Brother

ART BY 一瓶海货 ON LOFTER

Summary:
Youth Wei Qian, orphaned at thirteen or fourteen, struggles through life with a half-sister. He picks up a stray child who shamelessly latches onto him and gives him a name: Xiaoyuan.

Wei Qian dreams of rising above the crop. He is someone who values money over his own life. In the earlier part of his life, he battles against many obstacles, with his number one mission being to make a name for himself. Finally, when he achieves some success and thinks that he’s seeing the light of daybreak in life, Xiaoyuan suddenly goes crazy—he only likes men, and only stares at him, adding the glorious strokes of “being subjected to treachery” and “being subjected to insubordination” to his goddamn life.

Status: 69 chapters + 2 extras [complete]
Tags: modern setting, slice-of-life, growing up
CP: eager, devoted, and loyal street dog x classic poison-tongued queen
Content warnings: contains spoilers, click here

Personal thoughts, or why you should read:
Da Ge, or Brother, is a story that embodies slice of life. It presents the sorrows of life in equal measure with the joys; it doesn't hold back on showing all sides of people, no matter the age. It takes the inevitabilities of living and combines it with twists of fate, and examines the composition of the sparks that fly when people collide. As Wei Qian grows up, we are taken into his mind. We see all his struggles laid bare, why he does the things he does, makes the choices he does. I think this is a specific place where priest's storytelling shines, aside from her usual (and of course present in this novel) humor: she makes the conscious choice to tell, rather than leaving the reader floundering in the fast pace. And she does it well. We feel everything.

Da Ge is about family. It's about friendship. It's about the ravaging tempest that is memory, and the craters people leave on each other. It's about accepting yourself; learning when to persist and when to let go. Love more powerful than water, deeper than blood. It's a slippery slope to the top, but there's a way, even if you have to beat out the path yourself.

It isn't an easy story to read, but I am profoundly grateful to have read it. There's yearning, the unstoppable and bittersweet passage of time, and the most imperfectly perfect couple. And longing, and pining, and strangely wonderful coincidences, and letters written with all heart, all soul.

If I were to sum Da Ge up in three words: money, love, and turtles.

CONTENT WARNINGS:
Pseudo-incest, character death, violence, homophobia, prostitution, drug abuse and addiction, child abduction and human trafficking, body shaming, skin colour shaming, suicide, pedophilia and child molestation/sexual abuse (non-explicit), severe injury and disfiguration, drug trafficking

Some of these are mentioned, and not described in great detail, but please be careful.

JJWXC rawsGuide to JJWXCEnglish translation by @zyleyelashesAbout priest
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