Tiny gege

Pei Xiu seemed to have had enough of quarreling with Kemo, and he turned to Xie Lian. “So you see, there are many things in the world that simply cannot be clearly defined or resolved. You can only fight.” Xie Lian sighed. “I’ll agree to the first part.” San Lang, on the other hand, said, “Hm. I’ll agree to the second part.”

— TGCF Volume 1, Chapter 10 (Seven Seas Edition)

and this isn't a surprising mindset to have! he spent his childhood being beaten down and treated horribly. why would he think less of violence if that's what's gotten him where he is? he's good at what he does. the main difference is that he's not enamored or impressed by senseless violence and is usually very fair and objective in his dealings. he just knows this as a fact: violence is an effective tool that works for his purposes.

and on the topic of banyue arc: it's honestly hard to deny the racism rooted in the whole thing. i mean, a whole kingdom of barbarians? their designs? turns out they're the unreasonable in their conflict against yong'an? this isn't a new theme across mxtx's works; in mdzs, if i recall correctly, jin zixuan talks about the so very barbarous lands of the south in his attempts to impress jiang yanli, and as for svsss, well. gestures to the whole demon race. while i'm not saying mxtx herself is outright bigoted and thinks horribly of entire ethnicties, i'm saying there are pretty clear biases which is like. unsurprising. i do remember something else she said in an interview iirc but i do not have a source for that so i will not be quoting it, but i do remember hearing somewhere of the way she spoke about hua cheng's mother, in that she said something about how his mother was a foreign lady who tricked his father with her wicked charms, or something? once again, do not quote me on that, but it wouldn't surprise me if it was true, tbh

all this to say: one of the biggest problems with the manhua is how starember manages to.... make the racism worse. the designs of the banyue people were altered in a way that seriously. rubbed me the wrong way. within the novel, it's like, congrats on the muslim slash arab people who are [insert every description we get of banyue] and the manhua designs explicitly make them look arab (so does the donghua actually, and the official novel designs, i believe? but the manhua is....) i can't find the panels right now but. yeah. not to mention the people on the island xie lian and shi qingxuan crashed onto in volume 2 (7seas edition), they were very much drawn exactly the way one would imagine oh so barbarous island savages. complete with the leaf skirts lol

circling back to hua cheng and how i despise his manhua design: i can yap on and on about how starember straight up discarded all the symbolism to do with his actual canon appearance but we all know that, so let's move onto say that with all of the above in mind, him being of miao descent very specifically makes it an issue. he is violent, and he is half of an ethnicity that people consider to be immoral, wicked, and crude. in a way in canon you can read his actions and lifestyle as both a taunt and defiance to this, but within the context of hualian, it gets very.... hm.

xie lian is of full han blood, and is described to be a fair-skinned person who is both pretty and handsome and is a virtuous person who also happens to be an untouched, pure virgin (please note the exaggerated tone i'm using here). in direct contrast to the mixed-race hua cheng, who opts for violence in most situations, is crafty and cunning, and so on.

his manhua design making him so much bigger than xie lian, making his skin tone darker, especially when we know he views his desire as disgusting and blasphemous (his queerness, essentially), and considers himself to be horrible, dirty, and monstrous, which we know is because he had it beaten into him since childhood specifically re: his red eye, though it's not inconceivable to think that him being mixed-race likely played a large role in this, is both stupidly, horribly, racist, and it's literally reverting to typically uncomfortably bigoted yaoi tropes. there's something to be said here about his wealth and his relationship to... opulence, let's say? and his casual violence when directly contrasted with his helplessness and poverty as a child, i think.

this is such a mess, but i hope you get what i'm getting at here...? the fact that xie lian is depicted as a pure, waifish white-clad fairy, and hua cheng is the dark sexy icon of desire coming to save him while also very clearly undermining his autonomy in various ways and somehow this literally never becomes an issue while xie lian falls in love with him. one of the main points about hualian is that they're not interested on morally policing each other with their own separate views and actions, and neither are they interested in encroaching upon each other's autonomy, which manhua hua cheng repeatedly does. constantly. over and over again.

in the novel, with the scene where they discover the cave of ten thousand gods, we see how mu qing and feng xin view him as a sexual threat to xie lian the moment they discover the depth and intensity of his love and devotion to xie lian, and it takes xie lian himself intervening (though not after hua cheng beats them up) for them to calm down and accept that that's xie lian's choice to make. while it's entirely understandable to freak out because who the hell does all that and even though that was by far one of my favorite part of the novels purely for how entertaining it was and how this is how xie lian realizes his love is reciprocated and is enjoying how intense it is, logically speaking it's not at all out of place to be deeply concerned and unsettled.

and yet, it plays into how hua cheng knows and is deeply aware of his zealotry, so to speak. up until this point, he's been walking on eggshells because as much as he can't resist flirting with and messing with xie lian, he's truly afraid that xie lian, who had once comforted him and told him he's not unlucky and he is not a bad luck charm, would think of his love and devotion as monstrous, disgusting, and revolting. he's deeply, deeply terrified of being found out, because he does believe himself disgusting and monstrous and hideous, and is terrified of being viewed as a danger to taizi-dianxia when all he has ever, ever wanted is to protect and love him—and though it does all end well. gestures. you get what i mean.

so, when i say that the playing into the yaoi trope of small dainty uke and big dom daddy seme paired with starember's obvious racism—and i am not saying it's not present in the novel, though in lesser amounts—it's very much reminiscent of how real-life men of color, especially queer men or even, let's be real, transmascs, lesbians, butches, etc. are treated as violent and sexual threats to white people (most notably black people from what i've seen, especially those who present masculine, which is kind of a universal thing everywhere, because though i live in a country with people of mostly the same race and ethnicity as me, the antiblackness is genuinely wild—people here still casually sling around the n-slur, it's so gross), and is just. awful in so many ways.

anyone who's spent any amount of time visibly gnc and/or queer publicly can tell you why this kind of depiction gets under their skin so easily, and i imagine it's worse in places where the color of skin actually matters in that specific way. with hua cheng's internalized queerphobia that lingers throughout the entire story and how his desire and love is treated as something that is inherently wrong, horrible, and shameful—with hua cheng having grown up the way he did, it's all very much. a collection of things that irked me badly before reading tgcf, and only serves to infuriate me further now that i do understand where all of this is being pulled from.

and i guess it is personal to me in a way because hua cheng's experiences are. hm. something i understand on a visceral level.

this has been extremely messy and disorganized but that's the gist of it i think. i hope this answers the questions you have at least somewhat? thanks for sending the ask! and i would be happy to elaborate if you have anything else you want me to clarify tbh :d

Pei Xiu seemed to have had enough of quarreling with Kemo, and he turned to Xie Lian. “So you see, there are many things in the world that simply cannot be clearly defined or resolved. You can only fight.” Xie Lian sighed. “I’ll agree to the first part.” San Lang, on the other hand, said, “Hm. I’ll agree to the second part.”

— TGCF Volume 1, Chapter 10 (Seven Seas Edition)

and this isn't a surprising mindset to have! he spent his childhood being beaten down and treated horribly. why would he think less of violence if that's what's gotten him where he is? he's good at what he does. the main difference is that he's not enamored or impressed by senseless violence and is usually very fair and objective in his dealings. he just knows this as a fact: violence is an effective tool that works for his purposes.

and on the topic of banyue arc: it's honestly hard to deny the racism rooted in the whole thing. i mean, a whole kingdom of barbarians? their designs? turns out they're the unreasonable in their conflict against yong'an? this isn't a new theme across mxtx's works; in mdzs, if i recall correctly, jin zixuan talks about the so very barbarous lands of the south in his attempts to impress jiang yanli, and as for svsss, well. gestures to the whole demon race. while i'm not saying mxtx herself is outright bigoted and thinks horribly of entire ethnicties, i'm saying there are pretty clear biases which is like. unsurprising. i do remember something else she said in an interview iirc but i do not have a source for that so i will not be quoting it, but i do remember hearing somewhere of the way she spoke about hua cheng's mother, in that she said something about how his mother was a foreign lady who tricked his father with her wicked charms, or something? once again, do not quote me on that, but it wouldn't surprise me if it was true, tbh

all this to say: one of the biggest problems with the manhua is how starember manages to.... make the racism worse. the designs of the banyue people were altered in a way that seriously. rubbed me the wrong way. within the novel, it's like, congrats on the muslim slash arab people who are [insert every description we get of banyue] and the manhua designs explicitly make them look arab (so does the donghua actually, and the official novel designs, i believe? but the manhua is....) i can't find the panels right now but. yeah. not to mention the people on the island xie lian and shi qingxuan crashed onto in volume 2 (7seas edition), they were very much drawn exactly the way one would imagine oh so barbarous island savages. complete with the leaf skirts lol

circling back to hua cheng and how i despise his manhua design: i can yap on and on about how starember straight up discarded all the symbolism to do with his actual canon appearance but we all know that, so let's move onto say that with all of the above in mind, him being of miao descent very specifically makes it an issue. he is violent, and he is half of an ethnicity that people consider to be immoral, wicked, and crude. in a way in canon you can read his actions and lifestyle as both a taunt and defiance to this, but within the context of hualian, it gets very.... hm.

xie lian is of full han blood, and is described to be a fair-skinned person who is both pretty and handsome and is a virtuous person who also happens to be an untouched, pure virgin (please note the exaggerated tone i'm using here). in direct contrast to the mixed-race hua cheng, who opts for violence in most situations, is crafty and cunning, and so on.

his manhua design making him so much bigger than xie lian, making his skin tone darker, especially when we know he views his desire as disgusting and blasphemous (his queerness, essentially), and considers himself to be horrible, dirty, and monstrous, which we know is because he had it beaten into him since childhood specifically re: his red eye, though it's not inconceivable to think that him being mixed-race likely played a large role in this, is both stupidly, horribly, racist, and it's literally reverting to typically uncomfortably bigoted yaoi tropes. there's something to be said here about his wealth and his relationship to... opulence, let's say? and his casual violence when directly contrasted with his helplessness and poverty as a child, i think.

this is such a mess, but i hope you get what i'm getting at here...? the fact that xie lian is depicted as a pure, waifish white-clad fairy, and hua cheng is the dark sexy icon of desire coming to save him while also very clearly undermining his autonomy in various ways and somehow this literally never becomes an issue while xie lian falls in love with him. one of the main points about hualian is that they're not interested on morally policing each other with their own separate views and actions, and neither are they interested in encroaching upon each other's autonomy, which manhua hua cheng repeatedly does. constantly. over and over again.

in the novel, with the scene where they discover the cave of ten thousand gods, we see how mu qing and feng xin view him as a sexual threat to xie lian the moment they discover the depth and intensity of his love and devotion to xie lian, and it takes xie lian himself intervening (though not after hua cheng beats them up) for them to calm down and accept that that's xie lian's choice to make. while it's entirely understandable to freak out because who the hell does all that and even though that was by far one of my favorite part of the novels purely for how entertaining it was and how this is how xie lian realizes his love is reciprocated and is enjoying how intense it is, logically speaking it's not at all out of place to be deeply concerned and unsettled.

and yet, it plays into how hua cheng knows and is deeply aware of his zealotry, so to speak. up until this point, he's been walking on eggshells because as much as he can't resist flirting with and messing with xie lian, he's truly afraid that xie lian, who had once comforted him and told him he's not unlucky and he is not a bad luck charm, would think of his love and devotion as monstrous, disgusting, and revolting. he's deeply, deeply terrified of being found out, because he does believe himself disgusting and monstrous and hideous, and is terrified of being viewed as a danger to taizi-dianxia when all he has ever, ever wanted is to protect and love him—and though it does all end well. gestures. you get what i mean.

so, when i say that the playing into the yaoi trope of small dainty uke and big dom daddy seme paired with starember's obvious racism—and i am not saying it's not present in the novel, though in lesser amounts—it's very much reminiscent of how real-life men of color, especially queer men or even, let's be real, transmascs, lesbians, butches, etc. are treated as violent and sexual threats to white people (most notably black people from what i've seen, especially those who present masculine, which is kind of a universal thing everywhere, because though i live in a country with people of mostly the same race and ethnicity as me, the antiblackness is genuinely wild—people here still casually sling around the n-slur, it's so gross), and is just. awful in so many ways.

anyone who's spent any amount of time visibly gnc and/or queer publicly can tell you why this kind of depiction gets under their skin so easily, and i imagine it's worse in places where the color of skin actually matters in that specific way. with hua cheng's internalized queerphobia that lingers throughout the entire story and how his desire and love is treated as something that is inherently wrong, horrible, and shameful—with hua cheng having grown up the way he did, it's all very much. a collection of things that irked me badly before reading tgcf, and only serves to infuriate me further now that i do understand where all of this is being pulled from.

and i guess it is personal to me in a way because hua cheng's experiences are. hm. something i understand on a visceral level.

this has been extremely messy and disorganized but that's the gist of it i think. i hope this answers the questions you have at least somewhat? thanks for sending the ask! and i would be happy to elaborate if you have anything else you want me to clarify tbh :d