[Chinese BL novel] I ran away after wearing as a stand-in / 穿成替身后我跑路了[穿书]

Title: I ran away after wearing as a stand-in / 穿成替身后我跑路了[穿书]

Author: 瑜眠

Year of realease: 2020

# of chapters: 78+1

Status: Complete

Tags: wearing the book, art, painting

*all names/titles are an MTL version, never official translation

Synopsis: Yu Xiang wore a book of doog-blood drama and happaned to be a stand-in for a White Moonlight in the protagonist's heart. He was a renowned painter, just had a bad heart, now he has a healthy body and can pick up art again. As a result the first thing he thought of was to kick the unwanted people like blood-sucking family, get a foothold in the art industry and leave the protagonist for good.

The following will contain story spoilers, usually I rarely do it, but it only happens when I'm baffled by the choice of writing and storytelling that in my eyes looks really weird or inconsistent. And teh following criticism should be accepted as a healthy one and has nothing to do with author's health issues.

I must say I was lucky to stumble upon two novels that have MC as a painter, which makes me think that jjwxc has a type of trends when writing. This story for me came from 4/5 to 2/5 in the last third of the story, all thanks to the author suddenly proposing to include a serial killer, which was really out of nowhere.

The story in short is as follows. MC wore the book, decided to keep away from the gong (actually our ML). He was part of a plagiarism accident, later was discovered by an old professor who became his mentor though original owner never was taught art. MC got rid off the blood-sucking family, who were not even his biological parents. Later got into few contraversies, like his signed company, he later retired from broadcasting. Had few paintings, got a bit of fame, took part in filming, got a project for another city, then to broaden the horizon left to a signed gallery in Europe, spent time in creations, in one city met with a man who got himself plastic surgery same as ML, held his first exhibition, was abducted by this fake man-serial killer, got out unscathed, took part in the gallery contarvercy and then went back to China to apply the same way of bringing new artists as the previous gallery, it ended in success. At the end promised ML to be together. The end. Now...a bit of things I find are weird:

• The serial killer storyline. It was damn abrupt and out of nowhere and honestly, it only brought me rage. I was quite upset at author who led relatively ok story into.. this. The backstory: MC travels to France and meets a man who has obvious plastic surgery remnant signs, he looks almost exactly like ML, he also wants MC to paint him and in the unknown city, looking at unknown person, MC actually agrees. This was inconsistency with MC's character that was always keen to people, but now even feeling weird, failed to distance. Later he also had several moves out of rebellious psychology against ML who basically was worried that the person who approached MC is not ok. This further made it possible for murderer to contact MC and later he didn't guard against him at all. He was kidnapped and only thanks to timely appearance of ML was saved. This really showed MC from the dumbest side ever. It reminded me the previously read novel (previous review) where MC could be super dense like a concrete wall. I also want to mention one part which made me feel strange, when police called and showed MC the murderer's diary where he wrote atrocities about MC. Like.. MC is a victim and the murderer is dead, why would you want to bring the victim new grief?
• Helping the gallery. This part would have been great if the murderer part was cut out completely. It could have been a struggle of commerse and art instead this episode comes last before MC returns to China. Basically the gallery owner fell ill and was in a coma, while this happened his son was one of those who wanted to sell the gallery completely under the reason that their gallery sold a fake and it will ruin the reputation, though it was him who carried out the plan of selling fake and hanging this as gallery's fault. This was solved arther quickly, a matter of few chapters, but honestly there was one part that made me surprised, when MC questioned why the granddaughter of the owner called him back, while previousl it was described they became friends and the owner also had good feelings for him. Wouldn't you rush back just because someone you care about was sick?
• Unexistent romance and bad relationship building. The romance part was actually just a whatever part to me. I didn't feel emotional or anything from these two. 1) There is no strong foundation for ML's feelings, as well as any foundation of their relationship. We start from the very bland start where MC is in ML's house, but they just co-exist together. And suddenly ML starts to notice MC more; 2) MC was often very unfeeling for many things that ML did to him after accepting his wrongs, though at least later looked at things from ML's point of view too. He basically didn't like ML for his oppression, though ML never really imprisoned or obstructed MC, just wanted him to consider going back, because he doesn't want him to leave him, not because of oppression; 3) The way they came together and MC promised at the end was mostly like whatever, they rarely communicated, there was no explanation or hint on inner feelings, mostly MC was in his career, only by the very end he started to notice ML as something not that bad.

When it started it was entertaining enough and it felt like a 4, but when it came to last third, it just got weird with all that thriller and throughout the whole story the whole idea of writing this as danmei was pointless to me.

RATE: 2/5.