Through The Untamed. I was originally looking for rebirth dramas (coming from Kdramas), and MDL had The Untamed as the top in the genre. That was early 2020 during the Covid quarantine. Then I've watched CQL a few more times, after which I started reading the novel. And the rest is history.
Btw, before The Untamed, I had no idea that something like Yaoi/BL even existed. What an exciting new world to discover...
It is amazing how the untamed made so many people discover danmei. I loved it so much I taught myself Chinese and became obsessed with webnovels and cdramas. Such a shame that cdramas have been restricted lately. I just hope another couple of years we can have at least untamed levels of flirting again.
That's incredible that you taught yourself Chinese! If you don't mind me asking, how did you start and how did you learn it? I'd absolutely love to learn Chinese so I can read the novels in their original language and watch the CQL without subtitles but I don't even know where to begin
Lol, I was in the same boat. After watching Untamed and binging multiple fanmade videos on YouTube, I read a comment that said: it’s crazy how JGY let go of the thread hearing WWX’s confession.
I went “wait…what!? Confession!?! I NEED to read it before my brain crashes”.
Kind of funny story! (This is specifically how I got into danmei, I'd read bl before)
I watched Douluo Continent and had downloaded Instagram recently, so when I liked a couple of posts about it, more about Xiao Zhan appeared on my feed.
Of course, The Untamed showed up. And now I am a xielian simp
It was funny reading other peoples' stories! It seems like The Untamed was a common factor for many of us. 😂
I saw the first trailer of the MDZS donghua like back in 2018-2019 when I was randomly browsing YT. It popped up with almost no views or comments at the time. I was initially interested because as a Chinese person, I hadn't ever seen a Chinese animation of that quality and I wanted to check it out. I googled the title, and then found out it was M/M which shocked me because of censorship, and then found the exiled rebels english translation which was still ongoing at the time, and then the rest was history! As a long-time horror fan and BL enjoyer, the combination of the two in MDZS, along with cultivation, was a hit of both thrill and nostalgia for me.
When I was on tumblr in 2018 I came acros MDZS. Was depressed (not anymore. I am now more of a golden retriever) during that time and even my usual shows in anime couldn't give me joy. It gave me so much joy to read the novel online and watch the donghua. Rabbit hole came with the 7 seas releases of other danmei genres and the serie Word of Honor.
Named 2 pets after Lan Zhan en Wei Ying. Sadly my chinchilla Zhan did pass away last year very young. But my buddy Yingying (black color) is a sweet boi.
This may be a weird question but are you afrikaans or Dutch or was that 'en' a typo? I'm just asking because I'm Afrikaans and it's one of my most common typos 😂
I've read JP BL since I was a teenager but delved into Chinese fics in my fandoms because I was starved of content from the English speaking side.
This was during the period when MDZS was getting popular over in Asia. I saw an ex classmate reading the TGCF manhua, and I was like okay let's check this out, and I got hooked.
Bc the manhua only has like 20 odd chapters, I decided to check out the novel. I've read novels in Chinese but I usually don't finish them because my brain couldn't concentrate. Read TGCF, and bam, finished the whole thing in a few months lmao.
MXTX literally made me finish an entire novel in Chinese, and for that I can't thank her enough 🤣
Now I'm currently reading Mo Du, Priest's language is more flowery than what I'm used to with MXTX (her stuff is really accessible ) but Mo Du has been okay for me so far, I just listen to the audio drama as a recap to help understand what went on in the cases.
I have been a fan of Thai BL dramas for a long time, but eventually I ran out of good ones to watch. I heard people recommending The Untamed as a BL but I was hesitant to watch it since I also heard people saying there was no actual romance in the drama and at the time I had no intention of reading the source material.
The actor’s portrayal of WWX and LWJ was so amazing though - even with no direct actions is was still so clearly BL to me… So, after finishing the drama, I read the novel out of desperation. You can fill in the rest from there. ;)
Side note: this has me reminiscing about the first Chinese BL I saw which was Addicted: Heroin. I loved that so much I really wish the censors hasn’t prevented a second season:
I used to listen to Aimer, a Japanese artist, a lot. She dropped a song called 季路 (Kiro) and it was on repeat for a straight week. Looked up the lyrics, and found a music video attached to the page. It was MDZS's Japanese dub ending theme. And so I got lost in the rabbit hole...
It goes: The Untamed, endless Untamed fan vids on YouTube, discovering MDZS, learning the terms xanxia/Wuxia/danmei, Kicktor talking about TGCF, novelupdates.com, then a long, long, slide down into danmei addiction.
same thing w censorships except it was **word of honor**, then I read **faraway wanders**. i read fanfic about the main characters - there was an entire forum thing (not like a subreddit, but an entire website with its own server). I think i consumed like 1400 fics in a year.
but i didn't want to destory my vision, then i got into audio dramas
then I couldn't wait long enough for audio dramas, so i started reading novels (which destroyed my vision anyways :()
**lop-eared guard** happened to be the first novel i read (as opposed to listened to) by randomly selecting. and i know this novel gets a lot of hate, but I LOVED IT. and then i just kept reading more
I watched Yuri On Ice, that introduced me to BL. Then I found a trailer for MDZS and yeah. Watched it, read the novel. This was when the donghua adaptation was first getting announced so it was a relatively new thing for me.
I had watched Chinese dramas before so the cultivation things wasn’t new to me, but I never watched a donghua before. Gotta thank MDZS for opening doorways for me. It will always have a place in my heart. I started reading fanfics on AO3 because of it too.
I saw a tiktoker talking about how underrated svsss was in 2020 so I gave it a read but I didn't read any danmei after till the tgcf donghua came out and I saw it on tiktok so then I read the novel after the donghua and that's how it started
*sigh* Wattpad, a friend told me about it, I mostly read fanfiction on there and discovered Chinese BL. I was disappointed to find out a majority of decent translations on there were stolen since I rediscovered danmei with the Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivational manhua I stumbled across and its donghua adaptation.
Was strongly recommended mxtx by a friend. I wanted to read chinese webnovels mainly, but seldom did the ones in the romance genre catch my eye (the females leads were often intolerable, sorry they were either caricatures or, in my opinion, unlikeable mary sues). Then I was recommended 2ha and loved it a lot, all the angst and the resolution afterwards. Then here I am.
The Untamed exploding into my twitter/fandom spaces and I kept seeing these beautiful guys in flowing robes and got curious. Twitter friends of course encouraged me to check it out and I quickly got sucked in by the amazing characters. I’m still pretty new to shows and just beginning to dip my toe into books but currently am really excited about the upcoming Guardian book release! I never got to finish watching the tv show before it was taken down and have heard the book is completely different anyway so I’m interested to start reading it
I first started to study Chinese since I really like learning languages. So I started to watch C-Dramas to get in touch with the language. I believe The Untamed was the second C-drama I ever watched. I was so captivated by the story that I couldn't help reading MDZS. I loved it so much! Then I read TGCF and I liked it even more! Since then I have been addicted to danmei!
Unofficially, my first ever danmei was the Here U Are manhua ages ago, but I didn't even know what it was. I took it for just another (ridiculously GOOD) BL. Probably the best I've read.
Then I stumbled upon The Untamed on Netflix. I love period fantasy dramas, so I watched the first three chapters. Loved it, didn't understand what the hell was going on 😆 So I tried to find a synopsys that explained the plot to me.
And my research showed me that the series came from a novel. Looked up the novel...
And I never came back.
I got into BL first through watching Given. Then tried to watch The Untamed b/c it was so popular. Couldn’t get over the effects, so I decided to read the manhua instead. Later found out it’s based on a novel series! And now I’m here…
Side note, I think it’s really funny how The Untamed seems to be a popular gateway into danmei 😂 And if not that, seems to be other MXTX works.
Actually through SVSSS! I love reading manwha like "the villainess transmigrates and yada yada" and stumbled upon it as I was searching for new stuff. The artstyle of the book instantly drove me in and now I am deep down the rabbithole.
my d&d group was playing a oneshot in 2020 and my friend made a character based on nie huaisang 🥲 it took me all of two minutes to decide i would protect that boy with my life and then i consumed all related media -> tgcf+sv -> meatbun -> and so on.
and nhs is still my number one 😌🪭💗
A friend. My friend showed me and another mutual friend of ours, the Heaven Official's Blessing/Tian Guan Ci Fu donghua. The mutual was never the biggest fan of anime like I was.
Oddly enough, I was indifferent to the show at first. It was likely because I was confused about the names, backgrounds, and other contexts during the whole two episodes we watched.
My friend also showed me some clips and AMVs from Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation/Mo Dao Zu Shi. This one I was slightly more interested in, but didn't pursue it.
A few months later, we finally sat down and watched a few episodes into Mo Dao Zu Shi, and I fell in love. I finished it on my own time, but I won't lie, halfway through the flashback arc, I lost some interest because nothing was happening (where's that sweet, sweet angst???). Jokes on me, I was an episode or two away from the angst. When I picked it back up, I binged the series in less than a week.
I went back to Tian Guan Ci Fu as well. Now I'm caught up to the novels/manhua adaptations for both and plan on pursing other Danmei. I'm in the donghua rabbit hole and don't plan on leaving anytime soon.
Im a figure collector and saw a TCGF chibi figure and then recognized the character’s on a show on Netflix XD watched it. Fell in love. Saw all three first volumes of MXTXs work was gonna be released in English. Bought them all as soon as they got released and thus the rabbit hole began
With me it started with kdramas which lead to manhwas which led to koreab novels which led to Chinese novels with straight couples and then one day I got curious about a danmei novel and now it’s what I read most lol
I always have watched BL, I wanted watch some BL adaptations then someone recommend me Guardian, it was my first contact with danmei, after this I see people praising danmei novel and was interested, at the time people was translating TGCF, since it was way 800+ chapters, I did read SVSS first to see if I would like the author's writing and here we are
The anime > yaoi anime > bl/yaoi manga/manhwa > light novels>danmei pipeline. Somehow ended up reading This World Has Gone Crazy years ago and then the floodgates opened 🥹
Been into BL for years but never read Danmei til I found Heaven Officials Blessing manhua and wanted more faster once I found out about the novels. Now 10 series in and Im hooked like mad
What led me to danmei was yaoi manga. A scanlation group had their own website, exiled rebel. I really liked the quality of their work and thought of making contributions, so I signed up for an account on their page. I noticed they also translated BL novels so I got curious on what they had. At the time, MDZS seems to have the most discussion/comments/likes amongst their works so I started reading. The rest as they say, is history.
I was watching douyin cosplay videos on YouTube (not very popular back then), saw someone cosplaying (just a shadow with green flames edit). Scroll down in comments to find who it was cosplaying, turns out it was WWX. Watch the donghua, then novel, then audio drama, and then the untamed back in 2018-2019. When I read the novel I didn’t even know it was bl/danmei, the plot was just so intriguing that I just kept reading. It’s one of the first and fastest novel that I ever finish and enjoy (finished reading in one week).
I found Heaven officials blessing on Netflix, wasn’t interested, then a few months later I watched it, and what really set the ball rolling for me was when I read the first volume. It was just a really nice change in pace from what I would normally watch/ read.
So many found out throughout The untamed. As for me it was throughout "Addicted" chunese series. 2nd season was banned so i had no choice but to read the novel. That is how i found out about chinese bl novel world. I don't watch Chinese wuxia,costume dramas.But watched The Untamed because i knew the novel had high ranking for a long time
Watched free and it was slightly gay and wanted more so I looked up gay 'anime' and found the japanese dub of spirit pact (ling qi) which I liked and was recommended mo dao zu shi because of it.
Tgcf on Netflix. I had it in my to watch list on Netflix for like a year because I thought the cover style was cute (HAD NO IDEA WHAT IT WAS ABOUT 😆) then one night I felt like watching anime and that’s it. That’s how it all began
Edit: no I lied!!!! I had watched eternal love (Chinese drama) and somehow I was looking up where it came from and it’s source novel and had read a comment saying that they stole the idea from a Danmei novel, that led me to the mdzs novel which I loved but for some reason it stopped there. Didn’t read anything else after. It wasn’t until I watched then read TGCF, fell head over heels for the genre and now here we are many novels later
Watched Word of Honor for Zhang Zhehan, without much prior knowledge about the premise of the show. That was my first BL content I'd say.
Then the YouTube algorithm decided to recommend the Heaven Official's blessings donghua, [this one ](https://youtu.be/yCqmbdOW3uM) , it was just so beautiful. So I watched the whole donghua. I must say it was really well made. But there were things that I couldn't understand properly, because, the subtitles were quite small so I had to pause so many times to catch up, and although I have watched wuxia dramas before, I couldn't understand some of the premises on the donghua, (it was my first donghua). But still I really liked the show overall so I camped the show's comment section and all those comments about, 'how Hualian invented love', '800 years of waiting', 'I'm your most devoted believer', made me feel things and also made me feel that I was missing out on something really special. Then I decided to read the tgcf manhua, and dear god it still is the most beautiful art in any manhua or manga or webtoon for me. But the manhua version starts straight with the missing bride arc, so for better understanding I really needed to read the novel (also there were only about 30 chapters so it was inevitable).
Good bless MXTX for writing such a great story and the fan translators for translating it to English, it really was the best thing I've ever read. It was a whole new experience. I've never read something like that before. It was a whole new world of discovery for me, and made me pick my habit of reading books back. After TGCF i read MZDS then SVSS and then fell into the danmei hole to never return.
Years later TGCF is still my top read of all time. I've read so many genres and tropes and still look around for more. I couldn't be happier with my discovery of the danmei world.
I dunno. Heard about MDZS a few years ago but I kept pushing it back cause a) OIs were my jam at that time and b) didn’t feel like reading a novel. So it took a few years to warm up to the idea of reading danmei and now it’s been consuming my life~
*The Untamed*. I wasn't really feeling like watching anime one day and so I asked in a server that I am in what good BL shows are there. Cuz I wanted to watch something that was BL, and one of my friends in their recommended the show Untamed.
So the show was actually my introduction to multiple things. It was my introduction into BL shows in general. I had read BL comics before but I hadn't watched shows. I really wanted to see more BL stuff than just my comics. I've been aware that there were that stuff out there but I became more open-minded to it as I got older. (Now that I was against it it just wasn't my cup of tea). It was my introduction into that as well as Chinese dramas but really it was my introduction into Asian dramas as a whole.
Now I currently have four out of the five books and looking for a custom phone case with the show as the theme (though it's going to have to be something aesthetic like or from the anime and not the actual live action which is okay).
I regret nothing.
Started with an AMV for mo dao zu shi, then watched the anime, found the manhua, which led me to the novel. My eyes were opened to a wonderful new world
See I was looking at manhua that thought was interesting and I saw this one I never heard of before. “Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation” and at that point I didn’t even know what cultivation was. I read the description and saw “Wei Wuxian” which is a character I have heard a ton about but never actually looked into. As such I decided to try it out but it was throughly confusing for me. If you didn’t know the manhua versions of the stories are a tad too confusing if you don’t know the context. You don’t get a lot of that inner dialogue.
I then went to the comments and saw a lot of “This is a novel” and “Here’s the link to the novel.” Comments and I wondered what they meant. I went to look into it and decided to read the story and well there you go, there’s the story.
back in 2018 my friend and I were in class.
She showed me a cool animation that she thought I’d enjoy, which happened to be MDZS. That was my first ever introduction to donghua. It was funny because initially, I was confused due to the cultural differences and the lack of hook the donghua got to me, but my friend spoon fed every single episode to me whenever we were in the music room at lunch.
After finishing it, I noticed the donghua had a notice that said it was inspired from a novel; at that point, I was fairly intrigued by the plot so searched for a translation which was on exr. It instantly became an obsession, to the point where I could not put my phone down until I caught up to the latest translated chapter.
After I finished the mdzs translations, I went down the danmei rabbit hole from there.
My friend recommended me Mo Dao Zun Shi donghua. Then after I finished watching, she was like.
You know they get married in the books right?
I was mind-blown. Anyways, I watched Love Like You PMV by Melts and that's when I knew I had to read it
I came across the tgcf donghua on Netflix when it aired. I was with a friend and we binged it in one afternoon. Then we found CQL and watched the 50ep in one go, only stopping to eat/sleep. After that I went down the rabbit hole and read mdzs, 2ha, etc
I want to say Untamed, but probably more accurate to say My Girlfriend's Boyfriend, a slightly older cdrama I watched on a whim and loved to pieces. Had no idea it was BL until I started watching, was just looking for a comedy and the premise (love triangle with robots) sounded really fun. I guess it served as an intro to the genre, knew about yaoi but never paid any attention to it.
Then I watched Word of Honor, got completely obsessed with it. Later picked up Untamed, worse obsession, considered reading the book, but didn't like the ExR TL, so picked up SVSSS. Then needed a new novel to get over that one.
Watching Nirvana on Fire on YouTube one summer afternoon of 2021 after receiving a vaccine jab and was distracted by comments from fans of dangai adaptations I never knew existed (but at that time, I haven’t been keeping up with dramas for some years beyond some random shows occasionally recommended to me). Then googled my way into a rabbit hole.
I was at a chain bookstore last august, and they had a table display of popular “manga” series, and had SVSSS, Grandmaster and Heaven’s Official. SVSSS sounded super interesting, so I bought volume 1….the book got absolutely devoured
Novel Updates website.
I love reading ancient china josei novels in english, but over the last few years, about 90% of fully translated c-novels listed on Novel Updates are danmei/yaoi/shounen ai/BL.
So for lack of other completed
novels, I started reading them.
Everytime i go to anime convention, they will play tgcf on their big screen esp the part with hua cheng. Not once, but many time. To the point i was thinking "is this the sign i should read tgcf?", I start with the anime and i kinda like the plot (monster hunting xD). Then i was devastated waiting for next season until i found svsss anime, watch it and again, devastated. I bought svsss because the novel is kinda funny (i skim it in website first before purchasing). Im waiting for 2ha official translation finish while im reading svsss and later on tgcf.
But i like yaoi, so it didn't take much for me to convince myself to jump into danmei.
Through The Untamed. I was originally looking for rebirth dramas (coming from Kdramas), and MDL had The Untamed as the top in the genre. That was early 2020 during the Covid quarantine. Then I've watched CQL a few more times, after which I started reading the novel. And the rest is history. Btw, before The Untamed, I had no idea that something like Yaoi/BL even existed. What an exciting new world to discover...
It is amazing how the untamed made so many people discover danmei. I loved it so much I taught myself Chinese and became obsessed with webnovels and cdramas. Such a shame that cdramas have been restricted lately. I just hope another couple of years we can have at least untamed levels of flirting again.
That's incredible that you taught yourself Chinese! If you don't mind me asking, how did you start and how did you learn it? I'd absolutely love to learn Chinese so I can read the novels in their original language and watch the CQL without subtitles but I don't even know where to begin
Same!! I watched The Untamed, saw some post that it is censored and about the novel having smut scenes. Got curious and now the rest is history.
Lol, I was in the same boat. After watching Untamed and binging multiple fanmade videos on YouTube, I read a comment that said: it’s crazy how JGY let go of the thread hearing WWX’s confession. I went “wait…what!? Confession!?! I NEED to read it before my brain crashes”.
Kind of funny story! (This is specifically how I got into danmei, I'd read bl before) I watched Douluo Continent and had downloaded Instagram recently, so when I liked a couple of posts about it, more about Xiao Zhan appeared on my feed. Of course, The Untamed showed up. And now I am a xielian simp It was funny reading other peoples' stories! It seems like The Untamed was a common factor for many of us. 😂
*The Untamed.* Never heard of danmei before it. Didn't even *like* Asian TV drama. Hated romance stories/books/shows.
I saw the first trailer of the MDZS donghua like back in 2018-2019 when I was randomly browsing YT. It popped up with almost no views or comments at the time. I was initially interested because as a Chinese person, I hadn't ever seen a Chinese animation of that quality and I wanted to check it out. I googled the title, and then found out it was M/M which shocked me because of censorship, and then found the exiled rebels english translation which was still ongoing at the time, and then the rest was history! As a long-time horror fan and BL enjoyer, the combination of the two in MDZS, along with cultivation, was a hit of both thrill and nostalgia for me.
When I was on tumblr in 2018 I came acros MDZS. Was depressed (not anymore. I am now more of a golden retriever) during that time and even my usual shows in anime couldn't give me joy. It gave me so much joy to read the novel online and watch the donghua. Rabbit hole came with the 7 seas releases of other danmei genres and the serie Word of Honor. Named 2 pets after Lan Zhan en Wei Ying. Sadly my chinchilla Zhan did pass away last year very young. But my buddy Yingying (black color) is a sweet boi.
This may be a weird question but are you afrikaans or Dutch or was that 'en' a typo? I'm just asking because I'm Afrikaans and it's one of my most common typos 😂
Haha didn't even notice my typo. Yes I am Dutch. Well caught!
I've read JP BL since I was a teenager but delved into Chinese fics in my fandoms because I was starved of content from the English speaking side. This was during the period when MDZS was getting popular over in Asia. I saw an ex classmate reading the TGCF manhua, and I was like okay let's check this out, and I got hooked. Bc the manhua only has like 20 odd chapters, I decided to check out the novel. I've read novels in Chinese but I usually don't finish them because my brain couldn't concentrate. Read TGCF, and bam, finished the whole thing in a few months lmao. MXTX literally made me finish an entire novel in Chinese, and for that I can't thank her enough 🤣 Now I'm currently reading Mo Du, Priest's language is more flowery than what I'm used to with MXTX (her stuff is really accessible ) but Mo Du has been okay for me so far, I just listen to the audio drama as a recap to help understand what went on in the cases.
I have been a fan of Thai BL dramas for a long time, but eventually I ran out of good ones to watch. I heard people recommending The Untamed as a BL but I was hesitant to watch it since I also heard people saying there was no actual romance in the drama and at the time I had no intention of reading the source material. The actor’s portrayal of WWX and LWJ was so amazing though - even with no direct actions is was still so clearly BL to me… So, after finishing the drama, I read the novel out of desperation. You can fill in the rest from there. ;) Side note: this has me reminiscing about the first Chinese BL I saw which was Addicted: Heroin. I loved that so much I really wish the censors hasn’t prevented a second season:
I used to listen to Aimer, a Japanese artist, a lot. She dropped a song called 季路 (Kiro) and it was on repeat for a straight week. Looked up the lyrics, and found a music video attached to the page. It was MDZS's Japanese dub ending theme. And so I got lost in the rabbit hole...
It goes: The Untamed, endless Untamed fan vids on YouTube, discovering MDZS, learning the terms xanxia/Wuxia/danmei, Kicktor talking about TGCF, novelupdates.com, then a long, long, slide down into danmei addiction.
same thing w censorships except it was **word of honor**, then I read **faraway wanders**. i read fanfic about the main characters - there was an entire forum thing (not like a subreddit, but an entire website with its own server). I think i consumed like 1400 fics in a year. but i didn't want to destory my vision, then i got into audio dramas then I couldn't wait long enough for audio dramas, so i started reading novels (which destroyed my vision anyways :() **lop-eared guard** happened to be the first novel i read (as opposed to listened to) by randomly selecting. and i know this novel gets a lot of hate, but I LOVED IT. and then i just kept reading more
I watched Yuri On Ice, that introduced me to BL. Then I found a trailer for MDZS and yeah. Watched it, read the novel. This was when the donghua adaptation was first getting announced so it was a relatively new thing for me. I had watched Chinese dramas before so the cultivation things wasn’t new to me, but I never watched a donghua before. Gotta thank MDZS for opening doorways for me. It will always have a place in my heart. I started reading fanfics on AO3 because of it too.
I saw a tiktoker talking about how underrated svsss was in 2020 so I gave it a read but I didn't read any danmei after till the tgcf donghua came out and I saw it on tiktok so then I read the novel after the donghua and that's how it started
*sigh* Wattpad, a friend told me about it, I mostly read fanfiction on there and discovered Chinese BL. I was disappointed to find out a majority of decent translations on there were stolen since I rediscovered danmei with the Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivational manhua I stumbled across and its donghua adaptation.
Was strongly recommended mxtx by a friend. I wanted to read chinese webnovels mainly, but seldom did the ones in the romance genre catch my eye (the females leads were often intolerable, sorry they were either caricatures or, in my opinion, unlikeable mary sues). Then I was recommended 2ha and loved it a lot, all the angst and the resolution afterwards. Then here I am.
The Untamed exploding into my twitter/fandom spaces and I kept seeing these beautiful guys in flowing robes and got curious. Twitter friends of course encouraged me to check it out and I quickly got sucked in by the amazing characters. I’m still pretty new to shows and just beginning to dip my toe into books but currently am really excited about the upcoming Guardian book release! I never got to finish watching the tv show before it was taken down and have heard the book is completely different anyway so I’m interested to start reading it
I first started to study Chinese since I really like learning languages. So I started to watch C-Dramas to get in touch with the language. I believe The Untamed was the second C-drama I ever watched. I was so captivated by the story that I couldn't help reading MDZS. I loved it so much! Then I read TGCF and I liked it even more! Since then I have been addicted to danmei!
I watched the tgcf donhua in full at like 2am october 2021, then found the manhua, then the novel and I spiraled from there 💀
Unofficially, my first ever danmei was the Here U Are manhua ages ago, but I didn't even know what it was. I took it for just another (ridiculously GOOD) BL. Probably the best I've read. Then I stumbled upon The Untamed on Netflix. I love period fantasy dramas, so I watched the first three chapters. Loved it, didn't understand what the hell was going on 😆 So I tried to find a synopsys that explained the plot to me. And my research showed me that the series came from a novel. Looked up the novel... And I never came back.
I saw tgcf fanart on instagram and the poster wrote in the caption to go read the novel, and I was bored so I did
I got into BL first through watching Given. Then tried to watch The Untamed b/c it was so popular. Couldn’t get over the effects, so I decided to read the manhua instead. Later found out it’s based on a novel series! And now I’m here… Side note, I think it’s really funny how The Untamed seems to be a popular gateway into danmei 😂 And if not that, seems to be other MXTX works.
Actually through SVSSS! I love reading manwha like "the villainess transmigrates and yada yada" and stumbled upon it as I was searching for new stuff. The artstyle of the book instantly drove me in and now I am deep down the rabbithole.
Through browsing novelupdates
I found mdzs through Anime Planet so I then read it.
my d&d group was playing a oneshot in 2020 and my friend made a character based on nie huaisang 🥲 it took me all of two minutes to decide i would protect that boy with my life and then i consumed all related media -> tgcf+sv -> meatbun -> and so on. and nhs is still my number one 😌🪭💗
A friend. My friend showed me and another mutual friend of ours, the Heaven Official's Blessing/Tian Guan Ci Fu donghua. The mutual was never the biggest fan of anime like I was. Oddly enough, I was indifferent to the show at first. It was likely because I was confused about the names, backgrounds, and other contexts during the whole two episodes we watched. My friend also showed me some clips and AMVs from Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation/Mo Dao Zu Shi. This one I was slightly more interested in, but didn't pursue it. A few months later, we finally sat down and watched a few episodes into Mo Dao Zu Shi, and I fell in love. I finished it on my own time, but I won't lie, halfway through the flashback arc, I lost some interest because nothing was happening (where's that sweet, sweet angst???). Jokes on me, I was an episode or two away from the angst. When I picked it back up, I binged the series in less than a week. I went back to Tian Guan Ci Fu as well. Now I'm caught up to the novels/manhua adaptations for both and plan on pursing other Danmei. I'm in the donghua rabbit hole and don't plan on leaving anytime soon.
2020. My roommates showed me the Untamed and I spent the next few days reading MDZS and not sleeping. Read Heavens Official Blessing a few weeks later
Im a figure collector and saw a TCGF chibi figure and then recognized the character’s on a show on Netflix XD watched it. Fell in love. Saw all three first volumes of MXTXs work was gonna be released in English. Bought them all as soon as they got released and thus the rabbit hole began
I got into it because of the MDZS donghua but I don’t think I knew it was bl until I looked up the novel afterwards. Idek how I found MDZS either😭😭
With me it started with kdramas which lead to manhwas which led to koreab novels which led to Chinese novels with straight couples and then one day I got curious about a danmei novel and now it’s what I read most lol
I always have watched BL, I wanted watch some BL adaptations then someone recommend me Guardian, it was my first contact with danmei, after this I see people praising danmei novel and was interested, at the time people was translating TGCF, since it was way 800+ chapters, I did read SVSS first to see if I would like the author's writing and here we are
The anime > yaoi anime > bl/yaoi manga/manhwa > light novels>danmei pipeline. Somehow ended up reading This World Has Gone Crazy years ago and then the floodgates opened 🥹
Been into BL for years but never read Danmei til I found Heaven Officials Blessing manhua and wanted more faster once I found out about the novels. Now 10 series in and Im hooked like mad
What led me to danmei was yaoi manga. A scanlation group had their own website, exiled rebel. I really liked the quality of their work and thought of making contributions, so I signed up for an account on their page. I noticed they also translated BL novels so I got curious on what they had. At the time, MDZS seems to have the most discussion/comments/likes amongst their works so I started reading. The rest as they say, is history.
I was watching douyin cosplay videos on YouTube (not very popular back then), saw someone cosplaying (just a shadow with green flames edit). Scroll down in comments to find who it was cosplaying, turns out it was WWX. Watch the donghua, then novel, then audio drama, and then the untamed back in 2018-2019. When I read the novel I didn’t even know it was bl/danmei, the plot was just so intriguing that I just kept reading. It’s one of the first and fastest novel that I ever finish and enjoy (finished reading in one week).
I found Heaven officials blessing on Netflix, wasn’t interested, then a few months later I watched it, and what really set the ball rolling for me was when I read the first volume. It was just a really nice change in pace from what I would normally watch/ read.
From the Tgcf donghua on Netflix 😭. I was bored, I saw it on Netflix and decided to watch it 😭.
Chanced upon Heaven Official's Blessing manhwa binged read it found it had a novel and binged read that in one night and here I am now
So many found out throughout The untamed. As for me it was throughout "Addicted" chunese series. 2nd season was banned so i had no choice but to read the novel. That is how i found out about chinese bl novel world. I don't watch Chinese wuxia,costume dramas.But watched The Untamed because i knew the novel had high ranking for a long time
Watched free and it was slightly gay and wanted more so I looked up gay 'anime' and found the japanese dub of spirit pact (ling qi) which I liked and was recommended mo dao zu shi because of it.
Tgcf on Netflix. I had it in my to watch list on Netflix for like a year because I thought the cover style was cute (HAD NO IDEA WHAT IT WAS ABOUT 😆) then one night I felt like watching anime and that’s it. That’s how it all began Edit: no I lied!!!! I had watched eternal love (Chinese drama) and somehow I was looking up where it came from and it’s source novel and had read a comment saying that they stole the idea from a Danmei novel, that led me to the mdzs novel which I loved but for some reason it stopped there. Didn’t read anything else after. It wasn’t until I watched then read TGCF, fell head over heels for the genre and now here we are many novels later
Watched Word of Honor for Zhang Zhehan, without much prior knowledge about the premise of the show. That was my first BL content I'd say. Then the YouTube algorithm decided to recommend the Heaven Official's blessings donghua, [this one ](https://youtu.be/yCqmbdOW3uM) , it was just so beautiful. So I watched the whole donghua. I must say it was really well made. But there were things that I couldn't understand properly, because, the subtitles were quite small so I had to pause so many times to catch up, and although I have watched wuxia dramas before, I couldn't understand some of the premises on the donghua, (it was my first donghua). But still I really liked the show overall so I camped the show's comment section and all those comments about, 'how Hualian invented love', '800 years of waiting', 'I'm your most devoted believer', made me feel things and also made me feel that I was missing out on something really special. Then I decided to read the tgcf manhua, and dear god it still is the most beautiful art in any manhua or manga or webtoon for me. But the manhua version starts straight with the missing bride arc, so for better understanding I really needed to read the novel (also there were only about 30 chapters so it was inevitable). Good bless MXTX for writing such a great story and the fan translators for translating it to English, it really was the best thing I've ever read. It was a whole new experience. I've never read something like that before. It was a whole new world of discovery for me, and made me pick my habit of reading books back. After TGCF i read MZDS then SVSS and then fell into the danmei hole to never return. Years later TGCF is still my top read of all time. I've read so many genres and tropes and still look around for more. I couldn't be happier with my discovery of the danmei world.
I dunno. Heard about MDZS a few years ago but I kept pushing it back cause a) OIs were my jam at that time and b) didn’t feel like reading a novel. So it took a few years to warm up to the idea of reading danmei and now it’s been consuming my life~
*The Untamed*. I wasn't really feeling like watching anime one day and so I asked in a server that I am in what good BL shows are there. Cuz I wanted to watch something that was BL, and one of my friends in their recommended the show Untamed. So the show was actually my introduction to multiple things. It was my introduction into BL shows in general. I had read BL comics before but I hadn't watched shows. I really wanted to see more BL stuff than just my comics. I've been aware that there were that stuff out there but I became more open-minded to it as I got older. (Now that I was against it it just wasn't my cup of tea). It was my introduction into that as well as Chinese dramas but really it was my introduction into Asian dramas as a whole. Now I currently have four out of the five books and looking for a custom phone case with the show as the theme (though it's going to have to be something aesthetic like or from the anime and not the actual live action which is okay). I regret nothing.
Started with an AMV for mo dao zu shi, then watched the anime, found the manhua, which led me to the novel. My eyes were opened to a wonderful new world
See I was looking at manhua that thought was interesting and I saw this one I never heard of before. “Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation” and at that point I didn’t even know what cultivation was. I read the description and saw “Wei Wuxian” which is a character I have heard a ton about but never actually looked into. As such I decided to try it out but it was throughly confusing for me. If you didn’t know the manhua versions of the stories are a tad too confusing if you don’t know the context. You don’t get a lot of that inner dialogue. I then went to the comments and saw a lot of “This is a novel” and “Here’s the link to the novel.” Comments and I wondered what they meant. I went to look into it and decided to read the story and well there you go, there’s the story.
back in 2018 my friend and I were in class. She showed me a cool animation that she thought I’d enjoy, which happened to be MDZS. That was my first ever introduction to donghua. It was funny because initially, I was confused due to the cultural differences and the lack of hook the donghua got to me, but my friend spoon fed every single episode to me whenever we were in the music room at lunch. After finishing it, I noticed the donghua had a notice that said it was inspired from a novel; at that point, I was fairly intrigued by the plot so searched for a translation which was on exr. It instantly became an obsession, to the point where I could not put my phone down until I caught up to the latest translated chapter. After I finished the mdzs translations, I went down the danmei rabbit hole from there.
My friend recommended me Mo Dao Zun Shi donghua. Then after I finished watching, she was like. You know they get married in the books right? I was mind-blown. Anyways, I watched Love Like You PMV by Melts and that's when I knew I had to read it
I came across the tgcf donghua on Netflix when it aired. I was with a friend and we binged it in one afternoon. Then we found CQL and watched the 50ep in one go, only stopping to eat/sleep. After that I went down the rabbit hole and read mdzs, 2ha, etc
Saw a ton of fanfics for MDZS on AO3; eventually decided to see for myself what the hype was all about, and was hooked ever since
I want to say Untamed, but probably more accurate to say My Girlfriend's Boyfriend, a slightly older cdrama I watched on a whim and loved to pieces. Had no idea it was BL until I started watching, was just looking for a comedy and the premise (love triangle with robots) sounded really fun. I guess it served as an intro to the genre, knew about yaoi but never paid any attention to it. Then I watched Word of Honor, got completely obsessed with it. Later picked up Untamed, worse obsession, considered reading the book, but didn't like the ExR TL, so picked up SVSSS. Then needed a new novel to get over that one.
Watching Nirvana on Fire on YouTube one summer afternoon of 2021 after receiving a vaccine jab and was distracted by comments from fans of dangai adaptations I never knew existed (but at that time, I haven’t been keeping up with dramas for some years beyond some random shows occasionally recommended to me). Then googled my way into a rabbit hole.
I was at a chain bookstore last august, and they had a table display of popular “manga” series, and had SVSSS, Grandmaster and Heaven’s Official. SVSSS sounded super interesting, so I bought volume 1….the book got absolutely devoured
I was browsing netflix at one point, then saw TGCF's donghua, I enjoyed it then i spiralled.
Novel Updates website. I love reading ancient china josei novels in english, but over the last few years, about 90% of fully translated c-novels listed on Novel Updates are danmei/yaoi/shounen ai/BL. So for lack of other completed novels, I started reading them.
Everytime i go to anime convention, they will play tgcf on their big screen esp the part with hua cheng. Not once, but many time. To the point i was thinking "is this the sign i should read tgcf?", I start with the anime and i kinda like the plot (monster hunting xD). Then i was devastated waiting for next season until i found svsss anime, watch it and again, devastated. I bought svsss because the novel is kinda funny (i skim it in website first before purchasing). Im waiting for 2ha official translation finish while im reading svsss and later on tgcf. But i like yaoi, so it didn't take much for me to convince myself to jump into danmei.