motivationisdead

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Thinking about a duct tape wizard

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Also, I swear imma make that “the clown brigade were bad friends” meta this time around (eventually), but I need folks to stop talking about that servant-beats-master scene as if all it is was “Xie Lian witnesses a servant beating his master and feels bad,” leading to the interpretation of the scene to be that he feels bad because he sees himself as a “bad master” to Feng Xin and Mu Qing because “he treated them bad.”

The series of events surround that scene are:

Mu Qing leaves, citing their inability to make it out of the mud because of Xie Lian’s new identity as a fugitive.

Xie Lian is hurt by this but accepts Mu Qing’s wishes and lets him go peacefully.

Xie Lian and Feng Xin see the servant beating his master together on their way to pawn off a sword for money.

The servant is yelling at the master that he’s beating about how his loyalty has been exploited and his dignity degraded because his master benefitted from his loyalty while he got no material benefits in return. These words, specifically, strike a cord with Xie Lian.

The crowd sides with the servant. Feng Xin sides with the servant, saying that the servant was right to rebel and the master really was “no good.” Xie Lian is even more upset after these words. Feng Xin does not notice.

The duo eventually leave and successfully pawn the sword. Xie Lian then tries to gives Feng Xin something to pawn the moment they get home as material compensation for his loyalty.

Feng Xin, incapable of self-reflection, memory recall, or reading a room, rejects the offer, and though Xie Lian eventually does force something on him, his confusion does put Xie Lian’s mind at ease.

Much later, Feng Xin begins to actively ask Xie Lian for money and valuable items to pawn but refuses to say what for, politely telling Xie Lian he should mind his own business.

Xie Lian starts to think that Feng Xin is gonna pull a Mu Qing on him.

Now amidst all this, Xie Lian has begun being haunted by White No-Face again—which starts up after Mu Qing leaves because White No-Face wants to show Xie Lian that the “only person” who’ll accept Xie Lian at his lowest is the calamity—Mu Qing makes a return to betray Xie Lian a second time by bullying him in front of the 33 gods with Xie Lian’s former status, and Feng Xin makes it clear that he doesn’t truly believe Xie Lian anymore—not in his morality or as his friend. Now whenever Xie Lian returns from being kidnapped one of his disappearances, Feng Xin ends up throwing it in his face that “I’m taking care of your parents while you’re galavanting who knows where!” setting up their new dynamic in Xie Lian’s head as “Feng Xin is here because he’s loyal to duty, not because he’s loyal to friendship. He stays only because he feels he has to, and it’s only a matter of time before, just like Mu Qing, the disadvantages outweigh that sparse sense of duty.”

During Xie Lian’s little stint as “almost calamity,” this is THE source of his resentment: I put my whole self into serving my kingdom, I put my whole self into being a good friend, I put my whole self into being a filial son, but I still ended up abandoned in the end. And this is also why he doesn’t reach out to either of the idiot duo, himself, once be ascends for the 3rd time, not because “oh he’s putting the power in their hands as the hurt parties.” THEY ARE NOT THE HURT PARTY!!!! Xie Lian is the hurt party, and he gets over their abandonment by acknowledging that they were both fairweather friends and there’s no point of dredging up 800-year-old resentments when the last time he did that, he ended up “killing” the only person who hadn’t abandoned him! He doesn’t seek them out because he doesn’t need or really want them around. They talk over him, undermine him, destroy his scant belongings, degrade his temples, and use his traumas as gotchas against each other. They are nuisances at best and self-absorbed assholes at worst, and they can only return to some semblance of cordiality and warmth when they—not Xie Lian—finally get it beaten into them that they’re gonna have to either BE good people to him or accept that he’s absolutely fine without them.

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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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what is it about capybaras that attracts groups of small animals to them? Its not just mammals either its like birds and turtles and frogs too

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absolutely love abusing the power that comes with 3rd person limited pov and just ignoring things and being vague sometimes. does the character know all the details? no? then I don't have to either.

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forever grateful i was simply too lazy to let the make up industrial complex get its hooks in me. I was just like im not doing all of that. im doing none of that in fact

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Wow, now there's a bot going around on Ao3 telling people that the "moderators" will delete works from "deprecated" fandoms and impose bans.

Fearmongering bullshit, but it's fearmongering bullshit that seems to be taking advantage of the recent spotlight series in order to trick authors into deleting their fics.

Just. Why.

What the hell does anyone get out of making these bots.

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Mei Nianqing’s philosophy towards Xie Lian and Jun Wu’s obsession with him is so weird. On the one hand, he’s like “Jun Wu is a megalomaniac; I gotta keep my disciple as far away from him as possible!” But the moment that becomes impossible, he just throws up his hands and goes, “Look, Xie Lian, I’m not gonna fight him, and I’m not gonna tell you what he’s doing so that you don’t try to fight him. Instead, I’ll try to force you into the mold that he wants you to be in so that he leaves you alone. Oh, that didn’t work? Guess I’ll just watch as the guy I allowed you to believe cares about you systematically destroys your life and kingdom and let you believe that it’s actually all your fault for not letting me mutilate a child for your own good.”

Like idk Guoshi, I don’t think this makes you out to be the good guy standing in Xie Lian’s corner. In fact, I think you’ve lost the whole plot. You and Jun Wu aren’t opposing each other; you’ve both just lost your damn minds.

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I'm not joking when I say there should be a litmus test regarding all three MXTX novels before people are allowed to speak on all three of them.

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Oh ok so it turns out ive been borrowing grief from the future ! it turns out ive been preparing to lose the things i love rather than basking in the light of them while they last. Maybe i should nt do that

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No safety. No food. No aid. No water. No healthcare. No education. Is this what it means to live? Is this what world accept as life?

If a group of animals were trapped, starved, and cut off from the world like this, people would be outraged. But because it's us—human beings—somehow, the world looks away.

These are unbearable days. Everything feels heavy. Each hour presses on my chest like I’m being suffocated.

My family needs urgent help.

Basic survival has become nearly impossible. Bread—just bread—now costs over $25 a day to make.

We are not asking for luxury. We are begging for life.

Please, if you’re reading this: help. Reblog this post. Talk about us. Donate if you can. Even a small act can mean everything right now.

#crisis #humanrights #emergency #donate #pleasehelp #tumblrcommunity #survivestories #reblogtohelp #signalboost

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This is just a musing for now to be revisited when I get through Books 2 and 4, but I don’t think those initial draft vs. revision posts people made were accurate when they said they made Mu Qing a “better person.” I think what the edits did, instead, was make him more insidious. Draft!Mu Qing is a petty, jealous overthinker from the very beginning. He makes snide comments, tried to outshine Xie Lian during the festival, goes out of his way to antagonize Feng Xin in order to sow discord between him and the royals, he is just not a good person, and for a character that doesn’t put up with bullshit from anyone else, Xie Lian is uncharacteristically tolerant of his behavior. But revised!Mu Qing is much more subdued. He works in concert with Xie Lian during the festival rather than letting the jeers get to him. When he thinks that Xie Lian may have betrayed him, he runs off on his own without making that snide comment first. He doesn’t lash out at Xie Lian when they run into each other, again. Both the cherry-picking scene and the “Mu Qing meets the royals” scene are gone. With these edits early into Book 2, it’s much easier to view Mu Qing as a genuine, willing friend of Xie Lian’s. This, in turn, makes the betrayal much worse.

A bitter, disrespectful underling who’s been very obviously chomping at the bit to outshine his master is not one a person shouldn’t expect betrayal from. But someone who’s only ever been mild and helpful—even if he does overthink—choosing to abandon you once you lose your lofty status? That is an unexpected knife in the back.

It initially tripped me up in the first revised arc when Xie Lian upon reintroduction to Mu Qing says that Mu Qing never spoke so “delicately” to him before, but when you consider that the “delicate” is being juxtaposed with “openness,” it’s true. Both draft and revised Mu Qing had seemingly never held his tongue in disagreements and made his feelings clear to Xie Lian about all things. Except now taking into account the changes wrought by the revised, when Mu Qing sees no benefit from “playing nice” anymore and drops the facade before running off, we see that beneath this “openness,” a cold, detachment had been lurking. It isn’t that those parts of his character were edited out wholesale but that he is written to keep a tighter lock on them to justify why Xie Lian doesn’t see his fostered resentment. And when we get “Fu Yao” 800 years later, he is downright acerbic. Mu Qing as “Fu Yao” is mean, much crueler than he was in the draft. All the things edited out of the teen!Mu Qing’s behaviors are injected into “Fu Yao” tenfold, because now, no longer depending on Xie Lian’s good graces to survive (in his mind, at least), Mu Qing has truly gone mask off

He’s not “nicer,” now; his revised teenage self just hid his pitfalls better.

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I am proud to say that the best revisions so far have been to show how absolutely feral Xie Lian is about Hong Hong’er. He treats the kid like he treats San-lang during the Banyue Arc. All Hong Hong’er has to do is flash that big doe eye of his, and Xie Lian is ready to fight his own friends.

“What do you mean Hong Hong’er kicked you? He’s never kicked me, so sounds like it was your fault, doesn’t it?”