#tgcf asks

i think it's amusing bc so far for mdzs i always see this in favour for wwx-jc reconciliation and the yunmeng-shuanjie bit 🤣

for tgcf it's related to XL and his "naivety"

HEHEHEE YESSSSS

The difference is that Xie Lian gets an apology from at least one of the idiot duo (pending a full read of the revised, which may change that to two) after an entire novel of them at least attempting to help Xie Lian (in the most offensive ways possible until Xie Lian, himself, rips their facade off) before they rekindle a casual friendship that’s not nearly as close as when they were in their youth.

vs.

Jiang Cheng torturing Wei Wuxian, hatecriming him, hatecriming the love of his life, forcing Wei Wuxian into a qi deviation and then attacking him—at which point Wei Wuxian thinks to himself that he never wants to visit Lotus Pier again—lashing out at Wei Wuxian after finding out that Wei Wuxian personally saved his life, then tryna lowkey turn his half-hearted apology that followed the aforementioned lashing out with, “can we count your sacrifice as payment for my family’s deaths, too 🥺” because he STILL refuses to acknowledge that no one still alive is responsible for his family’s death! He got his revenge! He got his revenge BECAUSE OF WEI WUXIAN!!!! And then Jiang Cheng killed him!!! Idk, I don’t remember the idiot brigade ever harming Xie Lian to this extent.

What are your least favorite canons in TGCF and why? I’m curious just what’s been inspired by the translation choices as done by the watermelon and what’s born out of whole cloth.

(Correction: this is meant to read “least favorite fanons.) This list is already so long and I feel like a lot of it is self-explanatory, so I'm gonna skip explanations unless someone asks for clarity on a specific one. The only one that I can chalk up to translation issues is #8, though I'll say that the stuff about Xie Lian's relationship with Jun Wu can be chalked up to the deference Xie Lian shows to Jun Wu in the draft that has since been deleted in the final (though it's still overblown in fandom). In no particular order:

1.) Grooming pedophile!Jun Wu or Ex-abusive romantic partner!Jun Wu

2.) Guoshi Mei Nianqing was “sooooo in looooove” with Jun Wu and now resents Xie Lian for defeating him at the end of the novel.

3.) Xie Lian’s abusive father who not-so-secretly hates him and, concurrently, Xie Lian’s “daddy issues” where he just really wants Jun Wu’s approval (🙄).

4.) “Mu Qing and Feng Xin were right” about any situation.

5.) “Mu Qing and Feng Xin were totally looking for Xie Lian for all those 800 years!” and, concurrently, “Xie Lian is upset to discover that neither of his former friends reached out to him during his second banishment despite having the means to.”

6.) Mu Qing and Feng Xin, Xie Lian’s virginity guards*

7.) Mu Qing and Feng Xin, Xie Lian’s bestest friends in the whole wide world that he spends centuries trying to figure out how to get back into their good graces.

8.) Mu Qing the Lowly Servant who somehow also runs the entirety of Xie Lian’s household and personally decides who has access to the crown prince and, concurrently, Mu Qing as a cultivator alongside Xie Lian being erased to push some sort of weird "independent woman" archetype on him as the sole "powerless" man who must rely only on his words for defense while every other man around him knows how to fight.**

9.) Feng Xin the Loyal and Obedient Bodyguard who somehow never listens to a single wish, order, or boundary given by Xie Lian until Xie Lian tells him to “go away forever,” if the fic includes the friendship breakup.

10.) Hua Cheng being close friends with any of the gods outside of Yushi Huang, particularly being forced to "befriend" the idiot duo "for Xie Lian's sake."

11.) “Hua Cheng is such a dork loser, it’s a wonder anyone takes him seriously when all he does is cry over Dianxia.”

12.) "Dianxia! Dianxia! Dianxia!" like "gege" has just been excised from Hua Cheng's vocabulary.

13.) Wuming the Doll, "I am not a person with free will, thoughts, and desires. I only exist to serve Dianxia and obey his every command without question."

14.) Hua Cheng the Bad Boy who is a certified terrible person who makes life on earth worse, but it's ok because "Xie Lian finds evilness attractive 🤪" (unless he's being mean to the idiot brigade, in which case: "San-lang, be nicer to my friends 🥺").

15.) Hua Cheng the Slut who's slept with everyone and everything in order to "practice" for Xie Lian and, concurrently, Xie Lian the Super Virgin who must have even the concept of sex explained to him because he's that virginal.

16.) "That cave was definitely Hua Cheng's creepy porn stash/those statues were his Dianxia sex dolls, and the only reason Xie Lian's ok with that is because he's a freak/has stockholm syndrome."

17.) Xie Lian the Martyr, or “I’m gonna stab myself with every sword I find in every situation because my solution to all problems is self-harm!” and, concurrently, Xie Lian the Martyr who believes he deserves to live in eternal suffering because of what happened to Wuming, which self-harming will atone for, or something.

18.) Xie Lian the Plague God whose mere presence kills people and, concurrently, "Xie Lian spent all 800 of those years of his second banishment dying gruesomely every 20 years and avoiding human contact."

19.) Xie Lian the Maiden who can't defend himself against anything because of his cursed shackles.

20.) "Xie Lian totally would've been evil had the rice man not given him that hat."

21.) Xie Lian the Perpetually Afraid who doesn't want to initiate any action, make any decision, or form any opinion because "everything I do is wrong."

22.) Xie Lian thinks the only reason Hua Cheng loves him is because he saved him as a child during the parade, and if Hua Cheng doesn't remember having fallen off the tower, then there'd be no chance of Hua Cheng falling in love with him again.

23.) Perpetually ashamed!Xie Lian who’s ashamed of:

his background as a crown prince.

his current status as a scrap god.

his lack of worshipers.

his shrine.

his belief system.

his actions during the Xianle civil war.

his cooking skills (despite them being an homage to his mother).

his bad luck (despite him ASKING FOR HIS LUCK TO BE DISPERSED!!!).

"having disappointed Jun Wu."

24.) Catholic Guilt the Novel

Sinner!Hua Cheng who feels his very existence “defiles his god” and being attracted to him "taints Xie Lian's lily white purity."

Hua Cheng the Literal Christian Demon

“Xie Lian was taught that sex, sexual desire, and sexual attraction are dirty and make you a bad person,” so now he has to be coached by [insert character]*** to not have a panic attack at the thought of anything past kissing. Only Xie Lian has this problem, somehow, despite almost every other character also being Daoists.

"Daoism is just Catholicism if you think about it, and if you break any of the rules, you go to Chinese Hell, which is why Xie Lian is reluctant to stray from his cultivation path."

Bonus 1: He Xuan gives up his revenge against Shi Wudu because he's "soooo in loooooove" with Shi Qingxuan, or if he doesn't, then it's because he's "sooooo in loooooove" with Shi Qingxuan that he manipulate him into a relationship while forcing everyone else to keep Shi Qingxuan in the dark about what really happened to his brother.

Bonus 2: Stalker!Jian Lan who won't leave Feng Xin alone while pretending that it's Feng Xin who won't leave her alone.**

*Usually paired with "Xie Lian's abusive dad" because abusive dad is tryna force the son "he hates" into an arranged marriage, and Feng Xin and Mu Qing for some reason take it upon themselves to block any contact Xie Lian has with "strange men" (Hua Cheng). There is a not small amount of stories with this exact plotline.

**Usually, but not always, comes with the inclusion of fengqing as a ship.

If you ever decide to share, many of us will gladly listen! Now if only there was a way to keep those posts contained…

Oh, you must be new here. Unlike many others in fandom spaces, I use my words intentionally, say what I mean, and mean what I say. This is not an mdzs- or jc stan-exclusive problem. Sure, I hate jc stans, but they’re not the only ones who show that behavior by far. People literally talk about the jc-mq-sj trifecta of shitty stanbases for a reason. But branching out of even there, jgy and xy stans do the same thing. Both of them, specifically, peddle their nonsense off the back of Wei Wuxian comparisons, either that "wwx would be just as bad if he was in their shoes!" or "they would be just as good if they were '''''''privileged''''''' like wwx was!" A blogger I used to follow turned into a Jin Zixuan stan and suddenly started writing posts about how "classist" and "biased" Wei Wuxian was for not being friends with rich boy Jin Zixuan. Su She stans exist. I imagine you have the deductive skills to figure out which main character they hate and what type of posts they make about their fav. Hell, even Lan Xichen stans have this weird animosity for either Wei Wuxian or Lan Wangji (sometimes both) depending on what ships they like, either crediting Lan Xichen with why wangxian got together ("Lan Xichen is the #1 wangxian shipper!" "Lan Xichen is so nice for not hating Wei Wuxian after he hurt his baby brother," or "Wei Wuxian needed Lan Xichen in order to stop being an oblivious idiot") or being resentful towards Lan Wangji for "not being a supportive brother" and dropping everything to what? babysit Lan Xichen in seclusion post-canon? Literally seething that the man went on a 3-month honeymoon while his brother, uninjured, unpunished, and surrounded by family, reflects on his life choices in the comfort of his own home.

I had to mute “shen jiu” because every Shen Jiu post that popped up would be about how the op hates Shen Yuan for “stealing his life,” how they hate Luo Binghe because “he’s abused Shen Jiu” and how Shen Jiu was “right to abuse him as a child,” and how they fantasize about the day “Shen Jiu comes back and everyone hates Shen Yuan because they discover he’s not Shen Jiu." Had to filter "liushen" because lqg stans started the whole "Luo Binghe is a rapist and coerces Shen Qingqiu into being with him by threatening Liu Qingge's life" bullshit. Have yet to meet a liushen shipper who has a normal take on Luo Binghe or the canon story. Had to finally block "shang qinghua," "mobei-jun," and "moshang" because sqh stans started waxing poetic about how the new extra is actually all about how Airplaine-bro is the greatest author ever and Shen Yuan was just a loser too embarrassed to like a "masterpiece" and also, weirdly, how the extra proves that Airplane was in love with Shen Yuan or some nonsense. This ask is reminding me that I should probably mute "cumplane" too, cause the whole "Shang Qinghua is actually just Luo Binghe is you squint, so the one Shen Qingqiu really loves is Shang Qinghua!" thing has pissed me off in the background for years now.

When I first joined the tgcf fandom years back, the "fandom darling" was actually Qi Rong, not Mu Qing, and every single post was about how Qi Rong was such a "good person" and it was somehow Xie Lian's fault that he was a villain while they were lifting traits from Xie Lian wholesale to "headcanon" them as Qi Rong's "true personality." Had to block like every single Xie Lian x [insert character] ship variation and configuration for tgcf except for like 2 because, without fail, they would all either be "imagine if [side character] was actually the one that Xie Lian loved because they [insert thing Hua Cheng canonically does for Xie Lian]." Feng Xin stans can't make a post about Feng Xin without talking about how his "loyalty" for Xie Lian went "unrewarded" because Xie Lian "unfairly threw him away," while Mu Qing stans can't go a single post without blaming Xie Lian for Mu Qing's "poverty" and why they aren't friends. You could throw one stone with the strength of an infant in the tgcf or hualian tag and hit 5 different posts praising the clown brigade for their wonderful insight on how much of a freak and loveblind idiot Xie Lian is for loving Hua Cheng and how much of a monster Hua Cheng is for always being by Xie Lian's side when Xie Lian needs someone to support him, and they're all viral.

I've been harassed by every group I've listed minus the sqh/moshang folks and the lone jzx stan at some point or another for making my own posts about canon interactions between these characters. I've also had interactions where I'd just been talking about the main characters or pairing, just to have a character stan try to derail my post with nonsense, thinking that my innocuous post was somehow the space for them to type essays about a side character I could not care less about. These side character stans depend on hatred of the main characters to prop up their fav side characters. Their posts wouldn't be able to survive if they couldn't leech off the tags and interactions of the majority of fandom that's in it for—surprise, surprise—the main characters and canon pairing. And, this isn't even an exhaustive list.