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alright girls and gays let's unpack this awful post
1. Is Hua Cheng rude? Sullen? Moody? Blunt? Mean to others? Absolutely. You should've known that going in. He's a calamity-class ghost king and one of the four supremes. He's not a woke social justice advocate. Sorry for the shocker.
So yeah, he's ruthless, he's obnoxious to everyone else, he can be incredibly cruel, he's amoral and has an eye-for-an-eye sense of justice. I'm unsurprised that an MDZS fan wrote this lol. Not every ML is going to be like Lan Wangji. To borrow the words of my good friend Lillu,
if you want your morally upright social justice lawful good paladin, stick to rereading MDZS over and over again. You shouldn't have read TGCF if you don't like ML's such as Hua Cheng.
However, I have to say that the idea that Hua Cheng has a "savior complex" with regard to Xie Lian is wrong as hell. Hua Cheng does not swoop in and save Xie Lian as if he's a damsel in distress. Most of the time, he actually stands on the sidelines and supports Xie Lian.
In most of the arcs, Xie Lian doesn't need Hua Cheng to save him, but rather, Hua Cheng uplifts him, gives him advice, and fights alongside him. And Xie Lian actually asks Hua Cheng for his help. If Hua Cheng had a savior complex, he'd be helping and interfering with Xie Lian
and not allowing Xie Lian to be independent or figure out his own problems, but that's just not the case here. As for being close-minded? Yeah, he's close-minded toward most people, with GOOD REASON.
Did this person skip books 2 and 4? Because it really seems like it. Hua Cheng grew up in abject and severe poverty and was abused, mistreated, and left to die. He was going to commit suicide until XIe Lian saved him. THAT is why he is so protective over Xie Lian.
Xie Lian is the only person who ever treated him with kindness, dignity, and respect. It's not a misplaced sense of protectiveness but rather it comes from shared experiences.
Consider that Xie Lian gave Hua Cheng a reason to live where everyone else wanted Hua Cheng to die. Consider that Xie Lian fought for him and protected him where everyone else told XL to leave baby HC for dead.
Consider how much carnage and strife Hua Cheng has survived over the past 800 years and how much genuine agony he's been through, whether it was his childhood, the war and fall of Xian Le, or the 10 years of carnage at Mt. Tonglu.
So that protectiveness he feels for Xie Lian comes from a place of love and respect, not from a pathological savior complex or "over" protectiveness.
Then, remember that it was Xie Lian who freed Hua Cheng when HC was a ghost flame. Remember that HC had to witness Xie Lian being stabbed by hundreds of swords in a gruesome act of mob violence. Imagine if you saw the love of your life being mobbed and brutalized and
you couldn't do anything about it? Imagine how you'd feel, how much you'd hate yourself. Then imagine that you see the love of your life reach the lowest point in their life, and you see that they're quite close to giving up on humanity and their core values and just losing it.
Then imagine after helping the love of your life, you're separated from him for 800 years. You have no idea where he is, no idea how he's doing, no idea if he's safe. When you finally reunite with him, you hear horrible tales about how he lived his life those past 800 years:
sleeping in caves and on the ground, eating food off the ground or not eating at all, having awful luck, collecting scraps for a living, being dirt poor, wearing a cursed shackle around his neck and ankles, being trampled upon by a crowd, being stabbed in the heart w/ a sword,
enduring fatal injury afer fatal injury and just getting up and continuing to live in spite of the pain. of COURSE he's protective. he berates himself for not being able to help and protect xie lian for those 800 years. fuck, i'd be protective too if i was in hua cheng's shoes.
he wiped out qi rong's nest not only because of how qr brutalized him but also because of qr's role in hurting xie lian. he defeated 33 heaven's officials because those were the officials that xie lian conflicted with in book 4, the ones who stole his lands and made
his situation go from bad to worse! those people deserved what happened to them, lol, they weren't exactly uwu innocent people uwu.
2. This person legitimately sounds like Jun Wu. Like, are they daft? No one is saying XL is perfect. In fact I take issue with people who put him on an untouchable pedestal as well. However, it's not Xie Lian's fault that Xian Le fell.
Xian Le fell because of poor leadership on the part of Xie Lian's father and, most importantly, because Jun Wu engineered it to fall to punish Xie Lian. In fact, Jun Wu's whole thing was that Xie Lian was "sticking to his morals too much". How tf do you misread a book so badly
that you end up regurgitating the idea the VILLAIN is pushing, lol? Jun Wu punished Xie Lian for "getting involved" with the common people by making Xian Le's kingdom get destroyed, point blank period.
As for FXMQ: some of you like to forget that without XL, FXMQ would be nothing. Hate me for saying that if you want, but XL is the only reason FXMQ became mid heaven officials. MQ's inferiority complex is on his own shoulders. It's his problem, not XL's fault.
Should XL have told FX the truth? Sure. Should XL have seen that MQ had an inferiority complex because of the class conflict? Absolutely. But FXMQ's mistakes are their own, they belong to them and not to Xie Lian, and so blaming XL for that is gross, especially considering
what happens to XL after FXMQ leave him. Saying that XL isn't perfect but then stripping FXMQ of their flaws is ridiculous and hypocritical.
3. Well, at least this person admits that their brain is emotionally impaired. What else to say? Alright, the book didn't resonate with you. It's fine! You could leave it at that! And, guess what? You didn't have to post it in the TGCF subreddit, lol.
When will MDZS stans learn that not everyone needs their opinions and that not everything is meant to be compared to MDZS? When will they learn that MDZS Is not the only danmei novel in existence?
If you weren't moved by the events of books 2 and 4, by the blackwater arc, by Quan Yizhen and Yin Yu, by the brocade immortal and Ban Yue Pass arcs, by Jun Wu's backstory, by the events of the final fight, that's fine. Odd, but fine.
Don't expect people to be okay with the brain rot though because you went and posted this in a space where TGCF fans go, lol.
5. This is a peculiar complaint because SVSSS, MDZS, and TGCF are all told through the lens of the MC's and, to a lesser degree, the ML's. Whether SQQ, WWX, or XL, we're getting the bulk of the story through their eyes.
Funnily enough, that's not a criticism this person applied to MDZS, despite the biased perspectives we get from WWX and LWJ. Wonder why.
Look, most danmei tend to be protagonist-centric. I get that people like being edgy and stanning side characters just for the sake of it, but if you don't want a protagonist-centric work, don't read it. There are plenty of novels and narratives that feature a broad cast
that all get viewpoints. Go read A Song of Ice and Fire if you want a cast of 20+ viewpoint characters. It's bizarre to read works from a typically protagonist-centric genre and say "well one criticism is that this book like many others is protagonist-centric".
The story is ABOUT Xie Lian and Hua Cheng, and that's how it was marketed to the audience. It's not about Feng Xin and Mu Qing or whoever this person stans. If you want more content about those side characters, create it yourself.
5. The Black Water arc is complex and intriguing because of the way it ends. Literature would be boring if all we ever got were neat and tidy happy endings. The Black Water arc is challenging and thought provoking and the ending is supposed to hurt.
Sometimes, you have to grapple with the fact that there are no easy answers in life. That dichotomies and binaries don't explain all of life's problems or complexities. Whether you side with SQX, SWD, or HX, the point of the arc is to showcase class commentary &
how the circumstances one lives in can change drastically, how people will go to the ends of the earth and do horrible things for the sake of their families. If you didn't understand that, then you shouldn't have read a 700,000 word novel in the first place.
This isn't the Disney Channel or Love, Simon. It's an adult novel. If you want neat, tidy, happy endings for everyone, go read those kinds of works.
Also, again with the hypocrisy. It's not like MDZS had neat and tidy endings for all the arcs as well. Look at what happened to the relationship between Jiang Cheng and Wei Wuxian. Look at what happened to 99% of the Wen Clan. Look at what happened to Mo Xuanyu.
Look at how Lan Wangji will have to live knowing that he'll never hear the original voice or see the original face of his beloved ever again. Look at what happened to Xiao Xingchen, Xue Yang, Song Lan, and A-Qing.
Look at the state Wen Ning must live in for the rest of his life. Look at what happened to Nie Mingjue, Lan Xichen, and Jin Guangyao.
MDZS is literally chock full of character arcs that have difficult endings or unhappy endings. Does that lessen how good the novel is? Clearly that person would say no, so why are they acting like The Black Water arc ending on a tragic note is so bad?
Anyway... you all can hate TGCF if you want but your reasons for hating it are wack.
