#i read 2ha

[hopeheartfilia]

ahhh trying to analyse what i think about mo ran's little inner monologue about liking chu wanning and not shi mei and like

:readmore:

fundamentally i do thinks there is some truth to it, like putting someone on a pedestal as pure and good isnt really about being in love.. like its you not the state of u get to the nitty gritty, if u dont like their flaws specifically do you even like them or just the idea of this perfect kind eprson youve build in your mind that cannot be sullied

but also i feel like i disagree about the. sexual aspect of it? like just because youre not horny doesnt mean you dont have a crush? but also i tried to explain what it feels like to have a crush when not hornh and im having the issue of im demiromantic and ive had one crush in my whole ass life and it was in middle school, i simply do not know enough about romantic attraction to tell you. Like i can easily say that Mo Ran isnt experiencing just sexual attraction, even if he is ridiculously horny, but like

How to explain that while yes i dont 5hink you had a crush on shi mei that its not because you dont like shimei physically? you also dont seem to enjoy spending time with shimei that much and dont seem to have many meaningfull connections with him. also also you dont seem to want to be closer to shi mei you just want him to be safe and happy and stuff? It sounds a bit likea ! hes so nice to me, sort of squish. Like when someone does somethibg really nice for you and you decide that youve pack bonded and youre gonna be extra nice to them and youre gonna be the bestest of friends

but often they end up not even being your best friend. because your bestfriend is someone who you dont get tired if being around for days in end and who you can argue but then understand each other, not just someone whos nice to you. you know.

And like Mo Ran doesnt like Chu Wanning jsut because he does somethibg nice for him, he respects jim and has the eorlds most obvious crush BeforE that, thats just when he goes Shizun care for me too? owo and then Cherish the shizun protect the shizun, and i feel like the xie sini moment of Arent I human too? Dont I hurt too? Was more important? Like figuiring out hes been fundamentally misunderstanding Chu Wanning and then finding out for himself what the guy is really liek is what does it for him, because its the understanding, its about the knowing

You can like people without knowing them but you cant love them without knowing them and being willing to learn more

Anyway im going on a tangent and i still cant tell you what the difference in the whole lvoe thing eould be between learning to love chu wanning romantically and in general is outside of he thinks all of his sharpest edges are cute? they endear shizun to him, and thats all i have because i dont remember the like. questions of that What type of attraction are you feeling? quiz that helps me work it out.

yeah i have a bit more emotional intelligence then mo ran because i spend a looot of time thinking and self analysing but also its not by much. which is partly why i find his EM of -33 so relatable. mine is zero in this metaphor, which is better but still. like at least i can tell other peoples emotions apart with a suprsingly high degree of accuracy for someone who had managed to convince themselves they cant feel guilt and it was just anger obviously, not misplaced guilt nuh uh

ah i need to figuire out hoe to add a readmore in mobile for this rant

anyway mo ran yes correct conslusion that youre head over heels for chu wanning and not in love with shi mei, but no i dont think its just because you desire him carnally, you also desire him in every other way, ehich does not seem to apply to shi mei, but i dont think youre ready for that internal "im not even sure you consider shi mei as a human person with like agency and shit and nit a prop in your backstory" conversation. Which. I do see that shi mei isnt written that way which is just.. perfection, the complexity of secondary characters in danmei is unparalleled, love it when people that arent the main couple have personalities

#a shitpost can be blue #2ha #me #i read 2ha #mo ran #long post #i hope the read more works but i have my doubts #you just gonna have to scroll down #erha

[itzitxou]

I love Xue Meng a normal amount (I would die for him).

#I read xue meng's extra recently and I love him so much #Xue meng and veggie bun are learning to love each other (slowly) #i'm so proud of him #Xue meng #Veggie bun #xue ziming #2ha #erha #erha he ta de bai mao shizun #dumb husky and his white cat shizun #the husky and his white cat shizun #Danmei #Chinese book #illustration #art #fanart #二哈和他的白猫师尊 #Sketches #meatbun doesn't eat meat #rou bao bu chi rou #2ha memes

[jeong-guwon]

"The Yuheng Elder was indeed boss as fuck, impressive, truly impressive."

#i was re-reading 2ha because of vol 1's release #I LOVE HIM SO MUCH #2ha #the husky and his white cat shizun #dumb husky and his white cat shizun #erha #chu wanning #mo ran #xue meng #shi mei

[mios-art]

Trying to be normal at work but just thinking about Chu Wanning who at 26 thinks he's beyond love and support after spending all his formative years without anyone to stand by him and who developed feelings for the first person who showed some interest and kindness towards him even if it made no sense and who then saw that person fall for someone else

That man who hides when he sees people smiling heading his way because he knows they'll stop smiling if they see him since everyone he knows is afraid of him because he sticks to the rules however harsh those rules are and reacts aggressively at any show of injustice, but who still uses his powers in secret to create barriers to shield his students from the rain and who after failing to save one of his disciple became hated by the person he cared the most about

Chu Wanning who's every clumsy attempts at kindness is taken as mockery or cruelty and who spent the last 10 years of his life being abused emotionally and physically by that same person he loved and and I'm aaaaaaaAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

#HE MUST HAVE BEEN SO HEARTBROKEN IM YELLING #the husky and his white cat shizun #not an art post #if you read this you are strong i forgot how to write it was just brain barf because i have so many feelings about Chu Wanning #he's my poor little meow meow #2ha volume 2 spoilers #2ha #2ha spoilers #chu wanning #im waiting for volume 3

[mxtxfanatic]

I’ve been stuck in 2ha fics for a minute and have seen a few metas and posts surrounding Mo Ran’s character, but something I don’t think comes across very well from the book to fanwork and (some) discussion is that Taxian-jun doesn’t exist without the long-hatred flower.

Like, I see a lot of modern au fics, for example, that tackle the Mo Ran 1.0 to 1.5 shift by having Mo Ran be disillusioned by Chu Wanning and that being his villain origin story, but what gets lost in that remix is that in canon, while Mo Ran was hurt by being whipped by his shizun, after he thought about it for a while, he decided to apologize to Chu Wanning to reconcile rather than hold a grudge. Because Mo Ran, at his core, is someone who is naturally good and would rather die than enact vengeance on others. That’s why both the timing and the effects of the flower are particularly evil: Mo Ran is cursed because he chose reconciliation over petty grudges and the curse forces him to go against his nature by holding onto said petty grudges to “repay” them to a ridiculous degree while erasing any good memory he has, which is what had previously fueled his will to live.

With that said, Mo Ran 1.0/Taxian-jun is able to transition to 1.5 and eventually 2.0 not because he realized that Chu Wanning loved him all along (as a disciple at this point), but because the Chu Wanning from the original universe nullified the effects of the flower, allowing him to finally see that Chu Wanning loved him all along and that he actually doesn’t want revenge. And we can see that effect of the nullification immediately! Taxian-jun becomes 16-year-old Mo Ran, finds out that Shi Mei, his “first love” is actually still alive at this point, and immediately decides to prioritize keeping Shi Mei alive over enacting revenge on Chu Wanning. Because at his core he’s motivated by love! And when Hua Binan brings Taxian-jun’s reanimated corpse into the new universe, his control is tenuous because Taxian-jun isn’t being motivated purely by spite anymore because the flower isn’t in effect anymore. This isn’t to say that Mo Ran was incapable of becoming Taxian-jun, but as the narrative proves, that is a version of him that only exists under mind-breaking abuse and duress, which only happened when he lived under the Mo family’s reign of abuse for years before finally snapping and then once again under the effects of a curse that rewrote his memories to convince him that he was living under mind-breaking abuse and duress. Without those conditions, Mo Ran always chooses hope and love, and even as he looks back on those moments where he reigned terror, he wishes he could have chosen/been afforded death instead (much to Chu Wanning’s upset). So all this to say that Mo Ran isn’t saved by realizing he was living under a misunderstanding; he is saved by having the thing leeching out all of the good in him destroyed.

(Also on a smaller note, Taxian-jun isn’t uneducated because he was on the street for so long and therefore “too old” to be properly educated. Taxian-jun is uneducated because all of his memories of learning were good memories tied to Chu Wanning, thus they got erased. Mo Ran 2.0 re-educates himself in his late teens/early 20s because the problem was always the flower, not some “inherent” inferiority he was stuck with from his upbringing or an unwillingness to learn.)

#2ha #i know i said i was gonna stay out of this one until maybe i reread it #but I’ve been in the 2ha fandom reading fics #and as much as i love the angst #there’s just no way to accurately translate the story into aus #without the existence of the flower #but i also think it cheapens mo ran’s character to run with ‘he was naturally jaded until romantic love hit him’ #2ha spoilers

[catradoraism]

#chen feiyu u make me so insane why are u grabbing his hand like that. why are u the perfect mo ran THAT WE WILL NEVER SEE #this is how u can tell he really read the book #mo ran #chu wanning #ranwan #i think about ranwan. i explode and die #erha #2ha #2ha spoilers #haoyixing #hyx

[anshares]

Ranwan's Shoujo manga moment

(Tell me whats your fave shoujo manga trope + fave danmei ship)

#ranwan #2ha #chu wanning #mo ran 2.0 #mo ran #mo weiyu #the husky and his white cat shizun #erha he ta de bai mao shizun #二哈和他的白貓師尊 #楚晚宁 #燃晚 #墨燃 #墨微雨 #comics #cwn #with messy chu wanning room is i bet this happened #also mo ran looks like a shoujo primce with the new manhua style #i was actually reading a shoujo manga when this idea came up #i affectionately call this the baby kitten chu wanning comic #my art #fan art

[yumemiruuuu]

the other day when I was heading home, I looked over and saw that the lady sitting next to me on the public transit was READING ABOUT THE IMMORTALITY DRAMA??!!! I swear I did 10 double-takes because I was so much in shock.

#anyways… decided to reread 2ha while waiting for volume 5 to come out in April because I can’t keep on spoiling myself #the 2ha withdrawal symptoms QAQ #I should read Meatbuns notes for the chapter while reading the books LMAO #2ha shitpost #2ha #erha shitpost #erha #erha he ta de bai mao shizun #immortality #taxian jun #mo ran #mo weiyu #chu wanning #listening to 2ha playlists while reading hit hard #二哈和的白貓師尊

[fugottron]

#guardian #zhen hun #priest #this cover convinced me to read this series #thank god it’s not extremely long #I couldn’t take another 2ha

[hopeheartfilia]

common issue with reading unoficial translations of danmei novels: pronouns

#it sometimes gets tiring having to correct a whole paragraph of pronouns in your head #i read 2ha #Mo Ran's eyes were still red and her moisture-filled eyes were open as she looked at the man at her bedside #finally releasing her mouth and allowing the gentle teenager to feed her food over to her. #thats the paragraph im talking about currently but its like not something that im reading for the first or third time #but like the translation i found of 2ha is especially bad about it #feels like im asking a russian person to conjugate the verb to be in bulgarian #... past storytelling tense

[itzitxou]

I finished the book the other day and I cried :')

#Tgcf #Xie lian #Hua Cheng #heaven official's blessing #tian guan ci fu #I'm reading 2ha now wish me luck I'll need it #This is all clau's fault she recommended me a bunch of these books and I live in hell now #Danmei #Chinese #san lang #Hualian #Mxtx

[trans-hua-cheng-agenda]

Xue Zhengyong asking Chu Wanning what kind of person he’d be interested in romantically and Chu Wanning angrily replying “Alive. Female.” Is actually hilarious

Ah yes, just what any heterosexual man would say

#he’s gay and doesn’t want to talk about it #tbh I could see him being aspec too #also xue zhengyong this really isn’t the time #bryn reads 2ha #2ha #Chu wanning

[lunaticmeap]

See i love that SVSSS and 2ha gets compared so much, cuz they got the similar master-disciple dynamic w/ completely opposite brands of Supportive Shizun. Becuz when their students are at the brink of death, CWN goes, “I’ll die with you,” and SQQ (the absolute fucking goated millenial that he is) goes, “LFG” and calls it a day. And i think that’s just beautiful.

#i think about SQQ in that chapter at least once every few days #becuz it’s just so crackhead #i was almost bawling when CWN went ‘I’m here to die with u’ #and SQQ took me out of my Sad so quick with one line i think i keeled over and stopped reading #SVSSS #2ha #chu wanning #shen qingqiu #2ha spoilers #svsss spoilers

[catradoraism]

i know everyone anguishes over the fact that hyx will probably never see the light of day but the fact that it got filmed at all is a miracle in itself like how did the director read “student becomes a genocidal dictator and forces former teacher to become his sex slave” and go “yeah i can make that pass censorship”

#the fact that a live action version of taxian jun exists at ALL??? #that’s crazy #that being said i need hyx. give it to me #‘yeah we’re making cwn the imperial qin player :)’ #everyone who’s read That chapter: …..👀 #the fact that chen feiyu read 2ha and became the biggest mo ran stan. i hope he knows he is loved #2ha

[mejomonster]

Modu by priest was truly such a good read. If you like romance? It has a sweeping romance, with a well done bisexual and gay lead (and straight best friend) all written in ways that manage to feel realistic, it's got features people likely found it for when looking for a danmei - rich manipulative younger man, older investigator who's got a hero streak, and yet those categories don't really do justice to them (and of course tao ran is the more grounded detective story lead who keeps his theories to himself and worries about dragging others into his mess).

They're so much more... Fei Du is a traumatized young man who's worried he's as monstrous as the people who scarred him, who is preparing to take the leap and cross the line to become an even more terrifying version of himself if it will destroy the corruption poisoning this city and harming so many, Luo Wenzhou is a cop that used to want to be a hero and learned he will fail people and be unable to save people and holds onto Fei Du as someone who reminds him he DOES fail but also reminds him why he wants so hard to keep Trying to help people even when it seems impossible... why trying and putting in effort to care and help Even when its too late to fix things is Worthwhile. Tao Ran is a contrast to them both, Fei Du living in a world where there's only monsters and victims and Luo Wenzhou desperately trying to force the world to be a place where justice CAN prevail and win even as he sees it fail over and over, trying so hard to believe all people have the capacity for everything and are worth trying to save. Even though Fei Du doesm't believe that, being around Luo Wenzhou makes him want to consider it. Tao Ran, their contrast? Believing the world can go either way, and its up to people like him to create any justice at all, any structure at all, or else everything is just meaningless suffering chaos. As characters, the three of them serve to explore how the world works and views on it in terms of a detective murder mystery encompassing the whole city, the small scale version of the world. Modu is a romance, but its also fully commited to being a murder mystery that wants to tackle the kind of themes that come up in the setting it's created. Its characters are so much more than Insert Character Ship types here. These characters were made this way to explore these ideas (just as the villains are all made to parallel and contrast Fei Du to explord these ideas in comparison to our point of view Fei Du moments, our impressions of Fei Du from Luo Wenzhou and Tao Rans varied perspectives, all of them are different lenses to view humanity and how it works, if the world is just or if we have to make it good, if we can be inherently good and if good people will reach out to us if we just keep treading water to survive, if its luck and chaos, and how much... and much more frankly).

Modu is like. If you want a story about a corrupt city and its victims, symbolizing a corrupt world and all of us at its mercy, and you want to see the heart of the people doing something about it. First the main trio, but also every victim Fei Du recruits to help, every murderer recruited to the corruption, all the people in the cases swayed to some side. Thats what Modu is about.

The romance is just one facet of exploring that, the personal debate about what these things mean about the world as told through two people who view this world incredibly differently. Yet find some way to exist in the same space, same mutual world, when together. It hooks you in and doesn't let you go and youre wondering right there with them, left to draw your own meaning in the end. Hopefully that its worth trying, that doing something is worth trying even when its just the trying you can do and not the succeeding, at least thats what I got from it (at least in regards to Fei Du and Luo Wenzhou meeting each other, unable to live up to the pillar they put each other on but trying anyway, is what I felt from them).

Then like? Modu gives you THAT story, which in its own right is enough to make you contemplate.

And if you're like me and care about people, about characters? Well it gives you, like I said, those big themes and a city's nightmares symbolizing the world, and brings them down to an individual level. You read from the mind of the little girl who grew up in this (one of my favorite scenes and when I felt this novel was going to not shy away from dark psychological moments and bringing them to you). You read from the mind of Fei Du when he knows himself, when he doesn't. You read from the minds of all kinds of people, and the heart of much of the investigation is peoples motives and things they'd gone through and how that shaped what they'd do next. Why they'd do it. Leaving you to wonder who's right. Jaded idealist Luo Wenzhou who wants to believe in the goodness of the people he loves, but also is willing to risk that strangers may have good intent? Fei Du who thinks theres only victims and perpetrators and everyone is going to fall into one in the right circumstance? Tao Ran, who feels the world is too messy to dare declare predictable, who thinks even your closest can betray you and even you can accidentally hurt them, nevermind strangers, and the only thing you can control and rely on is your own choices? Some mix? None of them? The side characters as they come up, grow and evolve, do they understand the world better or worse, and is the world they experience different than anothers and justify why their worldview is likewise different? Modu gives you that up close and personal, over and over. Im still thinking about it. And the way its done, they all get to feel like lived in people. Not structures to tell the themes only. But on their own, there's a personal struggle between Fei Du feeling like a monster who'll destroy Lup Wenzhou if he loves him, like his dad destroyed his mom, and Luo Wenzhou carrying the guilt he could never save Fei Du and desperate to believe in Fei Du (and keep trying to save him in that way if only that way) as person who can do good despite not being saved and despite Fei Du's fears. You could cut the entire city's plot away, all of the crimes and make the city calm, and still that core of their plot would be carrying a Lot of weight. Theyre playing a game of "enemies" to lovers sure, or whatever romance story structures they fit into. But they're also made to be deeply rooted into each other, their personal beliefs tied into the outcome of what they hope or fear happens if they are close together. Modu made me care about that. Its like the fears many people might have, abiut theur own flaws, about getting close to others, about trusting and being unsure if that trust is safe to give. Its that and magnified into bigger form, in this landscape of a fucked up city and the tragedy of Fei Du and Luo Wenzhou's meeting and former lives.

Its like. Id love to to read another danmei (Ive got a lot on my to read list). But what's going to give me roo

#modu #silent reading #lb #meta #like... modu was so fucking good. #it was 3 characters symbolizing their city symbolizing the world in terms of worldviews morality justice and if theres a point to #trying to help at all. like damn #i want to read ANOTHER danmei that makes me weigh those questions. that uses the characters this personally and intimately with the readers #because the Characters weigh the themes in their OWN lives so heavily. #like... i know priest can probably give me this kind of huge delivery in can ci pin and sha po lang (at least i estimate #priesr probably can as theyre very popular novels by priest) #and 2ha can (because ive read half and know its themes) #but like. what other danmei can? can thousand autumns? can peerless? can wu shang jie? #can Mistakenly Saving the Villain? #like... the only non priest danmei i read was svsss and i got supremely lucky #cause i personally LOVE satire and critique commentary affection for the topics it explores #and svsss AS a satire is incredibly well done. having read 2ha first? and seen Eternal Love? #svsss does an amazing job at critiquing webnovel culture and flaws. at the way capitalism effects writing #at the way some tropes have become staples of certain genres and when used well yeah you get 2ha but when used badly you get #the fake novel svsss was making fun of that there Are many real novels like