I’m New To Tumblr, I Don’t Get It, And I Don’t Really Care Anymore So I’m Going To Just Keep

The saddest line in all of tgcf:

“It’s been so long since anyone listened to me talk. Won’t you stay? Don’t…don’t do this.”

God damn.. it punches me right in the gut. All these people around Xie Lian and only one person actually listens to him 😭

I honestly pictured it as a more chaotic fandom of Yizhen Gege worshippers, meatheads who love fights and drama, all claiming to have “been there when he descended” and “seen it with their own eyes” telling stories about how “lit it was” when Yizhen Gege threw Paul Jr through the local tavern for calling Yin Yu a bxtch. (Since Paul Jr was annoying and had it coming) and they’re gunna go light some incense rn and ask Yizhen Gege to come beat up Big Bern too since he doesn’t keep his chickens in the coop and lets them poop all over Greta’s flower bed.

But I can also respect a much more distinguished vision of dedicated practitioners who live to learn and treat his violent visitations as an opportunity for growth. Love it.

The fact that Quan Yizhen regularly descended just to beat up his own worshippers, and this only resulted in gaining a larger following… is probably the most realistic thing in this whole high fantasy series.

THANK YOU!

Alright, so I have good news and bad news: the bad news is that I’m gonna be pausing the comparison posts for a bit, possibly a week if not longer to work on a Hua Cheng bday thing. The good news is that the ghost bridegroom arc edits have a twist that I absolutely think y’all should actually read, so I’m thinking about putting it up for y’all!

Why do so many fans think Jun Wu has no control over who ascends? Like, yes.. people ascend without his permission because there really is a cosmic order in this universe but he literally only needs to fill the slot to prevent randos from ascending.

And YES he CAN artificially ascend people and he DOES. I’m fr about to write up a whole essay on ascension this weekend istg.

The man literally says:

“Even fates can be swapped. Why not spiritual power?” Jun Wu said. “There are many things that are hardly as difficult as you assume. It is only a matter of a few words and a few brush strokes from a few great heavenly officials.”

Right after he sucks out one homies spiritual power and injects it into another.

And let’s be real.. Do y’all really think Jun Wu actually ascended a second time using his own power?

The dude who has the suffering souls of his first attempt at human sacrifice plastered on his own face and.. screaming?

Hell nah. This dude became the grandmaster of demonic cultivation. He experimented on fetus spirits like some mad scientist interested in unethical stem cell research. He probs invented the damn fate swapping ritual himself.

He has an entire fucking Burial Mound volcano where he vents his resentful energy. You think all that energy is accumulating just cus he’s mad? Or from just the three faces?

No way fam. This man is actively cultivating the dark arts and probs needs so many followers just to help balance the yang to his yin.

I mean.. c’mon. You fr think Feng Xin and Mu Qing ascended back to back naturally? And just after they left Xie Lian? There’s a whole damn arc about how unusual it is for two people so close to ascend so fast and so young

Jun Wu gifts Feng Xin a bow called Fengshen which is a homophone for the name of an entire Chinese myth about appointing mortals to godhood for political reasons.

Blows my mind to see that so many collectively deny the possibility when the narration is screaming clues from every digital and physical page.

“…[Pei Xiu] turned to Xie Lian. ‘So you see, there are many things in the world that simply cannot be clearly defined or resolved. You can only fight.’

Xie Lian sighed. ‘I’ll agree to the first part.’

San Lang, on the other hand, said, ‘Hm. I’ll agree to the second part.’”

Hualian: A True Power Couple.

Weibaybay

It’s definitely a real possibility that Xie Lian’s first ascension wasn’t fully natural, and I’m not sold on either/or. The situation is muddy for a reason. Jun Wu had both the motive and the power to manipulate the outcome from the beginning. Xie Lian had the willpower and the talent to have ascended himself.

You’re also right that Jun Wu took an interest in Xie Lian early. One of his favorite tactics was humiliation, and what better way to humiliate someone than to make their subordinates surpass them? Putting Mu Qing and Feng Xin in positions Xie Lian once held, while keeping him ‘rolling in the mud’, is exactly the kind of longterm power play he specialized in.

We already know Mu Qing was assisted by Jun Wu, and Feng Xin’s ascension is hella murky but the bow Fengshen is an lol level clue. (but they’re not the strongest, they’re weakest of the named martial gods excluding Yin Yu and maybe Pei Xiu.. which is weird since they’re the oldest.. except Pei Ming but he ascended around the same time as them)

Editing to add in: just because they were assisted in ascension doesn’t mean they couldn’t have ascended themselves at some point and it doesn’t they’re bad people, it means Jun Wu is.

Why do so many fans think Jun Wu has no control over who ascends? Like, yes.. people ascend without his permission because there really is a cosmic order in this universe but he literally only needs to fill the slot to prevent randos from ascending.

And YES he CAN artificially ascend people and he DOES. I’m fr about to write up a whole essay on ascension this weekend istg.

The man literally says:

“Even fates can be swapped. Why not spiritual power?” Jun Wu said. “There are many things that are hardly as difficult as you assume. It is only a matter of a few words and a few brush strokes from a few great heavenly officials.”

Right after he sucks out one homies spiritual power and injects it into another.

And let’s be real.. Do y’all really think Jun Wu actually ascended a second time using his own power?

The dude who has the suffering souls of his first attempt at human sacrifice plastered on his own face and.. screaming?

Hell nah. This dude became the grandmaster of demonic cultivation. He experimented on fetus spirits like some mad scientist interested in unethical stem cell research. He probs invented the damn fate swapping ritual himself.

He has an entire fucking Burial Mound volcano where he vents his resentful energy. You think all that energy is accumulating just cus he’s mad? Or from just the three faces?

No way fam. This man is actively cultivating the dark arts and probs needs so many followers just to help balance the yang to his yin.

I mean.. c’mon. You fr think Feng Xin and Mu Qing ascended back to back naturally? And just after they left Xie Lian? There’s a whole damn arc about how unusual it is for two people so close to ascend so fast and so young

Jun Wu gifts Feng Xin a bow called Fengshen which is a homophone for the name of an entire Chinese myth about appointing mortals to godhood for political reasons.

Blows my mind to see that so many collectively deny the possibility when the narration is screaming clues from every digital and physical page.

Why is it common knowledge that the flashbacks in Volume 6 (7s) take place starting 4+ years after the fall of Xianle? As in, they’ve been on the run for 4+ years. I can’t find anything to support this in the text, and there’s a lot of context clues that suggest it hasn’t even been a full year.

Please point me in the right direction to confirm this.

Is that timeline fanon or canon?

I have decided. I like tgcf better than mdzs, but I like Wei Wuxian better than Xie Lian. Wbu?

(I still love Xie Lian. And I still love mdzs, but the scales have been weighed.)

It’s been months but I’m still thinking about this tweet that said out off every character from Xianle that we meet, Hua Cheng is the most representative of their love for the arts, for riches and beauty.

Like truly he in many ways comes to personify Xianle in a way, both in the high society luxurious culture that Xianle was famous for but also he’s the orphan from the four famous tales making him the representation of Xie Lians care for the common people. Like he is both the lowest of the low and someone who’s kept the Xianle ways alive.

Like all my brain is thinking of is how Xie Lian distanced himself from all that to cultivate, then to become a God, then a poor peasant and how homesick he’s been his whole life.

Only for his husband who was a poor peasant, then a solder, then a king who represents everything Xianle stood for and how their stories are going backwards and forwards and how Xianle is gone but how Hua Cheng embody all of Xianles culture from the poor to the rich and and how he feels like home to Xie Lian now.