#the one with Shen yuan and Luo binghe was good too but idk lan Wangji’s just funnier since he has no emoting skills

[happypeachsludgeflower]

Not even five minutes into Cherry Magic and I suddenly understand why I keep seeing so many au’s of it in various fandoms!! My favorites so far have definitely been mxtx au’s, but I may be biased…

[germy-yy]

MXTX football/futsal/soccer AU

I’ve been a goalkeeper for 1 quarter and idk how to drop properly so my arms and knees are a lovely magenta. Mxtx football/futsal AU!  Luo Binghe would be your typical “star” player. He’s a striker (protagonist and all) but is really good in the other roles. He absolutely RUNS OVER those who are physically weaker than him. His kicks are so fucking painful too. He’s like “ah, I better keep the ball far from the goal as much as possible so that shizun doesn’t have to worry”.  Shen Qingqiu/Shen Yuan would be a defender or a goalkeeper. He’s nimble (ehe) to jump towards the ball (read: out the window). One second he’s on the other side of the goal, the next he’s right in front of you and has tackled the ball. As a goalkeeper, he’s screaming the mantra “YOU WILL NOT FUCKING SCORE IN MY GOAL FUCKER” in his head so he doesn’t hesitate to take a ball to the face. He’s also a slippery defender where he’s running towards you and passes the ball back to his teammates in the field. I think he’s lanky so he has long legs to steal the ball away from your feet.  Lan Wangji’s kicks are so fucking painful. Like, no goalkeeper or any player really has never not gotten a bruise from him. Someone even blacked out because they did heading with one of the balls LWJ kicked. Someone fell over when the intercepted a ball he kicked. Idk what role he would be though I am leaning towards striker.  Wei Wuxian would be a goalkeeper. Absolute menace because he flails his arms around trying to mock the opponent and can slide his enter body in front of the goal area. He has a lot of bruises since he’s teammates with LWJ and during training, they do kick-ins (the one where all the players kick the ball and the goalkeeper must intercept it). Though that’s not the only reason why he has “bruises”. (”WY why do you have purple spots on your neck?? Do you intercept the balls with your neck or something?? LWJ, did you play as goalkeeper too today?? You shouldn’t catch the ball with your neck, you know.”) Wei Wuxian slides towards the ball when the opponent is RIGHT IN FRONT OF THE GOAL and hugs the ball, sliding between the enemy’s legs, and making them fall over LMAO.  Hua Cheng is a defender. His gege ran across the field and he isn’t wasting all the effort! Very reliable defender. He steals the ball away from the opponent and is able to make the ball fly all across the field to XL. He rams into opponents (without extending his arms, of course. They were just too...weak compared to his bulk). Like. He literally runs them over and sends them flying when he stops the ball while they’re dribbling with it. He wears an eyepatch and has a medical certificate deeming him suitable to play.  Xie Lian is a striker!! Him and LBH do long shots and it’s a beautiful sight to watch them passing the ball towards each other. Like. they pass the ball to each other from opposite sides of the field. He’s a fast runner and during corner kicks, he runs away from the opponent and is awesome at making openings for his teammates to pass it to him. Since his luck sucks ass, in recent years, he became susceptible to rolling ball kick-ins, hand balls, and hitting the post of a goal instead of scoring.  Extra: 

Shang Qinghua joined the team but doesn’t have much experience. It would look good on college applications. He plays as defender.  SQQ: GET THE FUCK OUTTA THE WAY I CAN’T SEE THE BALL AIRPLANE!!! SQH doesn’t take it personally and when he finds out he’s blocking SQQ’s view, whenever he’s defender and the ball is coming towards them, he’s like: SQH: bro can you see the ball??  love him fr  Also, do you call the sport Football or Soccer? 

[spockandawe]

Okay, I want to pull together more detailed thoughts at some point, I think, because the sheer amount of material means I have about ten billion thoughts to sort out. But I’ve read all three of the mxtx novels now, and loved all of them, in different ways. Though I already tried to figure out if I can pick a Favorite, and tbh, I can’t. I love them all in ways that are too distinct to let me rank them easily. And... man, it’s lucky for my friends that social distancing is in place, or I’d be hassling them shamelessly to give these novels a try.

RIGHT. So.

The Scum Villain’s Self-Saving System: Shen Yuan goes to bed full of rage directed at a trashy webnovel with a grimdark blackened hero who conquered the world and collected hundreds of women into his harem.... and wakes up in novel, while that hero is still an innocent youth. As the hero’s abusive teacher. Who is doomed for a horrifying death unless he can somehow turn things around.

I think I had the most fun with this one. I really enjoy self-referential stories, and stories poking fun at certain genres, and I’ve run into the concept of transmigration before (the idea being a person enters a fictional world, a la lost in austen), though I’m blanking on any media like that I’ve actually consumed. This was chronologically the first book mxtx wrote, and it has less of a sprawling cast with complicated relationships than the other two books, but it definitely has the thing where she lays early groundwork for later revelations that shatter my poor heart. 

And there may be fewer relationships to play with, but my GOD, do I love the relationships we got. I’ve been rolling around in svsss fanfic since I finished the book, even more so than mdzs or tgcf. There’s a lot of good crunchy relationship content with the 79 ship (they destroy me, all day every day), Liu Qingge owns my whole-ass heart, and Luo Binghe makes for a fascinating love interest. I love that even at his best, he remains a needy, needy, manipulative boy, who’s so smart and strong and nEEDY. I don’t love how the book handled moshang, but mmmm the fan content is Good. And Shen Qingqiu does the unreliable narrator thing that is usually not my jam, but works so WELL in these books, in that his unreliable narration is hugely skewed towards not giving himself nearly as much credit as he deserves. Xie Lian takes this to UNBELIEVABLE heights in tgcf, but in Shen Qingqiu’s case, it’s done on such a casual, immediate, personal level that I’m fascinated by everything he does. 

And, since Shen Yuan/Shen Qingqiu is a millennial fan of trashy romance webnovels who gets yanked into the universe of a novel he hates, into an old-timey xianxia setting, the prose is SO COOL. You swing between modern slang and old school high society courtesies at the drop of a hat, and I’m honestly awed that the translators were able to catch so much of that. Like, in-setting, I love all the nuance you can get in ‘qi-ge should give his a-jiu the scroll’ vs ‘yue-shixiong should give this teacher the scroll’ vs ‘you should give me the scroll’. But then it adds a whole new layer when the person ALSO has modern-day casual speech bouncing around in their head. It makes for a fascinating, fascinating reading experience.

The Grandmaster Of Demonic Cultivation: Thirteen years ago, Wei Wuxian died. And then he wakes up! In someone else’s body. I’m not going to try to summarize the premise of this one, go look up The Untamed if you want someone to do a better job of this than me XD

Ahhh, this was the book I read first. I still haven’t watched the show (only clips) and I’m not sure I ever will, because adhd is a hell of a drug. But it’s hard to purely evaluate the prose when there’s also this gorgeous, beautifully-acted visual adaptation all over my tumblr to bias me in its favor. I think this book benefits a lot from the MYSTERY of it all. From the very start, there’s the question of ‘what the fuck is up with this goddamn arm’ that the characters pursue, even as that takes them through flashbacks and other arcs within the story. It gives a thrust to the novel that I think isn’t exactly there in tgcf, though I’m torn on which one is “better.” This gave the story momentum, yes, but it also meant I was much more impatient in yi city and the 3zun flashbacks, because this isn’t what I was focused onnnnnn this is cool but how much longer will we BE HERE--

That being said, I think I’ll be more patient with those flashbacks on my next time through the book, now that I have a better picture of where everything is headed. I think the balance and structure of the book worked really well, I was setting myself up for self-sabotage because of the pace I was plowing through the thing. My reading habits didn’t lend themselves well to the nonlinear storytelling, and it speaks to the story’s strength that it held up that well despite me. And the CAST. My GOD. I went in not caring about anyone but Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji and maybe the jackass nephew, but... that Did Not Last. I didn’t intend to care about 3zun? Nope, too bad, you care so much now. Who cares about Xue Yang? Me. I care. Way too much. HECK!!!

And something that happens in this book and tgcf that was much less of a thing in svsss is that there are some meaningful holes in the story that I’d like to be filled, and I really care about filling-- and the story doesn’t go there. But it doesn’t leave me unhappy, it leaves me cheerfully scrabbling around in the throwaway details trying to piece together a picture of what happened when I wasn’t looking. What happened to Wei Wuxian in the burial mounds? How did Hua Cheng take control of the ghost city? Idk, but let us Rummage and theorize and roll around in ideas and have a fantastic, speculative time. Svsss might hook me more than the other stories from an au+shipping perspective, but mdzs and tgcf do a great job of making me want to roll around and create within the bounds of canon.

Heaven Official’s Blessing: 800 years ago, Xie Lian ascended to heaven. And fell. And rose again! And fell again. Now he’s ascended for the third time, and things are Awkward.

God, I just finished this, and I’m still reeling. This is the LONGEST mxtx book, that’s for sure. I also think it’s the most tightly edited translation. All the translators did an unbelievable job, I could never even approach what they accomplished, but I am genuinely stunned that a book this long was edited so well. I blew through this in about 3.5 days (if not for work, i could have made it in three dghsafdsgf) and my brain was cooking in my skull by the time I was halfway through, but I couldn’t STOP. I was ENCHANTED the entire time! I was reading so much my head was destroying me and I still sulked so HARD every time I had to put my phone down and sleep.

This book sprawls the hardest, I think, because it involves a cast made of mostly immortal/immortal-adjacent people, so time and space get... flexible. And I feel really bad saying this, because Lan Wangji is DEVOTED, but this is seriously the book with the most attentive and adoring and respectful love interest. Hua Cheng is..... god. I truly don’t think I’ve EVER read a character quite like him before, and I am so, so sad, because I don’t know how I’ll find one who lives up to these heights ever again XD I recommend reading this book just for the Hua Cheng experience, if nothing else. I was making audible noises at literally flailing at multiple points in the story, but most often, it was because of him. 

Shipping is what usually drags me into a fandom hardest, and all of these books do pretty well for themselves, all of them have a nice selection of fluffy and crunchy ships to choose from. And this one... goddammit. I just realized, that the best, most crunchy ships are too spoilery for me to be willing to talk about them here. Hell. Goddammit. But I think tgcf has the crunchiest ship of all, even better than xuexiao. I was so invested, and then there were Reveals, and then I was like OH NO THIS IS TERRIBLE BUT MY INVESTMENT HAS EXPONENTIALLY INCREASED. 

And something that I really, really appreciate, is that across the mxtx books, even though a lot of characters fit into strong archetypes, there’s nobody that is blurring together for me, either within or across the books. Liu Qingge isn’t Jiang Cheng isn’t Feng Xin. They’re all blunt, fighty boys, but all super distinct in my head, and what I want for each of them is distinct and character-driven. I want Liu Qingge to be properly cherished and I want Jiang Cheng to relax with his brother and nephew and I want Feng Xin to [goddammit i don’t want to spoil this book AGH]. It’s something I appreciated in the other books too, but I can really FEEL it in this book, with how long and luxurious it is. 

And last thing I have to say, I think, is that tgcf is so long. It’s so, so long. But I would FITE if anyone tried to pare it down at all. I can’t think of anything I’d be willing to sacrifice. I enjoyed every last piece of it so much, and it was all ultimately SO well-constructed and interlocking, that any piece I can think of snipping out would take away significant emotional impact from what was left. It’s a nonlinear story, like mdzs is nonlinear, and I loved mdzs a lot! But the construction here is so, so, so elegant. I’m just in AWE of how well it was assembled. I was in Agony as reveals happened, because oh no no no no, now that they’ve told me this, that casts this whole other scene in a brand new light! The one I read hundreds of thousands of words ago! Literally, I need to go start the book over so I can savor the shitty teens in new ways, given [redacted] as revealed in like, the last twenty percent of the book. The book was a fun experience, but there’s so Much here that I know I haven’t even absorbed yet. I loved the other mxtx books a lot, and in many ways, they were easier to get a grasp on than tgcf was, but even before I finished tgcf I was already despairingly trying to figure out how easily I could fit a full reread into my life, and I think that says a lot

[dornishsphinx]

Jiang Cheng vs Shen Qingqiu (Jiu)

Ahhh, a meanness for a meanness, I see :3 Let’s see, purple JiuJiu or teal JiuJiu… ooof this is gonna get long while I struggle with choosing lmao.

Jiang Cheng was the first MXTX character I properly loved while growing to love them even more as time went on, compared to other MDZS characters I loved at first who I’ve grown… sick of constantly seeing, if not actually disliking them. (It’s overexposure to your dull presence in the present storyline and half of MDZS fan content seeming to be Gusu-based post-canon domesticity, WWX, I promise. I’ll always consider you an interesting character before MXY got involved.) Meanwhile, finally reaching the lategame reveals about Shen Jiu as opposed to vague, MTLed spoilers heard from other people is the most excited I’ve been to read a character’s backstory in like… forever.

It’s a lot easier to get to grips with Shen Jiu as a character, since actual chapters involving him are 2 main chapters and an enclosed series of extras which condense his life into a very short, if fascinating to parallel with the wider story, space, while Jiang Cheng’s appearances are spread more thinly across a far longer novel and period of seen and unseen time (which I have not… finished, which impacts my ability to enjoy the character.) I feel like it’s a bit unfair to give it to Shen Jiu, since Shen Jiu does have the ‘easier to parse’ element, or Jiang Cheng, because I don’t have the proper context for him. There’s no way I can properly understand of the MDZS characters without having read the whole novel.

On that note, I will judge them anyway! The two of them occupy the same narrative role, foil to the love interest, the big vestige of the past confronted by the protagonist at the end (which, again, for Jiang Cheng, I have not yet actually read in proper context.) Let’s just get out the way that Lan Wangji is… not one of my top five, while that I do immensely care about Luo Binghe, but that both Jiang Cheng and Shen Jiu fulfil the role juxtaposing well.

Jiang Cheng isn’t a child abuser, despite what annoying people say, while Shen Jiu undeniably is. Shen Jiu is an example of the cycle of abuse and all his attempts at becoming and being better being thrown back in his face, and on many occasions causing him extreme pain and degradation. Luo Binghe is himself, but with a touch better circumstances, and that’s enough to make Shen Jiu wildly despite him. Meanwhile, Jiang Cheng does his best to help raise Jin Ling well, all his threats being empty, and actively shelters and confers more privilege than is actually fair onto him (the nets. I’m talking about the nets.)

Jiang Cheng is someone born into privilege who had to claw it back from nothing, but was seen by others as having the right to do so due to his family background. Shen Jiu is someone who had the least privilege possible as a slave, who clawed his way up from nothing to also becoming a peak lord. Shen Jiu's revenge is personal and is used to cast him down; Jiang Cheng's is for his family, and he uses it to pull himself back up. They’re both solitary figures, with Jiang Cheng being excluded by every other major sect leader in the region deciding to become a Triumvirate, and Shen Jiu being despised enough by most other peak lords that they cheer his ‘amnesia’, which really is his death. Their brother figures abandon them, and they wallow in bitterness over it for years before their last small token is given over (the forgiveness that takes the form of telling Yue Qingyuan to leave, Chenqing to Wei Wuxian.

They are extremely similar. The main differences are that one isn’t a child abuser, and that the other was born into privilege. One gets the chance to go on living and the chance to change and have his life improve for the better. The other is torn out of the story where everyone else gets the chance to become better people, who always believed things would turn out badly and that he was a terrible person and all his attempts to do good were meaningless (and yet did some anyway, such as with Liu Qingge, which did indeed backfire.)

While you can argue that he got what was coming in PIDW, as Shen Jiu actually said himself in the extras, Shen Jiu’s life in SV is so much more unfair than Jiang Cheng’s. They’re both interesting characters, but Shen Jiu never had a chance at successfully breaking out of the cycle with his mindset and the results of his actions, and was then just killed off for the sake of someone using his body (which, with his backstory of being called an animal, and “goods” and then his new, v privileged passenger also thinking of him as less than human and also “goods”… Well, realising that he is a person and wishing he could return, and that everything might be okay if he did is the apotheosis of Shen Yuan’s character development, so it’s not like it’s a meaningless thing. But still.

They’re both very similar, and very interesting and well-rounded characters. But for the sheer unfairness of his SV fate, I’m giving it to Shen Jiu. Though Jiang Cheng gets kudos for… not abusing children so badly that when they’re all-powerful demon lords, they still try to protect themselves from you when injured. (Even if it is a commentary on masters being really shitty to their students in xianxia novels.) …Maybe closer to a tie then.

(Sidenote since it doesn’t really fit the character vs character vibe: I feel kinda bad about my relationship to MDZS, since it feels like I got really tired of it before I got the chance to finish the novel, when I was… really excited and attached to it in the period immediately after the end of the first donghua, while I got really, really invested in SVSSS and actually reached the end of it. Maybe it’s that I keep getting slapped in the face with content because it’s become such a large fandom (...the idol stans, so many...), maybe it’s that all the new adaptions that make me feel like I’m falling behind in a race rather than actually Enjoying What I’m Reading, maybe it’s because certain subsections within the later MXTX novels fandom tend to be really shitty about the one MXTX novel I haven’t had to force myself to keep on reading and actually go back to on a regular basis… idk, I wanna take a step back and re-evaluate and actually get to grips with the story, but things keep moving too fast for me to be able to do so. Maybe that’s why I’ve ended up really hating a lot of elements from it when normally I feel like I’m fairly chill with stories…)