Canaries in danmei

    I have no idea how I managed to cross the search engine of jjwxc (probably 'revenge the scum' tag :'D) that I came across a fair amount of works that are all about raised canaries a.k.a. lovers that are nothing more but a beautiful vases to business marriages or smth like that.

    Don't get me started on the point where all these novels are like a copy-paste version of each other. I don't expect anything extraordinary, after all we've all seen what a trending writing/genres are. And they are actually that. But for some reason people still see logic to some of those, even though the events that mostly happen are a bit weird from a perspective of normal human thinking and actions. We all know that everything is playing for the convenience, but that's exactly what I don't like about it.

Common pre-settings for 'canary' plots:

• As the 'canary' suggest the attack is in the dominant position, both in profession adn the relationship, such as a president usually, while the receive is a beautiful being and taken advantage of for various reasons. Character settings are always the same, until the canary escapes and the whole chasing wife starts;
• Canary has no status. Usually the relationship might not be official or even if it is, friends and colleagues might not know about it or disrespect the partner. Nothing is done by the gongs in such cases of course;
• No communication whatsoever prior to break-up (which basically leads to the conflicts, duh, u surprised?). It either existed before, but ceased to be meaningful, or stays shallow. While two people live together, they often have more sex together than conversations;

And here's my pet peeve with such stories:

• The lack of communication what first starts the problems. Authors often portray shous as if they're the biggest victims, but actually they don't do anything about their situation and act very submissive during the relationship. It lasts only until they say - bye, I'm leaving - that they suddenly have the guts to oppose, which I find funny, because it seems they didn't really care about the relationship at all as authors try to convey, because they show character (that they have one and are not just sloppy rags), but they refused to fight or do anything or cause a havoc in the relationship, while they had all the chances to (e.g. I've read one where both agreed to consolidate relationship in 8 years, but shou didn't do much of fixing his partner's attitude when it started to go wrong, just started to accept his bs, later just packed up and left);
• Exchange of roles/positions. As you can tell canaries and presidents often exchange positions when the relationship is broken. Because gongs start the mad wife chase, everything that mattered and kept them busy before loses meaning entirely, only the wife exists. Which puts everything under the weird light. Due to miscommunication both parties don't really understand each other and their own motivation, which in my opinion makes both partners bad and not only one that is chased. And I guess it's a thing, because gongs are put into a position of being shoved into the ground for some sort of satisfaction. They're surely not the best partners to begin with, but it ticks me off the most that only one side is the bad side, but if you think carefully you'll see that no one is good though.

    It would be cool, if people wrote something not this weird. It doesn't mean the whole theme of raised lovers should cease to exist, I do think it might show the relationships that are not all sunshine, but just why it's written in the same damn  weird way all the time.

    Anyway, if you come across a novel like that, be sure you'll read something like the abovementioned.