Lying on my bed yesterday evening, listening to music in the lovely air conditioning while outside the closed windows it rained and thundered and was smelly-muggy, I started rummaging in the boxes on the far side of the bed and eventually pulled out a manga series sent to me ten years ago, called Red Dragon. At the time I noted it was not about a red dragon-- was naturally something set in Hong Kong probably involving gangsters-- and packed it back in the boxes. This time I started reading. I'm still not sure if it's about gangsters or just an extremely rich Chinese family, but no matter: what it is is by the numbers BL with only the slightest twist that the (distinctly underaged) young master our protagonist has a pash on is a) illegitimate b) the son of a foreigner and c) has eyes that change colour, frequently to red.
Red eyes of course are the sign of a dragon.
This might prove interesting if I can get past those tropes that used to drive me to foaming fury in the old days-- healing sex, and specifically healing sex after rape, which no truly *does not work that way* no matter how much the seme utters the magic words 'I'll be gentle.' (There's also the trope that Iya da does not mean No, but that one I already know the reasons for.)
