#Anyway not me working on a fic from hua cheng pov about all of this

[backpackingspace]

....do we think xie lian knows everything jun wu did to him because like. I doubt it. When you're being psychologically tortured and reality is breaking around you, you don't remember a lot of it.

[gotinterest]

On the topic of the blind-spot and how that should've been a weakness/issue - Honestly, I wish mxtx would have let HC be more vulnerable in general. Some of my fav hualian scenes were of XL also wanting to protect him (and it surprised him every time), but I wish there would've been more shown in that regard? I don't know how to describe it, I guess I was dissatisfied with how his issues/trauma were never really addressed (ex. the cave and XL noticing how he depicted himself as ugly and deformed but it's never brought up again). I do feel like hualian's relationship was eventually more balanced (which I enjoy!) but sometimes, I'm just bummed out by the hyper-focus on XL's trauma while that of others lacked - which, sure, the fic follows XL and that's why. But still, a very restrictive writing choice. (Like, for example, I find it so fascinating that HC was traumatized by XL's trauma - the altar - which kickstarted his growth as a ghost while he disassociates with the things that happened to himself/doesn't like to linger on them and other such things. So much potential to explore. I guess that's why I primarily consume fan content centered around hc, lol.)

It's probably also why I enjoy the donghua quite a lot - we don't see HC solely from XL's tinted view and as such, he comes off as real and vulnerable and relatable. I hope they won't change that for his og!form.

Anyway, sorry for the rambling! I just enjoy your content a lot and wanted to get this off my chest, lmao (btw, on the Mary Sue allegations, there was a lot of ruckus on twt recently about someone calling XL a Mary Sue, ppl being offended etc... and seeing your tags 😂 You are absolutely right! I'm the same, what makes him so engaging for me is the story surrounding him rather than he himself - although, Calamity!XL was a good flavor 👀)

Yeah, this. Although I DO like Xie Lian as a character because MXTX gave him some rough edges and allowed him to go through some interesting development. He's the good kind of Mary Sue where he has enough of his own personality, while still working as a self-insert.

I'm really the same about wishing Hua Cheng's trauma was more explored. I've been on the search for some good HC POV fics that aren't just a stream of horniness. I also wanted more chances for Xie Lian to take care of Hua Cheng, tbh. I also wish that Hua Cheng's fixation on keeping Xie Lian from any kind of harm was addressed as unhealthy, instead of being romanticized as part of his "eternal faith".

I really hungered in tgcf for there to be a transitory psychological moment where Hua Cheng internally goes from viewing himself as an "eternally faithful believer" to a "devoted, but equal, partner". Like his obsession and crush on Xie Lian was based on a deified view he had of Xie Lian where he is the believer and Xie Lian is the god. There is an imbalance there and its kind of unhealthy.

It's not that Hua Cheng needs to see Xie Lian as flawed, because he HAS seen his flaws. But rather for there to be a point where he realizes Xie Lian is just a guy, just as much as he is just a guy. Where, after hanging out with Xie Lian and having him as an actual friend, he falls in love with Xie Lian again, but this time as his friend who actually knows him. Xie Lian is no longer "his god, Xie Lian", but "his friend, Xie Lian". Y'know? And it's a different, healthier kind of love based on an actual, personal relationship where his self-worth is not centered upon how well he can protect and serve Xie Lian.

The reason why Xie Lian's trauma is Hua Cheng's trauma, is because he places his entire self-worth on serving and protecting Xie Lian. He needs to have an aha moment where he realizes that he is worth saving simply because every person is worth saving. He doesn't have to be the best most amazing ghost king to be worthy of Xie Lian. "There are truly no gods" "All things are equal".

[veliseraptor]

Separate thought in a separate separate ask! In the danmei world, do you have any thoughts to share about your favorite rarepairs/crackships, and what makes them compelling to you?

oh man! this sounds like fun. see the thing here is mostly that I feel like I have a lot of pairings in the danmei world that are more “wouldn’t it be fun if” rather than actively shipping them, where - okay, I think of my levels of “shipping” something in sort of tiers. 

I’ve idly thought about it and found it interesting in passing

if I was recced a fic or a friend wrote one I’d read it, but I wouldn’t go tag crawling on AO3 for it

thought of it and went tag crawling on AO3 because I was curious if anyone else had (subset of “got frustrated when discovered other people had but they weren’t doing it the way I wanted”)

thought of it, went tag crawling on AO3, and came out of it shipping it more

would read fic for it

checks the tag on AO3 every day in case someone has written something new

would write fic for it.

so then it’s like. which level are we talking about, here? but I guess I just go to “things where I have feelings about them” and run with that, eh?

wei wuxian/xue yang. look, we all know at this point how I feel about this one, right? that it would just be - okay, there’s that post, right, that says the good version of this is where they have really fun sex where sometimes one of them comes up with a really cool new necromancy idea in the middle and the bad version is where wei wuxian finds out xue yang has been creating bodies for their experiments himself. :D I’m bastardizing, but you get the point. look!!! they’re foils for each other and everyone knows that narrative foils make for fun pairings. dark mirror parallels make for even more fun pairings. both??? yes, thanks

xue yang/jiang yanli & xue yang/qin su. these are two different ships with different textures but they fit in sort of the same boat for me, part of the appeal of which is “xue yang being around people who are genuinely nice to him is a really fun dynamic” and also “two women who really deserve to have a semi-feral murderer looking out for them, and the opportunity to go a little apeshit.” 

nie huaisang/jin guangyao/lan xichen. look, I like 3zun as much as the next person (though I mostly live in xiyao, obviously), but I think if I had to pick a nie to put in the a-yao/xichen dynamic it would be nie huaisang because it makes everything terrible, and I just love terrible dynamics involving emotional manipulation, and relationships that are functioning on different levels depending on the pov of the character you’re looking at. every character in this triad is having a slightly different experience of the relationship. I’m into that.

jin guangyao/xiao xingchen/xue yang. look I thought of it once and I have no idea how or if it would work but I’m into the concept and it does smash together two (three hahaha) things that I like. so you know. there’s that.

jin guangyao/jiang cheng. didn’t see this coming and I’m still not sure I ship it so much in the classical sense as that I want to see the weird wine aunt coparenting energy that they have together, but I’m exploring my options and I like what I see in a general sense. 

hua cheng/mu qing. okay, look. again, I’m talking narrative foils (mu qing and xie lian but also I think mu qing and hua cheng). I’m talking proxyfucking. I’m talking hatesex. I’m talking really ill-advised decisions made out of grief (unacknowledged) and anger (acknowledged). I’m talking very lonely very angry ghost kings (kinks) during an 800 year time skip. do you hear me here

jiang cheng/wen ning. unexpected?? and I’m still sort of circling around it like a vulture waiting for the big predators to leave so I can stick my head in its carcass (that metaphor got away from me). but here I am. two traumatized younger brothers whose trauma is very tied together in a lot of ways, with some things in common but a lot of things not? yes, I would like to see where this goes, thank you

hua cheng/he xuan. I feel like I’m cheating because honestly this is another one where I’m not so much like I want a ship as I want them to be weird friends, but I really want them to be weird friends, all their existing interactions in the novel are so hilarious and I just. want more of that. 

I was like “drunken hookup during 800 year time skip?” but I feel like even if hua cheng got drunk he might just end up crying and then falling asleep on he xuan, and also can ghost kings (kinks) get drunk anyway. so, you know.

lan wangji/jiang cheng. this feels a little more...expected than some of the other ones here but there’s not nearly enough fic about mutual grieving proxyfucking hatesex and I want there to be more of it, so. give me that messy timeskip content don’t I deserve it. I just like people hurting each other while also hurting themselves, is all

I feel like I’m forgetting some here. possibly part of my problem is I don’t know what counts as a rarepair! like technically I think songxue is but it feels more mainstream I guess than a lot of the other ones on this list. songxuexiao is also like. smaller in the scheme of things? but has a solid community built around it.

this is also leaving off all the very thoroughly gen relationships I want explored, of which there are so many and this post would get truly out of hand if I tried to get into that.