Reading Between the Lines in TGCF: Hualian’s First Time Fics
Different folks have different levels of appreciation for smut in their books, but I am definitely a fan. I love reading the culmination of romance or flirting or just undeniable physical attraction. It’s not just for my own jollies, but also increases my empathy for the characters. I think a well-written sex scene can be a part of a character’s arc and growth and personality in a meaningful way.
But alas, for all kinds of reasons we don’t always get that in danmei. It may be because an author doesn’t care to write sex scenes for their characters, or because censorship of gay media in mainland China is rampant. No matter the reason, I’m always a little disappointed when the scene fades to black. I fully support authors making choices that are right for them, but as a reader I always want more.
Thankfully, fan fiction comes to the the rescue. This is the first in a series of posts to help shine a light on those fade-to-black scenes with some fanfic recommendations. I’m going to recommend fanfic here that is fully canon compliant (i.e., doesn’t contradict anything that happens in the official book), and is similar in tone and style to the original author. I’m really picky here—I struggle to read canon-compliant fanfic that is written in a different voice or style, so these recommendations are as close as possible.
We’ll start with Heaven Official’s Blessing/TGCF (天官賜福). This book is dripping with sexual tension, but for reasons most likely related to censorship we don’t get anything explicit. Author Mo Xiang Tong Xiu (墨香铜臭) left plenty of teasing content, like the Land of the Tenders scene (illustrated by Pu), and extras replete with many references to our favorite ghost king and his god enjoying themselves.
For any fill-in-the-blank scenes to be canon-compliant, they’ll nneed to reference not only the text and extras, but also some details the author shared in an interview. She said that Hualian’s first time was in, “Huangji temple in Taicang mountain!”
I asked around in various danmei forums for recommendations and got a handful of really good ones. Here are the two I most recommend:
- Hualian Wedding Night in English and the original Chinese by 流云下酒 (liuyunxiajiu): This is written in Chinese with a fabulous English translation. This one is seriously so good. Of all of the ones I’ve read, this one is my favorite for two reasons: First, the language is so close to the original text as to be basically seamless. The character interactions, inner dialogue, descriptions, etc. all felt like I was still reading TGCF. Second, Xie Lian’s natural bashfulness is quickly overwhelmed by his ardor, which felt like a very natural evolution of his character to me.
- every path leads to you by Nyerus: I also love this fic. There is more drawing out of their first time, with days that pass in between Hua Cheng’s return and their eventual marriage, but there’s a ton of sweetness here too. This extension also allowed for more interactions between the characters, more of Hua Cheng’s teasing and Xie Lian’s shyness are on full display in a way that made me giddy.
A huge thank you to the amazing fic writers who have made this such a fun blog post to research and write. You all are truly the amazing stars. I’ll plan some future posts in the Reading Between the Lines series for two of my other frustrating fade-to-black favorites: Guardian and Sha Po Lang.
Do you have any favorites to add to this list?
