Ruoye - Blog Posts

Can we talk about Ruoye for a second.

Like, it’s a sweet, wholesome, playful little spirit that loves Xie Lian to pieces, yet its backstory is so fucked up. It only came to life because of the horrible evil acts it was used to commit, and I’m just thinking that poor baby Ruoye has got to be just as traumatized as Xie Lian. The book notes that in its very first moments, it doesn’t understand the suffering that birthed it, but I hardly think that means Ruoye wasn’t aware of what caused it to gain consciousness. It was a lil baby spirit, so it just didn’t understand the implications yet.

And Ruoye had the misfortune of coming to life during Xie Lian’s worst moments. Of course it wasn’t XL’s fault, but it still hurts that Ruoye, innocent little spirit that it was, just wanted love from the person it saw as its creator and wasn’t able to get it. My guess is Ruoye probably quickly understood the circumstances surrounding its birth because of XL’s initial attitude towards it. I almost imagine it had to feel some sort of guilt for its part, albeit involuntary, in XL’s suffering.

However. As we know, no matter what mistakes Xie Lian made in the past, he ultimately chose kindness. I cannot imagine how painful it must have been for him to see Ruoye for a while, given what it must have reminded him of, yet he welcomed and cared for it regardless. He gave it the love that it so desperately wanted. And I can’t get over that. He realized that no matter how much pain Ruoye had caused him, it wasn’t the little spirit’s fault. In a way, I can draw parallels between that and Xie Lian’s treatment of Hong Hong’er, who he always took care of no matter how much others warned him that he would cause misfortune. Xie Lian ignored the warnings because Hong Hong’er didn’t deserve to be punished for something he had no control over. He deserved to be loved like anyone else.

Now, the scene that really got me thinking about all this? When Jun Wu uses Ruoye to tie up Xie Lian in Quan Yizhen’s palace, Ruoye is distraught. I don’t think that is purely because it has been tied into knots, as is explained in the book, but also because of the resurfacing trauma of again being used to hurt Xie Lian, whom it loves so much. And again, like little ghost fire Hua Cheng, it can do nothing about it.

All this to say, I love precious little Ruoye and I love the relationship it has with Xie Lian even more. Despite the trauma and pain, they found companionship in each other, choosing to love. It’s like, one of, if not the main theme, of TGCF, and I never realized how much Ruoye, with all its parallels to Hua Cheng, embodies that.

Felt silly, made a little something in relation to my tgcf fic "To be is to be yours" (Here´s the link if you´re interested)

This shows how XL would have reacted had Wu Ming shown him his face before...the incident

you guys ever think about how ruoye used to accidentally tie itself into a death knot/noose as a newborn evil spirit

Mermay Xie Lian

(Click for higher quality)

Btw, the little fire is Hua Cheng and the eel is Ruoye^^

I did Wei Wuxian last year, so why not Xie Lian this year yk

about Ruoye

What’s interesting about Ruoye’s (若邪) name is that, the second character in its name, “ye” (邪), is usually pronounced as “xie” (not the “xie” in Xie Lian), and almost never as “ye.” However, mxtx confirmed the pronunciation of “Ruoye” herself. So what might be the significance of 邪 being pronounced as “ye”?

邪 is no longer pronounced as “ye” in modern Chinese, and there’re two instances in classical Chinese where it’s pronounced as “ye”: first, as an interrogative particle in a sentence; and secondly, when it’s used within the name of the ancient legendary sword Moye (莫邪). So it’s very hard not to associate Ruoye with Moye, the sword forged around 500 BC that has achieved mythical status in Chinese tales.

Moye is in fact originally the name of a swordsmith. Legend goes that Moye and her husband were commissioned by the king to forge swords, but they had difficulty melting the metal in the furnace when forging the sword, so Moye threw herself into the furnace which eventually induced the metal to melt. After the sword was made, it was named after Moye. So we see the similarity between the sword Moye and Xie Lian’s weapon Ruoye: they both came into being as a result of human sacrifice. Moye gave her own body to forge the sword; Ruoye came alive due to Xie Lian’s blood and the resentful and catastrophic energy given rise by the death of XL’s parents.

Behind both the stories of Moye and Ruoye, there’s the ancient Chinese superstition that in order to forge a weapon of the highest calibre and with its own soul, human sacrifice is required for it, so that human spirit and life force can be absorbed into the weapon. Blood, in particular, was seen as the essence of the human life force, and crucial to creating an object imbued with human spirit. This might explain why Ruoye was so close and loving to Xie Lian as soon as it came to life, as it was stained with Xie Lian’s blood. So to sum it up, the pronunciation of Ruoye’s name tells us two things: first, that it is a very ancient weapon, since 邪 is only pronounced as “ye” in classical Chinese; secondly, like the sword Moye, Ruoye has a dark and bloody origin in human sacrifice.

Keep reading

Bonding time with Ruoye.

ABCDMXTX - Day 18: Ruoye.

From all spiritual devices, Ruoye is the one that feels the most like an extension of its owner. In a way, it's Xie Lian main and last line of defense.

I used this photo reference.

List of prompts.

"Let me see you (how I want to be seen)", also known in my WIPs as "Dancer Xie Lian" or "E-Ming's wish", is a Tian Guan Ci Fu fanfic I started writing eons ago and that is finally here with:

Hualian post-canon domestic tooth-rotting fluff.

E-Ming loving hours in which Ruoye gets love too.

Hua Cheng being a headache while having a headache.

Dance!

Summary: When Xie Lian woke up, two things were unexpectedly the same as how they were hundreds of years ago: he spontaneously got in the mood to dance —something that he didn’t remember happening since his first banishment— and Hua Cheng decided to hide his face.

Thanks a lot to Massie for beta-reading~