#war prisoner

I do not have any other explanation as to how he goes from “I hate you and captured you and will now get you tortured until you surrender” to “even though I’ve never as much as looked at dudes this way, I want to bang you madly. Guess I am gay now” to “I love you and will marry you and make you my empress and get rid of my harem” with literally no explanation or any intermediate steps or anything. Like - how does this work?

I mean, it’s not as if he saw Su Ye for the first time and got struck by love/lust as first time - they interacted plenty before Kong’s inexplicable fit of lust in the dungeon (and side note - I would assume he’s some sort of BDSM enthusiast and the blood and wounds turn him on, especially from the description of the first time he tries to bang the general - but nope aside from that one scene, he’s vanilla enough even in the usual “what’s consent” way.)

And even more, how the hell do we get from “I want to bang you because it’s like defeating you again and I don’t really care if you fight or are unconscious or get any fun out of it” to “I know we haven’t yet slept together and you haven’t changed your attitude or anything but I looooove you and want to marry and crown you and we won’t even have sex until the wedding because I respect you.” Like - did I skip twenty chapters somehow?

I am not particularly fond of the unfortunate Su Ye (and very confused how he’s supposedly a deadly general. That involves a lot of killing and planning of even more killing but that man is more softhearted than a five year old) but his constant “WTF” is the only reaction in this novel that resembles an actual human reaction.

About his only normal reaction. He doesn’t seem to hold much or any grudge against the King, dude who conquered his country, had him tortured for weeks, forced oral sex on him, blackmailed him into marriage by threatening his friends and neighbors etc. His main reaction is “I thought he was cool what a disappointment.” Su Ye, like the King, is a lot of cookies short of an Oreo box. Like why the hell do you get your hands on a sword and then interrupt your suicide plan to bandage a serving girl’s cut hand. Also can’t you just bite your tongue or ram your head into a pillar like all those people in other novels - by the time they realize that it’s a danger (and they do), he could have done it ten times over.

Where I am now, King has just blackmailed the General into marriage by threatening to murder his friends and relatives. I would normally wonder how he thinks wedded bliss would work if you have to use those means to force someone into a relationship (I will totally be able to woo you in marriage is his glorious plan), but it’s been established the King has the brain capacity of a lizard so a plan that makes me think of an old-school kdrama secondary girl is probably about right for his mental capabilities.

Did I mention that you don’t need to worry? He wasn’t really gonna kill the friends and relatives? The friends and relatives were in on it because the King was all “here’s money and also I promise to treat all the conquered people really well.” As the saying goes - with friends like this. My happy ending would be a freak tornado wiping out everyone in both kingdoms, thus not only getting rid of all these awful people but automatically raising the world IQ average by twenty points. (I feel bad for dumb and too ridiculously nice general because he’s had a bad time so the tornado can let him be the sole survivor and deposit him into some remote mountain valley to live by himself and raise goats, which would be perfect for his capabilities and mental acuity.)

1. It is quite lovely to know that no matter how stupid a person is, there is a perfect match for them out there, equally and matchingly stupid. The MC and ML of this just might be the most breathtakingly dumb protagonists I’ve come across in a while and I amused myself by imagining what would happen if a halfway competent person ended up in that Kingdom. Protags of Sha Po Lang, The Golden Stage or QJJ would take over the kingdom in about half a day with time off for tea. Even protags of The Wife Is First would only need a couple of days.

2. A number of danmei has a problem writing its characters like girls with boy anatomy but I don’t think I’ve ever come across one as bad as this. Su Ye is 100% written as a girl and the whole story would frankly make more sense if he was. In fact, if you replaced his gender, the story would not lose anything and actually flow way better.

3. I was wrong in wishing for him to herd goats.That’s too challenging. Maybe he can raise beets. I remain puzzled as to how he was ever a successful general between his lack of thinking ability and the fact that he can’t bear to kill or hurt ANYONE like an extra nice Cinderella which is a great quality in a monastic but frankly bizarre in a general. I mean, the enemy would just have to capture a random stranger and he’d surrender entirely. He is soooo patient and saintly and a male Griselda to such an extent I confess to understanding why his enemies wanted to off him.

4. How is he a general and a son of a minister but his neighbors appear to be working class random little people excited for ten taels of silver? None of it makes sense.

5. I will forever be puzzled how we went from torturery rapist to softest most doting husband ever with no explanation or in-between. I am forced to believe the King has multiple personalities.

6. THIS IS NOT HOW BIOLOGY WORKS aka further adventures of the self-lubricating behind.

I am sorry, but this is my favorite line from any novel review on NU and possibly ever.

Did I somehow fall through into a het romance novel? I am beginning to wonder if the author knows that men and women are biologically built differently and/or anal intercourse is not the same as PiV action.

But then, per the the author, a male period general in his 20s doesn’t appear to know how sex works - basically at all - and has never even pleased himself with his hand; he also blushes like a teen girl and etc etc etc so...

Honestly, I really do not get any point in writing BL and making one of the two a girl in everything except very basic biology. And I do mean basic because anything beyond that also gets iffy. Did you know that if you leave ahem love fluid inside the orifice after you are done, you will get terribly sick?! I wonder if this is advice from “wanking* will make you blind” school of medicine?

* autocorrect initially corrected it to Wanning which speaks for itself :)

I am seriously amused because I keep thinking “author, shame on you! If this novel was written by Meatbun or Tang Jiuqing or Song Qian Cheng, we’d get chapters and chapters describing the tortures and/or the mental agony of MC, yet we get a measly couple of sentences. Are you even trying?”

Anyway, because I want something gonzo and brain-dead, I decided to read War Prisoner properly. You know, the one where the beautiful general gets defeated and captured by enemy king. In real life, that would lead either to execution or the enemy kingdom acquiring a new general, but this is an old school danmei, so the King’s plan appears to be: MC defeated our army and killed my father, so now I shall: (1) defeat his army and capture him, (2) offer him to be my general instead and when he refuses torture him, (3) decide he’s hot and unbendable so it’s noncon time (4) fall in love and get married.

Ummmmm. One of these things is not like the other, one of these things does not belong. (1) and (2) make complete sense. (3) make sense if you are a particular kind of unhinged I can buy in a number of absolute monarchs. (4) is...well, I am not sure this the kind of revenge the dead dad is angling for, but it could be just me.

Anyway, there is a lot of potential for a meaty (ha! Maybe even meat-pillary?), problematic, epic angstfest of the type I adore but alas, as is shown by the few sentences above, this author is not the type to do that and instead of being deeply moved by whatever emotion, I am just kinda “ehhh.”

Got to say, because the author tends to skim over a lot of things, the fact that our paragon of nobility, Su Ye, refuses to surrender and become the King’s general makes me wonder if he took a bad head wound. Author reiterates over and over that the King of Su Ye’s country is utterly useless and awful (he took the money that was going to be paid to the army in the middle of war and used it to build a palace) and the King ML is, except for his rapey towards MC tendencies, an exemplary King - his kingdom is happy and prosperous and well-run, he treats all the conquered people fairly (and bans his soldiers from harming any citizens in cities they conquer), he even treats all the captured soldiers well except for our poor MC. Hell, he has other formerly enemy generals working for him. Why Su Ye, who knows his own King is useless and this King is a good King and who is not related to his own King refuses to switch is beyond me. I mean, because I have a brain that can make conjectures, I can say it’s because he’s too proud and so refuses to bend out of that principle, or that he’s patriotic to the Kingdom not the King (though no differences between the two Kingdoms are described) but it’s not fleshed out at all other than “my principles won’t let me surrender,” so I am all HUH? (He doesn’t even dislike the King ML on a personal level.) Same as to why the King starts fancying him - one moment he’s all torture time hope he goes over to my side and next “oooh, he’s hot I want to bang him” which - huh? Since when?

Is this a good novel? Hell no. But I am entertained and I don’t want anything too emotionally involved atm.

It is interesting how different my emotional response is depending on how emotionally involved I get. I am sure you saw me ranting about ML of FPYQ and feeling intensely sad for the MC of that novel initially, and if you think about it, ML of that novel never raises his hand to MC and even before they are exclusive, treats him fairly for a member of his household. But the people in that novel feel real and the situations feel real and so my emotions get involved and I am judging them the way I would people I know. In WP, our ML captures, tortures etc our MC and I am “I can’t muster much energy to hate anyway, I am rolling my eyes instead” because nothing about this novel feels quite real or particularly involving. My emotions being involved strongly even if those emotions are negative is a sign of quality, ironically (it’s pretty significant that I was angrier at MLs of Thousand Autumns or FYPQ than of any other danmeis and objectively ML of the latter hasn’t even done anything bad by period standards and the former has but he’s far from the worst.)

OK, I checked out War Prisoner and ummmmm....

Between that and Hua Hua You Long, I am beginning to think Zixiao from Wu Chang Jie deserves a thank you note because it could have been oh so much worse!!!!!

I mean, unlike HHYL, nobody in War Prisoner just grabbed a random for a severe BDSM torture session over and over and over and over. But I thought HHYL was an aberration and didn’t take it seriously because it was so gonzo I honestly couldn’t keep a straight face.

And then comes War Prisoner and it’s just “normalish” enough to make me go !!!!! Remember the bit in WCJ where Zixiao defeated Ziheng and kept him in the palace for noncon fun, occasionally threatening him with other people’s lives to comply? Well, so does the ML of War Prisoner to MC.

EXCEPT!!!! Emperor ML does not have evil magical artifacts fucking with his sanity. Emperor ML doesn’t think MC betrayed him terribly and tried to kill him, killed his parents and is Evil McEvilson who deserves punishment. Nah, Emperor ML has won a battle and captured the unfortunate enemy general MC (who hasn’t offed anyone nearest and dearest to him, there is no personal revenge motive there at all) and is all “oooh he’s hot! oooh, why is he being so noble and trying to protect fellow prisoners! oooh, why don’t I roofie him and bang him! ooooh, if he wakes up why don’t I blackmail someone who’s literally almost bleeding to death (because he’s been treated so well in captivity as I well know) that if he doesn’t comply I am gonna kill people! I am the smartest!!!!!” Also, I am pretty sure he ain’t gonna go to hell for a century.

I think I have somehow stumbled into danmei rape central lately. It’s like a weird gay version of all those 1970s romance novel rapefests where heroine always forgave the hot rapist asshole trainwreck of a person because he was HOT.

Ummmm.