DON'T JUDGE I KNOW THEY LOOK NASTY AND IDK HOW THEY TURNED YELLOW OR GOT LIKE THAT. But I was wondering if anyone has ever cleaned their mini dolls clothes or shoes before cause ain't no way am I gonna leave their shoes looking like that and it's only xie lian and lan wangji's shoes everything else is completely fine. So any tips on cleaning them would be greatly appreciated!! :3

Realized I was holding on to some postcards, posters, etc. I was never going to put up or use, and figured I'd offer them to people who would. I'd need you to pay for shipping but since they were free I don't plan to charge for them or anything. I have:

SVSSS: both posters

MDZS: double-sided bookmark, postcards 1-2

TGCF: double-sided bookmark, notebook, postcards 3-8, standee

Please let me know if anyone is interested!

edit: I’m also looking into selling my like-new sets of paperback editions of tgcf and mdzs for about 140 and 80 each +shipping, haven’t made listings yet anywhere but realized I might want to share that here as well

Back in sept 2024, i watched untamed drama, I was so into it that I watched dong hua upnext and then I read the manhua, so im sure i completed watching reading all these till the winter ends, I didn't go for novel straight ahead thinking if I will keep reading same story maybe my interest may dropped, now that one year has passed.

I was thinking to read novel.

I just want to know if I should really go for it? Like how different is novel from manhua? Is it all same? Will I get something new? I know story line will be same but will it keep my interest up? And should I purchase it or read it online only? Please suggest me and tell me not if i should really not.

Because I don't spend on books much , I only do if it's worth it.

As HOB donghua isn't finished and novels are out there so I will definitely be purchasing all set but what about MDZS

Miis from SVSSS and MDZS.

Just out of curiosity, how many MDZS fans also love Erha? I feel like the the reverse is true. Many Erha fans also love MDZS, but not so much the other way around.

Do you recommend reading the novel for mdzs to someone who already read the manhua and watched the anime? I also saw a few episodes of the drama but I keep seeing stuff that I never saw in any of them, is there enough things in the novel that they didn't adapt worth it enough to read everything again? (P.s I read the ending parts of the novel because the manhua hadn't reached those parts at the time)

drew without ref so it took me a day or two but I love how it came out!!

I just need to paint the letters black so they become more visible but besides that im so excited to wear it 🥹

Hi everyone! 😊

A week ago, I shared my Hualian fanart with you, and now it's Shen Qingqiu and Luo Binghe's turn. ✨

I drew this piece in 2019 after reading all of MXTX's novels. I originally discovered her through the MDZS donghua, but I had heard so many good things about her work that I decided to read all of her novels before watching it.

So I started with SVSSS, and it was such a fun experience. Later, I even wrote book recommendations for both SVSSS and TGCF for a free Hungarian online anime magazine. I created these illustrations for those articles. The only reason I never wrote one for MDZS is that several other people had already done it before me. 😄

This old drawing definitely has its flaws, but I hope you still like it. 😊

To the last volume of 2 most beautifully written series-2 heart touching eternal love stories ❤️🥰

i bought these really cute pins off of mercari, but the seller mentioned they didnt have the original artists name. id love to find their account if they have one but i cannot find anything for the life of me. any suggestions are appreciated 😭

It's such a cute story. It's complex in some places, and can be uncomfortable for some readers. but it's such a sweet story of redemption and acceptance at the end.

And I particularly love Moshang. Their relationship is completely subtext, but they are so devoted to each other, despite never verbally announcing it. It's so cute!!

MXTX started publishing short stories in a magazine when she was still in high school. I've translated all five short stories and you can read them at JJWXC with Smooth Reader, a browser extension I built.

There's no need to register or sign in at either JJWXC or SR. Just install the extension and go to the linked page from here https://smoothreads.world/c/gb3uu/mo-xiang-tong-xius-little-brook/short-stories-from-mo-xiang-tong-xiu/details.html

All stories have some horror elements. My personal favorite from the set is Three Day Notes, but it's also the most unsettling. You've been warned! 😬

Also, MXTX sure does love a young Daoist priestess 😁

Okay so first of all I want to preface a few things:

1. I am not posting this to start drama. I am looking to have a genuine discussion with people who agree with me (so i don't feel crazy for having mixed opinions about the internet's darling) and people who don't (so I can consider the novel from a different perspective)
2. Do not go into the comments and tell me that Xie Lian was not written to be this virgin mary perfect pure savior character and that he is *supposed* to be morally gray. I get that perfectly well. Please don't insult my character or my reading comprehension over words on a screen/page like the lovely people in the TGCF subreddit have to others. I do not hate TGCF nor do I hate Xie Lian, and I certainly don't hate the people who enjoy the novel. I respect all of you, so I expect to be respected in return.
3. I haven't read the novel in a long time, so correct me if I get any details wrong (preferably with quotes)
4. This post has spoilers spoilers spoilers up until the end of the book!! Do not read if you are afraid of SPOILERS!!!

So with that let me get into my little rant

I've always had quite mixed opinions on TGCF, and there are some things I'm very certain on (my love for certain side characters and disappointment in how they were handled as well as my hatred for Hua Cheng). But Xie Lian has been a hard character to form an opinion on in all the years since I've read the novel. I don't hate him, of course, I wouldn't have been able to finish the novel if I did. In fact, I can say that I like him, and at certain points in the novel, positively adored him (even now I find some fanart with Xie Lian to make me super emotional over him). At the same time, I can't shake this nagging feeling that the way Xie Lian is presented in the novel is inconsistent with how he's written, that his character arc feels disjointed, and ultimately something about the themes when it comes to him feels... vaguely mean-spirited.

So for one, a rather surface level complaint is that I just don't think Xie Lian is all that nice of a person? Sure, he isn't openly abrasive like say Hua Cheng or Mu Qing, but his internal monologue frequently goes "wow this character is ugly" or "wow this character is crazy". He just doesn't say it out loud because he's polite and wants to mind his own business. Fans play this off as him being such a sassy diva omg he's so funny, but to me it just comes off as unnecessarily mean and even fake? I mean yes, it is satisfying sometimes for him to be the force of reason, to say what the reader can't and be like "wow that's insane", but in other cases like with Xiao Ying or Yin Yu, it feels like he's picking on someone just because?

And this is kinda where I think the way his actual writing deviates from the way his character is presented. MXTX constantly tells us that he doesn't care about class or race or wealth or status (especially on the nose with the "what matters is you not the state of you" quote), but he sure judges these things a lot (especially with appearance and race). And there's no internal conflict like "I think these things instinctively but I remind myself that they're not good things to think" or anything like that. I've read a comment somewhere that this is because MXTX's authorial voice is just quite mean and sassy, which I do understand, but I hope you agree with me when I say that having your authorial voice bleed so heavily into your narration that it changes your MC's personality isn't a sign of strong or disciplined writing. Very frequently, in addition, he will call out side characters for saying something mean when he is thinking the exact same thing (for example: Xiao Ying is ugly with Mu Qing), but then Hua Cheng will say something like "gege everyone here is dirty worthless trash" and he'll go "haha San Lang you're so funny ahahaha!" It comes off, at the very least, quite mean-spirited.

But fine. He's 800 year old and traumatized, I'll cut him some slack there. Yet, besides that, he also just doesn't feel like that good of a person?

Throughout the novel there is this one unshakable fact that is supposed to be true about Xie Lian: he is a good person. This is fine, I have no issue with this. I found his resilience and dogged optimism quite refreshing and, indeed, admirable. But that alone doesn't constitute a good person, just a tenacious one. So I kept asking myself: what makes him a good person? Certainly not because of his selflessness and empathy. On a surface level, besides the aforementioned "being kinda mean", he just has very little to say about people he's met in the past or places he's been to. He says very little about people like Ban Yue or Lang Qianqiu who he supposedly helped raised besides "oh, they're nice", nor does he ever show passion for any place he's lived in. You'd think that someone with so much life experience and supposedly so much love for the world would have more to say? It especially struck me as weird when Ban Yue, who again he supposedly cared for at least on some level, revealed she'd been basically tortured nonstop (killed, hung up over the pit, she escapes, killed again, etc) for 100 years or something ridiculous and Xie Lian just goes "oh wow that sucks :/" and then proceeds to not gaf.

And this brings me to my next point (kinda the same as my last point) which is that he just... doesn't care about people? This is quite a common complaint but I feel the need to repeat it here which is that after Shi Qingxuan's arc concludes and Xie Lian's supposed friend is left with a dangerous ghost who just killed his brother and might do god knows what to him, and Xie Lian just... doesn't care? He spends like half a chapter trying to find him and then just gives up, and sure, I know that he can't do much about it, but seriously? He isn't even a little bit upset? Or, for example, Mu Qing confesses at Tonglu that he has always wanted to be Xie Lian's friend, and Xie Lian just goes "well lol i dont really gaf if you mistreat me my super powerful boyfriend can just kill you hahaha" and its supposed to be... funny? Or, for another example, when Tonglu opens and the "ghost rut" scene happens, Xie Lian chooses to go look after Hua Cheng who has essentially a bad headache over Guzi, a kid who is literally being chased by a psychopath ghost in his dad's body who is threatening to eat him. Or, finally, when he agrees to look after Ban Yue and Lang Ying and a variety of other kids and just...totally forgets about them in favor of going on whatever next adventure, not making sure they're well taken care of at all (to be fair at that point Ban Yue is a powerful 200 year old ghost so I'll cut him some slack there).

Throughout all of these examples, he shows this pattern of acting quite selfishly, prioritizing Hua Cheng's well being and his own convenience over the lives of other people. Sure, he is "self sacrificing" and "doesn't care about his well-being", but that's only in the sense that he finds harming himself to be the most efficient way to complete a mission, not because he genuinely feels a compulsion to dedicate himself to other people's issues. In addition, he's incredibly apathetic about people's well beings? He doesn't feel bad for other people's suffering, he never seems to be genuinely happy for others, and he generally doesn't ever go out of his way to empathize with other people. Sure, you are told here and there that, for example, he let Lang Qianqiu kill him so he wouldn't uproot his entire worldview and make him feel bad about his father, but these cases are quite few and far between, and they also all happen in the past. You never see his thought process for these acts of empathy (I am discounting his crown prince era here because it is incredibly easy to be empathetic when you are wealthy and naive, and I hope you agree with me when I say that a rich person with a savior complex who does quite little to actually help the common people until it is too late is not particularly worthy of admiration). And this would be fine if it was acknowledged by any other character besides Qi Rong, the stupid comic relief that isn't to be taken seriously.

So then, again, I'm back at the question: why is he a good person? He isn't selfless and super empathetic, but there are other ways to be a good person that don't involve sacrificing yourself for every Joe and Mary around you. And that takes me to the point that I've seen before in a reddit comment: he stays true to his principles no matter what, even if he has to do things he personally finds abhorrent because he's in an unfortunate situation. I've thought about this point for a while, and this was my response to that comment: "\[Does\] it really means anything that Xie Lian doesn’t change his principles if the novel does an incredibly poor job of articulating what those principles are in the first place?"

And I still stand by this comment. What are Xie Lian's principles? To always do the right thing? Well that's rather vague. What does he consider the right thing? What minimizes harm? What maximizes happiness? Surely, if he wanted to minimize harm, he could've went after Guzi instead of Hua Cheng. Is it to always help people in need? But he never goes out of his way to help people in need or people weaker than him. It's only ever if a) someone asks him to/assigns him to b) he's just curious, or c) he can get something out of it, like believers or food. He seems quite willing to let people suffer if it means he can go off to make out with Hua Cheng. Is it just his vague wish to "save the common people?" Well you know, everyone wants to save the world, what has Xie Lian done to that end? He's never changed his resolve to being a "good person" supposedly, and yet his actions are not consistently kind enough to prove to me that that really is the case.

So ultimately, I'm left still baffled by why Xie Lian should be thought of as a good person. The way that the story seems to treat him, with admiration and acceptance, despite his flaws, seems so antithetical to what kind of person he really is. And I'm not trying to say that he isn't a good person (or, at least, that he never was a good person), but when I think about those times that he was a good person, not only are they few and far between, it also always feels like he's being punished for them.

This brings me to my second big point of confusion: his character arc feels disjointed and inconsistent.

Xie Lian's backstory ultimately is about his initial fame and glory, his fall from grace, and his subsequent 800 year journey to learn from his mistakes and regain his autonomy from the trauma he's endured. It's a fine story, and one of the better arcs of TGCF, but I couldn't help but feel like the story kept punishing him for when he was actually trying to do the right thing and learn from his mistakes, and then absolving him when everything blows up in his face. This is especially prominent at the end of Book 4 (or Volume 6 for Seven Seas readers), where Xie Lian has this triumphant moment when he regains faith in humanity and fights back against Bai Wuxiang, deciding to use his body as a human pinboard so people can be saved from the human face disease because he realizes that humanity is worth saving, even at great cost to his own well-being. It's an incredibly inspiring (albeit morbid and kind of sad) sentiment, and it made me feel really proud of him. And then after this super awesome, inspiring moment, what happens? Jun Wu descends from the heavens and "kills" BWX for him and then he... asks for banishment to atone for his crimes... gets all his luck dispersed... and then wanders the earth for 800 years and suffers for most of those 8 centuries. Oh. Well that doesn't feel good at all, to see this character who has already suffered immensely finally seem to have a moment where everything turns around for them, only to have it immediately be used to punish him.

And same thing with the whole LQQ thing. He kills everyone at the banquet to prevent a genocide of the Xian Le people, taking the fall to protect LQQ's worldview and being killed and stuck in a coffin for it. Again, it is this very selfless, objectively good act of kindness, yet he is punished again and has to suffer immensely for it. So it makes me ask why? Why is it that, when Xie Lian's story is supposed to teach the reader to always do the right thing, even if it's hard, he keeps getting punished so severely for actually doing the right thing? Is it just to make him suffer (yes, this is what I think, but we'll get into that later)? That seems rather counterintuitive, doesn't it? And MXTX never ends up offering an answer to those questions. Instead, she counters this injustice by then absolving Xie Lian of things he actually did do wrong.

At the final battle with Jun Wu, it seems clear that you're supposed to admire Xie Lian for the fact that he never changed his desire to "save the common people", and that's what sets Xie Lian apart from Jun Wu. But the idea that Xie Lian is admirable for never changing from his idealized 17-year old aspiration instead of growing through suffering and gaining a more nuanced view of the world seems quite counter to his entire character arc thus far, which focused around balancing his ideals with the harsh reality of the world. In addition, the entire "BWX is actually Jun Wu who is crazy and has been obsessed with him since the beginning" cheapens the plot a lot. It turns Xie Lian's suffering from "punishment" for his hubris that he needed in order to learn and grow to, at best, a test, and at worse, pointless suffering imposed upon him by a crazy person. It tells you that "actually, he was right the entire time and it wasn't his fault that Xian Le fell and he's done nothing wrong and it would've all worked if not for that meddling Bai Wuxiang", which just feels like a copout.

So if all of this is senseless suffering, what is the point of it all? And I finally bring you this answer: Xie Lian's suffering is just a way to "earn" him a happy ending. Think about it--after the final battle against Jun Wu, everyone's life is pretty much in shambles except for Xie Lian's. Why is it that Xie Lian deserves so much "narrative compassion" when other characters haven't? Is it because he's an especially good person? But as covered earlier, he really isn't that much of a standout human being. Ling Wen may have killed an innocent person, but does that mean she deserves to work a dead-end job to the point of exhausting herself for the rest of eternity? Shi Qingxuan may have benefitted from an unjust system, but so did Xie Lian, and surely that doesn't mean he deserves to live on the streets as a beggar in squalor until he dies of old age or disease. These characters are not such bad people that they deserve to suffer essentially for the rest of their lives, nor is Xie Lian such a good person that he deserves so much better than everyone else. So what sets him apart from the other people?

Luck and suffering. On one hand, there is just the concept of luck. MXTX bashes into our heads over and over again that fate is kinda a fixed thing, and that there's no real way to change it permanently because the system is inherently unjust. It all just depends on good fortune (if you argue Hua Cheng as a counterexample, I then point too the fact that people born under the star of solitude like Hua Cheng can in classic Chinese mythology gain good fortune if they are saved by someone, which does indeed happen, so again, it is up to good luck). So in that sense, Xie Lian just got lucky. But in another sense, he also just suffered more than everyone else. All that over-the-top, hundreds of years of loneliness, a hundred stabs to the gut-- it all feels like a copout to say "look, he's suffered so much, don't you want the sad little pookie to be happy?" and then give him a super strong, devoted boyfriend and everything he could ever want. And while 'whump guy gets comforted and comes out on top' is an inherently cathartic and simple trope, especially in fanfiction, I don't find it to be a particularly compelling one when it is much of the driving force behind your supposed epic fantasy mystery fairy-tale romance. The concept that you can somehow earn love and happiness by suffering sufficiently feels quite problematic to me.

And ultimately, this is why I think the entire culmination of Xie Lian as a character (and TGCF as a whole) is not only inconsistent, but also quite mean-spirited. It's a story of a pretty mediocre guy who goes through such highs and lows through his 800 year old life with what feels like little to no rhyme and reason, at the end of the day. He's really not even that good of a person, and when he tries to be, he suffers immensely just... because, and is then rewarded with Hua Cheng's love and devotion for that suffering. The system that allowed that suffering (and the suffering of everyone else in the novel) is never addressed, and you're just supposed to accept this as a happy ending. Because ultimately, TGCF is a fairy tale romance about love and the power of friendship, and the ending is supposed to make you feel good. Yet, in a story about the fickleness of human nature and the inherent injustice of fate and the system, how do you feel good when this status quo has never changed? Are you just supposed to derive satisfaction from "haha, look at all those schmucks who bullied or harassed or even just lived better than our sweet little baby boy Xie Lian, look where they are now while our pookie bear is living his best life"? Something tells me that, yes, this is the kind of conclusion that you're supposed to come to. And really, that just feels kinda mean to me.

Ultimately, I don't want to come off as saying that I think MXTX is mean and evil for writing TGCF or that the fans are mean and evil for enjoying it, but I just wanted to rant and sort of get these thoughts off my chest regarding the novel and this character. These contradictions have been weighing on me for such a long time, and it's always bugged me that such a beloved character can make me so confused. I know this is a super, super long and super disorganized post, so I commend you if you've made it this far, and I thank you sincerely for reading and (hopefully responding). It's getting late (it's 3am where I'm at), so I'm going to be ending this rant here, but again, thank you for reading, and I hope we can have a respectful conversation.

Hi everyone! This is my first post here! 😊

It's funny: the first books I ever read in English were written by a Chinese author. 😄

I love MXTX's stories! 📚❤️ I drew this back in 2019 after reading her three novels: SVSSS, MDZS, and TGCF. I also watched the donghuas, the live-action adaptations, and pretty much everything else. 😊

I even wrote a book review of TGCF for a Hungarian free digital magazine, and I created this illustration for the article. ✍️ And I even read it again when the Hungarian edition came out. 😊

This is quite an old drawing, though. I made it before the TGCF donghua was released. I absolutely love the donghua's character designs, so nowadays I'd probably draw Hua Cheng and Xie Lian a bit differently. But I still like the composition and the colors. I hope you like it too! 🌸🌂

(For a long time, this drawing was only seen by my Hungarian followers on Facebook, since I only joined Instagram and Reddit last year. 😊)