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@yueqingyuan
Lend me your daylight
https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_empty_pen/works
"Lend me your daylight" is now finally finished at 35 chapters and 335k words!!! I offer you roleswap Ranwan with Flower!Chu Wanning, freaky Tianwen&Jiangui sex, Mo Nian dying brutally on screen, and also *checks notes* Xu Shuanglin fucking that old man!
I'd be so happy to greet some new people now that i've managed to finish this ueueueueueueuueueue
dl from here
best storylines are the ones where the wildest most off-the-wall shit occurs, one thing after another, unrelenting, and then at the end you realize it’s been happening over the course of like.. just a week. everyone’s been having a HELL of a week in that universe. that shit was happening on a thursday. of all days.
God, Xi Ping and Zhi Xiu have such fantastic chemistry as characters. From the moment they meet, their every interaction is a delight.
Xi Ping drives Zhi Xiu fucking insane (like he does everyone), but Zhi Xiu also clearly gets a kick out of him from jump. He adds him to the selection list just for a laugh after seeing his list of "crimes," and he's openly entertained by his audacity when he talks to Pang Jian and Su Zhun. Zhi Xiu scolds Xi Ping not to be rude out of obligation, but he never actually stops him from back-talking Shed Skins and such later in the novel.
Xi Ping is a fucking menace, but he's his menace. Big, emotional, Way of the Heart-shifting impacts aside, Xi Ping is Zhi Xiu's pet funny little guy. He's the problem that he knows he should be scolding, yet can't help but enjoy. He's like a rascally cat.
And on a serious note, I can't help but think that there's a reason Zhi "do not be a god" Xiu immediately gets along so well with the mortal boy who dares to drink from an immortal's wine pot. Frustrating as Xi Ping is, Zhi Xiu doesn't want to be revered, so of course he gets a kick out of the guy audacious enough to treat him like just another man.
The Tai Sui ending is like. What if Orpheus and Eurydice were brothers instead of lovers. What if Eurydice wanted to go to the underworld, and knowing Orpheus would do anything to chase after her, she sought him out before she died and told him that he musn't? What if Orpheus fought every instinct in his body and didn't go after Eurydice because he trusted her? Because she'd promised they'd see each other again if he'd only loosen the gates to the underworld while she was gone?
What if Orpheus never once looked back because he trusted Eurydice so perfectly, until hundreds of years later the underworld opened its gates to him entirely, and he entered to find no Eurydice after all. What if Orpheus saved every single person in the world except his brother and himself, and Eurydice was the only soul he never got to see again?
I've been thinking a lot about the Turmoilers' plotline in Tai Sui and the way the associated themes are executed. The slow unraveling of the truth that the world of steampunk cultivation we've come to know and love over the course of the novel could not exist without the Turmoilers' suffering. The way that everything technological would topple without the constant brutal resource extraction of the Southern Mines, the way that He's land had to be destroyed and its people had to be starved, disfigured, and exploited as a result. There is no other way for the era of Moon Plated Gold to function.
Tai Sui is a novel about realizing over and over that the world you know and love and live in comfortably is, in fact, a nightmare built on a foundation of horror, exploitation, and lies. It's about peeling back what you've always known to and taken for granted to find the nightmare of the machinery underneath. It's about Xi Ping realizing in the very first arc that Heaven's Design Pavillion protects him, but it does not protect Jiangli. It's about four sets of laws in Wan: for cultivators, for nobles, for people, and for ants. It's about Xi Ping discovering Xuanyin will kill him for the Hidden Bones. It's about Zhao Qindan discovering that her family will sell her for stability and wealth. It's about Xi Ping and Zhi Xiu and Zhou Ying discovering the truth behind the laws of cultivation and the fact that the Way of Heaven leads to nowhere but to fusion with the mountains, that unique and heretical Ways still lead ultimately to "immortality" through freezing/killing your humanity and losing/rewriting yourself.
And in the midst of all that, I think the Turmoilers are the incarnation of that theme that resonates most with my own real life. You grow up privileged and comfortable in a wealthy country only to discover that every comfort you take for granted is built on the back of brutal exploitation of countless foreign strangers. This is not a flaw in the system; the exploitation is an integral cog in the machine of modernity that the whole structure, in its current form, would crumple without. What do you do about it?
Because Tai Sui is not a doomer novel. It's not about just pointing out the horrors of its world to agonize over. It's about a very stubborn group of people who discover the horrors of the world and, over and over, choose to do something to fucking fix it. If cultivation is a nightmare, find a way to change cultivation. If the machine of society cannot function without the Turmoilers' suffering, build a better machine and find a way to dismantle the old one. Fight the very might of Heaven for it if you have to.
It means a lot to me to have a story that says "Yes, the exploitative nature of the world is a feature of the system, not an accident. But yes, you can and must work with allies to dismantle that system and build something better anyway." The problems of the world are systemic and baked into the structure of modern society. They are not something that can be fixed by getting rid of individual bad actors. But systemic problems are not unfixable ones.
It's a lot more resonant to me than fantasy stories where the problems can be fixed by killing the evil king, y'know?
i don't care what anyone says i love it when a historical novel slides in a historical figure all casual. every single time i am pointing yelling screaming cheering like YOU!!!!! I KNOW YOU!!!!!! FROM HISTORY
book: they ordered their drinks at ye olde tavern and there was a guy there. and he said sup i'm william but you can call me will...... shakespeare......
me: omg it's william. of shakespeare fame
book: he was scribbling with his quill pen mumbling to himself "hmm what if there was a play.... but it was WITHIN the play..."
me: omg hamlet.........................
pythagoras making a cameo in a novel about vampires in ancient greece or whatever: oh didn't see you there...... i was busy thinking about my theorem #mytheorem
me: no way....... just like when he said that in real life.......
Case File vol. 4
Xie Qingcheng: Reveals his tragic backstory, a tale of compassion fatigue, the court of public opinion, grievous bodily harm, shady medical practices, and murder that spans three chapters.
Meatbun: Friendly reminder, in case you forgot!!! He Yu has been playing Celine Dion’s My Heart Will Go On on repeat in the background the entire time Xie Qingcheng has been talking. #appropriatemoodmusic
The wider cultivation world's POV on Wangxian is incredibly funny cause on one hand you've got Jin Guangyao treating it like it's his comfort trashy soap opera, while Lan Xichen is well aware what's going on from day one and goes through the full parabolic arc from "oh he has a little crush that's cute" to "he's mourning him like a grieving widow maybe I should hide all the branding irons". The juniors take one look at the whole situation and go "huh I don't know why Lan Wangji is sleeping with this crazy guy we found in a ditch but whatever makes him happy man 👍" Jin Ling finds his uncles so aggressively endearing he is forced to speedrun Unlearning Homophobia and ends up giving Wei Wuxian a shovel talk that starts and ends with "be faithful to him or istg I will kill you with my own two hands." (he is thirteen)
And then there's Jiang Chang. Not only was he blissfully unaware that Wei Wuxian and Lan Zhan could even hold a civil conversation with each other, he also somehow went through Wei Wuxian's entire first life thinking that his brother was straight.
Tai Sui Doodles Masterlist
here's the list of the doodles I made as I was going through the novel for folks who want to look at them but avoid spoilers!!
Midnight Song (1)
Midnight Song (2)
The Dragon Bites Its Tail
Fragrant Jade Miasma
Demon Country (1)
Demon Country (2)
The Mountain Falls (1)
The Mountain Falls (2)
Indignant Cicadas (1)
Indignant Cicadas (2)
Indignant Cicadas (3)
Indignant Cicadas (4)
Interlude (1)
Interlude (2)
Traveler Abroad (1)
Traveler Abroad (2)
Traveler Abroad (3)
Unbound Knife (1)
Unbound Knife (2)
Unbound Knife (3)
Unbound Knife (4)
Interlude (3)
Unbound Knife (5)
Unbound Knife (6)
Unbound Knife (7)
Interlude (4)
Eternal Flame (1)
Eternal Flame (2)
The Storm Begins (1)
The Storm Begins (2)
Flower in the Mirror (1)
Flower in the Mirror (2)
Tomb of the Sage (1)
Tomb of the Sage (2)
Tomb of the Sage (3)
A Life of Regret (1)
A Life of Regret (2)
A Life of Regret (3)
Conclusion (1)
Conclusion (2)
Extras (1)
Extras (2)
mingqians from last year 🌊⚔️
If a fantasy world has an ancient tree of wisdom, that means it must also have young trees that are dumb as shit. Just giving terrible advice like, "the evil wizard is kinda hot"'
were you sent here to die? edit made for auctions as threatened, for @lily-ocho ♡
brushing up on the calligraphy -_-
good news! all the ink stayed INSIDE the inkwell this time at least
WHO THE FUCK IS HUA CHENG???
Ending is sad: ouch
Ending is happy: nice
Ending is bittersweet: I’m going to think about this every day for the rest of my life
Started re-reading tgcf and remembered how much I love his character design
a good ship is always improved by having at least one other random character who is so so fucking mad that the ship is happening and is either seething about it or actively trying to break them up. i see the appeal of "everyone else played matchmaker and they're all cheering to see the ship holding hands!!" but i need at least one character, with any motivation, to be the world's pettiest hater about it come hell or high water. bonus points if the beef is completely onesided and they still get warmly invited to the wedding anyway
