Hi....can I ask, who are your top 5 (or top 3) favorite characters from 2ha? And why? And what are your top 5 fav moments from the novel?...Thanks.....
A 2ha ask!!! I love this! Thank you, Anon, I love having excuses to talk about 2ha all day.
OK, my top 5 characters
5. Shi Mei/Hua Binan - he doesn’t count as a favorite character because I want to drive a spike through his eye but he is such an interesting character for me because of so many things:
(1) Meatbun’s commitment to her theory of redemption/repentance - anyone can repent and start on the road to redemption, all it takes is a sincere heart (we see Shi Mei do this near the end),
(2) how nothing is predestined/we are our choices - Shi Mei and Hua Binan start with the same premise and same goals but they wildly diverge ultimately because Shi Mei sees his future self and eventually takes it as a warning sign instead of a welcome mat (it’s an even better example of this than Mo Ran and Taxian Jun because it was never Mo Ran’s choice to become TXJ)
(3) the concept that abusers will create their own monsters -most times if you mistreat someone over and over, they are not going to grow up saintly. One universe got wiped out and another almost did because Shi Mei, whose people were dehumanized, decided to dehumanize the humans right back
(4) I find Hua Binan’s pathology so interesting - he genuinely believes he’s done nothing wrong and has killed nobody - he is puzzled and indignant when CWN accuses him of mass slaughter - “I killed nobody, it was Taxian Jun” he says and is sincere; the disconnect between the fact that TXJ had as much volition as a stick in it and carried out Hua Binan’s orders is surreal. And of course the depersonalization - he depersonalizes others as much as his people had been (as I mentioned) and that extends even to those nice to him - he views CWN as a toy for his sexual wishes (and he only was prevented from turning him into an evil zombie by Mo Ran’s sacrifice) and he genuinely enjoyed hurting Mo Ran who did nothing wrong to him and came from a background as abused as his own. His brain has more compartments than a fancy dresser. He is an interesting example of concept that Meatbun seems to subscribe to - being a victim does not necessarily make you a good person and having a nice life doesn’t necessarily make you bad and nothing justifies bad deeds. Explains, yes. Justifies, no.
4. Nangong Si and Xue Meng - I am combining them because for all their differences, the thing that I like is that Meatbun subverts the “spoiled young master is evil and useless and will be obstacle to our noble hero” trope. Xue Meng grew up with love and wonderful parents and he’s immature and spoiled but good-hearted. There is nothing glorious in abuse, Meatbun seems to say - it’s not character building, it’s not anything but awful. Xue Meng has the best parents in the novel and in a way, he is the most adjusted. And I still remember reading the scene where they are escaping from the Willow and it promises him the last magic sword (and Xue Meng believes that without such a weapon, he can never achieve much as a cultivator) for killing Mo Ran because, the willow points out, he is jealous of Mo Ran and dislikes him. I was unspoiled and went “aha, here is where betrayal happens.” And Xue Meng doesn’t even pause - he stabs the willow instead. Even though it means never having a proper weapon because he is morally sane and his bickering with Mo Ran is the usual cousin fighting among teens with different personalities, not a path to murder. And I may have screamed into my hands.
And Nangong Si is rather the same. He is once again, a seemingly spoiled heir of the most powerful sect. And he turns out to be a good-hearted, straight as an arrow young man who will do the right thing no matter what it costs him and whose death was the only non Ranwan related scene that made me bawl in the novel.
3. Ye Wangxi - she is the character who is most true to herself and consistent and unbendable throughout. In a novel full of broken people (some who start this way and some who get that way), she stands alone as completely unbowed - I cannot imagine ANYTHING breaking her. In 0.5 timeline the fall of the cities did not, in this life Nangong Si’s death did not. Her stepfather’s betrayal did not. The crowd gossiping and dragging her name through the mud could not. There is a reason Mo Ran is a literal fanboy for her. And I find it so interesting that the character most centered about what she is and isn’t is one who has the most ambiguous gender identity - living as a man for so long, then brief potential as a woman, and then back to ambiguity after Nangong Si’s death - I like it because whatever identity she inhabits, the core of who she is, is what matters and the wrapping is immaterial (and one of the reasons I love Nangong Si so much btw is that he loved Ye Wangxi for being Ye Wangxi; whatever body she inhabited was immaterial to him.)
2. Chu Wanning - I love Chu Wanning so much. Many other authors would have have made him beautiful and self-sacrificing and called it a day but CWN is far from an abused genius saint. He is thin-skinned, proud, finicky, quick to temper, awkward, yearning, embarrassed, insecure. He feels real. And Meatbun never forgets (same as she does not with all her other characters) the reverberations of upbringing and trauma throughout your whole life - his childhood where he was fed and protected but also utterly dehumanized and expected to be perfect, both - plays such a role in everything for him - from his genuine belief that he’s unlikeable and unloveable, to his strict standards for everyone and everything, even his attitude to desire. He rescues Mo Ran over and over - as a child from starvation, on the steps, from the flower etc. But Mo Ran rescues him right back over and over - from the flower and from the underworld yes, but emotionally as well - from feeling unloved, from being alone, from living not like a person.
Also, he is almost unique in the novel in having a genuine sense of justice. Even our good guys treat people differently depending on whether they are friends or foes or w/e, let alone the bad guys, but in a world where Rufeng Sect takes protection money and if you don’t have it, too bad, enjoy being eaten by ghosts, Chu Wanning applies the same rules to everyone - he treats himself as harshly as he does everyone else. The thing that sticks in my mind is after they come back from the ghost town and he asks for punishment because he assaulted the client (the scene where the gross client says “I paid, you have to do X” and CWN drops the money back at him and then goes at it was the precise moment I irrevocably fell in love with him) and his fellow master is all !!!! because everyone knows that while rules are technically the same for everyone they are really not, not for a master like CWN who every sect would like to have. CWN really is the only person in the novel (except possibly Chu Xun) who believes in treating everyone the same. Which is what makes his confronting the whole cultivation world for Mo Ran and killing cultivators to get to him all the more !!!!
1. Mo Ran - Ahhhh, is it any surprise he is first place. Mo Ran is not just my favorite character in the novel, he is my favorite character in any web novel and in my Top 10 favorite characters from anywhere. So many reasons but ultimately it comes down that he is unique for me in feeling real as someone who lives somewhere - he feels utterly and completely as a real person. The rest of them are characters. Complex and cool ones, sure. But Mo Ran is the only one who transcends that (honestly, the only one in any web novel I’ve read) and I can imagine walking past him on the street.
But there is so much else there - he is an example of how much potential for both horror and nobility there is in a person - the same person became the world-destroying monster that was Taxian Jun and the hero that was Mo Zongshi (and yes, the flower turned him into TXJ, but the flower takes one’s darkest impulses, so TXJ 0.5 is all the worst potentialities in Mo Ran realized.) There is his sense of humor, his layers of trauma that cover more layers of trauma (I love that right adjacent to the reveal about the flower, she gives us the reveal about arson/murder committed by the actual Mo Ran - Mo Ran IS very very messed up even before Shi Mei decides to go for broke), the fact that on reread it becomes clear that the journey from Taxian Jun 0.5 to Mo Ran 2.0 is just as much reversion as change - you witness Mo Ran’s reversion to his default setting - what he would have been without the flower ever interfering. In a way it’s like detox, aided by his guilt and remorse. I also love the whole narrative where Meatbun redeems him slowly and painfully and it’s never fast or easy; and she never lets you forget the horrors he did - it would be convenient but she sprinkles them through the narrative. If you buy his redemption, you will damn well do it in light of full knowledge of what he needs redemption for. She only reveals he is the greatest victim in this after you buy the redemption (and people love or hate the flower reveal but I love it so much because so many things only fall into place after it - no way anyone who genuinely was as unhinged as Taxian Jun was before his suicide would turn into Mo Ran 1.0 who as the worst thing he does is rob a prostitute. Where are the rivers of blood? And also because this was the only way for Mo Ran to get on the road of forgiving himself.)
There is also the reverberations of his trauma from childhood - like why food is his love language, the slow gentleness of 2.0 relationship with CWN, the duality of Taxian Jun versus Mo Ran where 0.5 is his darkest impulses but 2.5 in the extras is really a manifestation of his trauma, and I love that he doesn’t integrate because to me it’s not just Taxian Jun who doesn’t want to, I think Mo Zongshi doesn’t either because he can’t accept his past fully and this is a safe way to separate. Plus knowing/seeing Chu Wanning loving the TXJ fragment as much as he loves the rest of Mo Ran is the sole way to truly convince Mo Ran that yes, CWN loves Mo Ran in any iteration and accepts all of him, even the darkest and most damaged parts (which is a symmetry with CWN being the literal keeper of Mo Ran’s memories which is the sole way to truly convince him how utterly Mo Ran adores him - they heal and compliment the other’s damage/most vulnerable spots through these.)
OK, I am gonna stop before I write a dissertation.
Top 5 scenes
Oh god, there is no way I can limit it to 5! I suppose I could scream about all the amazing shocking reveals - I literally screamed when Taxian Jun showed up in the 2.0 timeline - like how?! It turned everything I thought was going on upside down. The thing with Mo Ran taking the flower for shizun, to protect him killed me (especially since as a result he ended up the one who hurt him the most. That terrifying irony) or the scene where Mo Ran sees Chu Wanning play guqin at the party, flashbacks to 0.5 timeline noncon and is wondering “but CWN is a good person, why did I even do any of these things, I must have been mad!” as he understands the reason for his past self less and less and on reread, you feel the puzzle piece slam into place etc etc but in terms of sheer emotion:
5. Mo Ran 2.0 and CWN eating together in the sect. I love this so much - Mo Ran breaching CWN’s loneliness and showing his adoration in practical ways - making sure he eats etc. And the thought he puts into it - he figures out how to coax him to eat - when he’s not blinded by aftereffects of the flower, Mo Ran has an excellent EQ. Just the whole thing about CWN having all his care unstintingly returned, being the one cared for, the way MR tailors himself to CWN’s tastes (giving up spice and picking up sweets) not being a sacrifice but more a combination of MR genuinely experiencing more pleasure sharing with CWN than eating spice and rediscovery of his original taste (I remember MR once saying he loved sweet things but nobody would buy it for him. I wonder how much of his love of spice is genuine and how much tailoring himself to sect tastes. Mo Ran can be a chameleon thanks to his abusive upbringing where he had to please to survive.) But also the whole bit where MR always wolfs his food down because how he believes subconsciously good things will be taken away from him and then CWN sees and silently brings him more soup and it sinks in to MR that perhaps he doesn’t have to wolf things down, perhaps the good things won’t be taken away (and the fact that it’s done by CWN who MR 1.0 believed looked down on his eating habits while Shi Mei did not when the truth is the opposite!) And how it echoes in the extras where Taxian Jun (who still eats like that - the whole bit where he eats up all the wontons CWN made to last for weeks is funny but also sad) has his own soup moment - when he finds out that CWN fixed and healed all the trees TXJ planted that blew down in the storm - and he realizes that he can be safe in his good things, CWN will guard them for him.
4. Mo Ran’s nightmare as he wanders the world and how in his dreams CWN is there to help with the light. That whole sequence is heartbreaking, and conveys his guilt and remorse and longing and his reliance on CWN so much.
3. Wontons reveal - when Mo Ran realizes who made them and he’s there clutching the hems of ghost CWN robes and bent over and you can feel his heart being eaten up. But also, the fact that CWN’s regret was not going to Mo Ran and not telling him they were his is heart-breaking but also this is what keeps his soul on earth long enough for Mo Ran to be able to absorb it into the lantern and thus go to underworld and eventually reunite all the three souls and thus save CWN and eventually this saves the universe. And the little kicker that Mo Ran thinks things would have been different if they knew and it’s only thousands of pages later we find out it wouldn’t have mattered - because flower took all the volition away but also because even in the original timeline, when MR had no idea and thought CWN just whipped him for no reason and didn’t even care, he still volunteered to take the flower for CWN, begged for the privilege - if not for the flower, they’d have talked and it would have come out (wontons) and etc etc. I kinda wish I could read that AU.
2. The core removal thing and surrounding stuff - especially CWN descending on the dragon and standing against the whole cultivation world for Mo Ran. The man who always cherished his face and the rules. But all of it - the way the mob is portrayed as not knowing or caring about Mo Ran but him being a symbol of them feeling righteous and superior and forgetting about their dreary lives, the way Mo Ran, even in utter hell, being basically tortured to death for the pleasure of the crowd, is still wondering if he did enough to expiate. Just all of it.
1. Good Night, Mo Ran - ch 279 made me imitate a Victorian hysteric deprived of laudanum but it’s a sheer amazing tour de force of writing and character/relationship stuff. The peace and devastation and the fact that Mo Ran’s heart stops and CWN doesn’t feel the precise moment because of noise of snow/branches cracking just gets the whole terror of a small moment changing everything and ending everything and CWN cooking anyway because he knows MR can’t bear to waste food so of course he’d wake up and just...I am gonna stop now.
ETA: this is not a favorite scene per se but I will never be over the fact that the first thing Taxian Jun did once his mind and heart and will were his own for the first time in decades is go to CWN’s side and save CWN and save the world (for CWN but not just for CWN - look at his gentleness with the old servant.) That is just!!!!!
