It’s Definitely A Real Possibility That Xie Lian’s First Ascension Wasn’t Fully Natural, And I’m

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.

Wei Wuxian flute battle soundtrack when? I need that haunting, heart pounding donghua music 🥺 no dialogue, zombie moans dimmed, just straight up spectral rage and melody and battle beats.

I swear if I could blast that while cleaning, laundry would become a moral reckoning. Mopping? A battle for the soul of my household. Dishes? Consider them exorcised.

I haven’t read the revised version yet, but sounds like mxtx is spelling a lot of things out that were left to the readers to put together. This is both great and kinda sad (sad because I love puzzles lol) but yeah the prayer thing, I had already guessed it was Jun Wu who stopped them but are you implying that Mu Qing and Feng Xin, as retainers, knew? I had not considered that, and thought their surprise was genuine. When I read again, or start the revised version, I’ll pay attention.

Even if that isn’t what you meant to imply, I still find the idea worth exploring. It’s a kernel. A seed. “For his own good.” And then before they realize, a whole wall of secrets is already between them and they’ve taken the first step away.

[Aside. The drought. We know Rain Master was freshly ascended when Xie Lian seeks her out for the Spiritual Device. Which means the drought is likely due to there being no Rain Master at the time and the newly ascended one being too weak to help. We also find out towards the end that replacing the Rai master isn’t something Jun Wu wants to do since the position is too important and the current RM doesn’t have “big ideas” so I wonder what happened to the last RM. They wouldn’t have faded naturally, which means technically Jun Wu caused the drought even if it wasn’t just to fk with Xie Lian]

As for the bell and palace, I’m not sure! I’m leaning more towards cosmic irony than a deliberate action. Or even just literary symbology. I wouldn’t count out the possibility that it was a deliberate provocation though, since the result was that Mu Qing and Feng Xin are immediately hostile. (However, Jun Wu telling Xie Lian that FX paid the bill but shh don’t tell was definitely meant to shame XL)

The second and third ascensions were definitely unplanned and completely natural, as far I’m concerned. The first one is fishy but not impossible.

He never wanted Xie Lian to have hope. He himself couldn’t even ascend a second time and if he actually did, it was centuries after his first fall. How mortifying and rage inducing for a man like Jun Wu.

But unlike Jun Wu who lost most his believers then completely eradicated the remaining, Xie Lian always had a believer and it was a Grand Believer of the rarest kind. One that Jun Wu thought he had just watch die. So he was definitely pissed.

Just my thoughts. I appreciate your thoughtful reply and love discussing/exploring tgcf. Always a pleasure

Mu Qing and Feng Xins overall immaturity, petty passive-aggression, and lack of personal growth over an 800 year span always blew my mind. But I’m starting to really consider that they had someone whispering in their ears about one another.

“Don’t mind him, Mu Qing. You know he always looked down on you and it’s only got worse since you left his highnesses side first. Feng Xin will never let that go.”

And vise-versa. Or even more insidiously, casually playing one another’s insecurities off each other in seemingly unrelated ways.

We all know Jun Wu love psychological games. Immortalizing everyone around Xie Lian not only physically but keeping them all emotionally stunted. (CoughLQQcoughcough)

And this also further serves to isolate Xie Lian, since if the three of them were able to co-exist then they could present a problem and possibly figure things out faster.

Too bad none of them could tread their own paths.

This is all just

Pure Speculation

The TGCF Appendix is Bunk

If I’m going to look at an appendix, I want facts. Not conjecture, and definitely not someone injecting their own thoughts and feelings into someone else’s work and presenting it as fact.

Using Vol.8 seven seas since it’s complete, let’s take a brief look at some of the character descriptions I personally found the most galling:

Pei Xiu: “…His ascension to godhood occurred because he led the charge to slaughter the Kingdom of Banyue, and his exile from godhood occurred because of his morally dubious attempts to save his childhood friend Banyue from her fate of eternal punishment.” —Appendix: Characters. Vol.8

Morally dubious? Since when is slaughtering an immeasurable amount of innocents over the course of 150+ years considered “dubious” by moral standards? And that’s assuming that he was actually trying to “save his childhood friend”

Let’s look at the facts. Pei Xiu, although he cared for Ban Yue, sent her to infiltrate Banyue which directly caused her death.

After succeeding in his scheme, he ascended. But he had a mess of resentful ghosts that were unliving proof of his war crimes.

In order to maintain his squeaky clean image, he routinely fed living people to the ghosts in an attempt to disburse their resentment.. quietly.

Did this help Banyue? No. It actually did the opposite. She spent 200 years being hunted down and hung over the sinners pit in an endless cycle of pain and suffering. Not only that, but Pei Xiu used her snakes, which further dragged her name into the mud and (ironically) fueled the ghosts anger and hatred for her.

So how.. just how.. does the Official Appendix Character Description get away with saying “…because of his morally dubious attempts to save his childhood friend Banyue from her fate of eternal punishment.”??

[I didn’t use quotes from the story because it would make this post congested, but the details are in Vol.1 Ch.10 about 86%]

You know what? I was going to continue ranting, like how He Xuan has almost no factual content or backstory yet practically ships him with Shi Qingxuan like “maybe he likes her idk 🤷‍♀️” and his unknown relationship with Hua Cheng. Instead it could have said at least something about Scholar He..

It’s a reoccurring thing that sometimes comes off as absolute fanon and sometimes comes off like they’re trying spin a picture or soften a character to a more sympathetic light.

Just give me the facts.

That’s the only reason I’d ever look at an appendix, I’m not here to read your drivel!

\rant

Expounding a little on why Jun Wu is obviously a demonic cultivator since my last post just dropped it in without backup and tgcf tap dances around what Jun Wu was doing with the kiln… It says it plainly without actually saying it.

Starting at the the low hanging fruit, Jun Wu’ first sacrifice:

“He set up a ritual site near the Kiln, and I accompanied him there every time, both of us enduring the curses and thrown rocks of the refugees as we conducted services to try to suppress the volcano’s fury.”

“Conducted services” lmao.. fancy way of saying “ritual sacrifice.” and “enduring the curses and thrown rocks” is nice way of saying “against their will”

“…but an infinite darkness is suppressed deep within his heart. Resentment, pain, anger, hatred…he must release those poisonous emotions to maintain his internal balance, lest he go berserk and slaughter everyone around him.”

Yeah um.. you say that like it’s a regular Tuesday therapy session, but it sounds a lot like ‘how to avoid yin-poisoning’

“He regularly releases his dark emotions into the Kiln, using the millions of Wuyong souls within as kindling to stoke the flames of hell and forge many malicious things..”

Oh ok. So he’s practicing his hand at twisting the souls of the dead. Nbd- wait. What?

“…Supremes came later, since he…changed the refining method…”

By.. “changed the refining method” you mean “perfected soul corruption”.. right? The way you say it is a bit umm-

“…In the early days, he’d have a session every few years, and each time the results would be different—endless batches of dark beings poured from its depths.”

✋ MNQ, please stop. That’s.. worse than demonic cultivation-

“Perhaps that had something to do with his unstable emotions-”

No. Shut up. This isn’t about Jun Wu’s feelings.

“…it produced nothing but monsters forged from his hatred and resentment. There are probably a few familiar names among them—”

It produced monsters because he was there to produce monsters. wtf are you on? I’m leaving.

And this is without getting into how he rearranged Heaven, the fact that the shackles aren’t a function of heaven but something dark and parasitic, what the heavenly capitol actually is etc etc etc.

This isn’t even a “theory” fam. This is the book.

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.

I’m new to tumblr, I don’t get it, and I don’t really care anymore so I’m going to just keep pressing buttons.

If I make some fauxpas, oh well. I typically just comment on and reblog whatever I want while using anywhere from 0-50 tags. Depending on my mood.

I don’t understand tumblr boundaries so to me there are none 🥂

This is mainly for tgcf, maybe some mdzs. I might even start ranting about the mongol invasions from the 13th century at some point. Who knows.

No, I didn’t come from twitter. I’ve never used twitter. I came from a strange place called “offline” after years of an intentional self-imposed social media blackout.

(But if you do ever want to talk about the mongols hmu)

Hua Cheng: I built this entire mansion all for you gege

Xie Lian: This is so much! San Lang is very talented indeed!

Hua Cheng: It was nothing <3

~

Luo Binghe: I built this home to look exactly like the bamboo house, so Shizun need not to ever leave me again!!

Shen Qingqiu: A bit of a red flag, but I appreciate the sentiment

~

Wei Wuxian: So where's our home?

Lan Wangji: This is the Jingshi

Wei Wuxian: Did you build it?

Lan Wangji: No

Wei Wuxian: Oh

Lan Wangji: My mother also died here

Wei Wuxian: Oh no

~

Bonus!

Mobei-Jun: I made you a new home

Shang Qinghua: Ah, my king, thanks for the... igloo?

Mobei-Jun: Mn

Shang Qinghua: Does it at least have heating?

Mobei-Jun: No?

Shang Qinghua: Greeeeaaaatttttt

Feng Xin.. is kind of an ass?

Rereading for the umpteenth time and wondering why no one ever talks about how Feng Xin was regularly spending money at a brothel to chill with his crush, but had the gall to shame Xie Lian for trying to steal money just to afford his dads medicine.

“How could we? People made statues of him kneeling solely for the purpose of stepping on him!” Feng Xin said. “You’re not the one whose face is being stepped on, so of course you can dismiss it.”

“It’s not the first time that something like this has happened since the war was lost,” Mu Qing said. “And it surely won’t be the last. If he can’t get used to it soon, he might as well just die.”

This. Coming from the guy who literally appears in people’s dreams if he doesn’t think his statues are pretty enough..