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Chapter 2 of Paper Memories (Part Two) has been posted!

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Today on blorbo.social (for me):

Hua Cheng's balls! (thoughts)

Hualian clone cunnilingus (thoughts)

Silly Hualian fic (fic rec)

Lesbingqiu vampire cunnilingus (fic rec)

Dominant Xie Lian (thoughts)

Instructions on how to join blorbo.social

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50+ COMMENTS. ANSWERED. hell yes

feeling chatty and bored so i think its time to finally tackle my ao3 inbox

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feeling chatty and bored so i think its time to finally tackle my ao3 inbox

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yes look at that ferret DOES have something metafictional to say after months of silence

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Sometimes I think about how lucky everyone in Xianle was that Honghong-er didn't die until after the kingdom fell. That kid had all of the accumulated misfortune the Kiln could collect on his shoulders. In a world where fortune and misfortune cannot be created or destroyed, but only change targets, I suspect that anyone anywhere near Honghong-er at the time of his death would have found their lives taking a drastic turn afterwards...

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theres something about the fact that wu ming is kind of an odysseus Nobody gambit—xie lian says “nobody believes in me anymore, nobody loves me” and hua cheng says “then i’ll be nobody.”

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It's that time again...

Good news. No more hanging off that cliff. You crawl back up here and face the angst now.

Paper Memories (Part Two) actually isn't fully written yet, but I'm gonna post it in three arcs (like 10-11 chapters each) while I'm working on it. First arc is done and ~74k words. Trying to keep the chapters under 9k this time 😂 and also sticking to one POV per chapter.

This will be updated mostly on Wednesdays and the occasional Saturday.

I'll put a concise text version of the fic tags and summary under the cut.

Paper Memories (Part Two)

Summary:

This is the sequel to "Paper Memories (Part One)." This is Part Two of Two. Part Two is about Faith and Forgiveness. Xie Lian has found himself in a rather unusual and dire situation. Not only does he have two amnesiac ghost kings cooped up in his shrine, but Hua Cheng has mysteriously regressed into the form of a child. While Xie Lian is determined to return his Beloved's memories, he also has the help of Shi Qingxuan who is equally driven to restore and confront the person he once considered his best friend. It will be up to the two of them to track down the powerful memory-eating steam spirit who has done this, and with any luck, find a way to return all that has been stolen away by her. This includes Xie Lian’s own lost memories. What could have driven him to nearly commit genocide?

Rating: Explicit

Relationships:

Hua Cheng/Xie Lian

Shi Qingxuan & Xie Lian

He Xuan & Shi Qingxuan (& minor HX/SQX)

He Xuan & Hua Cheng

Feng Xin & Mu Qing (& Fengqing Crumbs)

Quan Yizhen & Yin Yu (& Quanyin Crumbs)

Characters:

Xie Lian, Hua Cheng, Shi Qingxuan, He Xuan, Yin Yu, Mu Qing, Feng Xin, Quan Yizhen, Mei Nianqing, Shi Wudu, Jun Wu, Jing Wen

Additional Tags:

Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, POV Alternating, Mystery, Adventure, Angst with a Happy Ending, De-Aged Hua Cheng, Hua Cheng as Hong Hong-er, Hua Cheng as Wu Ming, Identity Reveal, Amnesia, Xie Lian Needs a Hug, He Xuan/Shi Qingxuan Angst, Hurt Xie Lian, Whump, Hurt/Comfort, Cursed Shackles, Hua Cheng and Xie Lian Invented Love, Established Hua Cheng/Xie Lian, Eventual Smut, First Time, Top Hua Cheng/Bottom Xie Lian, He Xuan is Bad at Feelings, Shi Qingxuan Needs a Hug, Warning: Jun Wu, Original Character (Villain), Minor Character Death, Yes again

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Before reading the TGCF novel, I think my expectation (based on background info absorbed via osmosis on Tumblr) was Oblivious™ Xie Lian and Secretly Pining Hua Cheng (trying to act cool but failing type thing). Maybe sth more similar to MDZS.

That would've been great too. But wow the actual story was NOT what I expected.

Hua Cheng was not acting cool. He was actually cool, as in calm and collected. He was just so sure about his feelings, and it truly didn't matter if Xie Lian ever reciprocated. He was happy just to be around and showed it candidly. He never actually hides his feelings per se, but tempers them so that Xie Lian would feel more comfortable. I mean, he did have a panic attack in the cave of ten thousand Xie Lians, but honestly who wouldn't. That's his soul laid bare, his ernest prayer in the depths of despair, clinging on to the only thing that's keeping him in existence. But, other than that, he was pretty normal actually. He knows how he feels, and he'll take it as far as Xie Lian wants to.

Now. Xie Lian. Xie Lian's response was a surprise to me. I did not expect to see him having a full-blown gay awakening, gay panic and gay acceptance journey, especially one occurring quite so early in the story. And boy was he NOT oblivious. Inexperienced? Yes. He had absolutely no idea what was going on with himself. But he was keenly aware of it the whole time, noticed every single thing he felt, emotionally and physically. And then processed it so normally i.e. initially by hoping for instant death, but later on just completely rolling with it, basking in it even. So much so that by the time we get the cave, he already knows what he feels and what he wants and who San Lang is to him. He panics only because he's afraid San Lang will run off without letting him explain.

And I just love that. I loved seeing a relationship developing so naturally, so easily over time, just blossoming, really.

What's difficult is everything around them, not them.

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redraw of this

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Hello! If you’ve read the revised version of the Banyue arc, I wanted to ask what are your thoughts on it. I personally prefer it because the focus shifted towards Banyue and Xie Lian, their father-daughter-like dynamic. Even though the content is lighter, it’s still there. I actually wasn’t a big fan of Pei Xiu × Banyue and It's more on Pei Xiu now. I don’t think they were meant to be together in canon like fandom paints it (I liked some of their interactions in the draft, but you know). I also remember the scene where Pei Ming, in Heavenly Court, was trying to drag Banyue in, and if I remember correctly, it was Xie Lian who stepped in. Most of the Pei Xiu and Banyue interactions are gone in the revised version (correct me if I’m wrong) and IMO, for good.

Got impatient and skimmed ahead, so here we are! I only read up to the part where Shi Qingxuan takes Pei Xiu and Ke Mo to the upper court, so some more info could’ve been edited into the actual trial, but from what I’ve seen so far, Banyue and Pei Xiu didn’t grow up together, Pei Xiu didn’t know “General Hua,” and Banyue was truly dedicated to the Banyue people. She didn’t open the gates to the city because she “was always working for Pei Xiu” but because she didn’t want the bloodshed to continue past the war with the plans of the prominent families to become sleeper cells in Yong’an. Her help was conditional on Pei Xiu sparing the rest of the uninvolved citizens (because the plan was only by the prominent families), but Pei Xiu betrayed her trust and slaughtered all of the people indiscriminately. He also has an incentive to deal with the the remnant ghosts quietly because Pei Ming had been attempting to usurp Quan Yizhen’s territory for Pei Xiu to take over, which also creates a reason for why Quan Yizhen disdains Pei Ming.

I never thought that Pei Xiu and Banyue were meant to be coupled up in the story because I don’t read with shipper goggles on, so I also never really cared about their history as pertaining to this arc. However, I love the edits to this arc as pertaining to the nation of Banyue, because before, the draft made it seem like they were just violent, bloodthirsty savages hellbent on destroying the “innocent, totally non-threatening” Han-stand-in society of Yong’an, but the revised makes their animosity mutual and paints Yong’an in the worse light that they would massacre an entire city down to the last child in the name of “quelling a threat.” The people of Banyue were not all irredeemably evil, but they were all killed as if they were, and this is the sin Pei Xiu attempted to bury and Banyue felt guilt for having participated in.

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non-zero chance xie lian ascended on honghong-er's birthday, i'm just sayin

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Part 6 of #hualianfuckaboutit

Part 5

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Paper Memories Update

So it's been a minute. I'm here to inform those of you still suffering the ill-effects of a god-awful cliffhanger that Part Two will probably begin posting sometime this month! 💪

That said, Paper Memories isn't actually finished. It's been fighting me a little bit and so has my schedule.

I'm actually going to release Part Two in three arcs (or seasons, if you will) with a little hiatus between each as I finish up the next part. This is mostly because at this rate, if I wait until its Completely Finished, y'all might be waiting here till fall lmao. And I'm patient, ok, but I'm not that patient. I also want to be able to share to keep me motivated.

Not to worry tho. Arc 1 alone is sitting at 74k words posting over 8 weeks, so this bitch is gonna be long. Yes, I have a problem.

But anyways, I suppose that's all I wanted to say.

Psyche! You KNOW I got Teaser Images. ⤵

Yes those ARE Xie Lian's boobs at the end. You're welcome.

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70% certain that Xie Lian sits back and watches Hua Cheng troll the clown brigade during the Banyue arc because he told them fools he’d already tested San-lang and come up empty, meaning the youth was either wholly human or a supreme. And those two idiots still went “rip to you, but we’re different” and went about testing him in the most overt and disrespectful ways they could think of. Between “we’re heavenly officials bullying a runaway mortal teenager” and “we’re ‘middle court officials’ testing the patience of a GHOST KING,” exactly what outcome were they hoping for?

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Has anyone done this yet?