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joys-of-everyday · 11 months

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On the fifty shades of morally grey

So quick thoughts on how MXTX writes morally grey.

Sorry, I mean, excessively long meta post on how MXTX writes morally grey. Light spoilers for all three books.

A gazillion caveats to begin with. Firstly, I don’t want to argue about whether character x is morally good, bad, grey, pink or whatever. In my books, arguing about whether someone is or is not morally grey is like arguing whether a colour is green, blue, teal, or turquoise – we’re arguing definitions. To add to that, I’m not saying that concepts like ‘this person is overall good’ doesn’t exist, but I would posit that a morally unquestionable person does not exist. Secondly, I also don’t want to pass moral judgements on any of the characters. That’s for a different post. I strictly want to focus on the storytelling techniques that make the reader think ‘hang on a second, are they good or bad?’. Thirdly, this whole post is mainly based on How Arcane Writes MORAL AMBIGUITY (9 Methods, 4 Rules) - YouTube. Great video, great channel (no knowledge of Arcane required). Would recommend if you are interested in story writing techniques!

1) The information gap and the poor narrator

Best example is Shen Jiu from SVSSS. We barely know anything about Shen Jiu. Almost everything we know is from SQQ’s notoriously unreliable perspective, so we’re left to fill in the gaps ourselves. Depending on exactly how those gaps are filled, you can get two completely different people. E.g. Did he have designs of NYY, or was he just ridiculously misunderstood? Who knows! We’re never told. Even if we were told, we should doubt it because it’s SQQ telling us.

2) 4D characterisation

Schnee’s video goes into this in more details, but this is where you build two narratives on top of one another. Best example is Jin Guangyao from MDZS. Is he an underdog who did what he could out of his situation and tried his best to be a better person working for the good of the common people? Or is he a selfish, manipulative, ambitious snake who at every stage pretends to be good in order to win the favour of those around him? The point is that both narratives make sense in the story. There are moments that lean more one way or another, but you can never quite pin him down completely.

3) Moments of weakness

Best example is Xie Lian from TGCF. On the whole, XL is a wonderful human being who you 100% want to root for. Except… there was that one time he made a mistake. He let his hurt and pain overcome him; he became hurtful himself. The point here is to add in just a few ‘moments’ which fundamentally impacts how the rest of the world perceives them from that point forwards. They are forever trying to redeem themselves, forever weighed down by what is a tiny proportion of their life. The underlying question is ‘is a moment of weakness a moral failure?’

Another good example is Qi Rong from TGCF. On the whole, he’s a piece of s***. But then there are moments when he’s a genuinely good father to Guzi, and that’s confusing.

4) Well-intentioned idiot

Trying to do the right thing and absolutely failing. Best example is Wei Wuxian from MDZS. His intentions are always good. There are extremely few moments where he is selfish or overly cruel. He is always fighting for justice, always self-sacrificing, always kind. And yet the outcome of his actions is pretty bad. The underlying question is ‘should you judge a person based on their intent, or on the consequences of their actions?’

(btw the name of the method is from schnee’s video. No shade on WWX. He is very smart… well, unless it comes to LWJ’s feelings.)

5) Excuses

Yes, they’re bad. But we feel sorry for them! Almost everyone fits into this boat, because doesn’t MXTX love trauma dumping? As one example, let’s look at Jiang Cheng from MDZS. JC’s behaviour towards WWX is pretty bad on its own. But given the context of his childhood being compared to him, of having his self-esteem brutally crushed by both parents? Knowing how much he’s done and sacrificed for him, how much he truly cared for him as family? It hits different.

A small point: ‘excuses aren’t enough’ we say a lot (and I agree, to an extent). But compare, for example, Jin Guangshan vs Xue Yang. JGS seems to be a power-hungry asshole for absolutely no reason. On the other hand, put XY in different circumstances and we feel like he might have been a better person. Just as food for thought, there was a Japanese monk Honen (1133-1212) who said: ‘The good person can reach the Pure Land, so of course the evil person can as well’. The point being that the people who struggle with anger and hate because of their circumstances are most in need of salvation.

6) World building and presenting hard questions

What is acceptable sacrifice in war?

Is it okay to make a super dangerous weapon for the sake of deterrence?

How much personal responsibility does someone hold for a lifetime of circumstances pushing them towards a morally questionable path?

What are the responsibilities of a leader – to do what is right, or to do what is best for their people?

The world of MDZS is imperfect. It’s full of horrors and disasters, as well as a mob of outsiders all trying to impart their opinions despite knowing little about the situation. An imperfect world presents unanswerable questions. We see the characters struggle with these questions, come to decisions, and make mistakes, all naturally arising within the complex world that’s been presented.

TGCF does this most explicitly. We literally have Kemo and Pei Xiu arguing about the ethics of war and XL concluding that it’s a Hard Question. In fact, every backstory of every Heavenly Official presents a new Hard Question. I don’t know if I like this method over the more subtle style of MDZS, but I have Thoughts about the storytelling styles of both (long story short, I love them both for different reasons).

7) Worlds are colliding

A slightly complicated method that takes a huge amount of set up. To summarise, set up two arcs that we the reader both feel invested in. Then set up a point where the ‘good’ outcome of one is the ‘bad’ outcome of another. For MDZS, we have 1) JC and WWX’s brotherhood arc. 2) WWX standing up for justice arc. They’re both merrily developing all the way through the conflict with the Wens… right until the moment WWX has to make a choice: stand up for justice and leave JC behind, or to fulfil his promises to JC and turn a blind eye to the injustices against the Wens. The decision is a lose-lose scenario because of the way these arcs have been set up.

8) Spectrums, Spectrums, we love Spectrums

Gongyi Xiao is a cinnamon roll. As is Wen Ning and Quan Yizhen. Meanwhile, the Old Palace Master? Literally no redeeming qualities. Wen Chao? Absolute scum. Then there’s everyone lying somewhere in between. We like Lan Wangji more than JC (I think that seems to be the case for most people?) but we certainly like JC more than JGS. Having a spectrum of morality is important because it gives us reference points to contrast and compare. It also emphasises the moral greyness of everything, because sure, Mu Qing isn’t a noodle like Shi Qingxuan, but is he worse than White No Face?

9) Spectrums aren’t enough – adding depth

Almost all of WWX’s moral ambiguity comes from the fact he has hard decisions to make. And for each of these decisions, the outcome is murky. He developed a new technique to fight against the Wens, but at what cost later down the line? He defended the Wens and gave them a few years of life, but was it worth it?

Compare with JGY. JGY does a lot of good. He also does a lot of bad. The magnitude of both lists is ridiculous. Sure, you wouldn’t usually find someone who’s killed most of their family members in any way likable, but how often do you come across someone who literally ended a war?

So one way of creating moral ambiguity is to make each decision difficult, but another way to go about it is to just… make them do loads of things. Like loads of things. Good things, bad things, all the in between things. Judging each thing is not that hard, but then trying to judge the overall person based on it is extremely difficult.

10) Pulling from the real world

Often, moral questions in fiction is hard because (surprise, surprise) moral questions are just hard full stop. Idk enough Chinese history and culture to accurately pin down all of MXTX’s references, but things like stupid misunderstands leading to conflict, poverty and inequality, less than ideal family situations, the horrors of war… these are all things that happen irl. No matter how fantastical the setting, grounding moral conflicts in reality makes us feel more emotional and invested.

Anyway, I hope that was an enjoyable rundown! This is an imperfect list, so comments, criticisms, suggestions greatly appreciated!

#i cannot get over how good mdzs is #a moment of appreciation here #mxtx #mxtx meta #svsss #mdzs #tgcf #svsss meta #mdzs meta #tgcf meta

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wangxianficrecs · 2 months

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The plagues of Jiang Wanyin by Lyna_Mei

The plagues of Jiang Wanyin

by Lyna_Mei

T, 54k, Wangxian

Summary: The morning he was supposed to make a visit to Lanling Jiang Cheng rose from bed earlier than usual and was confronted with the harsh reality of being a sect leader. He was getting ready for the day when a sharp and urgent knock on the door distracted him from his morning routine. His first disciple, Jiang Qingmei, entered the room in a rush with a troubled expression on his face. Or, Jiang Cheng is forced to face consequences of his actions of the past sixteen years. Things go down very quickly. Kay's comments: This is THE story for everyone wishing that Jiang Cheng would have gotten some permanent and not just emotional damage post-canon. It's mostly CQL-canon, but it also follows the plot points of the novel about how Jiang Cheng was hunting demonic cultivators in the years Wei Wuxian was dead. Now, his actions are finally catching up to him and it's beautiful to watch his house of cards collapse. Very satisfying all around. Also, I adore Lyna_Mei as an author - chef's kiss. Excerpt: "Lotus plants, zongzhu," Jiang Qingmei answered immediately. "Some of our disciples noticed something strange with lotus plants yesterday while taking a late swim. I sent people to check in the morning and they discovered that lotuses in our lakes were struck with some disease". This was bad. Obviously, some plants die every season but for Jiang Qingmei to run to him so early in the morning it must be massive. He should skip breakfast and go and see for himself, then if things are truly that bad - write a note to Jin Ling telling his nephew he wouldn't be able to come. Jiang Cheng didn't want to start imagining how big the problem was. Besides, it was always better to know for sure than to build suggestions and then come face to face with reality. So he quickly finished his hair and reached for Zidian and Sandu. "How much are we talking about?" he asked. Jiang Qingmei looked at him with something akin to fear before finally answering. "We might lose seventy to ninety percent of our harvest, zongzhu".

pov jiang cheng, post-canon, the untamed compliant, mdzs & the untamed combination, cultivation sect politics, not jiang cheng friendly, family feels, implied/referenced child abuse, minor character death, torture, canon-typical violence

~*~

(Please REBLOG as a signal boost for this hard-working author if you like – or think others might like – this story.)

#Wangxian Fic Rec #The Untamed #Wangxian #MDZS #Kay's Rec #February 2024 #Lyna_Mei #The plagues of Jiang Wanyin #teen #long fic > 50k #pov jiang cheng #post-canon #the untamed compliant #mdzs & the untamed combination #cultivation sect politics #not jiang cheng friendly #family feels #minor character death

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fincalinde · 1 year

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for your ask meme: wei wuxian?? 👀

Since I've got some new followers over the past couple of days (who knew what branching out from Xiyao would do for my reputation!), I'll once again add the disclaimer that I write MDZS meta and not CQL meta. I'm aware that in CQL, WWX is characterised somewhat differently. I have thoughts on that too, but I'm not immersed enough in CQL to commit to sharing them publicly.

Since WWX is the main character and appears in almost every scene, I won't attempt to write a thesis statement on him. (You cannot afford my hourly rate.) Instead I've decided to focus on an aspect of WWX that I feel is often overlooked or sanitised. That is to say:

WWX is extremely annoying.

He's not just irritating, or overly exuberant, or a touch too arrogant. He is infuriatingly obnoxious.

Obviously WWX is also brave and often well-meaning. He loves deeply, even if he consistently lets down the people who care about him. He's strong-willed enough to abide by his own sense of morality in the face of overwhelming disapproval and danger, and arrogant enough to make unilateral decisions when it would be better for all concerned if he took a step back. He's bad at big picture thinking and rarely considers the full ramifications of his actions, but he's also incredibly adept at getting out of scrapes, and he has an admirable if also somewhat depressing ability to shrug off pain and suffering that is the result of his difficult days on the streets and his mistreatment by YZY.

And he's obnoxious.

I do think it often gets forgotten, because Wangxian is intended to be a love story and it's much more tempting to write sweeping romance and charming banter than hark back to all the canonical moments in which characters, including LWJ, genuinely want to throttle him to death.

He never shuts up! He's constantly laughing far too loudly and for too long. He's the sort of person who thinks it's funny to pull the rug out from under someone in a conversation so they end up discomfited and embarrassed. I fully understand that a large part of his hectoring LWJ is a precursor to his later romantic interest and is in line with his flirtation style, but the fact remains that he goads LWJ beyond the point of endurance on multiple occasions. LWJ just happens to be a weird dude who's really into it.

A good example of what I mean is when Wangxian encounter each other at Phoenix Mountain. WWX asks LWJ if he's ever kissed someone, then proceeds to speculate that LWJ has never been kissed and will never be kissed. LWJ doesn't seem to mind this at first, and only becomes angered when WWX lies about having been kissed before himself (oh LWJ), but it's important to remember that WWX has no idea that LWJ has any interest in him whatsoever. From WWX's perspective, he's just having fun belittling someone else over a topic that for most young people is a sensitive one. I don't want to oversell this moment and claim that it's bullying, actually, but I do want to use it to highlight that WWX is not always a considerate person and this type of behaviour is teeth-achingly thoughtless and cringeworthy.

I could go on, but if you pick any given scene including WWX you're likely to see dialogue in which he's being actively annoying to other characters, intentionally or otherwise. This isn't an attack on him, just an observation that in order to write him in a canon consistent manner he should be not just witty and chatty in a way where other characters simply roll their eyes and keep going. He should genuinely actually aggravate them and it should have consequences within the scene. Characters such as JC and WQ care about WWX but also find him infuriating, and that's with good reason—never mind the juniors, whom WWX takes pleasure in messing with. There are many characters who feel great respect and affection for WWX, and every single one of them also regularly feels deep frustration and irritation towards him too. There should be some meat on the bones of any back and forth between them.

#ask #thatswhatsushesaid #roquen meta #i consider wwx an extremely difficult character to write #capturing this aspect of him without alienating your audience #is quite the tightrope #it's not surprising that it's often watered down #or just generally made more palatable

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neuxue · 1 year

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A few days ago I finished my buddy read of the Riddle-master Trilogy, and I’m left unsure what to say. I finally got around to reading it, after your numerous recommendations in your wot liveblog and I guess I want to thank you(?). It felt like discovering a new favourite and I have the deepest gratitude towards your for making me know her words. Do you have any recommendations which book to follow up with?

Anon, you have made my day. Maybe my week. Possibly my month. I love being rewarded for pushing this trilogy on everyone at every opportunity because I think the people I know who have read it remain in the single digits and yet lines from it have haunted my waking hours since I read it well over a decade ago, so. I am delighted that you not only read it but loved it - you're very welcome for the rec, and also please talk to me about Riddlemaster any time.

As far as recommendations! My next favourite of McKillip's works is Alphabet of Thorn, which is a beautiful story about a girl, a library, an ancient powerful sorceror/king loyalty situation, and the concept of translation given vague sentience and less vague power. If you enjoyed her writing in Riddlemaster, give this one a try! I also have a particular soft spot for The Book of Atrix Wolfe for the way it plays with identity, agency, desperation and its consequences, and the particular grief of living with yourself. Or you could try any of her other works; you'll find she revisits certain themes that are found in Riddlemaster, and her prose is always lovely.

Outside of McKillip... I sort of struggle to recommend something as an 'if you liked Riddlemaster, try this next' because while I can think of stories that are similar to specific aspects of it, I don't think I've ever come across something that hits in precisely the same way.

Two that you've probably seen me talk about recently: if you liked music-as-power, watching a character become immensely powerful at the cost of something that was once an intrinsic part of their identity, and a love story that focuses on seeing and being seen for who you are, you could try 《魔道祖师》 / Mo Dao Zu Shi, usually referred to MDZS or The Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation in its English translation (or its TV series adaptation 《陈情令》 / The Untamed). It's not the same vibe, but there are elements. Or, by the same author, 《天官赐福》 / TGCF / Heaven Official's Blessing, which has arguably fewer parallels but a slightly more similar vibe. Maybe. Still quite different but... hey, I liked both, and I feel like dissimilar as they are they sometimes hit some of the same things I want out of a reading experience.

Or, if part of what really did it for you with Riddlemaster was the exquisite agony of it all, and the infinitely fine line between love and betrayal, and the feeling of being held gently even as you were being stabbed in the heart, and you just want more of that no matter the genre or story it's in, you could take my hand and trust me and give something like Machineries of Empire, The Traitor Baru Cormorant (bonus points for lovely prose), possibly one of Robin Hobb's books, or maaaaybe even Doctrine of Labyrinths a try. Fair warning, all of those do feel darker (and Machineries of Empire in particular is weirder, though does have a fairly close Erlenstar parallel if you look for it), but for me they do hit some of those same deep-seated buttons in the id. Also for what it's worth, I know that Yoon Ha Lee (author of Machineries of Empire) has read and claimed to enjoy Riddlemaster; I think Seth Dickinson (author of The Traitor Baru Cormorant) might have as well, but I could be misremembering.

And if anyone else reading this has 'if you liked Riddlemaster, try ___' recs, please toss them anon's (and my!) way.

#I feel like I'm definitely forgetting some #the way I do anytime someone asks for recs and my mind goes immediately blank #but hopefully it's a start!#anyway thanks for this I really cannot describe how delighted I was to get this message!#asks #anon #recommendations #the riddle master trilogy

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plan-d-to-i · 2 years

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i think we as a fandom should roast lan xichen more. hypocrite really encouraged lan wangji to grow closer to wei wuxian then let him get punished for trying to save him

wwx and lwj were like "we think jgy is up to some shady shit" and lan xichen's response was "okay but i like him though"

Just another day in the mdzs fandom …

I think often ppl in fandoms are sort of enamored w putting out "hot takes", even when those hot takes completely eviscerate the story of its depth and don't actually make sense if you give them more than a second of consideration. Kind of like that LSZ was crazy for not jumping on the cancel WWX bandwagon 🤪. A take like this erases the actual dynamic between LXC and LWJ, the fact that it is a loving and positive relationship, LXC's autonomy and characterization, JGY's masterful manipulating, and especially LWJ's own characterization; because this is a man who does believe in the Lan teachings. He punished himself when WWX MADE HIM break curfew. He punished himself after he drank Emperor's smile and branded himself (even though LQR didn't punish him) SO how would he have accepted injuring 33 elders of his own clan without no repercussions. The point is he knew the consequences/cost and accepted them when standing by WWX and he carried no resentment about it. Direct contrast to jc who tried to distract some troops, got himself captured instead and then never stopped resenting WWX. The other point is LXC knows the face JGY has shown him all these years, that WWX himself knows would give him no reason to doubt JGY. LXC is also aware of how the cultivation world talks about JGY and treats him bc of his birth and doesn't want to condemn him off the bat, but still agrees to investigate and find proof! He doesn't tell LWJ he doesn't trust him (LWJ), he says neither one of them have seen the head personally so they must both go off the word of a second person. Hell someone else would've been more mistrustful after essentially forcing his way into JGY's treasure room only to find no head there! But LXC still agrees to investigate.

Lan XiChen nodded, “Young Master Wei, no need to worry. Before the truth is entirely revealed, I will not be partial to either side or reveal your whereabouts. Or else, I would not have allowed WangJi to take you to my Hanshi or helped with your injuries.”

And afterwards WWX and LWJ both trust his righteousness.

Wei WuXian played with the bookmark in his hands before giving it back to him, “Your brother received quite a big shock.”

With care, Lan WangJi put the dried herb peony back into the book. He shut the pages, “Now that he has found the evidence, he will not tolerate this.”

Wei WuXian, “Of course. He’s your brother after all.”

No matter how close of a relationship Lan XiChen and Jin GuangYao had, he was still from the GusuLan Sect and had his own principles.

Do people just not care what the author writes? Is it that they have cancel culture brain and know they'd jump on any hate bandwagon in a hot second after one inflammatory tweet and zero due diligence? Let's be real most people in fandom would have been like the ones at Nightless City condemning WWX. Or, do they think the Clan leaders gathered at LP who start trash talking JGY immediately and assigning every negative thing to him the way they'd once done to WWX are the ideal? I get the desire to make these humorous quips but like almost everything else in the fandom they're not about the characters or the story, they're about the op, clout etc... So take them w a grain of salt. x

#mdzs #answers #Lan Xichen #Lan Wangji #Wei Wuxian #Jin Guangyao

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sinterblackwell · 10 months

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2023 - mid-year book freak out tag

yay to getting into danmei. yay to my current read, qiang jin jiu, that’s wrapped itself around my brain.

yay to turning 22, and so as a gift to myself, i wrote to my heart’s content about some of the reads that have stood out to me this year so far.

it was really fun <3 and long lol enjoy

best book you’ve read so far in 2023?

the grandmaster of demonic cultivation (vol. 3) by mxtx

this is actually a much more objective answer, like scum villain would seem the most obvious choice being that it’s my new all-time comfort series but genuinely, the plot and character arcs of mdzs were so truly well-done and completely mind-bending to me, i was obsessed with it through & through.

best sequel you’ve read so far in 2023?

the scum villain’s self-saving system (vol. 2) by mxtx

this is the volume where shen qingqiu/shen yuan really gets himself in deeper trouble as despite how adamant he is that the people he’s contending with, including luo binghe, are simply fictional characters, he twists the story so much that he finds himself enveloped in it. and he soon has to come to face that his actions do have serious consequences that affect the emotions & actions of others.

also the angst….luo binghe was so goddamn heartbroken the whole time and sqq couldn’t even understand it, it was a lot. i loved it.

new release you haven’t read yet but want to?

ascension by nicholas binge

this story reminds me so much of echo by thomas olde heuvelt, one of my top 3 reads of 2022, and while things certainly will be different, i am very excited for what the premise is promising.

most anticipated release for the second half of the year?

the husky & his white cat shizun (vol. 3) by meatbun

this official english translation by seven seas entertainment was set to be released much sooner, im recalling maybe around the first half of the year?? and then it just got set back even further, which absolutely pained me with the way things ended in volume 2. it was definitely probably for a good reason since it promises that the translation will give the story a lot of justice by being more thorough, but damn 🥲

imagine starting this series in late january and then finding out you won’t get to know what happens next for about seven whole months. i’ve had lots of experience at this point, you would think i’d be used to it, but i simply am not. what makes it worse is that there are already fans out there who know what happens, they know the story from beginning to end. and for those who couldn’t understand chinese, there were fan translations to help include those better with english into the fandom, but now that’s gone, since seven seas has taken the rights of the official english translations.

this volume isn’t set to come out until september. i wholeheartedly cannot wait another moment, and yet i am simply here….waiting :’)

biggest disappointment?

maniac (necessary evils, #7) by onley james

you know….this series is not perfect by any means. the writing can be pretty average every once in a while, the dialogue cringey at times and almost juvenile, even, despite how dark the content is. but the author writes one hell of a case for each book, and it’s a very unique premise for the story as a whole. this is the same author who completely changed me after reading asa & zane’s story in headcase, making me break outside of my comfort zone when it came to what i consume in romance; and the fact that i actually enjoyed it??

as someone who has just recently experienced this same thing with danmei, this is something i’ll always appreciate her for because it was a huge jump out of my comfort zone that i would’ve never given a second thought to before but i was already five books into the series so there was no turning back, i was committed.

with this very interesting take on the found family trope, and the clear care that the author took regarding the subject of these psychopaths handling these grim cases, i was very much sad about having to say goodbye to the characters because i don’t think this is something i could’ve read by anyone else, and i don’t think there’s anything similar. so it made it even more disappointing when with this particular relationship in this final book, all the build-up that had been written of this dynamic from all the way back to unhinged, just suddenly collapsed and didn’t feel nearly fully resolved. the subject matter, especially with thomas’ painful backstory, was just as dark and difficult to read as the others, and it felt personal because of course it was, he was the center of this entire project that made this story. but….it was hard to reckon with knowing how the plot itself actually was pretty solid but then just kinda tied itself up way too neatly by the end?

i like this found family, i really really do, and it’s nice to know that they get their happy endings, but the way it was written felt so easy. what these characters were doing were pretty huge on a national scale and all eyes are on them due to their fame & popularity, and yes i can believe that the system maybe is just that oblivious, maybe that’s why they’re even doing this in the first place, but a part of me was hoping to see much more tension, more stakes built that puts these characters all in all in a very precarious position. this final book hints at that in the synopsis but it doesn’t follow through that well, because again, everything just seemed pretty rushed and a bit lackluster in execution once this final mystery was solved with a bloody red bow. the closest to these characters getting into any trouble was when zane in headcase, as a budding crime reporter, was actually pretty damn close to completely unraveling all the secret dealings that the mulvaney family were involved with. but then he meets asa, and well…here he goes becoming a part of the mulvaneys and easing into their operation with his own skill set as a reporter, which you gotta love for him.

if i look at this from a different angle, i can see another reader possibly enjoying this because again, this series could just be a nod to how fucked up the justice system is that a group of psychopaths are the ones to rid these terrible people off the streets. what they’re doing isn’t evil at all, it’s just as a minor character tells zane in headcase, that if what the mulvaneys were doing was to be revealed to the whole goddamn world, a great majority would probably be thankful for it because these people they’re taking out are genuinely awful and completely irredeemable. so no, i don’t wish for the mulvaneys to get punished, they’ve already been through enough in their own pasts and they deserve to get to live this very unconventional and comfortable life with each other; especially noah and zane.

is this an outcome that any good therapist would wish for these two in particular?? hell no….but they’re happy and they’ve been through enough neglect & abuse in their childhoods, let them be pampered by their psychopathic lovers and be part of a family that has well and done proven they would literally kill for them to secure their protection….because they already have.

at the end of the day, i guess for a finale…i just expected more, personally?? and it felt a little flat for me is all. the more time goes on, the more i don’t feel all that positive about my enjoyment of the final book. but i still have soft feelings for the characters, and it does kill me to think i simply don’t understand the story as well as i wish i could’ve.

the ending just wasn’t entirely for me, sad to say. and the writing, didn’t do a lot as i hoped for.

so yeah….there’s that 😅 (i’m definitely using this as my goodreads review)

biggest surprise?

hawk mountain by connor habib

see, the writing style was pretty interesting, which was a bit of a surprise on its own since it was just so completely unlike a lot of what i’m used to reading. but even more so, the big surprise lied in a plot twist that happened in the story. and now, with this twist, it was something i already had predicted, but it happened so much sooner than i had thought and so to see how the author wrote the aftermath, the next 200 or so pages that were still left in the book, it was very impressive, making the story that much more intense to me, and it also made me appreciate what he was doing at all.

i also would say another surprise is just the fact that i even read this book at all since i literally read it in the spur of the moment after first hearing about it in a booktube video where the creator was being recommended this title and the words “an English teacher is gaslit by his charismatic high school bully” immediately made me check out this story on libby, which!! would you look at that?? it was available.

i wasn’t reading anything else at the moment since at the time, i had to wait to read the next volume for tgcf, so that definitely made for a memorable reading experience :’)

new favorite author?

rou bao bu chi rou, aka ‘meatbun doesn’t eat meat’

if we’re looking at the numbers, mxtx would actually be the one who’s a new favorite since i’ve read all her translated books up to this point. and while i do respect her a ton as an author, meatbun just really stands out with only two of the works i’ve been able to read by her: dumb husky & his white cat shizun + yuwu.

yuwu especially, even though i’ve only read the first volume in the seven seas eng. translation, it made a huge impression on me because of how much i loved the way this particular author writes her characters. there’s a different brand of humor that’s unlike mxtx, which makes it difficult to compare, but the relationships meatbun has her characters involved in in particular, especially the main pairing, really throw me for a loop because they’re like the definitions of tragic lovers, but there’s still so much more going on in the story, so much deception and political struggles going on, i deeply enjoy every bit of it. yeah there’s a lot of angst, but the yearning….i can’t get enough. especially being in mo xi’s pov.

newest fictional crush?

i….do not have one. the closest ones i can come up with are michael stirling from when he was wicked by julia quinn + wyatt mckinley from how to say i do by tal bauer. and this is just because they’re definitely my most favorite love interests i’ve read this year so far :’)

newest favorite character?

- jiang cheng from grandmaster of demonic cultivation by mxtx

it’s as i said to another reader friend of mine (i’m doing this word for word lol):

he has anger issues. a bitter human being. he lashes out pretty quickly because he doesn’t like being seen as vulnerable. he turned out very closely like his dead mother, who was abusive, but it wasn’t written all black & white, at least the story didn’t make it so but the fandom took it upon themselves to do as such. he lost a lot and the way cultivation society manipulated that to make him turn against his own brother, was very hard to read.

he’s so complicated, i love that in characters. i love characters who get so many chances to be better and they have that potential but their own vices make them fall short, they just…feel so bittersweet, and they have these moments where the sweet shines through a little, but it’s not permanent. it’s there, but it’s fleeting.

book that made you cry?

ahem….heaven official’s blessing (vol. 4) by mxtx

TWO words: blackwater arc

book that made you happy?

- sent to a fantasy world and now all the men want me (vol. 1) by jaclyn osborn

no, this is not a manga, but it has all the tropes seen in a book where the mc is “isekai’d into a fantasy world and magically gets into a harem” (as said by a friend when i was speaking to them about it). and they were right!!

at first, i was going to list the true love experiment by christina lauren as the winner but just a few days ago, i finished this story, and it was so ridiculous and fun and heartwarming and had such an interesting world for evan & me to dive into, i couldn’t help myself putting it on here.

it’s so incredibly self-indulgent, and it just makes the story even better. i already miss kuya and can’t wait to see him & sawyer get their happy ending in the future because it will come. same for lake, lake is a sweetheart who deserves better.

most beautiful book you bought this year?

- all the sinners bleed by s.a. cosby (x)

literally just bought this book and i gotta say, 75% of the reason was because of how stunning the blood moon is on the cover :’)

books you really need to read by the end of the year?

- dark heir (dark rise, #2) by c.s. pacat

- all the hidden paths (the tithenai chronicles, #2) by foz meadows

technically, these books don’t even come out until the end of the year. but i know damn well that is there no way i’m not reading them before the world turns 2024.

dark heir i have been waiting for for about TWO years now, and all the hidden paths was a pleasant discovery since the first book read pretty much as standalone; but with how expansive the worldbuilding was and same for the court intrigue, plus all the drama that happened near the end, it only makes sense that there’s still a lot to uncover in this universe so i am very much looking forward to it.

#❣️#i was this 👌🏽 close to not publishing this at all and then i remembered this is my blog and i like writing stuff like this so yeah :’)#just something for me to look back on on this app #booklr

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pumpkinpaix · 3 years

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Pleeeeeeease get into the class one at some point because I very much want to understand the class dynamics happening in the story but I have yet to find a meta that dives into it

god anon you want me dead don’t you alsjdfljks

referring to this post

okay, so -- my specific salt about class interpretations in mdzs are very targeted. I can’t pretend to have a deep understanding of how class works in mdzs generally because uhhhhh yeah i don’t think i have that. i’m just not familiar enough with the genre and/or the particulars of chinese class systems. but! i can talk in general terms as to why I feel a certain way about the class dynamics that I do think I understand and how I think they relate to the themes of the novel! i’m gonna talk about wei wuxian, the daozhangs, xue yang, and 3zun with, I’m sure, a bunch of digressions along the way.

the usual disclaimers: i do not think you are a bad person if you hold opinions contrary to my own. i may disagree with you very strongly, but like. this isn’t a moral judgment, fandom is transformative and interpretive etc. etc. and i may change my mind. who knows what the future will bring!

OKAY so let’s begin!

here’s the thing about wei wuxian: he’s not poor. I think because characters use “son of a servant” kind of often when they’re trying to insult him, a lot of people latch onto that and think that it’s a much stronger indication of his societal status than it actually is. iirc, most of the insults that fall along the “son of a servant” line come after wei wuxian starts breaking severely from tradition. it’s a convenient thing to attack him for, but doesn’t actually indicate anything about his wealth. (exception: yu ziyuan, but that’s a personal familial issue) this is in direct contrast to jin guangyao who is constantly mocked for his family line, publicly and privately, no matter what he does.

so this, coupled with all the jokes about wwx never having any money (wei wuqian, sizhui’s “i’ve long since known you had no money” etc.), plus his like, rough years on the street as a child ends up producing this interpretation of wei wuxian, especially in modern aus, as someone who is very class conscious and “eat the rich”. but the fact of the matter is, wei wuxian IS rich. aside from the years in his childhood and the last two years of his life in yiling, like -- wei wuxian had money and status. he is gentry. he is respected as gentry. he is treated as a son by the sect leader of yunmeng jiang -- he does not have the jiang name, but it is so very clear that jiang fengmian favors him. wei wuxian is ranked fourth of all the eligible young masters in the cultivation world -- that is not a ranking he could have attained without being accepted into the upper class.

wei wuxian’s poverty does not affect him in the way that it affects jin guangyao or xue yang. he is of low-ish birth (still the son of jiang fengmian’s right hand man though! ok sure, “son of a servant” but like. >_> whatever anyways), but for most of his life he had money. he, jiang cheng, and their sect brothers go into town and steal lotus pods with the understanding that “jiang-shushu will pay for it”. this is a regular thing! that’s fucking rich kid behavior!!! wei wuxian is careless with money because he doesn’t have to worry about it. he still has almost all the benefits of being upper class: education, food security, respect, recognition etc. I think there may also be a misconception that wei wuxian was always on the verge of being kicked out by yu ziyuan, or that he was constantly walking on eggshells around her for fear of being disowned, but that is just textually untrue. i could provide receipts, but I admittedly don’t really feel like digging them up just now ;;

even in his last years in yiling, he was not the one who was dealing with the acute knowledge of poverty: wen qing is the one managing the money, and as far as we know, wei wuxian did little to no management of daily life during the burial mounds days -- mostly, he’s described as hiding in his cave for days on end, working on his inventions, running around like a force of chaos, frivolously making a mess of things -- it’s very very cute that he buries a’yuan in the dirt, but in classic wei wuxian fashion, he did Not think about the practical consequences of it -- that A’Yuan has no other clean clothes, and now he’s gotten this set dirty and has no intention of washing them. is this a personality thing? yeah, but I think it’s also indicative of his lack of concern over the logistics of everyday survival, re: wealth.

furthermore, i think it is important to remember that wei wuxian, when he is protecting the wen remnants, is not protecting common folk: he is still protecting gentry. fallen gentry, yes! but gentry nonetheless. wen qing was favored by wen ruohan, and wen ning himself says that he has a retinue of people under his command (the remnants, essentially). their branch of the family do not have the experience of living and growing in poverty -- they are impoverished and persecuted in their last years, but that’s a very different thing from being impoverished your whole life. (sidenote: I do not believe wei wuxian’s primary motivation for defending the wen remnants was justice -- i believe he did it because he felt he owed wen ning and wen qing a life debt, and once he was there, he wasn’t going to stand around and let the work camps go on. yes, he is concerned about justice and doing the right thing, but that’s not why he went in the first place. anyways, that’s another meta)

after wei wuxian returns, he then marries back into gentry, and very wealthy gentry at that. lwj provides him all the money he could ever want, he is never worried about going homeless, starving, being denied opportunities based on his class and accompanying disadvantages. who would dare? and neither wei wuxian nor lan wangji seem to have much interest in shaking up the order of things, except in little things like the way they teach the juniors. they live in gusu, under the auspices of the lan, and they live a happy, domestic life.

were his years on the street traumatizing? yes, of course they were, there’s so much delicious character exploration to be done re: wei wuxian’s relationship to food, his relationship to his own needs, and his relationship to the people he loves. it’s all important and good! but I feel very strongly that that experience, while it was formative for him, did not impart any true understanding of poverty and the common person’s everyday struggles, nor do I think he ever really gains that understanding. he is observant and canny and aware of class and blood, certainly, but not in a way that makes it his primary hill to die on (badum-tss).

this is in very stark contrast to characters like jin guangyao and xue yang, and to some extent, xiao xingchen and song lan. I’ll start with the daozhangs, because I think they’re the simplest (??).

I think both xiao xingchen and song lan have class consciousness, but in a very simplified, broad-strokes kind of way (at least, given the information we know about them). we know that the two of them share similar values and want to one day form their own sect that gives no weight to the nobility of your lineage and has no concern with your wealth. we also know that they both disdain intersect politics and are more concerned with ideals and principles rather than status. but, I think because of that, this actually somewhat limits their perception and understanding of how status is used to oppress. as far as we know, neither of them participated on any side in sunshot and they demonstrate much more interest in relating to the commoners. honestly, i hc that they were flitting around trying to help decimated towns, protecting defenseless villages etc. I ALSO think this has a lot of interesting potential in terms of xiao xingchen and wei wuxian’s relationship, if xiao xingchen is ever revived. regardless of whether you’re in CQL or novel verse, xiao xingchen really doesn’t know wei wuxian at all, other than knowing that he’s his shijie’s son. he knows that cangse-sanren met with a tragic end, like yanling-daoren before her, and that he wants to be different. but here is cangse-sanren’s son, laying waste to entire cities, desecrating the dead. I would very much like to get into xiao xingchen’s head during that period of time (and i think, if i do it right, i can write some of it into the songxiao fixit), but that’s neither here nor there, because i’ve wandered off from my point again.

i would posit that song lan is used to an ascetic lifestyle, and xiao xingchen probably is too -- but that’s different from poverty because there’s an element of choice to it. I also think that neither of them is particularly worldly, xiao xingchen especially. he lived on an isolated mountain until he was like, seventeen, and he came down full of ideals and naivete about how the world worked. I think that both of them see inequality, that they are angered by it, and that they want to do something about it -- but their solution is neither to topple the sects, nor is it to reform the system. rather, it seems to be more about withdrawing and creating their own removed world. I think that the daozhangs embody a kind of utopianism that isn’t present in the minds of any of the other characters, not even wangxian. honestly, baoshan-sanren’s mountain is a utopian ideal, but one that is not described. it exists outside of and beyond the world. i have a lot of jumbled, vague thoughts about utopianism generally, mostly informed by china miéville and ursula k. le guin, and I don’t think i have the ability to articulate them here, but i wanted to. hm. say something? there is something about the inherent dystopianism contained within every utopia, that utopias are necessary, but also reflections of the existence of terrible things in their conception. idk. there’s something in there, I know it!! but i suppose what I want to say is -- i do not think the daozhangs understand class and social hierarchy very deeply because they don’t see a need to examine it deeply. for their goals, the details aren’t the point. they’re not looking to reform within the system, they’re looking to build something outside of it. I think they spend a lot of time concerned with alleviating the symptoms of social oppression, and their values reflect the injustices they witness there.

regardless, even if their story ends in tragedy and there is a certain amount of critique re: the utopian approach, i think the text still emphasizes that xiao xingchen left a utopia and that he thought that people mattered enough for him to try, and that was an incredibly honorable, kind, and human thing to do.

YEAH SURE THE DAOZHANGS ARE THE SIMPLEST ok ok RETURNING to class and moving forward: xue yang.

i also don’t think xue yang has class consciousness lol, or not in any way that really matters, but I do think poverty impacted him in a much stronger way than it impacted wei wuxian. wei wuxian spent some years on the street as a child. xue yang grew up on the streets. chang ci’an’s horrific treatment of him was directly due to his class and social standing: chang ci’an is a nobleman and xue yang is not even worth the dirt beneath the wheels of his cart. what I think is the seminal point though, is that this does not make xue yang think particularly deeply about systemic injustice, because xue yang is so self-centered, self-driven, and individualistic. he is not even slightly concerned about how poverty and class might affect other people -- they’re other people. what he takes away from his experience is not an anger at being wrongfully cheated by a system, but an anger at being wrongfully cheated by a specific man.

xue yang is not particularly concerned with the politics of the aristocracy -- he has no obvious ambitions other than, “i want to eat sweets whenever i please”, “i want to hurt anyone who wrongs me”, and “i want to be so strong that no one can hurt me”. like, he just doesn’t care -- it’s not the kind of power he wants. he sneers at people for like, personal reasons, not class reasons -- “you think you’re better than me” re: xiao xingchen and song lan. to him, all people -- poor, wealthy, noble, common -- are essentially equal, and they are all beneath him. after all, what does he care what family someone comes from, how much money they have? everyone bleeds when you cut them. some of them might be harder to get to than others, but xue yang does not fear that sort of thing. it’s just another obstacle he needs to vault on his way to getting revenge and/or a pastry.

ANYWAYS onto jin guangyao (wow this is hm. getting rather long ahaha oh dear): I would argue that the two characters with the most acute understanding of class/societal politics and the injustice of them are jin guangyao and lan xichen. i’ll start with jin guangyao for obvious reasons.

where xue yang took the damaging effects of poverty as personal slights, I think jin guangyao is painfully aware that there is nothing personal about them, which is, in some ways, much worse. why are two sons, born on the same day to the same father, treated so differently? just because.

he watched his mother struggle and starve and work herself to the bone in a profession where she was constantly disrespected and abused for almost nothing in return, while his father could have lifted her out of poverty with the wave of a finger. why didn’t he? because he didn’t like her? no -- because he didn’t care, and the structures of the society they live in protect that kind of blase treatment of the lower class.

“so my mother couldn’t choose her own fate, is that her fault?” jin guangyao demands. he knows that he is unbelievably talented, that he has ambition, that he has potential, and that all of it is beyond his grasp just because his father didn’t want to bother with it. his mother’s life was destroyed, and his own opportunities were crippled with that negligence. it isn’t personal. that’s just the way things are. your individual identity is meaningless, your humanity does not exist. when he’s kicked down the steps of jinlin tai, it’s just more confirmation that no matter how talented or hardworking he is, no one will give him the time of day unless he finds a way to take it himself and become someone who “matters”.

jin guangyao’s cultivation is weak because he had a poor foundation, and he had a poor foundation because he was denied access to a good one. he copies others because that’s all he can do at this point, and he copies so well that he can hold his own against some of the strongest cultivators of his generation. he’s disparaged for copying and “stealing” techniques, but -- he never would have had to if only he had been born/accepted into the upper class. the fact is that i really do think jin guangyao was the most promising cultivator of his generation that we meet, including the twin jades and wei wuxian: he had natural talent, ambition, creativity, determination and cunning in spades. in some ways, I think that’s one of the overlooked tragedies of jin guangyao: the loss of not just the good man he could have been, but the powerful one too. imagine what he could have done.

jin guangyao spends his entire time in the world of the aristocracy feeling unsteady and terrified because he knows exactly how precarious his position is. he knows how easy it is to lose power, especially for someone like him. he’s working against so many disadvantages, and every scrap of honor he gets is a vicious battle. jin guangyao fears, and I think that’s something that’s lacking in xue yang, wei wuxian and the daozhangs’ experiences/understandings of poverty. i think it’s precisely that fear that emphasizes jin guangyao’s understanding of class and blood. jin guangyao exhibits an anxiety that neither wei wuxian nor xue yang do, and it’s because he truly knows how little he is worth in the eyes of society and how little there is he can do to change that. to me, it very much feels related to the anxiety of not knowing if tomorrow you’ll have something to eat, if tomorrow you’ll still have a home, if tomorrow someone will destroy you and never have to answer for it. it’s the anxiety of knowing helplessness intimately.

moreover, jin guangyao is the only person shown to use the wealth and power at his disposal to take concrete steps to actually help the common people typically ignored by the powerful -- the watchtowers. they’re described in chapter 42. it’s a system that is designed to cover remote areas that most cultivators are reluctant to go due to their inconvenience and the lack of means of the people who live there. the watchtowers assign cultivators to different posts, give aid to those previously forgotten, and if the people are too poor to pay what the cultivators demand, the lanling jin sect pays for it. jin guangyao worked on this for five years and burned a lot of bridges over it. people were strongly opposed to it, thinking that it was some kind of ploy for lanling jin’s personal benefit. but the thing is -- it worked. they were effective. people were helped.

i believe CQL frames the watchtowers as an allegory for a surveillance state/centralized control (i think?? it’s been a minute -- that’s the hazy impression i remember, something like a parallel to the wen supervisory offices?), but I personally don’t think that was the intent in the novel. the watchtowers are a public good. lanling jin doesn’t staff them with their own sect members -- they get nearby sects to staff them. it’s a warning network that they fund that’s supposed to benefit everyone, even those that everyone had considered expendable.

(did jin guangyao do terrible things to achieve this goal? yeah lol. it’s not confirmed, but his son sure did die... suspiciously...... at the hands of an outspoken critic of the watchtowers........ whom he then executed....... so like, maybe just a convenient coincidence for jin guangyao, two birds one stone, but. it seems. Unlikely.)

lan xichen is the only member of the gentry that ever shows serious compassion for and nuanced understanding of jin guangyao’s circumstances. lan xichen treats him as his equal regardless of jin guangyao’s current status -- even when he was meng yao, lan xichen treated him as a human being worthy of respect, as someone with great merits, as someone he would choose as a friend, but he did so knowing full well the delicate position meng yao occupied. this is in direct contrast to nie mingjue, who also believed that meng yao was worthy of respect as a human being, but was completely unable to comprehend the complexities of his circumstances and unwilling to grant him any grace. you know, the difference between “i acknowledge that your birth and status have had effects upon you, but I don’t think less of you for it” and “i don’t consider your birth and status at all when i interact with you because i think it is irrelevant” (“i don’t see color” anyone?)

to illustrate, from chapter 48:

大抵是觉得娼妓之子身上说不定也带着什么不干净的东西，这几名修士接过他双手奉上来的茶盏后，并不饮下，而是放到一边，还取出雪白的手巾，很难受似的，有意无意反复擦拭刚才碰过茶盏的手指。聂明玦并非细致之人，未曾注意到这种细节，魏无羡却用眼角余光扫到了这些。孟瑶视若未见，笑容不坠半分，继续奉茶。蓝曦臣接过茶盏之时，抬眸看他一眼，微笑道：“多谢。”

旋即低头饮了一口，这才继续与聂明玦交谈。旁的修士见了，有些不自在起来。

rough tl:

Probably because they believed that the son of a prostitute might also carry some unclean things upon his person, after these few cultivators took the teacups offered from [Meng Yao’s] two hands, they did not drink, but instead put them to one side, and furthermore brought out snow white handkerchiefs. Quite uncomfortably, and whether they were aware of it or not, they repeatedly wiped the fingers they had just used to touch the teacups. Nie Mingjue was not a detail-oriented person and never took note of such particulars, but Wei Wuxian caught these in the corner of his eye. Meng Yao appeared as if he had not seen, his smile unwavering in the slightest, and continued to serve tea. When Lan Xichen took the teacup, he glanced up at him and, smiling, said, “Thank you.”

He immediately dipped his head to take a sip, and only then continued to converse with Nie Mingjue. Seeing this, the nearby cultivators began to feel somewhat uneasy.

all right, since we’re in full cyan-rampaging-through-the-weeds mode at this point, i’m going to talk about how this is one of my favorite 3zun moments in the entire novel for characterization purposes because it really highlights how they all relate to one another, and to what degree each of them is aware of their own position in relation to the others and society as a whole.

1. nie mingjue, who is a forthright and blunt person, sets meng yao to serving tea and is done with it. he notices nothing wrong or inappropriate about the reactions of the people in the room because it’s not the sort of thing he considers important.

2. meng yao, knowing that his only avenue is to take it lying down with a smile, masks perfectly.

3. lan xichen, noticing all this, uses his own reputation to achieve two things at once: pointedly shame the other cultivators in attendance, and show meng yao that regardless of others’ opinions, he considers him an equal and does not endorse such behavior--and he does it while taking care that no fallout will come down on meng yao’s head.

is this yet another installment of cyan’s endless lxc defense thesis? why yes it is! no one is surprised! but this is my whole point: both meng yao and lan xichen understand the respective hierarchy and power dynamics within the room, while nie mingjue very much does not. this is not because nie mingjue is a bad person or because nie mingjue is stupid--it’s a combination of personality and upbringing. nie mingjue is straightforward and has no patience for such games. but then again, he can afford not to play because he was born into such a high position: that’s a privilege.

to break it down: meng yao knows that he is the lowest-ranked person in the room, sees the way people are subtly disrespecting him in full view of his general who is doing nothing about it. in some ways, this is good -- nie mingjue’s style of dealing with conflict is very direct and not at all suited to delicate political maneuvering. after all, the way he promoted meng yao was actually quite dangerous to meng yao: he essentially guaranteed that his men would bear meng yao a grudge and that their disrespect for him would only be compounded by their bitterness at being punished on his behalf. (it’s like, why often getting parents or teachers to intervene ineffectively in bullying can just be an incitement to more bullying -- same concept) meng yao’s reaction during that scene shows that he’s pretty painfully aware of this and is trying to defuse the situation to no avail. nie mingjue gives him a bootstrap speech (rip nie mingjue i love u so much but. sir) and then promotes him, which is pretty much the only saving grace of that entire exchange, for meng yao at least.

lan xichen, on the other hand, understands both that meng yao is the lowest-ranked person in the room and that any direct attempt to chastise the other cultivators in the room will only serve to hurt meng yao in the long run. he knows that if this were brought to nie mingjue’s attention, he would be outraged and not shy about it -- also bad for meng yao. so he uses what he has: his immaculate reputation. by acting contrary to the other cultivators’ behavior, he demonstrates that he finds their actions unacceptable but with the plausible deniability that it wasn’t directed at them, that this is just zewu-jun being his usual generous self. this means that the other cultivators have no one to blame but themselves, nothing to do but question their own actions. there is nowhere to cast off their discomfort. meng yao didn’t do anything. lan xichen didn’t do anything -- he just thanked meng yao and drank his tea, isn’t that what it’s there for? he doesn’t disrupt the peace, he doesn’t attack anyone and put them on the defensive, but he does make his position very clear.

i know this is a really small thing and i’m probably beating it to death, but I really think this shows just how cognizant lan xichen is of politics and emotional cause and effect in such situations. certainly, out of context I think the scene reads kind of cliche, but within the greater narrative of the story and within the arc of these characters specifically, I think it was a really smart scene to include. it also showcases lan xichen’s style of action: that he moves around and with a problematic situation as opposed to moving straight through.

not to be salty on main again, but this is why it’s very frustrating to me when I see people call lan xichen passive when he is anything but. his actions just don’t look like traditional “actions”, especially to an american audience. it’s easy to understand lan wangji and wei wuxian’s style of problem-solving: taking a stand, moving through, staying strong. lan xichen is juggling an inconceivable number of factors in any given situation, weighing his responsibilities in one role against those in another, and then trying to find the path through the thicket that will cause the least harm, both to himself and the thicket. lan wangji and wei wuxian are not particularly good at considering the far-reaching consequences of their actions -- again, not because they are bad people, but because of a combination of personality and upbringing. they’d just hack through the thicket, not thinking about the creatures that live in it. that is not a terrible thing! it isn’t. it’s a different way of approaching a problem, and it has different priorities. that’s okay. there are advantages and disadvantages on both sides, and where you come down is going to depend on your personal values.

okay we’ve spiraled far and away from my original point, but let’s circle back: i was talking about class.

I think it’s undeniable that class, birthright, fate etc. are some of the driving forces of thematic conflict in mdzs, and the way each character interacts with those forces reveals a lot about themselves and also about the larger themes of fate, chance, and what it means to be righteous and good and how that is and isn’t rewarded. a lot of the tragedy of mdzs (the tragedy that isn’t caused by direct aggression on the part of one group or another) stems from the injustices and slights that people suffered due to their lot in life. it isn’t fair. none of it is fair! we sympathize with jin guangyao because we recognize that what he suffered was unconscionable, even if we don’t excuse him. i sympathize A Lot with xue yang as well for similar reasons, though I understand that’s a harder sell. this is a story focused on the mistakes of an entrenched, aging gentry and the effects that those mistakes had on their children, and a lot of it has to do with prejudice based in class and birth status. whether the prejudice was the true reason or whether it was just a convenient excuse, the fact remains that the systems in place rewarded and protected the people in power who used it to cling to that power. mdzs is also a story of how the circumstances of one’s life can offer you impossible choices that you cannot abstain from, and it asks us to be compassionate to the people who made terrible choices in terrible times. it’s about the inherent complexity in all things! that sometimes, there are no good choices, and i don’t know, i’d like to think that people would show me compassion if I had to make the choices some of these characters did. not just wei wuxian, mind you, every single one of them. except jin guangshan because I Do Hate Him sorry. and i guess wen ruohan. i think that’s it.

good. GOD this is clocking in at //checks notes -- just over 5k. 8′D *stuffs some weeds into my mouth like the clown i am*

(ko-fi? :’D *lies down*)

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pocketfulofrecs · 3 years

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This week’s Author Spotlight is here! And our author in the spotlight is glitteringmoonlight! We really love this author and it seems like many of our friends do as well. We’ve both been recommended "on restitution" so many times! A testament of how good glitteringmoonlight is. If there was a list of authors to read as a newcomer, we think she would be on it for sure.

She has published 222k+ words on MDZS on ao3 in 12 works. You can find her @glitteringmoonlight on Tumblr.

Her fics:

Dreams of You (Are All I Have Left) - [teen | 2.7k | the 13 years]

love at every s(word f)ight - [teen | 3.2k | established relationship fluff]

one of our own - [general | 7.7k | 5 times the Lans defended WWX]

pay no attention to what’s behind the curtain - [teen | 7.4k | emperor!LWJ and concubine!WWX]

this version of our story - [general | 3.4k | Lan Sizhui learns about the Wens]

no smoke without fire - [teen | 12k | outsider pov about the Yiling Patriarch]

watch what we’ll become - [teen | 59k | arranged marriage between WWX and JZX - but still wangxian]

looking through a window - [teen | 5.4k | modern au online learning outsider pov]

pitfalls of greed (our post) - [teen | 3.3k | Yiling Laozu WWX]

our lives, never ours - [teen | 7.9k | hunger games au]

on restitution - [mature | 98k | WWX doesn’t die at the siege and is kept prisoner by JC - the rest of canon still happens]

this world (what I make of it) - [teen | 17k | wip | avatar au]

Dee’s favourite: I’m honestly torn? I love pitfalls of greed. It is one of the first fics I read. BAMF WWX is my jam. Looking through a window is a great fic too! There’s something so charming about outsider POV getting a glimpse of lovely Wangxian domesticity. The descriptions of LWJ and WWX are so enchanting here. I would highly recommend them.

Ju’s favourite: This was hard to choose, but “on restitution” has a big place in my heart. I was so afraid of reading it while the author was Anonymous, because the synopsis is so sad/angsty. The moment I saw who the writer was I started reading and just couldn’t put it down. And it is just so good!!! The first chapter is really angsty and it hurts a lot, but then the rest of the fic comes and it’s way less angsty than I expected. WWX is full of life, wangxian is absolutely glorious, and soft, and romantic, and sexy, and they tease and trust each other. The juniors are also there, and we get Wei Yuan for once! They are all so in character and it makes me so happy. Mostly WWX pov, but I cannot forget to mention Jingyi’s pov. I just couldn’t stop laughing at his chapter. Cannot rec this one enough.

The Interview:

Q. When did you start writing fics? Did you have fandoms before this one?

A. I used to write for Percy Jackson and Harry Potter in the early 2010s (under a different name), though not very prolifically, but that tapered off fairly quickly. Apart from a few unpublished fic drafts for Lord of the Rings and Leverage, I only really got back into fic writing after I rewatched Avatar: The Last Airbender in 2020.

Q. What made you start writing for MDZS?

A. Wangxian! What drew me to the source material was the fact that I found Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji utterly fascinating as individual characters, but it was how much I loved their relationship dynamic that got me thinking about writing fic. There was also something about the plot and themes of MDZS itself that I found very compelling, and that made me even more interested in exploring it in fic. I didn’t realize it would lead to me writing so many fics in this fandom, but I’m certainly not complaining!

Q. What’s your favourite fic you’ve written?

A. That’s a really hard question to answer because I love different fics for different reasons, and at any given time, the fic I’m working on at the moment is usually my favourite. Among my finished fics, I particularly love on restitution, because of the way I got to portray Wangxian (and how many sweet, fluffy interactions I managed to fit into it, which… might seem like an odd reason given the premise, summary, and tags) and no smoke without fire, because it contains so many tropes I love— Wei Wuxian being a genius inventor, Wei Wuxian and the Wen remnants as found family, kids loving Wei Wuxian… the list goes on.

Q. What’s your favourite type of fics to read?

A. It depends on the day, really. Sometimes I love a good plot-heavy fic and other times I just want tender domestic fluff. But when it comes to MDZS, I do have a soft spot for fics of the ‘Wei Wuxian protection squad’ variety and fics that heavily feature the Wen siblings and Wei Wuxian’s relationship.

Q. What’s your favourite comment? Or type of comment?

A. Any comment at all! It’s always amazing to know that someone liked my fic(s) enough to let me know! (Though it’s a special kind of thrill to see the same person comment on multiple of my fics, because it tells me that they liked my writing enough to check out what else I’ve written)

Q. What is your favorite trope to read and/or write?

A. Established relationship and all the subtropes that encompasses! I love the familiarity, the casual intimacy, the comfort in each other’s presence… I could go on and on. I also love a good outsider POV (as evidenced by how many of them I’ve written), and as a natural consequence, established relationship from outsider POV.

Q. Do you have any advice for new authors?

A. Write what you want to read. I’ve found that it’s a lot more enjoyable to write something that you personally like, and editing feels a lot less tedious when you enjoy what you’re proofreading. Also, there’s a good chance you’ll connect with other people who enjoy the same things you do!

Q. What do you think is the most important element in writing? Plot, characterization, relationship?

A. They’re all important, but characterization drives everything else, I feel. The characters— and the way they react to situations and to each other— influence how the plot progresses and the relationships develop, so characterization is an essential part of writing.

Check out their stories on ao3 and remember…

Comments and kudos feed the author’s soul.

#mdzs #author spotlight #glitteringmoonlight

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maniibear · 3 years

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Feeling very senti today so doing a fic rec list of all the fics that are CARRYING me in this trash year of our lord twenty twenty one. No particular order bc great things cannot be ranked!

Autumn Thoughts by softwired Sangcheng; complete - One disaster human secretly courts another more disaster human in this incredible tale of classical poetry, elegant gifts, and sloppy desperate bids for emotional connection. Come for the cute premise, stay for Jiang Cheng betting that if he runs fast enough, his feelings can't catch him bc that's how this works. Also wangxian are there, and they bought shenanigans.

The Mustache by @fortune-maiden Gen; complete - A FILL FOR MY PROMPT (😍😍😍) where NHS grows a mustache. Call me biased but this is the funniest thing I've ever read. Sometimes psychological warfare is just you, your sworn brothers, the entire jianghu, and a very specific fashion statement!

The Twin Blades of Yunmeng by @ghostysword, @sometimesophie wangxian + est. sangcheng; Ongoing - THE mdzs rewrite, THIS!!! What a brilliant and thorough reimagining of a world where JC wields both Suibian and Sandu! WWX comes back as usual, but the whole gang goes to solve the murder mystery with him and there are FEELINGS. There are some fascinating twists re NMJ's body; the character voices are ON POINT, the juniors are ducklings, JC is reluctant captain of ship wangxian, and don't even get me started on the gorgeous illustrations omgggg - like, when ya'll see and read about Qin Su mmph. This fic is an experience ok, go have it~

The Law of Unintended Consequences by @oddlyexquisite sangcheng; ongoing - An arranged marriage political drama that I could not stop reading and still think about. Do you like a grumpy purple pikachu and mastermind songbird discovering that they love each other v much actually + Niebros feels, shuangjie background feels, 3zun middleground feels? Bc this fic delivers everything. Also, what. is. happening. with the silver?? 👀👀

Telling Dreams from One Another (it's harder than you think) by @spaceshipoftheseus xisangcheng; ongoing - SPEAKING of fics that are an experience!!! Ok alright, the premise is that NMJ and JGY reincarnate, but it's SO MUCH MORE. The worldbuilding alone - like, concept art for NHS's Unclean Realm where?? The layers to every single character, do you ever want to write fanfic of fanfic? Are you ever excited for a single character to be introduced in the context of a fic? That's how RICH this story is. Every hour of every day I'm screaming at the sheer prose, the imagery, the emotions with which I am BLEST!

What we yearn for by YetForNothing the Gusu ot4; nearly complete - Oh, the sheer ambition of this fic and how i n c r e d i b l y well the author pulls it off! What if Untamed, but NHS, LWJ, WWX, & JC are an OT4? What if each of them have varying sexual orientations, gender ids, and perspectives? What if they loved each other very very much and what if all that was weaved in PERFECTLY with canon events? When I say I cannot believe fanfic is free sometimes...

That's all for now, go enrich your lives, loves!~ Also, I did my best to pull everyone's socmeds from fic notes, but if I missed anyone's tumblr or twitter, please tell and I'm happy to edit the post <33

#mdzs #the untamed #jiang cheng #nie huaisang #fic rec #mdzs fic rec #cql fic #wei wuxian #lan wangji

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inessencedevided · 3 years

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A very overdue cql/mdzs fic rec list

for @accidental-child

I am so sorry this took me so long Axel! The pandemic has really done a number on my time-management skills and things like this often fall behind :/

The fics complied here are the ones i have not recced in the list for @helianthus21 before. You can find that one here, so you can check it out as well :)

The Wei Wuxian makes a wish series by natcat5

My attempt at a summary: this is a madoka magica AU (which i had not watched prior to reading this fic). Cultivators, in this universe, are created when a teenager makes a wish to the creature named Kyubey, which than grants them their wish and the power to fight witches, strange and destructive creatures of despair that lure people into their labyrinths. Wei Wuxian, at the beginning of the story is not a cultivator, but his friends are and so is the mysterious new student at his school, lan wangji, who follows him everywhere and seems to be obsessed with preventing him from making a contract.

My comment: my attempt at a summary does not do this story justice and is really just a setup. Honestly i cannot put into words how much I loved this story. It kept me on the edge of my seat the entire time. It made me laugh, it made me cry for entire chapters, it drew me into it's world so much that I freaking dreamed about it! (I'm not kidding, I really did) Honestly, this fic deserves so much more attention than it is currently getting. Not only is the plot expertly crafted, with reveals that shock you and leave you reading, but the author also just gets the characters. The best thing an AU can do, in my opinion, is take familiar characters, put them in unfamiliar situations and then manage to make the way they react believable. And this AU nails that! The conclusion and the choices that Wei wuxian and lan Wangji make in the end felt exactly right. Not to mention, it has a stellar ensemble cast! Everyone is here (except Xichen sadly and I kind of think it is deliberate because without him, Lan Wangji lacks a support system). Again, I cannot recommend this story enough. It is, without doubt, my favourite fic series in this entire fandom. (Caution however: Do read the warnings in the tags and notes and take them seriously. They are there for a very good reason.)

Agapé (home is in your arms) by estel_willow

Author’s summary: Lan Xichen is in isolation. Wei Wuxian visits him. Together they find their way back to happiness, to clarity and to home.

My comment: This one focuses on both Lan Xichen’s and Wei Wuxian’s issues and lets them resolve them together. I am such a fan of their characterisations in this fic, as well as Lan Wangji’s even though he is not the focus. I love it when non-romantic relationships are the focus of fics and especially when they are central to the character’s resolving their own issues and moving forward in life and that is exactly what happens here.

until you're big enough by lostin_space

Author’s summary: Lan Zhan is sad and not hungry; Lan Xichen asks Nie Mingjue to help him.

My comment: This one is a really short and sweet read about how Lan Xichen and Nie Mingjue parent the their younger brothers. I just really liked how the author portrayed todler Lan Zhan, as well as these two teenagers doing their best to be the parents that both he and Nie huaisang lack.

Night Music by Manogahela

Author’s summary: There is a music that plays in the night at Cloud Recess....but there isn't suppose to be. Lan Xichen investigates the mysterious dizi music that can be heard from the Jingshi at night following the Siege of the Burial mounds.

My comment: I absolutely adored this one, mainly for two reasons: 1. I love an outsider perspective and Lan Xichen’s, at this point and with his limited knowledge is absolutely wonderful. First, he isn’t even sure is what he thinks is happening really is happening and when he is sure, his feelings are, understandably very conflicted. 2. The author’s style compliments this fic so well. Since most of it happens at night and Xichen isn’t entirely sure that he can trust his senses, there is a certain dreamlike quality to it that the author writes beautifully. This fic is part one in a series. Part two is a WIP, but also very much worth the read!

Company by WithBroomBefore

My summary: In which Wei Wuxian is whipped within an inch of his life by Madam Yu when he is fourteen and comes to stay at the cloud recesses. He and Lan Zhan become friends.

My comment: My summary once again does not do this fic justice. Because it is so much more than just that. It’s such a beautful exploration of friendship and love and bodily autonomy. Wei Wuxian has a lot to work through in this fic, but really, so has Lan Zhan who has the opportunity to make friends at a much more mellow pace than in the novel/show and panics a little less because of it. The war still happens but has much less dire consequences. All in all, this fic left me with a wonderful warm feeling in my chest.

you are safe / loved / worthy / enough by everythingispoetry

Author’s summary: One of the more timid-looking posts, in pale greens and creams and yellows, says Hello, I'm managing to be fairly high functioning right now but I'm really not doing as well as it may appear, and Lan Zhan feels as if someone sneaked into his mind and read his most secret thoughts, the ones he's never even dared to admit to himself.

(In which Lan Zhan, to his own dismay, finds himself with the help of the most obnoxious, cheerful, cheesy self-care instagram account known to men.)

(And Wei Ying.)

My comment: Listen, I have a complicated relationship with fics that depict mental health struggles in characters. They are all so incredibly valid and I’m glad they exist (every single one of them, no matter if i like them or not) but due to the fact that they tend to come from the author projecting their own issues onto characters (which is NOT a bad thing! that is what fanfic is for!) they are often hit-and-miss when it comes to characterisation. But this story ... it just GETS Lan Wangji. If someone told me a scenario in a modern AU that leads to him developing an anxiety disorder and depression, this is what I would have come up with. Because let’s be real, Lan Wangji is a perfectionist to boot, insanely competitive and needs to live up to his family’s expectations, while also not having much of an emotional support system outside of his brother and uncle. That’s a dangerous cocktail in the modern world and just screams of a burnout waiting to happen. So Lan Wangji, off to university, living alone in a strange city for the frst time, spends all his time in a carefully calculated study routine but slowly realises that the path he set out on was not one he chose because he liked it but simply the one that was laid out for him by his background and family, which then leads to him questioning the reason behind what he does. That reads as incredibly real to me. A good AU, in my opinion, takes the characters and their inherent characteristics and lets them meet new and unique challenges that they never would have encountered in canon, which then leads to new and interesting character developement. And this AU manages that perfectly! (Plus, if you are a university student like me who sometimes suffers from crushing anxiety about the path they chose in life, this is insanely relatable. What? I never said I wasn’t biased :P)

porn (but not actually) and waiting (a lot of it) by hyacinth4maria

Author’s summary: Lan Xichen sighs as he settles into the couch next to Lan Wangji.

"What are you looking at?"

Lan Wangji, without pausing from typing the names Lan Wangji and Wei Wuxian in the Love Calculator 3000, says, "Porn."

Lan Xichen chokes.

- Lan Wangji has a crush. Lan Xichen hadn't realized his little brother was growing up.

My comment: this one was hilarious! Just Lan Xichen being both absolutely exasperated and amused by wangxian’s pre-teen drama. I almost choked laughing at the line that coined the title. The author has these characters down to a T and they used their powers to attack my laugh-musccles :D

the field meets the wood by astronicht

Author’s summary: Wei Wuxian is a dark shadow in the barley. Wei Wuxian is sorry for the kind of compassion that he is about to hand out.

(in which Lan Wangji is stolen for salt, and Wei Wuxian unravels the world, a little)

My Comment: HOLY FUCKING SHIT THIS IS SO GOOD. Do you ever read a story and just marvel at the author’s mind? This is one of those. The sheer genius of giving Wei Wuxian the ability to pull entire beings into non-being! The absolute galaxy-brain idea to link the canon mythology to modern astrophysics!!! Wei Wuxian creates a motherfucking black hole in this one!!! And it’s SO well written, too! The author does not shy away from Wei Wuxian’s sharp edges and his darker side but goddamn if he is not still loveable anyway. Just GO READ THIS FIC!

Abandon your post by StarsAlignNomore

Author’s summary: After months as Chief Cultivator and separated from his soulmate, Lan Wangji follows Wei Wuxian out into the world. He searches for him. He finds him. He kisses him. They reunite, they talk, they resolve. Sometimes Bichen lends emotional support. Chenqing bites. Little Apple is there too.

Your typical Post-Canon-Reunion-Fic with much more emphasis on their spiritual weapons than expected.

My comments: This one just left me with a lot of mushy feelings. Also I adore the way the author emphasised the relationship between Lan Wangji and Bichen. And by the end, Wangxian finally figure shit out through actual open communication. Absolutely beautiful!

#cql fic #cql fic rec #mdzs fic #mdzs fic rec #mdzs #cql #wangxian #wangxian fic rec #lan wangji #wei wuxian #lan xichen

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crossdressingdeath · 3 years

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I can't say that there's much about CQL that I care too much for, but 1 thing that I really like is (it's been a while since I watched it so my memory might be foggy) the scene where LWJ is kneeling in the snow holding the cane after his visit to Yiling. It implies that LWJ did say something in WWX and the remnants favor and was punished for it. Either as a warning in a "this is what will happen if you stray again" or they were actively deciding whether to physically punish him as he knelt outside. It would also make some sort of sense on why he didn't seek WWX out anytime after the Yiling visit if he was on a tighter leash. I like using this in my fics when dealing with the time between his visit and the 1 month celebration.

This blank space in LWJs story is both fun and frustrating. Fun cause a fic writer can do so much here writing from his pov. Frustrating cause like bro... What were you doing whilst the love of your life was raising a child on Haunted Corpse Mountain? He specifically sought out WWX 3 times after the SSC and eventually committed treason for him, even if the last one was more impulsive IMO this scenario seems in line with what LWJ would do and start him on the path of questioning things he had taken for granted as true

I guess? But also I’m... not sure I actually like it. See, it kind of gives this sense that LWJ is being punished for associating with WWX. Like, that is pushed so hard in CQL, “Do not associate with evil” and all that. But that’s not the vibe I got from the novel. LWJ was punished for his actions in relation to WWX, yes, and LXC and LQR both blame WWX for “corrupting” LWJ, but I never got the sense that LWJ was being punished for caring about WWX. He was punished for attacking his elders, not because he attacked them for WWX. And that feels important to me? Like, LWJ’s family doesn’t approve of his relationship with WWX but they accept it and don’t punish him for it. I don’t know, maybe I’m just being queer, but a gay man in a society that is explicitly homophobic never getting punished for his love for and later relationship with another man even when he’s punished for the (genuinely and understandably Very Much Not Allowed) things he does because of those feelings feels important. LWJ gets punished, but not because he’s in love with WWX; it’s because his love for WWX leads him to commit treason. WWX is blamed for that, but he’s not actually the reason LWJ is being punished. Meanwhile in CQL... yeah, LWJ is very much being punished for his association with WWX, especially if you’re right and in the scene with the cane he’s being punished for arguing in WWX’s defence. I got the sense that the reason why any attempt LWJ made to argue for WWX and the Wens never comes up is because the Lans kept it quiet because LWJ would be in deep shit if it came out that he’d tried to protect the Yiling Patriarch. No one knows that LWJ was whipped for fighting his own elders to protect WWX (or even that he was whipped at all, as far as I remember) because again, the Lans protected him. There were consequences, but the Lan sect very much did close ranks around him and defend him from what would happen if the sects found out that he was in love with and had tried to help the Yiling Patriarch. Again, maybe this is me being queer, but the idea of a group punishing a member of that group for their actual wrongdoings but also not letting them be punished by an unfair and bigoted world for something they did out of love and that didn’t do any serious or lasting harm (sect leader’s brother or no, if LWJ had done serious and/or permanent damage to the elders he would’ve been in even deeper shit than he was) feels really really important. So CQL changing that and making it clear that LWJ is being punished for his feelings for WWX with the repeated “Do not associate with evil” line and if I remember right removing the fight with the elders from the story... in a version of the story that censors the gay relationship and makes it just Straight With Subtext... well, I do not like that. To make it a little more blatant, I’m pretty sure the “Do not associate with evil” rule only appears in CQL. It may exist in MDZS, but it never comes up.

The blank space in LWJ’s timeline between visits to the Burial Mounds is interesting, and there’s a lot you can do with it, but... making it so that the Lan sect, the sect that defended him from the consequences the other sects would make him face for being in love with WWX and helped raise WWX and LWJ’s kinda-sorta son and sheltered WWX when LWJ brought him back to the Cloud Recesses (even if most of them didn’t know about those two things) and accepted LWJ’s marriage even though they really didn’t like WWX, kept him from helping the Wens and punished him for trying to defend the man he loved isn’t exactly how I’d do it. Especially since there isn’t actually anything suggesting that LWJ was punished for going to Yiling in the book, mostly because... well, why would he be, there’s no rule against it and no mention of him being ordered to stay away from Yiling or WWX, and there’s no word about a rule against trying to defend someone from accusations (except the rule against lying, which the Lans know him well enough to know he wouldn’t do; at worst they’ll assume that he’s letting WWX lie to him and letting himself be convinced that the Evil Yiling Patriarch isn’t actually evil). At this point LWJ has done nothing worthy of punishment. LWJ doesn’t have to be punished for being in love with WWX to start questioning what he was raised to believe, he starts questioning what he was raised to believe because WWX dies! LWJ loves him and believes in his moral compass and he dies anyway! Righteousness alone isn’t enough, because WWX was one of the most righteous people LWJ knew and the sects killed him! So actually, making it so that he reconsiders what he’s learned when it negatively affects him instead of because he tried every rule-abiding method he could think of to help WWX and it did nothing actually weakens his character a bit. By the time he’s committing treason for WWX he’s started to change; he’s given up on following the rules and is willing to do whatever it takes to save the person he loves, and even then it’s not enough. That’s what changes him, not his punishment. It’s the realisation that the sects are not righteous, at least not when acting as a collective with mob mentality in full swing. Every individual Lan we meet is righteous! But only as individuals. As a group they’re just as bad as everyone else.

...This is getting away from me a bit. I guess what I’m trying to say is that while I see your point I think the scene where LWJ is punished with having to hold that cane up is just another aspect of CQL shifting from LWJ being punished for going against his sect’s rules to LWJ getting punished for his feelings for WWX, which wouldn’t be a good look even without the censoring of any aspect that was explicitly gay, so I find it hard to look at it in any sort of positive way.

Also, it’s not as fun as handstands.

#mdzs vs cql #lan wangji #what could wyb not do handstands or something? you've got wires #was it too undignified? if so: COWARDS #the lan sect can be a little undignified #as a treat #anon #asks

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cyb-by-lang · 3 years

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Fic Writer Interview

Tagged by: @writer-and-artist27

Name: Lang (or Liangnui for people who want to try to parse my back-asswords attempt at Pinyin as a college student)

Fandoms: Naruto (well, the universe I made), MDZS/The Untamed, My Hero Academia, One Piece, and Critical Role, at least in terms of what I’ve actually written for. Other stuff that has shown up includes Assassin’s Creed (before it went off the rails), Persona 5, Dragon Age, and more.

Two Shot: Closest I’ve got is enfants perdus, which was a fic written as a reaction to episode 26 of Critical Role’s second campaign and contains the best DnD-style battle I’ve ever written. It technically has a third chapter, but that’s just for fun.

Most Popular Multi-chapter Fic: Catch Your Breath by a mile. Even when I’m not actively writing for it, it serves as a baseline for every other Naruto fic I write.

Actual Worst Part of Writing: It varies, usually by the results on the “what is vexing Lang today” dartboard of writing progress debuffs. The usual suspects are fight scenes — which I know am good at — because of the amount of tedious detail-wrangling they involve, and the process of plotting things.

How You Choose Your Titles: Chapter titles in CYB and OSF come from songs, Shell Game had a “aspect of school life” theme going for a while, Dig Two Graves chapter titles are all single-word summaries of the events therein, and it must be a thursday’s first arc had all the titles come from the warlock class’s Eldritch Invocations.

In terms of actual fic titles: CYB and OSF are from songs, Shell Game is a term for a con and a turtle pun, Dig Two Graves is a part of a longer saying, and it must be a thursday is a riff on both the But For Me, It Was Tuesday trope name and to CR’s traditional airing weekday.

Do You Outline: Not consistently. I tend to pile up notes for a while, then start writing, then discard basically everything as the writing evolves beyond the outline. Nowadays, the actual outline is a bulleted list of what needs to happen in a given chapter, sitting at the end of the document.

Ideas You Probably Won't Get Around To, But Wouldn't It Be Nice?:

1. An FMA crossover based on a really shitty pun and Xingese culture. One of the few ideas I have that don’t really feature Kei, at least not as her actualized late-CYB self.

2. Pokemon crossover. It would be extremely cute.

3. Persona 5 fic. I had a vague thought about it during Shell Game’s run, but it’d probably wear away at Kei’s patience until she got arrested for dangling the volleyball coach out a third-floor window by his ankles. At least UA has superheroes. Instead, I just snuck a couple of Persona 5 references into Shell Game.

4. I have wanted to actually write a proper Fire Emblem Three Houses fic forever, but it doesn’t appear to be happening because I cannot confine myself to a one-shot for the life of me.

Callouts At Me: Howsabout I actually finish some stories. The fact that Shell Game and Nailed It! have been marked “complete” gives me joy every time I see them. A lot of other fics on my roster do not. XD

Best Writing Traits:

1. Snarky first-person or third-person narration. When people say they stick around my fics, this is usually one of the common reasons they cite. As a probably inevitable consequence, writing characters who don’t have opinions about everything is extremely slow going.

2. Banter and character interactions during downtime. One of the things I try to do a lot is actually make the characters friends, with a dynamic that is compelling and allows them to relax in each other’s presence. Sure, it’s a bit more rough-and-ready than some people probably prefer, but I find the back-and-forth allows the truly sincere moments to shine through better.

Spicy Tangential Opinion:

If you decide to drop one of my fics in the middle for whatever reason, don’t tell me about it. Especially don’t tell me in a hostile tone, as though you’re trapped on the page by a cursed internet browser that will devour your OS if you ever click the back button and that somehow makes your fit of pique my fault.

Just close the tab like a normal person.

This seems to be a thing that happens more often on FF.Net than on AO3 for whatever reason.

Tagging: @nyd-needs-cuddles, @mikkeneko, and whoever else feels like it?

#fic writer interview #ask the author #asks

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imaginaryelle · 4 years

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Meta: Luminaries and Power in MDZS

Apparently I’m doing meta for the Untamed Winterfest “star” prompt (day 14) because I keep thinking about “rising stars” and “falling stars” and supernovas and the sun and guiding stars, which makes me think a lot (a lot a lot) about Wei Wuxian, and the Wens, and Jin Guangyao, and Lan Wangji.

Like, we have the Wens here, right?

And the Wens are basically the cautionary tale for the whole rest of the plot. “Do Not Covet Power” the story tells us over, and over and over, “Power Will Turn Against You,” but the Wens come (chronologically) first. They wear the sun, and the phoenix. They stand triumphant, the brightest star in the sky, and they start thinking that means they are the sun, the source from which all other power flows, the unkillable generator of life. And so the sun turns scorching—there are too many suns in the sky, shoot them down or all life will burn—and the rest of the world snuffs them out, one by one (until one single sun is left, excuse me while I cry over A-Yuan; okay, we’re good).

Pretty blatant, in-your-face cautionary tale for a whole generation, right? Maybe even two generations? “Hey, look, those people over there, they tried to gather up all the power and they died horribly, maybe we should not do that.” Except none of them learn anything. Anything. They still all think it’s about who’s right, completely ignoring the fact that they’re all operating under a “might makes right” mentality, the lot of them (Especially Jin Guangshaun, of course).

Wei Wuxian starts out as a rising star—the child who came from nothing, but he has so much talent and he shines so bright that no one can ignore him. Even when they hate him, they can’t look away. (He’s also pretty much the only cultivator who regularly talks to the everyday people of the world as if they’re equals, but that’s a whole other thing.) He freely gives power away when he gives Jiang Cheng his golden core. It doesn’t define him, it’s just a tool, which has been very useful but which he can do without.

Honestly, I think if Wen Chao hadn’t found him and dropped him in the Burial Mounds he would have found something else to do. He’d likely stay with Jiang Cheng (who would have to know about him not having a core, once he found Wei Wuxian basically half-dead in that town, I don’t think Wei Wuxian was originally planning to hide that part once it was finished), and still be part of the Jiang sect and consult on tactics and do work that you don’t have to be a cultivator to do (which is a lot, really). He’d still have all the competent-gentleman-skills: archery, riding, calligraphy, etiquette and math, as well as all the general knowledge he’s collected from a truly rarefied education. He can’t use a cultivator’s sword, and he’ll never attain immortality, but there are plenty of other cultivators whose sword skills and quest for a longer lifespan are suspect. Maybe he’d still go on night hunts. Maybe he’d write excellent training manuals or mentor Jiang-sect kids. Maybe he’d make lots of talismans and just wave that in everyone’s faces, idk, it’s really hard to say how talismans work in this universe. Point is, I think he would’ve made things work in a less drastic way than what he ended up with, because at the time the power didn’t matter to him.

But instead Wen Chao does find him and does drop him into the Burial Mound, and whatever happens there (I really, really want to know what happens there), he comes out of it with TOO MUCH power. Power no one has ever seen before. It’s the only way he can survive there. He hoards power for good reasons, for his own survival and (later) to ensure the survival of others, but he is absolutely biting off more than he can actually deal with, and it immediately starts fucking up his life. He’s a supernova in the making. That bottomless source of power not based on his own physical limits + the Tiger Seal + his apparently endless well of traumatic life events means that he is absolutely going to collapse in on himself at some point. He loses reputation, and standing, and then people. He is almost universally reviled, with multiple actions both correctly and falsely attributed to his name. He knows it’s happening—Who can tell me what I’m supposed to do now?—he’s lost every reason he had for hoarding the power in the first place, he’s having uncontrolled explosions of power where thousands of people die, and so he tries to give the power back by destroying the seal so no one can have that power, but power doesn’t work that way: it has to go somewhere, and it goes through him in an event that people are still talking about over a decade later.

And yet. Does anyone learn anything? “Hey, that seal seems like a super dangerous tool there, maybe it should … not be used ever again? Be destroyed? It made that guy incredibly unstable and then he exploded over the whole cultivation world, maybe we should… not?”

No, of course not. (Aside from Lan Wangji, the Nie sect and Wei Wuxian. Lan Wangji seems to have developed this knowledge early. Wei Wuxian learns the lesson; it goes hand-in-hand with his (novel) daydreams of leaving the life of a cultivator to be a farmer with Lan Wangji. I think Nie Mingjue knew it too, because the Nie sect has some themes going on with the damage power can do, but he didn’t get a chance to talk about it much. Nie Huaisang, in addition to Nie sect things, is very observant and doesn’t have strong ambition at all until he starts getting fucked with, so he has less to figure out on this front.)

Everyone else still thinks it was about the Wens, and “corruption” and that Wei Wuxian was just wrong, even though they were the ones you know… killing children and elderly people in a culture that supposedly values both quite highly. Power is just power, right? Nothing wrong with power, in fact, maybe we should expand that power even more, with a centralized system of control. Supervisor posts? No, no, these are watchtowers. They’re for your benefit too, I promise. Also blackmail, lets use lots of blackmail and some really deep dungeons, but it’s totally okay because it’s us doing it, right.

Jin Guanyao is Hou Yi, the archer who shot down the sun (that link again), and rose to become an imperial tyrant—whose cruelty led his wife to abandon him (I’ve read multiple versions of Hou Yi, but this one fits here) and cut short his quest for immortality. His whole life is about gathering power, and justifiably so given how aware he is of the precarious nature of his position for most of it. Anytime someone feels like it, they can cut him down with a single reference to his mother. It doesn’t matter what his talents are, or how clever or well-spoken he is. Everything he’s built up for himself can be taken away in an instant, because he’s the son of a prostitute and that means he doesn’t matter. This is not to say that he doesn’t deserve Nie Mingjue’s reprisal or Nie Huaisang’s revenge, of course. He absolutely does horrific, terrible things every step of the way, and for entirely selfish reasons. But he’s Wie Wuxian’s closest foil: here’s what happens when someone of merit, rather than bloodline, seeks power: they’re creative, and innovative, and oh boy are they going to shake the world. This is what happens when cruelty and manipulation take the place of love and affection in a child’s life: each perpetuates itself on a larger scale—I will kill even those closest to me vs. I will die to protect a stranger. This is how the quest for power plays out when the motivation is selfishness, rather than selflessness. In the end, both are inherently flawed, because the power itself is the root of the problem.

Unlike Wei Wuxian, Jin Guanyao holds onto his power until the very last second. Literally, any scrap, even just Lan Xichen’s affection for him. His fall is fast, and guttering—so fast that it’s over before most of the world even knows it’s started. He’s a meteorite, his origins worse than obscure, growing ever brighter in the sky until he crashes to earth, leaving devastation in his wake. And I mean that literally, the power-structure of the world is shattered by the dual events of his exposure and his death. It’s so completely broken that in their rush to consolidate power once more, the person all these leaders turn to is Lan Wangji, who just happens to be the most reputable guy still standing at the end.

So, let’s look at Hanguang-jun, the Light-Bearer.

Lan Wangji is the lodestar. He’s a constant that rarely, if ever, wavers in his convictions, and for the purpose of the plot he’s effectively the example of what an “ideal” cultivator should be (I know other people have written about LWJ and the Confucian ideal, especially @rustycol so I’m not going far into that here). He’s arguably the most successful character in the canon. He has both bloodline and merit working in his favor, and he’s pretty much the most respected cultivator in the world by the time he’s 35 (ages in this canon are a mess). He can disobey or even betray his clan and not be uprooted, which is a luxury literally no one else has (yes, he’s punished, yes, there are consequences, but he attacked 33 elders and didn’t get kicked out or killed! He’s still respected and part of the clan! Don’t tell me that’s not because he’s the clan leader’s bloodline—there are a lot of things that can be said about LWJ and his clan and morality but they’re for yet another post).

The protagonist thinks highly of him. The next generation looks up to him, pretty much universally. He is respected even by people who don’t like him, and has almost zero actual enemies (Su She isn’t even a luminary in this meta analogy, Su She is a dude with a lantern trying to blame the stars for the fact that he can’t fly). Lan Wangji is the guiding light that goes into dark places where chaos reigns and brings clarity, and calm, and (often unforgiving) justice. He doesn’t seek power, and he doesn’t hoard it. In the novel, the only prize he takes away from Jin Guanyao’s fall is the certain knowledge of Wei Wuxian’s love. He doesn’t want anything else, and that’s why he gets to walk off into the sunset with the love of his life and keep his peerless reputation, even in a culture as steeped in homophobia as the novel’s world. Obviously the drama has a different ending, but I think the point still stands: Lan Wangji is so well-respected and utterly reliable that I doubt anyone even thinks twice about offering him the position of Chief Cultivator. Who else could they choose, shocked and appalled as they are in Jun Guanyao’s wake, but the star that never moves no matter how the heavens turn?

It’s been a rough 15 years. Between Lan Wangji, Nie Huaisang and that last Wen child, maybe they’ll finally get that lesson about hoarding power to stick in a few more people’s minds. We can only hope.

#untamed winter fest #mo dao zu shi #the untamed #mdzs meta #the untamed meta #wei wuxian #lan wangji #jin guangyao #long post #theres more about the nie sect #but i dont have a star ready #so #next time #alex writes

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neuxue · 3 years

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Hi....how are you? If you don't mind me asking, who is your favorite love interest in MXTX three novels (luo binghe, lan wanji, or hua cheng)? And why?

And who is your favorite protagonist in MXTX three novels (shen qingqiu, wei wuxian or xie lian)? And why?

Sorry if you've answered this question before....

I absolutely do not mind you asking; I will usually take just about any excuse to go on about stories/characters I enjoy, much as the fact that it’s taken me several weeks to respond to this may suggest otherwise.

So! Without further ado!

I can only answer for TGCF and CQL(/8 chapters of MDZS) but:

Favourite love interest: Hua Cheng

I love Lan Wangji, I really do, but Hua Cheng just hits so many buttons for me and has made a strong case for himself among my overall fictional favourites, much less by any particular category. There’s the obvious, for me: extraordinary competence and a particular brand of arrogance to go with it but at the same time extreme self-loathing, moral neutrality, a past (and to a certain extent present) full of pain, absolutely out of fucks to give (except for the things about which he does care, greatly), the sarcasm, the Aesthetic... you know, all the things designed to make a character My Type.

But also it’s some of the specifics. The whole relationship he has with his own... existence in general and personality in particular. The way he very much does have a strong personality and character and place he occupies in the world, when you’re looking at him from an external perspective, but from his own perspective all of that is... ephemeral, changeable, transient, bearing no value in and of itself except for how it can be shaped. That’s a hard thing to pull off even just from a technical/storytelling perspective - a character who treats their own personality as an extremely secondary afterthought, but who still has enough personality and presence to carry a story - but it’s also just. Man. There’s... probably an entire essay I could write here on the interplay between competence/capability/versatility and the tendency to then define yourself by what you think you’re supposed to be for whatever reason, and within that having to figure out who you actually are or want to be.

And then, the way the story isn’t about him having to change. Yes, there’s growth and self-recognition and coming to know as a person and equal the one he looked to as a god, but. Here is a largely morally-neutral character, perceived by most of his world as a villain, whose story isn’t about needing to be redeemed, or soften his sharper edges, or fundamentally change who he is - instead, it’s a character who goes into the story ready to change literally everything about himself to suit another, and whose story is instead more about accepting himself as he is. It’s about recognising what that self means, and the fact that he can be and is loved not for what he could be or what someone thinks he should be, but just... himself: ghost king and moral neutrality and sharp edges and oddities and all. It’s... I just feel like in so many stories it’d be about fixing him, or showing him another path, or whatever else, and instead it’s saying ‘no, you don’t have to change who you are, you just have to see it’.

I’m not sure I articulated that last bit very well but it really does just hit me like a metric tonne of bricks every time I think about it. What matters is you, and not the state of you, I just! Scream! A lot!

Favourite protagonist: impossible tie between Xie Lian and Wei Wuxian

I really, truly, genuinely cannot choose between these two. I think perhaps what it comes down to is that we’re seeing them at different points in their own journeys. Yes, we see the absolute low point for both of them (and in each case it’s a favourite moment), and that’s a large part of the appeal - that, and the immediate aftermath, and the way they react to (and mask, and deflect, and hide) pain, the way they dismiss their own hurt and accept so much hatred or ridicule as no more than their due...

But then beyond that, Wei Wuxian’s story picks up... later for the rest of the world but not much later for him, whereas we pick up with Xie Lian eight centuries later. And we see almost none of that interim time except in offhand comments (ow) and whatever you can piece together from fragments dropped by other characters or implied by other events.

And so where Wei Wuxian’s present-day story is a little more about a second chance and loose ends and consequences and finding a way to move on and all the ways the past clings to the present, Xie Lian is more... ‘settled’ isn’t the word I want, because when we meet him his life is about to be upended again, but with him we get perhaps a more unusual story in some ways in that he’s had some of that interim time, and while his coping mechanisms and how he views himself may not always be healthy, they’ve had a long time to develop. So we’re seeing a kind of... what happens when, after accepting your place in the world as an immortal drifter and laughingstock, after watching the people you loved leave or die or fade or pass beyond your reach, after learning to smile through anything and accept pain, something comes along and shakes that quiet, someone comes along and sees you. It’s just... fascinating and lovely and very different in some ways to Wei Wuxian’s story (for all that in other ways it has certain parallels), and makes it hard for me to pick favourites.

#idek how much sense any of this makes but #i simply love them all very much #which in and of itself is unusual for me!#it's rare that i like a) a main pairing #b) both sides of a main pairing #and c) the protagonist(s)#all in the same story #much less in all of the above in two!#it's a delight #asks #thanad-zid #tgcf #the untamed #hua cheng #xie lian #wei wuxian

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pocketfulofrecs · 3 years

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It's Friday and we're here with another Author Spotlight!

It’s impossible for you to be in this corner of fandom and never have heard of Vir_Abelasan. She has written some of the most interesting Wangxian fics we have read, a shade darker than usual, but so engrossing. When we want to read something a little savory, we go back to this author.

She has written 49k words in 5 fics, and we can’t wait to see what else she will come up with.

Her fics:

It’s we that you are for - [explicit | 2.5k | LWJ/WWX/LXC pwp]

to be wielded by your hands (our post) - [mature | 3k | competence kink]

Visitations - [mature | 18k | wip | modern au - corporate espionage]

Like stones on an unseen board - [not rated | 11k | dark lan wangji]

Symmetry (our post) - [mature | 13k | dark sizhui]

Dee’s favourite: I love Symmetry but my favorite happens to be Like stones on an unseen board. I have a special fondness for dark LWJ who is just as devoted to WWX as canon LWJ is. This fic has the potential age difference and teacher-student relationship but they don’t really get together in it. I like that, I like how LWJ recognizes how Jiangs are dimming WWX’s light and does things to get WWX away from them, even if it involves manipulation and subtly widening the divide between the Jiangs and WWX. Dark in a way that eventually benefits WWX.

Ju’s favourite: Ohhh I loved Symmetry. I loved to see JC getting his just deserves by Sizhui. The fic is very dark, and in many moments I was completely blown away and so angry. I love when reading makes me feel things, and I felt a lot of things reading this one. But as dark as it gets in some points, it makes sense in the story. And then we get a happy ending that is so good and perfect. Made me cry.

The Interview:

Q. When did you start writing fics? Did you have fandoms before this one?

A. Somewhere around the early 2000s with the Buffy the Vampire Slayer fandom, and BtVS was very prolific with crossover, which just led to more fandoms, mostly Western TV series. I wrote a lot of the Dragon Age trilogy afterwards, and a lot of Pacific Rim before finding MDZS.

Q. What made you start writing for MDZS?

A. Honestly at first I was here for the porn, because the Wangxian porn is bountiful and tender and exquisite. But then I read the novel and was enamored with how much more nuanced everything was, especially the many recurring themes and motifs related to social classes and personal vs familial/communal responsibilities, which as an Asian person you don't often get to dig into in the oftentimes Western-leaning fandom spheres.

Q. What’s your favourite fic you’ve written?

A. In the MDZS fandom it's Symmetry, because it's literally the fic I wanted to read upon completing MDZS but was not able to find. One of the saddest thing in canon for me is the lack of consequences for any of the gentry cultivators' actions in the past, and while it's realistic to the world building, I just really want an alternative where someone could go around an inherently broken system and make it so perpetrators actually pay for their crimes and less people in general becomes collateral.

Q. What’s your favourite type of fics to read?

A. Smut, because I'm just really bad at writing it. And oh, how the MDZS fandom delivers - Pure smut, sad smut, painstakingly tender smut, existential smut, it has everything! But Wangxian smut in particular is almost always a treat because there's just always that undercurrent of trust and having a person who's just for you in every sense of the word despite everything else happening. It's such a good, affirming feeling.

Q. What’s your favourite comment? Or type of comment?

A. Any comment is always a delight! From just incoherent screaming to details of which lines spoke to them the most, every comment is a reaction and stories are out there to create conversation in the first place.

Q. What motivates you to write?

A. Writing has always felt like problem solving to me, and fanfics in general has always been really interesting to write because there's the inherent conflict and problems written into canon, but also the matter of the fandom's perception of the source material to play with and solve.

Q. Who’s your favorite author?

A. There's so many fanfic authors throughout the years who are just amazing and hit a lot of very profound places a lot of published works didn't go to, so it's really hard to choose just a few. But thank you, every single fan author out there, you've really made a lot of people's days (and lives) better with your writing.

Q. What is your favorite trope to read and/or write?

A. I'm particularly fond of the trope of characters who are normally amicable or accommodating just going apeshit, both literally or figuratively. Because both in fandom and in real life, kindness and compromise in someone are often mistaken as a free pass for others around them to be terrible.

Q. Do you have any advice for new authors?

A. Write what you feel strongly about, I guess? And it's sometimes helpful to have an objective to the whole thing, for the times when it seems the story is going nowhere or you get stuck in a particular aspect of it. Sort of like a thesis statement, so whenever you fumble you have something to refocus on.

Q. What do you think is the most important element in writing? Plot, characterization, relationship?

A. Characterization carries you a long way since they're the vehicle to bringing the readers to where you intend them to be, but I also feel like structure helps a lot with stories too. Just the way you scaffold a narrative, like laying down the kind of path you want your readers to follow and experience along the way to the end.

Check out their stories on ao3 and remember…

Comments and kudos feed the author’s soul.

#mdzs #author spotlight #vir abelasan

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