TGCF Afterword

On gentleness, dreams, something never to be given up on, and someone never to be forgotten.

Every time I write, the postscript always comes before the main text. When these words were written, the outline wasn’t even fully fleshed out yet. Rather than a postscript, it's probably more so the conception before writing, and thoughts while writing.

(And, finally! This time the postscript doesn't begin with "finally".)

To have TGCF follow MDZS, the pressure is abnormally huge. I consider expectations to be a double-edged sword, which is why I always give out vaccination shots of warnings. Although I feel none of that worked.

But, at the beginning when I was planning setup and characters, what took hold of more wasn’t nervousness, but an excitement for challenging a brand new world. So, let's write about some happy things first.

1. Folklore and Local Myths

In the second half of 2016 and the first half of 2017, in order to change pace and seek inspiration, I traveled to many places. I’ve always enjoyed folklore and local myths. I’ve visited many Buddhist temples and Daoist shrines, and the impulse to write TGCF came from this.

In Chinese mythology and legends, sometimes they would deify a real person, and worship them as “Saint”, “God”, “Grandmaster”, etc., then tack on their lore afterwards. However, if I were to take any one of these pre-existing characters and use them for myself, there’s going to be inevitable disputes over the corruption of whoever’s sage. If the text is arranged in a way that comes from actual basis, then it’d become a whole other interpretation, but what’s regretful is this author doesn’t enjoy textual research. Furthermore, there’s not really any sense of accomplishment in building from a pre-existing character, in the end it’s still not as fun as making stuff up, so it’s pure nonsense from the very first word of this work. An entire heaven full of Gods and Buddhas with severe mortal desires, each with their own awful habits and personalities, fighting, pulling, yanking, airing each other’s dirty laundry all day. The air is thick with gossip and fireworks, none of them a single bit pure and refined, but they still stubbornly put on airs like they’re high and mighty.

Someone asked me why every one of these heavenly officials all have skeletons in their closets, or were perplexed over why such crummy people can become heavenly officials too. It’s very simple. Because I said so. I’ve said it at the very beginning too: ascension or not, entering the heavens or not can all be determined by things such as ability, hard work, and shit luck, and very seldom does it have to do with ethics and morality.

This novel has some shadow of an adventure travelogue. For example, that pit where criminals are thrown down to be bitten and devoured by snakes, scorpions, and beasts, the rocky cave for sheltering from sandstorm, are all places I’ve seen in an ancient city in the Great Northwest. The windstorms in the northwest were too strong, I accidentally sprained my foot but still used my camera to take pictures furiously, what a brand new experience. But while strolling about in that magnificent and gloomy gigantic rock cave, admiring all those divine statues of various sizes in varying postures, my belief is further cemented:

I will write a love story between a god and his believer.

2. Love Story

In all three of my current novels, HuaLian is the pair with the most flavour of tradition in my opinion.

Let’s talk about a small encounter first. While hiking in Yun’nan, I saw a very rundown, old Daoist shrine on a famous Daoist mountain. In the front hall is a damaged donation box and a plaque, very sincerely-written with “This Shrine is in Danger of Collapse, Please Kindly Donate.” I laughed to death then donated Y100, and then, I saw the red flowering tree growing in this shrine.

The flowering tree was very, very tall, and centuries old. Apparently it’s the world’s tallest flowering tree, still blooming beautifully and ardently. At the time, most of the character designs for TGCF were already set, so when I saw this, it felt like an amazing coincidence.

When it comes to character designs, the Shou’s were decided on first for the first two novels, but I was torn over the Gong’s for a long time, and needed a run-in period. Hua Cheng, however, was an exception. Inspiration struck and there he was; inspiration struck again, and I blinded one of his eyes.

In the design, Hua Cheng’s father is a man of Xianle’s royal capital, but his mother is an evil beauty of a foreign ethnicity, so when Hua Cheng first appeared, he’d have a small trace of a foreign culture.

In the outline, I referenced many ethnicities to determine this foreign ethnicity. The tattoo is an example; it seems many ethnic tribes have the custom of tattooing, and a tattoo would make Hua Cheng feel somewhat rebellious and a teeny bit juvenile, plus the sexiness of being childish. As for maple leaves, butterflies, silver accessories, beast totems, etc. are elements that are fairly easy to guess which ethnicity they’re from, since there’s a lot of information on that. Still, I hope absolutely no one will bring in any actual ethnicities into this, since my understanding is very shallow after all, so let’s keep things, foremost, imaginary. If this causes any misunderstandings for anyone in real life it’d be very troublesome. Besides, since I formally decided on Hua Cheng’s personality while traveling in Shanghai, technically his birthplace is Shanghai. Other than manipulating some foreign wicked tricks later, Hua Cheng lived in the Kingdom of Xianle for over ten years, so the Han culture has a deeper influence on him (what are you blabbering all seriously about).

In the abandoned draft, Hua Cheng often sang to his beloved a love song in a long-lost language his mother taught him. If Xie Lian asked what he’s singing, he’d blink slyly and tell nonsense. But as the novel progressed, I realized Hua Cheng’s parents and his background didn't necessarily need to be written, so we can just chat about this setup then let it go, it’s not important.

In any case, Hua Hua is a good boi. Whether he’s smiling fakely, or if he’s got a little silver chain on his boots, all of his designs and related decisions came fast and delightfully. My greatest happiness is to change his clothes and give him new appearances, and felt regret that I couldn’t manage to put together ten sets. Hopefully I can work on this during the edit!

It was actually the Shou, Xie Lian, who tortured me for up to half a year’s time. When the novel started serializing, I was still torn over him for a long time.

My feelings towards him are more complicated in comparison. It’s not that I dislike him; trust me, my likes and dislikes are very easy to guess. I like men who, the moment they emerge, make people say “ah, that’s someone with a story!”. But, he’s one of the biggest reasons why this novel was painful for me.

In the past, when I write, even if I’m not familiar with the character at the beginning, I can usually grasp the feeling within three days. But for Xie Lian, I was still struggling even after five, six days, and my heart lurched.

One of the tags on the novel is “Inspirational” because Xie Lian is a “loser”.

He must experience youthful ignorance, overestimation of his own abilities, have been laughable, been foolish, made mistakes, despaired, felt hatred, gone crazy. But he can’t run, and he can’t hide; everything is what it is. All this was killing me. Not just within the text, but outside the text too. My mediation was useless, and I’ve no energy anymore either, so in order not to be affected, I stopped looking at comments altogether.

Since I always habitually vaccinate myself before a serialization begins, speculating on all the worst possible scenarios and preparing myself mentally, by the time serialization started I had already expected how all the negative comments would go down. But after much hesitation, I still thought, why not try all different kinds of characters? I haven’t tried writing a main character like this before.

But the most important thing is, by my instincts, someone like Hua Cheng will most definitely love someone like this. So, after a good half a year’s worth of qualms, in the end I still typesetted him: It’s you!

This is a love story. It’s about gentleness, dreams, something never to be given up on, and someone never to be forgotten.

During middle school and high school, sometimes I’d write some mind-boggling stories, but I’ve always had a random fixation, the belief that a person shouldn’t see love as their life. They must have their own ambitions, their own ideals, their own goals in life, blah blah blah, otherwise they won’t have their own soul, not independent, blah blah blah. But, later this idea slowly began to change. Because I realized, although I’m always saying people shouldn’t put so much emphasis on love, truthfully, what attracts my eyes the most is oftentimes the people whose emotions are so powerful they’re like moths to flames. Does this count as the body being truthful while the mouth lies? Either way, after realizing this, I can’t help but think what I thought when I was young is too arrogant and single-faceted.

How can someone love another so deeply with abandon? Is it laughable? It’s too incredible, can it really be done to that degree? They must have obsessive disorders! There’s probably not one in a million! But then when I think about it, a shocking dummy like Xie Lian, who works hard but pleases no one, refusing to look back even with his head cracked open, is equally hard to find one in a million. So if looked at in this way, then the two of you really are made for each other.

I’ve seen you at your worst, but so what.

You are my dream.

3. Weirdass hobby and silly dailies outlook

At first, the foundation I set for TGCF is “warmth”. I wanted this story to be a bit soft, a bit sexy, a bit healing, a bit simple. So, at the beginning, the outline was putting all the efforts into going in the direction of fresh, newstyle traditional village life (?). Everyday, they’d grow some vegetables, drink some tea, maybe beat up some little monsters or demons who are causing trouble, assist the elderly Jun Wu cross the street, or something similar (???). To this end, I drank a ton of chicken soup to brainwash myself, hoping to nourish a pair of compassionate eyes to see the world.

But, reality is proof, right now I still prefer the heavier and more colourful worldly desires and emotions, that desperate love and hate. Every time I’m writing a character, I always secretly anticipate when they would suddenly explode in madness. I LOVE YOU I LOVE YOU! I LOVE YOU TO DEATH ! ! ! ! I HATE YOU I HATE YOU GO DIE! ! ! LET ME DIE! ! ! ! LET ME DIE AAAAHHHHHH! ! ! SAVE ME! SAVE ME! SAVE ME! SAVE ME! (...)

For example, Black Water ripping 15° (Shi Wudu) apart with bare hands, how did I manage to burst out 8k-10k [words] all of a sudden? It’s because that didn’t require thinking at all; the dialogue and script were both bang bang bang shooting out like a machine gun. I never thought about why a character would say this or do that, I’m only very certain that they were going to say this and do that from the beginning. For example, why did 15° try to strangle Shi Qingxuan before he died? Before I had the time to ponder the “why”, I’ve already written it out, he’s already done it. It’s only after that I understood, ah, why he did what he did. And this “understanding”, is only my own speculation on his psychology. In any case, he’s the one who went to strangle, I didn’t make him do it!

But, although the work didn’t end up warm, I made it comedic. I actually really enjoy writing comedies, and I like writing dailies too. From the very beginning, I had hoped TGCF would have daily life and adventures go hand in hand, that there are horrific cases and battling to pass a level, but also clowning around and friendly visits too. But I’m not used to it yet, so my manipulation of it is still not proficient enough.

4. Serialization

The keywords for the process of writing this work are: feeling lost and pain.

I’ve mentioned it at the start, when I first began writing the outline, I was feeling really gung ho about it. But then the closer to the end, the more painful it became.

Maybe no one will believe me, but TGCF was originally only intended to be 36k [words], so the outline was only 5k. The reason I said I was going to archive the whole novel was because this count was what I had predicted. Of course, everyone should know very well that I’m never accurate in predicting word count. Who knew that no matter how I wrote, nothing felt right, and I’ve changed several different versions for the opening alone. Even now I’m still not satisfied with this opening. Of all the three openings, SVSSS is the one I’m the most pleased with.

Anyway, it was under these distressful and confused circumstances that I saved a bunch of manuscripts. This is the first time I’ve ever saved manuscripts for such a long time, but I still felt the result wasn’t good enough, so a lot of manuscripts were abandoned. At the time, I really couldn’t figure it out, I was really anxious, and the thought of “maybe I won’t start with this novel, change to a different one”, had crossed my mind, but the preview had already gone out, so it wouldn’t sound very good if I changed my mind at the last minute. Besides, I’ve already written so much, if I didn’t use it, wouldn’t it be a waste? So I could only continue to sink into this investment. The end result is my speed became slower and slower, and the conclusion was nowhere in sight.

In the end I still thought, this won’t do. If it kept going like this, it’d be two years and I still wouldn’t finish! Should I stimulate myself? So, without thinking much further, let’s start! And so I released chapters as I edited (practically rewriting the whole thing), all the while writing new text, burning out. Until finally, (midway through the serialization) I’ve finally discovered the reasons for all the difficulties. It’s complicated and specific, so I won’t lay it out.

I did have plans to write million+ k words of a long serialization, but, it should’ve been something that’d take place many years later, I hadn’t expected it to be so soon. TGCF is a complete accident, I haven’t matured yet, this took me by surprise. It already takes me a long time to think things up, a novel of this length should’ve taken me at least three years’ time to figure out the outline, but dragging on for this long is absurd. Had I known the content was going to be this huge, I probably would’ve approached the outline much differently.

But, these are the things that you’ll never know beforehand. You’ll only know when you do it, it’s the same for doing anything. Unless the pen is on the paper, it’s nothing but talk.

In any case, the arrow on the bow must shoot. Since it’s shot, then I must grit my teeth and persevere to the end.

Writing a serialization is a high-stress affair. I know there are authors who can update fast and update good, but I know I’m not one of them.

When I think about things, I chew for a long time. Before in the past when I wrote, the average speed was 5k in half a year, so daily updates are a struggle for me. Moreover, my shape is sometimes good, sometimes bad. When I’m not stuck the speed is 1k3, in such cases my reaction is also fairly good; but when I’m stuck it really is suffering. I’m not satisfied with the text I squeeze out when I’m stuck, and somewhat impolite comments would also appear when that happens. That’s when I’d get depressed, and the vicious cycle continues.

TGCF is definitely the one novel that’s brought me the most pain; I often felt powerless, almost suffocatingly so, and every day I’d wonder if this was training to strengthen my ability against pressure. Plus, the large-scale rumours since MDZS still haven’t stopped even now, and mud is slung at me at every given opportunity, so I really am tired. If it wasn’t because I’m especially free, I wouldn’t even have the energy to say much. Plus the many troubles of real life, after these eight months of carrying this burden, no joke, I’m really going bald.

It’s just such a headache. Archive, and I don’t think it’d work out, the speed too slow. Serialize, but daily updates really are too exhausting, with a bunch of other issues on top of that. There’s cons and pros for each, I’m still trying to figure out how to solve this awkward problem.

I don’t want to hide anything either. I know many people have come to read TGCF at first because of MDZS. I’m not gonna lie, I don’t think that’s a very good thing.

I’ve also mentioned this at the beginning, that high expectations are a double-edge sword, so I’ve vaccinated from the very start: you guys will never see a second MDZS again.

Besides, it’s been one to two years between the start of TGCF’s opening and MDZS’s ending, so I had thought, maybe it’s faded some?

But it was still useless. Only a few chapters in of the serialization, and the problems I had long thought of poked their heads out, and persisted until midway, towards the end, and they’re still there even when the story’s concluded, so I suppose the bickering will continue. I keep wondering whether I should’ve started with a modern-day story instead, that way at least no one would compare a present-day world with the ancient world.

But, what can I do. In truth, most readers and authors only have the bond of one or two books; liking one book doesn’t necessarily mean liking the other books. Times like these I don’t think people should ask for too much. Authors don’t ask too much of readers, and readers don’t ask too much of authors. After all, writing and reading are both very personal and subjective affairs.

I never promise “Customer Satisfaction Guaranteed!”, just…I’m writing for myself, if you like it then read it, if you don’t like it then drop it.

I know better than anyone the good and bad of TGCF.

Just taking myself for example, in the process of writing this work, sometimes I’d get the feeling of being bound, unable to stretch out my limbs, so anxious that I’m rolling all over the ground. But there are some parts where I think are rather interesting. I can’t bear to look at the parts that I’m dissatisfied with, but the parts I like, I really love.

However, even though so much blood and sweat are spilt, I still wasn’t able to achieve the result I wanted, but there’s no reason why I can’t take this as training when the level of difficulty suddenly jumped exponentially.

Besides, I still believe there are many readers who like it. Even if there’s only thousands who truly love it, that’s good too, it’s worth it. That means this almost a year’s worth of all-nighters, hair loss, mental blood vomit weren’t for naught.

5. Editing

Right now the story’s current form is still somewhat far from what I had in mind at the beginning, so I still plan on fixing it a little.

Editing is actually not that great of a thing, because most readers won’t be looking back, the life of a web novel is too short, so in a few years maybe no one will remember this work anymore. Plus, pirated repost rates are too high, there are many who don’t read the original and go to download the TXT instead, so even if I edit, the outside would rumour it to be pirated, so it’s pretty helpless. Or, readers get attached to the old work, and think the older version is better, scorning the new version instead.

But to me, the serialization really is too rushed. I want to at least have those who enjoy this story see a better version of it. Of course, the most important thing being I myself want to see it.

Nonetheless, I still hope I can figure out a way to get rid of this habit from now on.

The new version will unlock some brand new plot and maps. Those who are interested can just take this as a Tuesday Special, those who aren’t can just leave it.

But because writing this really hurt me too deeply, and the length is too long, it’s a huge production, so I won’t be able to finish it that fast. Maybe it’ll be after the fourth novel, maybe before that, I can’t say. We’ll see what life has in store.

Or maybe because I’m exhausted. The structure is already set so there can’t be any major changes, after all, JJ has really troublesome restrictions when it comes to editing. I can’t promise too much right now, we’ll see after a few days’ rest.

6. Grim Reaper

The preview for the new novel “Grim Reapers Get No Days Off” is already out. You can see it when you enter the Author’s Bulletin, or maybe I’ll add the link in a bit. Starts 2018, modern-day danmei. The subject is weird so I don’t know how to categorize it.

The outline of this work was actually produced at the same time as TGCF. At the time, I struggled a bit in picking who to start with first, very indecisive, but in the end it was because Hua Cheng was born first, and Qiu Chi was born a teeny bit after, so TGCF it was.

If people are interested, then take a look, if not that’s fine too, we’ll see…still, vaccination first: This is my first time writing modern-day danmei, there’s definitely going to be all sorts of random attempts and experimentations. I don’t know how many people will really accompany me in going all the way, but whatever, come if you want. I’ll be off first.

—MXTX 2018.02.25