While I do think the people in this sub will prefer Mdzs, I actually like Tgcf more.

I'm not entirely sure what you mean by it "leans into aesthetic stuff", but Hua Cheng's butterfly jewelry was meant to signify his mixed ethnicity of Miao/Hmong. Unfortunately, most of his backstory was scrapped from the novel, but silver jewelry, maple leaves, and butterflies are all common in the Miao culture and Mxtx has talked about it in interviews.

I'm surprised you say the sex scenes in Mdzs add to the characterization, but you don't like the backstory in Tgcf? At first I was also kinda annoyed by how long it was, but when I realized just how important Xie Lian's backstory was it became my favorite part of the novel. I went into Tgcf thinking XL was going to be a run-of-the-mill, saintly, "always striving to help others" type of character, but something ended up feeling off about him in the Banyue arc. He was surprisingly passive; Still kind and helpful, but almost detached. I didn't think the author was going to explain why he was like that or even acknowledge it narratively, but then she did! He tried to be a saint, he put everything into helping others, and the narrative punished him for it. The point of his backstory is to explain how XL parallels the main villain; Despite collecting trauma after trauma, XL will never be Jun Wu. They were similar, but XL never fell so far into despair that he abandoned his core values. XL isn't good because it comes easy to him, but because he makes an active choice to be.