#anyway just thinking about erha again as one does

[shen-daozhang]

i don't have time to fully articulate this right now but the similarities between Hua Binan and Mo Ran?? Especially considering how much Hua Binan fucking despises Mo Ran and thinks he's stupid and violent and only good to be used as a puppet and a blunt object? When Mo Ran is actually similar to him? And does he deep down recognize this and that's why he hates Mo Ran so much, because he sees himself reflected in the things he dislikes about Mo Ran?

[dangermousie]

Mousie’s absolutely subjective, very biased Top 10 web novels list

Please note that this is hardly aiming to be objective, if one can even be properly objective about a work of fiction. It is 110% based on my preferences, which means this list is heavy on the angst and has nothing set in the modern day. It is also heavily danmei-centric, even though I read way more het romance than danmei, because for whatever reason, most of the danmei I’ve read has been insanely good.

10. Return of the Swallow - one of the two non-danmeis on this list. Smart and nuanced and with a large cast of characters. Our heroine is a long-lost daughter of the family that is brought back in and has to cope with familial struggles, crazy royals, court intrigue, invasion et al. It’s SO GOOD! There is romance with the sexy smart enemy general but honestly, it’s the heroine that is the main selling point for me.

9. Transmigrator Meets Reincarnator - the only other non-danmei novel on this list, this was my very first web novel and what drew me into this insanity. This is just a ton of fun, probably the lightest novel on this list, not an ounce of angst to be found. But it’s hilarious and features competent heroine and tsundere hero and I will always love it for opening a new world to me. Anyway, our heroine transmigrates into the novel as the female lead. Unlike the original lead though she doesn’t want to seek adventures and angst - she just wants to comfortably live with the wealthy, nice husband heroine has. Alas, said husband is no longer nice since he has previously lived this story where he was betrayed by FL and then transmigrated/reincarnated into the past. Oh well, the heroine opens up businesses and makes friends. And eventually, her husband realizes his wife is way different this time around. This actually doesn’t have much romance, not until close to the end, but this is so fun I don’t care.

8. Lord Seventh - I am only partway through this so far, but it’s already on the list because it’s smart and somehow intense AND laid-back (not sure how this works, but it does) and is honestly just a really really solid and smart period novel, with the OTP a cherry on top of a narrative sundae. Plus, I love the concept of MC deciding he is not going for his supposedly fated love - he’s tried for six lifetimes, always with disaster, and he’s just plain done and tired. When he opens his life in his seventh reincarnation and sees the person he would have given up the world for, he genuinely feels nothing at all. (Spoiler - his OTP is actually a barbarian shaman this time around, thank you Lord!)

7. Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation (MDZS) - oh come on, how are you even on this tumblr if you don’t know MDZS/The Untamed? This was my very first danmei and it’s so much fun! I love everything about it - the unreliable narrator, the looping structure, the main OTP, Wei Wuxian’s laidback, traumatized insouciance, everything. Anyway, the plot in the event you somehow transported here from 2005 is that the Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation, Wei Wuxian, was defeated by the righteous sects over a decade ago and fell of a cliff to his death. Only now that same Wei Wuxian opens his eyes in another body and everything that was supposed to stay in the past starts again.

6. Heaven Official’s Blessing (TGCF) - people either love its meandering narrative, picaresque structure and cast of thousands, or find it a detriment compared to much more compact MDZS. I love it even more than MDZS for those very qualities. It does have a rock-solid, darling OTP, but what really elevates it to me are the MXTX trademark combo of snarky/light tone hiding a ton of trauma underneath, the insanely intricate world-building, and what it has to say about the nature of grace and goodness. Xie Lian is one of my top 5 web novel characters and probably in top 10 from anywhere. Oh, and while MXTX’s stuff is not as angsty for me as Meatbun’s or even Priest’s, there are always exceptions, and there is one chapter in this novel that pretty much broke me and sometimes I still flashback to it and feel unwell.

Anyway, what is it about? There is a commotion in the heavenly realm - Xie Lian, the Crown Prince of a long-destroyed kingdom, has ascended to Godhood. That in itself is not so exciting. However for Xie Lian this is the third time (!!!!) as he’s ascended and lost his godhood twice prior. And now, the biggest joke of the divine realm is back, throwing the heavenly realm into chaos. And elsewhere, Hua Cheng, one of the four most powerful demons of that Universe, sits up and takes notice.

5. Golden Stage - my perfect comfort novel. Probably the least angsty of any danmei novel on this list (which still means plenty angsty :P) It also has a dedicated, smart OTP that is an OTP for the bulk of the book - I think you will notice that in most of the novels in this list, I go for “OTP against the world” trope - I can’t stand love triangles and the same. Anyway, Fu Shen, is a famous general whose fame is making the emperor antsy. When he gets injured and can’t walk any more, the emperor gladly recalls him and marries him off to his most faithful court lackey, the head of sort of secret police, Yan Xiaohan. The emperor intends it both as a check on the general and a general spite move since the two men always clash in court whenever they meet. But not all is at is seems. They used to be friends a long time ago, had a falling out, and one of the loveliest parts of the novel is them finding their way to each other, but there is also finding the middle path between their two very different philosophies and ways of being, not to mention solving a conspiracy or dozen, and putting a new dynasty on the throne, among other things. It always makes me think, a little, of “if Mei Changsu x Jingyan were canon.”

4. Sha Po Lang - if you like a lot of fantasy politics and world-building and steampunk with your novels, this one is for you. This one is VERY plot-heavy with smart, dedicated characters and a deconstruction of many traditional virtues - our protagonist Chang Geng, a long-lost son of the Emperor, is someone who wants to modernize the country but also take down the current emperor his brother for progress’ sake and the person he’s in love with is the general who saved him when he was a kid who is nominally his foster father. Anyway, the romance is mainly a garnish in this one, not even a big side dish, but the relationship between two smart, dedicated, deadly individuals with very different concepts of duty is fascinating long before it turns romantic. And if you like angst, while overall it’s not as angsty as e.g., Meatbun stuff, Chang Geng’s childhood is the stuff of nightmares and probably freaks me out more than anything else in any novel on this list, 2ha included.

3. To Rule In a Turbulent World (LSWW) - gay Minglan. No seriously. This is how I think of it. it’s a slice of life period novel with fascinating characters and setting that happens to have a gay OTP, not a romance in a period setting per se and I always prefer stories where the romance is not the only thing that is going on. It’s meticulously written and smart and deals with character development and somehow makes daily minutia fascinating. Our protagonist, You Miao, is the son of a fabulously wealthy merchant, sent to the capital to make connections and study. As the story starts, he sees his friend’s servants beating someone to death, feels bad, and buys him because, as we discover gradually and organically, You Miao may be wealthy and occasionally immature but he is a genuinely good person. The person he buys is a barbarian from beyond the wall, named Li Zhifeng. It’s touch and go if the man will survive but eventually he does and You Miao, who by then has to return home, gives him his papers and lets him go. However, LZF decides to stick with You Miao instead, both out of sense of debt for YM saving his life and because he genuinely likes him (and yet, there is no instalove on either of their parts, their bodies have fun a lot quicker than their souls.) Anyway, the two take up farming, get involved in the imperial exams and it’s the life of prosperity and peace, until an invasion happens and things go rapidly to hell. This is so nuanced, so smart (smart people in this actually ARE!) and has secondary characters who are just as complex as the mains (for example, I ended up adoring YM’s friend, the one who starts the plot by almost beating LZF to death for no reason) because the novel never forgets that few people are all villain. There is a lovely character arc or two - watching YM grow up and LZF thaw - there is the fact that You Miao is a unicorn in web novels being laid back and calm. This whole thing is a masterpiece.

2. Stains of Filth (Yuwu) - want the emotional hit of 2ha but want to read something half its length? Well, the author of 2ha is here to eviscerate you in a shorter amount of time. This has the beautiful world-building, plot twists that all make sense and, at the center of it all, an intense and all-consuming and gloriously painful relationship between two generals - one aristocratic loner Mo Xi, and the other gregarious former slave general Gu Mang. Once they were best friends and lovers, but when the novel starts, Gu Mang has long turned traitor and went to serve the enemy kingdom and has now been returned and Mo Xi, who now commands the remnants of his slave army, has to cope with the fact that he has never been able to get over the man who stabbed him through the heart. Literally. This novel has a gorgeously looping structure, with flashbacks interwoven into present storyline. There is so much love and longing and sacrifice in this that I am tearing up a bit just thinking of it. If you don’t love Mo Xi and Gu Mang, separately and together, by the end of it, you have no soul.

1. The Dumb Husky and His White Cat Shizun (2ha/erha) - if you’ve been following my tumblr for more than a hot second, you know my obsession with this novel. Honestly, even if I were to make a list of my top 10 novels of any kind, not just webnovels, this would be on the list. It has everything I want - a complicated, intricate plot with an insane amount of plot twists, all of which are both unexpected and make total sense, a rich and large cast of characters, a truly epic OTP that makes me bawl, emotional intensity that sometimes maxes even me out and so much character nuance and growth. Also, Moran is my favorite web novel character ever, hands down.

Anyway, the plot (or at least the way it first appears) is that the evil emperor of the cultivation world, Taxian Jun, kills himself at 32 and wakes up in the body of his 16 year old self, birth name Moran. Excited to get a redo, Moran wants to save his supposed true love Shimei, whose death the last go-around pushed him towards evil. He also wants to avoid entanglement with Chu Wanning, his shizun and sworn enemy in past life. And that’s all you are best off knowing, trust me. The only hint I am going to give is oooh boy the mother of all unreliable narrators has arrived!

The novel starts light and funny on boil the frog principle - if someone told me I would be full bawling multiple times with this novel, I’d have thought they were insane, but i swear my eyes hurt by the end of it. I started out being amused and/or disliking the mains and by the end I would die for either of them.

[spockandawe]

I think I want.... to talk about Luo Binghe.

Because I never ever get tired of talking about Luo Binghe, honestly. And I’m trying to mentally prod at my bingliushen au, so talking about any of those three dorks (or about 79) counts as being productive, right? XD

Anyways, I think one of my favorite things with Luo Binghe is how insecure he is, but not in the more common ways I see insecurity done in fiction. He’s skilled as SHIT, and he’s confident in his skills. He’s smart as hell too, and a dedicated learner. Shen Qingqiu even has a spot in the book where Binghe is like ‘oh, where did shizun learn this?’ and it’s from reading the novel, but Shen Qingqiu bullshits like ‘uhhh it’s from a secret book back at the sect’, and immediately is like SHIT and Binghe is like ‘hmm it must be a very, very secret book if this disciple never read it.’

And in the canon-verse, he’s got a magnetic, charming personality. He collects this MASSIVE harem of pretty ladies, he manages to charm political figures, etc., etc. He’s plenty strong as a fighter, but it sounds like he doesn’t often have to bring that to bear, because he naturally manages people well. He winds up comfortably ensconced in a position of power and with no serious threats facing him.

However, comma, he’s still massively insecure on the level of like... basic interpersonal relationships. Which sounds silly, considering the size of the canonverse harem. But even in the novel extras where canonverse bing-ge hops over to the svsss universe and talks to sy!sqq, he still craves shizun’s approval. Even though he, uh, dismembered his own shizun, and had some dream-ish encounters with this version of shizun where he popped off a couple limbs (though it didn’t stick). He finds out shizun and this luo binghe are happy together and shizun takes care of binghe, and he’s like what the FUCK, WHY DOES HE GET THIS, WHY DON’T I GET IT, I WANT IT I WANT IT THIS ISN’T FAIR--

I love that, that he has literally hundreds of women ready to dote on him in all kinds of ways, but it sincerely throws him that his old shizun, who rejected him, is willing to treat another version of him so well.

And like, in the actual novel itself, Binghe being insecure is a straight-up plot point, which is delicious. It’s such a nice build of the pieces of his backstory, starting with the way his mom gave birth to him and immediately tossed him into an icy river (it was more complicated than that, but that is the sequence of events he is aware of). And in the canonverse and novelverse, it’s a hugely formative moment when his shizun is like ‘oh, you’re half-demon? lemme just yeet you off into the abyss and tell everybody you died’

Plus in the novel, that feeling of rejection only builds and builds once he comes back, which is SO EXTRA TASTY because the rejection is actually shen qingqiu being terrified of binghe, not because he hates him. But from luo binghe’s perspective, shizun is his most important person, and shizun loathes him THIS. MUCH. it was one of my FAVORITE moments, even experienced indirectly, where luo binghe is like ‘wow, shizun would literally rather die than stay with me’ (and refuses to accept that dafghsgdj)

And!!! It’s not resolved by shizun visibly softening up to binghe either!! Even after he softens, even though it’s already a MASSIVE concession in terms of his typical reserve, that isn’t enough. He holds Binghe a little too far at arm’s length, and Binghe melts down because he concludes that it’s been made clear to him now, nobody will ever choose to stay by his side, nobody ever has chosen to stay by his side, and if anyone he cares about is offered a choice, they will choose to leave him.

Which, honestly, is also probably one of the things that draws me SUPER hard to svsss fic. Even though the story has a pretty emphatic romantic conclusion, and the extras go hard on the romance too (the marriage extra was PRECIOUS), that is some fertile-ass ground for fic to prod at in more depth. That’s the kind of emotional chasm that a novel has to bridge and move past, but maybe i want to go wallow at the bottom for a year or ten. 

It’s a relationship that carries the codependency to slightly worrying extremes, but has the story behind it to OWN that codependency. In the 100 questions extra, binghe’s most precious wish it to stay by shizun’s side for three whole days. Shen qingqiu is like ‘what, only three days?’ and binghe is like ‘but after three days, surely shizun will be tired of this disciple’ and sqq is like ‘Nope.’ It’s not as much of like... a lazy, relaxed codependency as cygate, it’s a coiled spring filled with potential energy. Which means, of course, that i also love the fics where their relationship has lasted long enough that binghe is able to relax his grip a little without feeling like he’s going to lose everything. And oh my goddddd, i love bingliushen, and seeing binghe able to relax his grip enough to let someone else in? GOD!!!! DELICIOUS! 

(and, if we’re talking about my personal fanfic ventures, having a triad introduces all kinds of new and delicious tension to the mix. as well as silly, silly things like ‘leave room for jesus’ memes, except it’s ‘leave room for binghe’)

But this kind of emotionally-driven insecurity is EXACTLY my favorite kind of flavor for a character. Like... tbh, binghe is probably the premier mxtx example of insecurity, but it’s a LOT of what draws me to jin guangyao as well, and to xue yang once he realizes Oh No, These Are Emotions. My favorite angle on hua cheng deals with this a lot too. And with jin guangyao and hua cheng especially, they are INCREDIBLY SUCCESSFUL in their personal lives, and have a good measure of their own skills, but if you ask them to evaluate themselves on an emotional level, things get much more Complicated.

I don’t really have an end point to this essay, but it’s really interesting to me just how STRONGLY svsss and luo binghe especially grabbed ahold of my heart. I hadn’t really been expecting it, and I finished the story pleased and ready to move on. But then... I couldn’t stop thinking about it. I read tgcf and erha and am working on dreamer in the spring boudoir, and still can’t stop thinking about svsss. I love fannish navel-gazing, so here we are, yet again, haha :P