#also idk how familiar you are with cnovels

[robealafrancaise]

Yo what's 2ha, you tagged it in a post about beloved media and I want to know more

Hi! I think you may be referring to my tags on the post about media that's great but you can't recommend without a bunch of caveats? 😂

2ha (or Erha, 2=er in Mandarin and it gets abbreviated both ways) refers to The Husky and His White Cat Shizun by Meatbun Doesn't Eat Meat.

It's a xianxia and danmei (Chinese BL) novel. It has almost every trigger warning known to man, and it is longer than the Bible. The official English translation is being published in volumes right now, with only the first two available as of today.

This was attached to the fan translation:

Basically, a cruel Emperor forces his shizun (teacher/master) to marry him, Shizun dies after a few years, the emperor kills himself, and then he wakes up as his 15-year-old self when he was still a disciple of a cultivation sect. But mentally he's a tyrant in his 30s, which makes things interesting. There is a big mystery that gets solved over time.

The endgame pairing is Mo Ran/Chu Wanning aka The Emperor I was talking about/His Shizun. A message from the author:

But yeah it's a great story, highly recommend, but *DO NOT* ignore those content warnings. They are not small mentions but significant portions of the book. Please take care of yourself and know your limits. Also to note: the rating on the English books is "For Mature Readers" as opposed to the 17+ they gave the MXTX novels, which did include some violence and sexual content. 2ha is on another level.

But if all that sounds good to you, I do recommend this novel! It's a popular danmei for a reason. The characters, story, and worldbuilding are fantastic. It will make you cry over wontons, flowers, and stairs. (Or maybe you're less emotional than me!) There is also dumb humor and heartfelt emotions. The ending is... I wouldn't say it's unambiguously happy but it's not Bad Ending, and the main ship is doing alright.

There's also an ongoing manhua adaptation if you'd want to read it that way, as well as a (censored) live action drama that we've all been waiting on to air for 3+ years. When will Immortality come home from the war? 🥲

Thank you for the ask, hope that all made sense!

#2ha #my post #this is not an exhaustive summary but i hope it's a good place to start! #also idk how familiar you are with cnovels #i don't think i read all the extras fyi bc they weren't super accessible when i read it

[grumfield]

how would you recommend getting into cnovels?

Hey! Im glad you’re interested :)! I’ll just give you a bit of my experience in how I got in, and maybe some tips? I idk if it warrants a *tutorial* but I could give some advice.

So I got into cnovels in the way most people have recently—I watched the Untamed by recommendation of a friend, was confused as fuck, and so read the first chapters of its novel to get a better grasp of what was going on, binged the show in like a weekend. Then I read the book, and then another book called SVSSS. I was extremely reticent to read any more because I was like “I’m too cultured and high brow to read any more of these SILLY STORIES” and then of course quarantine broke me, I read 2ha, and then signed me soul away lolol.

The thing bout cnovels is that for an English-only speaker like me, there’s a fairly decent learning curve with the way these are written, for a few reasons. 1) the translator and 2) the difference in word organization + writing formatting in Chinese novels. The difference in Chinese writing style isn’t too crazy, but it does carry over and sort of changes the way you think about reading. It’s not like Western English writing—it’s quite different from the way we read most stories. I’m not sure how else to explain it other than it feels almost as if someone is recounting thr story to you orally—it’s very “tell” more than “show”. The second is translation. Some translators use more “vernacular” ways of TLing, some just do an edited machine translation (like putting the text in Google translate) and pass it off as having been translated (the most notable example of this is a book called Little Mushroom), so it’s quite hit-or-Miss sometimes with what you’re reading in terms of understandability.

My recommendation honestly is one of these two things. If you want to just get into cnovels, start with a novel that is translated either by rynnanonrolls or yummysuika—a good idea is probably Heaven Official’s Blessing because it’s completed. They write in a very comprehensive writing style that’s easy to read if you’re not familiar with the writing style, as well as worldbuilding that doesn’t rely on an understanding of preexisting tropes. The footnotes are comprehensive, and the story also preps you for the length of cnovels.

The other thing I recommend is to watch the MDZS donghua. If you aren’t familiar with xianxia tropes trying to read the novel right off the bat can be difficult, so watching the animation can provide the necessary visual context, as it most closely follows the novel