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I need to read the extras, but first, here's various things I wrote while finishing up my reaction posts, including a bunch of recs for fic and art.
Man I was expecting to be WAY sadder and for WAY more characters to die.
I mean a few did! And everyone else's ending is a bit bittersweet! But most of the really bad stuff happened earlier, and this was a pretty good outcome considering where they all were at in like Book 3.
Way back when everything went down with Shi Qing Xuan etc I wanted to know if they'd be ok, but was already at the end of the existing translation. So I skipped to the final chapter of the Chinese version and read a machine translated version of what turned out to be the extra Ch.252: The Ghost King’s Birthday, silly post-canon fluff about Xie Lian trying to find a present for Hua Cheng's birthday.
I didn't understand most of it (though the basic premise is cliche enough that I got the gist) but recognised Shi Qing Xuan cheerfully chatting with Xie Lian and something about Ling Wen having a lot of work and was like OK SO THEY'RE MOSTLY FINE COOL. It's funny rereading it in English, with more canon context, and seeing the references to the difficulties in their lives. But at the same time, they are mostly fine.
I can't remember if I understood the bit about Ling Wen having been in prison, it would be entirely in character for me to have noted it at the time and then forgotten. But she did JOIN THE SIDE OF WORLD DESTROYING EVIL, so.
Shi Qing Xuan could do with being less staggeringly poor, but I assume Xie Lian is helping with that beyond a single measly meal. So in my head Shi Qing Xuan is working with Xie Lian to improve the slums in general, because they're not interested in improving their own life without helping their new friends, and while there stillare poor they are going to keep living as Old Feng.
I'm not sure how I feel about Shi Qing Xuan's injuries being healed: magic cures are a bit unfortunate as a fictional trope, but not healing an injured person in a world where easy magic healing has been established to exist is a bit unfortunate in-universe, unless they didn't want it. Maybe as Old Feng they'd keep the limp but get anything especially painful or troublesome fixed up? I don't have that kind of disability so idk how someone with it would feel. I imagine it hasn't been long enough to feel like An Essential Part Of Who They Are.
Partway through I came up with the theory that XianLe did something Bad to WuYong back in the day but I really like that no...Xie Lian was basically just this dude who happened to have the same birthday.
Who's in charge of Heaven now? Is anyone? DEMOCRACY IN HEAVEN
I still ship Shi Qing Xuan and He Xuan but accept it's a loooong road for them to be able to even talk to each other.
I poked at the ship tag on AO3 and quickly realised that while I respect cis dude Shi Qing Xuan as an interpretation of canon, I'm not really interested in reading it. And to my surprise I'm also not interested in reading trans woman Shi Qing Xuan, or trans He Xuan in general, even though that's not unsupported by canon either. But I actually managed to find multiple enjoyable genderfluid!Shi Qing Xuan/(possibly agender leaning)cis dude!He Xuan canon compliant fixit fics! Unfortunately everything smooths down their sharp edges a bit much, which is understandable with He Xuan (who's like 90% sharp edges) but fanon Shi Qing Xuan is bit too much of a soft angsty sweetie for my tastes.
On the plus side every fic I read with genderfluid!Shi Qing Xuan handled it pretty well! I've had some bad experiences with awkward transfic, but the fact that Shi Qing Xuan and He Xuan (a) come from a canon which treats same sex relationships and switching gender as no big deal and (b) Have MUCH bigger things to worry about than gender, means it was generally just a low key moment where Shi Qing Xuan switches forms or talks about liking to do so, and He Xuan is cool with it (more so than in canon, in fact, thanks to the whole less-sharp-edges thing) The novelty of reading half decent genderfluid romance added a lot to my enjoyment, so YMMV.
What there isn't is ANY REAL MENTION OF THEIR BEGGAR BUDDIES AT ALL. Poverty is just a source of angst Shi Qing Xuan leaves behind, not a community they found friends in :/
With all that in mind:
Still Waters is angsty slow-ish burn.
The ghost is silver and the god is gold is a tropey fluffy AU where they get together just before all the shit goes down. It's a WIP which stops just at the point where they start making out and haven't quite worked through their feelings.
there's a hunger under my skin and it's gripping at my bones rushes through the angsty reunion to get to the sex. So read it after the the previous fic, lol.
I would theoretically be open to gen plotty Shi Qing Xuan centric post-canon fic but didn't come across any.
I went through the "post canon" tag sorted by kudos and thus encountered pretty much all the most popular ships, but couldn't bring myself to read all of them.
Obviously the top ship is Hua Cheng/Xie Lian. Most of it is vaguely post-canon established relationship fluff/smut, which isn't really my thing, but points to "2 Fast 2 Furious: Skeleton FuckMobile 3: 'Til Death Do We PARTY" for the title.
I only managed to find one halfway decent canon compliant first time fic, Ever After. LOOK, XIE LIAN HAVING SEX FOR THE FIRST TIME IS AN IMPORTANT CHARACTER POINT SHH. Anyway, it's not quite what I wanted but isn't too bad.
I Will Come Back To Life (But Only For You) is an enjoyably self indulgent fic giving Hua Cheng's angsty POV on the scene where they get together.
Some premises upon which the authors did not manage to sell me:
Anyway. Moving on.
Shi Qing Xuan/He Xuan: The second most popular pairing, woo!
Feng Xin/Mu Qing: I understand the appeal intellectually, but personally can't get past how hung up Feng Xin is on Jian Lan. I think if working through that messy relationship was a big part of the emotional arc of forming a new one, I could really enjoy it, especially since there is an interesting contrast between Mu Qing the uptight 800 year old virgin and Jian Lan the bolshy sex worker. But image most stories mention her as little as possible.
Lan Wangji/Wei Wuxian: So I love this couple but they're from a TOTALLY DIFFERENT BOOK. A LOT of fic supposedly for HOB is really about MXTX's more popular GrandMaster of Demonic Cultivation. Thank god AO3 makes it easy to exclude tags these days.
Quan Yi Zhen/Yin Yu: They have a very intense relationship but I have trouble seeing it working as a romance, even after trying some of the fic.
Luo Binghe/Shen Qin Qui: Her other books really are more popular aren't they...
He Xuan & Shi Qing Xuan: Aww. But I ship it too much >.>
Jun Wu/Guoshi: ...huh, that didn't occur to me, but I guess it makes sense. I have negative interest in reading it though.
He Xuan/Hua Cheng: Uh. I see the logic but Hua Cheng has been Xie Lian-sexual since before He Xuan was even born. He Xuan/Hua Cheng/Xie Lian just makes me wish Shi Qing Xuan was there too, and the one time they were it was the "Hua Cheng laughs at the idea of being jealous" fic, so.
Shi Qing Xuan & Shi Wu Du: Aww :(
He Xuan/Shi Wu Du: I can see it but NOPE, NO INTERFERING WITH MY OTP
Naturally I had to filter a lot more to find anything involving Ling Wen, and even then it was mostly three tumours friendship or friends-with-benefits, and seemed inclined to focus on Shi Wu Du and Pei Ming. But after some scrolling I found two GREAT fics that focus on Ling Wen and didn't soften her at ALL.
You'd be good if you knew how Basically just some missing scenes but being inside Ling Wen's head is great.
black commands shake the earth Ling Wen becomes a supreme. PERFECT. ALL SHALL BOW BEFORE HER IN DESPAIR :D
It's funny how Shi Wu Du is super close to both my faves and I just do not care about him except as part of their stories. Sorry Shi Wu Du, at least plenty of other people seem to love you. Pei Ming is slightly more interesting but also kinda gross, and while I am ambivalent about Shi Wu Du sleeping with either of them Pei Ming/Ling Wen is a NOTP.
I'm not sure I ship Ling Wen with anyone, except Bai Jing like in black commands shake the earth: to quote the author, "fuck female objectification, the hot new trend is making men literally into objects". And while she obviously cares about him, she reads as kind of aromantic to me (versus Pei Ming who I read as alloromantically straight but an asshole)
I didn't bother looking up fic for Rain Master, she is not a character fandom would do well by at all.
I also went through all 21 or so pages of the tgcf art tag on lansizhuis. Sorry for the lack of image descriptions on these, to make up for it I did describe this fantastic three tumours comic.
There's a LOT of "Hua Cheng and Xie Lian are cute" art and I enjoyed every one, I liked the energy of this one.
Also an animatic of their whole story to Love Like You from Steven Universe which gave me FEELINGS.
I saw this comic a few times before finishing the book and thought it was humorous exaggeration. BUT NO.
A cute lil Quan Yi Zhen.
Snake love with Ban Yue (Zhuzhi Lang is a woobie snake demon from Scum Villian's Self Saving System)
Also I saw a chunk of Green Goblin/Lang Qian Qiu art, but I am only interested in that pairing as Two Dads Do Their Best For Their Son Even Though One Of Them Is Very Dead And Also Evil and the art was just hatesexy flirting. Which is usually my jam but idk, eh.
I will possibly have more thoughts, but this will do for now!
I need to read the extras, but first, here's various things I wrote while finishing up my reaction posts, including a bunch of recs for fic and art.
Man I was expecting to be WAY sadder and for WAY more characters to die.
I mean a few did! And everyone else's ending is a bit bittersweet! But most of the really bad stuff happened earlier, and this was a pretty good outcome considering where they all were at in like Book 3.
Way back when everything went down with Shi Qing Xuan etc I wanted to know if they'd be ok, but was already at the end of the existing translation. So I skipped to the final chapter of the Chinese version and read a machine translated version of what turned out to be the extra Ch.252: The Ghost King’s Birthday, silly post-canon fluff about Xie Lian trying to find a present for Hua Cheng's birthday.
I didn't understand most of it (though the basic premise is cliche enough that I got the gist) but recognised Shi Qing Xuan cheerfully chatting with Xie Lian and something about Ling Wen having a lot of work and was like OK SO THEY'RE MOSTLY FINE COOL. It's funny rereading it in English, with more canon context, and seeing the references to the difficulties in their lives. But at the same time, they are mostly fine.
I can't remember if I understood the bit about Ling Wen having been in prison, it would be entirely in character for me to have noted it at the time and then forgotten. But she did JOIN THE SIDE OF WORLD DESTROYING EVIL, so.
Shi Qing Xuan could do with being less staggeringly poor, but I assume Xie Lian is helping with that beyond a single measly meal. So in my head Shi Qing Xuan is working with Xie Lian to improve the slums in general, because they're not interested in improving their own life without helping their new friends, and while there still
I'm not sure how I feel about Shi Qing Xuan's injuries being healed: magic cures are a bit unfortunate as a fictional trope, but not healing an injured person in a world where easy magic healing has been established to exist is a bit unfortunate in-universe, unless they didn't want it. Maybe as Old Feng they'd keep the limp but get anything especially painful or troublesome fixed up? I don't have that kind of disability so idk how someone with it would feel. I imagine it hasn't been long enough to feel like An Essential Part Of Who They Are.
Partway through I came up with the theory that XianLe did something Bad to WuYong back in the day but I really like that no...Xie Lian was basically just this dude who happened to have the same birthday.
Who's in charge of Heaven now? Is anyone? DEMOCRACY IN HEAVEN
I still ship Shi Qing Xuan and He Xuan but accept it's a loooong road for them to be able to even talk to each other.
I poked at the ship tag on AO3 and quickly realised that while I respect cis dude Shi Qing Xuan as an interpretation of canon, I'm not really interested in reading it. And to my surprise I'm also not interested in reading trans woman Shi Qing Xuan, or trans He Xuan in general, even though that's not unsupported by canon either. But I actually managed to find multiple enjoyable genderfluid!Shi Qing Xuan/(possibly agender leaning)cis dude!He Xuan canon compliant fixit fics! Unfortunately everything smooths down their sharp edges a bit much, which is understandable with He Xuan (who's like 90% sharp edges) but fanon Shi Qing Xuan is bit too much of a soft angsty sweetie for my tastes.
On the plus side every fic I read with genderfluid!Shi Qing Xuan handled it pretty well! I've had some bad experiences with awkward transfic, but the fact that Shi Qing Xuan and He Xuan (a) come from a canon which treats same sex relationships and switching gender as no big deal and (b) Have MUCH bigger things to worry about than gender, means it was generally just a low key moment where Shi Qing Xuan switches forms or talks about liking to do so, and He Xuan is cool with it (more so than in canon, in fact, thanks to the whole less-sharp-edges thing) The novelty of reading half decent genderfluid romance added a lot to my enjoyment, so YMMV.
What there isn't is ANY REAL MENTION OF THEIR BEGGAR BUDDIES AT ALL. Poverty is just a source of angst Shi Qing Xuan leaves behind, not a community they found friends in :/
With all that in mind:
Still Waters is angsty slow-ish burn.
The ghost is silver and the god is gold is a tropey fluffy AU where they get together just before all the shit goes down. It's a WIP which stops just at the point where they start making out and haven't quite worked through their feelings.
there's a hunger under my skin and it's gripping at my bones rushes through the angsty reunion to get to the sex. So read it after the the previous fic, lol.
I would theoretically be open to gen plotty Shi Qing Xuan centric post-canon fic but didn't come across any.
I went through the "post canon" tag sorted by kudos and thus encountered pretty much all the most popular ships, but couldn't bring myself to read all of them.
Obviously the top ship is Hua Cheng/Xie Lian. Most of it is vaguely post-canon established relationship fluff/smut, which isn't really my thing, but points to "2 Fast 2 Furious: Skeleton FuckMobile 3: 'Til Death Do We PARTY" for the title.
I only managed to find one halfway decent canon compliant first time fic, Ever After. LOOK, XIE LIAN HAVING SEX FOR THE FIRST TIME IS AN IMPORTANT CHARACTER POINT SHH. Anyway, it's not quite what I wanted but isn't too bad.
I Will Come Back To Life (But Only For You) is an enjoyably self indulgent fic giving Hua Cheng's angsty POV on the scene where they get together.
Some premises upon which the authors did not manage to sell me:
- Hua Cheng is a pushy dom the first time they have sex and doesn't even stop to check if Xie Lian is ok giving up his magic celibacy powers
- Xie Lian drunkenly kisses Shi Qing Xuan, and Hua Cheng thinks it's cute, encourages Healthy Polyamory, and doesn't threaten to murder Shi Qing Xuan even a little.
- Hua Cheng lightheartedly initiates knifeplay? LOOK NOT EVERY BDSM FIC NEEDS A NEGOTIATION SCENE BUT IN THIS CASE MAYBE TAKE A MOMENT TO ADDRESS THE CENTURIES OF KNIFE RELATED TRAUMA BEFORE YOU START CHEERFULLY CUTTING EACH OTHER
Anyway. Moving on.
Shi Qing Xuan/He Xuan: The second most popular pairing, woo!
Feng Xin/Mu Qing: I understand the appeal intellectually, but personally can't get past how hung up Feng Xin is on Jian Lan. I think if working through that messy relationship was a big part of the emotional arc of forming a new one, I could really enjoy it, especially since there is an interesting contrast between Mu Qing the uptight 800 year old virgin and Jian Lan the bolshy sex worker. But image most stories mention her as little as possible.
Lan Wangji/Wei Wuxian: So I love this couple but they're from a TOTALLY DIFFERENT BOOK. A LOT of fic supposedly for HOB is really about MXTX's more popular GrandMaster of Demonic Cultivation. Thank god AO3 makes it easy to exclude tags these days.
Quan Yi Zhen/Yin Yu: They have a very intense relationship but I have trouble seeing it working as a romance, even after trying some of the fic.
Luo Binghe/Shen Qin Qui: Her other books really are more popular aren't they...
He Xuan & Shi Qing Xuan: Aww. But I ship it too much >.>
Jun Wu/Guoshi: ...huh, that didn't occur to me, but I guess it makes sense. I have negative interest in reading it though.
He Xuan/Hua Cheng: Uh. I see the logic but Hua Cheng has been Xie Lian-sexual since before He Xuan was even born. He Xuan/Hua Cheng/Xie Lian just makes me wish Shi Qing Xuan was there too, and the one time they were it was the "Hua Cheng laughs at the idea of being jealous" fic, so.
Shi Qing Xuan & Shi Wu Du: Aww :(
He Xuan/Shi Wu Du: I can see it but NOPE, NO INTERFERING WITH MY OTP
Naturally I had to filter a lot more to find anything involving Ling Wen, and even then it was mostly three tumours friendship or friends-with-benefits, and seemed inclined to focus on Shi Wu Du and Pei Ming. But after some scrolling I found two GREAT fics that focus on Ling Wen and didn't soften her at ALL.
You'd be good if you knew how Basically just some missing scenes but being inside Ling Wen's head is great.
black commands shake the earth Ling Wen becomes a supreme. PERFECT. ALL SHALL BOW BEFORE HER IN DESPAIR :D
It's funny how Shi Wu Du is super close to both my faves and I just do not care about him except as part of their stories. Sorry Shi Wu Du, at least plenty of other people seem to love you. Pei Ming is slightly more interesting but also kinda gross, and while I am ambivalent about Shi Wu Du sleeping with either of them Pei Ming/Ling Wen is a NOTP.
I'm not sure I ship Ling Wen with anyone, except Bai Jing like in black commands shake the earth: to quote the author, "fuck female objectification, the hot new trend is making men literally into objects". And while she obviously cares about him, she reads as kind of aromantic to me (versus Pei Ming who I read as alloromantically straight but an asshole)
I didn't bother looking up fic for Rain Master, she is not a character fandom would do well by at all.
I also went through all 21 or so pages of the tgcf art tag on lansizhuis. Sorry for the lack of image descriptions on these, to make up for it I did describe this fantastic three tumours comic.
There's a LOT of "Hua Cheng and Xie Lian are cute" art and I enjoyed every one, I liked the energy of this one.
Also an animatic of their whole story to Love Like You from Steven Universe which gave me FEELINGS.
I saw this comic a few times before finishing the book and thought it was humorous exaggeration. BUT NO.
A cute lil Quan Yi Zhen.
Snake love with Ban Yue (Zhuzhi Lang is a woobie snake demon from Scum Villian's Self Saving System)
Also I saw a chunk of Green Goblin/Lang Qian Qiu art, but I am only interested in that pairing as Two Dads Do Their Best For Their Son Even Though One Of Them Is Very Dead And Also Evil and the art was just hatesexy flirting. Which is usually my jam but idk, eh.
I will possibly have more thoughts, but this will do for now!
no subject
Date: 2019-11-19 01:19 am (UTC)Other things i was disappointed not to see when I briefly glanced through the tag last week:
- Feng Xin sorts out his family life with his bolshy sex worker ex and demon baby
- Pei Su/Ban Yue! I realize that on principle fandom does not care about hets but come on
- Mu Qing one-sidedly pining for Xie Lian, I don't even know that I want to read it actually, I'm just kind of surprised nobody seems to go there
- REVOLUTION! IN! HEAVEN!
no subject
Date: 2019-11-21 04:52 am (UTC)Feng Xin sorts out his family life with his bolshy sex worker ex and demon baby
YES. SAME.
Pei Su/Ban Yue! I realize that on principle fandom does not care about hets but come on
Right? They're so cute.
Mu Qing one-sidedly pining for Xie Lian, I don't even know that I want to read it actually, I'm just kind of surprised nobody seems to go there
I must admit that didn't occur to me! Meanwhile I was surprised at the lack of...um, Jun Wu/Xie Lian. I didn't look for it! But it seemed like a natural progression of the obsessive quasi-father/son dynamics already present, and I was surprised I didn't happen across any.
REVOLUTION! IN! HEAVEN!
I spent yesterday reading up on Chinese History to try and figure out a plausible way this could happen, and ended up staring at the Mandate of Heaven page thinking "But how does that work IN heaven?"
no subject
Date: 2019-11-21 12:26 pm (UTC)It's so complicated because it's like - okay, the gods do ascend by mandate or heaven, or something, apparently, but then if that's the case how do you explain Jun Wu? And how do you justify getting rid of Jun Wu?
no subject
Date: 2019-11-21 01:32 pm (UTC)I've been rereading the early chapters, and have gone from "I guess I can see Mu Qing/Xie Lian or Mu Qing/Feng Xin but would need to see a lot of working" to "Oh no I kind of ship Mu Qing/Xie Lian/Feng Xin". But your logic is perfectly solid.
The more I think about it the more I feel like there isn't a Mandate of Heaven for heavenly or mortal leaders in this setting, though the common people may think there is. Power is just power. Once you have the right sort you gain Special Powers, like The Aura Of A King. But for example Lang Ying only acquires The Aura Of A King after his revolution starts to succeed: it's not that The Heavens declared him worthy and thus he succeeded, it's that he succeeded and thus got declared worthy. Jun Wu was helping him along before that, but in secret, the gods are explicitly prohibited from interfering with matters of state on the ground. Gods are mostly privileged people who got to heaven by being ambitious jerks. Luck and fate exist, but can be manipulated and shifted around like stocks and shares, or even eaten, and people with naturally glorious fates don't seem to be especially good people (as the Heavens theoretically define Good). Guoshi clearly believes in some higher order, but Guoshi also thinks it's ok to abandon baby Hua Cheng because his fate is bad.
It's hard to say for sure, because narrative causality means that by the end of the book, the good are mostly rewarded and the bad mostly punished. But it didn't feel to me that that was because of any higher order, if anything the implication seems to be that that's an unusual outcome in a world that is usually unjust and arbitrary.
I mean reading up on Taoism made me realise that Xie Lian is in a lot of ways The Perfect Taoist, which is obviously meant to be ironic considering what a laughing stock he is in Heaven, but does imply some support for Taoist values, and also was another reminder of how much cultural and theological context I'm missing. OH ALSO apparently some forms of Taoism encourage a sort of anarchism.
tl;dr I feel like the gods can set up whatever system they like, retroactively declare it The Glorious Fate We Were Always Heading Towards, and the universe would go along with it. Maybe.
no subject
Date: 2019-11-23 03:36 pm (UTC)I would be interested in hearing you talk more about how Xie Lian is the perfect Taoist!
no subject
Date: 2019-11-24 10:38 am (UTC)Oh good point. The Heavens depend on the opinions of humans, rather than the other way around.
Rereading the Wikipedia page he's not actually a perfect Taoist, just better than most of the other gods lol.
naturalness, spontaneity, simplicity, detachment from desires https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Detachment_(philosophy), and most important of all, wu wei https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wu_wei:
Taoist philosophy, in accordance with the I Ching https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Ching, proposes that the universe works harmoniously according to its own ways. When someone exerts their will against the world in a manner that is out of rhythm with the cycles of change, they may disrupt that harmony and unintended consequences https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unintended_consequences may more likely result rather than the willed outcome. Taoism does not identify one's will as the root problem. Rather, it asserts that one must place their will in harmony with the natural universe.
He exhibits naturalness, spontaneity, simplicity, and detachment from desires https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Detachment_(philosophy) ....but not wu wei, as I understand it,. Which is the most important part, so...I take it back >.>