#I'm not that active in the mdzs fandom

[3kidsinacoat]

#I think the difference in how the OGs get treated is very funny #Shen jiu is the third most written for svsss character on ao3; there's a ton of headcanons and discourse surrounding him etc #And half of the mdzs fandom doesn't even know mxy's name #At least I think so #I'm not that active in the mdzs fandom #scumbag self saving system #scum villains self saving system #the scum villain's self saving system #scum villian self saving system #ren zha fanpai zijiu xitong #mo dao zu shi #grandmaster of demonic cultivation #mo xuanyu #Shen jiu #original shen qingqiu #Mxtx #Memes #Svsss #Mdzs #original shang qinghua

[aroacehanzawa]

help can someone explain the canon jiang cheng tag because i'm not actively involved in the fandom but i wanna know what the beef is

#i'm nosy..... #i only used to be active in the mdzs/cql fandom on twitter about 2 years ago #mad times btw. i don't miss it

[fateandloveentwined]

wuxia, xianxia, and cultivation differences meta

translations: wuxia 武俠, xianxia 仙俠, and cultivation 修真/修仙 (xīuzhēn/xīuxiān)

think i've seen posts on this eons ago, and i'm pretty sure there are tons of these online, but since this has been written up already let's just have another one.

wuxia 武俠

wuxia and xianxia sound similar, but basically for wuxia it is about the pugilistic world (江湖 jiānghú). It is relatively more down-to-earth, and people practice martial arts ("kungfu") in their current life -- they do not do it to become xians (仙) and gods (神) however.

Like Thousand Autumns and Faraway Wanderers/Word of Honor, it has more historical background and ties to the current court and kingdoms, because people are living in the moment and concern themselves with worldly issues.

Martial arts may seem unrealistic, but in view of chinese fantasy it would be considered "real". It consists of fighting moves and internal energy, which they call qi or nèigōng (內功), and at times you see people flying around, climbing hills and jumping across rooftops which is qīnggōng (輕功).

xianxia 仙俠

A level up would be xianxia, where characters in the story cultivate to become xians (and gods, like in the heaven official's blessing). They don't really care about earthly issues here now, because their ambitions lie beyond the current world, and cultivation, getting stronger, and an immortal life are majorly all their goals.

You may not always see them working towards that purpose, such as in mdzs they are considered a lower-xianxia society (低魔), meaning people don't go through all the steps of cultivation and only stay at the stage before the "golden core" stage.

In xianxia, characters still learn basic fighting moves aka. martial arts, but to direct the internal energy they use línglì (灵力), zhēnqì (真气), and fǎlì (法力), all xianxia terms you commonly see. "neigong" is practically nonexistent in this genre. That's why people building up their "neigong" instead of "lingli" are likely never going to be able to cultivate.

cultivation 修真/修仙

A subgenre in the xianxia category would be cultivation. Characters actively go through the stages of cultivation, and likely for the MC, because they are the main character, they successfully become a xian and exit the world at the end of the novel.

There are many stages of cultivation, usually defined at the beginning of the novel in the synopsis, and a typical example of the different levels would be this:

练气，筑基，金丹，元婴，化神，炼虚，合体，大乘，渡劫

And with a cursory search, an English translation would be something like this, albeit not with all the cultivation ranks identified.

Qi condensation (练气), Foundation establishment (筑基), Core Formation (金丹), Nascent Soul (元婴), and the names after that vary too greatly with translation and fandom so I'll jump straight to Immortal Ascension

extra info: getting into the philosophy of it all

It'd be interesting to note that the word "xiá" (俠) permeates all these genres. This is something akin to the concept of "hero", but not at all also, and I'd love to speak more on this but this post has already gone way longer than I hoped it would be, so perhaps another day.

Regardless, it is interesting to note that wuxia has a greater emphasis on "xia" than xianxia. (some joke that cultivation doesn't have the word "xia" in it, and much of that is because characters have foregone heroism and focused on gaining powers and working towards ascension instead). As a result, wuxia is more confucianism-oriented, though not without its taoism and buddhism influences.

xianxia, on the other hand, is mainly derived from "dào" (道), from taoism, which is another lengthy concept if I ever get to it.

And some may have heard of the "farming" genre, 种田 (zhòngtián). This has to do with golden fingers (mary sues) in imperialistic china, earning a wealth of money, and all that. It has nothing to do with cultivation, alike they sound in english.

that's it for now, hmu if you wish to ask/discuss!

(and apologies for the pinyin translations, hope it's understandable still! formally writing pinyin they are supposed to be two separate words not one.)

#danmei #mdzs #word of honor #cdrama #thousand autumns #cnovel #wuxia #xianxia #cultivation novel #chinese language #chinese #fate's meta

[veliseraptor]

Top five spiciest untamed opinions!

man, I've been in my own little corner of fandom for long enough that I feel like I struggle a little to parse what is spicy of my opinions and what isn't, but here's a go at it

The Untamed is a show with complex, morally grey characters that's telling a slightly different but not inherently inferior story. Maybe I'm just a bit defensive about this, and I have with time come to appreciate a lot of things about the novel over the way they play out in the show, but The Untamed was the first version of the story that I fell in love with and I think at least some of the criticisms of it overstate the degree to which it morally simplifies the story. I think, whether because of requirements of censorship or other reasons, that the moral messiness of the story is subtler, I don't think it's absent, and while Jin Guangyao in particular falls victim to a pretty intense villain edit the narrative still has plenty of sympathy for him (even if the audience, all too often, does not). I think it's telling a slightly different story (as others have discussed), but I think it's a strong adaptation that still works with the underlying themes of the text.

However, that being said, The lessening of Wei Wuxian's culpability, as in the introduction of the second flautist, weakens his character. I feel like the character of Wei Wuxian as we see him in The Untamed still has the recognizable flaws of the character from the novel - I think the degree to which they're sometimes claimed to be toned down is overstated, which I think I've written some about before. He's still at least a little arrogant, causes problems, has a definite temper, and doesn't always respect other peoples' choices, among other things. But what The Untamed does do is remove some of his culpability, or at least temper it - both for Jin Zixuan's death and the massacre at Nightless City, which are two moments that contribute to a strong tragic arc in the first life, which makes for a more powerful (imo) arc in the second life. Removing, or at least lessening, Wei Wuxian's culpability for Jin Zixuan's death and Jiang Yanli's death makes him more a victim of circumstance than of his own human flaws, and at least for me, a character who is doomed by their own flaws is a far more compelling one than one who just happens to fall victim to outside forces. It makes him, I would argue, more passive and less of an active force, and I think the culpability for those two deaths - and the loss of control that causes it - makes for a more powerful narrative than that of a man who is victimized by someone else's actions.

Jin Guangyao was a good Chief Cultivator. I see people talk about him as though he was corrupt and evil and just plotting all the time, but the Bad Things™ he does mostly happen before his tenure as Chief Cultivator and, even taking those into account, have a limited impact on the world at large (with the exception of Nie Mingjue's death, but even that I would argue has more personal repercussions than broader political ones). As far as his responsibility for the cultivation world at large, we have no evidence prior to his downfall that he is negatively perceived by people, except for the fact of his birth/origins.

this is more MDZS-related than Untamed specific, but: MXTX deserves praise for writing "problematic" and messy queer sex, but it's just not hot. I don't have a whole lot to add on this one, but one of my least favorite parts of some corners of The Untamed fandom are people who are thoroughgoing MXTX antis who are quick to cry about the ~problematic~ aspects of Lan Wangji and Wei Wuxian's sex life (which, honestly, I think are overstated a lot of the time, as is the weirdness of the sex scenes); however, in my opinion, the sex scenes as they stand just aren't very sexy, and I don't think that's intentional (as it arguably is in SVSSS). The sex scenes may be a shortcoming in the text, perhaps, but not the one certain people think it is.

this is again a stronger argument in the novel but I think it's present in the show as well: Jin Guangyao and Wei Wuxian are "there but for the grace of god" foils, but not in the sense of Jin Guangyao being "Wei Wuxian if he made bad moral choices" but in the sense of "who Wei Wuxian could've been if his circumstances were different." I've definitely written about this before and how much it drives me nuts the way people treat narrative foils in this story in general as Goofus and Gallant style duos, but this is a specific one. I think Jin Guangyao is an example of a story that runs alongside Wei Wuxian's, but ends in a different place, and I think the story isn't saying that he ends in that place because of something inherently worse about Jin Guangyao, but because of the way his circumstances happen to diverge from Wei Wuxian's in specific key ways. In some ways his ending is even a near beat-for-beat rewrite of Wei Wuxian's death, and Wei Wuxian receives the grace of a second life not because of any inherent merit, but actually because of his bad reputation. I think this goes for Xue Yang, too, actually.

I absolutely know I'm forgetting things and there are probably things back in my bitchy opinions tag that I could dig out, but here's at least a few that came to mind.

#conversating #maester of spreadsheets #lise has opinions #none of these feel so bitchy they need to go in the bitchy opinions tag but just in case i think i'll #lise's aggressively bitchy opinions about irrelevant and unimportant matters #lise memes #top five meme #the sad queer cultivators show

[svsss-fanon-exposed]

just wanted to say thank you so much for this wonderful blog!! i enjoy it a lot and feel like i’m learning a lot from it. it seems to me that out of the three mxtx books, that sv is the one with the most prevalent fanon attached to it - or maybe the one with the most fanon confused for canon. i wonder if this is because of the nature of the text as a kind of au of pidw- there’s sort of more than one canon in text, and due to shen yuan’s relationship to the original book, and his narrative POV, maybe people kind of take on this more meta-textual approach to sv itself as a novel

You're very welcome! All I really want out of this blog is to learn things & also to share things with others to learn too!

While I won't necessarily say that SV has the most fanon of the three novels, since I'm not overly active in MDZS/TGCF fandoms, what you say does make sense. Because, even in SVSSS itself, we also are dealing with Shen Yuan's fanon the whole time! And as we find out through the novel that SY's original ideas of PIDW's background weren't all correct, then it's easy to wonder if there are also other things to blame on SY's PIDW fanon (such as the argument in real-world fandom as to whether SJ abused disciples other than LBH), or on his unreliable narration in SV canon (something like, were the three daoist nuns actually interested in LBH, or were they actually blushing upon seeing him after having read Regret of Chunshan and the like?).

Since a major idea in SV itself is that Shen Yuan as the reader didn't know everything about PIDW, it creates a situation that is so very ripe for speculation among fandom-- and of course, when there are different kinds of ideas, some of them will take off more than others based on who relates to them and in what way.

That, aside from the multiple timelines in the novel itself, can make it very easy for fanon to become so common that it gets mistaken for being canon.

And, of course, the fact that even with all the worldbuilding that does exist in SVSSS, there is still so much that hasn't been explained or gone into-- so of course, in transformative works, fans will have to come up with their own explanations.

#answered

[aeternallis]

Kim's Place in the Mafia: Novel vs Show

The one thing I can say without a doubt in my mind is that from the crumbs we get of Kim and Chay from the book and show, these two are obsessively in love with each other. So I'll say that now and get that squared away.

And I know, most of the fandom detest the book due to its problematic authors and will never read it, and that's completely valid. Furthermore, I will say now that the book is trash and hardly coherent at times. But as my favorite English scholar for Ancient Rome, Mary Beard, once said: "It's trash...but it's very valuable trash."

For what it's worth, reading the book at least once can provide a more nuanced understanding of why the showrunners made the changes they did in the show. The changes in and of themselves makes for a more cohesive story (SOO MUCH MORE COHESIVE), but it also goes without saying that a lot of the events in the show remain faithful to the novel, so in that regard, there is some merit to be had.

Finally, when I say the novel is "trash", I mean the narrative itself, not necessarily the translation (although it's not perfect by any means). If anything, I'm grateful for the translators who took the time to translate this novel into English, since translation is a thankless job most times in fandom (lookin' at you, MDZS). As I speak no Thai whatsoever, I can’t give an informed opinion on DAEMI's technical writing abilities, since I'm not a native speaker, nor am I the book's target audience.

But, I digress.

The more I reread the book (in all its trash glory), the more I find myself questioning Kim's views in regards to how he sees himself as part of a mafia family. 🤔

In the book, Kim is a lot more accepting of his place within the mafia, despite his initial tendencies of disappearing on his guards and staying away from the main house. In fact, that pretty much changes once Chay enters the picture.

Gotta love a Kinn who's curious about his little bro's love life. XD

Kim is firmly settled into the fold of the family business (if that scene in the secret warehouse is anything to go by) and there’s a scene in the beginning of the book where Korn obligates all 3 sons to dress up in some fancy suits and visit their chocolate factory, since he’s particularly keen on getting it off the ground. This shows that although Kinn is set to inherit (in public, at least) the other two sons still have their duties to the family.

In fact, I will say that one of the most interesting things about reading the book is finding out that Kim's sleuthing is actually canon. Lol Granted, it's sleuthing more in regards to finding the mole and not really about Korn's game plan, but sleuthing nonetheless.

But in the show, his role within the family business and how he views it are a little bit more foggy because he has his musical career to keep him occupied, besides his sleuthing into Korn’s affairs. He’s not active in the way one would typically expect a member of the mafia to be (and who knows, this may be due to limited time constraints on the part of the showrunners), but he’s active within that sphere nonetheless.

And because of this, contrary to the general fandom consensus, I never really got the impression that Kim wanted to be out of the mafia, yknow? Personally, I think it’s too big of a leap to say him moving out = him not wanting to be in the mafia. Having that sort of character motivation wouldn't really make sense either, because then we would have had stronger hints of it, I think?

At the very least, by the end of the show, Kim--just like Chay--has more reasons to stay than not. The way I see it, Kim wanting to be out of the mafia would actually somewhat contradict his actions in the show.

Despite his effort in staying away from the mansion his father and brothers live in (and later on, Chay), Kim benefits from being a Theerapanyakul. We see this in a lot of different ways: the penthouse he lives in, the cars he drives (he gets his own set of the Maserati fleet, yo), his private studio, the freedom of movement he has in being able to easily get information (although this may be debatable), using Big as a gopher.

I highly doubt his career as a young musician is maintaining his luxurious lifestyle (perhaps only a part of it, like the fame); imo, there’s a calculated reason why BOC chose to keep the level of his fame as vague as possible. The way I see it, Kim moved out and pursued music simply because, due to his unique position of being the youngest son (aka the spare), he just had the luxury to do so.

If he truly wanted out of the mafia, I'm firmly on the camp that he could have done so already. We've seen in both the show and the book that unlike Kinn who's constrained by his duties, Kim does have the freedom to disappear, even to the point that it's to his detriment at times. Lol

Maybe I can go even further, and suggest that perhaps the reason he chose to move out is to get a better vantage point of the circumstances surrounding his father's schemes and the ongoing tides of power. Kinda like, he has to move away from the trees, in order to see the entire forest.

I wouldn't go so far as to say he wants power for himself (although this idea would be fun to entertain, especially within the context that he now has Chay in his life to protect), but again, being a member (a high-ranking one, at that) of the Theerapanyakul family benefits him in a lot of different ways.

In one of BOC's interviews and then in Jeff's goodbye message during the last KPWT, he mentioned something about Pond changing up Kim's character in order to make Jeff Satur shine. Idk about y'all, but that's quite a touching gesture, and one I definitely approve of, whilst I get a better understanding of the similarities and differences between novel!Kim and show!Kim. It's obvious from the show that besides changing Kim's maturity level and changing his image from a fuck boi to a cool prince, giving him a passion for music definitely humanized him and served as a way to balance out the other two love stories.

But be that as it may, although we the audience don't know as to what extent Pond changed Kim's character to better fit the story, at the very least maintaining Kim's position as a legitimate contender in the politics of the mafia world remains consistent in both the book and show.

Whether that observation lines up with the idea that he wants out of the mafia though, is entirely up to you. XD

#kimchay #kinnporche the series #kimhan theerapanyakul #character analysis #meta #kpts meta #kpts novel

[foxyyaoguai]

💫 Announcement: New MDZS/The Untamed Subreddit 💫

I'm excited to announce that I took over as the mod of the r/mdzs subreddit! I plan to make it into an alternative for r/MoDaoZuShi, whose mods aren't active anymore.

About this community This is a community for the danmei novel "Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation". Discussions about the novel and all adaptations, including The Untamed, the donghua, the audio dramas, the manhua, the manga, etc. are all welcome.

I have the following vision for this subreddit:

Give newcomers an easy entry into the MDZS fandom through the subreddit's wiki.

Provide links to fandom events, discords, fanfic references, and more. The MDZS fandom is huge and it's easy to lose track!

Create a safe environment for fans to share and discuss without fear of discourse or harassment.

Create threads where we can recommend and search for MDZS fanfiction. Here is a link to the first Fanfiction Mega Thread.

Weekly or Monthly discussion posts, based on activity and interest.

I have gathered a lot of resources throughout my time in the MXTX/MDZS fandom which I want to share with all of you. All collections are a WIP and you're welcome to add more!

Overview of MDZS, MXTX, and danmei Discord Servers

List of MXTX/MDZS Event Pages The list includes links to danmei meetups, big bangs, exchanges, ship weeks, prompt fests, event calendars, zines, and more.

Resources for fanfiction authors This list includes links to chapter and episode summaries, location guides, hanfu guides, language guides, speech pattern analysis, and more.

Places to buy Danmei and MDZS Merch in Tokyo, Japan

Links to the explicit manhua panels in English and Chinese

What makes this subreddit different than the MoDaoZuShi subreddit?

I’m aware that the MoDaoZuShi subreddit exists and I used to be active there. Unfortunately, the moderation team has been inactive for a long time. I applied as a mod and sent a message to the moderators, hoping that I could improve things, but never received a reply, which is why I requested to take over as the moderator of this subreddit. I hope r/mdzs can become a safe alternative for fans of MDZS with an up-to-date wiki page and active moderation.

Please help this subreddit grow by sharing this announcement. I hope to see you in r/mdzs! :)

Let me know if you have any questions or suggestions! You can leave a comment here or reach me through Modmail on reddit.

#mdzs #the untamed #mo dao zu shi #mdzs fandom #mdzs fanfiction #mdzs fanfic rec #wangxian #mdzs fanfic #mdzs fanart #mdzs subreddit #mdzs events #mdzs merch #mdzs discord #danmei #danmei fandom #danmei events

[wangxianficrecs]

Hi! Sorry if this is a weird question, but this blog is so cool and I haven't seen many like it that I was wondering, do yall know of any ficrec blogs like this one that are for other fandoms? I'd love to know more about other communities like this!

Hi! I'm glad you're enjoying the blog~

Are there any particular fandoms you're looking for? In either case, I will need to depend on the hive mind of our followers, because MDZS is the only fandom actively partipating in, so if anyone else knows any other blogs like this one, please comment!

Here are rec blogs I know:

@hualian-fic-recs [TGCF]

@mxtxficrec [All MXTX fandoms]

~Kay

--

We have a post over at fic finder that has a few other rec blogs if you want to check it out? They are mostly mxtx blogs though ^^

- Mod C

#ask #answer #rec blogs

[lgbtlunaverse]

I think i need to explain why this line makes me go so feral

I think the "fine! I'll kill myself after I kill you" line from nie mingjue in chapter 49 permanently altered my brain chemistry and it has something to do with precisely how i got into the mdzs fandom space in the first place.

I've mentioned it a few times but i started watching the untamed in late 2019 right as it was blowing up everywhere and, likely due to a combination of undiagnosed adhd wrecking my ability to be interested in anything for longer than 4 seconds and me very much not being used to the specific style of acting, especially during fightscenes, i never finished it. The only concrete memory i have of it is seeing wen qing's face and meng ziyi completely short circuiting my little gay brain. I remember more of staring endlessly at pictures of her than I remember of the plot. Press F to pay respects.

Flash forward a few years and a friend recommends me a fic writer for an fma fic (the fic riter in question is metisket) and i like their stlye so much i decide to read other stuf they've written. Here we get to our prime suspect: "the one body problem" a genuinely hilarious fic where jingyi gets posessed by wei wuxian like a year before the plot happens and they become awkward brain buddies. 10/10 i loved it (and still do) even though i remember huasiang showing up in my first reading and I, having fully forgotten his name, had no fucking clue what was going on. (Little did i know...)

Anyway flash forward ANOTHER year and I decide to reread that fic, and then the other untamed fic metisket wrote, a wen qing time travel fix it that's also real fun. And then i'm like. huh. that's fun. wonder if there's anything in their bookmarks.

And then, within 20 days, I had read approximately 350 fics. Many of them 100k+ words. I cannot stress enough how much this CONSUMED my brain's ability to do or think about anything else. I now think back to the early days of getting my adhd diagnosis and insisted that while i had pretty much all other symptoms, I did not get hyperfixations. Lol. Lmao, even.

I am mainly focused on wangxian and the junior quartet becuase they are my baby ducklings and i love them. I do come across some 3zun fics and I think huh... this is interesting. But the 3zun brainrot is LIGHT at this point.

The thing about reading more than 350 fanfics is that at some point you kind of piece the plot of the source material back together backwards. Especially because my favorite genre was time travel fix its, where characters relive the whole plot and like to make allusions to all the ways everything went wrong last time.

Because I'm still squarely in my wangxian + juniors (plus a heavy dosis of yunmeng sibling reconciliation) corner here... the feelings on jin guangyao in my fandom corner are. different from where I'd end up soon after. He is my special little guy though, so I do kind of immediatley develop a fondness for him, and I approach my 3zun and early nieyao thoughts specifcially from the assumption that the widespread opinion is that nie mingjue is a fine good guy and jgy is the evil one (I have not seen the bad nmj takes yet. well... I am seeing DIFFERENT bad nmj takes but they're nice to him. In, like, the wrong way. With no solid undertanding of the inherent tragedy at the heart of him that makes him so blorbo to me. But still.) major reactions to the stairs scene as I see them on twitter are "girlboss! He should've kicked him harder 💅"

And the baby jgy apologist in me goes :/ me no likey. And at this point I am also actively seeking out metas and analysis posts so i'm seeing some better opinions than that and getting a halfway solid graps on the themes. wwx and jgy being foils becomes very obvious to me very quickly. So, with my curent understanding of the plot, I go... you know all you people who are like "god i wish nmj would have killed jgy sooner" it uhh... kinda sounds like he'd have died if he did that. If he'd killed him before meng yao had gone off to spy there is a very big chance they'd have lost the sunshot campaign and most of the main cast would be dead. If he'd killed him at the stairs that's... well that's killing your sworn brother, which by the canon's own admission is a universally reviled crime, and jin guangshan could easily take advantage of this by demanding nmj's head in retribution, since he already wanted to get rid of him anyway. He doesn't give a fuck about a-yao of course but he could pretend well enough that he does. And what leg would nmj have to stand on? The jin clan is canonically both willing and able to slaughter entire clans for the murder or attempted murder of the leader or his family, and nie mingjue is the kinda guy who'd immediately offer himself up if it meant the rest of his clan would be spared.

This combined with jin guangyao specifcally dying for his murder of nie mingjue, with huaisang basically not caring much about everything else he does and wanting to get revenge only for his brother, it gives nieyao a sort of mutual doomed soulmates feel. For either of them, killing the other would spell death for themselves. They either both die or they both live, one cannot live on without the order. That's crunchy. I like it.

The fire palace though? well, on meng yao's part there is a real argument that if he'd let nmj get killed immediatly instead of dragging it out he wouldn't have been able to get wrh alone and distracted enough to assasinate him, so that's one half of the mutual doom coin, and if nmj had killed him during their fight there he's also done for. But after? Right before Xichen intervenes? I had no answer for that yet.

(You know what's coming. I did not)

It is at this point that i realize that if this is gonna keep being A Thing then i need to read the source material before I catch fatal fanon poisoning. Yes, I can piece together the plot and themes from seeing what stays consistent across fics and what are the author's own opinons. But I know just as well that sometimes fanon just agrees on shit that didn't happen and treats it like canon, and I have no way of knowing which is which. So I start reading the novel.

And of course, eventually I get to the empathy sequence. And remember, my "nieyao both live or both die" theory is heavy on my mind at this point, and the only stickler is that nmj could sort of have killed meng yao after the confrontation with wrh, still believing meng yao was actually working for him, and not a spy, and get off... not scott-free, Xichen won't be happy, but it's not gonna cost him his life.

And then I read THIS.

Please Imagine dropping a whole block of pure elemental sodium into water. Except the sodium is this quote and the water is my poor little delicate brain. Not only is my theory right, it is ten times more unhinged than i thought it was.

And considering that Nie Mingjue does not seem like the kind of guy who'd consider something like a life debt to have an expiration date, and because after this he will link himself legally and socially to jin guangyao as family and declare that one among their brotherhood turning against the others is to be met with a painful death, I can no longer read the scene at the stairscase in jinlintai without the impression that he is still planning to die afterwards. Which, if you wanted to make that scene even more painful, this is a very efficient way of losing all your remaining hinges.

I think I'd have gone crazy about this line no matter what context I heard it in, but this one specifically? where I'm already obsessed with idea of nieyao's deaths being connected by the narrative and missing just this one piece and having it confirmed? out loud? from one of the characters himself? It's like giving cocaine to a baby.

#mdzs #fandom #jin guangyao #meng yao #nie mingjue #nieyao #? sorta #this was months ago and i have long since worked my way through the whole novel #plus rereading empathy approximately 14 more times #funnily enough the fics that initially got me interested in 3zun don't gell so well with my reading of them anymore #still very well written and i can reread them happily but it's still kind of ironic #it is what i wanted i suppose. Making sure you don't fall for fanon means fanon sometimes becomes less enjoyable #also @helesia if you're reading this yes YOU are the friend and yes that means this is YOUR fault #i'm billing you for my next therapy appointment #not meta not a headcanon but a secret 3rd thing (unorganized rambling)

[admirableadmiranda]

Hi, I'm new to this fandom and saw about your stand against Jiang Cheng and I'm genuinely curious, could I ask you why do you hate the character so much? I'm genuinely curious.

Hello! Welcome to the MDZS fandom! It’s a really interesting place to be.

I do think you are perhaps misunderstanding my fight, and it’s understandable, there’s a lot of history behind it. But I don’t actually hate Jiang Cheng the book character at all.

He’s a fantastic antagonist, one who has enough happen to him that he’s understandable without justifying his actions. His anger and bitterness make him incredibly active, which can help move the plot along well, and the fact that he is also Wei Wuxian’s personal antagonist makes him very fun and relevant as you need the antagonists that can make a character hurt personally for stories of this type.

As his general character archetype, I think he’s done really well. I quite enjoy him in the context he is supposed to be seen as, the younger person who grew up with the hero who instead of attempting to better himself, tore down those around him in an attempt to put everyone on the same level.

My problem (and my fight) is that the character of Jiang Cheng in Modaozushi is not the Jiang Cheng that is in the fanfics and the art and the meta and discussions.

The Jiang Cheng that you see in fanfics and metas that isn’t under the Not JC Friendly on Ao3 or #canon jiang cheng tag on tumblr is one that is no longer an antagonist or in character, but someone else entirely. Someone who no longer slots into the world of MDZS as if he were actually the person they posit him to be, the events that he is responsible for would have never happened. Quite simply they take the character I enjoy, erase all of his actual traits and then show up to scream at me for writing him wrong, or lying about the book, or not knowing how to read.

Or they are gleefully celebrating classism and homophobia with him. I can’t tell you how many posts I’ve seen that are basically “he’s right to be homophobic because Wangxian are annoying and he should hate them for that”. In a danmei fandom. About the lead couple. I already have dealt with more than enough homophobia in my daily life, why do I have to deal with it in a fandom for a novel in which the leads are a happily married queer couple?

I have been in this fandom for a year and a half. I tag my posts appropriately. When I was requested to not put character hate in the main tag (and novel quotes qualified as character hate), I did as they asked and invented my own tag. Sure it’s a little snarky, but it’s also an easy one to block and allows others like myself who enjoy the character as he is in the book to find my stuff. On ao3, I’ve written a few fics that use him in it as he is in the book and tagged it not for JC fans as they requested.

Do you know what I got?

I have anon hate for using my tag, the very tag I created in response to their request. On my fics that use him, I have people showing up to cry that he’s out of character and I can’t write. When I did all that I could do to try and enjoy a character as he is in canon and as they continually say is what they want. “You don’t have to like him, just tag your stuff so we don’t have to see it.”

I do stand against his stans. I have blocked many of them and gotten in arguments with many others. You are new to this fandom so you wouldn’t have seen this, but a year ago one of them wrote a fanfic about Lan Wangji murdering Wei Wuxian because they were mad about the very existence of the not for jc fans tag, and tagged it with romance and fluff tags so that fans of wangxian would click on it and read a horrible, deliberately hurtful fic and gleefully celebrated it on Twitter.

Why should I not stand against them? They have bullied so many people out of this fandom for not writing Jiang Cheng in the way they want. That is not okay. This is a massive fandom in places where it is very easy to filter and tag, and they try to bully and chase us out of the whole fandom because we don’t like their made up version of a character, or the fact that they are homophobic and shitty to the leads and to me and my friends and my followers.

Welcome to Modaozushi fandom, new reader. It’s a very volatile place with a long history. This is my section of it. And that is why I tag with canon jiang cheng and do not take any shit from people who have umbrage with that.

Thanks for the ask, I hope you have a really great day and at least consider my words even if you don’t agree with them. I suspect if you do, we will never have a problem with each other.

#mdzs #canon jiang cheng #asks #fandom history

[tavina-writes]

currently trying to think if I remember any situations in Jin Yong wuxia where a family preferred sons over daughters (especially as like, a socially mandated thing) and coming up short.

Like I think there are plenty of situations where powerful men/families/sects only have one child and that child is a daughter. And this is neither weird, highly remarked upon, or considered odd in any way. Nor is anyone feeling pressed to come up with a son in the future.

Ren Yingying from XAJH, Yue Lingshan from XAJH, Huang Rong from LOCH, Guo Fu (from ROCH) for a good portion of her life (16 years of it, also Guo Fu wasn't displaced bc one of the twins was a boy, NOR were her parents trying to have more children on purpose), Yang Guo and XLN's daughter from ROCH/HSDS, Gongsun Lu'e from ROCH, etc.

Also their status range from like 'extremely important and visible family in the jianghu' to 'actually not all that well known' so it's not just a "well our family is powerful so who gives a fuck" kind of situation.

Like these are male dominated books, there are more men than there are women in Jin Yong's books (there are really cool women in his books though), but there's almost none 'oh no how will a girl inherit!' left beef. The girl will learn martial arts, like it's hard?

I think this is also relatively true of Gu Long books too, so at some points I'm left ??? at the discourse re: inheritance and gender in MDZS fandom bc I don't think it's actively stated anywhere that women aren't supposed to inherit? Or aren't allowed? or are less capable? or that there's a strong societal prejudice against it? Just. It's a danmei so most of these positions are occupied by men. Like, there are maybe five whole women and even less among the juniors. Who and how and why will they inherit if they don't exist.

#this isn't actually meta #I'm just tagging it that way bc I'm having a thinky thought again #like there's a surprising number of only or eldest daughters in Jin Yong's writing #and nobody is remotely commenting about this #like all of HYS's associates meet his daughter and they're not like 'man you should've had a son are you getting a son soon' #NO they're like 'oh my god I wish EYE had a cute daughter' #meta #my meta #I'm thinking about this in terms of like how people discuss inheritance or genderswaps in MDZS #bc I don't....I don't actually think the sects in MDZS (as they are in canon) would... #seriously have an issue with girl heirs? #like maybe the lan bc lan yi was so unpopular but like they tried one female sect leader at least lmao #like idk I just see this in fic/post canon fic a lot where there's this anxiety to have a son and I'm just left standing there like #'idk if this world is actually that misogynistic in this way #this seems like it's been transplanted from the imperial/royalty/nobility inheritance crisis genre'

[tbgkaru-woh]

Hiii, I wanted to do some questions out of curiosity, since I love see your arts and intakes on characters

1- Do you have any others fandoms you enjoy outside of the danmei ones?

2- any opinions on Jiang Yanli × Nie Mingjue? it's been awhile since I read something of MDZS so I dont remember if their ages are similar or not, but I have the feeling that NMJ is a dotting husband and there would be so much dotting for each other!

3- Where do you take inspiration for your designs on the clothes???? They are literally amazing!!! Such creative design with so much complementing on the sects cultures!!

Sorry for anything written wrong or confusing, interacting is still new to me, I hope you have a good day!

1- I've been in many fandoms over the years (and they're never fully gone, just pushed into subconciousness) but active-ish ones are Overwatch, Warframe, One Piece, Final Fantasy 14 Past ones were Captain America, Apex Legends, Critical Role, Sherlock (BBC), Life is Strange 2- I love the idea of them a lot ;v; Nielan is still my no.1 because I LOVE Lan Xichen, what a lovable motherly freak, but JYL can occupy very similiar spot to LXC in NMJ dynamic so they are my second NMJ ship :') NMJ just feels like such a wife-guy and I could never see JZX as a straight man I'm sorry I'm not buying it, maybe only if he's into ALL 3 of the Jiang siblings lol 3- Thank you ♥♥♥ I'm such a hoe for fashion shows and photos, I've been injected by fantasy and sci-fi games and medias since ever, so anything that is "weird-pretty" or slightly out of ordinary looking is fantastic, and also I was a magical girl girlie as a kid so every character had to be color-coded and distinct in silhouette and vibe! :D I think all three of those had big impact on how I approach my designs thank you for all these wonderful asks!!! You're pretty good at this interacting thing!

[fannish-karmiya]

I've often noticed people in the MDZS fandom imply that the narrative essentially punishes all of the antagonists for their crimes and that, by extension, anyone who survives the end of the novel is thus not that bad, or at least redeemable. Personally, I find this a very flawed idea. MDZS is not a novel where justice prevails; it's a novel where those in power act with impunity and never face justice for it.

In fact, I think the only times anyone faces justice is when their victims happened to also be upper class.

No one in cultivation society cares that Jin Guangyao mass murdered prostitutes (twice). They don't even care that much about the smaller, less important sects who were massacred by Lanling Jin. They definitely don't care about the Wens. No, they care that he killed Nie Mingjue. They care that he married his sister, killed his father, and killed his son. Nie Huaisang only acted against Jin Guangyao because he wanted revenge for the death of his brother.

No one cares that Jiang Cheng led the siege and helped massacre 50 innocent people who were non-combatants (none of the Wen remnants had swords). No one cares that he spent 13 years hunting down people he suspects of practising guidao and torturing and killing them, regardless of whether they truly did or not, or whether they were using guidao to harm others or not. They also don't care that he sometimes killed people simply for having the name Wen and being unlucky enough to cross him.

That is why he survives to the end of the novel. Not because his crimes weren't horrific, not because he's been deemed redeemable or 'not that bad' by the narrative. But because his victims were people their society doesn't care about.

Dare I say it, it's the same with the Lans. Lan Xichen isn't being 'spared' by the narrative because he's just a hapless victim; his survival has nothing to do with whether he's a good person or not. In fact, he survived in the end because, to paraphrase MXTX: even scum has someone they care about. Gusu Lan's failings go unaddressed because their victims were people they could get away with hurting. Who will judge them as unrighteous for taking part in the siege, when all the other sects did, too? Who will judge them for how they imprisoned Lan-furen for life, when her fate was kept a secret and she had no powerful family to speak for her? Who will judge them for whipping Lan Wangji 33 times, when that, too, was kept a secret, and he was being punished for protecting Wei Wuxian, who the cultivation world only viewed as a dog to be put down? Who will judge them for not wanting to give shelter to Wen Yuan, an innocent child, when their whole world wanted to kill said innocent child?

Jiang Cheng is not left alive at the end because his crimes weren't 'that bad'. Lan Xichen isn't still alive because he's actually a good person (I'm sorry, when does he ever do anything actively good in the novel? he's very neutral). Lan Qiren isn't still alive and a respected elder of the Lan sect because he's a good person with no blood on his hands. All of the other sect leaders and cultivators who took part in the siege aren't alive because they were less culpable.

They're alive because their victims were people society doesn't care about, and still does not care about. That's it. That's the only reason.

#mdzs #mdzs fandom #mdzs meta #short meta

[microcomets]

20 questions for fic writers

tagged by @thychesters! ty kate!!

How many works do you have on Ao3?

80! a nice round number. i actually think i have even more that i eventually anon'ed

2. What's your total Ao3 word count?

1,078,556

3. What fandoms do you write for?

primarily i've written for danmei fandoms the last few years (mdzs/cql, svsss, 2ha) but i kind of write whatever strikes my fancy! in the last year it's been xena, tristamp, bad buddy...just kinda whatever...i used to write for supernatural and merlin

4. What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

a turn of the earth (supernatural, deancas)

i'm the one for your fire (mdzs, wangxian)

come home to my heart (mdzs, wangxian)

the heartlines on our hands (mdzs, wangxian)

a light hidden and singing (mdzs, wangxian)

5. Do you respond to comments?

man i wish i could but i fell behind in 2015 and then never caught back up ;___; i definitely read & appreciate every single one!!!

6. What is the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

honestly probably something from the early supernatural days. i was obsessed with writing angst as a teenager

7. What's the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

all of my wangxian fics end happy!! i don't think any one is happier than the other because it usually ends up with them either in love or married :-)

8. Do you get hate on fics?

every so often! luckily the positivity tends to outweigh

9. Do you write smut?

yes! although this was something i had to work on getting more comfortable with throughout my 20s

10. Do you write crossovers? What's the craziest one you have written?

the only thing closest to a crossover i've done was two alternate wangxian timelines in "a tide in two seas," but otherwise nope!

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

a few times! if not verbatim plagiarism, then definitely have had entire original concepts/plots lifted & reused that are very identifiable lol

12. Have you ever had a fic translated?

yes!! most commonly into spanish and russian, but have also had some translated into mandarin and farsi which is super cool!

13. Have you ever co-written a fic before?

not formally!

14. What's your all time favorite ship?

i have love for a lot of pairings but wangxian definitely ate my brain the most and for longest.....and there they remain

15. What is a WIP you want to finish but doubt you ever will?

hmmmm....i was about 20k into a giant merthur fix-it time travel fic in like 2018 and gave up on it and i'll never finish it but wish i had!

16. What are your writing strengths?

i've been told i have a nice turn of phrase!

17. What are your writing weaknesses?

describing setting.......action sequences.......those are the two i most actively have to work at to make them sound normal and integrated with the rest of the prose lol. i think i can also fall into the trap of gratuitous overdescription pretty easily

18. Thoughts of writing dialogue in another language in fics?

i think it depends on the context but can be really effective if it's done correctly and respectfully! (if you're a non-native speaker, that is)

19. First fandom you wrote for?

honestly it was warrior cats. followed by twilight fanfiction i submitted to a local newspaper

20. Favorite fic you have written?

i tend to be more critical of past fics than not, but there are quite a few i'm fond of because i admittedly write to my own tastes but i'm especially fond of "make me whole, make me new," which is wlw wangxian!

tagging @yuklaa, @fruitdaze, @englishsub, @dcyiyou, @megafaunatic, @rcmclachlan and whoever wants to do it!

#tumblr games #about me

[veliseraptor]

actually though you know what, possibly the thing that drives me most insane about the feelings yakuza lurking about in mdzs fandom, specifically those dedicated to a really, really shallow moral dichotomy, is the way that. okay. how do I say this.

one of the things I found so deeply refreshing about getting into mdzs, and mxtx's other novels, when I did (and also the cnovels I've read in general, tbh), was getting into a text that seemed on first blush tailor-made to work for my general love of morally questionable characters who do bad things who are in awful situations often with no good solutions, and my specific distaste for both (a) morally didactic storytelling and (b) morality-obsessed fandom.

surely, thought I, this fandom, coming from a canon where the protagonist has done absolutely hideous things to people and presumably that's not a deal breaker, can be reasonable about not taking "did this character do bad things: if yes, then bad character must die, if no, then good character perfect angel" as the beginning, middle, and end of the matter. surely! finally, a place where I can lay down my arms and my weary head, cease bearing endless arguments about who's right or who's bad and who you're allowed to like, because, you know, surely it's obvious that's not the point here

and then. and then.

it just feels like, you know, finally feeling like I had a little corner of fandom where I could just roll around in people being terrible and coping badly with their problems and have the conversation not be dominated by circle-jerking about moral correctness, because that's what the text itself seemed to be actively disinterested in doing, and then here come a whole bunch of fucking clowns hellbent on making everything about morality all over again.

and I truly cannot overstate how much I don't care about that as a lens of "analysis" (to give it a generous name), but I also cannot overstate how much it feels like everybody thinks I should care, and how tiring it is to feel like I'm once again just soaking in a downpour of people yelling about how morally upright and correct they are when like. I came here specifically because I, foolishly, thought this wasn't what we were going to be doing.

i'm just extremely fucking tired and it feels like things have been particularly rancid lately. which sure sucks the joy out of doing things like "writing fic" let me tell you

#lise's aggressively bitchy opinions about irrelevant and unimportant matters #important text posts

[girlmikeyway]

ok you know what, i'm curious about media overlap because i've seen some by now, so:

#idk what im doing here ok but i've wanted to make this poll for a bit but never got around to it #mdzs #cql #mcr #poll #ash speaks