Discussion Friday

[geraineon]

Hi all to the first Discussion Friday post of the year~!

Since this week is still sort of the time of endings and beginnings, let's talk about endings and beginnings! Have you read any c-novels that has a beginning or ending that stuck with you long after you are done reading? Perhaps a beginning or ending that is unique, refreshing, different in some way? Or maybe you thought that the ending tied the themes up very well, or just for whatever reasons, is very satisfying. Let's hear them!

Alternatively, if you cannot think of anything or feel like you haven't read enough, share your reading goals (if any) for 2025~ Feel free to interpret "reading goals" as widely as possible (e.g., reading a new genre, finishing a book you haven't finished, starting a book on your TBR).

Spoiler tags for your ease of usage:

<details><summary>insert summary</summary>Your spoilers goes here</details>

<b>Highlight for spoilers!*</b><span style="background-color: #FFFFFF; color: #FFFFFF">Your spoilers goes here.</span>*

Comments

[geraineon]

I started this topic mostly to get recs XD

But hm, let's see. I liked how Mist's final arc circles back to the first arc, and suddenly make the whole story look different in hindsight. That was very cool! (I keep forgetting to do this when I talk about Mist but content warning for medical restriction not presented as a bad thing in the story - it annoyed me a lot when I read it and maybe that's why I just blot it from my mind).

... I also really liked how I Can't Be This Protagonist ended. Highlight for spoilers!*MC chose no one and decided to go to his retirement universe in peace alone. I laughed. I love it.* I don't know if I can rec this novel except to people who enjoy high melodrama (no, really, I mean it), with a main character who is completely aware of how to play every scum gong in his life. It's a very satisfying popcorn type of trash that I enjoy reading (sorry my taste is like this XD;;)

[shipperslist]

I'm reading 2ha book 7 and Heavenly Tyrant is next on the list.

[geraineon]

Nice! I'd ask if you have reading goals, but I remember you posting about your goals on your journal!

hm, that might be a fun community activity actually... c-novel scavenger hunt or community book bingo.

[shipperslist]

I remember you posting about your goals on your journal!

Haha, yeah. I'm doing the book bingo combined with Duckprintspress' queer reading challenge and a monthly cover/title buzzword challenge. 😁

[geraineon]

I'm gonna take a look at those for inspiration for something for the comm XD

[shipperslist]

How about some typical c-novel tropes? A whole year might be a bit much…

[geraineon]

I was thinking random things that if someone can find in the novels they read to reach a bingo, they win c-novel bingo XD (e.g., "someone slaps another person", "an unusual pet") but yeah, it can be a mix of tropes and random stuff!

[shipperslist]

"A character is actually a mushroom/a stick/a spirit/a lump of clay/pick your choice!" :D

[geraineon]

lmao yes! that will be a square!

[douqi]

Re: beginnings and endings, I have real a weakness for things where the ending mirrors the beginning. In Purely by Accident (shameless plug: read the completed translation here! there's an epub!), the romance begins with Highlight for spoilers!*our cross-dressing bandit chief's bandit bros abducting a princess for her (due to the stronghold-wide consensus that she needs to get laid)* and the novel ends with Highlight for spoilers!*the princess abducting the bandit chief right back* In Ravenous, the novel begins with Highlight for spoilers!*our resident fox demon not having eaten a single bite of food in three thousand years because she's cursed to only be able to eat her girlfriend* and ends with Highlight for spoilers!*her nervously eating her first meal in literal millennia.*

Memorable from a jiejie solidarity point of view (as previously discussed), is the ending of To Embers We Return, Highlight for spoilers!*where jiejie finally gets to take a nap because there's literally nothing left for her to worry about.*

Memorable for its complete self-indulgence is the ending of Miss Forensics, which involves Highlight for spoilers!*Two weddings with four costume changes, two honourable retirements from the police force, and IVF twins, one of whom becomes a famous webnovelist whose breakout work is a long-runner crime thriller baihe novel.*

[geraineon]

Ah, bookends type of endings are awesome! I'd need to read all of them to properly appreciate them, but they do sound like great beginnings and endings!

Re: To Embers We Return, Highlight for spoilers!*<3 This member of the metaphorical jiejie club is pleased that the jiejie gets to rest XD*

Re: Miss Forensics - wow! That really is indulgence~!

[douqi]

Also on reading goals: I feel within me a strange desire to read things that are not webnovels. I'm thinking some of the early/mid-20th century Chinese novelists, plus also some Sanmao (fun fact: Sanmao apparently wrote an essay about Jin Yong's novels in which she ships Huoqingtong from The Book and the Sword with Qiao Feng from Demi-Gods and Semi-Devils).

[geraineon]

Interesting! (is there fanfic for that? XD)

[douqi]

Haha, not that I know because it's so improbable! (also she missed a trick by not shipping Huoqingtong with Li Yuanzhi, who was already flirting with her while disguised as a man).

[geraineon]

Now that is a fic I'd wanna read XD

[xlbn]

Big TGCF spoilers

I really liked that Xie Lian gave Jun Wu his hat in the end. Often stories will end with the hero killing the bad guy, but Xie Lian is just the sort of unique character who will show kindness to his abuser in a way that also maintains his boundaries (he leaves afterwards) and encourages/signifies hope that the abuser will be a better person in the future (because of what the hat means to Xie Lian).

It's just so good.

[xlbn]

I hope I did this right! Hi to the community!

[geraineon]

Yes, you did this right! Thank you for sharing <3 It is a good ending, yes!

[hazevi]

An ending I still think about often is specifically the last extra for the internet version of Sha Po Lang (Stars of Chaos by priest). At first glance it's a bit of an odd chapter given that it's told from essentially a new character's point of view, but...

Highlight for spoilers!*It ties up Chang Geng's rule and Gu Yun's work so nicely together, gives them the retirement they deserve, and also reassures the audience that the country continues in its hard-earned, prosperous era of peace...* like that's everything and I was so satisfied!

Speaking of priest, I think I mentioned this last year but I still haven't read Liu Yao, yikes... I should get on with it sometime, but who knows haha

[geraineon]

Maybe Liu Yao can be a 2025 reading goal~

Mm, it is nice to have a neat ending past the ending!

[shipperslist]

…also, I only now realized what you actually prompted… 🤦🏻‍♀️

I really like the way priest wrote Guardian as a full circle with several major false turns along the way.

[geraineon]

XD It's fine. I gave two sets of prompts!

Sounds like Guardian tied up loose ends well~

[shipperslist]

Sounds like Guardian tied up loose ends well~
I think it really did.

[ehyde]

Ooh, endings! I'm going to expand on what I wrote last post about The Smiling, Proud Wanderer so I'll just spoiler tag the whole thing

Highlight for spoilers!*First of all, I found the ending fitting and satisfying! So imagine my surprise when I went to tvtropes (why do I do this to mysef? idk) and found this:

Anti-Climax: This is a weakness of the novel with regards to its ending. After the deaths of almost every major player in the Five Swords Sects Alliance, Ren Woxing planned to conquer the orthodox sects and bring them under his control, and Linghu Chong was the only leader of the remnants of the alliance standing in his way. After hearing this threat from Ren Woxing, Linghu Chong and his remaining followers went back to prepare for their one last stand against the Sun Moon Sect, only to receive news some time later that Ren Woxing had passed away from illness. This ending is obviously deemed too anti-climatic to be a finale for a live-action TV or film, and hence all the adaptations always altered the ending for more drama and action.

I wonder if that's a common view of the ending or just a random tvtroper's opinion. Consider that before I got to the ending, I wrote "If blowing this guy up with an explosive chair actually works I will throw this book across the room" in my reading thread ... anyway I think this tvtroper and I have different priorities lol. See the thing is Linghu Chong *had* a chance to avoid this hopeless last stand situation, Ren Woxing liked him and was really hoping for him to just join the Sun Moon Sect! But that would have gone against Linghu Chong's character and everything he stood for and he knew there wasn't a viable alternate path but he refused anyway. I think if it wasn't hopeless after all that would take a lot away from his choice there. I don't mind a slight deus ex machina for the sake of staying in character.
*

[geraineon]

Hm, now I wanna watch every single ending for the different adaptations. Don't know if it's a common opinion. I can float the question to some friends!

(it's definitely more dramatic in my fav adaptation!)

[full_metal_ox]

Gotta love the way Mo Dao Zu Shi begins with general rejoicing at the protagonist’s death—and then gradually proceeds to unravel the layers upon layers of untruths we’ve been set up to assume, beginning with the title (what WWX has been doing is ghostly cultivation: utilizing the resentful energy of the dead, rather than preying on the living.)

[geraineon]

I'm not sure if the title is an untruth tbh! Because "mo" (魔) tends to be used for anything that is not orthodox in these kind of stories (unless we are talking about the English title, Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation, but "demonic" doesn't even really map to Chinese, I feel).

But it is a great beginning, yes!

[full_metal_ox]

Then I yield to your greater expertise.

[geraineon]

My "expertise" is clobbered from too many cdramas/hkdramas in my childhood XD (someone with better expertise can always correct me on this!)

[forestofglory]

I've been reading a lot of stories from the TPGJ that start "as for so-and-so they were from such-and-such" and end "and then they left" but old stories don't really conform to our ideas of how story are shaped.


My reading goal for 2025 is to read joyfully! (I'm still figuring out what that means)

[geraineon]

It's an interesting beginning and ending!

All the best in reading joyfully~ I think that's a great goal.

[silverblade219]

Actually, the ending for Married Thrice to Salted Fish. During the middle arc, I was somewhat judging Lin Qingyu’s plotting

spoilers

as I didn’t think he would have been able to accidentally take over the government if he was a female villainess, so his breakdown in the final arc thinking that he caused the General’s death due to accumulated bad karma was surprisingly fitting

. The ending was sweet also, though the extras were hit or miss

[geraineon]

Responding to the spoilers with spoilers XD Highlight for spoilers!*I really enjoyed Qingyu's breakdown too! He's been so calm and collected, I love seeing the chinks in his armor. I didn't enjoy the extras much either, but the main story fed me well enough~*

[gekidasa]

My reading goal in general is 15 books, but that's any book, not just cnovels XD

It's 15 and not more because I'm know I want to read LLTG, which is pretty long.

[geraineon]

15 books is a good goal!

What is LLTG?

[gekidasa]

Love Like the Galaxy, sorry!

[dayadhvam_triad]

The last chapter of The End of the Bridge, the Top of the Tower just breaks my heart. Highlight for spoilers!*Lin Shuixian doesn't say a single word out loud—we only get a hint of her thoughts, and descriptions of her actions—but when the police open her suitcase and find what's inside... I believe that everything will get better /cue me turning into a puddle of tears/ And then the epilogue is a new beginning of sorts: the groupchat convo that helps us readers figure out what happened afterward, plus the statement that the group, brought together by her story, never disbanded.*

I find the first chapter of 3K Workers refreshing for its introduction of the protagonist through an outsider POV Highlight for spoilers!*(POV character: my benefactor who saved us from thieves! also plain-looking, weird as fuck, and so annoying....... but still, my benefactor! and strong! can I get him to protect me for the rest of my journey?)—which presents the mentality of the times and historical context in a non-infodump manner. I've read so many historical transmigration stories that dive straight into protagonist POV of "I woke up! ... I transmigrated??? ok I figured out who I am now, lemme gather my knowledge about this historical period," so I appreciated the different approach of learning through outsider POV that the protagonist has basically been isolated in the wilderness for months and doesn't fit in at all. (One little detail which I only noticed when rereading: the 1st chapter POV character's name is Zhang Min 张缗, where 缗 means "fishing line," and the protagonist's name has yu 鱼 "fish" in it... which is just too fitting, because Zhang Min is the one who "reels" her in to reconnect with human society.)*

My 2025 reading goal is to finish more of the physical books on my bookshelf, which I've been neglecting in favor of webnovels XD

[geraineon]

The End of the Bridge, the Top of the Tower does sound like it has a very interesting structure!

3K workers Highlight for spoilers!*Outsider POV is great and in a related but different way, I like it when the main character is not the transmigrator but someone who notices the transmigrator is acting different from "normal".*

Finishing books is always a worthy goal XD

[dayadhvam_triad]

yeah! on that note I really enjoyed how Married Thrice to Salted Fish had the non-transmigrator character as MC POV (for the most part—there was POV switching later I think?—it's been a long while since I read it).

[geraineon]

Yep! The non-transmigrator is the MC while the transmigrator is the ML!

there was some pov switching later but for the most part the pov is in the MC's view.

[llonkrebboj]

I think Langya List was the first cnovel that had an ending that kept me awake for the rest of the night after I finished.

Langya List spoilers xD

The way his greater needs and wants had taken precedence over everything else for literally as long as Mei Changsu has been alive. It's a responsibility that he had not needed to but choose to accept. And he did willingly give all of himself to that greater goal. But THEN he has this incredible chance - under the most unfortunate circumstances lol - to get back a little bit of what never entered imagination for what he could be again. So in the end, he doesn't just get back their cleared names as they should be, he also has back a piece of himself that had once been taken from him, and that he had also given up. The end that was also the ending he had chosen. That was already a great closure. But even better was the way we were shown that the story didn't end with that - life goes on and goes on improving for everyone as they had worked for together. (Mei Changsu will never be on the Langya List for another year, because now every year his name is written on a different list). But also doesn't let you settle into that happily ever after, because the eunuch who has lived through the rule of three emperors, two coups, political storms and mass executions etc. says 'the wind never stopped blowing.'

That was not cool, Haiyan jiejie. That was not cool at ALL. (I was shook and I loved it!)