Xiao Ying clutched his head in his hands as he remembered all the fanfiction that he used to read by Grimm_FairyTail_101 about his red haired teenaged crush, and gulped down a moan of pain at his actions and his terrible writing decisions.
The fucking metatext was physically hurting him just thinking about it.
Right, Lan Chang was a good name.
Respectable.
The little boy would finally be entering the palace and he would soon be uniting with the ghost of his dead mother tonight, after everyone else had gone to sleep.
Xiao Ying remembered making a huge deal of the moment that the little boy had stepped through the gates of the palace.
He had filled his paragraphs with nothing but overly long descriptions about the walls of the palace and the gates shining with pearl like sheens in the golden sunlight, with the guards, which stood with their back straight, looming like statues, from the perspective of the little boy, so close to the Earth and so small, as if they were deities, ready to welcome their new young master back into the palace.
The fact that this homeless kid was supposed to be the emperor's son was planned out by Xiao Ying to be a plot twist was probably massively undercut by all the symbolism that he had used as the child crossed the palace boundaries, likening him as a prince returning from a ferocious battle against the very demons from hell - mind you exactly what Xiao Ying had been feeling at the time - back to the grand place of his birth to reclaim his status and birth right, despite the little boy's character being portrayed as more of a trickster who was simply more loyal to his friends, who initially only pretended to be a noble man, full of honour and brimming to do right by his country, growing into said man over the course of the plot's events.
The entire walking up the stairs sequence - describing the little boy climbing the stairs of his destiny and rising up in ranks far above those who had once beaten him down, grinding him into the dust, the arches and bows of the golden palace roof looking like benevolent hands outstretched ready to cradle him, shelter him, and provide him all the support that he needed - was also a little bit too on the nose as well, but seriously, if Xiao Ying was going to rip off something, it would be the B/W series of games. That opening cutscene with a crowned king was iconic to his childish self. It was the epitome of stylishness and royalty, despite actual monarchs that he could copy.
To his kid self, playing those Monster Catch Games on his friend's console, and following the story line of the king mingling with the common folk to learn more about them and the supposed evils of their ways, acting to try and teach them the proper ways of doing things, before eventually realising that he was merely a puppet of his circle of advisors and then rebelling against them, deciding to abdicate his throne to spend more time learning with the common folk, and maybe, kind of, supposedly falling more the protagonist (in the fanfiction that Xiao Ying at least read), was the coolest thing ever, and definitely did not have any negative consequences on the way he wrote his characters.
None at all.
Definitely no negative consequences.
...
Xiao Ying was a terrible writer.
Everybody with half a braincell could tell that he was, at least born in the palace, if not the emperor's missing son.
If he had picked up a novel with those exact descriptions, he would have immediately put the book down and gone about the rest of his day, completely unchanged by what he had read, and easily guessing the plot of his novel, and decidedly not even bothering with it.
Watching the little boy walking through a gate, past some men with pointy sticks, and up a flight of stairs now was more than a little underwhelming. Xiao Ying felt like a fool and wanted to once more, dig his own grave and bury himself alive.
Hah!
Buried alive.
Xiao Ying felt remarkably stupid for dressing everything up so prettily, and knew, if given the opportunity, he could and would, rewrite this particular passage from forlorn prince returning home to sanctuary to fulfil sacred rite of passage to little boy entering a den of vipers and hidden traps and secrets that might seek to destroy him, and everyone who he would grow to love.
That would add so much more tension and intrigue into the setting, rather than build up some useless hype that would be rendered useless in the next chapter as he began working for a servant and set up a cheap bullying arc, because younger Xiao Ying had no idea what he was supposed to be doing with his characters, while the setting, which was right fucking there, could be developed so much more.
Why had Xiao Ying filled the early chapters with so much useless crap, considering that the bullying wasn't going to be stopped for years? Why didn't he introduce somebody, anybody, to be little Ming Cheng's friend?
Why was he so bad at decision making?
Why was he so fucking eager to keep away the angst and play pretend about unimportant shit when he had set up a powerplay, an admittedly mishandled powerplay, but a powerplay nonetheless?
His mass media consumption in lieu had really messed him up. If he had gone out to make proper friends, then maybe somebody would have prevented him from writing his stupid, hot mess of a novel and saved him from the consequences that he was suffering now.
But no...
He had to spend most of his life reading fan works about his most beloved properties, and an appalling amount of smutfic.
Well at least he had the decency to kill off his main character so he didn't have to write any sex of his own. It was quite frankly, the best literary decision that he had ever made.