🪷🌌🍵🍡🌈🌳🎆📚

patron saints of one way trips

Don't get me wrong, Shi Mei is a really compelling and sympathetic villain! But he's a villain nonetheless. Hua Binan came to the main timeline after Shi Mei had embedded the Flower - that was all on him. When Chu Wanning answered his question about whether he considered BBBFs to be human beings, Shi Mei had a choice, and he chose to embed the Flower into a helpless person who trusted him, and of course, ah, someone who would fall utterly in love with him...

Hua Binan is an out-and-out rapist, which Shi Mei is not - but Shi Mei is someone who could repay kindness by utterly destroying another person's bodily and spiritual agency. Shi Mei is a potential rapist before the timeline split, and he's extremely cruel to the completely helpless before Hua Binan ever influences him.

Hua Binan doesn't make Shi Mei worse. Hua Binan is the original, uninfluenced Shi Mei. Seeing what Hua Binan became is what influences Shi Mei and he begins to develop a conscience.

Then Mo Ran saved Chu Wanning from that (and in doing so, I absolutely agree, saved his life - I think that we'd never have got a fully Evil!Chu Wanning, I think Mo Ran is right that he would kill himself first).

Furthermore, Chu Wanning and Mo Ran both get tonnes of growth and character development! Chu Wanning becomes a person who is able to give and accept love, and who eventually sacrifices first his reputation for Mo Ran, and then everything important to him to save as many lives as possible.

And Mo Ran was influenced by the Flower, not completely changed by it. He fought and died for his redemption arc, which took years and his life, and Shi Mei is only a couple of steps along that path by the end of the novel. I think he probably does develop into a better person, maybe he will find a life and love, but it should be as far away as possible from all the other characters, and Meatbun's not interested in following that journey with him.

After the destruction of Rufeng Sect, Mo Ran and Chu Wanning find themselves on a remote isle and in need of money. Chu Wanning sits down to make some of his signature sound-recording crabapple blossoms.

Video has audio.

Notes:

As is explained soon after in the book, Chu Wanning’s last words “buy me,” 买我的, are more accurately “buy my,” with the last word omitted.

二哈和他的白猫师尊 audiobook produced by 打谷机

This is a spot from an italian estate agency (we are governed by the right-wing party)

The woman says "Ridiculous..."

The old lady is not in her home. She is at work. She's meant to be what in Italian is called "la portinaia", aka a cross between a doorwoman and cleaner of a residential building. She's in her small "office" space, at the entrance of the building, from where she can survey the coming and goings of the inhabitants. It's a job that has mostly disappeared, but is culturally very clear to us as having the connotation of "potentially gossipy, one-million-percent judgmental woman who sees everything that goes on in the apartment complex, knows everyone and their secrets, and has Strong Opinions™️".