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getting back to my roots of making stupid memes 🥰

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give us the password to Hua Cheng's private communications array, you cowards

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I get that Feng Xin/Mu Qing is a big ship and all but frankly the only way I'm into it is if it happens because they both want to fuck Xie Lian so badly they have hate-sex about it. Where's the fic

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xianle trio,,,,,,i love them dearly,,,,

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Hua Cheng essentially cockblocking himself for possibly all of eternity will literally never not be the funniest thing MXTX ever wrote.

Xie Lian was pretty much completely in love with him the second he saw those lanterns (and completely oblivious about it) and then we get the wonderful first kiss underwater moment and Xie Lian is basically drawing hearts around Hua Cheng every time he sees him. While like quietly dying cause he literally has no idea what to do with it. Like at this point he doesn’t even really understand that he is head over heels totally gone for this man.

Until Hua Cheng is like I have a beloved I just haven’t won them over yet. Which he thinks is perfectly reasonable because his self esteem is the worst and he doesn’t understand how he could have won Xie Lian over yet. (He’s only on step 22 of his Marrying Dianxia 3000 step Master Plan ((that he debates throwing out on a regular basis because he doesn’t deserve to even dream about wanting Xie Lian)). So course he’s like yeah I have this wonderful noble beautiful beloved I just haven’t won them over yet wink wink nudge nudge.

But Xie Lian is like oh of course obviously I don’t deserve nice things and fuck I actually wanted him so badly I’m actually in love with him and now I will resign myself to never being happy for his sake. (Their combined self esteem is truly a so low it’s a hole in the ground which is hilarious because they think the other person is to good for them and unattainable forever because they literally have the same neurosis.) So he starts boxing up his feelings forever constantly wanting Hua Cheng and feeling guilty about it and literally dying inside because he wants Hua Cheng like he’s never wanted anyone.

Like essentially books 3 and 5 only happen because Hua Cheng has now cursed them both by saying he has a beloved because Xie Lian believes he isn’t wanted and therefore any nice thing Hua Cheng does is just him being nice and not Hua Cheng pulling out steps 23-34 of his plan thinking he still hasn’t won Xie Lian over. (He has he so has but he shot himself in the foot so badly it’s painful to read).

Like thank the Gods Hua Cheng is so unhinged and created the cave of 10000 Gods cause Xie Lian would literally be at his own wedding to Hua Cheng still convinced he wanted someone else and this was in fact a thing they were doing to solve a case together otherwise.

Like he needed something that unhinged to put 2 and 2 together otherwise he never would have caught on he’s Hua Cheng’s beloved. Meanwhile Hua cheng is like 🥺 he’s going to think I’m a weirdo now and I’m only on step 50 of the plan 🥺 like the two of them wouldn’t have been fucking nasty 2 books ago if he just kept his mouth shut and didn’t cockblock himself so violently.

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what's with pointy-eared Hua Cheng is there something I missed

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reblogging for visibility.

Episode 4 just aired. Another thing I love about this podcast is that different episodes pick up different threads to this story, whether it's the compassion, the horror, the romance. Episode 4 has a lot to do with the phantom as an artist, but it's also about the zeigeist of the 70s and definitely worth a listen.

podcast rec

My BFF has made a podcast!!!! It's amazing and probably sometime I'd want to make if I was making a podcast. I'm not just advertising it because my friend made it but because it's a very cool project.

The podcast is called Re:Adapted. Each season is about a canon that has been adapted in many ways (mostly into film, but also stage and beyond). One thing that's cool about the podcast is that you don't have to know the canon to listen to the season; she provides pretty good summaries of the original and the adaptations. The other thing that's cool is it's not really about what plot or characters got changed from iteration to iteration so much a it is about how adaptation evolves as we as a society evolve, and what a new adaptation says about the time in which it's made. She looks at cultural context and film technologies and how the themes of a story change as the people who consume that story change.

The first season is about Phantom of the Opera. You can find it here!

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@yellowwallsbluesky asked about new Untamed end!

ahhhhh here is 27,745 words of wangxian that will never see the light of day. Thank you for asking!

I mentioned in my post about lwjwwx2 that I had a really hard time writing CQL fic partly because I just could not imagine WWX having any sex or even being particularly romantic. In CQL, he strikes me as very in love, but not in a romantic or sexual way. The problem was a little bigger than that, though, because I also could not imagine LWJ having sex. To be clear, I thought of LWJ as extremely romantic and sexual. But while LWJ's desire comes across as extremely intense, he's so hellbent on doing whatever WWX wants and whatever would make WWX comfortable, never pushing a single thing on WWX at all. In the second half of the show LWJ strikes me as extremely passive unless WWX needs him; he lets WWX get away with everything and expresses himself so little and so poorly that I just didn't see how these kids could get it together! That was 2020 - summer 2023. Then I was on the couch and thinking about them and could suddenly imagine it happening! So I started writing.

If this was a real fic I assume it would make some people extremely impatient. It takes place directly after CQL, and neither of them have any idea what they want from each other or what they can be to each other. I've seen plenty of people say it's unrealistic for them not to understand each other by then. But for me personally it makes sense that you could love someone with your whole heart and never once consider sex or romance, so to me CQL does not come across as romance but rather the prequel to one that is not necessary consummated (even with kisses) in the next scene after the end.

The premise is that after the end of CQL they go back to Cloud Recesses. LWJ knows that WWX arouses him and that he wants to be as close as humanly possible, but this doesn't really correlate in his mind to wanting to have sex and get married. He doesn't even think about sex. He just wants, all the time, a undefined longing that feels desperate and unstable to him. Meanwhile he's determined to do anything in his power to make WWX feel safe and comfortable and welcome.

It's not really a characterization of LWJ that makes sense to me now. I think I just needed to get it down to deal with idk, the way the censorship makes CQL so weird. I think the way I would read CQL!LWJ now is that he knows he wants WWX romantically and sexually but has difficulty communicating it with words and also does not want to impose, because people have asked so much of WWX and WWX is so willing to sacrifice himself for people he loves, and LWJ does not want WWX sacrificed. The reason this WIP is labelled "new" is that I went back and started changing the LWJ characterization so he was someone who knew what he was doing.

Meanwhile, the WWX is actually more knowing than I see him now. He comes back to Cloud Recesses with LWJ and feels restless and confused about his place there. He doesn't feel like he has a real role and even if LWJ really likes him, he doesn't understand what he could be here. But then LWJ just keeps giving and giving and giving, and WWX becomes very aware of what it looks like, from the outside. WWX has never been concerned about reputation for himself, but he is aware that reputation is a thing, and he cares about it for LWJ, so he notices. And when he notices that other people think they're a couple, he also realizes that it's what LWJ wants too. And WWX's reasoning is basically "well, why not? I'd give him anything; if he wants it, he can take it."

So he pushes and pushes on the boundary of friendship. It's obvious he's not doing it because he wants it because he thinks LWJ does. But it's also obvious he's not against it and that he doesn't know what he wants and that he would rather be something for LWJ than nothing at all. The idea was going to be that after they finally have sex, WWX grows addicted to the cuddling and intimacy that occurs afterwards and wants it all the time--because he doesn't really want it otherwise. He struggles to accept that kind of intimacy unless there's an act of service involved, because he doesn't really feel worth of it.

I actually think that this was the breakthrough for me. Once I realized that WWX would very much like to be held but doesn't really know how to let it happen unless there's a good reason for it, I finally felt like I could write him and write the whole wangxian dynamic. Of course, my WWX changed too; I am definitely more likely to write him now as not having a clue about what LWJ wants from him. That said, I read this fic, and I still buy that WWX could see that LWJ wants this from him and that his response is "sure, I'll do anything," even if he doesn't necessarily feel strong sexual attraction. That WWX gets off on service, which is still something I can buy.

Anyway I only got 25% of the way through shifting the LWJ characterization when I started writing Say More, and I realized I never really had a goal or end for this fic. It was just something I needed to write to get to know the characters--though I will say, I reread it to write this post, and I still really enjoy it!

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Something about the whole "Eming is born of Hua Cheng's desire to live and Rouye is born of Xie Lian's desire to die," and then how Xie Lian wears funeral colours and Hua Cheng wears wedding colours. God oriented towards death and stillness and self-denial. Ghost oriented towards life and hope and happiness.

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I've said I wished TGCF dealt with Hua Cheng's self-loathing more and dealt with his conflicts about how worthy he is of his god, and I still wish that. But just to be clear--no matter how unworthy Hua Cheng finds himself, the whole point is, it doesn't really matter to him. He can believe he is unfit to worship such a glorious and good god, he can believe he is the most unfit person on the planet, he can believe that he shouldn't get to worship such a god, he can believe that he doesn't deserve to live for him--and Hua Cheng would still just not give a fuck about it.

His whole thing is that it doesn't matter what he is or who he is as long as there is his god, in the world, as happy and healthy and safe as possible.

And what I love about that is that Hua Cheng can reach the very bottom of the barrel; he can hate himself to infinity and beyond; he can be the very lowest of the low and he is never, ever, ever, ever going to wish he did not exist. He's not ever going to say a thing like "I'm not good enough to go on." He's not ever going to hurt himself in a way that hinders himself, he's not ever going punish himself in ways that hobble himself, he'll never want to die. He's never going to get in his own way, because his way is more important than himself. His reason for living is more important than whether he wants to live.

What I'm saying is that Hua Cheng can hate himself but he doesn't ever doubt himself, and that's really interesting when you think about it.

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to be clear, Luo Binghe also would've fucked Shen Qingqiu statues and Hua Cheng would similarly only treat Xie Lian's corpse with utmost respect. Though obviously if Xie Lian died Hua Cheng would cease to exist

What’s the consensus on what Hua Cheng did with the statues?

It may be controversial, but I suspect it was hornier than whatever Luo Binghe was doing with Shen Qingqiu’s corpse…dressing it every morning, making it breakfast, and sobbing.

Like, I don’t think Hua Cheng actually did anything untoward with the statues, but he probably had thoughts about maybe, just maybe, kissing a hand, or a cheek, or — Anyway, he would feel very guilty about having such thoughts and atone for a long time...until the thoughts inevitably sprung up again, leading to more atonement. Basically, just an endless cycle of horny atonement.

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I could only find ONE fic about it on AO3. Fandom has never disappointed me so hard. I thought there was gonna be a full on tag

What’s the consensus on what Hua Cheng did with the statues?

It may be controversial, but I suspect it was hornier than whatever Luo Binghe was doing with Shen Qingqiu’s corpse…dressing it every morning, making it breakfast, and sobbing.

Like, I don’t think Hua Cheng actually did anything untoward with the statues, but he probably had thoughts about maybe, just maybe, kissing a hand, or a cheek, or — Anyway, he would feel very guilty about having such thoughts and atone for a long time...until the thoughts inevitably sprung up again, leading to more atonement. Basically, just an endless cycle of horny atonement.

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no he full on fucked those statues

What’s the consensus on what Hua Cheng did with the statues?

It may be controversial, but I suspect it was hornier than whatever Luo Binghe was doing with Shen Qingqiu’s corpse…dressing it every morning, making it breakfast, and sobbing.

Like, I don’t think Hua Cheng actually did anything untoward with the statues, but he probably had thoughts about maybe, just maybe, kissing a hand, or a cheek, or — Anyway, he would feel very guilty about having such thoughts and atone for a long time...until the thoughts inevitably sprung up again, leading to more atonement. Basically, just an endless cycle of horny atonement.

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Another panel from my comic about Hua Cheng «The Star of Misfortune» 🥰

The translation to english is done! I'm planning to open orders soon🫡❤️

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Lest you think I only have good things to say about TGCF forever--well, that's ultimately true but I'm also ultimately annoyed about the treatment of Hua Cheng as a character.

Listen. Wanting to put your god on a pedestal and lick the floor for him/die for him/efface your entire self for him AND fuck him through the floor/violate every part of his body until he begs for mercy/tease him and embarrass him so much he can't stand his own skin AND live as BFF husbands on somewhat even footing are three very different things.

I want to see how Hua Cheng reconciles being quite honestly ready to murder the first person in sight because Xie Lian had some slight question about his devotion to his god's cause, with purposely embarrassing him and teasing him and calling him gege. But we don't really get anything about his private thoughts? He is never presented as having inner conflicts, other than regret that Xie Lian has suffered pain?

Like, there is a suggestion that he knows his obsession with Xie Lian and the ways in which he is obsessed could be seen as creepy and freakish, but it gets washed away when Xie Lian says it doesn't bother him and still wants to kiss him. There are several demonstrations of his self-loathing, and yet it doesn't get aired like everyone else's dirty laundry does.

And then there's the part where you find out that Hua Cheng has sacrificed a part of his body rather than any part of a group of humans who were doomed to die anyway. And you know that this is a huge deal for him, because the whole reason he was with those humans at Mt Tonglu was so that he could be strong enough to come back to Xie Lian and protect him. Except we also know that again, Hua Cheng had no compunction about helping Xie Lian commit genocide and regocide and countless murders; like he had no interest or respect for human life at all when it came to doing whatever Xie Lian bid him to do. So it's in fact a huge fucking deal that in the end, Hua Cheng would rather hurt himself than anybody else, except that is not really explored in the novel.

I mean, you can say that the only reason Hua Cheng-as-Wuming didn't care about murders was that Xie Lian wanted the murders, which made the murders all justified in Wuming's mind, and, that since Xie Lian wasn't there at Mt Tonglu, Hua Cheng just had to go with his own instincts instead of Xie Lian wanting murders, so in the end Hua Cheng's own instinct was self-sacrifice. You could also say, I guess, that Hua Cheng hated his eye anyway so it's not the same sort of sacrifice it would have been had it been another body part.

But even if that's the case, I'd want it to be explored. Like, isn't it likely that Hua Cheng chose self-sacrifice because he knew Xie Lian would choose self-sacrifice, because he knew that a Xie Lian not driven mad with grief and pain would not want to harm others to further his own cause? At the same time, Hua Cheng is not shown to make choices that will align with Xie Lian's values at other parts in the book. In fact, Hua Cheng consciously and purposely makes choices that he thinks could or even would disgust Xie Lian, because it's more important to Hua Cheng to make those choices if they protect and preserve Xie Lian than it is for Hua Cheng to make choices that would make Xie Lian look at him fondly or proudly. So, it's such a big deal that deep down, Hua Cheng does want to care about and protect others, even people who aren't Xie Lian, but it's just mentioned in passing at almost the very end and never explored.

And then these 800 years, what was Hua Cheng even doing? I mean, I get it, it takes a lot of time to carve ten thousand statues, especially the ones where you need to get his cock just right for....reasons, but I thought we were going to get some kind of explanation of what he did during this time. Why did he decide to finally approach Xie Lian when he did? Like, I think the conversation between Xie Lian and Hua Cheng-as-the-little-ghost-fire is supposed to explain part of why Hua Cheng stayed away for so long--XL says "if your beloved knows you couldn't find peace just because you wanted to protect them, wouldn't they feel guilty?" And the ghost says that then he would just protect his beloved from afar.

But was Hua Cheng protecting Xie Lian? Because it seems like Xie Lian getting trampled to death (as "General" Hua) and then getting killed and buried in a coffin (as State Preceptor Fengxin) is not very protective? Like, Hua Cheng did a bad job there.

It seems like the fics I'm reading are going with the idea that Hua Cheng couldn't find Xie Lian. Hua Cheng does say he did search for Xie Lian and couldn't find him, but we know this is a bald-faced lie. Hua Cheng says this when Xie Lian asks him if Hua Cheng ever saw him outside of Xianle, because Xie Lian has become concerned that Hua Cheng saw his downfall after his banishment and his descent into genocidal madness before his second ascension. But we know that Hua Cheng did see that, which means Hua Cheng is very much lying about not being able to find Xie Lian after the fall of Xianle.

But sure, you can posit that after Hua Cheng-as-Wuming almost disperses all the way and then comes back, he can't find Xie Lian again. I think you can also assume that Wuming's dispersal is more total and complete than Hua Cheng's dispersal after he breaks Xie Lian's shackles, so I think you can easily posit that it takes Hua Cheng at least a century to return as a complete person after Xie Lian's second ascension/banishment. And I can imagine that even after fully returning amassing wealth and power takes time, but here's where I get stumped--Hua Cheng is does not read as someone who would sit around and wait to have enough wealth and power to protet Xie Lian before trying to protect Xie Lian. I imagine that the first thing he does as soon as he can like, move independently in the world is look for him, even if only to help him from afar. And yet, as previously stated...Xie Lian really didn't seem like he got much help in those 800 years.

Perhaps we can assume that once Xie Lian ascends (why does he ascend the third time? Never addressed? Also annoyed about this) Black Water/Earth Master/He Xuan now can report on Xie Lian's exact whereabouts, but there's still no good explanation for why super over-powered Hua Cheng would not be able to find Xie Lian for 800 years. I mean, it's not exactly a needle in a haystack here. Xie Lian is a singular person. Just follow disaster, honestly. I guess Hua Cheng didn't know about the shackle on Xie Lian's luck, but he has figured out a lot of Xie Lian's past, right? I don't understand why he hasn't figured that out.

(And another thing--does Hua Cheng even know why Xie Lian got banished the second time? Does he even know that Xie Lian asked for the shackles? Doesn't he want to know everything he possibly can about Xie Lian? If he's unwilling to ask, I'd understand, but again--everyone else's dirty laundry gets out there, but here there's this thing that is so central to Hua Cheng's and Xie Lian's relationship, unexplored.)

My problem isn't that Hua Cheng lives and exists for Xie Lian. That's who he is, and I think I wouldn't like or love him as a character if I thought he needed to have more in his life than his single-minded devotion. But single-minded devotion can contain a lot more dimension and conflict than I think ultimately got explored, and there are and some super salient events in his life that are really defining moments. It makes him feel a lot more one-dimensional than I feel like the character is set up to be.

The fic so far honestly gives him a more interesting treatment, imo. He's a lot more tortured about whether to fuck or worship and how to do both, which I guess I'm ultimately saying is what I really want from that character. I find him deeply lovable, interesting, and fascinating, I just didn't think the book really spent time with the most interesting parts of him.

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Ooh what about lwjwwx2? These ideas you’ve shared so far are super intriguing and cool!

Thank you!!!! I'm glad you've enjoyed them.

lwjwwx2 is actually a continuation of Lan Zhan, Fantasyland, which is the first CQL fic I ever wrote and also the first I ever posted.

I saw CQL in 2020 and fell in love with it. Read tons of fanfic! I admit to feeling kind of intimidated about writing for a Chinese canon where I really didn't know a lot of the cultural context, also knowing that some non-Chinese fans had been pretty shitty about respecting said culture.

Another barrier to writing fic for the series was I still, in some ways, struggle to imagine WWX having sexual feelings--or even romantic ones, really! Like, I could definitely write an aro ace WWX and that might be interesting, but I wanted wangxian to hook up with kisses and with boning. But like in my head I was just like...WWX is literally going to think of that? And LWJ is never going to tell him?

This is how I ended up writing Lan Zhan, Fantasyland. I couldn't even, in my own head, make WWX get sexy about anyone, so I wrote LWJ struggling, in his own head, to imagine WWX wanting him. Like, he's able to imagine WWX having sex in this careless, possibly-not-even-into-it way, but WWX having sex with him, much less wanting him that way? He cannot compute.

It was going to be a whole series; lwjwwx2 is LWJ imagining that WWX is hit with a sex curse where he has to fuck or die, and LWJ is like "okay but surely this fantasy will allow me to finally imagine us at least being intimate." Hilariously I have written the 5,000 words or so up to the actual fucking and stopped, because I still could not imagine WWX+sex. So I never continued, although I still read it sometimes, because Lan Zhan, Fantasyland is about Lan Zhan being haunted by WWX in his imagination, and the 5000 more words of that I wrote are great, imo.

As a side note, beyond the above mentioned two barriers I will say the biggest barrier to writing fic for this series is I just like it too much. In particular, I like WWX too much. I just get overwhelmed a lot when I think about CQL in general. There's something about it that's just too much of what I want of everything. The only other ship I feel that way about is Kirk/Spock; it's hard to write because it's so much of what I want that I just kind of stare off into space whenever I think about it.