sex, nor is it the leads). The leads have some daydreaming, and more recently some kissing and cuddling, but they don't really get it on (outside a dream of Mimi's) until Episode 92 (and it's some light touching, chest squishing, a couple kisses, some good make-outs, and then one shadow sequence before they're just on a bed together, versus multiple longer sex scenes in ENNEAD). SYMK is a decently chaste manhua, seemingly due to censorship. ENNEAD delivers much earlier, and in larger quantities. And despite the fact that Zhang Li and Mimi get along faster and stay together (in some respect) earlier than Horuseth, that is clearly not enough to keep an audience of much size (outside China). People can go on about how much "healthier" Zhang Li and Mimi are. But that doesn't seem to be grabbing anyone. SYMK is not the alternate BL I see any of the many ENNEAD fans I follow talking about, or an alternative people who dislike ENNEAD suggest, even when including manhua. Heck, since I started more regularly browsing tags for it, I see it brought up even less than I used to, which is bizarre, because I assumed the sex scene would bring in more fans.

The leads just aren't as fun, or even on their own, that fun. I like them, I like writing about them, I want to see what happens to them. I wish them the best future. They both have interesting struggles, Mimi in particular. But they're also kind of generally boring, even without Seth and Horus to compare to. Zhang Li is whatever the story needs him to be. Mimi bounces back and forth (partially because of Zhang Li's nonsense). The miscommunication becomes frustrating.

The antagonists aren't very compelling, either. Sutter is fun, but he vanished for a good chunk of the recent plot (and also his character feels a bit inconsistent) and now he's permagone. The church members are just irritating. The faux Set/Osiris priest died before doing much. Sutter's zombie never got much development (his most interesting moment is right before he's presumably dismembered). Mimi and Sutter's brother has been dead the entire time. We still don't know why Zhang Li was transported back. Narcissus is... whatever the plot needs him to be, which is kind of boring. So you've got a kind of vague, wandering plot, a meandering lead romance (with a side canon pairing who don't show much, especially since they're apart for most of the story), and that's... it.

Another central issue is that it doesn't fully embrace the Egyptian stuff. It's more of a mix of pseudo Greek-Egyptian stuff, and that's going to frustrate people looking for more... not exactly accurate, but more actually focused on Greek and/or Egyptian stuff. Since it's fantasy, and fiction, the author can do whatever they want, but in SYMK's case, that often feels like the Egyptian stuff in particular is there for the aesthetic, not as actual world-building. It does bring in some neat Egyptian cultural and historical stuff (like the cone bread), but it's less important than a comparable Egyptian boys love comic like ENNEAD, which more heavily embraces the Egyptian inspiration.

I also think the idea of "modern Chinese medical student going back to the past to learn how to survive in Ancient Egypt" is neat as a premise but boring in execution. Zhang Li is an expert spy and fighter and really smart, and he has reasons for being the way he is, but it makes a lot of problems lack tension. And when he does face real obstacles... the problems seem stupid. Like they're just designed for him to get rescued (assuming he didn't set it up himself to fuck with either Mimi or their enemies). The existence of magic is wonky as well. The world-building is basically just a mess in general. And anyone who doesn't care about isekai is going to give it a pass right off the bat (I know a number of people who hate isekai, it's a hard sell). ENNEAD, meanwhile, is not isekai, and deals with a lot of neat mythology (also it has more magic; magic is cool).

The art in SYMK is generally nice and the characters generally look good. That being said, Mimi is basically one of a small handful of good-looking and/or interesting characters. Zhang Li is pretty enough, but he's also kind of bland. I love Evtiti (visually, he's my favorite after Mimi, and personality-wise, he's my favorite), but he's a bit too slinky and he doesn't show up much. Veelaveesa is fine but there's something weird about his face, particularly near his hairline. Narcissus is fine and generic. Kaba's pretty, and again, seldom shows up. Sutter is nice, but his white hair looks odd (also he vanished for a lot of the manhua and he's now dead(?) and been revived to be white Mimi). And his bodyguard, and Stone, are just Mimi again. No one else comes to mind. Meanwhile, ENNEAD has a large cast of interesting, attractive, and fun characters. And for all Mojito's faults with art (and she does have some), she didn't do anything remotely like what Wen Yuan does with Akinatton (like even Ra isn't that bad imo). And that's... not great. And you meet him early. And from what I've seen of people's comments, that's a turn-off. Growing off that, people criticize ENNEAD because it's "whitewashing" or whatever (because they can't comprehend pale-skinned Egyptians and don't know mythology). Those people probably look at SYMK and give it an even wider pass (I imagine most of them are too clueless to realize Zhang Li is Chinese, but that's not the only issue). Also we're not getting into how a recent arc had Mimi, the main darker-skinned character... lighten his skin... (temporarily, as a disguise, but... the story does itself no favors...).

Another issue is that the English translation Kuaikan sends out is mostly garbage. Like atrociously bad. I've seen typos in some of Tappytoon's translations before, and I've never seen them as bad and frequent as what's in SYMK, to the point I really question if it's just gen-AI machine translation. Which discourages people from paying for it or paying attention to it. It's gotten better lately, but so far as I can tell, they've fixed nothing earlier.

I know, I rail against people comparing them and most of this is me comparing them, and that's not what you were doing, but well... that's where it ends up. At this point, given ENNEAD's prominence as the Egyptian boys love comic, I think its existence cannot be divorced from why SYMK's fandom is the way it is. That's not ENNEAD's fault or Mojito's fault or Wen Yuan's fault. It's just... the way it is. Maybe with time, the audience will grow. Maybe the CCP will reverse its homophobic policies and the comic will get to shine. We'll have to see!

Again, I like the series, for all its flaws. It does not surprise me, for many reasons, why it's not as popular as it could be.

That all being said, the only things I've actually seen people criticize are: the kind of racism, the slowness and will-they-won't they stuff, and that it's too fluffy. Most of the rest is very speculative and just based on observation on why something relatively similar is not appealing to a fanbase that should be all over it, and not just because I am bad at promoting things to other people. Far more popular people than I have recommended this series. It's done seemingly nothing. (Or people try it and then... never speak of it again)

Anyway, here's some cute shots of all the best bois in Episode 93 to make up for reading through all that.

From what I've seen at least of the preview for the Spanish physical release, the Spanish physical release is as uncensored as it can get, at least matching what's on Tappytoon (and I assume on Tapas). My hope is that another English publisher will get what's been put on Weibo, and they'll be allowed to do their own translation. I have the Chinese volumes, they're very pretty, I'm waiting for volume 3 to ship. But I'd love a physical version of this series that I can read and also isn't censored to heck. Like I was so mad they cut out the Veelaveesa/Evtiti stuff in the Chinese physical release and that was before I saw how much they butchered so much of Mimi and Zhang Li (and other characters, RIP borb). What gives me hope is that it does seem to have an audience: it gets a lot of merch, it's on its third volume, printing-wise, and it has two English licensors already. There are still a lot of English danmei translators, and manhua translations are slowly picking up, so my hope is maybe, at some point, we'll get an English physical release, too. I used to send in Seven Seas monthly surveys every month begging for ENNEAD before it came out, and after getting into SYMK, I added SYMK to the mix as well.