Think For Yourself

I’m not from around here.

[dillytaunt]

I’m new to tumblr, I don’t get it, and I don’t really care anymore so I’m going to just keep pressing buttons.

If I make some fauxpas, oh well. I typically just comment on and reblog whatever I want while using anywhere from 0-50 tags. Depending on my mood.

I don’t understand tumblr boundaries so to me there are none 🥂

This is mainly for tgcf, maybe some mdzs. I might even start ranting about the mongol invasions from the 13th century at some point. Who knows.

No, I didn’t come from twitter. I’ve never used twitter. I came from a strange place called “offline” after years of an intentional self-imposed social media blackout.

(But if you do ever want to talk about the mongols hmu)

[heartinhyacinth]

// Hualian on love and kindness //

For Hua Cheng, he teaches us that one’s love for another should be about who that person is, not who they can be to you.

For Xie Lian, he teaches us that one should be kind for the sake of being kind.

Neither should be about what you will get in return for your kindness or love. Neither should be transactional or withheld if one can’t “pay”—metaphorically or, concerning the gods, literally.

[mdzs-owns-my-ass-i-guess]

Ive said it before, Xie Lian as Heavenly Emperor isnt an idea im really excited about, but if he were to become heavenly emperor, i think he would be exactly like the stereotype of the chill boss that's never around and lets everyone do whatever they want on the condition that the work gets done in the end

Feng Xin and Mu Qing are fighting over who gets to kill monster of the week? Thats fine, as long as you kill it. Roll dice or smth idc just help the villagers.

You can have 34 girlfriends at the same time, I guess, Pei Ming, but make sure you deal with whatever has been causing unrest in your territory meanwhile.

Everyone leave Ling Wen alone. Just leave her be.

Rain Master is allowed to bring in her farm animals to the great hall if she wants to i guess

Yes you can play music in the heavens but keep it low during night time

If you have any complaints, too bad. If nobody is dead or dying, I don't need to know. If you do disturb me, you may have to deal with my husband so just figure it out.

[dillytaunt]

I want to post a rant about Mei Nianqing but I’m holding myself back and I don’t know why. 🤔

[dillytaunt]

Ppl out here doin’ mental gymnastics to make Jun Wu seem more palatable 👀 I’m sorry bro but he is actually not just a MisunderstoodSadboi™

He is a monster incarnate.

[skyazureeclipse]

self-indulgent “Things to never say to someone who just came out” TGCF edition, happy pride month!

and spoilers for plot of tgcf:

[dillytaunt]

Happy Pride Month!! Saw this and just had to reblog 😂

[dillytaunt]

Wei Wuxian flute battle soundtrack when? I need that haunting, heart pounding donghua music 🥺 no dialogue, zombie moans dimmed, just straight up spectral rage and melody and battle beats.

I swear if I could blast that while cleaning, laundry would become a moral reckoning. Mopping? A battle for the soul of my household. Dishes? Consider them exorcised.

[dillytaunt]

Some beautiful soul out there did the thing 🥹

Pure Donghua Battle Beats «— YouTube link to Yiling Patriarch shredding it on the ghost flute. 15 mins of unadulterated spook that only gets more intense as it goes.

ALSO. I’d like to say I think it’s a crime that the donghua flutist didn’t get credit. I could not find any information about who the actual musician was. However Qiu Niu who did the audio drama flute sounds a lot like the donghua flute so imma just put that out there.

And it’s a further crime they didn’t put the flute in the ost

[dillytaunt]

Why is it common knowledge that the flashbacks in Volume 6 (7s) take place starting 4+ years after the fall of Xianle? As in, they’ve been on the run for 4+ years. I can’t find anything to support this in the text, and there’s a lot of context clues that suggest it hasn’t even been a full year.

Please point me in the right direction to confirm this.

Is that timeline fanon or canon?

[dillytaunt]

The correct answer is: Time is a construct. Pain is eternal.

There are many clues that suggest this is year 1, such as his first wake up scene where he’s surprised he has the shackle, the fact that he’d only had one incident of forgetting to eat which suggests he’s still freshly mortal, the displaced citizens. Then the more telling events like it being the first Zhongyuan to pass Xie Lian without him noticing. (Maybe he’d just been doing good with eating for a couple years and suddenly slipped, maybe the nightmare was so disorienting he forgot he has a shackle, maybe nobody was celebrating Zhongyuan during the wars aftermath.)

Conversely, there are things like the day his parents die is the day Yong’an completes construction of their palace in Yong’an (did they start building before Xianle fell? Or are they construction wizards? Or was it just remodeling?) and the fact that Lang Ying has a seriously progressed case of Human Face Disease. (Although there might be a time skip between the palace being built and the Xie Lian attacking)

And the fact that it says “a few years ago when Xianle fell” during the interaction with white no-face on the mountain (but define “fall” was it when the gates were sieged, was it the pagoda, the disease, or when the last soldier died on the battlefield?”

All this to say. Fuck it, I don’t care anymore.

Also, thank you @quetzalpapalotl for helping me sort through this

[mxtxfanatic]

@dillytaunt idk why I just remembered this, but more fodder for your musings: gods without followers really do just faze out of existence just like ghosts who lose their obsessions do, but also like ghosts, they can survive long past the point of abandonment if they have an adequate enough obsession, even if they never re-cultivate to the point of ascension. This all comes from the new additions to Xiao Ying's character from the revised version.

[dillytaunt]

Interesting! I like that. I also like that ghosts are sustained solely from their own internal desires and gods solely from the external desires of others.

🤔

Does that technically make fallen gods ghosts? Since they’re supposed to be dead but their existence is dependent on attachment? Fascinating. And Hua Cheng.. a ghost turned god.. oop that’s a tailspin, I’ll stop.

Thank you for sharing! I had a fight with jjwxc and we’re longer friends, so I have no way of reading the revised version anymore 😭

[dillytaunt]

Why is it common knowledge that the flashbacks in Volume 6 (7s) take place starting 4+ years after the fall of Xianle? As in, they’ve been on the run for 4+ years. I can’t find anything to support this in the text, and there’s a lot of context clues that suggest it hasn’t even been a full year.

Please point me in the right direction to confirm this.

Is that timeline fanon or canon?

[dillytaunt]

Just thinkin’ bout how Xie Lian wasn’t even lent enough spiritual power to have a conversation through the spirit array until Hua Cheng came along.

[ghost-kings-court-jester]

I am a left-handed Hua Cheng truther. Still, I do think that even with the vision issues and left-handedness, he should have learnt to write at least a little neater after 800 years (especially since he was learning literally everything else), which has led me to the funny, probably wrong concept of Hua Cheng went maybe it is cause I’m a leftie and has learnt to write with his left hand and magically dry the ink while writing (as a leftie I know real ink calligraphy scares all left-handed people). Still, the second Xie Lian brings it up; he is like fuck I don’t know how to write properly with my right hand, and he wants to teach me and spend time with me, so ah, cursed right-handed calligraphy which I haven’t done in like 600 years it is. Like he’s committed to the lie immediately for Gege time which is valid of him.

[dillytaunt]

Hua Chengs handwriting is described hilariously and I’ve thought about it too, but not from the perspective of left-handed writing. So I love this take.

He’s so good at artwork and drawing, but soooo bad at calligraphy and the only reasons I could come up with were:

1) Writing (unlike art) is uniform, cold, and performative. It lacks expression(or is supposed to) and Hua Cheng is expression. His handwriting isn’t bad because it lacks anything.. it just has too much. Too much feeling. Too much expression. Too much artistic flair. Too much Hua Cheng.

2) He just wants gege to teach him, and refuses to learn on purpose.

But adding the struggle of left handed writing in a left-to-right format is a whole new challenge, especially with them sleeves 😂

[dillytaunt]

Since the shackles were man-made and not part of heaven.. then Xie Lian didn’t ascend 3 times, he went through 3 heavenly tribulations.

And he did the last one in his sleep and had the nerve to describe it as “having weird dreams.”

Legendary.

[mxtxfanatic]

Real question: can gods truly be exiled back into mortality? According to a response from mxtx to a different question, I’d say the implication is no.

[dillytaunt]

Using contextual information, they technically can. When Jun Wu was banished from heaven, he just wasn’t allowed to go back. His power was stripped from him by the gods by way of them descending onto his believers like a pack of wolves. *Every believer of his that changed their faith weakened him until he probs had no more power than an average cultivator.

So banished from heaven ≠ banished to mortality, unless you’re shackled and cut off from your power. *Or you have 0 believers left

Xie Lian was an especially annoying splotch for Jun Wu because Hua Cheng was a Grand Believer, so Xie Lian was technically never not a god.

Editing to @silver-cyn because I didn’t reblog this right. But yeah, you’re mostly right as far as I can see. When it says they “fade from existence” I don’t think that means they physically disappear, they are just forgotten and once forgotten you die like a mortal. Just another ant in the anthill. Pei Xiu was shackled though, I thought. He got shackled at the beginning iirc, I’ll look later

[mxtxfanatic]

Hm, but does being as weak as a mortal count as being a mortal? I say this because in one tgcf interview, the interviewer asked if Shi Qingxuan will have a better next life once reincarnated, and mxtx responds that heavenly officials don’t reincarnate, despite the fact that Shi Qingxuan is technically no longer a heavenly official (though even then, I wonder about the logistics of that, because his demotion was neither direct banishment nor a loss of believers). So there’s something that ascension does to mortals that’s irreversible, making it impossible for them to ever live (or die) like mortals once they’ve achieved it. I also believe that—since tgcf’s cultivation system tends to operate more closely with genre conventions—heavenly officials only live so long based off their spiritual energy, and the shackles serve that purpose for the banished, though there’s the question of where the shackles get their spiritual energy from if not their host god.

I feel like it might have gotten lost in my question, but I do agree that Xie Lian might have been going through tribulations rather than ascensions because there was never a process by which he became mortal again. He was always a god, just one barred from the heavens, and he only so happened to circumvent that banishment through multiple tribulations, the last of which was simply living long enough to collect the necessary amount of merits through trash-collecting.

[dillytaunt]

I dunno, cus I’m like.. If you can die from starvation and old age, infection etc, then I’d say yes, being as weak as a mortal makes you a mortal. The only difference being what they prefer to call themselves.

If you derive your immortality and power from believers and faith, then once that power is gone.. why would you still be a god?

There’s a part that talks about how gods fall naturally and I’ll have to try and find it sometime because it’s probably pretty telling for these specific answers we’re looking for.

Problem is, I have no freakin clue which book it’s in because so much info is given by way of passing commentary 😂

As always, if it’s tgcf I will veer so hard off topic we can’t tell where we started and still be ok with it lmaooo I get lost in questions like it’s a hobby.

SQX is one big question mark for me. He Xuan took the powers but I have no idea how and no idea what that means for Qingxuan. I can’t even guess as of now without it being just pure unadulterated baseless speculation (which I’m not opposed to, but I typically don’t post it lmao)

[mxtxfanatic]

I think now we may be getting into the semantics of the naming in tgcf, cause while they do call themselves gods in their titles, they’re actually not gods as we would think of them in English but immortals. They cultivate to immortality and once they reach a threshold, they ascend and become worshipped “as gods.” At the same time, immortals derive their power from worshippers, and that power fuels their continued everlasting youth and lifespan, but before they ascend, they gain power through cultivation and merits, which is how Xie Lian made it back to the heavens for round 3. Unascended cultivators can cultivate their way out of suffering from sickness, starvation, etc. before they ascend, too, but the only thing they can’t escape without ascending is death by aging, even if it is slowed. And both immortals and mortals can be plainly killed.

Idk what comment about other fallen gods you’re talking about, but it may likely be around the blackwater arc (and if not and I happen to come across it, I’ll let you know), but He Xuan didn’t take Shi Qingxuan’s powers. He never went through with his threat to switch Shi Qingxuan’s fortune, but before that, Shi Qingxuan started losing his powers the moment he realized what his brother had done.

[illuminatedferret]

A couple comments, if you don't mind me piggy-backing- first, both trials like the one Shi Wudu experiences and the ascensions heavenly officials experience upon, uh, ascending are called Heavenly Tribulations in the novel. They seem to me to be the same thing.

Also, it's the act of ascending that removes someone from the cycle of reincarnation, so even if Shi Qingxuan did have his godhood stripped from him, it seems his soul can't just be shoved back into the cycle. And I think that's the only true difference between heavenly officials and mortals/ghosts. Beyond that, they're simply humans with a whole lotta power.

The falling gods thing sounds like something that might've come up in Book 5. Perhaps in Mei Nianqing's 30+ page monologue? But speaking of him, if the only way someone can escape death by aging is ascending, what's your thoughts on how he's still alive, kicking, and youthful by present-day canon?

[dillytaunt]

I don't mind at all!

From my understanding, the word "ascend" is only used for the first heavenly tribulation. Ascend is step 1. After that you have your "2nd tribulation" or your "3rd" etc. So when they say "He ascended again?!" in reference to Xie Lian, they are not thinking "He's had a third tribulation?" because that means something else. The tribulations following ascension bring more power once passed. The ascension (basically) just opens the doors to heaven and welcomes you to a new power source.

And this is perf because we have the receipts now:

"For example, a heavenly official who managed horses was likely quite comfortable in their position. People always needed reliable transportation, and they couldn’t very well leave the condition of their horses and carriages to the whims of fate; who wouldn’t want their horses to be strong and healthy, and their travels safe? Thus, this sort of heavenly official would always see regular devotion. "However, what if one day mortals discovered something completely novel that ran faster than a horse? When this new invention inevitably overtook horses, worshippers of the heavenly official who presided over horses would decrease in turn. Heavenly officials such as these made up most of the heavens, blinking to life and flashing by like shooting stars. "This was the cruelest way gods declined because the process could not be reversed. A heavenly official in that situation was destined to watch their own decline until they disappeared entirely—unless they jumped down from the heavens, returned to being mortal, re-cultivated a new path, and then ascended once more as a brand-new god. Not everyone possessed the courage and fortune to do something like that."

Vol.5 Ch.79 7s

I really feel like this is pretty cut and dry in terms of explaining what happens to gods who have 0 believers left. They will die if they don't figure out a way to ascend again. And when they do, it will be their new first ascension.

What I love that you brought into the discussion is the reincarnation. That is a part of tgcf I hadn't paid much attention to and how it ties in. I'll be looking out for it

Editing: oh shoot I totally forgot to address MNQ. That's a loaded topic, but to keep it short, MNQ is "other" and he honestly sketches me out. He is the Birth of Old Age, Sickness, and Death. I have my own theories on that but this isn't the place lmaoo. (His pals are stuck on Jun Wu's face yet their bodies still became independent, sentient, mountain spirits. That's some next level shit.)

[dillytaunt]

Since the shackles were man-made and not part of heaven.. then Xie Lian didn’t ascend 3 times, he went through 3 heavenly tribulations.

And he did the last one in his sleep and had the nerve to describe it as “having weird dreams.”

Legendary.

[mxtxfanatic]

Real question: can gods truly be exiled back into mortality? According to a response from mxtx to a different question, I’d say the implication is no.

[dillytaunt]

Using contextual information, they technically can. When Jun Wu was banished from heaven, he just wasn’t allowed to go back. His power was stripped from him by the gods by way of them descending onto his believers like a pack of wolves. *Every believer of his that changed their faith weakened him until he probs had no more power than an average cultivator.

So banished from heaven ≠ banished to mortality, unless you’re shackled and cut off from your power. *Or you have 0 believers left

Xie Lian was an especially annoying splotch for Jun Wu because Hua Cheng was a Grand Believer, so Xie Lian was technically never not a god.

Editing to @silver-cyn because I didn’t reblog this right. But yeah, you’re mostly right as far as I can see. When it says they “fade from existence” I don’t think that means they physically disappear, they are just forgotten and once forgotten you die like a mortal. Just another ant in the anthill. Pei Xiu was shackled though, I thought. He got shackled at the beginning iirc, I’ll look later

[mxtxfanatic]

Hm, but does being as weak as a mortal count as being a mortal? I say this because in one tgcf interview, the interviewer asked if Shi Qingxuan will have a better next life once reincarnated, and mxtx responds that heavenly officials don’t reincarnate, despite the fact that Shi Qingxuan is technically no longer a heavenly official (though even then, I wonder about the logistics of that, because his demotion was neither direct banishment nor a loss of believers). So there’s something that ascension does to mortals that’s irreversible, making it impossible for them to ever live (or die) like mortals once they’ve achieved it. I also believe that—since tgcf’s cultivation system tends to operate more closely with genre conventions—heavenly officials only live so long based off their spiritual energy, and the shackles serve that purpose for the banished, though there’s the question of where the shackles get their spiritual energy from if not their host god.

I feel like it might have gotten lost in my question, but I do agree that Xie Lian might have been going through tribulations rather than ascensions because there was never a process by which he became mortal again. He was always a god, just one barred from the heavens, and he only so happened to circumvent that banishment through multiple tribulations, the last of which was simply living long enough to collect the necessary amount of merits through trash-collecting.

[dillytaunt]

I dunno, cus I’m like.. If you can die from starvation and old age, infection etc, then I’d say yes, being as weak as a mortal makes you a mortal. The only difference being what they prefer to call themselves.

If you derive your immortality and power from believers and faith, then once that power is gone.. why would you still be a god?

There’s a part that talks about how gods fall naturally and I’ll have to try and find it sometime because it’s probably pretty telling for these specific answers we’re looking for.

Problem is, I have no freakin clue which book it’s in because so much info is given by way of passing commentary 😂

As always, if it’s tgcf I will veer so hard off topic we can’t tell where we started and still be ok with it lmaooo I get lost in questions like it’s a hobby.

SQX is one big question mark for me. He Xuan took the powers but I have no idea how and no idea what that means for Qingxuan. I can’t even guess as of now without it being just pure unadulterated baseless speculation (which I’m not opposed to, but I typically don’t post it lmao)

[mxtxfanatic]

I think now we may be getting into the semantics of the naming in tgcf, cause while they do call themselves gods in their titles, they’re actually not gods as we would think of them in English but immortals. They cultivate to immortality and once they reach a threshold, they ascend and become worshipped “as gods.” At the same time, immortals derive their power from worshippers, and that power fuels their continued everlasting youth and lifespan, but before they ascend, they gain power through cultivation and merits, which is how Xie Lian made it back to the heavens for round 3. Unascended cultivators can cultivate their way out of suffering from sickness, starvation, etc. before they ascend, too, but the only thing they can’t escape without ascending is death by aging, even if it is slowed. And both immortals and mortals can be plainly killed.

Idk what comment about other fallen gods you’re talking about, but it may likely be around the blackwater arc (and if not and I happen to come across it, I’ll let you know), but He Xuan didn’t take Shi Qingxuan’s powers. He never went through with his threat to switch Shi Qingxuan’s fortune, but before that, Shi Qingxuan started losing his powers the moment he realized what his brother had done.

[dillytaunt]

Hmm, it was something like “if someone is the god of horses and like a car is invented and they stop worshipping him” but that’s paraphrasing and it obv wasn’t a car but I can’t remember the words used idk if that jogs your memory. There was better information before and after it about ascensions or just gods/mortals in general.

I probably won’t be rereading for a while (I tried and mq/fx actually started actively pissing me off enough that I stopped 😂) plus jjwxc locked me out of my account after stealing my money.

So im not gunna go quote diving rn. When I do re-read, I’ll no doubt be posting a storm

[mxtxfanatic]

I remember that! Found the quote:

Currently, Jun Wu was the ruler, and hundreds of heavenly officials formed the Upper Court, making the current dynasty, and the government before them belonged to a different dynasty. Just as how regimes change in the mortal realm, the heavenly realm would also go through dynasty changes. Although the time it’d take would be very, very long, but fundamentally they’re the same. New worshippers would replace the old, and new gods would replace the old ones. Sometimes, the decline of a god wasn’t caused by any mistakes he might’ve done and was banished as a result, but because another, more powerful god had appeared, for no other reason than because people’s lives and beliefs gradually changed and no longer needed him. For example, a heavenly official who controlled horses must dwell very well because people couldn’t leave their horses and carriages alone when they were in need of transportation. Who wouldn’t want their horses to be strong and healthy, their travels safe? Thus, his donations would never cease. However, if one day mortals discovered something completely new that ran faster than horses, then when this new invention overtook horses, worshippers of this heavenly official who controlled horses would inevitably decrease. Such heavenly officials who flash by like shooting stars make up the majority of the heavens. This way of decline was the cruelest, because the process could not be turned around. Unless that heavenly official jumped down from the heavens and return to being mortal to re-cultivate a new path, to become a brand new god and ascend, then he would be destined to watch his own decline until he disappeared. However, not everyone possessed the courage and fortune. The gods of the previous dynasty were said to have faded thus, and some also said it was because they caused a great calamity, fought a chaotic battle, which was why they all fell from grace at the same time. But, it couldn’t be proven, and it wasn’t important anymore.

—Chapt. 151: Panic Left and Right; East or West Undecided, fan translation (@illuminatedferret I was too lazy to go through the volumes, but this is the the kiln arc when they're finding the murals in the divine temples)

Now we know that that generation of gods were all killed by Jun Wu, but the information we’re told is still true because we have those 33 nameless gods as examples. They could have chosen to go back down to earth and supplement their lost spiritual energy with active cultivation, but they chose not to because they thought it was beneath them and ended up fading instead.

[dillytaunt]

Yes, thank you you beautiful beautiful person. I was fr torn between going offline or making myself not be lazy. I still chose the latter, but it was cus the task became less dauting haha so in the 7seas version it's the same except we seem to be interpreting it completely differently.

"This was the cruelest way gods declined because the process could not be reversed. A heavenly official in that situation was destined to watch their own decline until they disappeared entirely—unless they jumped down from the heavens, returned to being mortal, re-cultivated a new path, and then ascended once more as a brand-new god."

Vol. 5 Ch. 79 7s

This part in particular. "Could not be reversed," Returned to being mortal," and "Brand-new god." in particular.

This is not a supplementation, a continuation, or a top-up. It is starting fresh. from ground 0, with nothing. And if they don't, then they die.

So I'm gunna have to hard disagree with the idea that "gods are always gods" especially since that passage is pretty explicit with saying they are not gods anymore once they lose their followers.

If they ascended again it would be a 1st tribulation.

[dillytaunt]

Wei Wuxian flute battle soundtrack when? I need that haunting, heart pounding donghua music 🥺 no dialogue, zombie moans dimmed, just straight up spectral rage and melody and battle beats.

I swear if I could blast that while cleaning, laundry would become a moral reckoning. Mopping? A battle for the soul of my household. Dishes? Consider them exorcised.

[ghost-kings-court-jester]

It’s been months but I’m still thinking about this tweet that said out off every character from Xianle that we meet, Hua Cheng is the most representative of their love for the arts, for riches and beauty.

Like truly he in many ways comes to personify Xianle in a way, both in the high society luxurious culture that Xianle was famous for but also he’s the orphan from the four famous tales making him the representation of Xie Lians care for the common people. Like he is both the lowest of the low and someone who’s kept the Xianle ways alive.

Like all my brain is thinking of is how Xie Lian distanced himself from all that to cultivate, then to become a God, then a poor peasant and how homesick he’s been his whole life.

Only for his husband who was a poor peasant, then a solder, then a king who represents everything Xianle stood for and how their stories are going backwards and forwards and how Xianle is gone but how Hua Cheng embody all of Xianles culture from the poor to the rich and and how he feels like home to Xie Lian now.

[shijiujun]

OMG DAMN HANDSOME NEW OFFICIAL HUA CHENG ART BY GEAROUS FOR HUA CHENG’S BIRTHDAY!!!