#because shen jiu's entire thing is that he was CANONICALLY a terrible person | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

veliseraptor · 2 months

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top 5 fictional villains

oh man how am I supposed to choose from my entire villain warehouse. let's see.

1. Xue Yang. I mean, if this wasn't obvious from my [gestures] whole blog. But boy did I fall hard from pretty much scene one of my first watch of The Untamed, and then never looked back from there. He's just! What a guy. An icon. I love him so much. Fucks up his own life irreversibly and doesn't even realize he's doing it until too late. Whoops.

2. Maeglin. #my trash son. I waffled between putting him and Celegorm on this list (I could've done both, but, well, I felt like I should pick one per canon) and decided to go with Maeglin because he's arguably worse? Though I guess it probably depends on your metric. (I'm not really interested in arguing on that one, I don't particularly care, they're both my beloveds and there's no changing that at this point.) Seriously fucked up childhood that's got to fuck some things up in one's head to begin with, and then making some terrible choices later on that just go rapidly downhill, and again, tragedy of condemning oneself but also how doomed was he from the beginning (pretty doomed).

3. Vegas Theerapanyakul. I kind of hesitated about putting him on here because it feels sort of weird to call him a "villain" but like. He did sexually assault the protagonist in an early episode and threaten to kill him later on, so, like. Even if the story turns around and gives him a happy ending (iconic) I feel like he counts. Disaster of a man, kind of an awful person ("kind of?", you say, and okay, that might be so), and it's very sexy of him. Pete thinks so too, apparently.

4. Shen Jiu. Yest all right I know he's technically Sir Not Appearing In This Book but he is technically the titular scum villain so I'm counting him. Awful man. Miserable history, miserable story. I'm irresistibly drawn to tragedies created by characters themselves and that's what this guy's got going on.

5. Moridin/Ishamael/Elan Morin Tedronai. We! Love! A nihilistic villain just craving the end of everything! Of tenuous sanity and an abiding obsession with the protagonist! Anyway I didn't have a lot of feelings about this guy the first couple times I read Wheel of Time but then on my second to latest reread he came roaring out in front and plop, in the villain warehouse he goes.

thought about including He Xuan but he only sort of feels like he counts as a villain somehow; honorable mentions here go to Celegorm (disney prince murderer), Jun Wu (king of creating a toxic work environment), Clytemnestra (queen of my heart), Azula (since I just mentioned her), Jin Guangyao (generator of infinite discourse) and Jinx. I feel like I'm forgetting folks here. but that happens, I suppose.

and this is not including villains who are just so much fun for me to watch, who live in a slightly separate corner of my brain but are beloved of me nonetheless.

#conversating #brawlite #top five meme #lise memes

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tossawary · 3 years

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Shen Jiu’s character has been... difficult as hell to handle in “pride is not the word I’m looking for” at times. SPOILERS up to Ch28-ish.

Because, like, he’s an asshole. He really is an asshole. He’s a terrible person and should not be allowed be near children.

However, Shang Qinghua is also kind of an asshole, and Shang Qinghua does actually seem to like many of his characters, though he’s not really interested in helping them or risking his neck for them, with the glaring exception of Mobei-Jun. Mobei-Jun is also an asshole. SQH doesn’t seem to care at all that MBJ killed several of his fellow disciples besides fear for his own life.

And making Shen Jiu that shitty coworker Shang Qinghua hates dealing with was funny to me. He’s a bastard and it’s very fun to write. I’m fond of characters who aren’t nice because they actually keep things interesting. (Not that nice characters can’t be interesting, I just think Cang Qiong Mountain Sect dynamics are funnier if they’re all kind of bitchy to each other.)

Making Shang Qinghua invested in the Yue Qingyuan and Shen Qingqiu drama, then using it to explore SQH’s own relationships and character and growth, that was fun too.

I thought that it would be super out of character for Shang Qinghua to condemn Shen Qingqiu or try to get rid of the man, especially given Shen Yuan and the fact that the System in SVSSS seems invested in keeping Shen Qingqiu around for the Eternal Abyss scene. The fact that SY couldn’t get out of the Eternal Abyss makes me think that Shang Qinghua thinks that SQQ pushing LBH into the Abyss (the betrayal that kicks off LBH being a “blackened” protagonist) is a crucial, unavoidable plot point. So Shen Qingqiu has to stay.

But I don’t really want to make Shen Yuan be SQQ, because that’s a little too close to canon for my tastes and I want to steer clear of just redoing the plot with only a few twists. I wanted to make SY his own characters so that I could explore a really different take on the relationship between transmigrators.

I also wanted to have SY’s arrival kick off that terrifying World Update in Part 3 for plot purposes. So, again, it looks like Original Shen Qingqiu has to stay.

I kind of like the tragedy of Yue Qingyuan and Shen Qingqiu. I don’t see their relationship as romantic personally (I’m not against it), but the intense attachment and self-destructiveness of their relationship regardless is fun to me. They’re so explosive and miserable, which is interesting.

So, I don’t want to make my fic about how evil Shen Jiu is when the entire fic is about Shang Qinghua becoming a better person. It would feel kind of icky to me if I pointed at Shen Jiu and went, “THAT GUY is irredeemable. I’m writing a fic about Shang Qinghua trying to be a decent person and yet also have him fall in love with Mobei-Jun, who’s definitely an asshole, but Shen Jiu is the lost cause here! Throw the whole man away!” That... didn’t seem to fit.

(Sadly enough, I’m also leery of receiving abuse from people who think Shen Jiu “did nothing wrong”. Fandom sucks sometimes.)

It’s Pre-Canon, we don’t actually know that SJ has done anything yet, so I have a little bit of leeway there to say he could actually improve instead of stewing deeper and deeper in his own resentment and bitterness.

Also, making Shang Qinghua invested in watching Shen Jiu’s moral status and trying to point Shen Jiu in the direction of being less shitty was funny.

I also LOVE “villain decay” and “people being unwillingly dragged towards morality” stories. I just love them. It’s why SJ appeals to me as a character.

And I know some people like Shen Jiu and don’t want to see him suffer, so I thought, “Okay, I can have Shen Jiu develop from an asshole to... an asshole who can behave decently sometimes... and at least not abuse children beyond being kind of a shitty teacher during music lessons.”

Also, I just... didn’t want to deal with child abuse in my found family fic. I didn’t want to have to tackle that, guys. SJ becomes a less shitty person so that I didn’t have to write that arc because I wasn’t interested in writing that arc.

But I also didn’t want to make Shen Jiu nice. He’s fun to write.

The character of Fu Qiang does have some plot stuff coming up, but also she’s kind of there to... separate Shen Jiu from the students. Fu Qiang’s plot stuff may explain SJ’s improvement a little. He did NOT decide to get better for Shang Qinghua and/or Yue Qingyuan’s sake. SQH is... kind of wildly projecting onto both Yue Qingyuan and Shen Qingqiu at times.

Anyway, writing SJ is a terrible balance act. I’m mostly pleased with what I’ve managed, especially since SJ isn’t the main character and I don’t want to devote too many time to him, but sometimes it feels like one of those “in order to make no one here ‘foaming at the mouth’ angry with me, I am going to make no one totally happy” situations.

#tossawary svsss #pride is not the word #spoilers #shen jiu

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spockandawe · 3 years

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For the ships, Liujiu, Bingjiu or YueJiu ?

Oh man, Shen Jiuuuuuuu

Okay, so my answers for these are going to share some themes, so I’ll try to keep it a bit brief instead of repeating myself x3. Let’s see if I can keep a handle on this without it getting away from me, haha

Liujiu:

Downsides:

So, my biggest logistical struggle with these two is... making it happen. They’re both pretty aloof and standoffish people, and they take a strong dislike to each other early on. I love me some good hatesex, which matters a lot for the bingjiu, but with liu qingge and shen jiu...... getting them to tolerate each other for long enough for hatesex is hard.

And also, even though I love hatesex, for some reason I get really sad in here because they’re both going to take so much damage. Which is a common feature of hatesex? And I’m not opposed to hatesex for either of these men? But together... I don’t know, there’s something about how fragile Shen Jiu is and how bad at people Liu Qingge is, and the way they both amplify each other. I don’t know why this ship in particular makes me so anxious, but they definitely do, haha

Upsides:

Such...... hateful............... hatesex.........................

Like, it hurts me to think about how much they’ll hurt each other, but think about how much they’ll hurt each other! The potential is EXQUISITE. Shen Jiu has a sharp tongue, he’s quick on his feet, and he’s very good at finding cruel, cutting things to say. Liu Qingge is willing to give you his everything, but only if you’re nice to him first, which Shen Jiu is absolutely not willing to be. And Shen Jiu is so proud, and so horribly brittle. He takes damage from someone trying to be nice to him, he’ll react so badly to someone seeing him that vulnerable and trying to be mean.

I don’t know, it’s one of those ships where I instinctively Crave it, but I would have so much trouble figuring out a scenario where I was both satisfied where why they would do it (fuck or die is the easiest scenario, but tbh, i have a real hard time justifying that, even if i enjoy it), and I was confident I wouldn’t exit the scenario just... super super sad. It’s something I would idly like to write, but I’d have to be in a VERY particular headspace :P

Bingjiu:

Downsides:

Okay, now, to be clear-- I do like some well-executed noncon. It can do LOVELY things with character and emotion and power dynamics. And we don’t get much original Binghe on page to draw characterization from, but I’m going to go ahead and assume that similar to how he was hungry for Shen Qingqiu in canon, he was also hungry for something from Shen Jiu. But in a situation like this where one party is clearly and persistently wanting, and the other party is clearly and consistently rejecting, I find straightforward noncon more often... boring.

Upsides:

So what we’re left with is messy, deceptive dubious consent and messy, manipulative hatesex. Which I love. These are some of my favorite favorite kinds of unhealthy ship dynamics, and I live for it. I’ve read some nice liujiu before, and I’ve read some nice bingjiu, and they were both well-executed, but the bingjiu definitely stuck with me more. The liujiu? Even if it was hateful, it tended to be honest, and like........... if I have the option to bring lies and coercion into the situation, why would I say no?

I feel like I’m regularly being introduced to new variants on this ship, but I don’t want to just rehash existing fics that I liked. But there’s the idea of transmigration within canon, where Bingge enters a younger version of himself (or there’s one where older Bingge and Shen Jiu enter swapped bodies for their younger selves). There’s Binghe coming back from the abyss and somehow (angrily, sexily, messily) working things out with Shen Jiu. Or there’s Binghe leaning on his dream abilities and flat-out lying/steering to Shen Jiu to get him into bed. Either way, it’s more complicated that just taking. There’s a psychological/emotional component to the maneuvering that makes it all deliciously interesting to me.

Ah, here’s an angle I think I missed before. With Shen Jiu’s past in the Qiu household, I find a straight-up forcing to be... uninteresting. Shen Jiu himself has so much baggage that unless a fic or whatever is focused on aftermath, I’m very *shrug* about the dynamic, I think canon did plenty well for itself without even fully Going There. For a dynamic as poisonous as this one, I’d much rather see Shen Jiu having all his walls and boundaries and defenses, and being coaxed out into the open (whether he knows what’s waiting for him or not) rather than having his walls just blasted down

(and if you can avoid totally taking out Shen Jiu, it’s so easy to add a mutually assured destruction element to this dynamic, which is ALWAYS a favorite of mine)

(also, Binghe is like the one person in the universe with the power to unlock the secret that Shen Jiu used to hide in Qiu Haitang’s room for safety and comfort, and just....... *grabby hands*)

Qijiu:

Downsides:

None. None? I adore this so much it kills me.

Wait no hold on, Yue Qingyuan cannot fucking communicate. That’s the one downside.

Upsides:

Oh my goddddd, THESE TWO! THEY MAKE ME FUCKING BAWL! They care about each other so, so, so, so much, and they come so close to breaking free of their childhood together, and then it all barely falls apart, and it probably wouldn’t have fallen apart if they didn’t each care so fucking much, and I want to scream.

There’s something about a ship. Where one party is a complete unrepentant asshole who loves one (1) person in the entire universe, and would give them the WORLD, and cares exactly 0% about anyone else... It kills me every time. Especially in the flashbacks, okay. It’s like hua cheng, only Shen Jiu is also still absolutely vicious with Yue Qi, but! Yue Qi cares not at all, he just adores Shen Jiu right back and doesn’t even register the meanness. He’ll maybe, maybe tell Shen Jiu to play nicer with the other kids, and everyone involves knows that he will do nothing to enforce that.

The Qiu household thing... breaks my goddamn heart, I swear. Yue Qi promising to come back for Shen JIu. Shen Jiu waiting and enduring and finally thinking that Yue Qi must have died, or he would have definitely come back. Their reunion, where Shen Jiu is like ‘oh.... I’m an intrinsically terrible person’ because he realizes he would prefer that Yue Qi was dead rather than knowing Qi-ge abandoned him. Yue Qingyuan’s emotional confession in canon that he didn’t abandon Xiao Jiu, he never wanted to abandon him, he trained too hard and too fast and almost destroyed his body and his teacher locked him in the caves for a year.

The downside is that they love each other so much they can’t deal with the idea that Yue Qingyuan abandoned Shen Jiu! They can’t deal with it to such an extent that they can’t even come close to resolving the misunderstanding! The downside is that Shen Jiu loves Yue Qingyuan enough that he pushes him away, just for a chance that he can save him from Bingge, and that Yue Qingyuan loves Shen Jiu enough that he came back for him anyways, knowing that he was walking into certain death, whether it was for the chance that Bingge would take some mercy on Shen Jiu, or because he couldn’t bear the idea of abandoning Shen Jiu again!

The downside is that Shen Jiu quietly dies, Shen Yuan quietly slips into his body, and that Yue Qingyuan goes on loving Shen Jiu without ever realizing he’s already gone.

#ask memes/#spock replies #liujiu #bingjiu #qijiu #liu qingge #shen jiu #yue qingyuan #luo binghe #long post/#noncon mention/#dubcon mention/#Anonymous

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veliseraptor · 1 year

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Soft/hard head canons for Shen Jiu 🙌

finishing off the last few of these in my inbox...this is an interesting one because like with other characters I feel like my headcanons for Shen Jiu in particular are less "hard" and "soft" than "malleable and story dependent" outside of, like, what we know textually. but let's see what I've got.

also sometimes as usual I don't know that I have headcanons one way or the other until I run into someone contradicting them, which I think has happened here but struggling to think of something specific...

hard headcanon: While the personality change from Shen Jiu!Shen Qingqiu to Shen Yuan!Shen Qingqiu is undoubtedly pretty drastic (and I really can't think about that plot point too long, it makes me feel Real Bad), I think a lot of the original goods' behavior is more self-fulfilling than inevitable or unchangeable. I mean, this feels like a definite theme in SVSSS generally (and in MXTX's works as a whole) - that people are not definitively and unchangeably Bad, that change is possible for people, even seemingly awful ones. (I mean, the entire arc of Luo Binghe's character transformation, for one.)

I actually think a lot of Shen Qingqiu's behavior was self-fulfilling prophecy - I mean, this is pretty firmly textually canon as of the Shen Jiu extras, I believe. He decides that people are going to hate him and therefore he acts in a way to justify and confirm that hatred. I love a self-sabotaging, self-isolating bitter asshole! I really do. That then calcifies, but not actually as much as I think Shen Qingqiu believes - he seems convinced that all his fellow Peak Lords will hate him forever so why bother trying, but we see in canon that they actually turn around on him fairly quickly when his behavior changes, which suggests to me a willingness to change their minds that I don't think Shen Qingqiu would believe in.

It is so firmly entrenched in Shen Qingqiu's head that he is loathsome and rotten and there's no changing that, that he can't imagine anyone seeing anything else. Given that, his expressed hostility is a way of warding people off at least from seeing any vulnerability, because it's not like he has anything to lose: in his head, he never had their affection or even respect. I think Shen Qingqiu would always be kind of bad at being a person and not terribly sociable, but I do think if he made an effort he would get more of a response than he would expect or believe would happen.

Also I think that at least one of the reasons he continues to push Yue Qingyuan away so hard despite the fact that he cares very deeply for him is because he wants to see if he'll keep coming back. Even if it's just out of guilt, and that's the last thing he wants, at least he does still come back, and that is, pathetically, better than nothing. Which just makes him angrier and makes things worse. Good times!

soft headcanon: The Ning Yingying question is one that I feel like I have a few different potential reads on - by which I mean to say, the particularities of the accusation that he was somehow inappropriate with her. The firm part of it is that I don't think he actually would make sexual advances on her (or any female students); my read on Shen Jiu is pretty firmly gay but sex-repulsed to the point that he's situationally ace. Where I do have headcanon variations is what, exactly, did happen - whether there was a misread somewhere by Yingying that got blown up as the forming picture of Shen Qingqiu as a lecher became more defined and absolute (i.e. reinterpretation of a past event that maybe felt funny in retrospect even if it seemed innocent at the time, or even something that felt a little awkward or inappropriate at the time but wasn't meant sexually, but that then becomes something bigger), or whether it was entirely false rumor, boosted by Shen Qingqiu treating his female disciples better than his male disciples and being particularly fond of Ning Yingying.

If the latter, then why doesn't she say anything? That seems like a pretty clear answer to me: in PIDW she's very much pushed into a passive role, and Luo Binghe is a strong enough personality with enough force of will that I can see her not feeling able to contradict him, and/or I can see her being convinced that it doesn't matter what she remembers, everything else is true and bad enough that one more thing is just going to ensure that Shen Qingqiu can't hurt anyone else, and/or that it's only fair if upsetting for Luo Binghe to have his revenge.

Basically: while I pretty firmly don't think Shen Qingqiu (original flavor) made any advances on Ning Yingying, I can see a few different ways that situation might have played out leading to it becoming another point against him at the trial.

I also wobble on how far I think the abuse went with Qiu Jianluo - whether it went all the way to rape or just ("just") the threat of it up to the point when Shen Jiu killed him.

#conversating #thebeingofeverything #wow i was like 'do i have headcanons' and then wrote a short essay #OKAY ME #shen jiu #svsss #aggressively headcanons #lise memes

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spockandawe · 4 years

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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

#tgcf #mdzs #svsss #long post/#[sad journaling noises as i realize that whatever ridiculous wordcount tgcf has still only counts as one completed book on my list]#i need to get an actual wordcount at some point #then stack up enough physical books to visually represent each of these monsters #i know i read a lot #enough that i very much want to know *how much* i read #because CHRIST

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