#THAT IS THE TGCF PLOT

[yumemiruuuu]

Feng Xin: Hua Cheng is not normal

Mu Qing: Hua Cheng is not normal

Ling Wen: Hua Cheng is not normal

Literally everyone: Hua Cheng is not normal

Hua Cheng: meow

[kav3h]

tfw. tfw ur life is ruined by this dudes brother who swaps ur fate. so u craft a secret identity and a super dramatic revenge plot, but then the dude befriends u. and ur plotting to ruin his life but ur also deeply in love w him.

[muzsmocsing]

The elusive fun moments of book 4

💧 Shi Qingxuan ascending while getting white girl wasted on a Tuesday afternoon.

💧 Hua Cheng putting on a little fashion show in the middle of a mission for his gege's entertainment.

💧 The giant bone fishes getting distracted by the overwhelming urge to give Fangxin little kisses.

💧 When Pei Ming was asking uncomfortable questions so Hua Cheng told him to kill himself.

💧 Xie Lian forgetting that ghosts don't need CPR.

💧 When Xie Lian had to stop Quan Yizhen from taste testing a large vat of suspicious black dye in a haunted factory.

💧 Quan Yizhen stealing a raw yam from the kitchen for sustinence before Xie Lian can render it inedible.

💧 The biohazard meatball incident

💧 "Hey Ling-" "No." "Understandable have a good day."

(Book 2, 3, 4, 5, 6)

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

"What do you mean their name isn't Beef?"

(for @moondal514)

[hualianschild]

[juicedpeachy]

modern! moshang

[goatpunches]

the heavenly emperor has a brand new toy

(inspiration under the cut)

[wonderb0n]

Do you guys think that if Shi Qingxuan had called the right name, things would have ended differently? Even the slightest possibility?

I remember thinking when I first read the novel that SQ's plea, so raw and desperate, had managed to reach HX. I felt it in my stomach. A spark of mercy that shattered the instant they called the wrong name.

That's also something that catches my attention. HX said you called the wrong name instead of saying idk anything else to refute SQ's pleas (everything would have been valid, honestly). I felt like, in itself everything that happened was worthy of his fury, not being called his real name was just the last straw. But why would it be if it's not because he cared?

[theballadofmars]

"I want more unreliable narrators" bitch you can't even handle these three

[happypeachsludgeflower]

I’m just gonna lay here in my bed of dissociation and possibly grow moss in my lungs and let woodland critters burrow into my corpse to make themselves at home while I wither away into the ether from brainrot.

[dearmyloveleys]

the way I can tell mdzs was written more seriously (tone wise) than the other two bc there’s no sword rental or immortal discord servers in there

[piosplayhouse]

The way people recommend TGCF as an alternative to shows like Heartstopper or Love Simon is so funny to me. That's like if I told you I wanted to watch a movie with a het relationship in it and my favorite movie is Pretty In Pink and then you told me I should go watch LOTR

[lazycranberrydoodles]

modern AU where they meet again at the fast food place Xie Lian works at and Hua Cheng has to figure out how to romance a customer service employee

[muzsmocsing]

Digging through the depths of book 6 to find some fun moments

🎭 Fengqing being FLABBERGASTED their shit disguises didn't work on their literal childhood best friend.

🎭 Mu Qing immediately recognizing who the statues are of because no one else in history wore robes that cunty (a victory that belongs to him. because he made them).

🎭 When Mu Qing got fed up with Xie Lian and went "I think if he wrote 'suspicious' on his face on his face, you'd suddenly forget how to read."

🎭 Mu Qing being too scared to fight Xie Lian so he immediately passed the task to Feng Xin.

🎭 The way Xie Lian's mom's cooking had everyone literally crying and screaming and throwing up.

🎭 When even in the middle of being chased by his worst nightmare Xie Lian had mental space to analyse how rebellious and sexy Hua Cheng is.

🎭 Hua Cheng's detailed plan on how to defeat White No-Face: "All we're doing is heading inside to eliminate an eyesore, then breaking through the Kiln again. That's it. It's not like it's hard."

(Book 2, 3, 4, 5, 6)

[biboomerangboi]

Been thinking about the homoerotic potential of Xianle Quartet again and I think I’ve figured out the best/funniest way for the post canon dynamic to play out: Xie Lian gets his offical harem.

And no I don’t mean Xie Lian just gets to hold hands with everyone. I think Hua Cheng who wants Gege to be happy and give him everything he wants but also genuinely believes he’s better than Feng Xin and Mu Qing starts acting like the Wife and Feng Xin and Mu Qing are Xie Lians concubines.

I think it would start with Hua Cheng giving them strictly solicited times to be with Xie Lian and then later when Xie Lian admits he feels something more about the two of them he would get real into it.

He makes it extremely clear he’s the first and most important wife in this game and they play by his rules. They deal with his times and get to see him give Xie Lian really extravagant gifts to wear when he spend time with them as well as giving him lots of love bites not to mention lots of little digs and because Fengqing are Fengqing they instantly match the energy.

The Harem games begin.

There’s so much side comments and subterfuge and of course fights to see who is the favourite while also convinced that it won’t be them because they start to notice all the beautiful things about their competitors in a really homoerotic way.

They would all start to act nice with each other when they are with of Xie Lian because they notice that he likes that and they have points to win. So there are lots of group spars and meals with a general play nice vibe to them. Until they reluctantly start to like playing nice but are also be thinking fuck these guys. These two guys are the worst people in the world.

Then of course Xie Lian goes away for a few days on a mission and they all lose it . They will literally have no one to perform for and yet they are all still being so petty and in each others business, then each others faces, and then suddenly they are all in each others bed.

Xie Lian naturally comes back to this and is delighted by this development.

[prince-liest]

was recently talking to a friend about qi rong which then lead to me going on a reread of my favorite qi rong fic EVER, and now I’m in my feels about him, his relationship with his family, and his relationship with xie lian and guzi.

I just love qi rong a lot. to be clear, he’s a horrible little gremlin and that is a lot of WHY I love him - but I also think that fundamentally qi rong is a character who is super traumatized but does not receive sympathy for that trauma because he is not traumatized in a “palatable” way which is a trend that starts when he is young and just never ends, canonically, at any point in his life

right from the bat: the first 5 years of his life, he's being physically and emotionally abused, he's cast out to live in a shed, his mom is forgotten by her family. by the time she finally escapes his abusive father and goes back to the palace, her elopement with him has been swept under the rug and most people don't actually know what happened - and are then weirded out by her and qi rong, causing all the children and even most adults around qi rong to basically refuse to interact with him. so he's abused and hated, then isolated to the point where nobody talks to him, nobody plays with him. the one time he thinks he succeeded at attempting to make some friends, it turns out that they tricked him into writing a death wish for himself and his mother on his lantern.

and all the while, he's watching xie lian and the adulation he receives, not understanding why xie lian gets those things and he does not. everyone always says he looks like xie lian. he’s even called xiao jing, like he’s a mirror of the crown prince. what’s the difference?

and then xie lian himself is the only person aside from his own mother to be genuinely kind to qi rong. qi rong is desperately lonely, envious and fixated on the cousin that nobody will stop comparing him to, and then said cousin is the only person to reach out to him with kindness. of course he wants to attach himself to xie lian and emulate him.

unfortunately for both of them, then his mother dies - not just randomly, but specifically in defense of xie lian’s mother, and having extracted a promise for xie lian’s parents to care for qi rong. however, things don’t actually change at that point. sure, they take him in and buy him whatever he wants, but as far as love and care are concerned, xie lian is really the only potential source of those things left for qi rong. xie lian is also a teenager with a lot of pressure on his shoulders and a lack of understanding of difficult situations. of course he doesn’t know how to raise his traumatized, misbehaving cousin! and nobody else bothers to. it’s deeply unfair for xie lian to be used as the singular tool to discipline and direct qi rong, and that directly contributes to their extremely soured relationship.

now that qi rong’s mother is dead, there is nobody left around that actually wants him or is willing to put effort into properly raising him. when a kid turns out as wild as qi rong - that's not just random happenstance, that happens because they weren't parented right (or at all). he acts out in increasingly insane ways for the attention everyone hates to give him - anyone's, but especially xie lian's, which sucks for xie lian because it should have been his parents providing qi rong with an authority figure and source of love, not xie lian's teenage self. and people respond by waving him off, giving him whatever he wants just to make him go away, and ignoring him, because he has a deeply off-putting personality.

and it causes everyone around qi rong to resent him in this vicious cycle that escalates his behavior because he doesn't know what else to do - until eventually even xie lian, the one person that he really looked up to, hates him too.

obviously qi rong is an awful person by the point we reach in canon, but I also think that if he had received regular hugs as a child and maybe some actual parenting from someone who didn’t beat him, instead of just being given a bunch of money and being told to fuck off

specifically because he was weird and traumatized and unlikeable

things would have turned out very different for him. because he very clearly tries - that’s one thing that’s very clear in the flashbacks and even continues to modern canon: qi rong really tries to get love and attention, and when that doesn’t work, he just escalates to “any attention, bad attention, attention that proves I’m worth something, proves wrong all the people saying the supposedly-amazing cousin that took away my only source of kindness when he started hating me, is so much better than me”. he starts out an awkward, off-putting kid and ends up the night-touring green lantern. of course he holds enough resentment to end up a calamity. his cannibalism shtick doesn’t even read as genuine to me, it just seems like he picked out “what’s the worst, most attention-grabbing thing I can possibly be to pre-emptively justify everyone’s disgust in me” and landed on that.

(see also: I think it’s hysterical that he has very strong opinions and abilities as pertains to gourmet cooking, and then just uses them to lure in victims so that he can have his meal of Raw Unseasoned Human Flesh. you can’t tell me he’s doing it for anything other than the bit at this point.)

and that’s also why I think his weirdly wholesome relationship with guzi also makes a lot of sense. qi rong is a shockingly decent father to him (eventually), probably in part because he overidentifies with guzi also being abused by his father, but also, because guzi is literally just a kid and therefore is not someone that yet has the capacity to have all these preconceptions about qi rong, nor for qi rong to read into his words and be insulted, because. that's just a kid. there’s nothing to read into.

I think his treatment of guzi (eventually) shows that he's capable of being at least kind of decent (or at least functional), he's just never been in a circumstance where his trauma and relationships let it happen. his material life was always supplied for, but his emotional and familial environment in xianle was invariably toxic for him.

anyway, I think qi rong needs a shower and a hug, in that order, and then to be forced to learn to interact with people who don't immediately assume the worst of him. thanks for coming to my TED talk, I know it was long as hell.