#really resonates w my eldest daughter scapegoat of the family trauma tbh

[mumuqings]

tgcf book spoilers, but one mu qing and xie lian snippet that I think about a lot is this one, at the start of xie lian’s second banishment when he’s surprised to hear mu qing being described as generous and kind:

as opposed to this memory from before his first ascension when mu qing started giving out cherries to the kids in the city:

I think it just really goes to show 1) how deeply mq’s actions truly affected xl and what he thought of him, but also 2) just how different mq and xl are fundamentally in the way that they think and approach things.

I don’t have a lot of commentary on xl that hasn’t already been said, but bc we get the story from xl’s pov, we see a lot of mq’s actions being framed as selfish or suspicious (which is fair, bc again, we know how much his actions hurt xl), but we also see a lot of misconstrued kindness, like in book 8 where it’s revealed that he knocked out fx in order to save him. it’s also pretty obvious how much mq still cares abt xl, with how quickly he volunteers as fu yao and the lengths he goes to protect him when he deems hc a threat, so I also think it’s very likely that mq leaving the trio first was exactly what he said it was — that he thought becoming a junior official, ascending quickly, would be the best way to take care of not just his mother, but also xl, fx, the king and queen, and himself, and so in a way, him leaving was him acting on his kindness. but ofc it doesn’t work out, and he spends the next 800 years fighting w/ fx about it, defending himself, his decisions, and his kindness, and nitpicking the accuracies of his statues while he himself remains completely misunderstood by the two people he probably cares abt the most.

and idk, I guess I just think that’s probably a really lonely way to spend 800 years.