#grey ace xie lian

[yea-baiyi]

people on twitter are discoursing about whether xie lian’s chastity-based cultivation is a form of abuse (?????) which is so backward to me like huh???? yes jun wu’s thing about xie lian being a virgin is fucking creepy and weird and part of his overall obsession and desire to control him. but did they just completely miss the part where xie lian chose this method of cultivation bc the abstinence wasn’t an issue for him? he got hit by sex pollen and never once thought of sex? he didn’t even cultivate for 700 years and just never had sex because he never wanted to and as soon as he found a guy he wanted to fuck he just went for it? literally didn’t even pause to consider the cultivation thing at any point. if this were any other character it might have been used against him but the whole point is xie lian once again perfectly dodging jun wu’s manipulation attacks by just being a weird little guy with autism

[therubyjailcell]

me, staring at my fav lil blorbos:

me:

me: they're on the aro and ace spectrum :) they might also be trans, and also be nd :)

[web-novel-polls]

Aroace-spec Character Winners' Tournament

[Please vote for who you believe is the most aroace-spec character, not the most popular. It will never be acceptable to post "anti-propaganda" in this tournament or invalidate a suggested identity because "they're not aroace enough." You will be blocked unless it's clearly a genuine mistake / misphrasing.]

Propaganda underneath the cut

Xie Lian from Heaven Official’s Blessing

Submission 1: Demisexual

He's heavily demi coded. Man has no interest in sex what so ever for 800 years and then makes a strong personal connection to one (1) person and is shocked when he's suddenly interested

Submission 2: Demisexual

I think he is demisexual. He was canonically celibate for 800+ years and doesn’t seem to have too much of a problem with it, until he meets and binds with the love interest. Suddenly this whole celibacy thing becomes difficult. Seeing a character similar to me was an amazing experience and I think he deserves all the love!

Liu Qingge from Scum Villain’s Self-Saving System

Submission 1: Gay Grayace

He spends most of his life with one interest and that's fighting and then when he falls for a man he's confused by it and proceeds to flirt in the most awkward way possible. Also he has the grey-white-sometimes purple colour scheme

Submission 2: Aroace

The idea of him being asexual is presented right there on the page and you can't take that away from me. Yes I think he is in love with sqq yes I also think he is aroace. He can be both!

Submission 3: Asexual/Ace-spec

I think he’s sex repulsed given his icy or horrified reactions when sexual topics are discussed. He was also once forcibly aroused when hit by an aphrodisiac, and he responded in a way that implied he had never experienced that before. Additionally, his instinct was not to do anything sexual, but to commit acts of violence.

Mod Propaganda

Canonically not interested in romance by word of God

MXTX: “[Liu Qingge] isn't interested in Shen Qingqiu. He isn't interested in anyone. He's only interested in fighting. He wants to be the strongest and the best.” (Source)

Canonically had no clue he was sexually aroused in the Succubi Extra / interpreted it as “wanting to fight” (which isn’t the same as not experiencing sexual attraction, but that’s also not a trademark of allosexuality)

Speaking of, he never specifically seems interested in Shen Qingqiu romantically or sexually - he’s usually shipped with him bc of his devotion, not a clear desire for romance. Though that’s pretty much just up for personal interpretation

[kaz3313]

Dating Sim AU TGCF (concept) Part One

(Piccrew link in replies!).

As the title suggests- Started to make the concept of a Dating Sim AU. I’d like to make some fake screenshots (with my own drawings ^^)

(Notes)

* Agender Xie Lian (forgot a pin)

*Ace Yin Yu (forgot a pin)

*Genderfluid SQX (didn’t forget a pin, didn’t add them because didn’t look good with her outfit/could barely see cause of his hands)

*MQ and LW both have grey/silver hair but that wasn’t an option ^^

*HC also has pointy teeth, but the smile (and the red) made him look like a vampire. Then again, thats probably accurate

*SW has long hair, but it didn’t look good on him/tried him w/ short hair.

*Dialogue may change when I make my fake screenshots- But some of it might stay the same or have similar phrasing 😊

*Haven’t decided whether HX is going to go by “Ming Yi” as an alias or just as He Xuan.

[yea-baiyi]

I'm yet to read the novel fully, but I wanted to ask you something. Is Xie Lian gay? Or more bi/demi or something else?

At some point isn't he enticed by things taking the form of women to arouse him or something like that? But the same thing knew to take Xie Lian's form to entice Hua Cheng away from guarding him?

….this is from almost a year ago but once again i have zero memory of ever seeing this ask. i am so sorry

anyway xie lian is grey-ace imo. he’s hua cheng-sexual. before meeting hua cheng he demonstrates exactly ZERO attraction to anyone of any gender. and then he acts extremely horny towards hua cheng but also with the utter unhinged panic of someone who has never experienced sexual attraction in their life. which is why his reactions to hua cheng are so batshit despite him being scarily calm in most other situations

the sex pollen scene is hilarious and totally validates my point because there’s all these sex pollen demons trying to seduce him and tempt him. and he’s backed into a cave, alone with a fifteen year old with a massive crush on him. but his fucking reaction to the sex pollen is “i don’t experience sexual lust, the only lust i feel from this pollen is BLOODLUST so i gotta get this kid out of here immediately before i kill him—”

[yea-baiyi]

If you like acespec Xie Lian I must recommend beesinspades's fics, they have a bunch of different ones (SFW and NSFW) and they're so good ! It's mostly ace Xie Lian but I think there's a couple of grey ace Xie Lian fics too. It's so cool to see these ace interpretations of Xie Lian talked about more. We need that kind of representation !!

xie lian is so incredibly a-spec it is so inspiring

thank u for the rec!!!

[yea-baiyi]

ok but like imagine being hua cheng. and when you were a teenager you were trapped in a cave with your god when he got hit with sex pollen and you already felt ugly and unlovable but he stabbed himself through the gut rather than touch you and you saw him shirtless and horrifyingly that’s how you found out you were gay

and then you meet him again centuries later when you’ve grown up and become comfortable in your own skin, and you think you might be in love with him except a part of you still feels terrified that he’ll look at you and find you hideous again. but you want to trust him so you show him your real face. and. turns out he finds your adult self so hot that you make him horny for the first time in his life and he keeps doing and saying absolutely deranged things because he does not know how to cope. he panics and tries to give you, a ghost, mouth-to-mouth resuscitation and while you’re lying there trying not to freak out he is beside you acting out his one man humiliation-style comedy show because he has never wanted to kiss someone before let alone fuck. he agrees to get locked in a coffin together because he never even considered the possibility that he might pop a boner except he does pop a boner and now you are stuck under him while he squirms and you are trying very hard not to think about your own boner

i don’t know how to end this post i just think that’s so funny. and they live happily ever after and have lots of gay sex. hua cheng keeps winning. slay king

[yea-baiyi]

xie lian really is living the ultimate grey-ace fantasy though, because imagine you’ve gone 800 years not being attracted to anyone and you’ve been totally fine keeping a vow of abstinence you have no obligation to keep —

and then one day you run into this guy and your brain goes “he’d be a great husband” and suddenly you’re thinking about how he’s so tall and fixating on his hairline and his bone structure and wow his hands are so big, sure wouldn’t wanna be choked by him, and you’re a huge embarrassing mess around him. but turns out he is equally as embarrassing towards you and you end up liking him a lot and you guys flirt and joke around when you’re together and it’s great except you have massive walls up because of all of your centuries of trauma —

and THEN you find out that this guy has known you nearly your whole life, was actually the person beside you at all your lowest points, someone who has already been tested and come out fighting. he’s not nice and he’s seen some shit but he has literally crawled his way out from hell and proven himself to be good, and most of all already proven that he will stand with you and be by your side in every way that matters. all that before you guys even started dating, before you guys even MET in this lifetime. just the perfect alignment of a) attractiveness, b) compatibility, c) resilience as a life partner — and he came over and started talking to YOU.

maybe it’s just me but i’m chewing on the walls????

[yea-baiyi]

I will be honest here (and please let me know if you think I am reaching) but I think mxtx herself has been working through an gray or demi ace thing through her stories. Because like. Shen Yuan? That guy reads as someone who has no idea what love or attraction is even supposed to be. Wei Wuxian (while flirting with quite a few people) has Lan Wangji as his one and only romantic love of both lifetimes. And Xie Lian- as you've stated- is definitely experiencing all these new romantic and sexual feelings for the first time and is overwhelmed.

Now, I have ventured outside of mxtx (not...a lot, but still) and I havent seen anything to suggest that this is a genre convention?? For example, Chu Wanning or Zhou Zishu do not give me this vibe. Maybe I am reading the wrong books haha, but I have started to get the feeling she was definitely working through something (authors always put more of themselves in their work than they think)

hi anon, sorry this took me so long (i’m honestly still marinating in my own possibly grey-aroace revelation and so this ask sent me into a spiral of sorts). i think you have a point — idk about mxtx herself, but all 3 of her protagonists can be read as different types of grey/demi/aroace narratives.

what they all have in common is this particular total obliviousness to the romantic situation unfolding. not that they’re blind to what is happening, but it’s as if they have zero frame of reference for what that they are feeling. they don’t think, oh it’s a crush, i’m having romantic feelings for this person. instead the reaction is more like, ?????? suddenly i want to kiss???? why do i like them so much???????

off the top of my head, wwx’s blossoming feelings for lwj are a good example here. in the novel, he genuinely doesn’t have romantic feelings towards lwj at first — he may have had a bit of a crush back in cloud recesses, but he never perceived his interest in lwj as romantic. he slowly falls for lwj over the course of the novel. how it happens is (imo) a very demi-aroace process: it goes from > hanguang-jun is so good looking and admirable > omg he is so funny and great > i like him so much idk why??? > wtf i want to kiss him > i wanna jump on that dick

that strikes me as very non-allo?? it’s not that he’s in denial about how he feels, more that he has no idea what these feelings mean, which sounds very much like someone who has hardly, if ever, experienced sexual or romantic attraction before. iirc we never see wwx express any sort of specifically sexual attraction to lwj before developing feelings for him (literally sleeping in that guys arms seems a perfect recipe for unfortunate boner hijinks and yet it never seemed to happen?) — compelling argument for demi reading imo.

and it’s the same for sqq and xie lian, though their journeys are slightly different to wwx’s. i can’t imagine that this sort of narrative is at all common in the genre? i can’t speak to other c-novels but zhou zishu certainly doesn’t read that way, and from my general knowledge of BL/danmei, it doesn’t seem like a common romantic trope. i absolutely love it though, now you’ve pointed it out it makes sense why i connect so strongly with these stories. and certainly if mxtx managed to work this into all 3 of her stories, i’d want to know how she feels about it herself.

now excuse me i’m going down an a-spec analysis spiral for mxtx novels

[yea-baiyi]

anyway grey-ace adhd xie lian. happy pride

[jayktoralldaylong]

This is perfection XD

ok but like imagine being hua cheng. and when you were a teenager you were trapped in a cave with your god when he got hit with sex pollen and you already felt ugly and unlovable but he stabbed himself through the gut rather than touch you and you saw him shirtless and horrifyingly that’s how you found out you were gay

and then you meet him again centuries later when you’ve grown up and become comfortable in your own skin, and you think you might be in love with him except a part of you still feels terrified that he’ll look at you and find you hideous again. but you want to trust him so you show him your real face. and. turns out he finds your adult self so hot that you make him horny for the first time in his life and he keeps doing and saying absolutely deranged things because he does not know how to cope. he panics and tries to give you, a ghost, mouth-to-mouth resuscitation and while you’re lying there trying not to freak out he is beside you acting out his one man humiliation-style comedy show because he has never wanted to kiss someone before let alone fuck. he agrees to get locked in a coffin together because he never even considered the possibility that he might pop a boner except he does pop a boner and now you are stuck under him while he squirms and you are trying very hard not to think about your own boner

i don’t know how to end this post i just think that’s so funny. and they live happily ever after and have lots of gay sex. hua cheng keeps winning. slay king