
What’s my favorite danmei/BL and why? This question only gets harder the more webnovels I read, but Heaven Official’s Blessing/Tian Guan Ci Fu (TGCF) is forever going to be up there among the top contenders. MXTX’s other two works, Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation/Mo Dao Zu Shi (MDZS) and the Scum Villain’s Self Saving System (SVSSS) are also in the top ten, for sure. (You need to know these acronyms if you are going to survive in danmei land. You’re welcome.) I’d really like to draw attention to TGCF right now because, along with MXTX’s other two novels, it is the only major danmei/BL that has a licensed English translation in hard copy — and volume 3 is coming out soon, sometime in July. (Although it’s currently listed on Amazon as the #1 LGBTQ+Manga, so, you know, it isn’t really waiting for my recommendation to make the big time.)
TGCF is a long, slow-burn, mysterious and aching affair between two beings who have gone in opposite directions on their spiritual roads precisely because of their love for one another. The entire novel is structured by the unfulfilled desire and longing of these two people. Combined with the mystery of the characters’ past and suspense about their future, this is one of the things about shounen ai danmei that gives these books so much ability to engage over enormous, complex, fast paced and overlapping story arcs (note that Heaven Official’s Blessing apparently will be published in English in eight separate novels. In the webnovel, this is ONE BOOK.).
All of MXTX’s works have hilarious elements to them, funny moments as well as tragic ones, and TGCF is no exception, but I would say it is probably the least tongue in cheek (SVSSS is the most). In TGCF the funniest parts tend to be given to the side characters, with the center of the novel tragic in that technical ancient Greek play meaning of the word. What makes TGCF stand out, for me, is the complexity of the main characters, Xie Lian and Hua Cheng, and their personal quests. Xianxia danmei novels often have characters with huge amounts of power who are essentially unbeatable (looking at you, Thousand Autumns). I can’t get into too much detail without going into potential spoiler territory, because the discovery of the characters’ real natures is part of the excitement of the novel, but Xie Lian is unusually complex in that he is not particularly eager for power or to demonstrate his superiority to others, a common motivation in xianxia. Xie Lian longs to “save the common people,” and the acts he undertakes, consistent and at great cost, provide the unpredictable and inexplicably joyous moral center to the novel.
In MXTX’s novels, as with so much of danmei, it’s the love one character feels for another, and unfailingly offers up despite all obstacles, that provides the way forward despite a world where you’re not going to conquer evil, where evil itself is mostly inevitable accidents and mistakes and suffering and confused people, and yet where you can’t give up trying. Longing for and commitment to another person provide the steps on the pathway you take from there.
And if that doesn’t sound like fun, I’m definitely not giving credit where it’s due! Season 1 of the Heaven Official’s Blessing donghua (animation) is on Netflix, and there’s a manhua (comic version) as well, on Bilibili comics, if you want to check out some of the gorgeous art associated with TGCF. If you’ve read TGCF, what makes you a fan?