#nangong xu x luo fenghua

[rarepair-competition]

Round 1, Matchup 7

Nangong Xu | Xu Shuanglin x Luo Fenghua is not pictured as I cannot find a picture of both characters.

[dangermousie]

Your thoughts on the side characters relationships in 2ha ? Esp: Xu shuanglin & Luo fenghua

AND xue yang and song lan and xiao xingchen in mdzs?

OMG, I love this ask!!!

I find XSL x LFH a dark mirror to Mo Ran x CWN - yes the latter can get horrifyingly dark in 0.5 story line but we know 0.5 TXJ was not Mo Ran's true self and it all ends happily with a cabin in the woods, a dog, Mo Ran and CWN living in blessed peace and a forest of trees that are princes and princesses to Taxian Jun.

There is no such out and no such peace for LFH x XSL. The ending is horrific, especially for LFH, who did nothing wrong ever and who ends up not having even hope of reincarnation - his soul scattered, utterly gone from the world. Even his innocent sister ends up scattered the same way as part of XSL's plan (without XSL knowing who she is, and ironically as part of the plan to bring LFH back.)

@momoliee has a great post where she makes an amazing point that Meatbun's lastest main pairing (in CFC) is paralleled by 2ha but not really by Mo Ran x CWN but XSL x LFH and I think this is a great point. And it's all rather hopeless because of it, to me.

To get back to the ask - the set up also lacks the romance underpinning. We never get any hint that LFH was anything but a teacher to the Nangong family. We never get any hint that he felt any romantic love for XSL. Honestly, we don't even get the feeling that XSL wanted to bang his shizun. I am not saying that romantic obsession is not a valid interpretation - it may very well be - it's just it's never indicated that it is one way or another in the text. XSL may have been romantically obsessed with his shizun. OR he may very well have been so lonely, so starved for caring, that he viewed him as only person who demonstrated kindness and so became obsessed without wanting to bang him, we don't know.

What we do know is that this obsession is deeply destructive and deeply selfish. He does not need the flower to make awful choices. He lies to his brother and LFH's corpse is kept from reincarnating. When he realizes he can't get what he wants, he rather scatter the soul, destroying that person he supposedly cared for, then have LFH reincarnate and have a life elsewhere. Taxian Jun, even at his maddest, never kept Chu Wanning from reincarnating. Taxian Jun used puppets to win battles - he never turned people he either loved or hated or had some other connections with into puppets so they'd be a human diorama to act out his fantasies the way XSL did. He kept CWN's corpse preserved but he never turned him into a puppet. It does not look like it even occurred to him. XSL in the same situation would not have hesitated for a second.

To me, XSL like Hua Binan, though on a lesser scale, is an example of "if you treat people horribly, they may become monsters and you'd have unleashed it on yourself." My sympathy for him is limited - by the time he's wiping out towns and people by scads, more than half-mad, any initial compassion on my part has dissipated.

As to LFH, I feel terrible for him. Just as XQC in CFC as @momoliee pointed out, his only sin was to show care to a brilliant, unloved boy. And his whole life got destroyed to such an extent I cannot even describe.

Speaking of unhealthy relationships and dark mirrors to the mains, this is what I think of Xue Yang and Song Lan and Xiao Xingchen in MDZS - YIKES! I have noticed that XY x XXC is a popular fandom ship and I totally get why but to me they are a huge and utter NOTP for the same reason I don't care for XQC x LFH in terms of rooting for them (or the same reason the main ship of CFC is currently giving me the creeps; actually they could be a good parallel to this also) - a good person and a psycho obsessed with them because the good person showed kindness, but still unable not to destroy everything because he is a psycho and because he needs to hurt and/or control (or in his mind, "get even") is not a dynamic I find appealing, though I get why people do (the potential for drama!) XY takes XXC apart to such a degree the latter literally scatters his soul because he's in such pain he doesn't even want to contemplate reincarnation. XY is more fixated on XXC than anyone in his life, and cares for him insofar as he's able to care for anyone and yet the horrors he inflicts are so bad XXC self-destructs and that says everything.

I do ship SL x XXC because friends-fellow fighters for good who have tragedy heaped on them is my jam. The novel unlike the drama leaves some hope for XXc's soul so I choose to run with it. I think they are the darker mirror to WWX x LWJ not in their dynamics being darker - they are not as they are good guys - but in miscommunications and missed timing and a string of coincidences leading to all this horror, something the main OTP actually avoids, thank God.

ETA: thanks @cuentaprovisional for pointing out I flipped SL and XXC names. For some reason I always do that. Fixed now.