#them being blessed by heaven

[bipedalseal]

so ive been playing pathfinder: wrath of the righteous for a few hours now and so far the premise has not really hooked me. compared to dos2 and bg3, the premise feels like generic christian-flavored fantasy "demons destroyed the city and i am chosen by heaven to save it". the companions not having a lot of overworld dialogue also threw me off (like i lead into the party in a room full of disfigured corpses and medieval torture devices and there was no reaction or insight whatsoever

[solacestea]

[mossymage]

reminder to give your ghost king lots and lots of smooches

[huachengsromcom]

People call Heaven Official’s Blessing / TGCF a slow burn but Hua Cheng is literally courting Xie Lian like they are DATING. Slow burn who??? They’re sleeping next to each other on straw mats and Xie Lian’s offering to cook him dinner and they’re bantering across THE HOME THEY SHARE like a bunch of desperate hussys

San Lang LEAVES XL WITH A KEEPSAKE OF THEIR TIME TOGETHER SLOW BURN WHOMST

They have A DATE in HC’s armoury where they HOLD HANDS and XL pets San Lang’s quivering sword I-

Hua Cheng basically throws himself at this man he’s like you want a sword?? All of them ?? You want ALL THE SWORDS?? Fuck it take the whole room THE WHOLE ROOM JUST COME VISIT I WILL CLEAN THEM FOR YOU

Like he isn’t the king of a whole realm with shit to do

And this is just the first half of the first book—again I ask the world SLOW BURN WHOMST

[lazycranberrydoodles]

they are so in love and disgusting and also sarcastic bitches. follow for more / prev comic / next comic

[hagelwolke]

uuuaahhhuhaaahualian

[sillygoofyqueer]

HEAR ME OUT!!! What about, right, an AU where the main MXTX couples are somehow dropped into modern times (or...transmigrated back, in Shen Yuan's case), but they're still obviously from historical times. Instead of panicking or getting concerned like everyone else, Shen Yuan immediately finds the nearest, biggest cosplay convention and drags them all there so he can show off their awesome "costumes" (a win is a win, no matter the specifics). Cut to the couples strolling through the con, with Luo Binghe looking out of his depth, Xie Lian questioning everything and Hua Cheng hating that he doesn't have the answers for once, Lan Wangji the picture of serenity despite everything, Wei Wuxian looking like he literally belongs there, and Shen Yuan. Literally the picture of smugness. Everyone gawking and him being like "Oh hell yeah. Take a wild look at us guys."

[happypeachsludgeflower]

Modern day YouTube au where Xie Lian is infamous on the internet for his catastrophic cooking channel.

[disgracefulthings]

If Shang Qinghua also wrote TGCF

Hua Cheng: So if you made this world and everyone in it...

Hua Cheng: That means you made dianxia into the most perfect and ideal being

Shang Qinghua: Actually, that's Mobei-Jun

Hua Cheng: Incorrect

Shang Qinghua: You can't correct me, I'm literally your go-

Hua Cheng: Absolutely incorrect!

[skipblebee]

LIVE LAUGH LOVE FENGQING FOREVER!!!!!

[potatosaresweet]

Feng Xin and Mu Qing

feng xin and mu qing who spent their teenage years together, in constant proximity, because they were both close to someone else

feng xin and mu qing watching their nation collapse, their home ruined, their kingdom dissapear

feng xin and mu qing losing their friend, first losing him emotionally by not being able to understand what's going on and then literally losing him as he vanished for 800 years

feng xin and mu qing both ascending to godhood, constantly seeing each other as they co-ruled(?) the same area

feng xin who never wanted to become a god, who didn't know what he was if he isn't a bodyguard to the royal family, who was abandoned by the woman he loved, never forgiving himself for leaving and losing xie lian

mu qing who always wanted to ascend, who knew he had the potential to but was constantly overshadowed and wanted to desperately to prove he was not a servant to be discarded, who still never forgave himself for leaving when his friends needed him. for coming back too late

and so they take it out on each other. 800 years of pent up frustration, guilt and misery and they take it out on each other because really, who else can they take it out on? who else knows xie lian? who else rememberes xianle and its' days of glory?

yes, they're constantly at each others throats. yes, they dislike each other.

no, they don't hate each other. how can they? they're all each other has and it's been that way for 800 years

can you really hate someone when he's the only contsant thing in your long immortal life as the world shifts around you? happy and unpleasant memories, they're the only ones who know. the only ones who remember

is this anything

[hualianschild]

[nanocados]

When idiots come in a package of three, that’s the good stuff right there 👯‍♀️

[chaos-of-the-abyss]

mannnnnn he xuan's all-consuming hatred for shi wudu and fury over everything he did to him and his family vs. hua cheng's all-consuming love for xie lian and gratitude for everything he did for him... shuangshui is truly the dark mirror of hualian

[levemetal]

Why Junmei is just 3 Qijius in a trenchcoat, a disorganized essay

As an avid lover of both of these ships, I've been wondering what about them makes me so sick to my bones and causes the same heart pain to flare up every time I think about them too hard. Over the time I noticed their similarities and how very very alike both pairs are and- regardless of shipping lenses - have a very similar base structure to them.

So at the risk of sounding more insane than Jun Wu, join me down below the cut.

The Core

At their core, both pairs' structure is the same:

A strong relationship/friendship/whatever-the-fuck-you-can-call-this-ship that is tested by a bad situation, and an utter failure to communicate after a failed promise and a betrayal. (And a divorce they proceeded to make everyone else's problem.)

For Qijiu, they were both slaves, fighting to see another day - torn apart by the horse incident, which lead to SJ being dragged off to the Qius. Yqy made a promise to him and left. The two reunite later, however can never reconcile as YQY is never able to utter the words SJ needs to hear, believing them to be excuses and beating himself up over his failure to keep the promise. Meanwhile SJ never cared about the fulfillment of the promise, just about the fact that he was not left behind, that he is not a monster or mudstain the other no longer wishes to associate with. He fails to communicate this, and YQY fails to communicate his side as well.

For Junmei this means they were prince and vassal respectively, growing up in a country with all but bright futures ahead. And then the mountain erupts, starting the long road spiraling downwards. Despite this getting Jun Wu banished, MNQ promises to stay, to not leave. Yet after JW sacrifices their 3 friends to Mt. Tonglu, once MNQ finds out, it tears them apart. JW tells him to get out and MNQ runs away, breaking his promise.

While you cannot project MNQ and JW on YQY and SJ 1:1, you can find similarities that were merely remixed.

Miscommunication leads to Divorce

Title is pretty self-explanatory. But both pairs are plagued by incredible communication issues and most importantly lack of communication. Qijiu cannot communicate their issues about the promise, and Junmei cannot communicate about the past. It leads them apart and to their frankly earth shattering divorce.

The Monsters

Both SJ and JW have one core desire in common - unconditional love. The desire to be seen and accepted in spite of the sins they accumulated. But neither is good at being able to read what they actually want particularly well.

For JW, he reads it as a desire to be understood, to have someone experience the same suffering and still choose the same path as him - to feel justified in his past actions, to be able to not feel like the monster the people painted him to be. It's this what leads him in part to torment Xie Lian so. (On this topic, I want to link this wonderful little comic. It captures this aspect of JW's story and character quite perfectly imo. Here is a translated version: part 1 part 2)

SJ meanwhile just spirals harder at YQY's perceived abandonment. He already hates himself deeply, and YQY's only serves as re-affirmation of his belief to be a monster. His paranoia feeds on the constant survival mode he runs on, he pushes everyone away. JW was able to secure himself a spot that is hard to rob; SJ never finds such comfort with his ruined cultivation. As such, feeling assured of how undesirable and unlovable he is, he drowns in his own loneliness.

Ironically they both project their issues on children. Just a funny side note really.

Soul-Crushing Guilt

One strong undercurrent of both relationships is guilt. YQY and MNQ both are the ones who carry this most obviously - YQY never recovers from not having fulfilled his promise to Xiao-Jiu, and MNQ regrets running when JW told him to disappear.

Meanwhile SJ and JW carry less guilt on their sides, although JW probably carries more. Junmei is guilt balanced like that :D

Loyalty

Neither SJ nor MNQ abandon the other despite the other's actions, and nor do the other two. They cannot forgive (themselves) but they also cannot separate themselves entirely from what was once a dearly loved person, or perhaps the only close person they had (SJ especially). In a way all of them are stuck in the past, a past they unconsciously may seek to return to. Easier times if you will.

Loyalty may not be the entirely fitting word (I'm not a native english speaker nor was I ever good with expressing myself correctly) but every party still clings onto the other in some shape.

SJ keeps saving YQY although he thinks he was abandoned.

YQY comes back to save SJ even though SJ kept pushing him away, telling him to stay away.

Jun Wu despite choking MNQ multiple times does never actually kill him, nor seems to be able to get himself to.

Mei Nianqing decides to stay in the end. He stops running for once to help take JW down if only for JW's own good. He still worships JW even though the crown prince of Wuyong is long since dead.

In a similar vein, YQY and JW are incredibly soft in their treatment of the other.

YQY all but showers SJ in gifts and keeps giving him lee-way and being more than a little indulgent towards him. This goes to the point that their martial siblings see this as a negative thing, and despite YQY's inherently good intentions, it hurts SJ's reputation and standing in the sect.

JW... honestly just look at the wild goose chase through locked down Heaven chapter. All his prisoners are treated with The Horrors, just look at what he did to Yin Yu. And then look at how he treated MNQ. MNQ was fucking sitting in his cell, comfortably and playing cards with his paper dolls. He let MNQ reveal him earlier, with little consequence too (a yank on the cursed shackle). He most likely also left MNQ alone to do his thing on the run. He kills others for far less infractions and yet here is MNQ, basically treated like a wife on house-arrest. I cannot make this shit up. Even XL and HC are rather baffled when they find him about this.

Devotion

Despite all their messy history, they are somehow still devoted to the other.

Despite all his words and rejections, SJ goes out of his way to repeatedly save YQY, even if it costs him everything.

YQY did not hesitate to rush to SJ, knowing full well it was a trap. It cost him him everything.

MNQ ran, ran and ran. Yet in the end he was the one to reveal JW, helped to take him down. It might not seem like devotion at the first look, but inherently the desire behind it was for the other to stop self-destructing, to get him back on solid ground.

In the end all it took for JW to stop, to finally rest it was MNQ telling him to. And in the end, MNQ decided to no longer, to stay behind with JW.

Their Fates

Now where they significantly differ is in how their respective situations end. Junmei are both alive by the end of the story, living together under the mountain JW was sealed under after his defeat. MNQ stated his intentions to stay, to not abandon JW again. But most importantly, they now have the time and opportunity to fix their relationship and untangle the mess that is their very long and traumatized lives.

Qijiu does not get this opportunity. As the events unfold, they are never capable of resolving their issues. In PIDW, SJ tries to warn YQY, push him away so he would save himself, only for YQY to end up dead anyway to Lou Bingge's trap, ultimately also being SJ's undoing and the only reason he broke despite all of LBG's futile attempts to do so. They pass each other by.

In SVSSS, SJ is dead from the start. He never gets to hear the confession about why he never came back from YQY at Maigu Ridge, long since replaced by SY. He is merely a specter that haunts the narrative at every step, a ghost never given a chance to be anything but what the narrative of PIDW demanded him to be. Whether YQY is aware of SJ being entirely gone is unknown, but in the end he is still left standing, on his own, with no proper closure either.

Where Qijiu is inherently doomed by the narrative, Junmei is given another chance, their fates changed by a kindness extended by Xie Lian when he chose not to kill Jun Wu.

And Now For the Silly

If you're still here, wow thanks and I am so sorry. Have a gold star: ⭐️

Now let's get away from the serious stuff and talk about the absolute silly but equally essential parts of both Qijiu and Junmei.

- Divorced without ever having been married. This does not require an explanation if you know their stories.

- Make their divorce everyone's problem: Junmei divorcing might as well be the one core reason all of tgcf even happens in the first place. Qijiu divorcing is also a core reason for Pidw ending as it did. Namely JW and SJ made their divorces everyone else's problem.

- Give it up for Abandonment issues!!! Post canon JW probably can barely survive through MNQ going out for groceries without a breakdown, and SJ yearns for someone to come back for him and never ever abandon him.

- Freak4Freak. None of these people are fucking normal. Can they express their love in normal ways? Fuck no. Sadomasochism, atticwifing, unhealthy possessiveness, "my dear highness" while actively getting choked, YQY very obvious desire to be used by SJ like a doormat and be stepped on by SJ, you name it it probably fits.

- One party that is entirely too forgiving about the other. I'm looking at you Yue "Xiao Jiu did nothing wrong ever" Qingyuan and Mei "he's just a soft puppy" Nianqing.

- Atticwifing would have fixed them. That's all I'm gonna say.

- A party that has a thin face at least in public. SJ and MNQ respectively here.

- A party that looks all fragile and harmless but can and will absolutely wreck your shit if they wanted to. SJ had to have some skill in him for LQG to keep sparring him, and MNQ acts fragile but he's mostly just fucking lazy. Bro kicked a martial god and lifted two grown ass martial gods without big effort. And the other party is

- Eternal fucking Yearning. Oh my god.

- This is not exclusive to them but where are the Xianxia therapists when you need them.

- Both pairs are plagued by traumas that actively hinder and stop them from having conversations they desperately need.

- Weirdest way to say I love you.

- Junmei would actually thrive too in a weird codependency situation like Qijiu in my dual calamity AU. Just saying...

- Having had other lovers would be an insult. Possessive bitches.

There is most likely more, feel free to add on naturally. But anyway to conclude this:

FUCKING COME JOIN JUNMEI SHIPPING IF YOU LIKE QIJIU. How are there so little people into this ship oh my god.

[shadowgale96]

I love me some angst. Are there any fic recs where Mu Qing and Feng Xin more successful keeping Xie Lian away from Hua Cheng against his will.

Bonus points if Hua Cheng doesn’t immediately come after him because he thinks Xie lian is disgusted with him, and, after 800 years of pinning, he’s ruined the good relationship he’s developed with Xie Lian.