Hualian Mix'n'Match, Day 4 Ghost Fire Hua Cheng And God Of Flowers Xie Lian (butterfly Dream)

I did a thing о-о

A short comic I made about my experiences as a seasonal worker, and the way places change you.

ABCDMXTX - Day 13: Mu Qing.

I read somewhere that Mu Qing uses a zhanmadao (horse-slicing curved sword) and I never looked back.

List of prompts.

The fact that there's an actually functional website for the library of Babel is one of those things that fucks me up more and more the more I think about the implications.

For wip game: Within Reach!

( I adore this one so much. Hua Cheng's worshippers have always been so interesting to me, and I love the idea of them having very different stories about who he is (ghost; a fox; man; woman; some other animal). And an eye symbol for 'helping' him find his beloved is so touching! Xie Lian picking up on little hints and slowly learning more of his new (not as new as you think my prince) dearest friend and being so tender with his San Lang 🙏 Also it also having Hua Cheng sickfic-hurt/comfort bits! Whump is my jam, and it's not so often I see a good one for Hua Cheng.)

Within Reach! I'm so happy you like it. It was one of my very first ideas for a TGCF fanfic. Alongside The Newcomer and Heavenly Damnation —which was the one I ended up submitting— it was one of the pitches I prepared for the TGCF minibang 2022. At the time, I was translating manhua for Bilibili Comics, from which I learned a lot about Chinese mythology and wuxia/xianxia tropes. This led me to understand just how big MXTX had made the sandbox for TGCF canonverse fancreations, particularly with how loose she made the magic system, and how she built Hua Cheng's backstory up through rumours and half-truths. I thought I could explore this by writing about Hua Cheng's side of the 800 years of separation, but I didn't want Xie Lian to miss out! I then needed a lapse that MXTX had left open to interpretation, and during which Hua Cheng's ability to conceal his story or interfere was limited.

Now, if I wasn't a rabid fan of The Legend of Zelda, I don't think I would've chosen the time when Hua Cheng was sealed in a child form to tell this story, even if it's possibly the best moment for doing so. I don't like children in fiction. I've got nothing about real life children, on the contrary, but the use and connotation of childhood in fictional narratives is more times than not shameless propaganda for reproductive futurism, and I hate it. However, the biggest sidequest of The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask features Kafei, a man who has been de-aged by a curse, and his fiancée Anju, who he's to marry on the same day the moon is going to fall and end the world. Kafei hides from Anju and the rest of the town in shame by wearing a fox mask (known in the game as Keaton mask, being Keaton a golden fox spirit). One good day, I looked at Kafei, thought of Hua Cheng, and had an epiphany, hahaha. If I'm very idle in the future, I'll write a TGCF x Majora's Mask crossover with Xie Lian as Anju, Hua Cheng as Kafei and Link as, well, Link. It'd be the ultimate "target audience = me", reason why I'm not in a rush to write it (I can simply daydream) but this explains the design of Hua Cheng's mask in the cover art I made for the fic. It's just Keaton's mask with Hua Cheng's trademarks, lol. Also, the eye windows/carvings might be Zelda's influence, too. There's a lot of eyes in the series, as they're the weak point of most bosses, and the emblem of the sheikah, a tribe of ninja warriors at the service of the Hyrulean crown.

In general, coming up with ways for Hua Cheng's worshippers to show their devotion and support has been a lot of fun. Hua Cheng will never appreciate the love they have for him or how they want to help him (he only cares about Xie Lian), but Xie Lian will see it and be very proud of him, I think. He's also delighted to be able to take care of his dearest friend during this trying times, and he'll baby him to oblivion, as he should —you're so real for the Hua Cheng whump appreciation, I salute you.

They'll be a bit further from human settlements in the next chapter, so we'll mostly encounter creatures, rogue travellers, and cultivators with their own bewildering theories about Crimson Rain Seeking A Flower. I hope you enjoy it when I finally post it, and thank you for the ask!

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Back to WIP game main post.

Ooh can I ask about "Clarity" 👀

Yes, you can, haha... ha /sweats

"Clarity" is an E rated, possibly dead dove, dubcon, top Xie Lian/bottom Hua Cheng project. Also known as "as far removed from what Yaban normally writes as humanly possible."

As I mentioned in the original description, the action takes place towards the end of the novel, and it's as close to canon as I can get with this premise. This means that the dubcon doesn't come from Xie Lian being a dark version of himself, but rather from a sort of "fuck or die" scenario. I make no promises of the smut being sexy —for starters, I haven't written smut since like 2011— because I'm more interested in Xie Lian's internal turmoil than anything. In fact, one of the tags I think I'll add is "this would be sexier if only Xie Lian didn't overthink so much."

I'm not sure of when the idea first occurred to me, but I've been turning it over in my mind for probably more than a year. Here's what I have written so far:

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Xie Lian waited until the last moment. He held on, and on, and on, watching how some flowers wilted and dried whilst others turned into fruit that ripened and fell, bursting over dead petals, making a mess of his front yard and the paths he’d painstakingly built from the base of Mount Taicang to his cottage. He had a hunch that Hua Cheng would be back before the flowering period was over, and he wouldn’t admit that such a thing happened until the very last bloom fell. 

One hot night of late summer, a sudden torrential rain shook the mountain, washing every single weak flower and most of the fruit away. Lightening felled a maple tree midway down the path, too, blocking transit. After assessing the damage in the morning after, Xie Lian resigned himself. Going back to the cottage, he picked a hatchet from his little trove of used farming tools and put on his new bamboo hat, given to him by a young man from Puqi Village who noticed he wasn’t wearing the original any more. The boy had asked what had happened to it, and Xie Lian had said that he’d given it to someone who needed it.

“But daozhang needs a hat too,” the boy had protested, reminding him of Hua Cheng.

This wasn’t a surprise, and it didn’t hurt. It was only natural that everything and everyone made him think of his beloved ghost. Xie Lian missed him dearly, so what was better than thinking about him to pass the time while he waited? He’d done so in many ways: dusting off his memories, visiting the places they’d shared, talking to Hua Cheng’s many subjects in Ghost City. Reading and wondering. Dreaming. Praying, once or twice, when he’d stumbled upon shrines dedicated to the Crimson Rain Seeking a Flower. That day, the circumstances invited him to reminisce about how swift and efficient Hua Cheng was cutting wood, the strength and elegance of every swing of his axe, and the way he cheekily pretended to sweat so he had an excuse to bare his snow-white, lean torso.

Xie Lian felt his face warm up and sighed deeply. Many days and nights of his heart and thoughts being spurred in dangerous directions by the memory of Hua Cheng’s scalding gaze and mischievous lips had made him familiar with this sort of agitation. In fact, he’d started to enjoy it, although he didn’t indulge much. The intensity of these new emotions and sensations was strong enough that, regardless of how scandalised he was at the prospect, he didn’t expect to preserve his path of cultivation nor the reserves of spiritual power attached to it once Hua Cheng came back. However, he was adamantly against allowing anything to break before that came to happen. After eight centuries and eight months that felt like a millennium each, he wasn’t going to succumb to his own imagination.

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When will I finish it? Who knows. I will focus on completing my ongoing fics first, but I'll keep taking notes and writing on the side. This is a very daunting project, so if inspiration strikes, I won't let it pass. Thanks for asking!

Back to WIP game main post.

Modern TGCF

I've tried to make a little comic of modern hualian ♥

It was quite long to draw, I'm way too perfectionist T-T

English isn't my native language. I apologize for any mistake.

(Sorry for the late post here. Tumblr became so quite lately. I've migrated to Twitter and Instagram ;-; I'll try to keep posting things here as long as there're people following me.)

"If I had a green face and fangs, deformed features, ugly as a Rakshasa, evil as a Yaksha, how would you handle it?"

GetBackers headshots since I finished rewatching the anime a bit ago with a friend. Some of these men were impossible to draw!! Had to redraw Akabane 3 times and I'm still not sure if I captured him well.

I realised that I never posted this gift for @tiiracotta in occasion of their birthday. It came to me in a vision 🌟🧠