#BRIDE!DIANXIA OH MY GOD

[abigail-nicole]

tgcf liveread 7

continuing porting my liveread of Pure Light And Joy In Novel Form, Heaven Official's Blessing, Tian Guan Ci Fu, from the dying twitter to the optimistically-not-dead tumblr. please support official translations of TGCF, the best novel, and maybe someday we'll get to see the COMPLETED, FILMED, EDITED LIVE ACTION if the chinese government ever quits being ragingly homophobic. enjoy season one of the donghua in the meantime and do read the original text!

originally tweeted on 3/31/2020:

I unabashedly love Xie Lian’s thrifty grandma personality & also the casual “wanna come to my ghost palace instead of always staying at your one-room apartment with three other people also living here which I never complain about even though I own a fjking palace”

I have Great Fondness for the ghosts in Ghost City being overly protective of Hua Cheng & Xie Lian (even if it is just to try to curry favor)

hahahaha oh my god this scene of sexytimes on an altar on top of poetry about Longing....

I’m. VERY PUMPED ABOUT SEEING MOUNT TONG’LU

tomorrow. i guess ill be responsible & start CHAPTER 128 TOMORROW THANKS EVERYBODY THIS IS THE ONLY THING BRINGING ME JOY AS I WORK THRU THIS PANDEMIC

yall Lang Ying THOUGHT HUA CHENG LIVED WITH THEM im dying....

He didnt think he could hide his feelings HE DIDNT THINK HE COULD HIDE HIS FEELINGS HEAAAAAAAAA

He’s really going straight WE USED TO SLEEP IN THIS BED TOGETHER level melancholy oh my god

This is a little nightmare story, the kind at which MXTX excels

Oh my god hes the crown prince of PINING AWAY TO NOTHING

okay mxtx it is Not At All Obvious that Hua Cheng is this Lang Ying & this gratituitious bathing scene is.... amazing omg

more like dianxia babysitter of errant dieties

-shi qingxuan

-quan yizhen

-qi rong

Heavenly Babysitter Dianxia confirmed with DONT PUT THAT IN YOUR MOUTH and DONT SET THAT ON FIRE

Think of the donghua playing with this scene of attacking empty clothes

his whole “this is the robe! no THIS is the robe! just kidding it was never here! now ive trapped you!” feels a little Princess Bride iocane powder reasoning

the boyfriends being Soft sustains me

hahahahahahaha god xie lian’s cooking is so amazingly terrible how is this book so great in its most domestic scenes

OUR BOY SNAPPED

bitches destroy Puqi Shrine gotta contend with the Flower Crown Martial Prince

hahahaha hua cheng really had to turn into a child for Flimsy Plot Reasons didn’t he

this Ghost Inn scene is pure chaos and slapstick & detail & action, and this is the cherry on top of the elaborately-crafted layers of this cake of a scene

Im sad about ling wen???? I love her???? She’s the most competent character in this book sorry hua cheng

“He might spit in the water of someone he doesn’t like....or put laxatives....but not poison...” Lolololol

Let’s pause mid-investigation so we can appreciate hualian holding hands

fetuses don’t have teeth......LIES EXPOSED

fetus eyes also don’t yoke together in utero this is a real medical fact unrelated to the fetus ghost in tgcf

ah yes, sitting in the window in the glowing, luminious moonlight, with your weapon-pet-scarf, an excellent time for a heart to heart confessional with your beloved

this is on level with Single Plank Bridge as a life philosophy / love confessional

so many important scenes happen over a table here. Jun Wu + Xie Lian + Hua Cheng taking tea without dissembling is A Mood

“Sometimes three with a single move” Lololol I Love Him

This adorable little exchange where they just talk about how much they belong to each other

Let’s stop here a second, pause the film on Puppet Master boyfriends, and do a bit of Plot Dissection:

-Jun Wu has sent Xie Lian to Mt TongLu to...become the next Ghost King

-Hua Cheng, the most recent Ghost King, is with him

-don’t you have to kill all the other ghosts to win

Let’s also stop & think about our Magical Girl Dianxia becoming A Ghost King:

I have no idea how this plot is gonna turn out but it’s always fun & fruitful to examine your thoughts & expectations the first time through something & wonder why you want or fear a certain outcome

Hua Cheng would be devastated if Xie Lian became a fierce ghost king capable of murdering millions. In fact it’s so antithetical to everything he is that, at that point, Xie Lian wouldn’t be the same person anymore.

(contrast this to wwx & lwj, both of whom have proven themselves capable of Big War Murder when pushed hard enough)

he contrast of soft sideplot of boyfriends being The Most Obviously In Love But Afraid To Say It and the extremely harsh main plot of What The Fuck, Did God Just Send Xie Lian Into A Literal Torture Volcano With Like, Real High Stakes

... but also does anyone else wanna see ghost king boyfriends

these gays obviously

but this plot, lighthearted flirting aside, is going to a real dark place??? & i see the end of book 3 coming with xie lian in a real bad cliffhanger of a situation for me to sit through while reading another painful flashback

Lolololol more fuckin on the altar i guess

The General Who Broke His Sword !!!!

let’s take a roll call:

(check) the general who broke his sword

(check) the prince who pleased the gods

[ ] the princess who slit her own throat

(check) the young lord who poured wine

OKAY BRING OUT THE REST IM READY!

continue Mt Tong'lu next time on TGCF Liveread livetweets part 8 or whatever part is next!

#tgcf #tgcf liveread

[razberryyum]

TGCF donghua Ep 3 Thoughts (SPOILERS!)

Oh my God the hell I went through to just watch this episode. Waited all night for Bilibili to load it on their Youtube channel, only to have it buffer nonstop, then had to figure out how to register and join the VIP membership on the Bilibili website, only to end up accidentally buying a shit ton of B coins that I don’t know what the hell I’m going to do with since I only needed like 68 out of the hundreds I have to buy a long enough subscription for the rest of the season. If anyone has any idea what I can do with all these extra coins, please do tell me. Even if I kept them around for the next season of TGCF or Tianbao Fuyao Lu, I’d still have too many left. AARRGGGHHHH.

And you’re probably wondering, why go through all the trouble, it’s gonna be on Funimation the next morning. Tbh even though Funi said it’s in HD, the quality of the stream didn’t seem up to par, and plus...I just couldn’t wait. I’m like already that committed to this show even though I haven’t even read the book (I started again tonight though!). 

Was it worth all this trouble? Of course, yes. Look at this cutie. He’s worth every bit of my hard earned money and brain cells and energy.

We got to meet a few more new characters which I’m sure we’ll see again in the future. I just have to say, good looks definitely run in the Pei family.

I hope Pei Su’s not as much of a bastard as his ancestral predecessor (current boss?) Pei Ming. I don’t know if we’re supposed to think of Pei Ming in a negative light, maybe it’s all a misunderstanding, but right now I do think he wronged Xuan Ji just a little. Sure, it was her fault for getting too serious with the relationship when he already clearly told her he wasn’t into commitment, and it’s also her choice to betray her country for him AND destroy her own legs. HOWEVER, he could have handled that a bit better I guess? Unless I read the scene wrong, I take it he didn’t use the information she gave him to defeat her army, that he did it on his own strength and merit? But his coldness, the way he rejected her, when he knew she was in love with him...I just couldn’t help but feel bad for her. Although, then again, she did kill a lot of people in her wrath form so...I guess I shouldn’t pity her too much. Her victims were probably all innocent people...all those poor brides, life taken away on what was supposed to be the happiest day of their lives.  So sad.

I have to say, seeing Pei Ming and Xuan Ji kiss on screen also made me feel a bit sad but for a different reason: because I know we will never get to see HuaLian have intimate physical contact like that on screen. I always feel that for danmei-based adaptations, if the main couple can’t physically express their love, then no other couple should be allowed to do anything more either. Just doesn’t seem fair otherwise, even if it’s something straight from the source material and it’s a completely valid relationship. 

But considering the curse Xuan Ji was trying to put on Pei Ming, now I’m dying to know if he does eventually fall in love. Feels like an obvious set up to future tragedy so I can’t wait to read to find out...unless the show actually gets to it first (but I somehow feel that’s doubtful).

I had a feeling things wouldn’t end well for her and the boy, and I guess I was a little relieved that I was only half right, but still, I got teary-eyed when this moment happened. I loved that the donghua team had her pass away with her eyes open so that Xie Lian had to close them. Made the scene seem more real somehow. 

I can’t wait to find out what his disease is all about since it’s related to Dianxia’s history. I remember seeing the name of the disease floating about once in a while, but I don’t even know if it’s a spoiler at this point to know that. Is it too much to hope that he survives and is cured of the disease? I’m already attached to the poor boy. (should I be?? God I can’t wait to read so I have more context for everything and I can be prepared to either get attached or not get attached to certain characters!)

#TGCF #Tian Guan Ci Fu #TGCF donghua #Xie Lian #Pei Ming #Xuan Ji #Pei Su

[beneaththebrim]

TGCF Ep 3-4 reactions/rants

Am I doing these in twos? :) Or was I too unremittingly :) anxious :) last week about [redacted] to make a post?

whatever let’s go spoilers spoilers

Episode 3

SO many things that I didn’t notice while reading that become apparent via the visual medium--like how Feng Xin repeats “So she was a bitter and vindictive bride” to Xie Lian--the FORESHADOWING,, ah, good stuff good stuff

the horror elements are great just wanna say

RUOYE GOOD

Ling Wen knows it all DAMN RIGHT SHE DOES

Love the sound design for Xuan Ji and how her resentment manifests physically in the animation, don’t love her character--unfortunately these first two arcs of tgcf really do lean back on these sexist (ghost bridegroom arc) and racist/Islamophobic (Banyue arc) caricatures--hope it doesn’t stifle the international popularity of tgcf as a whole, given that the first season of the donghua will probably only get to just the end of the Banyue arc, but I’d definitely understand if it turned ppl off (I get the feeling that these issues that are more subtle in written form are more apparent in audiovisual media--granted, I haven’t actually seen much discourse on twitter outside my own circle about the Banyue arc even though the manhua is near the end of it, soooo...)

(somehow bc tumblr feels so much more like a ghost town lately I’m more open to posting wank and unadulterated opinions here :P which I’d be more careful about on twitter)

BUT YEAH MAN I MEAN THE STRONGEST ARCS IN TGCF DON’T START UNTIL LIKE BOOK 2 WHEN I THINK BACK ON IT

Book 1 seems to mainly exist to quickly introduce everyone and ship tease ship tease ship tease to suck ppl in

Little Ying :’(

oh there he is, the imperialist symbol, with his imperial background music

I’m sorry I don’t like Pei Su at all

mmmm do love the narrative parallels of Ping Ming reacting to a woman about to slit her own throat

LMAO THE SEXY CANDLE SILHOUETTE SCENE

WHY AM I REMINDED OF THE ROOM

hey can hualian have one of those bilibili just how much can you imply eh

like what about when Hua Cheng goes ghost!feral in book 3 and Xie Lian has to suppress him by blowing kissing him could we also have sexy candle silhouette scene for that

OH MY GOD THAT MONTAGE IS THE CHEESIEST. HETEROSEXUALS ARE YOU OKAY

it is good that in the end Xie Lian’s like ‘can’t judge as an outsider’ w the implication that we are really only getting two unreliable narrator sides of the story (even tho the story ends up implying that pei ming was for the most part in the right)

Pei Ming is an interesting character imo, bc he has a very consistent moral code, which puts him on various different sides throughout the story. I don’t really blame him so much for his sleaziness as I do for his corruption (sorry I don’t like Shi Wudu either) and how he pressured Pei Su to military glory (leading to a genocide of the Banyuese). do agree with leila (don’t think she has a tumblr?) that he should have suffered more in his character arc of slowly learning to respect women tho (whereas Pei Su suffered but didn’t really have a character arc, unless ‘dating Ban Yue against Pei Ming’s wishes’ counts as a character arc)

okay here’s the thing

here’s the thing

you can go on and on about not liking a character and you can dig up tons of receipts of them doing bad things to justify your dislike

but what you’ll find after a while is that the people who do like that character aren’t wrong either, bc they can also pull up tons of ways they did admirable things or had interesting motivations

after a while you just realize it comes down to vibes

like Pei Ming’s awful, but later on I just find myself positively enjoying that chauvinistic pig. And Shi Wudu has good motivations/his actions are p typical ‘just vindictive god things uwu✨ ‘ but to me, his vibes are positively rancid and I just cannot like that bourgeois pig

this is why it’s important to take Taixi Dianxia’s advice 😌

(or be like Mu Qing and just judge absolutely everyone)

(most of all himself :’) )

OH HERE WE GO AGAIN DISRESPECTING MU QING

HE IS RIGHT

if he didn’t get reinforcements they would have to clean up the bodies on their own GOD no one considers logistics

it’s just Ling Wen and Mu Qing running heaven for real

😂  oh my god I love fengqing

YASSSS BAI WUXIANGGGGG

OOF ngl that’s some good-ass cutting between Xie Lian being reminded about the fall of Xian Le and the clip of Ruoye’s origin in the EC (WHY DONGHUA TEAM WHY)

Episode 4

One thing I was never fully clear on was whether Bai Wuxiang placed the piece of his soul onto Lang Ying like, right after his death? or if Jun Wu put it on him when Xie Lian takes him up to heaven later

actually I never read the edited version of tgcf maybe mxtx made that point more clear

MU QING STOP BEING TRANSPHOBIC CHALLENGE

OH MY GOD WHAT THE FUCK THE PILES OF SCROLLS

Ling Wen of all the corrupt evil ass bitches in heaven you are the one I will never blame for being corrupt and evil

lmao everyone being like “bruh” when Xie Lian’s like “ah, Hua Cheng, what a nice name for the helpful youngster” 😂

LMAOOOOOO LOVE THAT QI RONG IS THE KIND OF ATTRACTIVE THAT ONLY QI RONG STANS WILL FIND ATTRACTIVE

mallgoth ass bitch

FISH

FISH

FISH MAN YES

(He Xuan is sexy in exactly the kind of way that He Xuan stans find sexy which is Actually the objective standard of sexiness I’m sorry I don’t make the rules)

I mean he’s being voiced by Wu Lei who no doubt is gonna give it the full Yan Wushi, again, I don’t make the rules

interesting how Jun Wu is facing camera but tilting the mask so you can only see the crying side--to ppl who don’t know who he is it looks like he’s turned to the side and his head is kinda incorporeal, whereas to ppl in the know you can see him towering over you

I like that you can kinda see through Xie Lian’s expression & tone that his gears are turning, how there must have been something significant about the 35 officials Hua Cheng challenged, and he even already suspected Mu Qing & Feng Xin were the two who didn’t accept

LMAO PEI SU THINKING HUA CHENG AND QI RONG ARE WORKING TOGETHER this is like centrist Democrats who are like, “well I think that it’s the socialists who ultimately helped [redacted] win in 2016″

NO QI RONG IS NOT BERNIE SANDERS IN THAT ANALOGY

I’M SORRY QI RONG STANS BUT QI RONG IS NOT THE SOCIALIST ICON YOU THINK HE IS

ALTHOUGH I ADMIT THE OTHER FIGURE IN MY COMPARISON WAS KINDA HARSH QI RONG ISN’T ACTUALLY THAT BAD

pfffft all of Ling Wen’s miserable employees

awwwwww fengqing helped their f-f-friend out owo

Ling Wen’s like “Wait! You were supposed to ask His Majesty for help and become completely dependent on him! No, Your Highness, he’s gonna take it out on me now!” 🤧

YES MY FAVORITE LINE STAYED

“Collecting scraps is better than ascending” :)

AAAAND THERE HE IS. THE BOY.

I like how Hua Cheng has a kind of know-it-all, nerdy arrogant voice, it does fit San Lang and I think it will be a nice contrast when we finally see him as Hua Cheng

WELL THAT’S IT HAPPY FRIDAY THE 13TH GHOSTFUCKERS

#tian guan ci fu #天官赐福 #天官赐福动画 #tgcf donghua #brim reacts