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intensitystoner · 3 years

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Scribble for @sifkiweek

Day 2 - AU

~2,000 words (attempt at lil’ humour)

Jotunheim was nothing but ice on the surface, such a vast layer over the original soil of the planet that most forms of life couldn't survive here. The few cold-bearing pines that arched towards the sky heedless of the chilling storms had been here long before the Jotunn arrived and the winter they brought along killed all other creatures and plants; this was one of the few superfluous facts that Sif knew, besides ways to find food on foreign land or to recognise the enemy.

Instead of lore, she excelled at warfare: this is what brought her here with the golden armies of Asgard, to take over control and gift the land with their culture and technology. She saw this as a great opportunity to prove worthy of her title. Many people had doubts about her, some had the most insulting accusations. She deemed it wise to stabilise her reputation at this opportunity by delivering a few Frost Giant heads back into the camp from the solo scouting mission she volunteered for among others.

That said, there had been no Giants in sight for what felt hours of wandering in the bone-bursting chill. The ever-present snow gnawed its way under the protective layers of her neck-high armour and padded cloak. Valiant Sif soon got bored of the monotonous rows of icebergs, ice valleys, ice canyons and ice plains. She started looking for caves, through the derivation that the giant inhabitants must be hiding away in fear of her. She ventured into a cavity under a cliff, with icicles hanging off from it like a coarse beast's fangs. She crept bravely inwards in the deepening dark, stumbling occasionally as she tried keeping a hand against the wall, determined that such a difficult place must be a hideout, and she would bring back the desired slain heads from here if it killed her. But Norns, how deep were those miserable beasts tucked away?

She startled when a small light flashed into her eyes, but she quickly figured out that it was the end of the corridor beyond a bend, and with breaths eased, she stepped outside.

Almost immediately, splashing of water hit her ears. Frowning at the peculiarly misplaced sound, she turned to observe the thick bundle of mist. Then she recoiled and reached for her sword, although she hesitated to believe what she perceived: there, in the middle of the snow field, was a steaming pool, and in it, a Frost Giant crouching, presumably washing something.

There were so many peculiarities about this that she couldn't enumerate them at once. So she settled with carefully drawing her sword and creeping up on the vile being for a long awaited death match for valour.

Her hand was halfway towards the handle when a crude bellow interrupted:

"Just what the hell do you think you're doing, barging in like that? Can't you see I'm defenceless?"

Astonishment made her hover for a moment, but she quickly remedied it by swinging the blade into an attack stance before her. Encouraged by the comforting metal in her grasp, she responded:

"I will never trust your word or your demeanour, monster! Prepare yourself, for this is the last day you see this meagre sunlight!"

"How dare you?" came the low hiss as an answer.

Vengeful assault it is, then. Her eyes narrowed in preparation for the well expectable offence, her muscles tensed as the figure moved.

When he stood, she noticed three things consecutively: the giant, uniquely, had pitch dark hair of shoulder length; he was but the size of an Aesir, the scrawniest Jotunn she had seen; and – she gasped – he was naked, and his nakedness didn't stop below the hips as he rose, eventually presenting himself in his entire unveiled glory.

"You've got some nerve, pointing that measly stick at me, Asgardian," said the not-so-giant one with hands on his hips like he weren't as bare and plain as a newborn.

Well, plain wasn’t entirely accurate, as he wore the intricate carvings of his kin all over the body, smooth curves following the muscles and other significant features – quite elegantly sculpted, at least for a barbaric Jotunn build, she thought with some untoward warmth throbbing in her temple. In this critical moment when life or death could be decided within a single breath, half of her attention got wasted on not to glance where his fingers on those unbelievably narrow hips were pointing.

"Are you perhaps dull?" mused the creature then and gestured with a full arm towards the cave entrance, forming each word clearly: "Make your way back where you came from, and I'll grant you mercy this one time; solely because I'm past an especially tiresome group hunt with imbeciles."

The insulting tone stirred Sif out of her stun.

"Or better," she spat, "I'll be the one to hunt you down, and we'll see who's dull. I'll let you get armed now and face me properly for the slaying. Move out, be quick about it!"

The measly but impudent Giant – or whatever it was, she was less and less sure – laughed at her soundlessly.

"All right," he said when he regained control over his breaths, "I see how we stand. But I know one even better." With eyes wide, he bent closer to share the excitement. "Getting armed to spar with you would be a waste of time. I'll fight you off unclothed like this."

She could have exploded from the perky glint in his eyes and the spread arms. Though she tried to stay untouched, anger – so she named the sensation – heated up her cheeks.

"You will learn your place soon enough," she promised mostly to herself, but she remained where she was for now, unsure of what to do: a victory against someone exposed and weak like this was not what she could have bragged about at home, and especially not if this was the only thing she brought back today.

"Oh, I’m sure it’ll be an easy win for you. If you climbed this high in the palace of gods, you won't even break a sweat killing someone like me, will you?"

So that’s what the game was about. He knew very well that her honour wouldn't let her fight an unarmed being, and he evaded the battle this way. No wonder he was trying to get away; with his size, he must have been a weak link, probably subject to continuous scorn. And his marks-

Dumbfounded, she lowered her sword and took a step closer for a better look, meanwhile noting how the movement didn’t even break his infinitely bored posture.

"A royalty," she breathed staring at the curved lines on his forehead, symbols for a crown or horns according to Aesir scripts. "You're meant for the throne? How is that possible? You're so-"

"Majestic, indeed," he cut in.

"Well, not quite-"

"I get it, knightess, you're wondering: how can such an eloquent being be found among barbarians?" The tiny Jotunn presented himself with both arms while speaking, in a languid stride towards the side of the steaming pool, undisturbed by Sif as she smoothly followed his procession with relentless steps and keen eyes. "Could the land of Frost Giants ever nurture something as refined, as poised, as glamorous as this? Could they hide something that no codices in the golden halls of Asgard tell about? Let me soothe your wonder: they can't. Yes, I am Laufey's son; yes, I will have the throne of Jotunheim, and then woe to all that have wronged me. But no, these brutes have no mind to hold me as the jewel in the swamps of their miserable existence,” he boasted while heading for a bundle of clothes on a cleared rock. “I have nurtured my own self, my own talents: everything you're ogling now has been grown through sheer discipline-"

He was about to bend down for the leathers when she stepped in; but before her blade would have stirred, his arm whipped towards her, and she grew motionless as something sharp dug into her neck. His face was languid, his eyelids low over his crimson look at her.

"I merely wish to dress, milady," he cooed like he was victim to the threat. "Won't you allow me this one boon?"

"It's Warmaiden for you, beast," she snarled as her breath let loose again. "And you better learn your place before you think again that I'm ogling anything."

She hid her relief over the fact that she had a voice, her skin intact, though the sharp thing was still pressed tight against her throat. And where in the Nine had he been hiding it up to now?

"I may grace you with your name on my lips, if you give mine due respect,” he replied while reaching for his clothes once again. “Namely, I am Loki, third son of Laufey, would-be King of-" His lofty words merged into a quiet snarl as his lowering arm got smoothly replaced with hers, the much longer sword keeping his chin up. "You may address me as Your Highness, shield maiden."

He uttered the title with such contempt that for an insulted moment, his insightful knowledge failed to catch her attention. But the epiphany reached her before she'd have retorted, and her sharp breath turned into a threatening hiss.

"How do you know so much?" she demanded.

And he laughed, once again that modest hissing sound under his breath, as if he weren't even doing it to mock her, and then he continued obtaining his clothes despite the blade grazing his skin.

"By reading. I taught myself runes, carving them into the snow," he admitted, though his tone felt a lot like he was but jesting. "I used the sharpened bones of my slain ancestors."

"You're an outcast, aren't you?" she inquired with her deepest scorn, just to retort.

That seemed to hit the mark.

“I'm a rightful heir of Jotunheim, and I'll live up to it," snapped the annoyingly fine-wired creature while winding the girdle and kilt around his hips with irate movements.

The Jotunn soldiers Sif had seen always settled with this amount of clothing, so she eyed him in mild surprise as he went on throwing the skin of a soft-furred beast around his shoulders, with her blade following the movements in loutish idleness.

"You may not live up to anything your people don't accept," she pointed out meanwhile. "I hear that resilience is power in this realm, which you seem to lack miserably. Your nation has yet to adopt some higher values."

"Higher values," the creature repeated with honest amusement. "You could list a hundred of those in one sitting, I bet."

"Tell me then, if you’ve read so much, what do you hold for one?"

"There is no light I could shed in your head, Asgardian," he said bending towards her to emphasize the statement. "Your mind is already set, the Allfather's teachings too deeply rooted within you since your birth."

"I only first saw Asgard after I came of age," she protested, too quickly before she'd have considered whether she owed him this excuse.

He took it in with a surprised arch of eyebrows. His exhale was audible when he turned to leave.

"Then you may have a glimmer of hope. Don't waste it. The nearest horde is wandering east of here, by the way, full of the dullest-"

"Waste what exactly?" she snapped while hurrying to catch up with him before he could elope or have time to catch her off-guard. "Do you really hold yourself so-"

"Fine, I'll be your guide. You could have just asked nicely, you know. You should be well aware of the benefits of courtesy, since you come here with your people to preach about it."

“I have no need of a guide,” she announced as they walked on side by side.

“Don’t you, now? How long exactly have you been circling around in the area again? Not even noting that you passed the most significant landmarks you’ll ever find here twenty-four times altogether? And this before I grew bored of you and retreated believing to be rid of you for good?”

“I don’t need a blabbering guide, like you,” she corrected, her look challenging.

“And yet here we are,” he announced brightly. “If you’re not attentive, you’ll find yourself my spouse after I obtained the throne.”

“You’ll regret that a thousand times, I’m not marriage material.”

“Challenge accepted.”

An abrupt silence followed as their thoughts caught up to the mutual jest, filled with unintended smiles. Not yet giving it much significance, they carelessly trudged on in the snow on their joint path.

#sifkiweek21 #sifki #da orky writing

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secondpubertyscene · 3 years

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8.14.21

This year has been one of major change. In Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower, there’s this quote, “God is Change. Beware: God exists to shape and be shaped,” and I think for the first time since reading it, I get what was being said. While I subscribe to the idea that there is a higher power of some kind, I also believe that we (as in, us as individuals) have great power as well. That power lies in our ability to change, to grow, to persevere. This year has been one of major change, and we really have to talk about it.

It is easy to look at this last year and think, “Well, that fucking sucked” because frankly, it did indeed fucking suck. I could write you a list of things that brought me great pain this year, unbelievable, undeniable, unrelenting pain that still lingers now. But, see, the beauty of it all is that none of that pain happens in a vacuum. Along with the pain, I’ve come through it all with more wisdom, more compassion, more empathy, more gratitude, more peace, more love, and more confidence. I’d like to share how those things all are connected, but first I would like to acknowledge something.

While I don’t know for sure if this is just an American thing, it does seem very clear that Americans aren’t fantastic at processing grief, death, and pain collectively. We often are encouraged to suck it up, to shut up about it, to not make others uncomfortable with our tears and trauma. I believe this is in large part due to the fact that American Exceptionalism doesn’t quite allow us to acknowledge when our systems have failed us or when we are suffering in the “greatest country in the world.” I don’t intend on participating in that toxic positivity or to dismiss the seriousness of the year past. I simply intend on acknowledging the nuances of my experiences, the complexity of it all. Now, let’s begin.

Without recounting every moment in large detail (in part because that would be far too much and also because I don’t need to relieve my traumas today), the events of the last year have been as follows: 1) COVID hit, 2) I had a severe emotional breakdown that resulted in a short stay at the hospital, 3) my grandma passed away, 4) I broke up with my partner of a year, 5) I was officially diagnosed with adult ADHD (inattentive), 6) I got into a PhD program for sociology (fully-funded), and 7) I moved to Ohio (two weeks ago now). So much happened in what feels like a blink of an eye. When you’re a kid, you think a year lasts forever. Now, a year feels like a couple months!

Anyhow, all of these things had super intense negative impacts on my life and most of them had super intense positive impacts on my life. Let’s talk about how. I won’t say that COVID had any “positive” impact on my life, because it’s still currently making things difficult and it is still destroying lives (full worlds) every day. The emotional breakdown that I experienced shortly after COVID began, however, was the impetus for some of the greatest change I would ever make in my life. It began with new therapy, medication for the first time ever to treat my mental illnesses, and a new relationship with boundaries.

Out of this breakdown, I came to realize a few things. 1) I wasn’t really feeling most of my life up until that point. That isn’t to say that I didn’t feel at all or that I wasn’t aware of my feelings all the time, but to say that most of the time, I numbed everything out that was too hard to bear. I didn’t cry, I didn’t write, I didn’t even take the time to try to identify exactly what emotions I did feel. I just lived through it and waited until I felt better. Or, I would breakdown with rage and then feel better. Therapy, especially the group therapy I participated in for a couple weeks after leaving the hospital, changed that in huge ways for me.

Because I was able to sit in my pain, in my discomfort, I was able to actually work through some of my issues. I began to identify the areas in my life that made me genuinely unhappy and began to grant myself permission to feel disappointment. I granted myself the permission to expect more, to want more. I granted myself the permission to set boundaries without guilt or shame. I granted myself freedom. It is an ongoing journey of mistakes and back-peddling and trying again, but it is mine and I am proud of it. Had I not had that breakdown, I don’t know that I would be where I am now.

My grandma dying is one of the most painful things I’ve experienced and honestly, I haven’t dealt with it all the way yet. I didn’t get to say goodbye to her in person, I still am battling the feelings of guilt despite knowing that there likely was nothing I could have done, and my chest still feels heavy thinking about her. Even as I write this, I feel that pain. I know she is not truly gone and that she lives within me, but oh, I do miss her physical presence. The nagging, the phone calls, the hugs, the cooking, her soft hair and beautiful hands. I miss her. Because of her, though, I have been able to rehabilitate another relationship in my life. The relationship I share with my mother.

My mother is a lot of things, but for whatever reason I continually forgot that she too is a victim of hardship brought on by nothing but sheer luck. In this last year, she lost her mother, the man that she loved, multiple cousins, friends that went back to childhood, and who knows who else. She suffered a lot this year and she has suffered a lot over the course of her 61 years of life overall. For the first time, I have been able to really acknowledge her as a full being with a complex history and understand her as a person, rather than just as a parent. I’ve set new boundaries with her as a result, boundaries that have completely change the dynamic of our relationship and will continue to do so as we both learn more about each other. Gone are the days where she relies solely on me for emotional support or financial support. Gone are the days where she feels comfortable talking down to me and then expecting any kind of favors from me. She understands and respects that I am an adult, that I am independent, and that I can terminate our relationship should it get to a point where I feel unsafe again. While this might sound like a threat or even negative, it is in fact quite the contrary.

We now share the belief that I deserve better from her and that my continued relationship with her is founded upon our mutual growth. That’s a beautiful thing that arose from us being pulled together by the loss of someone we both loved more than we maybe even loved ourselves. Thankfully, though, I have come to love myself more than anyone else on this planet. This newfound self-love and respect resulted in the severing of my relationship with my partner.

I won’t pretend like my ex was this horrible person because she wasn’t. She was kind, loving, intelligent, hilarious, unique, complex, and so many other amazing things. I still love her with all of my heart and have thought about her every single day since we broke up. It is not for lack of love that our relationship came to a close. The issue was that I needed more than what she could give. I needed someone who could really sit in my shit with me without invalidating my feelings jokingly because they didn’t know what else to say. I needed someone who could make me feel safe and secure, not fearful and insecure. I needed someone who understood boundaries as openings for futures, not closed doors. I needed someone who could show up for me the way I showed up for them, even when they hurt me, even when they lied out of fear. She wasn’t able to do that. She wasn’t able to stick beside me during the worst days of my life. She wasn’t able to see me beyond our relationship. When my grandma passed and our relationship was on the rocks, she made it about us. She didn’t stop pestering me about our relationship for long enough to give me support on losing someone who meant the world to me. I couldn’t trust her after that and I also realized, I wasn’t required to.

Boundaries in that relationship weren’t healthy. I felt unseen, unprotected, and sometimes even unloved. While I am sure that she has grown even more since we have parted, the reality is that when I ended things, I knew that doing so was the most fair thing I could do for the both of us. This is because I deserve someone who sees my value inherently. I deserve someone who takes the time to understand me, to love me, to see me. Not just see me and them together, but me as an individual separate from them. More importantly, I needed to be able to ask for those things without feeling guilty or bad. As of now, I still don’t know that she sees me as me, as a singular person, and maybe she never will. That is okay. I still love her anyway. I just love me more now. As a part of that love I’ve grown for myself, I also now have sought out more help for myself. This seeking of resources led me to realizing that I was ADHD and helped me change my life.

Being diagnosed with ADHD at 21 felt absolutely ridiculous. How could I be ADHD when I can sit still most of the time and have a pretty decent amount of impulse control? The answers came from my psychiatrist, breaking down the stereotypical understanding of ADHD and allowing me to find myself within the diagnosis. Finding the right combination of medication has been difficult, but what hasn’t been hard at all is finding more resources that help me manage my symptoms. It’s because of some of these resources that I am able to sit here and write this.

A huge part of ADHD is this perfectionist mentality that makes it nearly impossible to start or complete some tasks. Every time I sat down to write in the past, I told myself that I absolutely had to write every single day, once a day, or I should just not do it. When it came to this blog especially, I had so much shame when I failed to post for a long time or had a lull, that I would either consider deleting the whole thing to start over, or just never posting again. I realize now that those were just cop outs for my brain, that I can write as little or as much as I want because it is for ME. It doesn’t have to be perfect; it doesn’t have to be anything but what I need it to be. Waiting for perfection would have me waiting forever because it’s simply not how my brain works. Accepting that is a large part of how I got into my PhD program.

I’m not going to lie. I am still trying to figure out all of the feelings I have regarding this PhD program. I am shocked that I got in, shocked that I got full-funding, shocked that I am now in Ohio, shocked that I am in my own apartment, and overall shocked that I’ve made it this far in general. While I do not believe that I am stupid or not capable of greatness, I am realizing that I’ve always seen myself pursuing something more straightforward. When I was younger, I had a pretty clear idea of what I wanted to do even as those things changed. I knew what was required of me, I knew what I would ultimately do, and I took refuge in that. Doctors go to medical school. Chefs go to culinary school. Forensic anthropologists get masters degrees and do field work. It felt clear cut, straightforward, safe. This is uncharted territory. What do you do post PhD? What do you do DURING PhD years? I suppose I’ll just have to find out!

Anyhow, this year has been intense. Change is always present in our lives and sometimes it brings with gifts that we can only receive when we’re healed enough to take them. I’m hoping to keep healing, keep growing, keep loving, and keep going. I’m learning so much about myself and about the world. I’m loving myself more than I have in the past. I am incredibly proud of where I am. And I’m not done yet.

#personal blog #vent blog #black ftm #black transman #black tpoc #black mental health #personal writing blog #sociology #sociology phd program #covid #grief

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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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