#The universe isn’t just a novel. It’s specifically a webnovel.

[lialox]

*grabs a reader* You don’t understand.

Han Sooyoung wrote everything in their universe. She wrote EVERYTHING.

“Everything has already been written but at the same time still being written”……. by her.

[whumpwillow]

Havitys | immortal whump one

FINALLY i have the first chapter ready~ here is the new thing inspired by this post from @whumpsday that i had y’all fill out the google forms for 

warnings: negative self-talk, past torture, hair-pulling, being pinned to the ground, spicy emotional breakdown. mentioned: police, hospital, drunkenness 

—

Caelurus dashed through the forests of the divine realm, slashing any monster that entered his path. He swung his sword in a wide arc, creating a ray of energy that sliced through dozens at once and easily decimated all the rest. Fighting them was no trouble at all even if they were high-rank monsters, because he was the most powerful god in the divine realm, no, the entire universe—

Jae-Seong sighed and shook his head. “No, that isn’t right.” He backspaced the last line and continued muttering to himself. “It’s Ximun who’s got the most power, even if Caelurus is building up his strength…”

He re-typed the sentence and read through it again, pursing his lips in displeasure as he continued.

Caelurus stood confidently in the midst of the battlefield he had made of the divine forest, chuckling darkly. A beast snuck up and tried to pounce on him from behind, but its sneak abilities were far too weak to go up against Caelurus’ detection. He reacted by spinning around and swinging his sword as swift as a breeze, and the monster was torn to shreds from just one hit. Lesser gods would have been caught in the trap, but not him, because he was Caelurus Nox, the thousand year destruction god—

“Oh no, that sounds terrible,” Jae-Seong groaned, putting his head in his hands.

He rested like that for a moment, bent over his desk with his eyes closed. He threaded his fingers through his hair and took a deep breath.

“It’s okay, just stop making it sound like an infomercial,” he said, and then winced.

And stop talking to yourself while you’re at it.

This deadline was going to drive him insane and he knew it. It’s not like he didn’t have a clue that people were waiting on the next chapter of Revenge of the Thousand Year Destruction God—his next new popular webnovel that had been serialized just last year. He had to get the next chapter out in order to get the commission, and without that, he wasn’t going to be able to pay the rent for this month, and he definitely didn’t want the electricity shut off again, but the words just weren’t coming.

He needed to write. It was either that or go back to working at the grocery store, and he would almost rather take the loss of electricity over that whole mess. He was lucky to have had not just one popular novel go viral, but two, so he couldn’t afford to wait.

He set his hands back on the keyboard.

Caelurus—

A knock at the door.

Jae-Seong groaned, whirling around in his chair to glare at the door to his apartment and whoever had the audacity to interrupt him when he was about to get back to writing. He had to do it before the motivation died out. He knew from experience that it would be ten times harder then and the quality twice as bad.

He went to look through the peephole in the door to see who could be bothering him, but there was no one there. Confused, he opened the door, only to have a person nearly topple him.

Jae-Seong cried out in surprise and pushed the person away, who yelped in pain and collapsed in a jumble of limbs. Apparently the man had been resting against the door and had fallen inward when Jae-Seong opened it, but Jae-Seong had no idea why anyone would be here. Jae-Seong didn’t pay much attention to the man, figuring the most logical reason was that the man was drunk and just happened to choose his door specifically to fall asleep on. Of course. That was just typical, wasn’t it.

Jae-Seong nudged the man with his foot. “Hey, go drink somewhere else.”

“Nngh!” the man cried out, curling in on himself and putting a hand to his ribs where Jae-Seong’s foot had touched him.

Jae-Seong put a hand on his forehead. “Hey, I didn’t hit you that hard—”

And that was when he noticed the blood. The bruises. The various other lacerations. The man’s eyes were closed, his face was twisted in pain and he was clearly in enough of it to react to a light poke even when barely conscious.

Idiot. Idiot idiot idiot.

Jae-Seong chided himself for not noticing this earlier. It was so obvious. The blood was everywhere. It covered the poor man, staining his clothes and sticking them to his skin. He was only wearing a tattered pair of grey pants, no shirt or shoes. The numerous wounds littered what Jae-Seong could see of his exposed skin and bruises covered the rest.

He wasn’t drunk—well, maybe he was, and honestly that would be a mercy considering all the injuries—he had collapsed due to blood loss.

The man’s face was gentle and smooth, but smeared with blood and bruises. He had a split lip and a line across the bridge of his nose—likely broken—and not to mention the black eye. Around his neck appeared to be a thick band of scarring, and Jae-Seong saw similar marks around the man’s wrists and ankles as well. His back had the worst of it. It was marred flesh rather than anything else, torn to scraps. Jae-Seong thought he might be sick just looking at it.

He redirected his gaze to the man’s front, away from the vicious remains of his back. Were those burns? he wondered, but there was no way anyone could shape burns into images that precise…right?

Jae-Seong puffed some air out and steeled himself. He bent over and put his hands under the man’s arms and dragged him into the apartment before unceremoniously depositing him on the floor. Panting, he thought about what to do.

Call the police? The hospital? What would they even say about all this?

He shouldn’t have brought this person into the house. Who would get this injured if they weren’t involved in some sort of shady activity? All those wounds were definitely intentional. This man was beaten, severely, and by someone who clearly had a grudge. Maybe he was in the mob. But no, the hair…he looked like a cosplayer with that long white wig on.

First thing, he should probably get the wig off since it got in the way of the injuries. The long strands stuck to the cuts on the man’s back and had to be uncomfortable. Not that being uncomfortable was the biggest thing to worry about right now—there were so many wounds—but Jae-Seong wanted to do just the one thing. He grabbed a handful of white hair and tugged.

The man made an awful screech before spinning around and had Jae-Seong pinned against the floor of his apartment before he could even blink. The danger wasn’t the first thing to register in his mind, but instead those piercing golden eyes that stared back at him. Shining, luminescent gold, that of which not even the sun could rival. The line came to him unbidden, something he had thought of months ago when drafting his character designs.

It was just like Jae-Seong had written in his webnovel.

“I…escaped?” the man said, holding his forearm to Jae-Seong’s throat, his other hand supporting his body, albeit shakily. He gave a cursory glance around the apartment. “It granted my wish? I’m free?”

Jae-Seong blinked at him. “What?”

The golden-eyed man pressed his arm into Jae-Seong’s throat, making Jae-Seong hit the back of his head on the floor.

“I asked you a question, mortal. I am not so weak that you can look down on me!” the man shouted, teeth bared in a snarl.

His eyes shone with a fierce light, unstable and deranged. Jae-Seong’s thoughts caught up with his survival instinct and he finally realized the position he was in, pinned to the floor by a madman.

“I’m not!” Jae-Seong blurted out. “I’m not looking down on you, in fact, you’re looking down on me, ya know, since you’re the one on top—” oh god what was he saying, the man was going to kill him—

The man’s brow furrowed and Jae-Seong couldn’t help but think of how closely he resembled the protagonist from his webnovel. More than resembled, Jae-Seong would say this man was the exact image he had of Caelurus Nox…a man with long white hair and golden eyes and who was tortured for a thousand years. That sort of thing could leave injuries like this.

No, that’s impossible.

“Are you…safe?” the man asked. He’d maintained the same rough edge to his voice, but there was an undercurrent of fear and desperation hidden in there. “I asked it to bring me somewhere safe…”

The System. Jae-Seong thought back to his novel and how he’d written in, as a sort of cosmic cruel joke, that a “System” appeared to Caelurus on the final day of his thousandth year of torture and offered him a single wish as a “reward” for enduring so long. It was a cliché trope, but System novels were popular, a type of deus ex machina that went accepted as long as it was funny. Jae-Seong thought it was a good bit of dark humor for the System to offer a “reward” to Caelurus after a thousand years of torture. What cold comfort that was—but it served as a way for him to advance the plot with Caelurus wishing to escape and become stronger so he could take his revenge on all who betrayed him.

Jae-Seong didn’t see it as funny or convenient now.

“You’re safe,” Jae-Seong whispered.

He didn’t know why he had worried. The golden-eyed man was severely injured, so even if he did have Jae-Seong pinned, he could have easily toppled the man over with a single hit. It didn’t even take that much. Just those two little words and the man had released him, his arms going shaky. He bent double on the floor, putting his hands to his face, trembling all the while. A sob escaped him.

It was pitiful, really.

Jae-Seong sat up and rubbed his throat as he watched the man shiver and break. He was crying now, his breath hitching with every passing moment, and Jae-Seong didn’t know what he was even supposed to do in this situation. Did he still call the hospital?

That certainly wouldn’t work if this person was who Jae-Seong suspected he was.

“Hey, you, what’s your name?” he asked.

He didn’t expect to get a response from the man currently mid-breakdown, but he turned his head to look at Jae-Seong and meet his eyes. The man’s own were red and wet, making the golden hue stand out that much more.

“I’m sure you’ve heard of the god of destruction? My name is Caelurus Nox.”

—

[spockandawe]

So, my heart keeps circling and circling back to The Scum Villain’s Self-Saving System, and I was idly prodding at why that is, even more than the other mxtx stories, and then I thought to myself, ‘why not ramble into the internet abyss instead of just in your own head?’ And so here we are.

I love this story so much, seriously. It was maybe the most difficult of the three novels for me to begin, because the translation editing is definitely rougher than mdzs and tgcf, and I think the story itself assumes that readers are kind of familiar with transmigration concepts (teal deer, person from real world reads novel, involuntarily is pulled into novel, often(?) as one of the established characters, lives out the-novel-plot-but-different).

But once I got past like, that first chapter? MAN. I was so hooked. 

I think the first thing that really stands out to me is that Binghe as a love interest is...I’m not sure I want to say he’s more “flawed” than the other mxtx love interests, but that’s the best word I’m finding right now. The wangxian ship is mostly in tune with each other in the present, despite a few lingering misunderstandings. And the hualian ship, like, hua cheng rolls up like ‘heyy what up i would do anything you asked of me’ and xie lian was like ‘you. i like you a lottle.’ and their in-book development is mostly about bringing xie lian up to speed on the depth of their history together.

But Shen Qingqiu and Luo Binghe! The original canon Binghe is specifically a blackened hero, who is casually cruel and manipulative, and has collected up a massive harem of pretty ladies to be his wives and concubines. Pretty much the last straw in that blackening is that his abusive teacher (who he still desperately wanted the approval of) found out he was half demon (also news to luo binghe) and kicked him into the abyss where he had a miserable few years having his demon blood awakened. Later, he came back to the human realm, much stronger and angrier than when he left, and his morally questionable adventures involved de-limbing his old teacher, cutting out his tongue, and keeping him alive for years.

Shen Yuan is a modern-day human bean who has been hate-reading the webnovel of this story, where he can see a lot of interesting potential in the story, but is massively frustrated by the things the author has chosen to do with it. It is a Significant shock to his system when he wakes up inside the story, in the body of Shen Qingqiu. After Luo Binghe has already been his student for some time. Also, there’s a System that’s policing whether or not he acts in-character as Shen Qingqiu, and he’s going to get punished if his points drop below a certain threshold. He gets more freedom to act as the story progresses, but at first he has to do things like argue with the System about why he should be allowed to give medicine to Luo Binghe after he gets beat up (it will shame their sect if outsiders see him with a bruised face). And on the one hand, he’s trying DESPERATELY to avoid a future where he gets mutilated and tortured by his student, but... he is absolutely a massive softy who takes no time at all to start ADORING this kid and being super proud of everything he does. He won’t admit that, even in his own pov, and he has a very, very reserved external manner, but he’s so soft on the inside.

(ps why did using fans as conversational props stop being a thing. maybe sometimes i don’t WANT my face hanging out in public, maybe sometimes it’s extra fun to hide your expression.)

And this makes for a fascinating dynamic, because this new Shen Qingqiu 1) adores Luo Binghe, 2) is terrified of Luo Binghe.

At first, when Luo Binghe is still a teenager, it’s easier to land on the side of just adoring him. The original canon character was a sweet, sweet kid all on his own. And Luo Binghe is still an extremely good boy when this novel starts, even though he’s being mistreated by his teacher and most of his fellow disciples. But when Shen Qingqiu starts giving him support and positive reinforcement, oh my god, he BLOOMS. 

But Shen Qingqiu is from outside the novel, and he knows where this is headed eventually. And at the point where the original character shoved Luo Binghe into the abyss for a couple years of misery, the new Shen Qingqiu thinks he’s in a damned if you do, damned if you don’t situation, and... reluctantly does the same thing.

So here’s the trouble. Luo Binghe is... needy. He’s a needy, needy boy. He loves very hard and cares about his people (person) a lot, but he is also clingy as heck, jealous, and has MASSIVE abandonment issues. Getting this treatment from his favorite person in the entire universe is... not ideal. Having it happen when he’s just found out he’s half demon is even less ideal, especially when the framing makes it look like he’s being rejected because of What He Is, not something he has any power to change. And it ties back into to his oldest, most painful insecurities. His name literally means ‘lowered into the icy river’, because that’s what his birth mother did with him. 

So when he comes back to the human realm, he’s not as blackened as he was in canon, and doesn’t have a grudge of the same magnitude as the original Luo Binghe. But the person he loves most in the world hurt him very, very badly, and he :) has :) some :) questions :))))))))))))))

And this is the point where every time Luo Binghe breathes, Shen Qingqiu goes WAUGHHHH

Which is so TASTY, honestly! And the escalation of hurt and mistrust is such a delicious feedback loop! I love a good supportive relationship, but I live for two people who care about each other inadvertently inflicting massive wounds on each other’s hearts.

I don’t want to go into describing the later parts of the plot, because that seems like such a waste, but I feel like transmigration stories are the MOST tasty if having prior knowledge of a novel’s plot makes the leads act as dumbasses in all kinds of new and exciting ways. Which definitely, definitely applies here.

And there are all kinds of DELICIOUS side relationships, which weren’t there in the original canon, and that Shen Qingqiu accidentally discovers/uncovers while he’s fumbling around trying to dodge his canon fate. Like, early in the book, Shen Qingqiu is supposed to kill one of his peers in the sect. The guy was suffering from a qi deviation and the original Shen Qingqiu was like ‘look, he was out of control, and I didn’t want to kill him, but it was him or me.’ Everyone was skeptical, but they didn’t have any evidence to contradict him. This character was the brother of one of Luo Binghe’s eventual wives, so it was pretty much just another bonus reason to hate his shizun once he turned against him.

The new Shen Qingqiu is like ‘okay, so this Liu Qingge is supposed to be strong. Maybe if I save his life he’ll protect me from Luo Binghe?’ And it changes SO MUCH! And Shen Qingqiu is SO DUMB! He’s like ‘wow, liu qingge really hates me, huh.’ And Liu Qingge is like ‘WHY ARE YOU BEING NICE. IT’S WEIRD. ARE YOU REALLY STILL YOURSELF?’ And then later there are spoilery developments, but there’s this act of devotion that moves me so much. (five years!!!!!!!!!!)

And I don’t want to undersell the intense emotions these characters are so frequently feeling in this story, but they are also. so dumb. so frequently, frequently dumb. and I live for it.

Like, I just got past the part in the novel where Shen Qingqiu sees Luo Binghe and Liu Mingyan having their first conversation. Liu Mingyan is a legendary beauty (so beautiful she wears a veil, because otherwise her beauty is just too distracting) and eventually becomes one of Luo Binghe’s favorite wives. So Shen Qingqiu (who hates the original novel, but also sure has a lot of passion for it and remembers a lot of the details, considering how much he theoretically hates it) is like ‘OH, HOT DAMN. MY OTP’S FIRST CONVERSATION. I WANNA SEE HOW THIS GOES.’

And what happens is that Luo Binghe gets so massively jealous. We get a bit of his pov, where almost all of his thoughts are ‘WHY IS SHIZUN STILL LOOKING AT HER?? IT’S NOT LIKE YOU CAN SEE MUCH PAST THE VEIL ANYWAYS. AND ANYWAYS, I’M PRETTIER???????????????’ And finally Luo Binghe goes off out of sight with her so shizun can’t watch her anymore, and Shen Qingqiu is like ‘ah.... alas....... of course the protagonist and his lady get privacy for such an important scene..............’

They are so dumb, guys. They care so much, and they ache so much over each other, and they are so dumb. And the supporting cast isn’t much smarter. Even the smart ones have the dumb ones inflicted on them.

In the extras, at one point demon king Luo Binghe is addressing his main retainers, and he’s like ‘if... hypothetically..... two people’s hearts were out of alignment with each other........ how would u fix that.......... hypothetically..............’ And his poor retainers are like

But I really, really think that the protagonist being afraid of the love interest is a really key point for me, personally. And then it’s extra my favorite, because of 1) him having a good fucking reason to be afraid, and 2) his love interest having no goddamn clue. It makes for such a good blend of humor and sincere pathos. I’m weak to dumbasses-in-love as a dynamic, but it can be hard to have something so lighthearted while also working in painful emotional depths. The premise for this story is hard to replicate, and I’m kind of drawing a blank on anything that I’ve read that measures up to it, and the plot REALLY makes the use of some incredible foundations.

Anyways, thank you for coming to my ted talk, this book is ridiculous and i love it, and it’s also the shortest and most linear of mxtx’s books, and i highly recommend it to everyone.

[spockandawe]

It’s time for the weekly training that I already know, but they want us to participate so okay, I guess, but that means it’s ALSO time to listen with one ear while I yell about another gay webnovel.

So, okay. I yelled a bit about Yuwu (or Yu Wu) before, but when I started reading it this summer, there were only 30-something chapters translated, and as of last night, I think it’s up to eighty (the current translator is working like a beast, and i’m honestly in awe). Yuwu is by meatbun, the author of erha, and is technically set in the same universe, just significantly removed in time. This doesn’t have too-too much bearing on things (Mo XI and Mo Ran are not related), and you run into concepts like the ‘butterfly bone beauty feast’ in both novels.

And as a meatbun story, this book has hilarious highs and horrifyingly dark lows, and I love every minute of it. I’ll try to bold relevant warnings as I go!

The story stars Mo Xi, a cold, upright, proper nobleman, and one of the foremost generals in the kingdom of Chonghua. Years ago, he fought alongside another general, Gu Mang, until Gu Mang turned traitor, stabbed Mo Xi right over the heart (symbolism!), and defected to the enemy kingdom of Liao. As the story opens, Mo Xi has just received word that Liao... is giving Gu Mang back.

Yeah, the story doesn’t beat around the bush for long, they were absolutely 100% banging. They were having a long, passionate, extended love affair until Gu Mang turned traitor, and Mo Xi is still absolutely not over it. I’m no longer positive in what order the information is revealed, but Gu Mang was a slave, and the first slave in Chonghua to be freed and promoted to the rank of general. Does this have anything to do with his later decision to turn on the country? Mayyyyybe! But back in the day, even as a slave, he met Mo Xi, at that time, a child of a disgraced noble family, and as his shixiong, took it on himself to protect and care forthis sad, lonely little shidi. The latest chapters have been revealing the moment this transitioned from a platonic relationship into a distinctly not-platonic one, but there was really, really a lot of genuine love, admiration, and respect between the two of them.

But, back to the present! Mo Xi gets word that this notorious traitor is being extradited to Chonghua, but he’s out in the field with the army. Gu Mang is being sent to the capital. He can’t do anything about this right now except stew in private, unhappy emotions.

Smash cut to two years later, and Mo Xi’s return to the capital. Finally, he can find out what Gu Mang’s been up to. Prison? Probably? HA, no, this is meatbun, and meatbun goes harder than that. Content warning: sexual slavery, because apparently it’s standard policy in Chonghua for traitors to be placed in a brothel specifically for purposes of clients taking out their anger on them or humiliating them in whatever way they so desire.  For bonus D: points, the brothel is owned by the same nobleman who used to own Gu Mang. Things are not completely dire for Gu Mang, for reasons I’m not going to try to describe here, but when Mo Xi finally can’t stand not knowing, and goes to see him, Gu Mang is... not the same shining, bright, clever man he once knew.

Yeah, so his mind and sense of self are literally fractured. I’m not too-too familiar with the philosophical(?) concepts driving this, but it’s similar to how Mo Ran had to collect all of Chu Wanning’s souls when he almost died. Gu Mang is missing a number of souls, and he doesn’t remember who he is, he doesn’t remember his history, he’s even lost most of his vocabulary. When Mo Xi finds him, he struggles with basic communication. The story hasn’t explained what happened yet, or what can be done to fix it, but the Guoshi of Liao Kingdom is sketchy as hell, and this sure feels like something that was done to Gu Mang.

So, relatively early on, Mo Xi extracts Gu Mang from the brothel and brings him back to his estate. This isn’t necessarily a happy development, because Mo Xi is still incredibly angry and incredibly betrayed, but now, it isn’t even like he can ask for an explanation or find closure. Gu Mang is... slowly recovering bits and pieces of his memories, but this isn’t necessarily a happy development either, because the emperor has said that he’s going to pursue content warning: sketchy human experimentation/torture. He said this outright to Mo Xi, and Mo Xi goes ahead and communicates it to Gu Mang, and honestly, the whole outlook is so focking bleak, but for some reason, Meatbun balances incredibly dire situations with just enough optimistic flavor that I never quite lose hope.

I’m not going to try to describe the supporting characters, because their storylines are just starting to blossom, and I feel like I’d cause more confusion than I’d resolve. But honestly, I’m having a delightful time right now, and I’m getting probablyyyy two chapters with every three days, and it’s been SO tasty. 

The tragedy of the old relationship was really tasty to begin with, but the additional class-related tragedy that fuels it? Honestly, that’s not usually my cup of tea, but this story leans into the difficulties of a relationship between a noble and a slave, even once the slave is free, even once they both become generals, and it all hurts so good. And we still haven’t gotten a full accounting of all the ways Gu Mang suffered, but we’ve gotten so much, and he’s such a sweet boy, and it hurts in all the best ways. It hurts to see the way Mo Xi is hurting, and then it hurts to see the way Mo Xi treats Gu Mang. 

But then, in terms of the characters themselves, it hurts Mo Xi to realize Gu Mang is coming back to Chonghua, and to know that Gu  it hurts Mo Xi more when he learns about everything Gu Mang has been through, and it hurts him when Gu Mang can’t remember the history that is still so, so, so important to Mo Xi, but then!!! It hurts him even more when Gu Mang does start to remember! This is all the angst I could ever ask for, and it’s set up so that no matter how someone breathes, it’s virtually guaranteed to hurt Mo Xi. 

And I would Die for Gu Mang, honestly. We only get to see bits and pieces of him in his prime, before everything went to hell, but he is really truly the best of boys, and he has so much suffering ahead of him. I have no idea how quickly the story is going to explain what exactly led to the specific decisions he made (we’ve seen enough to understand why he would make a decision, but not this decision), and still know almost nothing about what happened to him while he was in Liao, or how possible it is for him to recover what he’s lost, and I’m honestly so invested. This is probably a little more incoherent than most of these rambles that I’ve done, but this is a surprisingly difficult story to describe, haha. It’s a very tragic experience, but especially if you’ve read and enjoyed erha, it’s one that I highly, HIGHLY recommend