#but tgcf is the one i itch to reread the most

[cursed-angelic-art]

Key Themes in TGCF

Posted this to reddit, but I want to save it here as well, because I've been seeing an uptick in people coming from SVSSS or MDZS fandom to TGCF and being disappointed. Either they find it boring (fair criticism for the first two volumes honestly), or the plotting is incoherent, or they don't understand the ending, or find the plot twists too predictable. I think the key thing to keep in mind while reading TGCF is that it's about an abuser controlling the narrative surrounding a victim, and the victim coming to an understanding of the depth of that abuse and wresting back control of the narrative. So here's my rambles on that: SPOILERS AHEAD

Going to expound a little on why I love TGCF. Xie Lian's progression through the story is not the typical character arc for a protagonist. He doesn't exactly go from point A to point B, where he starts off with a huge flaw that he works on and overcomes by the end, but rather he meanders from point A through points B, C, and D, and finally back to point A. This is not because he has no flaws. He certainly does. His inability to look at the past and have an open dialogue about it with the people he loves is one flaw he overcomes. But it is not the pivotal tragic/heroic character flaw we are sold at the beginning, which is his "naive" belief in the goodness of others. This is because he is was right in his forthright and honest beliefs from the start and it's his long degradation at the hands of the abuser that makes him question and doubt and go seeking for different answers, constantly holding that belief in goodness as the mirror for all the other deeply flawed people he encounters.

Even the audience is bamboozled by Jun Wu's control over the narrative. Each MXTX novel has a "false start" in the first chapter. In Scum Villain, we get Luo Binghe's story in PIDW, which Shen Yuan carries as the "truth" about the world and people he encounters when he transmigrates. He comes to understand he was deeply wrong, and by holding the original works narrative as the truth, he failed to see and understand the people around him.

In MDZS, we get a false start in the way the cultivation world has spun the story of the Yiling Laozu and his evil deeds. This whole book is about lies and rumors and how easy it is to join the bandwagon and make someone an outcast.

In TGCF chapter one we get the story of the naive god-pleasing crown prince, who comes to realize he can't save everyone and is cast out of heaven because of his foolishness, a prince who grew up "coddled and pampered" and unable to understand reality. We are told this inability to understand reality, that people are innately evil and will always choose to do evil things, is his flaw that led to his degradation as an outcast God.

This, too, is a false narrative that Xie Lian and the book itself seek to disprove over the next several thousand pages, as we are shown story after story of gods' wrongdoings and evil choices. And where we land at the end is with this: every person we saw make evil selfish choices because it seemed the easier way out, comes to the realization that they can make a good choice, a pivotal choice, and they can make it without much ado or any acknowledgement and it was that simple all along. We see Yin Yu choose right, Pei Ming choose right, Mu Qing choose right, hell we even see Qi Rong do something good in his last moments. And none of it is to any of their benefit, but it was something good. And Xie Lian is proven right. Despite what Jun Wu did to him, despite how much he tried to force him to change, Xie Lian never needed to change his core beliefs (and he literally says that over and over as he bashes his abusers head into a wall at the end there). We see this grand epic scale battle of all the gods against this heavenly tyrant, and it's juxtaposed against Xie Lian running back and forth alone with Yushi Huang's hat to make the rain. If all of the gods had helped back then, couldn't Xianle and Yongan have both been saved?

It was never Xie Lian who was wrong. It was the complacency of those who had the power to do something if they had not written him off as naive. And it was an abuser who controlled the narrative surrounding him for so long, that he drowned in self-doubt before he was finally able to cast off his shackles. He just needed someone to believe in him to help him believe in himself again.

Tldr: I think a lot of people are expecting a standard hero narrative where the hero has one great flaw he overcomes, and that's not the story of TGCF. It's the narrative and everyone upholding it that needed to change, not the protagonist. So it's an odd story to get into in that respect.

[iantimony]

accidentally back to tuesdaypost

despite my best efforts, shabbat came and went and i did not make my post. oops. trying a new heading template this week as well.

maybe not this week but i am thinking of starting to host images for the making section somewhere else...maybe on gdrive? or postimages.org? imgur? just so that if my tumblr ever breaks the images in dreamwidth won't vanish.

listening

partizan! halfway through episode 12 right now, which means, according to where i was last week-ish, i am averaging about one episode a day LOL. extreme sport FatT speedrunning. also relistening to all is as all should be recently, just scratches a brain itch for some reason. it's very brain-worm-able to me, i've been humming songs from it all week.

reading i was going to say fallow and then went. hooold on. i've been reading SO many things just not, like, books.

wikipedia articles of the week: Naomi Shihab Nye, Rachel's Tomb, Matzevah, Alexandre Cabanel, Abd el-Ouahed ben Messaoud, Leo Africanus

because it's november and i'm nostalgic for nanowrimo (and considering doing it again once i'm done with classes and therefore homework), i went and reread some of my nano from when i was in high school and WOW. nostalgia!!! some of it is very very bad, unsurprisingly, it was almost 10 years ago, but some of it is actually quite good. very fond of the comments left by a friend on it that were preserved when i downloaded the google doc a billion years ago to save on my external drive, including one that said "your prose is crisp like an autumn apple" or some fucking thing like that. truly delightful. i'd also somehow forgotten that i'd actually hit the word goal? the document is about 60k words give or take, the story was not finished though which is probably why i misremembered. i should start writing again.

in my quest to populate my inoreader with blogs and other such things i've been delving into my bookmarks and re-found this delightful site, their most recent article is just the world's most specific niche horn memes it's so funny. like this is absolutely meaningless to literally everyone else that it passes back into absurdity and probably funny to non-horn players again. i am VERY excited to peruse their pdf library though.

playing pokegoooooo. i am visiting my grandma and going on long night walks around the old people development with pokego is very elite. i am a little nervous that someone will call security on me though because i frequently just stop (often like...in front of people's apartment buildings....) and stand still to catch pokemon if a bunch have spawned in one location...

watching i have not watched it yet but i am VERY excited to start season 2 of the tgcf donghua!!

watched kurtis connor's "deep dive into potterheads" and literally cheered out loud at the end when he mentioned the snapewives. that made me want to watch strange aeons so i also watched her video on msscribe and snapewives.

i wasn't On Livejournal or active in fandom while everything was going down but i remember learning about it a few years after it all happened so seeing comprehensive deep dives now is very, very...satisfying isn't quite the right word, but i am a messy bitch who lives for drama especially when i'm not involved in it. what a mess.

making pottery!!! i have a bunch of stuff coming out from a glaze run that i'm very excited to see but it will have to wait til saturday when i get home from visiting my grandma for thanksgiving. i do however have pictures of this little box i made:

it was a gift for my grandma, and i glazed it all the way back in the beginning of october i think? the kilns got monopolized by some other stuff for the owner's business (which is super fair) which means we didn't get a student project run until literally friday, two days before i was supposed to leave town, so after some texting with her she was able to put it out on her porch around 11pm on saturday when the kiln cooled down enough so i was able to pick it up at like 5:30am on my drive to the airport LOL so all in all it worked out! next roundup post will have pictures of some of my other glazed pieces, i'm very very curious how they do!!!

i've been playing with underglaze because i was like ohhhh i love the look of carving designs into underglaze...and i bought some fun colors when i went to The City a few weekends ago...so i have this mug that needs its first fire, i also have some fun eye-motif ones in the works at the moment! i also added some underglaze color to my dragon carving from last week.

finally this bowl already had its first fire but i painted underglaze on over white to try and get a watercolor-type effect? i put lilypads on the inside and painted koi on the outside (no picture of that yet)

misc not a whole lot else! since my summertime trials and tribulations i have unfortunately become the kind of person who gets tummy issues when my stress levels get too high. i have always become a basket case in the ~24 hours before i have to travel somewhere so that's been less than fun but i'm figuring it out. also trying to switch psychiatrists right now is sooooo fucking aggravating i will not get into it but ughhhhhh.