Hello There!

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)

Just thinkin’ bout how Xie Lian wasn’t even lent enough spiritual power to have a conversation through the spirit array until Hua Cheng came along.

Interesting! I like that. I also like that ghosts are sustained solely from their own internal desires and gods solely from the external desires of others.

🤔

Does that technically make fallen gods ghosts? Since they’re supposed to be dead but their existence is dependent on attachment? Fascinating. And Hua Cheng.. a ghost turned god.. oop that’s a tailspin, I’ll stop.

Thank you for sharing! I had a fight with jjwxc and we’re longer friends, so I have no way of reading the revised version anymore 😭

@dillytaunt idk why I just remembered this, but more fodder for your musings: gods without followers really do just faze out of existence just like ghosts who lose their obsessions do, but also like ghosts, they can survive long past the point of abandonment if they have an adequate enough obsession, even if they never re-cultivate to the point of ascension. This all comes from the new additions to Xiao Ying's character from the revised version.

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

Happy Pride Month!! Saw this and just had to reblog 😂

self-indulgent “Things to never say to someone who just came out” TGCF edition, happy pride month!

and spoilers for plot of tgcf:

Yes, thank you you beautiful beautiful person. I was fr torn between going offline or making myself not be lazy. I still chose the latter, but it was cus the task became less dauting haha so in the 7seas version it's the same except we seem to be interpreting it completely differently.

"This was the cruelest way gods declined because the process could not be reversed. A heavenly official in that situation was destined to watch their own decline until they disappeared entirely—unless they jumped down from the heavens, returned to being mortal, re-cultivated a new path, and then ascended once more as a brand-new god."

Vol. 5 Ch. 79 7s

This part in particular. "Could not be reversed," Returned to being mortal," and "Brand-new god." in particular.

This is not a supplementation, a continuation, or a top-up. It is starting fresh. from ground 0, with nothing. And if they don't, then they die.

So I'm gunna have to hard disagree with the idea that "gods are always gods" especially since that passage is pretty explicit with saying they are not gods anymore once they lose their followers.

If they ascended again it would be a 1st tribulation.

Since the shackles were man-made and not part of heaven.. then Xie Lian didn’t ascend 3 times, he went through 3 heavenly tribulations.

And he did the last one in his sleep and had the nerve to describe it as “having weird dreams.”

Legendary.

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.

If I was going to make this analogy it’d probably be more like:

“imagine if you attended a car rally where you and hundreds of people murdered your brothers friends then started plans to hit your brother with a car and kill him (since he’s using diesel instead of gasoline.) But then your brother shows up with a bunch of remote control cars and it turns into some kind of deadly demolition derby. Metal flying everywhere, flaming tires arcing across the sky, the ground is littered with oil and glass.

Then your sister shows up with no car, barefoot, and she’s just running around in the chaos. She’s hit by one of your brothers car and your brother races to get her. She’s injured asf and needs immediate first aid. Then some asshole on your own side drifts in, tires screeching, and slams into her.

Raging mad, you murder him with your car.. only to find out years later that the car you killed him with.. was given to you by your brother. And you wouldn’t even have been able to attend the death derby from hell if it wasn’t for him.”

Imagine you're in a car with your brother and you keep telling him "slow down, you're going too fast" and he insists "I've got it under control!" And then he hits someone and you get out of the car and find out it's your sister. Your brother goes crazy from guilt and starts running over people left and right until you have to kill him to make sure no one else dies. Then years later he comes back to life and his boyfriend reveals oh guess what fuckhead. The reason he had to drive recklessly everywhere? Because he gave his legs to you in a secret operation you didnt know about. That's mdzs from Jiang Cheng's pov

Ohhh. I see, you were talking about the initial accusation of why he got the shackle my bad. It gets so hard to unravel via conversation because things get tangled.

And are we off topic? I can’t tell cus when tgcf is the topic everything’s on the table for me 😂 no sah.

But really, I could go on a tailspin about tgcf and I have to stop myself. It’s just so incredibly fascinating! Things like..

The Entire Narrative is Propaganda: How Jun Wu used bureaucracy for control. He usurped the heavens centuries before anyone present ascended. He created the rules, the division of territories and the “divine laws” we thought were above him. Everything we knew was a lie.

Jun Wu, or Nah? A study on how many pies his fingers were actually in: what does he get blamed for that he didn’t do. What did he do that he doesn’t get blamed for? Part 1: Xie Lians parents were actually murdered, here’s why..

The astounding amount of foreshadowing and symbology in the God Pleasing Parade: 16 white horses and 16 named officials?! What does it mean?

“You are what they believe you are.” And how much that actually impacts their lives, relationships and abilities..(like some theories on why the Shi brothers relationship is pseudo-incestuous, cus I don’t think mxtx accidentally made them coded that way. No, I don’t think they’re actually incestuous. )

The Clown Show: but why are they really like that 800 years later? What could have happened?

Is Jun Wu the Missing Fire Master? The volcano and his seat of power.

And… some spicy takes on the Black Water arc that I usually keep to myself because they tend to ruffle feathers. 😅

All that to say, I totally relate to falling headfirst into this story and needing to untangle every thread. I really appreciate conversations like this, ones that don’t turn into arguments but actually let us question things and share interpretations. I made a Tumblr just to find alternative takes and dig into things with people who care as much as I do. So thank you— this has been such a pleasant and thought-provoking exchange. Doors always open.

Why do so many fans think Jun Wu has no control over who ascends? Like, yes.. people ascend without his permission because there really is a cosmic order in this universe but he literally only needs to fill the slot to prevent randos from ascending.

And YES he CAN artificially ascend people and he DOES. I’m fr about to write up a whole essay on ascension this weekend istg.

The man literally says:

“Even fates can be swapped. Why not spiritual power?” Jun Wu said. “There are many things that are hardly as difficult as you assume. It is only a matter of a few words and a few brush strokes from a few great heavenly officials.”

Right after he sucks out one homies spiritual power and injects it into another.

And let’s be real.. Do y’all really think Jun Wu actually ascended a second time using his own power?

The dude who has the suffering souls of his first attempt at human sacrifice plastered on his own face and.. screaming?

Hell nah. This dude became the grandmaster of demonic cultivation. He experimented on fetus spirits like some mad scientist interested in unethical stem cell research. He probs invented the damn fate swapping ritual himself.

He has an entire fucking Burial Mound volcano where he vents his resentful energy. You think all that energy is accumulating just cus he’s mad? Or from just the three faces?

No way fam. This man is actively cultivating the dark arts and probs needs so many followers just to help balance the yang to his yin.

I mean.. c’mon. You fr think Feng Xin and Mu Qing ascended back to back naturally? And just after they left Xie Lian? There’s a whole damn arc about how unusual it is for two people so close to ascend so fast and so young

Jun Wu gifts Feng Xin a bow called Fengshen which is a homophone for the name of an entire Chinese myth about appointing mortals to godhood for political reasons.

Blows my mind to see that so many collectively deny the possibility when the narration is screaming clues from every digital and physical page.

I have decided. I like tgcf better than mdzs, but I like Wei Wuxian better than Xie Lian. Wbu?

(I still love Xie Lian. And I still love mdzs, but the scales have been weighed.)