"Have you ever known an animal? A stray? Something that spent its whole life starving? If an animal knows it’s safe, for the first time in years, it often slips back in time; it will behave as though it was born yesterday. A kind of innocence restored; for all you, you poor fucking human, you poor condemned thing, can never relearn what it was like to live in a world before things like death were real, no return from the moment when the bird lying under the tree was no longer asleep." x
tgcf is like if xie lian was faced with the trolley problem every single day and every day he said "i'll choose a third option!" and that option was throwing himself in front of the trolley to stop it but instead it flips over and kills/maims everyone on both tracks and xie lian himself
inspired by reading this post by @biboomerangboi considering how hua cheng was going to deal with the (almost) gambled daughter in the gamblers den scene if lang qianqiu hadn't interfered: "Option 2) She has to work in Ghost City for 20 years and is married to Yin Yu in name only (because Hua Cheng can’t have a wife at all or he won’t win Gege) then gets pleasantly divorced and giving a severance payment after 20 years."
ok!!!!! hua cheng's sneaky operation to liberate the daughters of shitty men who use them as collateral (? i'm sorry i don't know gambling terminology) in the gamblers den by making them yin yu's tribute wives!! yin yu has a platonic harem of mysterious women given full freedom to pursue any and every interest they want, go where they want, for their time in the harem, fully resourced by hua chengzhu.
the first time something like this happened hua cheng was like hmmmm how am i gonna get out of this one to fuck this guy over and protect his daughter...
*a few hours later* yin yu receiving a message that he was now married like 'hua chengzhu?!??!!' but the system works (and yin yu finds his wives pretty helpful with his work) and they keep adding wives
i'm picturing a troupe of mysterious, cloaked and masked figures gliding through the city as the ghosts quiet as they pass and clear a path for them to go on whatever their business is, either performing a task for the waning moon officer or their own secret affairs.
perhaps called "the waning moon brides" ... they're kind of like a sect or secret society or initiation cult or girl gang XD of talented, interesting, intelligent, mysterious women who are free to spend their time following whatever passions they want, roam around the city or go travelling. they can go to yin yu if they need something, or to help him with any tasks he needs done.
and because i'm a yinxuan shipper and can't help it... yin yu goes to them for advice after he sees he xuan's blackwater form for the first time and decides to set out to seduce him. (probably most of them don't know what they're doing either and give him terrible advice)
I went to a restaurant with a friend yesterday and upon entering we saw these splendid blueberry tarts under bell jars on the counter and we made jokey small talk with the waitress like oh, people will fight over these if there's not enough for everyone, it'll tear families apart, are you making more later? and she said no, I'm afraid that's our entire stock for today, but there are 18 slices, it should be plenty! It was a small village restaurant with only one menu du jour so there weren't any other dessert options but they don't usually get that many customers—but then a couple of large groups arrived and most people noticed the tarts like we did, and went ohh blueberry tart, it's been a while, I can't wait, and it became clear that when we'd get to the end of our meal there would be winners and losers in the blueberry tart rush
But later as we were about to order dessert I wasn't hungry anymore and I was like well that's too bad but someone else will be glad to get 'my' slice of tart—and my friend said yeah, me :) You should order it anyway, I'll eat both! At first I thought she was joking, but no. I said, there's not enough for everyone, you can't take two, and she said, we were going to order two slices, what difference does it make? and I was baffled that she couldn't see the ethical difference between two people eating one slice of tart each vs. one person eating two, when there's a limited quantity of tart. I felt like we were in a simplistic social justice metaphor it was so obvious, but there was no changing her mind. When I said "it's just... not nice" she said "okay" with a shrug, and what can you say to that. She added, you don't know any of these people and I was like, why are we reverting to tribal dynamics in a non-apocalyptic setting, how would you feel if we'd arrived a bit later and seen others ordering two desserts knowing you'd get zero? And she said, I would think that's their right, and I felt kind of amazed.
I pointed out that if she didn't think it was a wee bit wrong, she wouldn't ask me to order her second piece as if it was for me, and she said yeah maybe we don't need to do that, there's no law preventing me from ordering two desserts. What about Kant's categorical imperative Okay I guess you're not breaking any laws by taking more than your fair share of a thing other people also want, just failing a kindergarten-level morality test. I felt embarrassed for sounding like an annoying preachy rigid person so I dropped the issue, and as she ate her two slices she'd smile at me every time we overheard someone order coffee without dessert—like "See? There'll be enough, no one will be deprived of tart because of me!" as if that cancelled the fact that she didn't care in the first place. I guess it was one of these tiny issues that can still significantly alter the way you perceive a person. I tried to tell myself not to be so bothered about this small thing but I was! so bothered. And I felt like writing a letter to some agony aunt like "should I end a friendship over irreconcilable blueberry tart ethics"
(The MC is explaining the different color meanings of the lions; traditionally golden/yellow lions represent the character Liu Bei from Romance of the Three Kingdoms; red represents Guan Yu; black represents Zhang Fei)