Hua Cheng is so Cinderella-coded
that one new image of the Little Soldier. This one.
You tell me he died with a sword in one hand and a flower in the other and you expect me to be normal about this?!?! 😭😭😭
user-needs-new-hyperfixation reblogged
Rereading volume one I think it's funny that both Banyue and Fangxin had their dramas play out within like 150-300 years of the main story, but they're looked at as almost semi-mythical rumors. It's like if we went, "Though most of what is known of him is steeped in myth and shrouded by time, we are at least relatively sure that Napoleon Bonaparte was a real person."
Anonymous asked:
Trick or Treat with Xie Lian please 🥺 ?
Boop 🐾🐾
And many boops to you Nonny!
Xie Lian picks through the stalls of the marketplace, bowing and smiling to the vendors as they call for him. Five years he’s lived here now, and still they have not bored of him.
They also have not forgotten who he is and what that means – he might as well have a forcefield around him, for how much space he gets in the otherwise crowded and jostling market. He buys a few trinkets, strange little curiosities of little value other than amusement, and overpays for all of them. It had taken a couple of years for him to be comfortable spending Hua Cheng’s money so freely, but eventually the incessant whining and grumbling of “Gege, that’s what it’s there for,” had worn him down. (He really has spoiled his husband terribly.) And anyway, he likes supporting the citizens of Ghost City, and it only bolsters their love for Hua Cheng.
He spots a new stall at the end of an alley and approaches it eagerly, lured by the lovely calligraphy of the signage and the sweetness of the vendor’s smile beneath the veil covering where the top part of her face should be.
“Good evening!” He isn’t entirely sure it is evening; it is always dusk in Ghost City. “You’re new here, aren’t you? Your stall is very beautiful.”
The ghost bows, the rings on a flesh hand clacking against the bones of her other as she presses them together.
“Thank you, Your Highness.” Ah, he’d almost hoped for someone who did not know who he was, if only for the break in routine. But the gossips have beat him to the stall, evidently. “Can this lowly servant interest you in any wares?”
He looks over her spread and barely contains the urge to laugh. She sells calligraphy supplies; beautiful kits of brushes and ink and paper in artfully carved and painted wooden boxes. But what nearly makes him laugh aloud is the one that most catches his eye: a set intended for a child. There are characters already printed on the paper in fine translucent lines which can be copied over, and the brushes are short and squat and easy to hold.
He’s almost snickering as he passes her twice the value of the kit in coins.
He’s gotten better at buying gifts.
Anonymous asked:
Hello, can I ask from both this ask game :
https://www.tumblr.com/threecheersforinking/677824836625694720/anime-ask-game?source=share
https://www.tumblr.com/rafael-silva/90297624190/send-me-a-fandom?source=share
For series : Moriarty the Patriot and Tian Guan Ci Fu....
Thanks ⭐
First One, MtP version:
Send me an anime (preferably one I’ve seen) and I’ll tell you my
Favorite Character: William or Albert depending on the day
Favorite Arc/Episode/Scene: Chapter 67. Just Chapter 67. I love it so dearly.
Character I Think is Underrated: Mycroft I guess?
Character I Think is Overrated: uhhhhh I'm personally kind of meh about Moran? I don't dislike him I just don't think about him much? The playing card thing with William is very sweet though.
Favorite Ship/Pairing: Sherliam, obvs, followed very closely by Mycal.
Something I Love About the Show/Movie: the trajectory towards hope. It could so easily have been a tragedy, but having suicidal characters whose arc could have very "naturally" concluded in their deaths instead live and push forward? Just makes me very happy.
First One, TGCF version:
Send me an anime (preferably one I’ve seen) and I’ll tell you my
Favorite Character: I love both of the mains but I think Hua Cheng might have the tiniest fractional lead? I dunno. Both of Hualian lol.
Favorite Arc/Episode/Scene: I'm just a sap for all the romantic bits, but I especially love "Only after having met you did I rediscover that it's such a simple thing to be happy." More a favourite line I suppose haha! But that just sticks with me so much.
Character I Think is Underrated: Qi Rong. I love that little gremlin. He's terrible and he makes me cackle.
Character I Think is Overrated: I'm always a little puzzled by fic and stuff about Shi Wudu. No hate, he just didn't really leave an impression on me at all.
Favorite Ship/Pairing: Hualian. I am not a very original person 😂
Something I Love About the Show/Movie: (I realize I keep referring to the book here rather than the existing donghua. Whoops. 😅) I am really just in this one for the romance. Romance for romance's sake. It's lovely and I love it. But also all those out of pocket bits like "the heavenly city is a giant transformer that does battle with a huge statue of the mc powered by true love's kiss and wielding a sword made out of several of his acquaintances" are so funny.
Second One, MtP version:
The first character I first fell in love with: William
The character I never expected to love as much as I do now: Sherlock lmao
The character everyone else loves that I don’t: In more recent times within the fandom it seems Milverton has become something of a dark horse fave and I just. I do not get it. But glad y'all are having fun.
The character I love that everyone else hates: I dunno?? I've repeatedly turned Mycroft into some kind of supernaturally perfect daddy dom Gary Stu, which people could justifiably hate, but I seem to have successfully found my audience for that so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
The character I used to love but don’t any longer: Huh. Don't think I have any of these.
The character I would totally smooch: Bond. He just seems like he'd be really great for a quick friendly smooch and wouldn't make this whole self-insert scenario weird and complicated 😂
The character I’d want to be like: Also Bond, actually. He's got this specific kind friendly ease and confidence I would like to have
The character I’d slap: I feel like Moran needs a friendly slap now and again just to keep him humble lmao
A pairing that I love: Just to branch off from the usual Sherliam and Mycal answer, I also like Bond/Hudson
A pairing that I despise: I guess the closest I come would be Milverton/Ruskin?? But even then it's like. I don't really put energy into despising ships I don't like, I just avoid them and enjoy the things I do like.
Second One, TGCF version:
The first character I first fell in love with: I fell in love with Hualian at the same time, when an amv happened across my youtube dash that heavily featured the scene of them walking through the bloody forest in the wedding clothes with the umbrella. The gothic fairytale romance of it all enchanted me right from the get-go.
The character I never expected to love as much as I do now: Yin Yu maybe? I don't spend a lot of time thinking about him but when I do I'm immensely fond of him.
The character everyone else loves that I don’t: I like Mu Qing but I'm nowhere near as invested in him as a lot of people seem to be.
The character I love that everyone else hates: Qi Rong maybe kinda?
The character I used to love but don’t any longer: Again, idk lol
The character I would totally smooch: Yushi Huang
The character I’d want to be like: Hua Cheng.
The character I’d slap: Pei Ming just cuz that's basically what he's there for lmao
A pairing that I love: side-stepping the obvious again, I quite like the thought of Fenglian having a very innocent but meaningful crush on each other as teenagers
A pairing that I despise: again, wouldn't quite say "despise" but I am baffled by Qi Rong/Lang Qianqiu
I always find it fun to watch fanvids and imagine what someone who knows nothing about a series would think based on the video (is this a weird hobby? 😅) and with a lot of TGCF vids I always just imagine someone like --
smol child with bandaged eye grows into man with eyepatch: ✅
teenager in between who is clearly the same guy but has two eyes: ?????
For the tropes ask game, how about #10 and #36 for sherliam or #60 and #100 with beefleaf? 👀 (Also sorry if this ask got sent multiple times, my phone is bonkers 🥲)
Don't worry, it didn't send multiple times! And I'll do both!
10. Airport/Travel AU and 36. Text/Letter Fic: this is less an AU and more a fic I have actually considered writing and would love to read if it already exists. Sherlock's travels during the timeskip as told through letters he and Liam wrote each other. Part silliness, part pining, and part barely-disguised Victorian sexting. If I was writing this one I would go really heavy on the period voice: probably read a bunch of actual letters from the time and try to style it after them while still maintaining the characters' own voices. I think it would be a fun challenge, but also one I do not have the energy for atm lol.
60. Poorly Timed Confession and 100. Accidentally Saving the Day OOoooh. Hmm. I really want Shi Qingxuan tragically confessing their love while He Xuan is holding Shi Wudu's decapitated head, but I don't know how that plays into saving the day. (It's a little late lol) Maybe it's later, when He Xuan appears as Hua Cheng and slaps Shi Qingxuan across the courtyard. Maybe Shi Qingxuan recognizes him, calls after him, "I love you, you know. Still. I always have." And he kind of freezes in place, just radiating confusion and anger and helpless love. And he stays. He doesn't go back to Shi Qingxuan, doesn't speak a word to them. But he stays, and keeps feeding power into the circle, and that actually ends up being a significant part in turning the tide.
hey wanna see a delightful little snippet of animation I just noticed? Heaven Official's Blessing season 2 episode 1, about 13 minutes in, when Xie Lian bows and Jun Wu pulls him up, Xie Lian's hair is draped over Jun Wu's arm and Jun Wu sort of turns his hand and strokes the hair through his fingers and I am like OH YOU CREEP (and mad props to the animators)
RIP Hua Cheng you would have loved Madonna Like a Prayer
user-needs-new-hyperfixation reblogged
headcanon that transmasc Xie Lian gave himself magical top surgery but not magical bottom surgery because having neither titties nor a penis makes him the most aerodynamic martial god he can possibly be send tweet
If you're still doing the headcanon game, how about the best of the besties, the absolute icon, Shi Qingxuan? 🍃💖🍃
The Bestie!!! 😄
(Using they/them pronouns overall for simplicity's sake here, with some intentional exceptions.)
- Barely headcanon if at all, but contrary to all those fics where Shi Qingxuan is Xie Lian's slutty (affectionate) wingperson (not that I don't enjoy those), I think they are actually pretty naive and clueless, at least in relation to sex. Even 800 year old virgin Mu Qing got that whole "the evil energy is coming from inside you" bit.
- They don't have a bad life post-canon. Xie Lian has lived that life, and won't let a dear friend live it unaided. And Hua Cheng is happy to help someone Xie Lian wants to help. They always know they can come to Ghost City if they need a hand. They have just as much help as they want -- no more and no less.
- Post-canon they do miss having the ability to shift forms, and it causes some dysphoria. Some days she feels like a woman, but she can't just blink the physical components she was used to into being anymore. One day when she's feeling down, Xie Lian takes her to a place in Ghost City to get all done up and helps her feel herself again: a little taller, maybe, but just as beautiful as she ever was.
- They're a really good landscape artist.
- A few years after everything, they start trying to reach out to He Xuan through Xie Lian and Hua Cheng. If I feel like being really angsty about it, I'd say He Xuan finally comes to see them when they're old, on their death bed. Their reconciliation is also their goodbye, and He Xuan doesn't take long to disperse after that. Uuuuh. Sorry for that. 😅
Anonymous asked:
Any headcanons for the fluffy child Quan Yizhen?
Quan Yizhen is one of a few characters/plotlines I mean to pay more attention to on the second read-through I'm slowly doing. I don't feel like I fully Got Him the first time through, so this might be a little threadbare, but lemme see what I can rummage up lol.
- Fidgets/stims a lot. Always picking at his clothes or twiddling small objects or drumming his fingers on something. Never entirely still.
- I actually tend to view him and Yin Yu as less of a ship and more like tragic siblings, something along the lines of Golden Child versus Scapegoat Child.
- Yin Yu likes Xie Lian and so Quan Yizhen likes Xie Lian. Yin Yu respects Hua Cheng and so Quan Yizhen respects Hua Cheng. Neither XL nor HC are quite sure what to make of a god following them around like a lost golden retriever puppy while they wait for Yin Yu's soul to recover.
- Post-canon, Quan Yizhen keeps showing up in Ghost City and just hanging out. He's only causing mild amounts of trouble though, and Yin Yu mostly keeps him in line, so everyone just kind of shrugs.
- He has a surprisingly good singing voice, when he can be coaxed to use it
Ooh, Xie Lian for the five random headcanons game? 👀 If someone's already asked about him, then Hua Cheng.
Doing Hua Cheng cause a Xie Lian one already came through! 😊😊
- I've talked about this before, but I think he has trauma around his sexual awakening being tied to his beloved suffering. It takes him some time and some coaxing to be truly comfortable expressing desire towards Xie Lian. Early on he tends to make sex entirely *about* Xie Lian, skirting around his own desire as much as he possibly can, but Xie Lian is pretty quick to catch on and is having none of that. (There is much cuddling and comfort.)
- He only knew how to read and write at like the equivalent of a kindergarten level until he went into Mount Tonglu: just the barest understanding that gave him just enough to teach himself more with given all that time. (Though his writing never did improve much lol.)
- This is based a bit on Eming's design in the donghua. His right eye wasn't just a different colour, it also had uuuhhh... *google break* Exophthalmos? It bulged out of his skull. The heterochromia was just the cherry on top of the bullying sundae.
- After he went to find his own remains to cremate, he ended up on a series of side-quests chasing down battlefield looters to get the coral earring back.
- Sometimes when Xie Lian gets dragged away by heavenly business and he's bored and lonely, he and Yushi Huang hang out at farmers markets in the human realm
Make stuff up about Xie Lian. Or if that's too obvious, make up stuff Xie Lians stray cats that the revised version mentioned like. One time
I was unaware of the stray cats! Does Xie Lian feed stray cats now?!?! Cutie!!
Anyway, general Xie Lian headcanons:
- Has delivered a baby before. It was the only time he'd ever seen the relevant parts up close, and it did not help dissuade him from his long-held belief that abstinence is easy actually and everyone else is just undisciplined.
- Post-canon, with Hua Cheng as an initially very anxious but gradually relaxing supervisor, he likes to get just ever-so-slightly tipsy on rare occasions. It's always just the two of them (and maybe Yin Yu coming and going). He just gets to the point where he's relaxed and giggly and extra chatty, and Hua Cheng finds it unbearably cute.
- I'm hardly the first person to headcanon this, but he has chronic pain that flares up sometimes, and where he'd always had to force himself to push through before -- or found someplace to hide himself away miserable and alone -- post-canon Hua Cheng pampers and spoils him and basically refuses to let him out of bed until he feels better.
- He hadn't spoken to anyone in the language of Xianle for centuries, but now he and Feng Xin and Mu Qing and Hua Cheng all sometimes speak it. The first time they fall into it, Xie Lian tears up and Feng Xin pulls him into a bear hug and Hua Cheng can't even be mad about it.
- Has traveled extensively. He's been to India and throughout Central Asia and up into Siberia. After all, why wouldn't one wander a bit, over the course of eight centuries?
That last ask reminded me how much fun I have making up stuff about fictional characters with little to no canonical evidence. 🤣 So send me a character from any of the tagged things and I'll make up five random headcanons about them with varying degrees of nonsensicalness in relation to canon (note: I did something similar with Yuumori characters before so this might get a bit redundant -- I'll try to mix it up but I also probably won't go back and read those lol, we'll see.)
Hua Cheng's array password is so mysterious because like:
- it can't be a direct reference to Xie Lian because Hua Cheng is (badly) hiding his obsession
- it's something offensive or suggestive enough to fluster Xie Lian and generally keep people from bothering Hua Cheng
- but it can't be something SO offensive or suggestive that Hua Cheng feels bad about telling it to Xie Lian or teasing him about saying it
- I don't even think it could be something like "Oh great and noble Hua Chengzhu, let this humble one speak" or anything, because at the point in the story where he tells it to Xie Lian I think Hua Cheng would be horrified by the idea of even teasing Xie Lian to say such a thing. After they're married and he's been utterly spoiled, maybe, but not then.
My theory is it's some kind of slight against heaven, the kind of thing that Xie Lian is sort of uncomfortable saying but is secretly amused by. Probably in the form of some kind of rhyme or wordplay. Something like,
gods in the gambling house,
gods in the brothel,
gods in empty, burning shrines,
praying to a fossil
I would like to thank the English translators of the TGCF novel for the phrase "boisterous brouhaha"