#wu chuchu

[liobi]

there was a bit where i paused the show, turned to triss, and told them how the meeting between A'Fei and Chuchu would go down if it was a baihe show. Then we unpaused and Beat For Beat they met exactly like I said

back when @trisshawkeye and i were really just getting started on our cdrama rabbit hole, Legend of Fei was our first show after Untamed and I cannot tell you how glad i am that we went from a show with a complex villain to a guy who wanted a stash of literal lightsabers because we got to see the full gamut of cdrama antagonists right from the get go

[qilingxiong]

me too

[nemainofthewater]

Best character surnamed: Wu

Come and vote for the best characters with the same surname!*

What does best mean? It's up to you! Whether you love them, are intrigued by their characters, love to hate them, or they're your '2 second blorbos whose personality you made up wholesale', these are all reasons for you to vote for your favs!

*note, the surnames are not exactly the same in all the cases, as often there will be a different character. I am, however, grouping them all together otherwise things got more complicated.

Propaganda is very welcome! If I’ve forgot anyone, let me know in the notes.

This is part of a larger series of ‘best character with X surname’ polls’. The overview with ongoing polls, winners, and future polls can be found here

[welcometothejianghu]

A little Legend of Fei In Real Life tonight, because I feel like looking at pictures of attractive people. (Skipping the two mains, because it's well-documented what they look like out of costume.)

Zhang Hui Wen / Wu Chuchu

Chen Ruo Xuan / Li Sheng

Zhang Xin Yu / Yang Jin

Leng Ji Yuan / Ying Hecong

Sun Jian / Yin Pei

Zhou Jie Qiong / Li Yan

Geng Le / Shen Tianshu

Guo Xin / Mu Xiaoqiao

Dong Xuan / Duan Jiuniang

[sassybluee]

for the fandom thing: legend of fei?

LEGEND OF FEIII!! Yesss! Thank you for the ask :P

Favorite Male Character - Xie Yun

Favorite Female Character - Zhou Fei

Least Favorite Character - Yin Pei... had so much potential and just got the cartoon villain treatment by the end

Favorite Ship - yunfei but a close second is the one braincell trio

Favorite Friendship - Wu Chuchu and Zhou Fei 🥺

Favorite Quote - It's been so long since I watched the show so my memory is fuzzy of the exact quote but when ZF is trying to get the medicine for Xie Yun and just telling master Tongmin she'll do whatever it takes as long as she can see him... my heart.

Worst Character Death (if any) - oh my god one char death that made me rly sad was the North Blade Master (Ji Yunchen I think was his name?) Idk he was so cool and gone too soon lmao.

This made me so happy you have no idea Moment - when Xie Yun finally sees Zhou Fei after being in a coma and ZF just missing him while he's awake etc. Just... UGH so good.

Saddest Moment - When Xie Yun "dies" (ZF thinks he's dead)

Favorite Location - Oooh I loved the little medicine valley sm

Send me a fandom and I'll answer...

[psychic-waffles]

wrote a whole thing out for the dmbj discord yesterday but thought it might be useful here as well

tldr: according to the dmbj books there's probably two different things affecting hei xiazi's eyesight

1. his miscellaneous eye disease that may or may not be related to his immortality that causes him to be able to see better in the dark (he needs a tiny speck of light for it to work, it doesn't work in pitch black) and for him to be able to see other weird details in low light (the best description i’ve seen of this is in  moving forward through the flowery night aka the heihua extra) this may or may not be getting worse (i'm sort of assuming he's gradually able to see less in bright light but his ""darkvision"" remains the same but that’s speculation on my part)

2. what i’m really here to talk about: there’s something making his vision fully black/fade out intermittently (regardless of external light levels) which started probably shortly before the main dmbj story, and has got significantly worse during reboot

more below the cut (contains spoilers for all of reunion book 2, and minor spoilers for the reunion drama)

caveat 1. i haven’t double checked the timeline because ~gestures at dmbj~ so some timings might be vague

caveat 2. *i can’t read chinese and any terms i’ve used are whatever terms were used in merebear’s translations, so please correct me if anything is wrong!

i’m also gonna preface all of this real quick with a couple things. Most of this info is taken from two retellings of "the strange case of the burning corpse" which you can read in full in sha hai chapter 112-115 and reboot book 2. Both times the story is told by xiao hua (mostly), and the when we first hear it in sha hai it's sort of 50/50 whether the story is true or not. When we hear it again in reboot it's a bit more substantial and is atleast probably true. (as always take any of this with a pinch of salt).

***

so the version we hear in sha hai is as follows and talks about the first time xiao hua met hei xiazi: when xiao hua was younger (either teenager or early 20s probably) and staying will granny huo there was an incident nearby where a building burnt down and 14 corpses were pulled out, 13 had drowned before being burned and were laid out in the shape of a fish, and one had burnt standing upright on the roof. The 13 drowned corpses were also found to have a strange eye disease. hei xiazi is called in by chen pi to investigate and after looking round the scene he says there should be a 15th body and proceeds to find a well with an ancient corpse in it under the building with a mirror stuck in it's chest. That night after hei xiazi had gone down into the well he starts experiencing eye problems, every time he opened his eyes he felt something pushing his neck down so he could only look at the floor (xiao hua then says that hei xaizi then blindfolded himself and lived for 6 months without his sight, but then backtracks on this so 🤷‍♂️). meanwhile granny huo finds out the 13 drowned men were loggers who dug up the ancient corpse, they all developed a weird eye disease and found a priestess* to help them, who turned out to be the corpse standing on top of the building burnt up. wu xie (who had been listening to xiao hua tell the story) then falls asleep so we don't get any more context for any of that.

***

all in all pretty weird and possibly mostly made up, however then the story gets revisited in reboot with a bunch more detail and making a bit more sense generally.

context for if you have seen the drama version of reunion: this is all tied to hei xiazi's visit to the mute village, which in the books is a stand alone story set just prior to reboot, only hei xiazi goes there and ershu etc don't follow later.

context for if you haven’t seen or read reunion: hei xiazi goes to ‘mute village’ to investigate some strange happenings related to thunder and an underground river, but while he's there he meets a mute woman called chuchu who is making a documentary about the village.

Hei Xiazi realises he knows chuchu, and figures out he saved her from a fire when she was a child, in connection to the burning corpse case.

***

so back to continue the burning corpse story where it starts up being told again in reboot: hei xiazi tracks down the priestesses daughter. he realises (due to his weird eyesight) he can see something strange on her back, maybe the same thing that was on his back before. the girl says she can do a ritual to help him with this whole case and takes him to a school where they set up an array etc. hei xiazi isn't sure if the ritual is legit or not but the info he gets from this girl is that there's an "immortal thing*" that wants to go back "below" (none of this is elaborate on). Once hei xaizi leaves the school a fire was started and he rushed back in to save some kids one of whom is chuchu (whose vocal cords were presumably damaged in the fire). when they get outside they see a burnt up corpse standing on the roof who turns out to be the priestesses daughter.

now to jump back to approximately the present where hei xiazi is running around mute village: he realises that the "immortal thing" that he'd encountered all those years ago is wrapped around chuchu's neck, over her vocal cords, and realises she was the girl from the fire and it must have latched onto her then. (note: it seems like the ""immortal thing"" goes for weak points? like the vibe i got was it went for chuchu's vocal cords cos there was already a problem there and/or they were damage from the fire?) so he decides he needs to deal with this thing once and for all. him and chuchu go into the underground river and hei xiazi tricks the "immortal thing" into leaving chuchu and going back to being on his back. his eyesight starts to black out, closing in from the edges, and he throws himself into the underground river. to make a long story short; hei xaizi is pretty fucked, mostly blind, and being attacked by evil crabs. luckily 1. whenever thunder rings out through this underground river hei xiazi’s eyesight returns briefly, and 2. xiaoge shows up out of nowhere and helps him use a mirror they find (like the one originally stuck in the ancient corpse) to potentially kill the creature on the back of hei xiazi's neck, or at the very least drive it away into the depths of the underground river.

***

so that's all context i guess, the sort of important bit is the following: after hei xiazi had the "immortal thing" on his neck last time it took 19 days for his sight to return at all, and since then his sight faded in and out on the daily (like that moment in the heihua movie). at the point of xiaoge rescuing him this time around he didn't know if his sight would return but at the point they escape the underground river he is fully 100% blind.

once again npss i would love it if you could concisely explain any of this 🙏🙏🙏 and/or atleast confirm if the story being told here is true and hei xiazi isn’t just making up some bullshit

[randomshenaniganery]

TGCF Donghua

okay so I've been watching this shit since it was released and I'm fully enjoying waiting for the weekly episodes and I wanna rant about it because I love it so much but I do have some minor gripes

Bad chuchu out of the way first

I am not happy with how generic and unoriginal the designs for most of the supporting characters. Like yeah they still look somewhat different but when the pool of named characters will expand it will get harder and harder to tell people apart if they keep on going with this route. Almost everyone suffers from same face syndrome which I know is rampant in current anime I just wished they allowed for at least more dynamic silhouettes, hairstyles, and color palettes. It feels like a more toned down version of the character design in the manhua. Lang Qianqiu in the manhua is so easy to recognize because of his outfit and pei ming looks more like the bastard he is etc. Don't get me started on the design for Kemo, the manhua felt eh I feel like Kemo was too pretty and too slim but in the donghua its just he's a straight up orc idk, i feel like they could've done better. Pei Su looks very generic, I think out of everyone he's the most generic looking of them all. SQX, Ling Wen and Jun Wu are the best designs for the supporting cast and I think Banyue is also okay looking cause you can tell her apart from the rest so far.

I am super disappointed in Qi Rong's reveal because it doesn't feel as impactful in the book. In the book the reveal of him looking like Xie Lian was so dramatic to me I was like oh my god is that his brother? A twin? a doppelganger? And then Qi Rong just kinda looks like that, tbh his voice actor and his clothes are fine I think they fit. It's just weird how he suffers from same face syndrome. If they made everyone look less like each other making Qi Rong look like Xie Lian would have been so impactful and a really cool cliffhanger but they couldn't do that because even fucking Lang Qianqiu kinda looks like Xie Lian with lighter hair. Also the Fang xin design is alright on the clothes but the mask gives off a bit cheap however I get that it can't be super detailed and it still does its job so I can handwave that small pet peeve.

Also censorship we couldn't get Xie Lian falling on Hua Cheng's lap and so them trying to make up for that was super awkward LMAO, they could have solved this by making SQX fall right on Hua Cheng's chair so that they could justify why Xie Lian grabbed Hua Cheng and throws him but they didn't... and it's so awkward...

I think it was like Episode 2 of s2 that the animation feels weird, Mu Qing's face felt off to me idk what was going on it just felt like something went down but the next episode it was perfectly fine anyway.

Positives!!!

Something the manhua didn't have was Fu Yao and Nan Feng looking a bit like each other, that was so fucking funny and it's a great display of how much they hate each other and live rent free in each other's heads ong. I love that detail the donghua did I think that's smart.

The voice actors are so great in both dubs they're doing amazing (I haven't listened to the jp dub) I have no complaints I love their work

ONE of my favorite things about the donghua is being able to see Hua Cheng's expressions even when Xie Lian is doing something in the book so he wouldn't notice. I love seeing how pleased he is every time someone points out the intimacy with him and Xie Lian. Like in season 1 when Fu Yao is shocked/horrified that Xie Lian shared a bed with Hua Cheng, San Lang puts a hand on his chin and looks so fucking smug and happy. This happens a couple times in s2 as well someone will be like oh that's weird you're so like this with Hua Cheng and he becomes a smug cat it's great.

Another one I enjoy is during the beginning of the banyue arc when Xie Lian reveals to Fu Yao and Nan Feng that he's used to sleeping in squalor the camera goes to Nan Feng not revealing his face but clearly showing his guilt over what Xie Lian reveals. That's good shit.

Lan Chang picking a fight off screen, also cool, love seeing her. I like that she looks inconspicuous so for someone who doesn't know shit about tgcf they will not see *that* shit coming.

ALSO the men look kinda generic if they're not the mls but the girls are all gorgeous???? like the woman who was Hua Cheng's speaker, the girl who led Xie Lian further into the gambling den, XUAN JI, Banyue all the girls are unique without being so ostentatious and I love them. If you put them beside each other they all look like they're own thing but still on theme. From clothes, to hairstyle and colors it's easy to tell and that's good design. I also include SQX's female form cause she's gorgeous too.

The donghua I think adds to stuff I haven't read I'm not sure if this is because I have a bad memory but I don't recall reading a flashback of Lang Qianqiu and the failed robbery. But the message of that entire section was so fucking good. The way that what Lang Qianqiu said about 'maybe he shouldn't have intervened' and the sound effects UGh. It's so good, i love how the book tackles the morality of everything, breaking down Lang Qianqiu's firm positivity and believing in humanity but still promoting being kind and considerate through Xie Lian. This theme still carries on in the show and I think they're doing a great job.

GOD THE MUSIC in the donghua is so fucking good, I love it. The songs, the meanings, the beat it's all perfect I can't say anything more.

even though i'm disappointed in the character design choices the donghua is very solid, I love it a lot. It does come off as very expositiony sometimes but I think that's very prevalent in Chinese Wuxia and Xianxia. Probably weird for people who aren't used to the genre but to anyone who's seen something like it, it's not unbearable and it's kinda necessary because of how the book is written. Waiting for wednesday patiently whilst i draw huahua

There are so many fun details the Donghua adds that shows that they know the story and where it's going as well hinting at character stuff, it's so fun to spot those. Like Xie Lian's reaction to Hua Cheng biting the bun made me wanna claw my face that shit was good af.

[thelaithlyworm]

WIP meme

Thanks for tagging me @nemainofthewater and also @bladedweaponsandswishycoats

Rules: make a new post with the names of all the files in your WIP folder, regardless of how non-descriptive or ridiculous. let people send you an ask with the title that most intrigues them, and then post a little snippet or tell them something about it! and then tag as many people as you have WIPs.

Disclaimer: some of these are for fandoms that I barely remember and are unlikely to be continued, others are just vaguely sketched in ideas without much in the way of writing...

A Little House in Pingting (it was a c-drama called, maybe Exquisite Girl? something like that. interesting worldbuilding and i'm not sure why i didn't get to the finale)

A-Ning Stays For Lunch (Heavenly Palace, DMBJ)

An Imperfectly Articulated Knowing (Nirvana In Fire)

Bai Haotian & Li Cu Meet (Post-Reboot, DMBJ)

Banking Fire (Ashes of Love)

Black Coffee (Star Trek La Sirena)

Blackboard Notes: Crimson Spider Takes the Pearl (DMBJ)

Bright Soul (Nirvana In Fire)

Chuchu Rescue Fic (DMBJ, Reboot)

Cicada Season

Fei Liu's Marvellous, Wonderful, Never-Bad, Very Good Day

Hard Times At Wushanju (DMBJ)

Heat in the Belly, Like Burning Coal (DMBJ, Sand Sea)

If At First You Don't Succeed (DMBJ, Reboot)

Portraits of a Young Lady (Nirvana in Fire)

Possible Su Nan & Wu Xie friendship (DMBJ, Sand Sea)

Purge (Star Trek La Sirena)

Scheduling (DMBJ)

Scratching at Oblivion (DMBJ, Nausicaa of the Valley of Winds)

The Fall and Rise of Bai Shan, Hapless Grad Student (DMBJ, Mystery in the Abyss)

The Humperdinck Variation (Princess Bride)

The Lone Dumb Husky and Cub (erha)

The Most Mysterious Thing (DMBJ, Reboot)

The Pleasant Night Has Come (that one where hou minghao played a dragon)

Xiao Bai Deals with Death (DMBJ, Reboot)

Yanyou and Runyu After the End (Ashes of Love)

tagging (if you choose to be tagged) @procrastinatorproject @regionalpancake @jazzfic @bean-in-dice @foxofninetales

[minnarr]

Thank you for tagging me, @nemainofthewater

Rules: make a new post with the names of all the files in your WIP folder, regardless of how non-descriptive or ridiculous. let people send you an ask with the title that most intrigues them, and then post a little snippet or tell them something about it! and then tag as many people as you have WIPs.

I'm excluding multichapters that are partially posted and things I'm just not thinking about anymore, but here's some I'm either actively working on or still really want but they're on the backburner. I've done pretty okay finishing some wips this year! there's some that were on the list for a while that are now finished and posted!

MiSa Liability

please leave me alone (shanjiang/buyi/shaoshang)

qjx meet the kid [i published the fic this doc was made for but there's a sequel in progress in it] 

zhou fei and wu chuchu play house

tagging @deepestbluesky @rainsfalling @bisexualshakespeare @bladedweaponsandswishycoats

[dailyasiandramas]

[lunarriviera]

i have finished reboot & i am sad

it's bittersweet—i mean, it was time to be finished with it; i've been watching it literally over the course of the pandemic. but enough! all things must end, even the arduously dragged-out conclusion of a whacked-out chinese tomb raiding drama featuring poisonous gas, hordes of insects, zombies, hand crabs, flying carnivorous clams, and "coffin dew," which like all the rest of those things does not exist. ruminations and pictures and spoilers behind the cut!

1. so why is this xie yuchen the most boring xie yuchen out of all of them? i don't even know this actor's name because i never bothered learning it. also when the hell did he become a doctor and do sketchy operations on people without anaesthesia? he's wearing pink, he's rich, he has the same name; but there the resemblance ends. this is not the xiao hua we know and love. where is my bitchy swishy opera-singing organized crime boss? no wonder there's no chemistry between him and xiazi; this guy barely has a pulse. sorry to this man. nice sweater, tho.

2. i was trying to prove that pangzi says "that's not your xiaoge" (which he doesn't, those are bad subtitles; he just says "that's not xiaoge") and instead captured this adorable picture of drunk bai haotian. xiao bai gets a bad rap—mao xiaotong is adorable and sweet and honestly kinda hot when she's not trapped in a bowl haircut and overalls. i appreciate that wu xie, busily dying of lungs, doesn't have time or patience to explain to her why he's not available, but zhu yilong plays it wisely straight down the middle, face impassive. ship it or don't, he seems to be saying; i don't care, it's not up to me anyway—the viewer can read it however they want. (but wu xie does manhandle her on more than one occasion and that's also kinda hot.)

3. admittedly liu sang is very very pretty but i still don't want him in my pingxie, like mint in my chocolate chip ice cream. no thank you please. i have always considered myself a multishipper, a live-and-let-live fan; but this fandom has taught me i'm monogamous and i guess there's nothing i can do about that. still. look at liu chang's beautiful features. he made me care about jinx beyond just his function as a whump magnet, and that's an achievement. someday maybe his ouxiang will give him the hug he deserves.

4. speaking of beautiful just look at these total idiots. i'm going to miss their stupid faces. xiaoge drinking water, so he can be sober enough to take his drunk husband home and put him to bed. wu xie so plastered that i have inadvertently captured the one (1) image of the most beautiful man in the world making a derp face.

BONUS: whatever this beautiful cranky bitchy "doctor" has going on. which definitely involves feelings he still has for wu xie, after what happened in germany. (you know what happened in germany.)

and that's it, that's a wrap. in the meantime zhu yilong has been in cannes being absolutely heart-stoppingly fucking divine, and i will bet you a hundred flying carnivorous clams that the next time he's there, his film will be in competition. the condé nast cover story didn't hurt. with each entrée he cements his reputation and, more importantly, protects himself from the increasingly nasty sweeps of china "cleaning up" c-ent. i honestly don't know what there is to clean up anymore; there's almost nothing left. immortality and the live-action of tgcf not being released; justice in the dark just abandoned not even halfway through. this doesn't end well.

at least as far as lost tomb goes, though, i've decided i'm proceeding backwards—so next i'm watching sand sea/sha hai, because i want to spend time with mob widow wu xie (qin hao has won me over via gifset) and ji chen's xiazi. until then, pouring one out for li jiale and chuchu. and wu erjing i guess. 干杯!

[qilingxiong]

top unhinged things book xiao hua has done in canon, off the top of my head:

5. loudly told the hei xiazi + chuchu story to Everyone in detail while gossiping at reunion dinner

4. thrown li cu, su wan, yang hao, and liang wan out of a moving train

3. his entire plan in the post-reboot sequels that i still cannot unpack emotionally

2. called wu xie 'beloved' in front of a room of people who actively wanted to kill them

1. sniffed wu xie's ass

[ilgaksu]

Do you have any other ships in dmbj? I know you mostly from your HeiHua, but do you enjoy other ships as well?

I do! I just don't write them and I'm not sure why. I think there's not a story I've felt I both have the energy to write AND that I've compelled to tell about them yet. I am a big fan of ot3 iron triangle, pingxie, some pingxiesang, and I actually find hei xiazi/chuchu interesting. Su Wan/Yang Hao AND Huo Daofu/Yang Hao are ones I really want to write in future though.

I also love reading other people's takes on the Hei Xiazi/Wu Xie/Xiao Hua dynamic where they are all sleeping together in various iterations, I just haven't written it. I suspect part of it is it wouldn't wash in the extended metaphors universe, but I do have canon setting fic I don't consider part of that. I think it's moreso that I don't want to write SH-era dmbj at this point. I can go into why, but that's a whole other thing.

As a rule, I like Liu Sang and I have a lot of thoughts on him, but I'm not sure they're conducive to a ship fic for him. I'm far more fascinated by how much he acts his age in regards to cruelty, for example; I actually put most of my thoughts about him into that AU where Hei Xiazi and Wu Xie are camp counsellors in 90s America. Which. Huh. I guess it just worked out that the AU setting provided the best framework?

Same for Xiao-ge. I have very clear opinions on Xiao-ge and how I'd want to write him.

[thatlittlemouse]

the mute village part of the restart novel was a nice little story, with a fun framing device of being told by multiple people over dinner, I literally cannot understand why it became THAT in the drama (deep sigh)

but anyway, the ending has a few hei xiazi thoughts that I thought were interesting

When the incident in the past happened with chuchu he felt bad about it and lingered a while around her to make sure she's okay, and then later when he met her he still felt somewhat indebted to her

Even if reluctantly he wanted to help her and didn't want her getting hurt again

It seems that he gets soft hearted sometimes, but doesn't really like it. If there's an emotion clouding his judgement he prefers to get rid of it

If relationships are born from cause and effects, he feels most at peace when he closes that loop and leaves that relationship and the emotions tied to it behind

(he feels the most calm when his heart is like a desert? that's depressing actually)

That still begs the question to me about what the people currently in his life are to him, does he also want to close whatever debts he has with them and leave eventually? Or is this mindset mostly applicable to "regular" people since having them in his life wouldn't work out well anyway

Of course my heihua brain is chewing on this, what is xie yuchen to him in this context

After he says goodbye, he gives xiao hua's contact info to her, as someone who is a source of information and an avenue of contact to him

He's definitely someone in his life who he won't or can't get rid of 🧐

In my mind they're an exception to each other when it comes to a lot of things, since they're two people who prefer to not get attached, but I think they're very special to each other, anyway I lost track HEIHUA AM I RIGHT

(also there's a scene earlier where he goes like "these kids are so troublesome" and lists su wan, li cu AND wu xie lol, xiao hua is not in the kids category I guess ;))

[anniebotao3]

The Hairpin

Published 16 November 2021 | T-rated | 1948 words | Oneshot | Ongoing series

Tags: Ji Chong (The Wolf TV)/Xie Yun (Bandits); Xie Yun & Zhou Fei (Bandits); Wang Yi Bo/Xiao Zhan adjascent; Ji Chong (The Wolf TV); Xie Yun (Bandits); Zhou Fei (Bandits); Wu Chuchu (Bandits); Zhang Chenfei (Bandits); Canon Compliant; Crossover Pairings; Episode: s01e06 Legend of Fei; Dialogue Lifted Directly From The Show; Gift Giving; Reference to Light Dom/sub; zswwlsfyyizhanverse: day 4; The Romance of Gifting A Hairpin; Wang Yi Bo/Xiao Zhan | Sean Character Combinations

Part 3: Encounters Across the Jianghu

What follows Xie Yun’s run in with Ji Chong in Huo Lintao’s mountain prison is a daring escape from said prison with Zhou Fei, a dangerous confrontation with Mu Xiaoqiao, and then a trek towards Huarong led by Zhang Chenfei. Despite there being no shortage of excitement, Xie Yun’s fingers, and indeed his thoughts, don’t stray far from the zan placed in his hair or the way Ji Chong’s eyes had lingered on him after he’d placed it there.