#OKAY THATS IT TALK TO ME ABT IT IF YU HAVE WATCHED

[suashii]

i watched mashle all day at work and all i have to say is. . . rayne ❤︎

[zhuhongs]

Here’s my long ass review of TGCF that literally no one asked for it i have opinions and I have no one to tell them too so i must write them out and post them. (also part of this is abt the mdzs novel bc i can’t not compare them and I have a lot of thoughts abt that too)

This is very very long so it’s going under a read more. Spoilers ahead!!

Okay so first off this book was a fucking behemoth i can’t believe i read all of that (minus the extras) in under a week.. what the fuck. I definetly got reading fatigue halfway thru book 3.

I’m gonna separate my thoughts into sections bc i  have a few points that don’t all relate

firstly, overall writing and organization:

I said it earlier but tgcf is a lot more structurally sound than mdzs imo. My biggest criticism of the MDZS novel (minus the bad sex scenes, homophobia, and general I hate mxtxness of it) was the way the flashbacks were presented. 

Like OH MY GOD they were presented so badly. I hated that the flashback was told intermittently and only when one of the characters invoked the past. For example, when WWX meets Jiang Cheng and a second time, Jin Ling distracts JC to release “Mo Xuanyu” bc he saved his life in the Nie Ancestral hall earlier. WWX then proceeds to be the self sacrificing dude he is and take away Jin Ling’s curse and put it on himself. When he escapes and returns to LWJ, LWJ offers to carry him.

 If you watched CQL, you know exactly what LWJ is referring to when he says smth to the effect of “You once offered to carry me too, remember.” HOWEVER in the novel you don’t know what he’s talking about. This is because the flashback wasn’t been revealed to you yet. The next chapter goes to tell the flashback. I think that this takes away all of the emotional depth away from the scene. But in CQL, having the flashback already be known, you make the connection on your own and are like “awww wangji remembers that.. even 16 years later.“ Its a lot sweeter bc you know what the two have gone thru. At this point in the MDZS novel its barely the 30th chapter or so and you have no real idea what wangxian have been thru together or what reasons wangji has for loving wwx. You just think, well obviously they like each other bc this is a danmei novel and they are the two leads, ofc they have to like each other. But in cql, you learn through watching them that they’re in love. It’s not just like”well they have to be!! its a bl!!”

Okay that was a rlly long side tangent but it makes me so angry. So what did any of that have to do with TGCF?? well tgcf doesn’t have this issue. In fact, i believe that it gains a lot from having the flashback withheld from the reader. 

I really liked how the flashbacks were contained to books 2 and 4 respectively because it adds a layer of mystery. Hua Cheng is a very secretive man so it makes sense for us to not know everything about him upfront. The way that the author teases and hints little things at you make you want to know more, making it all the more satisfying when the truth is revealed. Because in a way you Know that Hua Cheng meets Xie Lian before and you know that he’s the child XL saved during the God Pleasing Ceremony but you don’t know all the details. Like obviously since Hua Cheng is a ghost you know that he’s died and it was likely for Xie Lian or Xian le’s sake but you probably never expected that he actually died twice. Once on the battle field and second when he took the human face disease. I think the difference between these flashbacks and the flashbacks in MDZS result from the length. In TGCF you get two long concise flashbacks that make sense to be placed where they are. Book 2 because you already have a feel and hint at what the characters have been through and book 4 because the White No Face appears again so then you learn how he and Xie Lian met before. It wouldn’t make sense to place book 2 any earlier bc there is no emotional impact. And it doesn’t make sense to place book 4 earlier because you don’t know what the white no face’s deal is so it’d be confusing. In MDZS, you get numerous short flashbacks happening alongside the main story and it makes it hard to piece together the timeline in a way that feels satisfying. Ik a lot of ppl grill cql for having a confusing intro episode and having a rlly long flashback but its much better than the mdzs novel. However the mdzs donghua handles the flashback in the most concise way imo.

Overall i think the way the story is structured is very good and is a step up from mdzs. Also the horror aspects of tgcf are rlly enjoyable and honestly i think mxtx should just write short horror stories at this point. like enough long ass novels chock full of fetishization. just write some fun horror with no romance and call it a day.. pls

Side Characters:

okay so straight up, i think the side characters arent used as well as they were in mdzs bc mxtx wanted to focus on hualian and didn’t want to give the side characters as much focus. This is a weaker point of the novel.

I’ll get into it more below but i think hua cheng was done dirty as a character by having him rlly only care abt xie lian. Since he doesn;t have any real relationships with others outside of xie lian this takes away from having more depth in the side characters. They’re really only related as far as xie lian’s relationship with them. Though thankfully xie lian gets rather close with a few officials and the ones we get to see more of are rlly interesting. I especially loved the reconciliation of mu qing, feng xin, and xie lian at the end of book 5. honestly their relationship was one my favorites and i’m glad they finally said what they had to say to each other after 800 fucking years. Also Shi Qingxuan is a delight. we stan sqx in this house.

The characters i wish we had seen more of were yushi huang (although she didnt rlly want to be there, good for her), Quan Yizhen and Yin Yu. I very much wish yizhen and yin yus story happened earlier on and we had more time with them. It felt strange to have their subplot occur towards the end and it was sort of out of place but i liked them a lot!! i wish there was more to it. and that there was a reconcilation but mxtx hates happy shidi’s doesnt she, (glares at novel jc). Also man yin yu did NOT have to die like that i’m sad.

Also, honestly.. i don’t think qi rong added to the story whatsoever and i have no clue why he and guzi were there. qi rong just pissed me off the whole time and added literally nothing.

going back to yushi huang, i’d like to say for the millionth time that i hate how mxtx uses any of her female characters. like we get it.. u hate women being useful... im still pressed but what i want to say has been said many times before so ill leave it at that.

Hualian:

I really really did like hualian at the end. They had a truly epic love story and it was so beautiful, especially when hua cheng repeated his words as wuming to xie lian as he started to disappear. But, I said it once and i’ll say it again. I don’t think Hualian is a super healthy relationship. As fiction its fine (i firmly believe fiction impacts reality but let me finish), i guess bc literally nothing about their situation can be replicated irl and none of it ended up containing manipulation or abuse or anything bad but there was a potential for it to and i’m really glad it didnt go that route.

Hualian is a highly idealized and romanticized relationship full of some truly troubling feelings of self worth. While its “beautiful” in a way that hc really was xls most devoted believer, it wasnt healthy for him to live for xl like this. Nor was it healthy for xl to feel so unworthy of hua chengs love.  

Hua Cheng’s devotion to Xie Lian is a little too extreme and it bothers me. When the truth was revealed abt the Temple of 10,000 Gods I had the same reaction as Mu Qing and Feng Xin. I was like... HEY WHAT THE FUCKK that’s a little uh... thats NOT HEALTHY,, dianxia PLEASE say smth. But ofc Xie Lian didn’t say fucking anything and and i was so pissed. Like the whole thing of Hua Cheng living his life solely for XIe Lian is really kinda fucked up and not romantic. I was holding out hope that at some point XIe Lian would sit him down and be like “Hey! I love you and i’m really grateful that all these years you’ve still believed in me when no one else did. But you can’t just live your life for my sake. You deserve love from many other other people and deserve to have a life and happiness outside of me. I still want to spend the rest of my life with you, but you need to not only think of me.” or something to that effect

It bothers me that after Xie Lian learns the truth he doesn’t once reassure Hua Cheng that he didn’t have to make Xie Lian his reason for existence. Like.. idk i just think that’s rlly kinda unhealthy. Like I understand why Hua Cheng is so deeply devoted to Xie Lian-- he saved his life twice and was the only one to ever show him kindness and he’s seen xie lian suffer a fate worse than death multiple times. I get that he wants to protect him and make his life easier, but to not let anyone else into his life and spend 800 years looking for xie lian is just overkill. Like if the whole 10k statues thing never happened i’d be 100 percent fine with hualin but the whole devotion to that extent... uhhh yea.. no that put a bad taste in my mouth. Obsession should not be romanticised. I don’t think any reader of tgcf is going out and deciding to live like hua cheng obviously but still.

Also Side note, the whole 100 swords scene.. bro i felt for hua cheng, the way he screamed seeing that, i don’t blame him. I was so horrified reading that chapter. i don’t think i’ve been so horrified by a piece of media like that in a while. Poor fucking xie lian.. oh my god. I understand the intense reaction he had and how seeing that prompted such a degree of loyalty but still.. 10k statues?? the cave that mu qing and feng xin saw... thats a little too much obssession... like please.. dial it back.. im begging u.

I was talking to mary (liviahyes) and she said smth abt how Hua Cheng doesn’t have a character outside of xie lian. And she’s right, he kinda doesn’t. If Xie Lian didn’t exist neither would Hua Cheng. I get that that counds kinda romantic but in practice i don’t think its a good things. Especially because Xie Lian has a story outside of Hua Cheng, hehas goals, he has friends, he has something. Hua Cheng said it-- his only dream is Xie Lian. Which is romantic but very very unbalanced. 

THAT BEING SAID, i still rly liked their relationship and i think theyre cute they just have issues they need to work through. I mean they have time but yea. It wasn’t perfect but eh. overall i’m bitter bc they couldve been THAT COUPLE but theyre so many bad implications as mentioned above and i.. smh. They still have amazing moments. Like the lantern scene, the alter scene, the “what matters is you, not the state of you”, the end when hua cheng helps release the shackles on xie lian, the scene where hua cheng disappears, the way xie lian waited for him, like they were so close to being THAT COUPLE but then mxtx and her fujo ass just had to make it uncomfortable like that. i’m so bitter. Like the reason why i wrote out all of this is bc this novel could’ve been great but so many little things added up and made the experience far more sour than it shouldve been.

MXTX did hua cheng SO DIRTY by not giving him a character much outside of loving xie lian and being good at everything. Like when I first learned abt how Hua Cheng beat 33 heavenly officials at what they excel in best i was like WHO IS THIS LEGEND but honestly.. he rlly doesn’t have any motivations outside of helping xie lian and I wish he had more to him . Like if we had more situations like the one where hua cheng dug out his own eye to save the group of mortals on mount tong’lu then he’d have been a much more well rounded character. Honestly, that’s rlly the only instance where he seems to have taken xie lians ideals to heart. I wish we had more of that bc that scene was so cool. i wish it hadn’t been revealled so late and there was more than one occasion where he defends others (minus xie lian ofc) without anything for himself to gain that.

To contrast hualian with wangxian, i think wangxian work so well bc at their core, they have the same life goals and same ideas about people and the world. Where in hualian, xie lian has core principles and morals and hua cheng is just like, anything for xie lian. SMH they couldve been great but overall i think hualian falls flat for me because of my own fear of dating someone who doesn’t have a life outside of dating me. Moreso, my parents had this sort of unbalanced relationship towards the end of their marriage and it ended very badly and yea, i just can’t whole heartedly love relationships that in any way resemble this, even if it ends differently. that’s a personal thing tho.

I don’t think Hua Cheng has ANY bad intentions towards Xie Lian or ever will. I don’t think he’s ever manipulated xl or tried to force him to love him. But again, it’s my own personal feelings that makes me feel kinda.. ehh conflicted abt hualian. There was potential but again.. fujoshis ruin everything... smh. Overall i think the way it ended redeemed the issues it had but still there were issues and i really wish xie lian like,, reassured hua cheng about living his life freely at some point but whatever. 

IN CONCLUSION

TGCF had the potential to be better than mdzs, it rlly did but it was bogged down by the authors own toxic mentalities abt love, and mlm relationships, and treating women like ppl and it just leaves a bad taste in my mouth. I enjoyed this book, truly i did (otherwise i wouldn’t have stuck through and read 750k words of it) but there are some flaws that cannot be glossed over. I hope that tgcf when it does get adapted, goes through the same miracle that cql did and makes the characters more like ppl and less like tropes but i doubt it. Also i highly doubt that a live action tgcf is feasible given the supernatural aspects of the series but we shall see. I’m excited for the donghua when it eventual comes out but i will continue to be critical of the novel bc..well.. you see why. idk if i’d reccommend this book tbh bc like yes i would, no i would... well.. </3. yea. overall, it sure was something that i enjoyed in spades. especially the last 5 chapters. I generally liked it but had many issues with it at the same time, but honestly, yea thats the standard fair for a mxtx novel. 

[queernuck]

hi mom do u think like. its ok for someone to do drugs and have no desire to quit? like i feel like i can control myself and i rly feel helped out by a lot of substances and i feel rly shit without them and idk like, I guess that makes me an addict but idrc and i just want people to focus on like caring abt me as the person i am now rather than caring abt me as the ~person i could be sober~.

well damn that makes two of us and if you think its okay i sure as fuck do

that part at the end is definitely relatable specifically because of how it involves marking a clear division between “sober you” as an idea and where you are now, what you are doing, looking at you in a way that makes it such that they can preclude themselves from actually quite caring.

the only addicts people really like are either clean or dead and if you cant be the former a lot of people are more than happy with the latter so they can pull you out like a fuckin Yu-Gi-Oh card in front of friends and family and talk about how much they tried and how tragic things are when they were part of what put you there.

maybe you can control yourself, maybe you have trouble with that. both are more than possible because like, the two can coexist. sometimes you can keep it in, sometimes you just cant. sometimes you can save a bag or two for tomorrow, sometimes youre scraping every last stamp from the bun to get the last few lines and crashing until your body forces you back awake and you decide to score again or you eat enough xanax to be near-comatose for about 12-15 hours.

a lot of substances have side effects that add up over time, but the thing is that a lot of them dont seem to really be all that bad when you consider that you can end up with similar shit from daily life, from accident and chance, from other habits that are widely accepted, from things that you try to replace drugs with, from substances that are legal or being used as directed. benzos fuck up your brain a lot but like, i am not planning on stopping using them anytime even remotely soon, maybe ever, because like, between the daily dosage of clonazepam and the intense relief of Xanax (along with the soothing near-sub-threshold stirrings of almost tasteless tablets of Ativan) I cant pass that up

and i like opiates, i like heroin. its good, theres a reason that since trying it the comparison “its like heroin” is one i think is kinda embarrassing to use because most things that arent really good opiates just are nothing like heroin. and while i joke about it a lot, from one wikipedia citation, the idea of oxycodone as an antidepressant works for me like...yeah, i would be less depressed if i got to take oxy daily, now that you mention the idea

you probably have plenty of things you like to do alongside taking drugs. listening to music, reading, watching films or anime or reality tv or writing or whatever it may be, you try to live and you are doing what you can. you probably have a job if you can sometimes manage to afford substances. and even if you dont, even if youre just trying to keep yourself alive, thats okay too. the thing is that like, so much of drug use is making up for what you dont get, what you cant get, elsewhere. like, the notion of marijuana being not a drug, but rather medicine, is a kind of act of obfuscation: it can function as both, can be both at once even. cocaine or meth to offset ADHD is self-medication but operates on a principle of enhancing focus or giving energy that matches the buzzing going on inside, deterritorializing one’s body such that it can be directed in however many ways at once. Lean is medicine that gets sold secondhand for more than top-shelf champagne may at times, and in general the joking way people look at opiate-based cough syrups is missing that it really is one of the best ways to beat a cough: if you just cant stop coughing, slow your CNS down some, youll feel at least somewhat better, throw in some promethazine to fix the rest of it.

you always should feel like people should be allowed, expected to care about where you are, whether or not you want to be there. not wanting to be sober, hating being sober, makes sense because sometimes being sober fucking sucks. sometimes you just cant handle shit sober, and people even recognize that at times. but when it comes to living, the idea that polydrug use might represent a viable approach to dealing with a wide range of potential experiences, an attempt at compensating for failures under capital as well as the more personal experience of the phenomenological, of trying to navigate trauma, of trying to work through a process of living, of being, it is rejected. it sucks.

so like, I more than think it’s okay, it’s where I want to be. 

damn, i hate being sober.

[tfw-no-tennis]

hunty x hunty cont

soooo we watched more! woohoo

we finished the hunter exam arc???? i THNK? lmaoooo at the end of the ep (21 i thiiiiink) we were on, satotz was like BUT THE HUNTER EXAM ISNT EVEN OVER YET or w/e lol aigh??? whats up w/that

anyways a lot happened in the last few eps that we watched....man i shouldve written this earlier but i litrelly havent been online. anyways

so during the hunter exam stage 4...gon is literally perfect (as i always have to say), him reuniting w/leorio and kurapika was rlly sweet :’) 

of course he immediately offered to help....goodest boy 

and wow that kid has such a powerful nose bvhjksfbjsk he rlly be a gr8 sniffer 

ok literally the part where leorio was in the cave and was like GON KURAPIKA DONT COME IN HERE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! and they both full speed sprint into the cave with 0 hesitation.....we love a 0 brain cells family 

i love leorio so much he really just b running around w/a switchblade and a breifcase, both of which he barely used during the exam lmao

so bummed that leorio slicing up tht snake happened offscreen. how tf did that even work, he doesnt have a goddamn sword

gon just being able to hold his breath for almost 10 mins makes so much sense somehow...he rlly is one of those shounen protags who is just casually a ridiculous human being and doesnt even fully realize that its weird 

that shot of him carrying everyone out of the cave was so sweet

and of course gon vs snakes....hes so perfect....he trusts his friends so much :’) 

also random aside but im so glad tonpa is out and idk if i talked abt this in my prev post but i feel like in most shounen he wouldve been like, so inspired by gons shounen protag energy that he wouldve changed his tune and taken the exam genuinely and either passed or declared that hed definitely pass next year - but no, he was awful til the end, this aint that kind of story (yet...?) 

have i mentioned that i hate hisoka? cause i hate hisoka. nasty ass crusty clown bitch 

what else happened in the phase 4 stuff. oh yeah killua clowned on those triplet dudes (and hanzo lowkey), which was great

ok the opening not having changed this whole time is so funny. imagine if it never changed and its still basic and cheery when everything gets crazy and dark lmao 

ooh my god i forgot to mention this last time but i feel like gons backpack is full of hair gel and hair gel ONLY, he only brought hair gel and his fishing rod. this is canon ty 

oh gosh when killua and gon reunited at the end of the 4th stage....OOOUGH so precious...those two are so cute god. i want a compilation of their cute moments together i hope that exists 

GOD OH FUCK the scene on the airship where kurapika and gon talked bc gon was clearly bothered by something (what happened w/hisoka obvs. i hate that clown bitch) and OUGHHHH OH GOD gon crying LICHRALLY killed me oh man :( i was literally just chanting NO NO NO!!!! at the TV cause seeing tiny baby boy upset was so sad....and ik it gets soooo much worse oh god i cant handle it 

the whole convo was really good and really anti-shounen (once again...feel like thatll be a theme lmao) bc like, it was a healthy convo where gon talked honestly abt his feelings instead of using some shounen protag BS phrases like ‘it doesnt matter!!! ill be stronger next time!!!’ or w/e....and kurapika is a such a good parent oh man :( 

again, cant get over how genuine and uncomplicated the teamup of the main 4 characters has been....literally no ‘we’re competing and only teaming up for convenience/the hunter exam comes before our friendship’ nonsense 

did anything else happen on the airship. ider 

anyways. can i talk abt illumi now. CAN I TALK ABT ILLUMI NOW. H8 THAT BITCH. 

ok wait back up theres other stuff

the interviews w/the candidates was interesting! i love how the old dude was SO not picking up what Creepy Hisoka was putting down lmaooooo

that poor old guy lmao he seems like a decent dude, he was like oh i dont wanna fight gon and killua cause theyre kids,....RIP u red shirt legend 

the bracket setup was so interesting oh man....very funky and creative. and then it wasnt really fully utilized lol, i feel like thats indicative of a bigger patten - hxh so far has been really creative and interesting, and clearly uninterested in setting things up simply to check off boxes on a shounen tropes checklist....i can already see what makes it so great if this keeps up bc daym, so many shounen have their interesting themes drowned out by the overwhelming necessity for the plot to hit certain shounen story beats, smothering otherwise new/fresh ideas and rerouting them back into the same old over-trodden shounen trope territory 

on a meta level, i wonder if the author was like, allowed more leniency (’do whatever bro’) bc hed already been successful w/yu yu hakusho. i havent seen/ready yyh so idk how ‘typically shounen’ it is but thats st that im curious about 

aaanyways. the tournament starts w/hanzo beating up gon for THREE HOURS STRAIGHT. jesus dude. so yeah obviously leorio and kurapika are the best parents ever and them getting so righteously angry over seeing this happen to gon is so heartwarming and good and also a big big mood 

they love their son okay. also that was fucked up. ALSO i find it interesting that thats only the second time we’ve seen kurapikas eyes turn red 

i bet that hisoka saw that also and somethign something phantom troupe, see bottom of post in predictions section 

seeing gon get beat up like that made my heart hurt :( especially when hanzo broke his arm...oof. 

god also i cant believe hanzo is 18 hes literally bald hvbhjafbjs whats w/hxh and making everyone a teen or younger lmao god 

also omfg i love that leorio and kurapika are lichreally 19 and already have kids wow thats amazing especially considering their kids are 12. its so funny that theyre such Parents already considering that the age gap is kinda hilariously small, espec bc i thought that they (mostly leorio) were a lot older at first lmao 

the fact that gon gets to win that fight against hanzo was a legit shock to me....again, anti-shounen. we’d normally want to see what our protag can do in a fight - espec in a tournament-style arc where the consequences arent as high typically - so we’d want him to go further, which is easy here bc to move on he has to lose, which is easy bc gon is a baby w/no offensive capabilities (that we’ve seen)

god ive talked abt this already but its so fascinating how we havent really had any full-on fights???? espec w/the main 4 characters????? we still barely know what they can do....WE STILL HAVENT BEEN INTRODUCED TO NEN???? 

ive been spoiled (i guess?) to the existence of nen but thats abt it. what can it do? what is it? fuck if i know lmao. so i could totally see them pulling a ‘we were using nen the whole time’ w/like hisoka or st, OR a ‘YOU were using nen the whole time w/out realizing it’ w/gon

ok anyways. that hanzo fight was rough but also gon is literally the best. he was trying to bargain w/hanzo to figure out a way where they could come to a conclusion that would satisfy them both - despite hanzo clearly outmatching gon in skill, so the effort on hanzo’s part would be pointless and simply for gon’s benefit....basically the entire proposal sound ludicris and insulting to suggest (or st, idk how to phrase it), but since its gon of COURSE he only has the purest of intentions and means it so genuinely that you cant even be mad at him 

hanzo just knocking him out lmaoooo and then hes just out for the rest of the tournament???? thats so wild and...whatdya know....un-shounen! 

then he wakes up n his lil x-shaped forehead bandage....ough so cute

also the whole convo he and satotz had abt gon’s victory and hunter license and earning/deserving it was so good :’) 

also i feel like the show did a good job of humanizing characters like satotz. i legit thought he was a robot or st at first but it feels more like hes just A Guy now,....albeit a weird guy, but thats to be expected. its like, yeah this guy also took the hunter exam at one point, wow.

anways this is already long and i havent even gotten to the killua stuff yet lol so im gonna stop here for now. and introducing a new segment..........the prediction corner! where i dump my speculations/predictions, entirely for my future self’s benefit 

PREDICTIONS: 

first off as i alluded to above, i think that hisoka has some sort of connection to the phantom troupe (does he know them? maybe not, but he knows where to find them? idk) and when he saw kurapikas red eyes, was able to figure out that whole deal and said st to kurapika during that fight like ‘hey i can help you find the phantom troupe if you want :))))’ 

i kinda said this earlier but i predict that kurapika might get really wrapped up in revenge and go off the rails a bit. we’ll see, so far that hasnt really happened, but for some reason i kinda think that it will? we’ll see

i (incorrectly) predicted that killua would have known that illumi was there the whole time, considering that he was able to noticing the hunter exam dudes following him in phase 4, etc....but BOY was i wrong about that oof 

iiii think that the whole ‘the hunter exam isnt over yet!!!’ stuff will be an opportunity for killua to pass this year still, maybe? idk abt that tho 

i have more predictions but i forgot :( also some of them are more relevant to the next few eps ill make a post on