#another example: nie huaisang from mdzs | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

sorrowschengmei · 1 year

Text

why almost every villain in MDZS breaks their expected gender role somehow

btw please notice when i say 'masculine' i'm not saying 'manly in a contemporary western POV' i'm basically saying 'appropriate behaviour for a cisgender male of his social position' so yes expect a lot of class struggle as newsflash, identity based oppression ALWAYS walks hand in hand with social class [there's a reason upper class americans always seem more comfortable to display gender nonconforming behaviour than working class ppl of the global south]

first i'd like to use a character as pretty much an example of almost 100% gender conforming behaviour in that show: Wangji.

yes he's gay, but that really doesn't seem to be an issue in this setting. why? bc he dresses plainly, doesn't display excessive emotion, shows devotion to his family, respects customs, doesn't mingle outside his social class... i mean, we all watched that show, he DOES slip sometimes, but not enough to create a reputation of rule breaker or something. even in his most rebellious moments, he's still inside everything one might expect of a cisgender man of his social class.

so who fails to meet the standard? characters that are heavily punished for doing so. that become bitter and resentful, and display their suffering acting in vengeful, cruel, calculating ways. that look at the society that ruined them, and say 'i'll ruin this bitch'.

and yes, this list includes Wei Ying. so say hello to the mean girls of MDZS!

starting by the most obvious example: Mo Xuanyu, gay, gender nonconforming to shocking levels and mentally ill. taken into the Jin sect, goes there and hits on his half brother. absolutely iconic.

no really this character spits and pisses on the face of society, and its one of the saddest examples of this list as he not only doesn't do much damage as the others, he's also driven to suicide. i won't list all the ways he's GNC bc honestly there aren't too many ways he WAS in gender conformity lol

another character that resorts to ways that could be called antagonistic and also struggles with gentlemanly behaviour is Nie Huaisang.

he's devoted to the arts, what is NOT unmasculine per se, but the fact he can't succeed at swordsmanship, won't display a traditional assertive and unattached attitude when in a leadership position and has an overall sensitive and gentle demeanor mark him as a deviant from his assigned gender role, what is harshly punished by the masculine-and-manly-in-a-contemporary-western-POV Nie Mingjue. as he cannot win in direct confrontation, he appeals to indirect ways and social manipulation [completely ungentlemanly behaviour] much like the next in the list: Meng Yao.

this one is sorta tricky to fit in this list bc he DOES display gender conforming behaviour but as we can see, its either something fucking wicked like impregnating his own sister or pretty much a role he's playing. Yao is PAINFULLY aware of how society works. he can see clearly all the roles and picks those that will favour him. does it mean he's comfortable with them?

no lol to become the perfect married, with an heir, of high status, filial etc male model he does unspeakable things. i absolutely love this character and i'm yes, based af towards him bc his tragedy is BEING TOO GOOD AT FITTING GENDER ROLES. accepting anything to dodge the social outcast status that was imprinted on him since he was born. a whoreson is not a man, he's something less than a man, he's a Mo Xuanyu, he's a Xue Yang. he has no family to honour, no place in the social pyramid, no means of starting his own family.

he's unmasculine by definition. and much like Huaisang, Yao was graced with a soft and gentle presence, more appropriate for a Mianmian than a sect leader. talking of Xue Yang....

yes, he's pretty much 'manly' in a western contemporary POV. he kills ppl and displays antisocial behaviour, what is pretty much tied to our current view on manhood [see the soldier and the CEO as peak examples of the ''alpha male'']

but whose family is he going to honor? what kind of emotional restraint is laughing during a massacre? which customs are being respected when a working class-born man kills an entire highborn clan for something that according to the custom he should just accept as his fate and move on?

add to that the fact he's very much satisfied with assuming a housewife role and hits on upper class men obscenely in any opportunity he has, and you have a walking menace to the entire concept of masculinity of this setting. *throws kiss* for Xue Yang, ancient Chinese working class queer icon.

then we have Su Minshan, who BETRAYED HIS CLAN out of devotion for a WHORESON, and has a lifelong grudge with who? yes, THE masculine role model, Lan Wangji, who honestly couldn't care less, he's just trying to live his already hard enough life in peace. Su Minshan offends almost everything that means being a man in his setting. plus he's cunning-not a good look.

and finally we have the Yiling Laozu, that one that broke all the taboos, offended all the customs, rejected swordsmanship and embraced music, all while being romantically involved with a Lan of Gusu when he's merely a Jiang associate. and the most iconic part?

MXTX made him the fucking protagonist. yes. the dude who went there and dishonored everything that means being a man in his setting, she doesn't want us to think he's lowly, dirty, unworthy of empathy--there are enough characters doing this already. she wants us to join this gender nonconforming gay man as he lifts all the veils of society, wrecking mayhem in their little extremely rigid feudal system, intriguing the a-Yaos, a-Yangs, Minshans, Huaisangs and Xuanyus with his ways so similar but so different from theirs. it's like the author is saying:

'we know you are hurting. we know society fucked you up. but please, dont become bitter. you still can create a beautiful life for you. you don't need to be stuck in a coffin, left to rot, suicided or tossed aside. you CAN write your WangXian song and cultivate until immortality'

and honestly i dont think i've ever seen any work so obscenely thought-provoking regarding gender roles, social roles and trauma as MDZS....

#the untamed #wei wuxian #xue yang #jin guangyao #the untamed meta #tl;dr: every villain in mdzs is gay and traumatised and this IS supposed to make you feel bad [and revolutionary]#Sorrowful Thoughts

76 notes · View notes

moondal514 · 9 months

Text

WIP Wednesday

Saw @decaflondonfog doing this last week and I wanted to join in

It's WIP Wednesday, time for a little accountability, sharing your work, and getting a kick in the pants.

Here's how it works:

In a reblog (or new post w/ rules attached), post up to five (5) filenames of your WIPs; not titles, file names.

Post a snippet from one of them. Snippet must be words you wrote in the last 7 days. We're posting progress here. If you haven't made any, go make some and come back to post.

After you've posted, people can send you an ask with one of your file names. You must then write 3 sentences in that file. If the filename is one you can't share from (for example, an event fic), write 3 sentences on it anyway, and then 3 more on another to share.

That's it! You can invite others to join in, or just post. I'II be searching the reblogs to find people to send asks to!

If you see someone posting a WIP Wednesday Game snippet, send them an ask! Make them write.

If you're reading this, you're invited!

Here are some of the most recent WIPs I’ve been working on:

Nie Huaisang fic (MDZS)

[redacted] for AFTG then & now fest (AFTG)

Self-indulgence (AFTG)

strange view of somewhere i want to stay (AFTG)

The Invisible Tomorrow: Take 2 (BBC Merlin)

To start us off, here is a lil bit from the Nie Huaisang fic:

Do you know what it’s like to have a cliff ripped out from under your feet? The death of a monolith shaking your world, the foundation upon which you rested all your weight crumbling, a house shaking before collapsing in on itself in glorious, horrible, but absolute destruction?

Da-ge! you cry, rushing to where Nie Mingjue lies still on the ground. You gather what you can of his body, hug his torso to your chest, but it’s too late. He’s limp, loose in a way he has never been in life, unresponsive in a way he has never been to you. Not you.

Time stands still.

You blink.

One moment you’re cradling your brother’s body in your arms. The next, you are seated in your rooms and san-ge is pressing a cup of tea into your hands.

#moonie writes #mdzs #aftg #bbc Merlin #fic wip #ask games

5 notes · View notes

rosethornewrites · 2 years

Text

Thursday-Sunday T & G reading

The usual

Finished

Teen:

MDZS continued: a novella, by kalhunter (14 chapters)

A figure strolled through the streets of Yunmeng.

In one hand, he juggled five balls of greaseproof paper that once held the jianbing he bought from the street vendor. In his other hand was a stick of candied haws.

At his waist hung a dark flute adorned with blood-red tassels.

Nowhere I’d Rather Be, by miixz

A short moment from a morning where Lan Wangji wakes up sick and Wei Wuxian takes care of him.

Son's Intervention, by abCEE

In which Lan Sizhui time-traveled to the past and he may or may not have caused mayhem of mass destruction and a few murders here and there with just one goal in mind: to keep his parents safe and have their happy ending without experiencing too much pain. Nothing else matters after that.

An arrow to the heart, by IsilmeLasgalen (9 chapters)

If you try to kill someone make sure they are dead or it might actually make them stronger.

Wei Ying can take a lot as long as he knew his A Yuan and his Lan Zhan were safe and sound but they should have never, ever hurt his family.

the dinosaur artist, by varnes

“Zhan-jie,” Wei Ying whines, and Lan Zhan is appalled to realize that the sound sends a shiver down her spine. She wants to shut Wei Ying’s stupid mouth. She wants to tie Wei Ying’s hands behind her back and tell her exactly what she is and is not allowed to do. She. Hm.

“Explain,” Lan Zhan commands her, voice going dark and heavy, and the startled look that Wei Ying gives her sends another zip through each and every one of Lan Zhan’s nerve endings.

Hm, Lan Zhan thinks, again.

“Well,” Wei Ying mumbles, darting glances at Lan Zhan, “well, the thing is, Baby sort of — it’s not her fault, but she, when she ran away, she sort of. She, uh. Well, she had a passenger.”

“A passenger.”

“The dinosaur took my nephew,” Wei Ying says, and Lan Zhan lays her forehead against the wheel and ignores the horn as it sounds.

OR: Lan Zhan, sensible museum curator and paleontologist, gets robbed, gets arrested, gets a headache, gets a wife.

Following the Rules, by BegrudginglyTumbling (SarcasticSmiler)

To the outside world Lan Wangji was the picture-perfect example of what a Lan should be.

He was quiet, studious.

He knew every rule and followed them to the letter.

Never a hair out of place, his pure white robes pristine.

He was perfect.

There was no doubt in anyone’s mind that he was the pride and joy of his Sect.

But to Gusu Lan he was an absolute menace.

Story-Shaped, by lingering_song (2 chapters)

Nie Huaisang knows that things in this world are rarely story-shaped. That they're more akin to ink spilled on parchment - Messy and unpredictable and rather tragic. But out of all the threads he's woven throughout damn near a decade, he had not expected the most straightforward of his ploys to go this awry.

He had not expected Wei-Xiong to end up here in Qinghe, half-drunk and too thin with no Lan Wangji in sight. Because it turns out that on his way to becoming the Chief Cultivator, the great Hanguang-Jun had left Wei-Xiong on the side of the road to walk alone in a world that most probably still wants him dead.

What else could Huaisang have done other than bring Wei-Xiong home with him?

The Meaning of Silence, by The Silverfish (ZephyrAndTheSilverfish) (3 chapters)

There’s something wrong with second young Master Lan. Of this, Wei Ying is absolutely certain, despite his peers’ doubts. How to help, however, is unclear, especially when Wei Ying can’t seem to prove that it’s not just all in his head…

Double Dare, by malkinmalkout

For a prank Jiang Cheng dares Nie Huaisang to pretend he has a crush on Lan Wangji. This results in Wei Wuxian having a few realisations about his own feelings.

To You, My Heart I Surrender, by ShootMeDead

Lan Wangji travelled the world with a shadow on his soul, intangible yet heavy, patiently (agonisingly) counting the minutes till he might meet with his beloved again.

Or,

Lan Zhan, through the years, without and with his Wei Ying.

~Follows the show-verse~

Crimson Scars, by ShootMeDead (3rd in a series)

Alternative ending to See You Again (Part 2 of this series). Reading SYA first is recommended.

They had known (after that terrifying defense by the Second Jade against thirty three cultivators, after the thirty three flesh-peeling lashes) that the one person Lan Wangji would break all the rules for, the one person he would wage war upon the world for, was Wei Wuxian.

But they forgot that the reverse was also true.

Or, what if Wei Wuxian had come just a bit later?

Or, Lan Wangji was hurt, and the Yiling Patriarch was out for blood.

Battle Chefs, by sami (12 chapters)

BATTLE CHEFS IS COMING!

by Qin Su

The new season of Battle Chefs is upon us, and once again I will be recapping every episode. Join us to discuss the latest season of everyone's favourite video-game-themed cooking contest!

Wen Qing is returning as the Referee and Jiang Cheng and Jiang Yanli will be our Players for the PvP section once again. Raid Boss Wei Ying is sure to make things interesting as always, and the trailers for this season promised us new heights of drama and excitement.

They honestly could have just promised us pretty. It's going to be great!

General:

The Debts of a Child, by Hauntcats (2nd chapter is author’s note)

A young Wei Ying realizes Lotus Pier isn't actually his home and does something about it.

P.S. It's not Jiang friendly, so please don't read if you don't like that.

If only you knew (what goes on in my mind), by makexianxianhappytoday (2 chapters)

We all know that bad decisions occur when you're drunk,,

but for Lan Wangji? It was the best decision he ever made.

Hurting, by AmyNChan

This is, perhaps, one of the hardest things about being a father.

Surprise, by Befallings

For the Untamed Winterfest 2019 Prompt 26: Surprise

Five Times Lan Zhan Woke Up Alone and One Time He Didn't aka He Dreams Of Falling, by InTheGreySpaces

In the moment Wei Ying wrenched himself free and fell from the cliffs at Nightless City, Lan Zhan's only thought was to follow after him. That he did not was a regret that would haunt him for the rest of his days.

and tomorrow comes, by dirgewithoutmusic

Five Times Wei Wuxian Was Hungry + Once When He Was Not

It was Wei Ying’s favorite spot to scrounge. The morning’s cook cut the vegetables carelessly-- there was always a good few mouthfuls to gnaw off the cabbage and radish ends, the onions and peppers. He remembered having roasted potatoes before, with his mother and father, but it was hard lighting fires. And as soon as things started smelling good, other people came, or dogs.

Raw potatoes though-- they were barely sweet, crisp, and grainy. He chewed them more for entertainment than because they filled him up. He’d gotten a good instinct for which mouthfuls went the longest ways. Some things stuck to the ribs.

Wei Ying curled up in a different hollow each night, a different rooftop or alley or meadow or tree, and ran his fingers over the curved ridges of his ribs. He counted them and thought of his mother teaching him arithmetic, moving little twigs and stones into place beside a fire.

A Meadow Paradise with Flower hats, by Ravi_doing_a_think

Sitting under a tree to not get sun burned or grow too hot in the many layers of robes he is wearing. The bunnies lounch along with him, around him and two on his lap. It had been some time since Lan Wangji felt as lighthearted, as he did with his mother. After she teased him, they would just sit together. On days similar to this one, his mother and him would have sat together on the porch of her house and enjoyed the afternoon sun together. Just him in her lap, eyes closed and letting the sun warm their faces and the breeze keeping them cool.

Sitting together with his bunnies in the shade and enjoying the same breeze, comes close to it.

a perfect match, by suibianz

the screen changed to the infamous “it’s a match!” screen that wei ying had seen so many times before. this time, however, was different. this time, it was lan zhan that he’d matched with.

in which wei ying goes on tinder and meets lan zhan.

Never, by StoriesOnlyScarsCanTell

“This isn’t the first time that I realized this, Lan Zhan.” Wei Wuxian said, one night. “I do make a lot of bad choices in my life.”

Unfinished

Teen:

Abyss, by WanderingMongoose

Lotus Pier was an explosion of color, the vendors’ bright banners contrasting with the soft pink and green of the lotus ponds. The purple standard of the Jiang Clan flew from the tops of pavilions, fluttering against the azure sky. Every part of the landscape was saturated with color. The white robes of the Lan Sect were the only negative space, their perfect jade white looking unnatural and leached of life in the midst of Lotus Pier’s bustling docks. Sounds and smells assaulted them from every side, as if the docks themselves were affronted by their colorless silence.

Worried about his little brother's solitary nature and lack of friends, Lan Xichen convinces his uncle to send fifteen year old Lan Wangji and a group of GusuLan disciples to study at Lotus Pier under the pretense of improving intersect relations.

The Twin Ghosts of Yunmeng, by sandupommelfrog

Yanli, Jiang Cheng, Jin Zixuan, Lan Wangji, and Wen Qing put together a plan to bring Wei Wuxian home and secretly resettle the Wen remnants and it goes well until it doesn’t. The Twin Prides of Yunmeng have died in disgrace, but their memory haunts the cultivation world as demonic cultivators wreak havoc in Yunmeng and violet lightning strikes around the now cursed Lotus Pier.

Jiang Cheng breathes once again and has no choice but to continue forward to resurrect his sect (again) and raise his nephew.

(Also a mer au)

Shards of Hope, by Dreaming_Days

He had built his life with the coldest calculation. Clawed his way to power with unhesitating ruthlessness. Destroyed anyone who would impede him. Betrayed even the few who had truly cared for him. And, in the end, utterly forsaken, Jin Guangyao died.

Then, 25 years earlier, Meng Yao woke up.

A Glimpse Into the Future, by SallySPT

When Jiang Cheng and Wei Wuxian help save a sacred shrine in the forest outside of Caiyi town during their time at Cloud Recesses, they are gifted with two glimpses into the future. Wei Wuxian asks to see the Twin Prides of Yunmeng leading Lotus Pier. Instead of the future they expect, the two see their future selves fighting at a Cultivation Conference in Lotus Pier. Discovering this, Jiang Cheng asks to see where their relationship went wrong. The two are then shown the aftermath of the burning of Lotus Pier. Horrified at their future, the two promise to work to change their fate.

Featuring Wei Wuxian having a gay awakening upon realizing he’s married to Lan Wangji in the future.

The Tales of Despereaux, by stiltonbasket

Various MDZS AUs originally posted on tumblr. Prompts are still open.

1-23: What if Qin Su summoned Wei Wuxian? (complete)

Words of a Dying Man, by SallySPT

This was the end. With his last breath Wen Zhuliu spoke as loud as he could.

“I wasn’t even the one to destroy your golden core.”

Lan Wangji and Jiang Cheng stiffened as they heard Wen Zhuliu’s final words.

What if Wen Zhuliu revealed Wei Wuxian didn't have a core before he died.

Here With Me, by iamwish

Wen Qing finds him on the roof of where he’s been staying, nursing a jar of Sishu’s wine.

“Wei Wuxian! What are you doing up there?”

Wei Wuxian hasn’t had nearly enough wine to get tipsy, let alone drunk enough for his words to slur, but he slurs them anyway for nostalgia. “What if Lan Zhan doesn’t fall in love with me?”

Wei Wuxian finds himself in the past, a few months before the Gusu Lan lectures, and decides that his best shot at hiding his trauma fixing the future is faking his own kidnapping and asking Wen Qing who all he needs to kill before she or someone she trusts is in charge of QishanWen. Clearly, he thought this through.

Or: Wei Wuxian creates a No War!AU, and then he has to live in it.

General:

有情人终成眷属 | lovers, finally wed, by stiltonbasket

Six weeks after Jin Guangyao's defeat, Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji go their separate ways; Lan Wangji returns to the Cloud Recesses as the new Chief Cultivator, while Wei Wuxian travels to Lotus Pier as Yunmeng Jiang's acting sect leader.

Even love must wait for duty, Lan Wangji writes to his brother. I cannot make my feelings known, Xiongzhang. Wei Ying is not yet free.

Luckily for everyone's sanity, Lan Xichen disagrees.

(or, the post-CQL arranged marriage AU you never knew you needed.)

#the untamed #mo dao zu shi #mdzs #cql #chen qing ling #untamed fanfiction

0 notes

ibijau · 3 years

Note

I don't think I've seen this anywhere (and if you know of any fics that do have this concept, please link!), but what if the events of MDZS (all media) was actually based on history within a modern AU of MDZS?

So like, as an example, you have people speculating whether or not Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji were lovers or not in the same way people do with some real historical figures today, some theories that say Nie Huaisang orchestrated everything that go mostly ignored by everyone except those in the #NieHuaisangDidIt community because it's Nie Huaisang, who is largely remembered as a relatively harmless sect leader, etc... Some even still think the Yiling Patriarch was pure evil, though the novel, shows, and audio drama have since made this an unpopular opinion to have.

And then there's Wei Wuxian, be it through reincarnation with regained memories or immortality, listening to all of this in the background.

“I'm just saying that you wrote your thesis on him, so of course you're biased,” Jin Guangyao said. “There's no way Nie Huaisang organised all this. Everyone in that period agrees that he was so stupid he could barely do basic additions!”

“I have a phd and I can't count either,” Nie Huaisang countered. “Listen, I tell you, the proof is all there if you just look.”

Of course, they weren’t called Nie Huaisang and Jin Guangyao, not in this life, but Wei Wuxian wasn't good with names. In fact, after centuries of being alive, he was worse with names than he'd ever been. Thankfully, this crowd Lan Wangji and him had become friends with didn't mind at all the nicknames he'd picked for them.

“And I can prove that Jin Guangyao didn't even die, and made a name for himself in Japan,” Jin Guangyao retorted. “There's this Han man who suddenly appears out of nowhere in the Japanese court, claiming to know great magic, and...”

“Yes, I've seen the movie too,” Nie Huaisang yawned, taking another sip of his bubble tea.

Jin Guangyao went red and purple, while Wei Wuxian tried to hide a snicker. If there was one sure way to piss of Jin Guangyao, it was by mentioning that recent movie that had come out, very loosely inspired by a series of blog articles he'd written years ago when he was still a student. The inspiration was loose enough that he hadn't been involved in the process at all, because the scenarist had pretended they just happened to have come to the same conclusion.

It wasn't a bad movie, Wei Wuxian thought. It wasn't a goodone either, but he quite liked the actor who played Lan Wangji in it (Wei Wuxian himself wasn't part of the plot, sadly, on account of being officially dead by then), and the fight scenes were pretty fun. Besides, he felt like Jin Guangyao should have liked it even better than he did.

The actor playing him was the tallest member of the cast after all.

“I hope you choke on your tea,” Jin Guangyao muttered, to which Nie Huaisang answered with a bright grin.

It was about to devolve into a fight (an animated academic discussion, Jin Guangyao would have called it) when Lan Xichen entered the boba place, radiant as always. She ordered her own tea (plain black tea but with extra sugar and the sweetest fillings available, as usual) and sat with them, apparently oblivious to the adoration with which Jin Guangyao and Nie Huaisang gazed upon her.

Wei Wuxian had a bet going on with Jiang Cheng about which man would ask her out first in this life. He also had a bet going on with Jin Ling regarding whether anyone would dare ask her out at all. Wei Wuxian would have tried to help the matter, but Lan Wangji wouldn't allow it, worried for his sibling. A needless worry, Wei Wuxian thought. Lan Xichen was doing well for herself in this life, and so were the other two. Going into academia had been a great way for them to channel their lingering resentment. Their fight had almost never gotten physical in this life.

“I'm sorry for being late, jiejie wanted me to help her order something from overseas,” Lan Xichen apologised, smiling warmly. “I hope I didn't interrupt anything important? You seemed to be chatting, no?”

“We were talking about Guangyao's movie,” Nie Huaisang cheerfully answered.

Jin Guangyao looked about ready to murder him, but Lan Xichen just laughed in that sweet, careless way of hers and in a second both men had forgotten their previous argument.

“Oh, that reminds me, I brought something that might make you laugh,” she said, digging into her handbag. “It's in your field of study... in a manner of speaking.”

She put a book on the table. On the cover were two handsome young men, one dressed in black and carrying a flute, the other in white holding a bright sword. Above them, bold characters professed that this book was called “The Founder of Demonic Cultivation”.

Wei Wuxian's drink went the wrong way, and he nearly died coughing on a tapioca pearl. When everyone was sure that he wouldn't choke so stupidly, they all turned their attention back to the book.

“What's that?” Jin Guangyao asked.

“It's a danmei novel,” Lan Xichen explained, a spot of red on her cheeks. “Jiejie lent it to me the other day, and as soon as I started reading I realised the subject was... familiar. It's about Wei Wuxian. The real one I mean,” she added with a smile to Wei Wuxian who pretended to be fascinated by his bubble tea. “It's, ah... very creative. It takes liberties with some of the events, but, ah, it's very well written.”

“Wonderful, more fiction,” Jin Guangyao muttered.

Meanwhile, Nie Huaisang eagerly grabbed the book and started browsing it with hungry eyes. He had theories about that, too. Mostly, about the exact nature of Wei Wuxian's relationship with Jiang Cheng, which he had once explained to Wei Wuxian with far more details than the immortal would ever have cared to hear... and he hoped Jiang Cheng himself would never hear about it.

In fairness to Nie Huaisang though, his arguments had been very convincing, and Wei Wuxian would have had doubts, if he hadn't been married to Lan Wangji for over a thousand years.

“Oh, Lan Wangji,” Nie Huaisang grumbled, closing the book and sliding it back toward Lan Xichen. “I suppose I see the appeal, but there's really no evidence whatsoever in their case, you know?”

“We know,” Lan Xichen said with an indulgent smile.

“Now, Jiang Wanyin and him, on the other hand...”

“You people are obsessed with romance!” Jin Guangyao complained. “His relationship to Jiang Wanyin was platonic!”

Wei Wuxian distractedly nodded. That was indeed true.

“And so was his relationship to Lan Wangji,” Jin Guangyao added with a disgusted glare at the book.

Wei Wuxian grimaced. That was very much not true.

“From the letters I've read, I think in today's world, the Yiling Patriarch would probably be asexual,” Jin Guangyao argued. “Not that I particularly approve of using modern terminology to describe the sexuality of long dead people, but if you consider everything we know about him, then... are you ok?”

“Peachy,” Wei Wuxian coughed, trying not to burst out laughing. Jin Guangyao's pride was still a delicate thing in this life. “Hey, Xichen-jie, mind if I borrow that book until we meet again? I think Lan Zhan would love it.”

“Sure, I don't see why not.”

Wei Wuxian grinned, and pocketed the book.

Lan Wangji and him were going to have a good laugh that night, as they always did whenever someone wrote a new story about them.

#nie huaisang #lan xichen #jin guangyao #wei wuxian #mdzs #I know nothing about academia and I'm too lazy to do research #wangxian later agrees that somehow the danmei is the one version that's closest to the truth #and that's how they find out that Lan Jingyi has reincarnated #jau writes

146 notes · View notes

mdzsartreblogs · 3 years

Text

12,000 Post Round up!

It's that time again!! :D

Updates:

In honor of Pride month, I've added tags for character sexualities and genders. I already had "trans character" as a tag, but now I've also got "asexual character," "bisexual character," "non-binary character," and others! The individual character is also tagged - so, a work featuring pansexual Lan Xichen would be tagged "pansexual character" and "pansexual lan xichen." These tags are only used when the work is explicit in identifying the character's sexuality, such as by including a Pride flag or by indicating the chosen sexuality in text. They are NOT used if sexuality is merely implied or if a non-definitive term is used (for example: artwork of a male and female character in a ship does not imply that either character is heterosexual. for another example: the terms wlw and mlm do not indicate clearly if a character is homosexual/lesbian, since they might also be bi, ace, pan, etc., and still be wlw/mlm.)

310 tags have been added to this collection, for artists, attributes, and more! There are now over 5,000 unique tags in use on this blog. In addition to the Pride tags mentioned above, I also added a few media tags, and of course new ship tags and such were added as needed. Usual reminder: If you have a specific trigger or squick that I'm not currently tagging, please let me know (anon asks are fine) and I will add it to my list!

The blog has over 1,000 followers now - 1,064, to be exact. Thanks for joining us, everyone!

If you know where any of the works tagged unknown location are, please let me know. Likewise, if you know any of the artists tagged unknown artist (it’s pretty much all official art), I’d appreciate your help a lot!

If you make fanart, feel free to DM it to this blog, or @ me @unforth (don't @mdzsartreblogs, tumblr rarely shows me those tags). I don't track any unique source blog tags but I do check #mdzs daily and reblog all artwork posted there provided it doesn't break any of my few rules (also provided that the creator hasn't blocked me, or I haven't blocked the creator - I've been blocked a handful of times (10 that I know of, to be exact), and I block people who post hate in the main tag, and yes, that's included a few artists.)

Always remember to support artists! Don't just passively consume/view what's posted here - make sure you're liking stuff and, even more importantly, REBLOGGING!, to help encourage content creators!

-unforth

And now, behind a read more - some tag stats, because I like stats. (I do these tag audits every 1k posts primarily so I can catch any mistakes I've made, but also...I just like playing with spreadsheets).

Characters Tagged Most Often: no new characters this 1k...

wei wuxian (5,861 works) (no change)

lan wangji (4,723 works) (no change)

jiang cheng (1,739 works) (no change)

lan xichen (1,064 works) (no change)

nie huaisang (970 works) (no change)

a yuan (863 works) (no change)

jin guangyao (744 works) (no change)

jin ling (709 works) (no change)

nie mingjue (583 works) (no change)

wen ning (561 works) (no change)

xiao xingchen (525 works) (no change)

jiang yanli (483 works) (no change)

xue yang (452 works) (no change)

lan jingyi (379 works) (no change)

song lan (353 works) (new!)

Ships Tagged Most Often: always more rare pairs, and it makes me happy.

wangxian (3,305 works) (no change)

xicheng (217 works) (no change)

sangcheng (198 works) (no change)

songxiao (196 works) (no change)

xiyao (159 works) (no change)

xuexiao (111 works) (no change)

3zun (74 works) (no change)

xuanli (72 works) (no change)

xisang (68 works) (new!)

yanqing (67 works) (-1 from 11k post)

nielan (66 works) (-1 from 11k post)

zhuiling (62 works) (new!)

nieyao (43 works) (new!)

ningxian (42 works) (new!)

songxuexiao (29 works) (new!)

Platonic Relationships Tagged Most Often:

twin prides of yunmeng (382 works) (no change)

wangxian are dads (187 works) (+1 from 11k post)

yunmeng siblings (185 works) (-1 from 11k post)

twin jades of gusu (181 works) (no change)

grape uncle (179 works) (no change)

nie brothers (151 works) (no change)

wei wuxian is a dad (114 works) (no change)

junior trio (99 works) (no change)

lan wangji is a dad (86 works) (no change)

yi city family (81 works) (+1 from 11k post)

wen siblings (81 works) (-1 from 11k post)

junior quartet (73 works) (no change)

one brain cell trio (72 works) (no change)

burial mounds family (70 works) (+1 from 11k post)

wei wuxian is an uncle (69 works) (-1 from 11k post)

Artists Tagged Most Often: At the 11k check in, there were 2,778 different artists with at least one work on this blog; now there are 2,938 - and increase of 160! I think that's one of our smallest increases yet - but it's still roughly 1 in 6 works by a new, never-before-represented artist. It's always exciting to have this evidence of how the fandom continues to grow! Reminder that this ranking below is about how prolific an artist is, and has nothing to do with popularity or anything like that.

official art (156 works) (no change)

modao18 (128 works) (no change)

sketchyscribbles (111 works) (+2 from 11k post)

ibijau (103 works) (-1 from 11k post)

hilluhri (98 works) (-1 from 11k post)

joshua-beeking (89 works) (no change)

littlesmartart (80 works) (no change)

xiejie-liubo (formerly bees0are0awesome) (74 works) (no change)

bbeix (65 works) (+2 from 11k post)

valdrift (64 works) (no change)

v0006 (61 works) (-2 from 11k post)

candicewright (59 works) (new!)

shuanghua (57 works) (new!)

sweetlittlevampire (54 works) (new!)

elogval (52 works) (new!)

NEW! Most Prolific Artists Who Posted for the First Time since Last Tag Audit: I want to try to highlight more artists who've only recently become active in the fandom! Here are artists who've produced a lot and are newly added in the last 1,000 tags. This list includes all newly added artists who created at least 4 works that were reblogged here specifically since the last tag audit - you should consider checking them out!

artificiallygayrabbit (15 works)

ookamiarnarok (11 works)

sharpieshepie (10 works)

butterscotchfinch (10 works)

potatoodles (5 works)

kitsunace (5 works)

wickedwitchitus (4 works)

slap-me-xingchen (4 works)

raphcrow (4 works)

jamieemmanuelle (4 works)

Top 20 Most Used Other Tags:

portrait (10,223 works) (no change)

digital art (9,844 works) (no change)

comic (1,769 works) (no change)

flowers (1,715 works) (no change)

laughs (1,621 works) (no change)

sketch (1,443 works) (no change)

modern au (1,377 works) (no change)

chibi (1,201 works) (no change)

lan wangji has golden eyes (1,113 works) (no change)

wangxian hug (974 works) (no change)

chenqing (846 works) (no change)

fantasy au (810 works) (+1 from 11k post)

yiling laozu (800 works) (-1 from 11k post)

food (755 works) (+1 from 11k post)

pencil drawing (716 works) (-1 from 11k post)

ink work (715 works) (-2 from 11k post)

blood tw (712 works) (+1 from 11k post)

lemon (702 works) (-1 from 11k post)

hearts (636 works) (new!)

lan sizhui (631 works) (no change)

Actors:

xiao zhan (147 works) (no change)

wang yibo (106 works) (no change)

song jiyang (10 works) (no change)

zhu zanjin (8 works) (no change)

wang zhuocheng (6 works) (+1 from 11k post)

Animals:

bunnies (622 works) (no change)

birds (289 works) (no change)

butterflies (168 works) (no change)

cats (104 works) (no change)

dogs (74 works) (no change)

Character Attributes:

lan wangji has golden eyes (1,113 works) (no change)

yiling laozu (800 works) (no change)

lan sizhui (631 works) (no change)

wei wuxian has red eyes (544 works) (no change)

jiang cheng with braids (383 works) (no change)

fierce corpse wen ning (352 works) (no change)

blind xiao xingchen (312 works) (no change)

child a yuan (287 works) (no change)

jiang cheng has purple eyes (228 works) (new!)

nie mingjue has a mustache (186 works) (no change)

Ship Attributes:

wangxian hug (974 works) (no change)

wangxian kiss (458 works) (no change)

wangxian holding hands (382 works) (no change)

lan wangji carrying wei wuxian (105 works) (no change)

xicheng hug (82 works) (no change)

wei wuxian wearing lan wangji's ribbon (75 works) (no change)

wangxian sharing a bed (60 works) (no change)

wangxian duet (58 works) (no change)

sangcheng hug (58 works) (no change)

xiyao hug (53 works) (new!)

AU Tags:

modern au (1,377 works) (no change)

fantasy au (810 works) (no change)

canon divergent au (457 works) (no change)

creature wei wuxian (363 works) (no change)

creature lan wangji (332 works) (no change)

technological anachronism (215 works) (no change)

dragon (129 works) (no change)

merperson (118 works) (no change)

historical au (95 works) (no change)

creature jiang cheng (83 works) (no change)

Memes, Fandom Events, Holidays, and Character Birthdays:

october art challenge (200 works) (no change)

wangxian week (105 works) (no change)

wei wuxian's birthday (89 works) (no change)

lan wangji's birthday (89 works) (no change)

valentine's day (88 works) (no change)

mermay (6 works) (no change)

lunar new year (57 works) (no change)

draw this your style (55 works) (new!)

mdzs reverse big bang (44 works) (new!)

color palette challenge (43 works) (new!)

Instruments and Weapons:

chenqing (846 works) (no change)

bichen (388 works) (+1 from 11k post)

wangji (379 works) (-1 from 11k post)

zidian (319 works) (no change)

suibian (145 works) (no change)

sandu (126 works) (no change)

baxia (114 works) (no change)

shuanghua (109 works) (no change)

fuxue (92 works) (no change)

liebing (81 works) (no change)

Common Motifs and Objects:

flowers (1,715 works) (no change)

food (755 works) (no change)

hearts (636 works) (+1 from 11k post)

stars (603 works) (+1 from 11k post)

fan (596 works) (-2 from 11k post)

lotuses (487 works) (no change)

the moon (353 works) (no change)

alcohol (350 works) (no change)

fire (338 works) (+1 from 11k post)

jiang clan clarity bell (333 works) (-1 from 11k post)

Media-Related Tags:

portrait (10,223 works) (no change)

digital art (9,844 works) (no change)

comic (1,769 works) (no change)

laughs (1,621 works) (no change)

sketch (1,443 works) (no change)

chibi (1,201 works) (no change)

pencil drawing (716 works) (+1 from 11k post)

ink work (715 works) (-1 from 11k post)

lineart (567 works) (no change)

screen cap redraw (396 works) (no change)

watercolor (358 works) (no change)

work in progress (308 works) (no change)

meme redraw (283 works) (no change)

art of art (210 works) (new!)

markers (199 works) (-1 from 11k post)

Trigger Warnings:

blood tw (712 works) (+1 from 11k post)

lemon (702 works) (-1 from 11k post)

mcd + implied mcd (371 works) (no change)

body horror tw (168 works) (no change)

suicide tw (71 works) (no change)

Locations and Eras:

cloud recesses (494 works) (no change)

lotus pier (300 works) (no change)

lecture era (173 works) (no change)

burial mounds (137 works) (no change)

post canon (120 works) (no change)

pre canon (66 works) (new!)

nightless city (59 works) (new!)

yi city (48 works) (new!)

carp tower (43 works) (new!)

the cold spring (42 works) (new!)

Lemons:

bondage (70 works) (no change)

bondage using the lan clan ribbon (33 works) (no change)

blindfolds (27 works) (+1 from 10k post)

hickies (25 works) (-1 from 10k post)

bottom wei wuxian (21 works) (no change)

Other Fandoms:

tian guan ci fu (128 works) (no change)

ren zha fanpai zijiu xitong (115 works) (no change)

lang dianxia (10 works) (no change)

legend of fei (9 works) (no change)

douluo continent (9 works) (no change)

the husky and his white cat shizun (5 works) (new!)

yuri on ice (4 works) (new!)

word of honor (4 works) (new!)

star wars (4 works) (new!)

#mod post #tag wrangling

8 notes · View notes

words-writ-in-starlight · 4 years

Note

So the book implies that that string-garotte thing Jiggy does with his hostage is actually a Lan technique. Specifically technique developed by Lan Yi to assassinate dissidents during her tenure as Sect Leader. Therefore I desperately NEED fic where Lan Xichen introduces Meng Yao to Lan Yi and grows increasingly concerned as thhey bond over best ways to murder political opponents, especially ones you are related to.

(Inspired by wonderful Russian short fic where Lan Yi orchestrated deaths of her siblings to ascend to position of Sect Leader and is implied to have created Song of Turmoil, which is such galaxy brain take)

One of the things I find really satisfying about the Untamed/MDZS is that all the sects have some core principle that they believe will lead to a good life, not just for them but for everyone, and all their problems come from overadherence. It’s like that post about how the Avatar nations run into problems because, lacking balance, they’re too far into their own natures to manage their world.

The Lans believe in regulation--both in the adjective and the noun form. If you follow the rules and do everything as methodically as possible, you will live a good life and so will the people you’re responsible for. The extreme example of this, of course, is Lan Xichen, who was so rule-abiding and so methodical that he missed the boat on every opportunity to stand up for what was right.

The Nie believe in strength, in being able to literally defend yourself and your people from all threats and dangers. The nature of their cultivation means that they’re littered with extreme examples, but in the narrative it’s Nie Mingjue--he was murdered, to be sure, but uncontrolled strength was such an expected part of the Nie leader that no one thought twice about why he was getting worse, not better. See also, strength being aligned with revenge, and the obvious link to Nie Huaisang, even if he goes about it in a nontradtional Nie way. (Actually kind of a Jin way, all things being equal.)

The Jiang believe in--shooting for the moon, basically. Wei Wuxian and all his collateral damage are a good extreme example, since a rocket designed to reach the moon is liable to do a lot of damage if and when it explodes on the launch pad. So is Jiang Cheng, who spent his entire life trying to be his foster brother instead of himself, and made himself and pretty nearly everyone else miserable for it.

The Jin believe in control, and hear me out here, that’s not necessarily a bad thing! The watchtowers are a genuinely good idea! It’s the difference between training a dog and using a choke chain--both are controlling your dog, but, A, one makes you a good dog owner and the other makes you a bastard, and, B, one means that dog is liable to bite you hard at the first opportunity. In this argument, obviously, Jin Guangyao’s manipulations and lies are the choke chain.

Public opinion turns fast, but not that fast unless you have legitimately wronged some people, okay. Control is fine, but damn those abuses come thick and fast when someone decides to fuck with it.

And the Wens...we don’t actually know that much about what the Wens are into, but I think they believe in mechanics. Understanding the mechanics of a body, the mechanics of a war, the mechanics of a golden core. Wen Ruohan can’t have won his position exclusively on might, he must have had some real comprehension of the mechanics of politics too. Wen Xu, who knows how to run a blitzkrieg attack, understood the mechanics of war. Wen Zhuliu and Wen Qing understood the mechanics of golden cores and bodies. Even Wen Ning has an exactingly precise grasp of the mechanics of the power dynamics and alliances around him at any given moment. Wei Wuxian also has some of this, but that’s another ramble about the people who change the cultivation world being the people who don’t force themselves to align with a single sect’s methodology.

Anyway, my point to this whole highly distractible ramble was that Meng Yao and his intensely control-based excesses meeting Lan Yi, who one assumes was something of a Lan wild card, more like Lan Wangji rather than Lan Xichen, bound and determined to stick to her rules until she decided something else mattered more, would be. Very interesting.

#the untamed #mdzs #i don't really recall why i wrote this last night and then forgot about it and went to bed #but huh sleep-deprived me had some points to make didn't he?#regrettably i do not recall what they were! rested me does not know what i was saying here #hope this makes sense because i'm not editing it #*looney toons exit circle*#a queue we will keep and our honor someday avenge #irleughlivelyatalanteangodfan #asked and answered

160 notes · View notes

pbaintthetb · 3 years

Text

Deadset ghost lore

I wrote this for myself and wasn’t gonna post it but eh screw it.

So it’s really mostly HOB/tgcf ghost lore BUT it has been slightly changed to fit better with MDZS and unlike tgcf, ghosts are rare. This means some actual changes both in how ghosts function but also people’s attitudes and perceptions surrounding them.

Firstly- why they call Wen Ning "Ghost General" in this au where ghosts actually exist. tldr it's cos conscious fierce corpses fit most of the criteria for being a ghost and most people don't understand ghosts or don’t think they really exist. Ghosts are rare, conscious fierce corpses like Wen Ning are rare (a WWX creation really) so people assume they are the same. But Wen Ning is not a ghost because his conscious form is his body- whereas for Nie Huaisang he has the form he interacts with the world in- that he can change (another important distinction) and he has his dead body, which just acts like a dead body and isn’t special. This is also why the cultivator in chapter 5 mistakes NHS for another conscious fierce corpse, when a ghost is powerful enough that it’s body looks real it can be hard to tell.

Secondly- essentially ghosts are conduits for resentful energy- they are made up of resentful energy, it gives them power and this is why they are so easily able to interact with it- stripping and mining it, detecting it etc. BUT it’s also why they are vulnerable to it- it’s why ghosts and fierce corpses can hurt other ghosts in their ghost forms and not just their dead bodies. For example, Nie Huaisang being stabbed is not super good for his health, but it won’t have any long lasting or severe negative consequences as long as they stay away from his body. However when the other Ghost attacked him in chapter 7 it did hurt him, because ghosts can directly hurt each other. This is why NHS’ real form has a scar from the ghost attack but his corpse does not. They can also change their “ghost” forms appearance very easily because it’s not physical, it’s just a projection of resentful energy, although the real form/base look (tldr: what Zidian will make them look like) is connected to their corpse and anything that can physically touch their real form.

This is kind of linked to ghosts living between the “planes of existence”- living and dead, and why NHS can communicate with NMJ. As dead people, ghosts can hear and be heard by both living and dead people/things. However, this is not like WWX with his flute, the ghosts are not able to control the fierce corpses through speaking (they can use other methods, just like demonic cultivators) but simply communicate with them. NMJ listens to NHS because he likes NHS and that’s all there is too it really. Similarly when LWJ plays inquiry to talk to spirits they are meant to tell him what he wants to hear, when NHS talks to spirits they tell him what they want to say. Ghosts and fierce corpses can hurt ghost’s real forms (though only a ghost can kill it, sorry NMJ) because ghosts exist on a different plane to both alive things and all other dead things- they exist in between, and everything else can only hurt them on the surface. If you cut them they bleed, but it’s not real blood. (Wei Wuxian might have some more luck though...) Zidian works on ghosts because it kind of occupies that in-between space too- if it operates by removing possessing (dead) spirits from (alive) bodies it works to separate the spheres, like a reverse emulsifier, and it exists in the same realm as ghosts too, kind of. It exists in all spheres.

Ghosts can’t mainstream cultivate. This might seem obvious, but I wanted to make it clear. They don’t have access to their golden cores when in their ghost forms, not entirely sure if their dead bodies too, but ghosts can’t actually use their bodies for anything so it doesn’t matter. They can though, as conduits of resentful energy, engage in demonic cultivation.

They get powerful from resentful energy, this has led to assumptions in the world that they are all evil. It’s more complicated, and not just in the case of Huaisang. Obviously doing evil things will give you large sources of resentful energy to mine from-as the other Ghost does. But equally you can always be more like Huaisang, essentially a parasitic vampiric ghost which just leaches off the resentful energy created by very much alive people. The other Ghost toppled a few sects, maybe a civilisation in its time, but it really also just went around after the Sunshot campaign and drunk that all up.

There are 4/5 ghosts in this world. NHS (obvs) the Other Ghost, one mid-level Ghost who was waiting for the Other Ghost to chill and then NHS/the Golden Ghost showed up, and two very low level ghosts who are mostly irrelevant and almost powerless. One is only a ghost because he really wanted to file his taxes but he died. He now files other people’s taxes because he needs a purpose-

Which leads on to why ghosts exist. They become ghosts because they need to do something and are by nature very single-minded and stubborn. Other Ghost wants chaos and misery, it probably has some Freudian excuse, maybe power. Huaisang wants revenge vengeance. Tax boy wants properly ordered taxes and does other peoples or maybe he’ll kill you. Related to this, imo people who become ghosts are not so much those who want to live, but those who either can’t or are too scared to die. Huaisang isn't keen to live per se, but he is determined he can’t die alone with his knowledge and without revenge or justice. WWX is not a ghost because he’s not scared of death. He got over that a long time ago. Also not everyone who could become a ghost does, it’s also luck of the draw. The death also needs to be traumatic, likely unexpected, or have a lot of strong and largely negative feelings around it. This only needs to apply to the person dying, it could be objectively expected, untraumatic and not a bad thing, but if the person dying felt otherwise then it could be sufficient. This is kind of similar to fierce corpses- the resentment over death- which is why people in universe aren’t always convinced ghosts aren’t just a sub type of fierce corpses. This is because criteria is similar, but ghosts do not operate in their own bodies, and always have the same level of consciousness and free thought as they had when alive. Their power is not linked to their resentment, slightly different for fierce corpses.

On a side note, NMJ is not smart like Wen Ning BUT he benefited from eating a ghost, and I am arguing the left arm was so strong because it was holding Baxia when it died and absorbed some of that, giving it both more power and free thought. Double side note- when I say “eat” and talk about NHS eating sabres this is not literal. Absorbing the energy is probably a more literal way of phrasing it, but Huaisang thinks consume, thinks eat, and he like, lowkey drinks the sabres energy because that’s what he thinks he needs to do until he learns otherwise.

The lack of understanding of ghosts and similarities to fierce corpses is why everyone labels ghosts as evil and as threats. However, unlike fierce corpses ghosts have agency and free will. Though, some people argues this makes them actually worse because they choose to be evil (even if they haven’t done anything evil). They are kind of the unholy mix of fierce corpses and demonic cultivators, except that’s not a super helpful description either, as, mentioned above, ghosts can demonic cultivate. It’s what NHS does when he needs to pretend, but luckily for him he never had much of a core anyway.

That being said, ghosts do have a larger tendency to go evil than their alive peers, even if ultimately they are people and they can be good or bad. This is because their drive is to fusil their goal above pretty much all else, so if they struggle to achieve it... also the type of people that become ghosts. Angry, bitter, resentful people with something to prove and to gain after dying traumatically tend not to react with grace to all situations. Also, yanno, resentful energy power corrupts, and if you play your cards right you will have a lot of resentful energy power.

Ghosts sort of wither if they don’t have an aim to achieve/if they achieve it. However, it’s pretty easy for a ghost to extend this, i.e. Tax Ghost who does other peoples’ accounts. I have some ideas for how NHS could extend his “purpose” including, getting his brother a better afterlife, living to spite JGY, destroying the man’s reputation in death etc. They’re made because they’re scared to die (or too stubborn), you really think they can’t keep thinking of excuses to extend their afterlife?

Ghosts also kind of see the world differently to other people- not in a “colours we see: colours shrimp see” kind of way, but also kind of yeah. They can see resentful energy is probably the simplest way of putting it. This is why the other Ghost could tell NHS was “young” (his energy levels suggest high, but his aura is young), this is why NHS and ghosts can sense other ghosts, fierce corpses, demonic cultivators, the sabre-tombs, or really just anything with a large resentful energy signature. They’re conduits, they feel it. Wei Wuxian doesn’t have ghost vision, but he also kind of has something close. There’s a reason he thinks the Golden Ghost died after he did, and it’s not just because NHS kind of did a shitty job of hiding his identity there. I drew this from the fact that it is mdzs canon that Wen Ning is much better at detecting fierce corpses than his alive peers- maybe he can just see them in a certain way, and ghosts can do the same. Other demonic cultivators and fierce corpses are obviously aware of resentment and fierce corpses and spirits are attracted to resentful energy, but DCs have to try to feel it. It’s like a technique. For ghosts it’s like the wind- it’s either there or it’s not and there’s nothing you can do about it. It smells differently too, depending on times etc. people.

I haven’t talked about sprits and low level stuff here because they’re kind of boring/unchanged. They’re pretty lowbrow, though a particularly angry spirit could probably also be mistaken for a ghost by the uninformed local non-cultivator in an isolated area. Most people don’t really know what ghosts are, and even the major sects aren’t entirely sure on how to deal with them or what can hurt them- other than burning their bodies. However, their free thought makes them very difficult to control, it’s like controlling an actual human- and their occupation between the planes of existence makes them hard to hurt. This is why people constantly try to music control Huaisang- ignorance of ghost lore, thinking he’s a fierce corpse, or, like WWX just lowkey hoping something you do will work.

There is probably more I could say, but these are the main things (elaborated upon) that I try to keep in mind when writing Deadset/Huaisang and keeping him consistent with other ghosts and people’s attitudes.

#fic #world buliding #deadset #fic lore #deadset meta

3 notes · View notes

inessencedevided · 4 years

Note

Once you're done with the entire show, could you maybe do sorting for all the characters? I usually know the house for each character, but I have literally no idea with The Untamed. WWX for example I can equally see him as a Gryffindor, Ravenclaw or Hufflepuff and my brain hurts trying to decide.

First of all: I'm so so sorry anon! This took ages to answer! I hope you're still out there to read this! I started answering ages ago and then trailed off because I had to think about it. So here goes:

Thank you so much for this opening! I LOVE sorting non-HP characters into Hogwarts houses!! And for some of these, I’ve already done so in my head ages ago :D

Disclaimer: I’m mostly going off live action canon here, but will make some comments about the novel from time to time.

Disclaimer 2: Obviously, these are extremely subjective. If anyone disagrees, I would love to hear your counter arguments! I love discussing these things!

Wei Wuxian

GRYFFINDOR!

I know you said you weren’t sure but in my book, he’s a textbook Gryffindor. I’m not saying he doesn’t have Hufflepuff or Raveclaw traits (his sense of justice and his “out of the box thinking” kinda genius come to mind), but those aren’t the main drive of his actions imo. WWX follows his confiction and he often does so without even considering a second option or a compromise, especially before his death. And he is not afraid of deviating from the law or societal expectations to do so. This alone could also make him a Slytherin. The reason I wouldn’t place him there is the way he acts very much in the open. He doesn’t try to bring about change by quietly working in the background. He openly calls people out on their bullshit, even when it is clearly to his disadvantage and might just come back to bite him in the ass. Imo, WWX is a brilliant example of how a gryffindor might be driven to doing some very questionable shit given the "right" circumstances.

Lan Wangji

Now, he’s a different story. I have a lot more problems sorting him, maybe because he is not our point of view character. And he's the reason why it took me so long to answer this ask. My conclusion might be controversial, so let me work up to it. Slytherin? His most slytherin trait, imo, is his determination and drive, which I think stems, among other things, from a desire to prove himself. However, I believe his main reasons for this were family loyalty and (somewhat headcanon territory) the rejection he must have felt at his parents absence. And I don't see him as cunning either, as that always carries a certain level of deceitful intent, even if it's not malicious. And deceitful? That's one thing lwj certainly isn't. So, Slytherin is not a good fit for him. Ravenclaw maybe? He is certainly very intelligent, but that intelligence is more due to his studious nature and his focus, imo. And wisdom and out-of-the-box-thinking are not traits I would associate him with, especially in his younger years. So gryffindor then? He is certainly brave in many ways. He is enduring and stubborn, both gryffindor traits. But he also someone who takes his time to arrive at decisions, unless he is under extreme emotional duress (losing his mother or the love of his live). His bravery, to me, seems to be deeply rooted in his deep deep devotion. He goes through extreme, long lasting pain for the few people he holds close to his heart. In the end it all comes down to his heart, his loyalties, his devotion. Ironically, even more so in the book than in cql. And that loyalty, that steadfastness, that devotion is extremely hufflepuff.

So here you go:

HUFFLEPUFF! (There is no yellow:/)

(And now I really wanna write that AU :D on first glance, lwj would make such an unusual hufflepuff, with his cold and aloof behaviour. I want to play with this idea now!)

Lan Xichen

HUFFLEPUFF!

Aaaahhh! Now I really like the idea of the twin jades of hufflepuff. :D and Lan Xichen is a bit more obvious right? He certainly has the intelligence of a ravenclaw, but his defining characteristics are his devotion to his duty, his kindness, his fairness and his willingness to carefully consider all sides. A hufflepuff to boot. No wonder, I love him so much.

(And now I can't help but imagine lan Xichen, welcoming his little brother at the hufflepuff table, beaming with pride. And later, making sure that they eat at least 1 meal per day together because he knows his brother doesn't make friends easily, even in a house as theirs. Until there's a certain rebellious and bright eyed gryffindor, with a penchant for DADA ...)

Jiang Cheng

He, too, gave me a hard time sorting him. Ravenclaw, I discarded immediately. Gryffindor came next. He's definitely brave in his own way. Going on after the devastating loss of his entire family is brave beyond anything I can imagine, but his motivation why he did it, I believe, was a mixture of family loyalty and his competitiveness and drive to prove himself worthy. Thise are hufflepuff and Slytherin traits, respectively. I would tip the scale towards the latter, simply because his inner conflict is so defined by his feelings of inferiority, his feelings of never living up to his parents expectations. He's in that weird place of being both extremely privileged and emotionally neglected. It reminds me of Draco, come to think of it. So, my favourite angry grape, I'll place in ...

SLYTHERIN!

(He's even rockin' the snake aesthetic already :D)

Jiang Yanli

With her association with cooking and motherly love she seems to be a rather obvious hufflepuff. She is certainly brave, too, enduring her family's near destruction and moving on, or standing in front of her adoptive brother and defending his place in her family and in society. But again, it's very much tied to the people she loves. So yeah,

HUFFLEPUFF!

Nie Mingjue

The jock to end all jocks and still he's got a heart of gold. He's kinda the cliche gryffindor and I can't find a reason to not place him there. So *head barely touches him*

GRYFFINDOR!

Nie Huaisang

SLYTHERIN!

If the twist at the end didn't happen, I'd have placed him in Ravenclaw, as it is, he is such a quintessential Slytherin and also, just ... my favourite kind, especially in cql, where he just fuvjs off to paint his fans and leaves others to do the heavy lifting. He got what he wanted, revenge for his beloved older brother. It reminds me a bit of Horace Slughorn (minus the people collecting). He doesn't want to be at the top. He just wants a comfortable enough life and the possibility to reach his very specific and not at all mainstream goals. A legend. (In mdzs, where he becomes chief cultivator, he's still a Slytherin, albeit a slightly less interesting one.)

Wen Qing

Now, she is another hard one. Another fiercely loyal person (although that's a common trait in mdzs/cql), she also had to show incredible resourcefulness to survive and still stick to her principles throughout her life. But to mention that she invented and su subsequently performed the first core transfer in history. (In the book, it is specifically mentioned that the essay on this subject was written by her). In short, this woman is s genius in her field and forward thinking and incentive. All of those are textbook Ravenclaw traits. So, with her we have ...

RAVENCLAW!

Wen Ning

Puh, he is hard. I know, with his timid behaviour and gentle nature, hufflepuff comes to mind BUT ... he strikes me as a neville. As in, his bravery lies in the fact that his own insecurities hinder him constantly and yet he overcomes them every day in a hundred small ways. He is brave precisely because he is afraid of so many things. And, like Neville, when his sense if right and wrong demands it, he takes a stand. His rescue of wwx and jc extremely dangerous circumstances and the core reveal come to mind. So, even though he probably argues with the hat to place him in hufflepuff, I'll place him in ...

GRYFFINDOR!

Jin Guangyao

SLYTHERIN!

Do I have to explain this?

Luo Qingyang

I know, she's a much more minor character than the others but I love her and this is my post, so she's in it. Do i have to say it? I hate to be the "Gryffindors ftw!!!"-one (as a proud snake), but yeah, Nie Mingjue was goddamn right when he said that she's got more backbone than half the cultivation world combined. My queen snapped and removed herself from the narrative and I love her for it!

GRYFFINDOR!

Let's get to the juniors:

Lan Sizhui

Now, maybe the hufflepuff does run in his family because I do think he belongs there, too. His defining characteristics are shown to be kindness, fairness and filial piety, even though he also has a mischievous streak and does not shy away from confrontation when he thinks his warranted (politely defending "Mo Xuanyu" in front of the Mo clan comes to mind). So yeah

HUFFLEPUFF!

Lan Jingyi

His brash and outgoing nature would make him a good gryffindor fit, certainly. However, the trait I associate with him the most is his nonconformity and that in a sect where that is highly unusual. He might not be as much of a social butterfly as Luba, but he still reminds me more of the kind of eccentricity associated with ...

RAVENCLAW!

Jin Ling

Now he's hard. Maybe because he postures a lot though that's something that's true for a lot of these characters. He tries to imitate his uncle but has non of the trauma to back it up, though he is an orphan and,in his position, probably pretty lonely which leads to the kind of breakdown we see him having over his confrontation with the person who killed his parents and he can't even really blame and so he just... crumbles. And non of that really helps me in my search for a house for him. I don't really see him as a Slytherin because while he loves to posture and play his privileges, he mostly crumbles under pressure and I don't think there's conviction behind it. He's certainly not sly either. Rabenclaw? Nah. I see neither outstanding amounts of eccentricity or wisdom. Gryffindor? Maybe. He's certainly impulsive. And he displayed bravery both in Yi City and even more so in the Guanyin temple where he had to face the fact that one of his uncles, the men who raised him, would kill him to achieve his goals. Still, what left the biggest impression on me was how, after his own world had just completely changed, he send his dog away because wwx would fear him. And how he then tried to get his uncle to talk to wwx. So I'd tentatively go with

HUFFLEPUFF!

Ouyang Zizhen

Another hard one because we don't know him very well in canon. But what we do know is that he is very emotional (passionate one might say) and has no qualms going against his father in a fit of teenage rebellion. I love him for it but that's not that much to go on. Both of these point to gryffindor however, so that's where he goes. :D

GRYFFINDOR!

So ... that's where I'll leave it. I know I missed the Yi city arc but it's getting late and I'm tired. 😅 If anyone wants to add them, feel free!

Congrats of you've made it this far down! :D

Please, do come and discuss these with me!

46 notes · View notes

imaginaryelle · 4 years

Text

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

269 notes · View notes

inanna-arianna · 4 years

Text

Another meta on Lan Xichen I did not want to write

Never once does the novel state that LXC was romantically even interested in JGY. And here is why the people who ship JGY and LXC are the most tedious, annoying and delusional part of not just MDZS but MXTX works in general.

It’s their insidious and tenacious twisting of information and pushing of their headcanons as legitimate narrative. The best example of this is the wiki page for MDZS outside of tumblr. Twitter is not as infested as tumblr is. Twitter favors NieLan pairing, it would seem. But those who ship NieLan do not try to pass their ship as canon nor do they shove it down everyone’s throats. Ship all you want, but once you start adding your headcanons to profile pages that are supposed to be an objective analysis of the character profiles and source materials, that is where you become a delusional menace.

Author even went as far as to state that the only gay couple in the novel is WangXian. Why would she be coy? Why would she hide? She has written novels with more than one homosexual couples before.

To the delusional shippers LXC has gone into seclusion to repent for the killing of JGY. They even twist his seclusion to such a level that they insidiously add LXC seclusion to be the same as his father’s. Even adding it to the list of clearly romantic acts of passion such as here:

this is sadly just one of many pages they infected

I don’t think people give LXC’s dimwitted naivety the full credit it deserves. I get it, people are fond of his character. He is one of my favorite characters also. But he is not benign.

His idiocy has come with a terrible price.

Siege of Burial mounds? Against a broken man and a group of farmers who were non-combative? The siege came to their doors. WWX had the right to raise the dead to defend them. Ultimately, had LXC been a competent clan leader and had his clan stood for what they say they do: righteousness and justice, WWX would not have been as desperate as to resort to such horrible cultivation practices. Had the Lan clan been what they pride themselves at being, they would have stood on Wei Wuxian’s side. And don’t try to oversimplify it. I’m not talking just about the siege. I’m talking about the build up to it as well. But Wei Wuxian stood alone. He stood alone at the path where they failed to assassinate him. He stood alone at Nevernight. He stood alone at the siege. But the snow white boots of the righteous Lan clan, stomped the skulls of old women and frail men.

Nie Mingjue’s death is on LXC’s hands more than JGY. You don’t blame a tiger for being a tiger. It does what it was made to do. Nie Mingjue trusted Lan Xichen. Painfully so. And it cost him his life. It was LXC constantly making excuses for JGY and shielding him from criticism and consequences that allowed him to get away with all the evil he has done for so, so very long. JGY carefully and meticulously build the image Lan Xichen had of him. I don’t deny that LXC was a victim of JGY. Perhaps the most tragic victim. But it does not absolve him of his crimes and playing a part. Weather out of his dimwitted naivety or moral cowardliness, does not matter. JGY needed Lan Xichen. He needed him to be his moral guarantor, his warranty, his shield and advocate. He used LXC’s impeccable reputation as a shield. He needed LXC to vouch for him.

That is why he never mistreated Lan Xichen.

But it’s not exactly true, right? I don’t doubt that JGY in this cruelty and arrogance and lust for power truly believed that he never mistreated LXC. But that is just not true. Weather the suffering of the person Lan Xichen loved most in the world, his own brother. Or by having LXC be his unwitting accomplice in his crimes. Nie Huaisang used LXC to deliver a final blow to JGY. But JGY was a villain. JGY’s fans want to condemn Nie Huaisang for that one act but gleefully ignore just how much damage JGY has done to LXC by using him to further his own ambitions. A man that now has to live with the consequences of his naivety and blindness.

Lan Xichen spending time in seclusion is coming to terms with what he has allowed to happen by continuously absolving JGY of his crimes and willfully turning a blind eye to his wrongdoings. Do people seriously believe that a man who is the head of a clan that prides itself on righteousness and intolerance of all evil is going into mourning for the death of a villain than rather to repent for being the guarantor that allowed the said villain to go unchallenged for so long? That his reputation was used as a cover that allowed a murderer to go unpunished.

Before those shippers try to point out how LXC was hiding JGY’s crimes and avoiding reveling them out of romantic interest: Don’t try it. LXC was naïve and non-confrontational on all fronts. He stood by and watched the mistreatment of Wen civilians, elderly and disabled and even children. His greatest love is his brother, yet despite being the head of the clan he stood by and watched his brother be viciously beaten and scared for life. Even refusing to know why his gentle and kind mother would murder someone is part of his refusal to even think and dwell on things that displease or hurt him. He is an incredibly passive and lethargic person.

Even his demeanor, gentle smile and voice are a shield against aggression. Author herself has stated that when drunk his voice becomes more booming, deeper. It’s a common tactic to defuse aggression. He puts on a submissive stance. Gentle voice and smile, non-aggressive and non-threatening gestures. But even he snaps from time to time. Like he did with WWX. But ultimately he is someone who avoids confrontation and pushes all that is too hurtful for him to think about out of his mind. Even if it is his own mother and her pitiful destiny, even if it is the brutal beating of his own bother. So no, he was not hiding JGY crimes out of love or romantic interest.

Do not forget, when confronted with the facts: he sided against JGY. Immediately. He sided with his brother. He sided with the man who is possibly the only man in the world that he hates (or as close to hate as LXC can muster). LWJ one mistake in his own eyes. He helped them gather evidence against JGY. He hid WWX in Cloud Recesses at great personal risk fully knowing that he was gathering evidence against JGY. He revoked JGY’s access to Cloud Recesses as soon as suspicions rose.

My point is: Ship whatever you want to ship. But don’t insert your headcanons or shipping fantasies into source material or profile pages that are supposed to be objective. Why have I decided to go off this time? Well, I have, so far got 4 people to look into the MDZS fandom and 3 of them were very much confused as to why they could not find a single reference to JGY and LXC “epic romance”. And asked me about it. Every time it was them reading wiki pages maliciously edited by JGY/LXC delusional shippers. I’m not going off at normal shippers. I understand the appeal. Many people like to ship the victim and his/her abuser. Just look at the people who ship Xiao Xingchen and Xue Yang. Not that I would ever ship those. But I’m not here to ship-shame. Just for mercy’s sake stop shoving your ship down our throats or try to pass it off as canon. It’s not.

I hate writing metas on LXC. I love his character. I truly do. I relate to him more than many other MXTX characters. He is deeply flawed. A bit dimwitted, lethargic, non-confrontational, but he is well meaning, benevolent, and generous. Whenever I have to write about him I have to unpack things I don’t particularly enjoy pointing out. See, why his character appeals to me. I don’t like thinking about those things so I push them out of my mind. And so I apologies for grammatical errors, to begin with I was short on time. But once again I was irritated into writing a meta on this subject. So I combined many of my metas and rants into this mess.

#Lan Xichen #zewu jun #lan huan #jin guangyao #meng yao #nie mingjue #nie huaisang #gusu lan #lan clan #meta #mo dao zu shi #the untamed #grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation #Lan Wangji #Wei Wuxian

111 notes · View notes

pumpkinpaix · 4 years

Note

Hello! Sorry if this is a silly question, but I was wondering in the world of cultivation, do you think it's possible to cultivate with like a fan for instance? Cause like they use swords/sabers but then also musical instruments and Zidian. And as more Nie Huaisang's character is revealed, the more I keep thinking eventually he'd develop that into his preferred method of cultivation? Because it's the thing he always keeps on his person, instead of his saber. He's smart enough and (1/2)

(2/2) and Nie Huaisang would want to keep his sect going strong right? After his nature is revealed, I feel like he’d actually fall into his role really well. But he wouldn’t want to follow his father/brother into a qi deviation so maybe he develops a new way forward for their clan that results in less violent deaths and doesn’t harm their temperament either? Also there’s the problem of keeping the sabers satisfied even after the death of their owner. Sorry for rambling, it’s just a thought. 😊

AHAHAHA oh anon i laughed when i read this because (spoilers) this is pretty much exactly what I’ve been thinking about re: nhs post-canon. don’t apologize for rambling!!

I definitely vibe with the idea that he would try to innovate his sect’s cultivation techniques so the line of tragedies would end with him. I think there was an interview with mxtx somewhere where she said that he would be a good sect leader and chief cultivator, and I think that after all that he experienced, his goals would basically be exactly what you said:

change the way his sect cultivates so that no one in his sect is ever fated to die of a qi deviation again–even if this means breaking with ancestral tradition, so be it

keep his sect strong and honorable and safe (and happy?)

cultivate just enough so that he has the power and ability necessary to do so

Nie Huaisang is a character that I’ve struggled with liking (which i could write a whole essay on but like it basically comes down to: i have a soft spot for all the characters he hurt LMAO), but he’s starting to grow on me as time goes on. I think he’s really interesting from a thematic standpoint, re: his continued insistence that he just isn’t suited for cultivation, that he’s never going to be good at the sabre, that no matter how much he’s forced you can’t change his nature–like, idk.

So much of mdzs is about breaking away from the toxic choices, cycles and prejudices of previous generations/your ancestors, and I think nhs’s character would be a really cool place to explore that post-canon, especially in comparison to how all the other characters move forward. He’s undeniably talented and intelligent, but those talents lie not in cultivation, but in other subjects, namely art, culture etc. wwx remarks on his good eye and taste for such things at some point, I’m pretty sure. After his brother dies and the threat posed by jgy is eliminated, I like to think that he would take the time to pursue the things he really loves and find some kind of self-actualization not restricted by his brother’s well-meaning, but ultimately unhelpful insistence that he follow tradition.

about cultivating with a fan–LMAO i am in fact planning on writing this, but I haven’t gotten super far with it yet because i’m…. actually very unfamiliar with how xianxia worlds work in general. mdzs is the first xianxia media i’ve consumed, and honestly, its cultivation worldbuilding is….. like honestly? almost nonexistent HAHA. which I guess means there’s more freedom to play! some scattered thoughts:

you can cultivate through music, so why not other arts, eg: dance, theatrical performance, etc.

fan dance exists! also the use of fans as props in kunqu and peking opera, (here’s an example of a fan in a kunqu performance–admittedly, I’m not very knowledgeable about it, so tbh don’t know if it’s good or average or anything ahaha. there’s another example here of the same work, but the filming is… shaky) the idea of specific movements being shorthand for meanings etc. and i think it would be really cool to build up a cultivation style around using wrist/hand motions as components for–I don’t want to call them spells lmao bc that’s the wrong word, but like???? you know, like how wwx cultivates through talismanic inscription etc. using the motions as building blocks for bigger actions

weaponized fans DO exist, though most information you can find on them is Japanese in origin–there’s some scattered kernels of anecdotes of chinese fan weapons, but I’ll have to do more digging. though honestly, mdzs has canonical cultural exchange with japan (at least the Lans did) and i feel like nhs would be very excited to trade crafts, information, etc. with foreign cultures given his own interest in the arts

so uh, yeah!! basically, same hat anon, and here’s a big pile of my own ramblings right back atcha

#mdzs #the untamed #mdzs meta #nie huaisang #meta #cyan writes #mymeta #sort of??#mine #idk what is tagging #thanks for the ask anon!!!#Anonymous #asks and replies #(this is so disorganized rip my brain is mush and i don't have the energy to put these words into coherent structures im sorry)

50 notes · View notes

razberryyum · 5 years

Video

The Untamed/陈情令 Rewatch, Episode 13, Part 2 of 2

(spoilers for everything MDZS/Untamed)

[covers MDZS chapters 52, 53 and 54]

WangXian meter: 🐰🐰🐰+🐰🐰+🐰🐰+🐰🐰+🐰🐰+🐰🐰🐰+🐰🐰🐰+🐰🐰+🐰🐰+🐰+🐰🐰🐰🐰🐰🐰🐰🐰🐰🐰

Continued from Part 1...

Xuanwu Cave Comparison

Between the novel, audio drama, donghua, and live action depictions of the Xuanwu cave event, there are marked differences that determine my preference for each version, so here’s how I would rank them (and this is only applicable to the Xuanwu cave adaptation):

novel > live action > audio drama > donghua

Since the novel is the og source, its depiction should naturally rank above all versions of MDZS, but if I’m going to be honest, I debated a bit whether the The Untamed’s adaptation should fall beneath it, or actually be equivalent to it. The primary reason for my momentary indecision is because the relationship dynamics between Wei Ying and Lan Zhan in the show were different going into the Xuanwu cave than how they were in the novel. Because they had gone through more experiences together—the Yin metal hunt and their defiance against Wen Chao, for example, which wasn’t in the novel of course—their interactions during this just this whole conversation scene in the cave is somehow warmer and more amicable. The difference is most noticeable with Wei Ying: in the novel he actually gets a little annoyed and then straight up angry with Lan Zhan, going so far as yelling at him and moving away from him. Even though it’s admittedly for a valid reason since Lan Zhan did bite him, the distance between their hearts felt farther apart. It did feel more like two people who didn’t like each other much, forced to work together. And since the audio drama follows the novel pretty closely for this event, the same sentiments applied there as well. But here in CQL, Wei Ying is mostly just teasing, considerate and sweet. He’s almost affectionate with Lan Zhan, like they’ve been friends for a while, which in Wei Ying’s mind they have been, so there’s no sense of animosity whatsoever. Wei Ying never stops to wonder if Lan Zhan actually hates him like he did in the book. Lan Zhan, in turn, was also generally more blatantly irritated with Wei Ying in the book, a fact that was clearly brought to life in the audio drama since he was rather short with him many times. Whereas here in the live action, while he’s exasperated with Wei Ying (because he’s being dense AF)…

...overall he’s more...soft? Like, even if we didn’t know he was in love with Wei Ying, or that Wei Ying thinks they’re good friends, there’s still no sense that they don’t get along at all.

Still, at the end of the day, because the novel is the well from which the Xuanwu cave event sprung forth, it has of course more precious and crucial elements that the show lacked, which helped finalize my decision on ranking the novel’s version of the Xuanwu cave above The Untamed instead of putting it on the same level. In addition to the previously mentioned piggyback ride, Lan Zhan making his permanent mark on Wei Ying by biting him and then breaking down over what befell his family and Cloud Recesses, were left out of the show as well. The stripping scene was also longer in the book, with Wei Ying straight out threatening to jump Lan Zhan’s bones while half-naked. Although a slight downer to that moment was how Wei Ying ended his prank: by assuring Lan Zhan he’s not into men. That one line actually still bothers me to this day because I can’t shake off its implications: basically, it’s really lucky for Lan Zhan that Wei Ying was revived in a gay man’s body. The thought of how their ending would have been otherwise makes my heart ache. For sure, I don’t think we would’ve gotten “everyday means everyday”. But that’s a longer and more involved discussion for another time. I’ll shelve it until we get to the episode later on when Team CQL changes Mo Xuanyu’s sexuality completely.

Back to the differences in the novel that was absent from CQL: Lan Zhan ended up wearing Wei Ying’s undergarments, and the satchel of medicine was from Mian Mian, not Wen Qing (who hadn’t even appeared yet in the story), which is important since later on when it’s revealed that Lan Zhan secretly pocketed that satchel and turned it into his coin purse because he’s such a sweet romantic. Of course the satchel never made an appearance against in The Untamed. Lastly, in the novel, Wei Ying ends up sleeping on Lan Zhan’s legs because Lan Zhan finally obliges his request after he passed out from the fever. The most we got in the show was them sleeping next to each other.

Aside from the differences in the degree of WangXian, there’s also general story differences as well: in the novel, Su She was the one who tried throwing Mian Mian to the Wens and pretty much got bitch slapped by Lan Zhan for it (in the show, it was just some random Jin disciple betraying his own kind). Su She also was the one that caused the Xuanwu’s blood lust to be riled up because he accidentally shot Wei Ying with an arrow while trying to make amends for his cowardice with Mian Mian. It’s actually a shame that Team CQL decided to leave Su She out of the Xuanwu proceedings entirely in the show because his inclusion would have made his hatred of Lan Zhan and his actions against Wei Ying make more sense. Petty jealousy and an overblown inferiority complex just seemed a bit of a reach in light of how much he despised Lan Zhan and the lengths he went through to essentially destroy Wei Ying. They really should have included Su She in the Xuanwu cave, was the actor not available, I wonder.

As for the audio drama, even though it follows the novel pretty closely and I absolutely love it and most of the performances by the voice actors—in particular our two leads, Lu Zhixing-laoshi as Wei Ying and Wei Chao-laoshi as Lan Zhan, who are absolutely beyond superb...seriously my knees turned to freaking jelly in some scenes because of them—not to mention, it is probably the most faithful adaptation of the novel we will EVER get, the reason I ranked it below The Untamed in terms of the Xuanwu cave events is because of the mere fact that some scenes just are better brought to life in a visual medium. That’s really it. Therefore, it’s not the fault of the audio drama, per se, but the nature of audio dramas that makes me prefer the live action’s depiction of the Xuanwu cave scenes over it.

As for the donghua, at least in terms of these particular sequence of events, I absolutely think it has to fall to last place because it omitted so much from the novel in terms of WangXian. Even though Wei Ying showed some upper body nudity for a brief moment and Lan Zhan rubbed medicine on his brand directly, they changed the disrobing to Wei Ying pulling on Lan Zhan’s head ribbon as the reason for Lan Zhan spitting up blood. He did smack Wei Ying for doing that, which I thought was cute and funny, but that’s still a far cry from what was supposed to be. Even the talk about Mian Mian was truncated and just didn’t have the same sentiments involved. Lan Zhan did get emotional over his family, but not to the degree that he did in the novel/audio drama. Also to be honest, most of the cave sequence in the donghua was just a little too dark. Like, I do appreciate the fact that they were trying to go for realism in a cave setting; I mean, at least they didn’t light up the cave at 9 pm (aka the time the Lans fall asleep like narcoleptic zombies...how do they even go on night hunts???) like it was Alaska during the summer:

But my poor eyes would have appreciated it even more if the donghua abandoned reality and simply lit up the surroundings more. They could have easily thrown in some glowing stalactites as the explanation for the unrealistic lighting. I was so happy whenever cultivation magic happened since those were the moments my eyes no longer had to strain.

Also, while the Xuanwu tortoise wasn’t much to write home about in The Untamed:

I did like the fact that I could see every CGI wrinkle on him. Actually, I’m being harsh, he really wasn’t too bad as CGI effects go in the show, and he’s definitely much better stationary than in action.

There was one thing that the donghua included that wasn’t in the novel, audio drama or the show, and that was Nie Huaisang. I actually don’t know why he was included...not that I’m complaining about it since I welcome more NHS in any version, but I thought that was a curious change and I would actually like to know the reason for why Team Donghua decided to add him in. Although, I can understand why The Untamed didn’t include him: first of all, he wasn’t meant to be there to begin with since he wasn’t in the novel but also perhaps they realized they didn’t need yet another damsel in distress who had to be constantly protected. One Mian Mian in the cave was enough.

With Apologies to Mian Mian

I know the Mian Mian in the cave was actually closer to the way she was portrayed in the novel, but I really didn’t like this version of Mian Mian since she isn’t the same one we’ve been living with in the show up until that point. In terms or The Untamed, the Mian Mian we know is much stronger, braver and smarter than that. I mean, this is the girl who diffused the tension between Wen Chao and Jin Zixuan at Qishan while casually side-stepping Wen Chao’s attempt at harassment at the same time. While I understand she was without her weapon in the cave and there had been no indication she was even that strong of a fighter to begin with, I’d still like to believe that had she been in character, she would’ve picked up one of the Wen’s swords and fought alongside everyone else against the Wen dogs. I don’t know why Team CQL decided to damsel her down in this instance, but I found it rather irritating. Her being the one to induce the Xuanwu’s bloodlust because she fucking tripped and hurt herself makes me cringe every single time I see this scene. That’s like a bimbo in a bad horror movie type of move and totally not worthy of the Mian Mian we’ve been blessed with up until then. This is the woman who will one day take off her sect robes and renounce her secthood in front of a roomful of sect leaders and her seniors due to her sense of righteousness, and then more than a decade later draw her sword to protect her family against two intruders hiding in her backyard....not to mention protect her husband and daughter against freaking ghost puppets while voluntarily going on night hunts. This Mian Mian isn’t one to cower behind anyone helplessly or carelessly tripping over her own feet, dammit. At least in the Xuanwu cave, Team CQL really did Mian Mian wrong.

Wei Wuxian is awesome

Again, a given as usual, but I still want to especially restate that fact because his recitation of the Wen Sect rules back to Wen Chao’s dumbass face is still one of my favorite Wei Ying moments. Not like I even have a non-favorite Wei Ying moment, but this definitely ranks at the top of the list. What made the moment even better was Wen Zhuliu’s reaction to Wen Chao’s ignorance.

I will never stop asking this: what the hell kind of debt does Wen Zhuliu owe Wen Ruohan that he would be willing to saddle himself with someone who is clearly very very much his intellectual and cultivational inferior? I know it’s a life debt, maybe his own life was saved, but that still hardly seems worth the trouble he has to put up with for all these years.

WangMian?? (j/k)

Even though Wei Ying was just teasing Lan Zhan about liking Mian Mian, I can kind of see why someone would mistakenly think Lan Zhan might have some interest in her based on this moment alone. The way the scene was constructed was rather interesting because of how Lan Zhan quickly rushes to Mian Mian’s side as soon as he notices she might be in danger. First time I watched this I thought, oh, he’s just doing that to block Wei Ying from getting into trouble and also to protect him from Wen Chao, but after reviewing the scene a few times since then, I realized his position isn’t quite right for that purpose. Or perhaps, Lan Zhan was protecting Mian Mian because in that instance she was someone who is weak and he was just acting on his principles. I can accept that explanation. After all, I don’t seriously think there was anything between Lan Zhan and Mian Mian, nor do I think Team CQL ever intended there to be, but that was still a rather motivationally vague way to execute that scene.

A Jealous Lan Zhan is Cute

I just love how over he is with Wei Ying flirting with Mian Mian. Lan Zhan was really chugging the vinegar there.

Wang Lingjiao is a Real Evil C-word

Speaking of people who downs vinegar like water, I have to take a moment to marvel at just how truly evil and petty a woman Wang Lingjiao is. The fact that in the middle of a highly dangerous, life or death battle with an ancient monster, she still found the time and mood to try to brand some poor girl her stupid sugar daddy showed just a teeny tiny bit of interest in is pretty astounding. She is really an unbelievably vile character. However, as much as I hate the character, and I will only hate her more in future episodes, I have nothing but praise for the casting choice for WLJ. Lu Enjie really nailed that role, not only in terms of performance but she had the perfect look and body language as well. And then, Qiu Qiu-laoshi’s voice acting made what was already perfect even more sublime. It was as if Wang Lingjiao literally stepped out of the pages of the novel and onto the screen.

Questions I Still Have

- Even now I actually don’t know how Wei Ying’s paperman trick works cuz there doesn’t seem to be much consistency in how it operates. Sometimes it seems like he’s just commanding it to do things, while other times he’s like putting his own consciousness in it. But even the degree of consciousness he is able to insert into the paperman seems to vary. What gives? And man, could Wei Ying have been more obvious with his little messenger in that moment?? That paperman flew to Wen Qing and clung to her in full view of everybody right behind her. Good thing the Wens obviously employ a bunch of blind dummies who are completely oblivious to their surroundings, otherwise both Wen Qing and Wei Ying would’ve been in deep shit.

- Did Wen Ruohan ever tell his son the game plan for keeping all the major sect’s kids? Cuz if the point was to hold the next generation of sect leaders hostage so that their parents won’t revolt against the Wens, KILLING them all in a cave is probably the LAST thing Daddy Wen would want Wen Chao to do. I mean, I would imagine nothing would incite a collective mutiny more than if everyone’s most precious heirs mysteriously died during a night hunt held by the Wens. Honestly, what the hell was Wen Chao thinking with that stunt? I guess the answer is he wasn’t thinking since he is kind of stupid, but then that begs the question why would Wen Ruohan let his idiot younger son be in charge of something so important in the first place? I wouldn’t trade the hostage situation in for anything since it did lead to important events in the story, but I guess I wish it wasn’t so flimsy-seeming in the logic department?

Overall Episode Rating: 9.5 Lil Apples out of 10

Disclaimer: The Untamed would not be possible without Mo Dao Zu Shi and Mo Xiang Tong Xiu-laoshi. I mean no disrespect whatsover when at times I may favor the shwo over the MDZS bible that is the novel. All hail MDZS and MXTX-laoshi, always and forever!

86 notes · View notes

boat-full-of-lotus-pods · 5 years

Text

MDZS Chapter 110. “Concealment” Part 4

Everyone has their own path

Wei WuXian replied, “Naturally, coffins are for storing the dead. I’m guessing what it originally contained was Jin GuangYao’s mother, Meng Shi’s corpse. He’d come here tonight intending to retreat his mother’s corpse and flee to Dongying with it.”

Lan XiChen was still at a loss for words. With an “Ah,” Nie HuaiSang suddenly said, “Right, that makes a lot of sense.”

Wei WuXian continued, “What do you think the person did with GuangYao’s mother’s corpse after digging it out?”

Nie HuaiSang replied, “Wei-xiong, why are you always asking me? No matter how much you ask me, how would I know?”

After a pause, he continued, “But hm……”

Slowly, Nie HuaiSang gathered up his rain-drenched hair and said, “I’m guessing, since this person hates Jin GuangYao so much, he’s probably going to be particularly cruel towards something which Jin GuangYao held so dear.”

Wei WuXian suggested, “For example, tearing the corpse into pieces and scatter it across the land, just like what had happened to ChiFeng-Zun?”

Shocked and startled, Nie HuaiSang staggered backwards, “That that that…… that would be too cruel…….”

Wei WuXian studied him for a while but ultimately moved his gaze away.

After all, speculations were just speculations. No one had any evidence.

The expression on Nie HuaiSang’s face appeared lost and exasperated. Perhaps he was faking it. Maybe he didn’t want to admit to using people like pawns, treating them as if their lives were nothing; or maybe his plan didn’t end here. Maybe he needed to disguise the truth to accomplish greater, higher goals. Or, maybe it wasn’t so complicated after all. Maybe the one who had delivered the letter, killed the cats, and pieced Nie MingJue’s head back to his body had been someone else, and that Nie HuaiSang was truly as useless as he looked.

Or maybe Jin GuangYao’s last few words were simply lies that he’d spun after Nie HuaiSang had seen through his backstabbing attempt, aimed to sow doubts in Lan XiChen’s heart so he could take the opportunity to take him to the grave After all, Jin GuangYao was a notorious liar. It wouldn’t be surprising for him to be able to spew anything any time he wanted.

As for why he’d changed his mind in the last moment and pushed Lan XiChen aside, who could really know what he was thinking?

With veins pulsing on the hand that was pressed to his forehead, Lan XiChen lamented, “……What exactly did he want? Once upon a time, I thought that I knew him very well, until I realized that I didn’t anymore. Before tonight, I thought that I had learned him anew, but once again I know nothing.”

No one could answer him. Lan XiChen repeated, at a loss, “……What exactly did he want?”

But if he, the one who was the closest to Jin GuangYao, didn’t even know the answer, then no one else would.

After a moment of silence, Wei WuXian said, “Let’s stop standing around doing nothing. Get a few of these men to go find more people, the rest of them can stay and guard this thing here. This coffin and these qin strings won’t seal ChiFeng-Zun for long.”

True to his words, a series of thundering noises came from within the coffin, radiating an aura of insuppressible rage. Nie HuaiSang shuddered. Throwing a glance at him, Wei WuXian said, “You see? We need to find a stronger coffin fast, dig a deep hole, and bury it again. Definitely shouldn’t be opened for at least the next century. If opened, I guarantee you the resentful spirits will still be there to cause more problems, disaster awaits……”

Before he even finished speaking, a series of crisp, vigorous dog barks came from the outside.

Wei WuXian’s expression changed in an instant. Meanwhile, Jin Ling’s spirit reluctantly lightened up a little. “Fairy!”

The thunder and lightning had passed. The pouring rain had diminished to a small drizzle. The darkest hours of the night were already over and the sky glowed with dim light.

Drenched from head to toe, the dark-furred spiritual dog sprinted towards Jin Ling on all fours like a torrent of dark wind. With a pair of round, teary puppy eyes, she stood up on her hind legs, sprawled over Jin Ling’s legs and made low whimpering noises. As Wei WuXian saw Fairy incessistantly licking Jin Ling’s hand with her scarlet tongue darting out between her sharp, pale teeth, his face was ashen and his eyes were frozen. Opening and and closing his mouth, he felt as if his soul was ready to evaporate out of his mouth in a bundle of smoke and fly towards heaven. Lan WangJi quietly stood in front of him, blocking him from Fairy’s line of sight.

Immediately afterwards, about a hundred or so people surrounded the entire Guanyin temple. Every single one of them had a sword in their hands. With caution and alarm all over their faces, they looked prepared for a brutal battle. Once the first wave entered, however, they were all startled by the scene before them. The ones on the ground were all already dead, while the ones who were still alive were either half-down or no longer standing. To summarize, corpses were everywhere, covering the floor in chaotic disarray.

From left to right, the two armed at the front were respectively the Head of Staff from the Yunmeng Jiang Sect and Lan QiRen. Lan QiRen was still too puzzled to speak, and the first thing that greeted him was the sight of Wei WuXian and Lan WangJi plastered so close together as if they were a single person. Instantly, Lan QiRen forgot everything he wanted to say. Murderous anger flared upon his face and his brows stood. Fuming, his breath was making his beard flare and shake. The Head of Staff hurried to help support Jiang Cheng, saying, “Sect Leader, are you alright……”

Meanwhile, Lan QiRen shouted, “Wei……”

Before he could finish shouting, a few figures clad in white darted out from behind him, all shouting, “HanGuang-Jun!”

“Senior Wei!”

“Senior Patriarch!”

The last youth bumped into Lan QiRen. Nearly stumbling, Lan QiRen warned, furious, “No running! No shouting!”

Aside from Lan WangJi, who called him “Uncle,” everyone else ignored him. With his left hand seizing Lan WangJi’s sleeve and his right hand seizing Wei WuXian’s arm, Lan SiZhui beamed, “This is wonderful! HanGuang-Jun, Senior Wei, you’re all fine. Looking at how agitated Fairy was, we all thought that you guys were in deep trouble.”

Lan JingYi said, “You must not be thinking straight, SiZhui; what trouble couldn’t HanGuang-Jun handle? I said a long time ago that you were worrying over nothing.”

“JingYi, weren’t you the one who was worried sick all the way over?”

“Go away! Stop talking nonsense.”

Finally spotting Wen Ning, who had finally managed to crawl up from the ground, from the corner of his eyes, Lan SiZhui immediately grabbed him and dragged him towards the group of youth as well, chatting about what all had happened.

As it turned out, after Fairy had injured Su She, she ran all the way to find the nearest subsidiary sect of the Yunmeng Jiang Sect within the city, and barked in front of their door nonstop. When the leader of the subsidiary sect saw the special collar on Fairy’s neck, the golden symbol and the family sigil, they realized that Fairy’s master must have come from a prestigious place. Noticing the blood marks on Fairy’s teeth, claws and fur, it became evident that a chaotic battle had just happened. No doubt the dog’s master was in danger. Too scared to waste another minute, the sect leader had immediately rode on his sword to the Lotus Pier to inform the Yunmeng Jiang Sect, the largest and most powerful sect in the area. The Head of Staff there had immediately identified the dog to be Young Master Jin Ling’s Fairy, and had immediately send out backups for rescue.

At the time, the Gusu Lan Sect were just about to leave the Lotus Pier, but Fairy had blocked Lan QiRen’s way. Leaping, she ripped off a stripe of white from the corner of Lan SiZhui’s robes with her teeth. Placing it on top of her head with her paw, she seemed to be trying to tie the stripe of white around her head, and then dropped onto the ground and pretended to be dead. While Lan QiRen was puzzled, Lan SiZhui had an alarming revelation, “Mister, look at that; doesn’t it seem like she’s trying to mimic our sect’s forehead ribbon? Is she trying to tell us that HanGuang-Jun or someone else from the Lan Sect is in danger?”

Thus, the Yunmeng Jiang Sect, the Gusu Lan Sect and a few other sects that hadn’t left yet all gathered up their people and headed over for rescue.

Lan JingYi praised, “All this time we’ve been calling her ‘Fairy’, ‘Fairy’, who knew she’s actually a spiritual dog!”

But no matter how spiritual or how smart it was, to Wei WuXian, a dog was still a dog—the most frightening existence in the world. Even though he had Lan WangJi blocking in front of him, he still shuddered nonstop. Ever since the group of youths from the Lan family had come in, Jin Ling had been stealing furtive glances towards them—towards the sight of them talking and chatting loudly around Wei WuXian and Lan WangJi. Seeing that Wei WuXian’s face was becoming paler and paler, Jin Ling patted Fairy’s butt and said quietly, “Fairy, go outside first.”

Shaking her head and wagging her tail, Fairy continued to lick him. Jin Ling chided, “Hurry and go. What, you don’t listen to me anymore?”

Fairy gave him a sad look, and dashed out of the temple, wagging her tail. At last, Wei WuXian relaxed. Jin Ling wanted to go over but felt too awkward to actually do it. Just as he was hesitating, Lan SiZhui suddenly saw what was by Wei WuXian’s waist. Frozen and startled, he asked, “……Senior Wei?”

Wei WuXian said, “Hm? What?”

Lan SiZhui said numbly, “Your…… Your flute, may I take a look at it?”

Wei WuXian brought it down and asked, “Something’s up with this flute?”

Receiving the flute with both hands, Lan SiZhui’s brows creased slightly. He looked a little lost. As Lan WangJi watched him, Wei WuXian turned to Lan WangJi and asked, “What’s up with your SiZhui? Does he like my flute?”

Lan JingYi exclaimed, “Huh? You’d finally lost that awful-sounding flute of yours? This new one here’s not bad!”

Little did he know that not only was this flute “not bad”, it was the legendary, treasured Ghoul Flute Chenqing upon which he’d always dreamed of gazing one day. Right now, however, he was merely thinking in glee, ‘This is great! At least he won’t be embarrassing HanGuang-Jun anymore the next time they duet together. Heavens! The flute he had before was ugly in both looks and sound!’

Lan WangJi said, “SiZhui.”

Only then did Lan SiZhui remembered himself and offered Chenqing back to Wei WuXian with both hands. “Senior Wei.”

Retrieving the flute, Wei WuXian at last remembered that it had come from Jiang Cheng. Turning to the latter, he added, “Thanks.” Waving Chenqing, he said, “Then, I…… will be keeping this?”

Jiang Cheng threw him a glance. “It was yours to start with.”

After a pause, his lips twitched as if he wanted to say something more, but Wei WuXian had already turned to Lan WangJi. Seeing this, Jiang Cheng didn’t say another word.

Of the people gathered, some were cleaning up the scene, some were strengthening the wooden coffin’s seal. Some were trying to figure out how to relocate it safely and securely, while others were angry. Lan QiRen raged, “XiChen, what exactly is up with you?!”

With an unspoken sorrow stitched between his brows, Lan XiChen pressed against his temple and replied in tired words, “……Uncle, I’m begging you. Stop asking. Please. I really don’t want to talk about anything right now.”

In all the years he’d raised him, Lan QiRen had never seen Lan XiChen so irritated and discomposed, so disquieted and hard to reason with. Looking from Lan XiChen to Lan WangJi, who was being surrounded together with Wei WuXian, Lan QiRen’s rage magnified, consumed by the realization that these two pupils of his—once perfect and spotless—had both stopped listening to him, and neither would give him peace of mind.

The coffin containing Nie MingJue and Jin GuangYao was not only unusually heavy but needed to be carefully handled. Thus, the few brave souls who volunteered to relocate it were all sect leaders. One sect leader took a look at the face of the Guanyin statue and started. Then, as if discovering something fascinating, he called out to those next to him and said, “Look at this face! Doesn’t this look like Jin GuangYao?”

The one next to him looked and then muttered in wonderous contemplation, “It really is his face! What was Jin GuangYao doing with something like this?”

Sect Leader Yao said, “Made himself a god out of pride and arrogance, duh.”

“That’s a lot of pride and arrogance, hahaha.”

Wei WuXian thought to himself, ‘That’s not necessarily true.’

Jin GuangYao’s mother had been a whore looked down upon by the whole world. Therefore he constructed a Guanyin statue in her image so that she could be praised and respected by tens of thousands kneeling by her feet, offering her burning incense all day long.

But there was little use for bring up it up now. Wei WuXian understood, better than anyone, that no one would care, and that no one would believe it. Anything that had even remote ties with Jin GuangYao would never be given the benefit of the doubt again. From now on, people would only assume the worst of the worst of him, and words would ripple like ceaselessly waves.

Soon, the coffin would be sealed inside an even bigger, stronger casket. Seventy-two mahogany stakes would be nailed into it before it became buried deep beneath the earth, underneath a mountain surrounded by warning posts.

And whatever that was sealed within would never be reborn underneath the weight of a thousand seals and the scorn of thousands more.

Leaning against the door frame, Nie HuaiSang watched as the group of sect leaders carried the coffin outside the Guanyin temple’s doorsteps. Lowering his head, he swiped at the dirt and grime caking his robes when something seemed to catch his eyes, making him pause. Wei WuXian followed his gaze. Laying on the floor was Jin GuangYao’s hat.

Nie HuaiSang bent down. It was only after he picked it up did he wander outside slowly.

Outside, Fairy was already worried sick waiting for her master, and cried out two long howls. At the sound, Jin Ling suddenly remembered that Fairy had been just a dumb young pup no taller than his knee when Jin GuangYao had first brought her to him.

At the time, he was only a few years old and had just fought with a few other kids at the Koi Tower. Even though he’d won, it hadn’t felt like a victory, and so he had thrashed his room in a huge tantrum, shouting and crying. None of the maids and servants dared to approach him, scared that he’d hit them. With a face full of smiles, his youngest uncle had suddenly appeared and asked, “A-Ling, what’s wrong?” and he’d instantly shattered five or six flower vases by Jin GuangYao’s feet. Jin GuangYao had said, “Aiyoh, so scary, I’m so scared,” and left while shaking his head, as if he was truly scared.

The next day, still mad, Jin Ling had refused to leave his room to eat, and so Jin GuangYao had roamed back and forth outside his doors. Jin Ling, with his back against the doors, shouted at him to stop bothering him, and had been suddenly greeted by the weak howls of a small pup.

Opening his door, Jin GuangYao had been half-crouching right outside with a black-furred small dog tucked in his arms, its sparkling eyes big and round. Jin GuangYao smiled up at him and said, “I found this little one here, not sure what to call it. Would A-Ling like to give it a name?”

That smile had been so warm and genuine. Jin Ling couldn’t ever believe that Jin GuangYao had faked it.

Suddenly, fresh tears rolled down his cheeks again.

Jin Ling had always believed crying to be a sign of weakness, and had thus always looked down upon it. Right now, however, aside from crying his eyes out, he had no other means to express or unleash the pain and fury in his heart.

For reasons he couldn’t understand, he couldn’t find anyone to blame, or anyone to hate. Wei WuXian, Jin GuangYao, Wen Ning—every single one of them should be responsible for the death of his parents in one way or another. Every single one of them rightfully deserved his hate. Yet, in one way or another, he found himself incapable of hating any of them. But if not them, then who else could he hate? Did he deserve to have his parents taken away from him so young? He was already incapable of avenging their death—incapable of making the kill. Was he also to be robbed of his hatred? Was he not even allowed to hate with no repercussion nor hesitance?

It didn’t feel right. It didn’t seem fair. He almost felt like he should have died with them. That would have been more right.

At the sight of him crying soundlessly at the coffin, Sect Leader Yao asked, “Young Master Jin, why are you crying? Are you crying for Jin GuangYao?”

When Jin Ling didn’t answer, Sect Leader Yao spoke with the air of a senior chiding a fellow young disciple of his own house, “What’s there to cry? Cease your tears. People like your uncle don’t deserve other people’s tears. Young Master, I’m not just speaking for myself, but you cannot be this weak and frail! You’re acting like a woman. You need to know what’s right and what’s wrong, and straighten your……”

Had the Lanling Jin Sect still held the seat of the Chief Cultivator that sat above hundreds of sects, never would any of the other sect leaders dare to chide a disciple of the Jin Sect in the tone of a condescending senior even if the chance was handed to them on a silver platter. But now that Jin GuangYao was dead, the Lanling Jin Sect had no one left to support the roof over its head. With its reputation utterly ruined, it would probably never return to its glory days. And so the others finally dared to come at them. Jin Ling’s heart was already in churning turmoil. Sect Leader Yao’s unnecessary, condescending words only made his mood worse. Rage exploded like a gush of fire inside his chest as he shouted, “So what if I just want to cry, what’s it to you?! Who do you think you are to comment on my crying?!”

Sect Leader Yao didn’t expect to be shouted at for his chidings. After all, he was still a sect leader; not spectacularly renounced but respected all the same. His expression darkened immediately. Someone next to him persuaded, “Let it go, don’t quarrel with a child.”

Tucking away his anger, he huffed and said, “Of course. Heh, what use is there in arguing with a little child who has yet to learn black from white?”

After seeing the coffin carried onto the carriage, Lan QiRen turned around and, after a pause, asked, “Where is WangJi?”

He had only just been thinking of dragging Lan WangJi back to the Cloud Recesses and have one hundred and twenty days of lengthy, private conversation with him. And if that failed, he planned to confine him again for a little while. Little had he expected Lan WangJi to disappear in the blink of an eye. After roaming a few times around the premises, he yelled, “Where is WangJi?!”

Lan JingYi answered, “Earlier, I mentioned that I brought Little Apple along and left it right outside the temple, and then HanGuang-Jun and…… and…… left to see Little Apple together.”

Lan QiRen asked, “And then what?”

Little needed to be said regarding what happened after that. Outside the temple, Wei WuXian, Lan WangJi, and Wen Ning were no longer in sight.

Turning to Lan XiChen, who was slowly following behind him with an unfocused gaze, Lan QiRen exhaled angrily before turning back with a swipe of his sleeves. Meanwhile, Lan JingYi looked left and right before gasping, “SiZhui? What’s going on? When did SiZhui disappear as well?”

Hearing that both Wei WuXian and Lan WangJi had disappeared, Jin Ling hurried outside and nearly tripped himself by the tall doorstep of the Guanyin temple’s main gate. Despite his haste, the two were already nowhere to be seen. Fairy happily circled around him with her tongue out. Standing by a tree, rigid and sky-high within the Guanyin temple’s grounds, was Jiang Cheng, who looked over at Jin Ling and spoke coldly, “Clean your face.”

Giving his eyes and face a few forceful wipe, Jin Ling dashed over and asked, “Where are they?”

Jiang Cheng responded, “They left.”

“And you let them go just like that?” Jin Ling burst out.

Jing Cheng’s response dripped with sarcasm. “Or what? Ask them to stay for dinner? Say ‘thank you’ and then ‘sorry’?”

Agitated, Jin Ling pointed at him and said, “No wonder he left! It’s because you’re always like this! Uncle, why are you so unlikable?!”

At the words, Jiang Cheng raised his hand, mad as well. “Is this how you should speak to an elder? You’re asking for a beating!”

Jin Ling visibly shrunk. Fairy’s tail went between her legs as well. Ultimately, Jiang Cheng didn’t land his palm on Jin Ling’s head and instead weakly lowered it.

He irritatedly added, “Shut up already, Jin Ling. Shut up. Let’s go back. We’ll all go back to our own.”

Startled, after a moment of hesitation, Jin Ling pliantly remained quiet as told.

Head sloping, Jin Ling walked by Jiang Cheng’s side for a few strides before looking up. “Uncle, you wanted to say something earlier, didn’t you?”

“What? No. I didn’t.”

“You did! I saw it, you wanted to say something to Wei WuXian but then you stopped.”

After a beat of silence, Jiang Cheng shook his head. “There’s nothing to be said.”

What was there to say?

Tell him ‘I didn’t get caught back then by the Wen Sect because I was trying to retrieve my parents’ bodies from the Lotus Pier.’

‘When you went out to buy food at that little town where we ran to, a group of cultivators from the Wen Sect had caught up.’

‘I found out early and left the place we were staying at, and avoided capture by hiding at a street corner. But they were patrolling the streets, and soon they would have caught up to you.’

‘And so I left my hiding place and attracted their attention away.’

However, just like all those years ago when Wei WuXian had ripped out his own golden core for him without telling him, here and now, there was no way for Jiang Cheng to bring this up again.

#魔道祖师 #mdzs #mo dao zu shi #grandmaster of demonic cultivation #novel translation #my translation #'i am back' i said #and then i disappeared for 2 more weeks...#claaaassic shortsightedness coming from me #apologies apologies

221 notes · View notes

peerless-soshi · 5 years

Text

Final thoughts about Nie HuaiSang...

...and how he never lied, and became the mother of WangXian. Twice.

CONTAINS MAJOR SPOILERS FOR CHAPTER 109 AND CHAPTER 110. DO NOT READ IF YOU DO NOT WISH TO BE SPOILED.

I find it really interesting how, in the end, MXTX decided to not expose NHS as a mastermind behind JGY’s fall. It was heavily implied that he was the person who sent the letters, and the final scene with NHS picking JGY’s hat seems to be a closing wink for the reader. But even so, it was never confirmed and WWX specially points how they have no evidence. NHS’s role could be just a misunderstanding. Maybe MXTX didn’t want us to be sure and we are supposed to wonder what is true and what is false? Or maybe the whole reason lies in showing who is the perfect liar? A hint: not JGY.

As WWX said and I’m going to repeat, it’s nothing more than a speculation. My opinion. But I'm having second thoughts about NHS being the cruel mastermind and even more, the perfect liar. At least not in the way that JGY suspected it. Right before his death, JGY screams “HuaiSang, you’re truly impressive. How unexpected for me to fall in your hands like this…“ and I feel this line tricked a lot of readers into thinking that NHS’s fear and timidity was nothing but a facade, a part of the plan. Personally, I don’t think it was the case? NHS’s style of lying seems to be based on something completely different than JGY’s lies, and his finale mistake was to judge NHS with his own standards.

First of all, to assume that NHS only pretended to be good-for-nothing in order to avoid suspicion would mean that his plan started long time ago - too long time ago, when his brother was still alive. Back then, NHS had no reason to play dumb. When we meet him in the Gusu school, he’s truly cowardly and lacks ability and will to learn. If he has no reason to lie, my conclusion is: the NHS we saw in the school was the true NHS. Because what would he gain? Nothing. Still, we got a bunch of very useful (in the light of recent events) information.

First, WWX never, even once, treated NHS like an idiot. Of course, he wasn’t a good student. But I think it was clear that NHS was stubborn and put efforts only in things he was passionate about, ignoring things that bored him. WWX says “It wasn’t that he was not clever, but that his heart was set somewhere else and used his smarts on other areas, such as painting on fans, searching for birds, skipping classes, and catching fish". WWX says it - NHS was clever! His talents were just too different from proper cultivaton talents; thus he was considered stupid, a head-shaker. I now wonder... let me ask you, how did someone like NHS found out about JGY’s murder? We know JGY was extremely careful, he left almost no hints. And seeing something off in qi deprivation? NHS, who did so poor in cultivation? It’s impossible. Unless he found truth by looking at things he was good at - for example, at the music. And music is a very interesting topic since it plays a big role in MDZS. LWJ and his brother are praised for their musical knowledge and WWX realizes that he can use a flute to control evil energy. Then JGY uses music to kill NMJ. It’s the key word: uses. For all those characters music is a weapon they can use in their cultivation and for this reason they are admired, while in NHS’s case, the art of any kind was separated from cultivation and fighting, and because of that totally useless. I think it is very interesting to wonder whether this whole ‘being lazy’ turned out to be NHS’s most powerful weapon. If NHS learned about music, he could hear something smoothing in LXC’s playing and then something strange in JGY’s music. Connect the dots. But it’s just a theory.

Then, NHS is described as a coward and pretty much... every scene with him proves it. Almost. It depends on what we consider to be cowardly. For sure NHS didn’t have enough courage to stand face to face with his brother and tell him openly that he doesn’t want to practice, but it didn’t stop him from not learning and skipping classes. Let me tell you, I find it a type of bravery, though a very specific one. It’s hard to say if NMJ was truly cruel to NHS - we know that JC’s ‘I’ll break your legs’ is more of a catchphrase than an actual threat, and NHS is a chicken contrasting with NMJ’s explosive personality, what gives us a poor picture - but even if he wasn’t beating his brother, NMJ was still frightening in NHS’s eyes. Shouldn’t NHS put twice as much effort in learning to escape from his brother’s anger? Yes. And here we are - he didn’t! Never! Even when he was afraid! Instead, he was doing whatever he could to trick his brother into thinking he’s trying to learn. Meanwhile, NHS was avoiding classes. He brought porn to the Cloud Recess although he knew about the rules and punishments. Would a coward do it? I doubt. But it’s all about being caught. Nothing more. In all this, we see NHS’s philosophy - it’s scary, but only if done openly. Nobody is dangerous if they don’t know about your faults. And this is how MXTX introduces NHS to us; he’s a master of escaping from responsibilities, pretending to care and making the stronger one believe he care. Even if NHS started with classes and finished on plotting a murder, I think his personality is very consistent and that’s why I don’t think he was lying, JGY misinterprets his intentions - NHS didn’t just pretend to be scared, rather he was scared to death... and that’s what he did the only thing he could. Made sure nobody knows the truth.

NHS was not only good at avoiding responsibilities and running from his brother (the stronger one). MXTX also made sure to show us that NHS knows how to use people. When he was in school, he was painfully aware that he wouldn’t win alone, thus searching for help in WWX. It’s another thing we know about NHS - he has no problem with pushing his duties onto others, and even more, leaving others to do it for him. His friendship with WWX was build on little lies - WWX was supposed to help NHS with tests and in return, NHS copied texts for WWX. As you see, they both knew how to slip between the rules and lie here and there. Now, hear me and look how it goes with WWX and LWJ’s relationship: though the met on the wall of the Gusu Cloud Recess, back then they didn’t know much about each other. LWj noticed WWX but he wasn’t a type to approach strangers while WWX tried to befriend LWJ, but still didn’t drag him by force. If it continued like that, they would never fall for each other. But then something happened. NHS couldn’t do something alone. He asked WWX for help. He got caught. WWX was punished and forced to copy in the library. LWJ was monitoring him. The punishment was the first opportunity to spend more time together and get to know each other. And now we have the present times, and NHS who has no idea how to deal with his brother’s corpse. A plan appears in his mind. He needs WWX’s help. He can use him and make him do it. WWX is also aware that it couldn’t be a coincidence for the Lan Sect to be present in the same place he was reborn, yet he doesn’t list any reasons... And what if NHS knew? Leaving WWX all along in the world full of enemies could be dangerous for the mission NHS planned, but if he was one of few people who actually noticed something deeper in WWX and LWj’s relationship, deceiving LWJ to go to the Mo village and find WWX was only an insurance.

Maybe I’m like WWX and add more than it’s necessary? But I truly think that NHS was scared and good-for-nothing, so in his fear he used dirty methods his brother would hate, used people to achieve his goal. Still, NHS was the reason WWX and LWJ got together. Twice. And still, JGY was afraid only of NMJ, in the end dying because of NHS. I think it’s all a very good parallel.

#mo dao zu shi #mdzs #my analysis #nie huaisang #I started excited but then became sleepy

113 notes · View notes