dillytaunt

[dillytaunt]

Ive said it before, Xie Lian as Heavenly Emperor isnt an idea im really excited about, but if he were to become heavenly emperor, i think he would be exactly like the stereotype of the chill boss that's never around and lets everyone do whatever they want on the condition that the work gets done in the end

Feng Xin and Mu Qing are fighting over who gets to kill monster of the week? Thats fine, as long as you kill it. Roll dice or smth idc just help the villagers.

You can have 34 girlfriends at the same time, I guess, Pei Ming, but make sure you deal with whatever has been causing unrest in your territory meanwhile.

Everyone leave Ling Wen alone. Just leave her be.

Rain Master is allowed to bring in her farm animals to the great hall if she wants to i guess

Yes you can play music in the heavens but keep it low during night time

If you have any complaints, too bad. If nobody is dead or dying, I don't need to know. If you do disturb me, you may have to deal with my husband so just figure it out.

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I want to post a rant about Mei Nianqing but I’m holding myself back and I don’t know why. 🤔

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Ppl out here doin’ mental gymnastics to make Jun Wu seem more palatable 👀 I’m sorry bro but he is actually not just a MisunderstoodSadboi™

He is a monster incarnate.

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Happy Pride Month!! Saw this and just had to reblog 😂

self-indulgent “Things to never say to someone who just came out” TGCF edition, happy pride month!

and spoilers for plot of tgcf:

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Some beautiful soul out there did the thing 🥹

Pure Donghua Battle Beats «— YouTube link to Yiling Patriarch shredding it on the ghost flute. 15 mins of unadulterated spook that only gets more intense as it goes.

ALSO. I’d like to say I think it’s a crime that the donghua flutist didn’t get credit. I could not find any information about who the actual musician was. However Qiu Niu who did the audio drama flute sounds a lot like the donghua flute so imma just put that out there.

And it’s a further crime they didn’t put the flute in the ost

Wei Wuxian flute battle soundtrack when? I need that haunting, heart pounding donghua music 🥺 no dialogue, zombie moans dimmed, just straight up spectral rage and melody and battle beats.

I swear if I could blast that while cleaning, laundry would become a moral reckoning. Mopping? A battle for the soul of my household. Dishes? Consider them exorcised.

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The correct answer is: Time is a construct. Pain is eternal.

There are many clues that suggest this is year 1, such as his first wake up scene where he’s surprised he has the shackle, the fact that he’d only had one incident of forgetting to eat which suggests he’s still freshly mortal, the displaced citizens. Then the more telling events like it being the first Zhongyuan to pass Xie Lian without him noticing. (Maybe he’d just been doing good with eating for a couple years and suddenly slipped, maybe the nightmare was so disorienting he forgot he has a shackle, maybe nobody was celebrating Zhongyuan during the wars aftermath.)

Conversely, there are things like the day his parents die is the day Yong’an completes construction of their palace in Yong’an (did they start building before Xianle fell? Or are they construction wizards? Or was it just remodeling?) and the fact that Lang Ying has a seriously progressed case of Human Face Disease. (Although there might be a time skip between the palace being built and the Xie Lian attacking)

And the fact that it says “a few years ago when Xianle fell” during the interaction with white no-face on the mountain (but define “fall” was it when the gates were sieged, was it the pagoda, the disease, or when the last soldier died on the battlefield?”

All this to say. Fuck it, I don’t care anymore.

Also, thank you @quetzalpapalotl for helping me sort through this

Why is it common knowledge that the flashbacks in Volume 6 (7s) take place starting 4+ years after the fall of Xianle? As in, they’ve been on the run for 4+ years. I can’t find anything to support this in the text, and there’s a lot of context clues that suggest it hasn’t even been a full year.

Please point me in the right direction to confirm this.

Is that timeline fanon or canon?

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Interesting! I like that. I also like that ghosts are sustained solely from their own internal desires and gods solely from the external desires of others.

🤔

Does that technically make fallen gods ghosts? Since they’re supposed to be dead but their existence is dependent on attachment? Fascinating. And Hua Cheng.. a ghost turned god.. oop that’s a tailspin, I’ll stop.

Thank you for sharing! I had a fight with jjwxc and we’re longer friends, so I have no way of reading the revised version anymore 😭

@dillytaunt idk why I just remembered this, but more fodder for your musings: gods without followers really do just faze out of existence just like ghosts who lose their obsessions do, but also like ghosts, they can survive long past the point of abandonment if they have an adequate enough obsession, even if they never re-cultivate to the point of ascension. This all comes from the new additions to Xiao Ying's character from the revised version.

[dillytaunt]

Why is it common knowledge that the flashbacks in Volume 6 (7s) take place starting 4+ years after the fall of Xianle? As in, they’ve been on the run for 4+ years. I can’t find anything to support this in the text, and there’s a lot of context clues that suggest it hasn’t even been a full year.

Please point me in the right direction to confirm this.

Is that timeline fanon or canon?

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Just thinkin’ bout how Xie Lian wasn’t even lent enough spiritual power to have a conversation through the spirit array until Hua Cheng came along.

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Hua Chengs handwriting is described hilariously and I’ve thought about it too, but not from the perspective of left-handed writing. So I love this take.

He’s so good at artwork and drawing, but soooo bad at calligraphy and the only reasons I could come up with were:

1) Writing (unlike art) is uniform, cold, and performative. It lacks expression(or is supposed to) and Hua Cheng is expression. His handwriting isn’t bad because it lacks anything.. it just has too much. Too much feeling. Too much expression. Too much artistic flair. Too much Hua Cheng.

2) He just wants gege to teach him, and refuses to learn on purpose.

But adding the struggle of left handed writing in a left-to-right format is a whole new challenge, especially with them sleeves 😂

I am a left-handed Hua Cheng truther. Still, I do think that even with the vision issues and left-handedness, he should have learnt to write at least a little neater after 800 years (especially since he was learning literally everything else), which has led me to the funny, probably wrong concept of Hua Cheng went maybe it is cause I’m a leftie and has learnt to write with his left hand and magically dry the ink while writing (as a leftie I know real ink calligraphy scares all left-handed people). Still, the second Xie Lian brings it up; he is like fuck I don’t know how to write properly with my right hand, and he wants to teach me and spend time with me, so ah, cursed right-handed calligraphy which I haven’t done in like 600 years it is. Like he’s committed to the lie immediately for Gege time which is valid of him.

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I don't mind at all!

From my understanding, the word "ascend" is only used for the first heavenly tribulation. Ascend is step 1. After that you have your "2nd tribulation" or your "3rd" etc. So when they say "He ascended again?!" in reference to Xie Lian, they are not thinking "He's had a third tribulation?" because that means something else. The tribulations following ascension bring more power once passed. The ascension (basically) just opens the doors to heaven and welcomes you to a new power source.

And this is perf because we have the receipts now:

"For example, a heavenly official who managed horses was likely quite comfortable in their position. People always needed reliable transportation, and they couldn’t very well leave the condition of their horses and carriages to the whims of fate; who wouldn’t want their horses to be strong and healthy, and their travels safe? Thus, this sort of heavenly official would always see regular devotion. "However, what if one day mortals discovered something completely novel that ran faster than a horse? When this new invention inevitably overtook horses, worshippers of the heavenly official who presided over horses would decrease in turn. Heavenly officials such as these made up most of the heavens, blinking to life and flashing by like shooting stars. "This was the cruelest way gods declined because the process could not be reversed. A heavenly official in that situation was destined to watch their own decline until they disappeared entirely—unless they jumped down from the heavens, returned to being mortal, re-cultivated a new path, and then ascended once more as a brand-new god. Not everyone possessed the courage and fortune to do something like that."

Vol.5 Ch.79 7s

I really feel like this is pretty cut and dry in terms of explaining what happens to gods who have 0 believers left. They will die if they don't figure out a way to ascend again. And when they do, it will be their new first ascension.

What I love that you brought into the discussion is the reincarnation. That is a part of tgcf I hadn't paid much attention to and how it ties in. I'll be looking out for it

Editing: oh shoot I totally forgot to address MNQ. That's a loaded topic, but to keep it short, MNQ is "other" and he honestly sketches me out. He is the Birth of Old Age, Sickness, and Death. I have my own theories on that but this isn't the place lmaoo. (His pals are stuck on Jun Wu's face yet their bodies still became independent, sentient, mountain spirits. That's some next level shit.)

Since the shackles were man-made and not part of heaven.. then Xie Lian didn’t ascend 3 times, he went through 3 heavenly tribulations.

And he did the last one in his sleep and had the nerve to describe it as “having weird dreams.”

Legendary.

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Yes, thank you you beautiful beautiful person. I was fr torn between going offline or making myself not be lazy. I still chose the latter, but it was cus the task became less dauting haha so in the 7seas version it's the same except we seem to be interpreting it completely differently.

"This was the cruelest way gods declined because the process could not be reversed. A heavenly official in that situation was destined to watch their own decline until they disappeared entirely—unless they jumped down from the heavens, returned to being mortal, re-cultivated a new path, and then ascended once more as a brand-new god."

Vol. 5 Ch. 79 7s

This part in particular. "Could not be reversed," Returned to being mortal," and "Brand-new god." in particular.

This is not a supplementation, a continuation, or a top-up. It is starting fresh. from ground 0, with nothing. And if they don't, then they die.

So I'm gunna have to hard disagree with the idea that "gods are always gods" especially since that passage is pretty explicit with saying they are not gods anymore once they lose their followers.

If they ascended again it would be a 1st tribulation.

Since the shackles were man-made and not part of heaven.. then Xie Lian didn’t ascend 3 times, he went through 3 heavenly tribulations.

And he did the last one in his sleep and had the nerve to describe it as “having weird dreams.”

Legendary.

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Wei Wuxian flute battle soundtrack when? I need that haunting, heart pounding donghua music 🥺 no dialogue, zombie moans dimmed, just straight up spectral rage and melody and battle beats.

I swear if I could blast that while cleaning, laundry would become a moral reckoning. Mopping? A battle for the soul of my household. Dishes? Consider them exorcised.

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It’s been months but I’m still thinking about this tweet that said out off every character from Xianle that we meet, Hua Cheng is the most representative of their love for the arts, for riches and beauty.

Like truly he in many ways comes to personify Xianle in a way, both in the high society luxurious culture that Xianle was famous for but also he’s the orphan from the four famous tales making him the representation of Xie Lians care for the common people. Like he is both the lowest of the low and someone who’s kept the Xianle ways alive.

Like all my brain is thinking of is how Xie Lian distanced himself from all that to cultivate, then to become a God, then a poor peasant and how homesick he’s been his whole life.

Only for his husband who was a poor peasant, then a solder, then a king who represents everything Xianle stood for and how their stories are going backwards and forwards and how Xianle is gone but how Hua Cheng embody all of Xianles culture from the poor to the rich and and how he feels like home to Xie Lian now.

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OMG DAMN HANDSOME NEW OFFICIAL HUA CHENG ART BY GEAROUS FOR HUA CHENG’S BIRTHDAY!!!

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I found it in an afterword. I don’t think I’d take what she said as Bible, since prior and after she is walking us through where her inspiration came from (a place she visited, a flower she saw, a storm she witnessed) and then it takes us through her iterations (it was intended to be 35k words, it was supposed to be a cozy fantasy the amount of manuscripts she had and threw away etc) so idk.

About the concept:

It feels off to me that she would make his abilities as an ode to his mom when the trajectory turned from “cozy serial” to a “dark epic” where the ML has an obsessive all consuming love.

How the story evolved:

Hold on while I have a breakdown about how Xie Lian is the only mxtx character to legitimately try to kill himself. This fandom spends all day and night crying about his deadbeat friends “suffering” over their abandonment of him, meanwhile he is the one who almost died over it—by his own hands AND others—and the only thing that “saved” him was Jun Wu’s curse of immortality.

Reading mxtx novels is watching a very clear walk into tragedy, where any other person at ANY MOMENT could intervene and say “actually, let me do right,” yet actively choose not to, only to cry years later about “well what did you want from me?” when their sins gets shoved back into their faces and their guilt starts gnawing at their flesh.

…Let me stop right here before I say something regrettable.

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Probs so [someone] knows who to sacrifice for maximum gain at [the place where people are sacrificed for power]

Power of belief and all.

NO BUT WHY DOES HE HAVE A SWORD THAT DETECTS VIRGINS??????