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Types of fanfic summaries and what they mean

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Jin Guangyao and Nie Mingjue as Broken Mirror Reflections of Each other

An interpretation I want to try throw out there is that Jin Guangyao and Nie Mingjue are more alike than they might seem. The amount of privilege that Nie Mingjue has should not make it harder for him to understand what Jin Guangyao is coming from. On the contrary, the specific ways in which he does and does not have privilege should make it easier for Nie Mingjue to understand Jin Guangyao’s challenges as a low born cultivator, perhaps even more than let’s say Lan Xichen. So Jin Guangyao and Nie Mingjue are not so much two ends on a spectrum on privilege, but broken mirrors of each other.

What’s in their Names: Two Men Alike

Jin Guangyao and Nie Mingjue’s names mean the same thing. Guangyao (光瑶) means bright jade. Mingjue (明玦) also means bright jade. There are, admittedly, subtle ways in which their names are different

Significance of their names

Nie Mingjue’s name was given from a desire that he be bright, and complement others like how a jade pendant completes a gentlemanly attire, like in this line of a poem “侵衣明佩玦”.But JGY’s courtesy name an insult from his father, who refused to give him the generational character zi 子 like Jin Zixuan and Jin Zixun, while recycling the “Yao” from his personal name, though according to naming conventions his courtesy name is supposed to be completely different from his personal name. Is this foreshadowing that it is his father’s mistreatment that sets Jin Guangyao up to be Nie Mingjue’s “evil” doppelganger? Or rather Nie Mingjue’s inability to recognise how while they seem to be similar in status, the origins of their status are profoundly different.

Differences between words for Jade: Yao and Jue

The Yao (瑶) in Jin Guangyao’s name means “beautiful jade” or anything that is lovely, precious, or pure like a beautiful piece of jade. (Side note: it does not mean pearl. I’ve seen that misconception in fandom and I’m guessing its from a bad definition given by an English Chinese dictionary that comes up in google search. I’ve never seen a Chinese dictionary entry define 瑶 as possibly meaning pearl sometimes).

But the Jue (玦) in NMJ’s name is a type of jade pendant that can symbolise the cycle of flourishing and suffering. Does this foreshadow NMJ’s gruesome death and fierce corpse afterlife? A Jue can also be gifted to someone to decisively cut ties with them, per the phrase 绝人以玦 (jue ren yi jue). It’s a play on how Jue sounds like the word for decisive (决) and to cut off (绝). It also kind of foreshadows how NMJ decides to be permanently suspicious of JGY since he saw him murder his commander in Langya and kill his men in WRH’s throne room.

Despite all these subtle differences, the fact remains that fundamentally Mingjue and Guangyao are insanely similar in meaning. So in what ways are they alike?

On Social Status: Butchers and Prostitutes

This I think is speculative, but it’s possible to imagine that there was a time when Nie cultivators were the most despised in the world of cultivation.

This theory would hinge upon the fact that the ancestors of the Nie Sect were originally butchers, the Nie Sect cultivates using the resentful energy of animals that they have butchered — and that depending on which historical period you look at in China, butchers are considered to be morally corrupt in some sense. This stems from some Confucian and Buddhist texts which were influential in China.

For instance, for Confucianism, Mencius wrote on the conduct of a noble man: “A noble man when it comes to animals, they see them alive, and cannot bear to see them killed. If they hear their cries, they will not bear to eat their meat. Thus, a noble man stays far from the kitchen.” This is supposed to be a show of the compassion of a noble man for all living things. 孟子在《孟子·梁惠王上》中说：“君子之于禽兽也，见其生，不忍见其死；闻其声，不忍食其肉。是以君子远庖厨也”

Then for Chinese Buddhism, the religion is opposed to the taking of lives be it from people or animals. Thus butchers and butchering as a profession are looked poorly upon. For instance, there’s a funny story about how there were two friends, a monk and a butcher, who reminded each other everyday to read sutras and butcher animals respectively. The butcher goes to heaven for the good deed of reminding the monk to read the sutras everyday. The monk goes to hell for reminding the butcher to slaughter animals. Monks are also prohibited from directly killing, and are only allowed to eat 3 types of clean meat (三净肉 San Jing Rou). The three ways in which the meat is supposed to be clean are: you cannot have seen the animal that was killed, you cannot hear the animal being killed, and you cannot suspect that the animal was being killed for you to eat (i.e. donated surplus meat).

Thus, in East Asian countries with Confucian and Buddhist influences, like Korea and Japan, butchers tend to be treated as one of the lowest castes in society. It was fortunately not that bad in ancient China. But I think you can catch hints of how this impression of butchers as being impure factors into the history of the Nie Sect in MDZS. The dwelling of the Qinghe Nie after all is the Unclean Realm Bu Jing (不净世). It’s interesting to think about whether their dwelling is named that because people kept deriding it as being an unclean Bu Jing (不净) and a place that you should not set foot in. Or if the Qinghe Nie started to call their dwelling the Unclean Realm as a way to reclaim a slur. I think its also reasonable to imagine that in their initial years, the Qinghe Nie were also looked upon with a great deal of suspicion for cultivating using the resentful energy of animals. One defence that butchers in ancient China often used was that moral blame should not be imputed to them for butchering these animals, since they don’t actually eat the meat of these animals — its their customers who eat the meat and benefit from the death of the animal. But for the Nie, they are clearly benefitting from the resentful energy of the animal at its wrongful death, and could be derided as being even more cruel compared to ordinary butchers. And in general, they were the first out of all the Sects to use resentful energy to cultivate, which must have marked them out as an anomaly, possibly to be discriminated. Stretching this postulation even further, perhaps it was the desire to escape from the low social position that they were trapped in as butchers, that prompted them to undertake a method of cultivation as dangerous as cultivating using the resentful energy of animals, where their Sect leaders die young.

What I find so interesting about this particular theory is that it casts a different light upon then Meng Yao’s interactions with the Qinghe Nie. You could interpret the reason why Meng Yao first joined the Qinghe Nie as him seeing it as an example of a Sect that rose up to prominence in the world of cultivation, precisely through their occupation which was once as despised as his mother’s profession. This interpretation would add an extra knife’s twist to that moment in the MDZS novel, where when Meng Yao pours tea for some Nie cultivators in the Hejian front, they refuse to drink it because they think that it is dirty because of his mother’s profession. It would be an extra WTF moment for Meng Yao if, just a few generations earlier, it might have been other cultivators refusing to drink tea poured by Nie Sect cultivators, either because they think that the profession of butchering is “unclean” or because they think that the Nie Sect cultivators must be dangerously tainted with resentful energy. It would make the moments where Jin Guangyao talks about privilege with Nie Mingjue extra poignant, because maybe within Nie Mingjue’s Sect, the traumatic experience of social ostracism and stigmatisation might only just have faded out of living memory. It would be very “who are you that do not know your history” to quote Fallout New Vegas. The Nies could be read as like a nouveau riche class of cultivators, who have completely forgotten their origins, and who now take part in ostracising “lower” professions such as prostitution.

Related to this, Nie Mingjue’s experience as the Sect Leader of the Qinghe Nie should have allowed him to, more than anyone, understand that the acts of violence that Jin Guangyao commits does not entirely stem out of his free will, but on the exigencies of his circumstances. As the Sect Leader of the Qinghe Nie, he has to to cultivate with a saber, and thus accept that he will die young and succumb to saber madness. For instance, Nie Mingjue tries to kill Jin Guangyao after kicking him down Koi Tower while in saber madness. This is literally after implying that he has never killed without good reason. As one in a long line of Sect leaders who have bouts of homicidal violence, he should have have some understanding of how acts of violence do not necessarily stem out of a deficient moral character, but also by how one’s mind has been shaped by one’s upbringing. For instance, when facing Meng Yao who said that he killed his commander in Langya, after his rage boiled over from having his mother been denigrated and humiliation her entire life, he should have been better prepared to understand.

Finally, looking at the good relationship that Nie Mingjue had with Nie Huaisang who is only his half-brother, maybe at one point Meng Yao hoped that when he entered the Jin Sect, he too could live as peaceably as Nie Huaisang did in the Unclean Realm, as the half-brother of Jin Zixuan. Sadly we all know how all that worked out, and it is Nie Huaisang who brings about JGY’s death.

ANYWAY wrapping up this post that turned out a lot longer than I expected… I think this is an interesting interpretation of Nie Mingjue and Jin Guangyao’s relationship. That in some sense, Nie Mingjue is a tragic hero out of a Shakespearan play. He genuinely wants to act according to his ideals of justice. He probably pledged sworn brotherhood with Jin Guangyao despite having doubts about his character because he believed the he could guide Jin Guangyao along the right path. Worst of all, Nie Mingjue had all the pieces of the puzzle to bridge an understanding with Jin Guangyao on his difficulties with power and privilege precisely because of his background as the Sect Leader of the Qinghe Nie. And more importantly he had the power and privilege to back Jin Guangyao up, against the influence of Jin Guangshan. But in canon, (at least through this lens) he never picks up these pieces of the puzzle, even though they are right before his eyes. And so, he embitters the people around him like Nie Huaisang and Jin Guangyao, because no one wants to be “enlightened” so forcefully, especially if it is by someone who does not want to understand their difficulties. If he had less power and privilege, Nie Mingjue would only be ridiculous and annoying to Jin Guangyao. But as he is, he was so dangerous to Jin Guangyao, that Jin Guangyao had to kill him first, before Nie Mingjue killed him in his saber madness or because of his narrow understanding of justice. Likewise, there could have been a point where Jin Guangyao saw what Nie Mingjue had with Nie Huaisang, along with the status the Qinghe Nie commanded in the world of cultivation — and thought that this was hope — that he might be able to live with dignity as a bastard and a son of a whore in the world of cultivation. But alas no, at least in canon, Nie Mingjue and Nie Huaisang were his doom.

[i-shall-never-repent]

Did some people really make those Lan Jewish in Canon setting!? I cannot comprehended this madness. Daoism has nothing to do with Jewish culture, nor comparing the wall of Gusu to the Western Wall, the Holy Wall for all Jewish, is appropriate.

#Thank you twitter for inform me this audacity exist #Mdzs #Respect different cultures #By not doing something like this #Ever

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One of the most hilarious aspects of FMA:B is just how the finale plays out.

like the protags get split (roughly) into Team Mustang and Team Ed Team Greed. 

Team Mustang, in preparation for the Promised Day, has consolidated power across the entirety of Amestris and organized a secret coup led by the Briggs forces covertly smuggled into Central. They then successfully take out the entirety of the High Command, and take command of the radio in such a way that they smoothly and secretively dictate all information released to the public which shuffles all blame onto the High Command and Briggs, away from Mustang, leaving Mustang’s hands clean and ripe for Fuhrer-dom, like the goddamn fucking pros they are

…and Team Greed has….um….hmmm…they sure did Show Up. Greed went somewhere. But I mean. …Ed definitely got into Central. He just……. Yeah he had no plan. None of those 4 (5?) idiots had any kind of plan in the months leading up to this. They were hiding in a basement. Stellar. Illustrious. Our Protagonist, everyone. The Prodigy. The Smartest state alchemist Amestris has seen. Hiding in a basement at home. Pretending to be dead.

Like Thank Fucking God for Mustang because FMA was never going to shape up into one of those “plucky young protag kid somehow outsmarts the whole Big Bad Organization” no Ed’s dumb as a doornail and would have gotten stomped into the ground if he didnt have An Experienced Strategic Adult With Uncountable Connections and Vast Knowledge of Military Procedure on his side.

#fma

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Hiromu Arakawa’s genius is obvious throughout all of FMA but her first and biggest leap of genius was in how she crafted her protagonist. 

Arakawa realized the burgeoning youth of the early 2000s wasnt interested in another plucky spry optimistic young shonen protag. Instead she gave us a short ugly egotistical asshole smarter-than-you atheist with so much money and power that people could no longer best him in arguments by telling him “dude shut up ur literally like 12″ 

Five pages in we’re told Edward’s famous and rich and powerful. Five more pages and he’s calling some girl stupid for thinking God exists. Five more pages and he’s proven right. Five more and he’s kicked an evil priest’s teeth in. And no one can tell his mom on him.

Hiromu Arakawa figured out the dream of every edgy young weeb discovering internet arguments for the first time and she cast them an idol made of gold.

#fma

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This Picrew is better than I thought. Thanks @hisohiso​ for tagging me :)

#Love these grins #Anyone who want to try just go for it

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Every time I hear people said they have Naruto as their role model I really want to ask "So you want people to take your problems as everyone problems, become a golden boy for fascists regime, drag your 'friend' back to the place that massacre said friend's whole family, and then let the rotten system stay as it is because you get to be the one in charge and profit from it?"

Konoha​ need to be reform or destroy since forever, too bad Madara failed.

ppl always be acting like "but sasuke killed people!!!!! he betrayed his friends!!!!" is an argument but to that i simply say more power to him

#pro uchiha #They deserve better #Sasuke​ deserves to lead a revolution #Madara​ was right

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Turn out that Xue Yang's courtesy name Chengmei​ could be interpreted to something along the line of "Help me accomplish my beautiful wishes’ in truth." What a beautiful name, JGY's expectation of his relationship with XY is really interesting to explore indeed.

#mdzs #jin guangyao #xue yang #Cultivation society revolution is indeed a beautiful wish

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“The closer rebel characters come to a definable ideology, the more likely they are to be written as villains. At the same time, the emotive aspects of rebellion - the heroism of the underdog, the thrill of fighting the power - are rendered safe for public consumption by taking out any explicit political ideology. … The effect of all this is to suggest that violence is somehow more sympathetic the less its perpetrators believe - that heroism decreases the more detailed your policy proposals get. If Luke Skywalker was fighting for galactic communism, or Daenerys intended to create a series of peasants’ councils to govern Westeros, or Harry Potter wanted to smash the Ministry of Magic and overturn wizard supremacy, we would have to confront serious and difficult questions about when political violence is appropriate, for whose benefit, and for what purposes. I don’t believe those are questions pop culture is incapable of asking. They are questions we do not want to ask.”

— Alister MacQuarrie, Outlaw Kings and Rebellion Chic (via secularbakedgoods)

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I don’t understand how people are sleeping on the Ennead manwha when Set is the definition of a Disaster Bi complete with war crimes, self-doubt, and guyliner.

#ennead #Plot driven story with loads of interesting characters #My dear Set #Can't even decide who to ship you with #Too many delicious ships to choose #Is that count as incest when it was a mythology of ancient gods family

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And many characters who are deem to be 'too problematique'​ by society for whatever reasons out there. Let's be honest, they are more interesting to explore.

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Allow me to add

Xue​ 'at least I'm willing to tear those tongues that insults your mother for you' Chengmei 🖤💛

So…canonically, JGY gave Xue Yang his courtesy name. And MDZS wiki says;

His courtesy name 薛成美 (Xuē Chéngměi) is derived from the proverb 成人之美 (chéng rén zhī měi) meaning ‘help others do good deeds’ and is usually used to describe the conduct of a gentleman. (x)

Now, I do not know much of anything about Mandarin or Chinese literature or the naming conventions therin. But correct me if I’m wrong–did he basically name Xue Yang ‘be good’?

#mdzs #jin guangyao #xue yang

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i know the general done thing in fics is to have jgy be very cynical about his dad from day 1 but like. i don’t think that is my read actually. i think he really loved his dad. the “i will do anything for you” behavior wasn’t just so he could stay on his good side or gain influence, it was because he wanted any scrap of affection or affirmation from his dad that badly. idk. i am thinking about this in connection with nmj. it hurts worse if he maintains a slightly unhinged devotion to them up until nmj kicks him down the stairs and his dad says “hahaha. forget about it.” and he wouldn’t have gone as far outside of the realm of reasonability when killing them if he wasn’t so insanely hurt because. he loved them. he did ridiculous, insane things to show them that. and none of it mattered because in the end he didn’t matter and no action on his part could change that. but they were just going to let him keep busting his ass to earn something they had no intention of ever giving him.

#shameless jiggy apologism #mdzs #jin guangyao #i do think nmj cared about him a lot #but he was so bad at caring about him that this is what it felt like #to jgy #i don't think he cared in a healthy way at all #but i'm not trying to say that like #nmj having violent paranoia featuring jgy is the same #or coming from the same place #as jgs's calculated cynical exploitation of his son #just that to jgy they feel similar #but i think if he hadn't cared about them #their deaths wouldn't have been so... creative #Tags from OP​ are really on point

[i-shall-never-repent]

Sometimes I really can’t believe that Airplane was like, “Yeah, I was going to reveal Shen Jiu’s tragic backstory for a heavy-hitting message about the cycle of abuse, but people have terrible taste and I’m a sellout, so nope!” 

And then SVSSS hit me in the last act with the whole Yue Qi and Shen Jiu story, and it was just like, Shen Jiu is not a good person, but fuck, I’m sad now. Yue Qingyuan basically sold his fucking soul to save Shen Jiu, failed to save him, and now he’s looking at a completely different person and doesn’t know it! Excuse me, I’m going to go lie down on the floor! And not get up! 

It’s like the Tianlang-Jun/Su Xiyan story. Tianlang-Jun, you are a shitty person, you have done some shitty things, but fuck, I’m weak to a tragedy. 

[i-shall-never-repent]

If I need to pick between him and LXC, I will pick YQY at any giving moment without ever thinking about changing my choice. LXC's devotion is on the condition that JGY need to fit into 'a good person' category, LXC turn his back to JGY -who saved his life, help rebuilt his Sect, and support him for 13+ years- because JGY's​ crimes.

While YQY just go on 'my benevolence is for SJ only and I will abuse my power to keep enabling him to do Bad Things'.

The best thing, like @hisohiso said, YQY is the strongest cultivator in the story (only threat to LBH), he just let the furthest thing from paragon of virtue walk over him, because this is his CHOICE to be with his special one, SJ. And I believe if it was anyone else, that idiot would not get a happy ending.

I stand firm on my previous opinion that YQY​ is one of the best husband materials out there. I will die on this hill.

What makes yqg character work so well that are adoration characters haven't? What do you think?

Specifically for “extremely adoring/benevolently intense guy” aspect? Lmao it’s bc he is no typical nice guy, he’s an enabler :’) He commits quite unethical acts for SJ while being fully aware of what he was doing was wrong. Another very important thing is that, it’s made obvious in the story that he is like that towards “one person only” - he doesn’t treat the rest like that, since his preferential treatment was a huge reason for other peak lords’ hate for SJ. And about committing unethical acts, obv for this “extremely devoted” trope to work they have to be willing to say fuck all to morals when it comes to That Person more or less but usually this trope gets written in a “oh my beloved can do nothing wrong, theyre a pure angel” way (xiyao) which isn’t even really dependable while with qijiu it’s the exact opposite, Yqy literally had thought SJ as a worse person than he actually was and still covered up for him. Also extremely likely that he thought of him as someone incapable of returning the affection (bc more i think about it less sense it makes for yqy to let him believe he left him behind if he actually thought he could ever mean something to sj) He was like, hmmm xiao jiu probably killed our sect brother :/ Eh whatever, let’s shut everyone up about it! Xiao Jiu torturing a disciple? Just politely suggest he probably got beaten enough and leave it at that! Xiao Jiu gambling away sect money? He can have mine too! Lol. Also, he’s objectively very powerful (canonically the only threat to LBH), highly respected and has authority since uhhh he’s the sect leader of the strongest sect lmao, and despite all that he chooses to behave in such a way, misuses his position and does it so openly when SJ gives him nothing in return. In comparison, very often this trope comes from a place of weakness, like a doormat character gets treated well by This One Person and latches themselves, or similar things.. which is just.. meaningless. If the character is weak in other ways, the emotion won’t be read as strong. Then there is the fact he....died for him like...twice. In a way that was realistic and wasn’t done for show, that alone can seal it already lol. Generally he’s written well too, you can see how a character like that would think “It doesn’t matter that I tried since I failed and he suffered for it, he wouldn’t forgive me anyway, I’ll just end up making myself look even weaker, let me drown myself in guilt till the end of my life as a punishment” for an instance, so the bond feels even more realistic for that reason as well.

So basically well written character + extreme and meaningful acts of devotion + behaviour focused on one person rather than general benevolence, in fact causing destruction for others is what makes it a good romance.

#qijiu #yue qingyuan #shen qingqiu #shen jiu #svsss #mdzs

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Crossover of Bureaucratic friendship I never know I need in my life but thankfully it exist anyway ❤️💛

Jgy just thinks it’s nice to talk to someone who gets it, you know?

#jin guangyao #mdzs #carnistir #morifinwe #caranthir #silmarillion

[i-shall-never-repent]

Penranduil & Penrond.