#anyway i think hes the opposite of wwx in a really interesting way where wwx is usually portrayed as self destructive

[piosplayhouse]

I love Jiang Cheng but I don't rlly want to make him better or worse I kind of just want to put him in a jar an d watch him pickle for a while

#and boil on the radiator #jk for once this isnt a rainbow dash jar post i swear #its a shen jiu jar post. which i guess you might be able to turn into a rainbow dash one if you're that kinda guy but #anyway i think hes the opposite of wwx in a really interesting way where wwx is usually portrayed as self destructive #but in truth his self destruction is all for other people #a la shen yuan #jiang cheng on the other hand will destroy himself if left alone for long enough #he's got too many emotions and none of the capabilities to cope. he's already running himself into the ground #he claws at his scabs so they dont heal hes the snake eating its own tail etc etc #my little specimen #if you made it this far im assuming youre kaya. hi oomfie #mdzs #mo dao zu shi #jiang cheng #jc #gdc #the grandmaster of demonic cultivation

[wangxianficrecs]

Follower Recs

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Hi! First of all, thank you so much for running this blog, It's become one of three reasons why I haven't yet committed arson (I jest but the Feeling is true). [Hee, hee, hee.] I have a rec for you! It's called "wholesome life usurp immediately" by comfect on ao3 and it's. So good. It's unfinished but the author updates it literally every other day if not faster! It's a lovely fic, I hope you enjoy it. 🌻

Wholesome Life Usurp Immediately

by Comfect (T, 55k, yunmeng sibs, qingli, wangxian, WIP)

Summary: Wen Qing examines Jiang Yanli at Cloud Recesses and has a cure for her poor cultivation.

Now there are Three Prides of Yunmeng.

Everything kind of fixes itself from there.

~*~

hello mojo!! I would really like to recommend standing still (but we keep going) by lwjromantics!! it's really good!!

standing still (but we keep going)

by lwjromantics (justfantaestic) (T, 5k, wangxian)

Summary: Lan Wangji supposed that if having to take care of little A-Yuan and Mo Xuanyu and having to look at the reminders of Wei Ying in their habits and mannerisms was punishment for his actions, he would willingly take it and flay his own back open.

— There are children in the Burial Mounds.

~*~

hii mojo! I just read this cute fic and I loved it so I wanted to rec it :) 

Word Up, Talk the Talk

by Larryissocute (G, 2k, wangxian)

Summary:  It wouldn’t have been a problem (it really wouldn’t) if they weren’t best friends. Wei Wuxian doesn’t know what good deeds he did in his past life to be blessed with Lan Wangji as a friend nor does he know what evil things he did to be cursed with being only a friend to Lan Wangji.

Or the one where Wei Wuxian kisses Lan Wangji and then runs away.

~*~

Hey! Love your account — and proud of you for taking the hiatus you needed.  [Lol - it was really nice!]  Idk if you take fic recommendations, but I'd love to rec Roots by ardenrabbit. Fantastic characterization, I really love it!

Roots

by ardenrabbit (E, 46k, wangxian, WIP)

Summary:  After Wei Wuxian's duel with Jiang Cheng, he finds that stab wounds aren't so trivial when he doesn't have a core to heal them. He wakes to find Lan Zhan in the Burial Mounds with him, already beloved by the Wens and making himself at home. When Lan Zhan tells him that he wants to stay and offers more help than Wei Wuxian knows how to accept, he fears that it's only too good to be true.

Lan Wangji knows that Wei Ying is doing the right thing, and he couldn't live with himself if he let him do it alone. For everything Wei Ying has sacrificed, Lan Wangji is determined to give something back to him.

Hanguang-Jun has turned his back on the clans to join the Yiling Wens and their demonic cultivator leader, and every clan has a different opinion on the matter.

~*~

Hello! I wanted to rec a fic on ao3 called "Restoration" by jelenedra. It's complete, an alternate universe of the sunshot campaign told nonlinearly. It has strong fairy tale and fae elements, with a touch of mystery. Bit of a fix it. Some delightful one liners, and the final ending imagery is just LOVELY. The fic deserves much more love. There's also some YilingWei, wwx not raised by Jiang, and sentient Burial Mounds elements. Enchanting read that keeps you enthralled and curious and intrigued.

Restoration

by jelenedra (M, 85k, wangxian)

Summary:  They say he was thrown into Luanzang Gang by the man who killed his parents; they say that he is an immortal cultivator who had been in a deep trance until the Wen sect disturbed his rest and incurred his wrath; they say that he is the fierce corpse of a cultivator who had somehow regained his mind and his spiritual powers.

When Lan Wangji sees him for the first time, he understands why people talk.

Meng Yao wants safety. Xue Yang wants vengeance. The Sunshot Campaign wants victory. Yiling Laozu provides, for a price.

~*~

I usually read all your recommendations. Thanks for gathering all good recs of wangxian. I am in love with every single story your recommend especially the favorites. [I’m so glad!]  I just wanted to suggest a fic i came across while searching for phoenix!wwx. Its a new story I think as author has published it today. The first chapter was very interesting that i thought ill recommend it you and know your opinion. The legendary phoenix and his dragon -Devipriya and Hidden Path to Love by ShadowTenshiV

Hidden Path to Love

by ShadowTenshiV (G, 78k, wangxian)

Summary:  Wei Ying is a servant working at the Gusu Lan castle. One day he enters through a secret passage way connected to the library where he meets a Lan for the first time. He may have left quite an impression, gaining the other´s attention and slowly becoming friends. They would like to become something more, but a servant can´t be with a prince, but maybe his secret can change that.

~*~

hello mojo! i was wondering if I could make a fic rec? it’s called “and the calm is deep where the quiet waters flow” by izanyas. it used to be on ao3 but the author has since moved it to eir own website and has started posting updates there. i was wondering if this could also act as a signal boost bc some old readers on ao3 might not have known that it is now on another website.   Author's been through a tough time so I think it deserves a lot more love.

For new readers, please mind the warnings in the prologue and the beginning of each chapter! it’s omegaverse and a very heavy read as it deals with (possible spoiler) off-screen rape that results in an unwanted pregnancy, as well as secondary gender oppression which runs deep, but for people who can bear it the writing, worldbuilding, and emotions are truly spectacular.

and the calm is deep where the quiet waters flow

by izanyas (E, 270k, wangxian, WIP, link is to WordPress rather than AO3)

Summary: Cangse Sanren was the first of her kind to become a cultivator. Talented, passionate, free-spirited, she bested everything that ever came her way until the very end.

Jiang Fengmian refuses to see her son deprived of that same freedom.

~*~

Hello Mojo! I dunno if this's been recced before, but here's another ficrec for you? It's complete, on ao3, "The Third Young Master of Qishan Wen" by KouriArashi. It's 'if wwx was raised by dafan wen, but gets recognized as 3rd heir due to his skill' scenario. Some really nice banter and characterization. Wwx and lz get together before the sunshot campaign. Story follows the live action but diverges into au, and does some cool callbacks to original canon. Love Meng Yao in this!  [Oh, I know KouriArashi from my last fandom, I love her works!]

❤️The Third Young Master of the Qishan Wen

by KouriArashi (T, 139k, wangxian, my post)

Summary:  The fic where Wei Wuxian is adopted by the Dafan Mountain Wens instead of the Yunmeng Jiang.

~*~

Hi Mojo! I can count the number of times I’ve spoken on Tumblr on one hand (I’m shy heh) but I found this fic that I think you and others would really like? I’m a sucker for emotional hurt/comfort and this was just too sweet for me not to share (did I go through 20 pages of bookmarks just to make sure you don’t already have it? Maybe …) [Aww, you can do a sidebar search in the bookmarks for the author’s name.  But I hope you found other good fics by carding through the whole catalog!]  It’s “Close Your Soft Eyes” by timetoboldlygo! I also wanna say thank you for all the hard work you put into this blog! It’s a treasure beyond compare. :D [Thank you so much!]

Close Your Soft Eyes

by timetoboldlygo (G, 12k, wangxian)

Summary:  When Lan Wangji woke, the first thing he noticed was the slip of paper, folded and tucked between his index and middle fingers, not Wei Wuxian’s absence. His fingers trembled as he unfurled the paper. A donkey with a little smile beamed down at him.

-

On the nights that Wei Wuxian was gone, Lan Wangji woke to gifts on his pillow.

~*~

Hey Mojo! I love your blog it is beyond awesome! [Thank you!]  I was wondering if you would consider reading JaenysBloodcourt series "A Bond to Takes us home"? The summary is weird but I like the fics and would love to hear your opinion on LWJ POV (it's part 2). Part one is Mingxian but part two (Wangxian) reads as a standalone for the most part. Anyways, thank you for all your hard work! <3 [I’ll put it on my list!]

A Bond to Take Us Home

by JaenysBloodcourt (T, 10k, mingxian - nmj/wwx, wangxian, series in progress)

Summary:  Wei Wuxian has two soulmarks. He has two soulmates that seem to be the opposite of him. During his first life he meets both of them, loves only one and longs for the other. In his second life, the one he loved first is dead, and the one he pined after is pining after him.

These are the many tales of his soulmates and the raucous they made across the cultivation world.

Some are dark, some are light. Beware.

~*~

I forgot to send this in for Mother's Day a few weeks ago, but have you read dragongirlG's "into the light of a dark black night"? It's a short canon divergence where Mama Lan escapes the Cloud Recesses after spending one last, heartbreaking night with her sons. It's so beautiful and bittersweet! [Oh, ouch.  I just read this author’s time travelling juniors au, but hadn’t seen this one.]

into the light of a dark black night

by dragongirlG (T, 3k, Madam Lan & sons)

Summary:  The night that Wu Yuhua, formerly known as Madam Lan, plans to escape from the Cloud Recesses, she runs into an unexpected complication.

That complication comes in the form of her younger son A-Zhan running up to her door and kneeling in front of it, hushed whimpers escaping from his throat.

Wu Yuhua knows it's not the full moon, knows that it's not the one day a month she's allowed to see her children—but like hell is she going to leave her six-year-old son out there trying to stifle sobs in the snow.

She opens the door. "A-Zhan," she says, bending down and reaching out a hand. "Come in, my sweet boy."

On a snowy night in the dead of winter, Wu Yuhua, formerly known as Madam Lan, unexpectedly spends one last night with her sons before escaping from the Cloud Recesses.

~*~

Hello queen I’d like to recommend for ur follower rec posts Avatar: The Untamed Waterbender by KouriArashi. Banger of an ATLA au, def the best one I’ve seen. It’s a WIP but the author updates pretty regularly and it’s all around an A+ fic [Oh, yes, I’ve been waiting for this one to finish before I jump in.]

Avatar: The Untamed Waterbender

by KouriArashi (T, 123k, wangxian, WIP)

Summary:  You know the drill. Long ago, the four nations lived in harmony. Then, everything changed when the Fire Nation attacked.

100 years later, Jiang Cheng and Jiang Yanli find Wei Wuxian sealed in an iceberg.

Featuring: avatar WWX, waterbending JC, firebending Wens, airbending Lans, earthbending Nies and Jins, Jiang Yanli in possession of the brain cell, et cetera.

~*~

[My ko-fi.]

#follower rec #wangxian fic rec #I HAVEN'T READ THESE YET #wangxian #mdzs #follower recs

[canary3d-obsessed]

Restless Rewatch: The Untamed, Episode 01

(Masterpost) (Next Episode)

Warning: This is **FULL **of spoilers, not just for this episode but for the entire series. If you haven’t finished all 50 episodes, please don’t read it! 

Intro: 2020 continues to be much much too much while also being incredibly boring, and Im done with Shen Wei’s Lewks, so now I’m doing a deep meta dive into the Untamed. Let’s roll! 

Prologue: The Battle of Mordor

The Demise of our Protagonist

Unlike some other shows I won’t name, The Untamed kills its suicidal queer protagonist immediately, rather than waiting four seasons, so we know what we're in for. 

This is Wei Wuxian, who is about to yeet himself off of a cliff. He is having a bad day. 

Note: if mouth blood bothers you...C-Drama might not be your thing. 

Reasons for mouth blood: a sampler

Anyway...cliff time

Note: if (fictional) suicide bothers you...C-Drama might not be your thing. 

To be fair there are hardly any suicides in The Untamed. No more than ...five? As long as you don’t count the entire population of the Wen Corporate Headquarters in Yiling or those wall bandits in Qinghe or Madame Yu or all those Wens who supposedly threw themselves into the mud puddle or that Mo guy who broke his own neck. Plus watching Wei Wuxian’s cliff drop several more times from multiple angles. So, you know. Hardly Any Suicides. 

This is Lan Wangji, who is about to have his first losing encounter with physics. He is having a bad day.

In fact, if it is possible to have a worse day than the guy who is currently falling to his death, Lan Wangji is having that.

This is Jiang Cheng, who is feeling extra stabby from this camera angle. He is having a bad day.

Camera operator: why you gotta take it out on me? 

(Much, much more after the cut!)

The Amulet Situation

This is the Stygian Tiger Amulet. Yes, by all means, (Netflix) subtitles, let's use a 12-dollar word, “Stygian,” that every English speaker who is not a Shelley/Byron shipper will have to look up. Let’s not use a normal word like "deathly" or "corrupt" or you know... "Yin" which is clearly what they are saying on screen.

Why does this tiger amulet look like a chameleon crossed with a remora? Wei Wuxian can paint photorealistic bunnies on a flimsy lantern while sitting in a field having distracting teenage lust, but two months of meditating with super magic gets him a tiger that looks like a chameleon. And don’t try telling me this is a traditional-Chinese-art vibe because this jade tiger from frickin 1000 BCE is way more tigerish than Wei Wuxian’s attempt. 

Try harder next time, Wei Wuxian.

This is thousands of cultivators having a battle.  What do you mean, it looks like about 40-60 dudes?

 Any time someone in The Untamed refers to a number of people, it is like when you do your high school play and look off into the wings at nothing and say “Hark, A Ship Approaches!” and everyone’s parents nod indulgently.

Jin Clan Mountain Hunt:

*viewership nods indulgently*

This is Captain Blowhard, over on the right, courtesy name Clan Leader Yao. His job is to talk smack about Wei Wuxian and stick up for whoever is the biggest asshole in any given scene.  

He represents mainstream cultivation-world values so here he is shanking one of his allies to take the deadly amulet of evilness.

The Present Day

Spilling All That Yiling Laozu Tea

Down at the Exposition Tea Shop, the Lan juniors are chilling and listening to Tea Dude tell the story of Yiling Laozu. 

How did they get permission to take this field trip? “Principal Qiran, we want to go downtown to hang out with the local rabble and learn about your favorite person, Wei Wuxian.”

Waiting in the wings is the man with a fan and a plan, Nie Huaisan(g), who is paying tall loot to get these stories told.  

...Why? Is Mo Xuanyu having tea here and listening? Or is Wei Wuxian being summoned back by hearing all this smack being talked about him? *Shrug.*

Gank Your Soul

Drunk flag guy out here talking about spirits. Wikipedia tells me that In one school of Daoist thought, a human being has a collection of physical souls (魄 pò) and ethereal souls (魂 hún). Drunk flag guy is saying “hún ” at the moment. 

The many types of souls don’t translate well into English, where spiritual vocabulary has always been shackled connected to Christian beliefs, and is too limited for this context. So when the subtitles have conversations like “Is it a soul eater? No, no, it’s a spirit taker!” just roll with it. (Speaking of hún, if you have any interest in linguistics, do yourself a favor and go read all the wonderful meta @hunxi-guilai​)

The spirit-carrying flag looks a lot like Raava and Vaatu from Korra which...probably doesn’t mean anything.

The Demise of our Trill Host

Suicide #2 happens about 8 minutes in. 

Mo Xuanyu is that hippie roommate with the annoying wind chimes and bead curtains and blood spatter.

He is super mad at his terrible family and also at Jin Guangyao, who sent him home to his terrible family. I wonder if Fan Man Nie Huaisang influenced Jiggy’s decision-making there. Mo Xuanyu’s choice to die for revenge might be excessive, given how easy it actually is to murder the Mo family.

Being Alive Is Fine I Guess As Long As I Get To Fuck WIth People

Wei Wuxian starts his new life by splashing a little water on his face, which instantly makes his hair go from this

to this. 

He looks at his reflection and wishes he was dead, which--mood--but he gets over it as soon as he finds someone whose day he can fuck up.

And he is ALL in on being crazy. 

OP wishes she had the Wei Wuxian kind of crazy instead of the kind she actually has. 

Meanwhile, this is the sane Mo cousin:

This asshole is wearing one of the best fabrics in the whole show, incidentally. Asshole.

My favorite bit of Wei-Mo craziness is when Wei Wuxian does a meaningless 360 all the way around this dude before ducking in the opposite direction, which is like when I make 4 right turns around a whole block to avoid making a single left across traffic.

Perhaps I Do Miss One Thing In This Life

Wei Wuxian has pining thoughts about Lan Wangji, so he plays WangXian on a fucking blade of grass well enough for Sizhui to recognize it from his dad's guqin jams. 

Wei Wuxian is a better flautist than even Inspector Gadget BeatBoxing Flute Guy (Google it).

Our Many Many Spirit Lure Flags have Lured A Spirit, Oh Shit

Lan Clan has a Plan and Wei Wuxian is a Fan

Having one single lure flag stuck in Wen Ning’s torso caused spirits to basically eat him alive, so to catch one evil spirit, 6 disciples holding flags on the roof plus 8 more flags on the ground seems like a good amount. Wei Wuxian is like “yep, a single one of these will lure every spirit for five miles, carry on, younglings.”

Baxia Does the Heavy Lifting

Wei Wuxian is supposed to kill four people because of this curse situation, and in the course of the series they all die, and he kills exactly zero of them. The curse on Wei Wuxian’s arm should be called the scorekeeper curse. 

Baxia’s spirit pinballs around the Mo clan, rapidly killing three people on Mo Xuanyu’s list plus a couple extras for good measure.  Who's a good blade? Baxia is! Yess you are! Yes you are!

This here is the exact point in the show where your friend, who has listened to you squee about The Untamed for three months and finally agreed to watch it with you, will say “what the fuck am I watching?” and try to get up off the couch. Tackle them! 

This also the point where we all realize that the prosthetic and practical effects in this show were probably not made by the people who made the clothing, because the quality is...variable. The white eyeballs are pretty good, but the glove of death is ridiculous.

Camera operator: why you gotta take it out on me?

While Baxia goes to town on the Mo clan, the Lan Clan babies...watch? And tie up the various victims after they are already goners. 

Narrator: Her son is dead.

Meanwhile, 

Wei Wuxian, you motherfucker. You’ve been alive for like 7 hours and you’re already building a new zombie army. No wonder you don’t want them to call Lan Wangji.

Hanguang-Jun Cut It Up One Time

Lan Wangji shows up and very slowly kicks zombie ass with his guqin. If you are used to Hong Kong action speeds, you will find The Untamed very peaceful.

 All of the baby Lans fan squee up at Lan Wangji like he's the cultivation world's David Bowie and...they're not wrong. Jesus Fuck, he’s charismatic.

Lan Wangji is soft boi when he discovers this murderous sword full of dead-bastard energy, because it reminds him of his true love.

Like the talk about souls, the conversations about the nature of the murderous entity really don’t survive translation into English.

Servant: it’s a ghost! 

WWX: it’s not a ghost, it’s a spirit

Babies: It’s a spirit

LWJ: it’s not a spirit, it’s a [...] ghost

Our Protagonist gets the FOH

Wei Wuxian is soft boi when he sees Lan Wangji, but not so soft that he considers actually, like, sticking around. 

Wei Wuxian is also clueless boi, noting Lan Wangji’s white clothing and thinking, as in the past, that he looks like he’s dressed in mourning. The term he uses is 戴孝, which google tells me means the type of outfit worn by Jiang Yanli after Wen Ning rips her husband’s heart out someone who is in mourning. 

Actually, Wei Wuxian, you dumbass, he is in actual mourning, actually, for you. Dumbass. He probably packed away all of his blue outer robes 16 years ago and only takes them out occasionally to reminisce about that nice date you had on your mountain of corpses. 

On his way out the door Wei Wuxian manages to find a red ribbon for his beautiful hair, so things are looking up. 

Where to go next...hey I know, how about that one haunted mountain with the killer statue, you know, the one that all my executed friends and child came from? That’ll be fun and a great way to put the past behind me!

Episode 02 Restless Rewatch is here!

#fytheuntamed #the untamed spoilers #the untamed gifs #the untamed #restless rewatch the untamed #tw: blood #tw: suicide #chen qing ling #cql #c-drama #bl drama #canary3d-original #the untamed memes #my gifs

[xiyao-feels]

wow the amount of bad takes about jgy in his tag are so ??? and the number of people who write jgy's love for lxc as being unrequited in his own tag is also ?? and gleeful and borderline sadistic? like why do my boy dirty like that 🥺🥺🥺

It's the worst!!!!

There are so many. Soooooo so many. And yes, the unrequited thing too!!!! Like, sad unrequited is...well, let's say I very much disagree with unrequited as a reading of canon, but you do you, but there really is a lot that's just spiteful to JGY!!!! Or god I don't know if you've ever gone browsing the xiyao the on the ao3 but if you /don't/ add otp: true to the search results you get some truly ridiculous stuff all over the place—so much past abusive JGY xiyao, for example. Which is a) nonsense and b) tagged with xiyao in relationships instead of additional tags why exactly?

I think....part of it is that people can sense CQL is incomplete, and they want to fill in those gaps. Which is fine and great!!! But they want to fill them in with like—oh, very much Evil JGY and Righteous NMJ, and so forth, and I think that's a bad extrapolation from CQL canon (people really have a hard time remembering that NMJ is against the Wen, yes even in CQL) and often it's just really not supported by MDZS. Which—I mean, complications of 'sometimes you have to read MDZS in to CQL to make it make any sense' and 'almost everyone does some reading in' aside, you certainly don't have to, but I think people...like, fill in JGY mistreating LXC and then treat is as the One True Canon.

Which I mean. I don't mean to imply you don't get some truly awful takes from novel people, too. *bitter laughter* The takes I have seen.... I don't want to get too specific and vague people but yeah I've seen some truly awful purely novel-based takes, too.

Oh and then there's fucking Fatal Journey. If you have been around you probably know my opinion on Fatal Journey. I really do not like it and I think the degree to which it wildly misrepresents the characters and their situations is...not appreciated. I'll tell you this, when I watched it I spent a lot of time exclaiming so that's where that totally unsupported idea comes from! E.g. the idea that the music was supposed to entirely cure NMJ.... Every time I see a post that's just like "and JGY decides not to kill NMJ, so he survives!!!" it's very....sigh. I mean, even aside from the thing where JGS and JGY's circumstances are being completely ignored.

I think there's also something where like....people really REALLY want the ending to be about, you know, people getting their just deserts. WWX got a happy ending because he is morally correct in such-and-such a fashion! JGY got his bad one because he's evil!!!! Etc.

And beyond that people...want it to just be a happier ending than it actually is. I think part of it is CQL's ending...and part of the problem I have there is that if one man interested in good at the top can fix things, which seems to be like the emotional implication, then it's a pretty straightforward inference that JGY wasn't interested in good...but some of it is just people. But JGY's downfall is bad, actually!! Even just—well, consider this bit from the Iron Hook extra, from ch 123:

The guard didn’t report to the real sect leader at all, but instead to another senior of the LanlingJin Sect’s. When the senior heard, he was infuriated by the fact that such an ordinary merchant would dare step on the golden stairs of the LanlingJin Sect’s, ordering him to chase the visitor out. Yet, it was interrupted by Jin Ling, who was just about to head to the hunting grounds.

Jin Ling knew that these seniors of the sect were all quite full of pride, believing that they were a sect hundreds of years old. No matter what, they definitely couldn’t lower their prestige, refusing to welcome anyone who wasn’t of eminent personage. First of all, he’d always abhorred such a way of doing things; second of all, he was mad that the guard reported to somebody else directly, ignoring him completely; and third of all, he remembered that when Jin GuangYao was still here, no disciples of even guest cultivators dared to take bribery so easily.

This is very much the opposite of what people want to be true about JGY!!! I'm just over here like...look, I'm certainly not going to tell you you have to stick with canon, but if it offends you so profoundly I.... really don't know what to tell you....

(wanting it to be happier than it actually is is part of why people also have really weird takes about LXC post-canon, I think.)

Honestly it's really exhausting!!! People absolutely post in the JGY tag to just. Talk about how much they hate him. Talk about other characters hating him. "Jokes" that are just oooh, NMJ is going to do so much violence to him. Suggesting that he's inherently evil. Suggesting that he's inherently evil because he chooses JGS over his many many options including the people who love him, NMJ and LXC.... Which, you know, even aside from the many many problems with that analysis, even if it were true wanting your dad to love you is like. Not actually pure evil. And also it's a shitty analysis of his situation! So hey.

I've mentioned before the way people seem to want the cultivation world to be not only way better and more progressive and safe and so forth than it actually is, but way better and more progressive and safe and etc than the modern States! It's really something.

Also a whole bunch of vibes that are like, ngl, how /dare/ JGY want to improve his position in the world, how dare he want to be anything other than a servant, doesn't he know his place.... funnnnnn times.

Oh and of course people taking the Empathy framing uncritically—in CQL the straight-up different version of events, in MDZS the way it's interpreted through NMJ's anger which WWX can also feel... Like, look at this section from chapter 50:

Jin GuangYao was, at the moment, complaining to Lan XiChen, yet just last night he had been all soft and innocent as he talked with Nie MingJue, playing the guqin. Hearing how Jin GuangYao spoke ill of him behind his back, Nie MingJue burned with anger and kicked the door open. The raging flames within his head traveled throughout the entirety of his body. A thunder-like roar exploded in the air, “How dare you!”

People will read this and conclude JGY was in the wrong and NMJ was totally reasonable in his anger here. I?????? Like. He is literally about to try and kill JGY on the spot, to be clear. Also the last time JGY talked back to him he also tried to kill him. I just. What. Framing is framing but please think about this for like five seconds.

Anyway yeah it's exhausting and it sucks :( I think a lot of us pro-JGY people don't even post in the tags....man.

My position is that JGY is amazing, actually, and that it's best not only for him but for the people around him that he becomes Jin-zongzhu and Jin-xiandu 🥰 Seriously he's fantastic, no one else does what he does or would even think to try.

#also sorry for taking so long to get back to you!!! #i've been on and off sick and also very busy at work so I haven't been writing as much #but I think I am managing to ginger tea the sick into submission 💪 #more than one tag could contain #I love him....

[ouyangzizhensdad]

RE: WWX and his arc being about trauma. I got into the fandom through CQL and the first time I saw it I actually read a lot of his actions post the burning of Lotus Cove as being influenced by his trauma. He's paranoid even before getting thrown into the burial mounds. He seems to be self medicating with alchohol (which WQ kinda calls him out on). He over-reacts to a lot things, which seems to me like a nasty case of emotional dysregulation as a result of PTSD. He avoids all kinds (1/3)

Of reminders of his tramua, his sword being the greatest example but there were other little things. He never gave much of a fuck about propriety but the way he completely igonres it (and the possible social fallout) later speaks to me less about not caring and more about not *having* the emotional capacity to care, much like what happens with depression. Plus, a lot of his behaviour can be read with various shades of being self destructive, and there are just in general a lot of points (2/3)

Where it's made clear that he's in a pretty bad headspace (him crying about being useless in the burial mounds for example), but none of that ever really gets dealt with so all of those issues are still hanging under the surface even if they're not apparent all the time. I mean, this is just my take, but at least imo WWX ticks a lot of the checkboxes for PTSD in the drama and it explains a lot about the way he acts and the bad decisions he makes. Hope this was helpful! (3/3)

I'm only referring to the drama btw, not the novel (which I haven't read yet). My memory is terrible so I'm not sure if I made it clear or not lol. Anyways, have a good day ^^

Hi there, 

I am always curious when people who have only engaged with CQL end up engaging with my novel-only meta blog but perhaps I shouldn’t be surprised: if CQL posts end up in the mdzs tag, why not the opposite? I’ve seen some of my novel meta reblogged and tagged with “the untamed” and “CQL” so maybe the answer is already out there, staring at me in the face! 

I’ll start by saying that I do not wish to really argue with people’s interpretations of CQL since I consider that MDZS and CQL are very different works because so many changes were made in the process of adapting the novel, and I personally have no interest in analysing CQL except wrt  how it can help us better understand the novel (seeing certain elements removed or changed may help us understand why they mattered in the first place or what their use was). So I will speak to the arguments that could be applied to the novel and why *I* don’t think WWX’s arc in the novel is about trauma, and why I don’t think that picking up certain behaviours that can be exhibited by people with PTSD (but not exclusively by people with PTSD) is enough in itself to support the idea that a character’s arc is about trauma/shaped by PTSD. That does not mean that my interpretation is the only acceptable one--I am aware that a lot of people disagree with me on this and see trauma as a central theme/central part of WWX’s arc--and so I expect that a lot of people will disagree with my points (hopefully after they’ve read this post in good faith). And that’s perfectly fine: how likely is it that we can find another person who will agree 100% with our own interpretation of a work of fiction? And having divergent opinions floating around the fandom, or having to develop counter-arguments is a good way to strengthen our own pov if we don’t find ourselves convinced by that other interpretation, so it’s all good. 

So first, I’ll address the biggest point of my argument before moving to address more specific points you raise in your ask. For me, WWX’s characterisation is not about trauma but about resilience. 

So first, let’s clarify some things. Going through adversity/experiencing a situation that is difficult =/= experiencing trauma. Trauma is a concept referring to a potential response to going through adversity/experiencing something distressing or disturbing. In short, trauma as it is conceptualised and understood is not universal: not only in the sense that is a spatiotemporally specific concept used to make certain experiences intelligible, but as the reaction to difficult events (as well, what is considered to be an experience that falls under that concept is not itself universal and can take many gorms, and the behaviours and thoughts associated with trauma are generally not exclusive to it, ie having certain behaviours/thought processes is not an automatic proof that someone is dealing with trauma/ptsd). So after all this word vomit I want to clarify that my intent is not to suggest that WWX doesn’t go through experiences that are likely to cause trauma, but that to me, what is being portrayed is a different reaction to these events: resilience (if a slightly more “fictional” portrayal of resilience than what it would be presented in psychology/psychiatry). 

Resilience refers to how people adapt or recover successfully from adversity/distressing situation/stress. That does not mean that people’s first reaction to adversity/distressing situations will be not defined by negative emotions, of course. For instance, I don’t think WWX’s heightened paranoia/emotional state directly after the fall of LP when he goes to look for JC is an indication of trauma because at this point WWX is still deep in the middle of that moment of adversity: he’s still a fugitive in the middle of a war, in the middle of danger. This also doesn’t mean that people cannot still have some temporary negative reactions to things that happened to them, afterwards: WWX having to pause when JC presents him with Suibian after he returns from Mass Grave Hill is not inherently an indication of trauma as it can be read that his sword a reminder of the difficult sacrifice he made--and the consequences he faced as a result (just because a situation was not traumatic doesn’t mean we enjoy revisiting it).

Why I think that WWX’s arc or characterisation is about resilience rather than trauma is because of many things, but mostly I want to point out two sections of the novel in particular. 

First, this characterisation of WWX through JYL that we get relatively early in the novel:

Most memories from back then were already blurred. Yet, Jin Ling’s mother, Jiang Yanli, remembered all of them, and even told him quite a few. She said that, after his father heard of the news that his parents both died in battle, he had always dedicated himself to finding the child that these past friends had left behind. After searching for a while, he finally found the child in Yiling. 

The first time they met, Wei Wuxian was kneeling on the ground, eating the fruit peels that somebody tossed on the ground. Yiling’s winter and spring were quite cold, yet the child only wore thin layers. His knees were already tattered, and on his feet were two different shoes that didn’t fit at all. As he was looking down, searching for fruit peels, Jiang Fengmian called him. He still remembered that there was a “Ying” in his name, so he lifted his head. Although his cheeks were both red and chapped from the cold, he still wore a smile. 

Jiang Yanli said that he was born with a smiling look. No matter what unfortunate thing happened, he wouldn’t cling on to them; no matter what situation he was in, he would be happy. Although it sounded a bit heartless, it really was not bad.

This refers to a time of his life that is extremely difficult: he lost both his parents suddenly, at a young age, became suddenly homeless with no means to feed himself except to beg, and yet the only trauma he seems to carry from this experience is related to dogs. To me, this is a clear move from MXTX to position WWX as the kind of protagonist who can face a storm and keep his smile on his face. I can imagine that some people take it perhaps as a subversion, as the text telling us that WWX is weathering it all with a smile but underneath it all he is just a bundle of unaddressed trauma. And that’s certainly a possible interpretation, but it’s not mine. In this case I think the text is being straightforward. What we see of WWX also seems to support that: the way WWX just rolls with being brought back from the death, how easily he finds a way to adapt to things, etc.

I also find it meaningful that the novel choses to include in its ultimate chapter this discussion as part of its wrap-up of WWX’s journey and of Wangxian’s relationship.

After they left the shop, Wei Wuxian still sat on Xiao Pingguo while Lan Wangji held the reins in front.Swaying left and right atop the donkey, Wei Wuxian took the flute from his waist and placed it by his lips. The limpid notes flew across the sky like birds. Lan Wangji halted and listened quietly.

It was the song he sang for Wei Wuxian when they were stuck in the Xuanwu cave. It was also the song that Wei Wuxian just so happened to have played at Dafan Mountain, the song that enabled Lan Wangji to confirm his identity.

When he finished, Wei Wuxian winked his left eye towards Lan Wangji.

“How was it? Beautiful, huh?”

Lan Wangji slowly nodded. “For once.”

Wei Wuxian knew that ‘for once’ referred to how his memory was good for once. He could not help but smile.

“Don’t always be so angry about it. It was my fault in the past, alright? Besides, my terrible memory should be accredited to my mom.” Wei Wuxian propped his arm on Xiao Pingguo’s head, spinning Chenqing in his hand. “My mom said you have to remember the things others do for you, not the things you do for others. Only when people don’t hold so much in their hearts would they finally feel free.”

This was one of the only things he remembered about his parents.

Of course, this is not a direct reference to resilience as it is explored in psychology. But to me it speaks to that idea: one of the biggest lesson WWX has kept with him, one of his only memory of--and thus legacy from--his parents, is this idea that we should not hold so much in our hearts. It also reframes his bad memory as being the result of a philosophy, of an approach to life that not just about being grateful/paying your debts to others, but also a form of resilience, in a sense. 

As well, I find that a lot of people who go with the trauma interpretation see WWX’s actions and thoughts processes dyring his YLLZ’s days as being the result of his ptsd, where I personally read it as the influence of modao. I am aware as well that some people do not think that modao actually harmed WWX during that period of his life, but I don’t think that LWJ would have been worried if there were not reasons to believe it would:

One against two, Lan Wangji still refused to back off. He gazed at Wei Wuxian, “Wei Ying, for cultivating an evil path you would eventually have to pay. Throughout time, there has not been a single exception.”

Wei Wuxian, “I can pay.”

Seeing how unconcerned he seemed to be, Lan Wangji lowered his voice, “The path would not only damage your body, but your heart as well (此道损身，更损心性。)”

So now, onto the specific points you raised in the ask.

Self-medicating with alcohol: WWX is shown to enjoy and drink large amounts of alcohol before the fall of LP and after most of the events of the novel have unfolded. In the novel, while WQ tries to make WWX stop drinking, it is as likely to believe that it is for his health (now that he doesn’t have a golden core) than it would be because she was worried he was self-medicating. As well, heavy drinking is a very normalized behaviour (although most physicians don’t think it’s a good thing) in a lot of cultures and times, and considering WWX’s higher tolerance and his general demeanor while imbricated, his drinking is not shown to have a negative effect on his ability to live his life. The line between “self-soothing” (normal aspect of being humans dealing with emotions and hardships) and “self-medicating” (pathological) is hard to trace with alcohol consumption. As well, just because people with PTSD may self-medicate with alchohol doesn’t mean all people who self-medicate with alcohol do it because of PTSD. 

He's paranoid even before getting thrown into the burial mounds. As I mentioned briefly before, WWX is at the time a fugitive in the middle of a war: he’s still in the middle of those stressful events and his paranoia is not necessarily a maladaptive response since they are still very much fugitives in the middle of a war. Trauma is not really your reaction during but in the aftermath. It would be more telling if WWX were still exhibiting signs of paranoia in situations where he would have no reasons to. 

He over-reacts to a lot things, which seems to me like a nasty case of emotional dysregulation as a result of PTSD. I’m not certain at which reactions you are referring to here, but especially considering that some of this might be chalked up to acting choices since this is based on CQL, I probably won’t address this one point too much in relation to the novel. I do want to emphasize though that we’ve seen prior to Sunshot campaign that WWX can be quite impulsive in certain situations (hitting JZX for insulting Shijie, which he does both before and after the events of the Sunshot Campaign). As well, I do think it’s important to remember that he is still in the middle of the war during the Sunshot campaign, and that he is also hiding something pretty important from the people close to him and living a sort of double life, on top of experiencing fatigue/hunger in a way he hasn’t for years due to the loss of his golden core. In short, there are a lot of things going on that can be used to explain what can be seen as “over-reactions” without necessarily going with PTSD.

avoids all kinds  reminders of his trauma, his sword being the greatest example but there were other little things. I’ve broached in my previous discussions, but it’s also pertinent to remember his mom’s philosophy: we can also see this as WWX trying to leave in the pass this difficult sacrifice he made in order to move forward. 

He never gave much of a fuck about propriety but the way he completely ignores it (and the possible social fallout) later speaks to me less about not caring and more about not *having* the emotional capacity to care, much like what happens with depression. I have to disagree with that interpretation of WWX and WWX’s actions, but again this might just be a case of CQL-only vs novel-only interpretations of the character. One thing WWX thinks about being reborn in a “lunatic’s” body is that he’ll get to have fun, the way he never could when his actions reflected on others. So while at times WWX flaunts propriety, he is aware of how his actions can impact others and show in different situations that he is aware of propriety. His choice to protect the Wen Remnants goes against that, for sure, but it isn’t necessarily a case of not understanding the possible social fallout so much as putting other things (ie his life-debt towards WN and WQ) before propriety, as we can see for example in this exchange.

Jiang Cheng, “I’m the one who fucking wants to give you a thrashing! Yes, they helped us before, but why in the world don’t you understand that right now any remnant of the Wen Sect is a target of criticism! No matter who they are, with a surname of Wen they have committed a most heinous crime! And those who protect the Wen are at risk of being condemned by everyone! All the people loathe the Wen-dogs so badly that the worse they die the better. Whoever protects them is against the entire world. Nobody would speak for them, and nobody would speak for you either!”

“I don’t need anyone to speak for me.”

[...]

Swords unsheathed, the two stared at each other for a while. Neither was willing to take a single step back. A while later, Jiang Cheng spoke, “Wei Wuxian, have you still not realized what the situation at hand is like? Do you really need me to say it out loud? If you insist on protecting them, then I won’t be able to protect you.”

“There’s no need to protect me. Just let go.”

Jiang Cheng’s face twisted.

Wei Wuxian, “Just let go. Tell the world that I defected. From now on, no matter what Wei Wuxian does, it’d have nothing to do with YunmengJiangShi.”

“… All for the Wen Sect…? Wei Wuxian, do you have a savior complex? Is it that you’ll die if you don’t stand up for someone and stir up some trouble?”

Wei Wuxian stayed quiet. A while later, he answered, “So that’s why we should cut ties right now, in case anything I do affects YunmengJiangShi in the future.”

a lot of his behaviour can be read with various shades of being self destructive Which ones, specifically? I’m not trying to be obtuse, but I’m not sure which ones you mean. 

he's in a pretty bad headspace (him crying about being useless in the burial mounds for example) It needs to be said that the crying is only in CQL (it was an acting choice by XZ). My memory is playing tricks on me, but I think pre-rebirth we only see him cry after he kills JZX and after JYL’s death? Someone please fact-check me on this. 

Since I don’t believe it was MXTX’s intent to make WWX’s characterisation and arc about trauma, I do feel like interpreting the different behaviours as signs of his PTSD might lead us to miss out on other potential interpretations or meanings behind these choices, if we put aside the PTSD angle. It may also lead us to deny the text the possibility to signify something different through these behaviours and signs, especially on a thematic level--to explore something about how events and emotions shape us in a manner that exists outside of modern psychiatric classification.

TLDR (because god this got long): My point is not that WWX is unaffected by the things that happened to him or the things he’s done during this portion of his life: of course he is! Especially as they are happening to him, or when he is still stuck in a very difficult situation. But I don’t think his character and his arc is about trauma but instead about resilience. That, at the end of MDZS, WWX is still the person JYL described: No matter what unfortunate thing happened, he wouldn’t cling on to them.

#wintersrchild #mdzs meta #mdzs #wwx #maybe i should tag this as unpopular opinion? just in case

[eldritch-elrics]

i think its rly interesting to compare how svsss treats og sqq and how mdzs treats mxy when both their roles are characters the mc has the body of and pretends to be and also to other novels with the trope

OOOH yes this is such an interesting point. i think i made the connection before but haven’t put a lot of thought into it until now

it’s sort of interesting how... uninterested mxtx is in really having the protags struggle with worrying about how well their pretense is going. wwx doesn’t really take especial pains to perfectly imitate mxy - all he’s gotta do is act ~crazy~ and people will buy it. luckily for him, mxy’s reputation is what it is, otherwise he might come up against greater resistance from characters like jin ling questioning him. another thing to note is how most characters figure out “oh shit it’s wei wuxian” pretty quickly, so the reveal in jgy’s chamber is kind of underwhelming

on the other hand we’ve got shen yuan, whose entire conflict throughout the beginning of the novel is focused on imitating og!sqq. thing is, we never get the impression that he’s gonna fail at that. he’s helped along by the system, and he very quickly unlocks ooc mode, after which the deception is quickly forgotten. it’s actually kind of surprising to me how little resistance sqq is met with when he starts acting ooc. perhaps this is a testament to the nature of the world and how it bends to the whims of him, lbh, and the system, but to me it reads as mxtx being more interested in the relationship he’s building with lbh and the other characters, and the question of narrative fate/destiny rather than identity

(confession: i actually would have liked ooc mode to stay off for a little while longer! i want more of sqq identity issues! struggling to roleplay this evil dude while still secretly trying to make things not suck for lbh!)

this is the point at which i admit i am NOT very far through svsss LMAO. i’ve read a little bit past the endless abyss (chapter 28), and haven’t read more in a couple weeks because i’ve been reaaally busy lately :( i want to soon though!!! super curious to see what happens with sqh because i’m sure that’ll make the story even more meta...

so yeah i can’t completely analyze sqq’s whole predicament properly but this WILL be something i keep in mind when reading in the future! i Really Really Hope that there will be some sort of pivotal moment where sqq is forced to reveal his real backstory to lbh. DON’T TELL ME IF THIS HAPPENS OR NOT i want no spoilers!!!! but i am thinking about it.

(another interesting thing to note is that the narration called wwx in mxy’s body “wei wuxian,” whereas shen yuan in sqq’s body just becomes “shen qingqiu.” it makes sense for the sort of story that’s being told, especially given that sqq has to Live This Other Guy’s Life Or Die, but... it strikes me all the same)

i’d also highlight a way in which mxy and og!sqq are almost opposites. mxy, a Real Dude (at least in the context of mdzs), has his story almost completely erased. but we know all about what og!sqq was like! and pidw has been read by so many people! we may never meet og!sqq, but he’s really important and pivotal to both narratives!

also interesting to think about how much of mxy’s story/life has been fictionalized...

and i’m SURE there’s something here to be said about the transmigration genre as a whole and this sort of character archetype. i am super not qualified to make any observations/generalizations though

anyway thank you for the ask!! i definitely think that mxy and og!sqq (and even og!lbh...) occupy interesting positions in the narrative and i’m excited to think about this more re. scum villain

#mdzs #mxy #sqq #svsss #my post #analysis #once again do NOT reblog this with sv spoilers or anything!!! #i will have more thoughts when i read more #anonymous #asks

[crossdressingdeath]

On the Lan Sect negativity:

1) The Lan Sect’s involvement was only at Discussion Conferences and the like - events they had to attend. No real choice, they had to go. But WWX mentions only the Jin Sect at Qiongqi path, and only the Jin and Jiang Sects at the siege.

WWX only mentions that WN might have hurt Lan Sect members when he went wild at his execution with WQ - and it should be noted that the Lan Sect let LWJ argue on behalf on the Wens. They had the power to stop him, but they didn’t. At the Nightless City, WWX seemed to attack everyone with no mercy or distinction between friend or foe. Of course they’re worried when LWJ disappears with him. But LXC specifically points out that he wanted to do it secretly, so it wasn’t a Lan Sect siding with the Jin Sect thing.

Yeah, there was the Second Siege... but the Jin Sect had “proof” that WWX had killed innocent people and had kidnapped Sect heirs and junior disciples. Not great proof, but ya know. And the Lan Sect was one of the first ones willing to listen to WWX.

2) We don’t know what went on with LWJ’s mother. We don’t know much about who she killed, why she killed them or anything. The fandom likes to paint her as this helpless victim but we don’t know if she was. We don’t even know if she was in love with her husband or not. You can speculate. You can headcanon. But you can’t know. It sucks, but it is what it is.

3) We see in the extras that it’s perfectly normal for Sect members to interact with someone of the opposite biological sex. WWX sees and talks to a female disciple, who was heading to feed the rabbits. And, actually, it seems that the separation only happened recently, as WWX’s parents met at CR. CSSR met JFM at CR. And it seems like a lot of the parents were there as well. It’s probably a tradition for Sect heirs to go. I wonder what could have happened with the past generation that could have caused the Lan Sect to decide “You know what, let’s seperate them”? That sounds like a great idea for a crack fic, honestly...

Anyway, the gossiping rule is only there to discourage the spread of misinformation. Considering that one of the main themes in the novel is the dangers of taking gossip at face value without looking into it, I don’t think that’s a rule we’re meant to find oppressive.

4) Where does it say that the “no talking to WWX” rule is written on the wall? I’ve only seen it in fics. And rereading the extra it was introduced in... hmm, not there... maybe translation differences? Or maybe it’s an exaggeration? Either way, this rule is clearly not taken seriously as WWX is allowed to teach the junior disciples. Without LWJ present even. This is shown in two seperate extras. So, unless we assume that the Lan Sect is too dumb to realize that WWX and the juniors all disappearing at the same time has a connection, we can assume that he’s probably allowed to teach them. And it’s very hard for a teacher to teach without communication with students.

5) Yeah, the Lan Sect has plenty of rules, but the rules are clearly dealt with differently depending on what they are, and the circumstances they are broken in. Like the rule against fighting - that is clearly fine to break if you’re fighting to defend someone or something. The rules against noise and running? Perfectly fine to break if there is an emergency and you need help instantly (or if you want to scold someone for doing something wrong). Someone being unconscious doesn’t violate the sleeping rules either.

It should also be mentioned that they’re even willing to let things slide not only based on serious (we never see WWX punished for running, or sleeping in, for example) but also on knowledge. They don’t punish him for those first four rules he breaks, they just make sure he can’t use not knowing them as an excuse to break more.

6) Yes, “Do not grieve is excess” sounds messed up on its own. But one, I don’t even remember if that’s a canon rule or a fanon rule (this is not as easy to double check as the rules in the extras), but I don’t remember it in any version I’ve seen. Two, there are certain parts of the grieving process that can actually be detrimental to one’s health if preformed for too long. The rule doesn’t put a time limit on grieving, it just says “excess”.

1) I believe it’s mentioned that they were present at the first siege, but it was the Jin and Jiang sects that were leading it and as I’ve mentioned before the fact that they felt the need to hide the bodies suggests to me that the Lans (and Nies) were far enough away from the actual Wen village that they never saw any of the remnants; it’s not like there wouldn’t be a large number of fierce corpses to keep them busy in the Burial Mounds. I think there may have been some Lan cultivators at the ambush? But that may be CQL-only (if it was a thing at all; I may be misremembering), and either way we never get any evidence to suggest their presence was sanctioned by the sect as a whole. And yeah, the Lans at the very least hid LWJ’s involvement from the rest of the sects; it may have just been an attempt to protect their own, but they were prepared to let a connection to WWX slide, at least. (Not to mention I don’t doubt that at least some of them suspected that A-Yuan was connected to WWX in some way, and no one said anything about that; I’ll be the first to admit that I can’t prove that, but it seems like a reasonable assumption.) And as you say, in the second siege they’re quick to stand down when given reason to believe that WWX isn’t an actual threat, not to mention how their sect leader actively sheltered him from the wrath of the sects not long before that point.

2) Yeah, that’s always the thing with the “the Lans locked up the Twin Jades’ mother and forced her to marry against her will” thing. It’s certainly a possibility, but it’s not a guarantee. The only source we get is getting the story second hand from people with a vested interest in making the whole affair look as bad as possible (to lower the risk of their current sect leader and heir doing something similar, which... fails). And if it did happen it doesn’t guarantee they’ll do it again in a very different situation; in fact we know they don’t, since WWX and LWJ’s marriage is accepted, if only grudgingly, and there’s no sign of them locking WWX up.

3) I imagine male and female disciples were always separated during classes, but it doesn’t follow that they’re separated all the time; clearly there are at least co-ed areas, if a female Lan disciple is going to visit the rabbits. Personally I’m thinking maybe the separation is at least stricter during the lessons to avoid distraction (hence why WWX never saw a female disciple as a kid but ran into one by accident while living in the Cloud Recesses) and it was probably a thing while the previous generation was there (CSSR is the exact sort of person to sneak into areas she’s not supposed to be in; I mean, she breaks into LQR’s room). But yeah, if nothing else there’s no reason to believe the male and female disciples don’t share information and a rule against sharing information that isn’t proven true (in a sect with rules against lying) which is generally rather negative towards the target doesn’t exactly seem unreasonable.

4) I think it’s in the ExR translation; is it not a thing in the original Chinese? But yeah, at worst the entire sect turns a blind eye to this rule being broken constantly, and more likely it was just quietly removed (if it was an official, policed rule to begin with, which is debatable). People seem to take that rule way more seriously than it’s ever taken in canon, honestly.

5) Yeah, the Lans are clearly prepared to make allowances in the rules for various reasons; there’s no reason to believe that mental health stuff wouldn’t be considered worthy of a similar allowance. Note that whenever we see a Lan faced with a clear mental health issue their response is to try to help; somewhat clumsily in LWJ’s case, but they do want to help, not shove the person back into some semblance of normalcy. That suggests to me that someone having genuine issues with following the rules would be treated more gently; note that LJY’s rule-breaking is treated mostly with mild exasperation and the usual punishment (which also grants Lan disciples a pretty useful skill, in this case; incredible arm strength is the Lan Thing, after all) and no one really seems to get fed up with him in any serious way.

6) Honestly, of all the sects I think that the Lans quite possibly have the healthiest grief-management stuff? I mean, we don’t see much of the Jins, but the Nies seem to go for “Channel everything into Rage and Fighting” and (while odds are it’s not indicative of the Jiangs as a whole, at least under JFM) every time we see grief in the Jiang sect it involves JC trying to murder WWX, which... is a whole thing. I’ve always taken “Do not grieve excessively” as “Do not let your grief consume you”, which is in fact a healthy way of looking at it; I don’t know if the Lans have grief counselling, but there is a point where grief just becomes incredibly unhealthy and saying “Hey, don’t do that” is at least... something. I do hope they offer some sort of assistance though, because just banning all-consuming grief and offering no help would be a whole mess. Still, if any sect is going to offer some form of counselling it’s going to be the one with the magic music for calming the mind!

#mdzs #cql #y'know i like getting asks in numbered lists #makes it easier to respond to #anon #asks

[words-writ-in-starlight]

I saw your tags about atla!untamed and I immediately had the exact opposite thoughts! Wwx is an air bender (natural playfulness and constant pranking) somehow adopted into a water tribe family? (I first thought earth but youre right, nie is definitely earth) and lwj is fire nation. I tried to choose that based on what element was most structured (wrong word I think but it’s close to what I’m looking for) bc lwj is inseparable from gusu and it’s rigidity and rules. (mby second son of firelord?)

So let me preface this with: PLEASE go forth and write Wei Wuxian the Last Airbender, that sounds like some choice angst (H E Y throw the celestial mountain gang in there for good measure, make Cangse Sanren into a monk or something, maybe XXC, I just watched the Southern Air Temple and I have feelings about it) and I love having a million and one takes on a good AU concept, but I have actual Thoughts on why Wei Wuxian would be a firebender and it’s not just for the aesthetic.

If I was going to do an AtLA AU of the Untamed (which! I am not!), I would cast the clans as follows:

Water Tribe Jiang (obviously, especially since “attempt the impossible” is pretty on point for the Water Tribe’s motto in AtLA, see also: Sokka and Jiang Cheng would have a lot to talk about)

Fire Nation Wen (also kind of a gimme, in every conceivable way)

Earth Kingdom Jin and Nie (this one was a little harder, as the Jin aren’t strongly aligned with any elemental imagery and the Nie’s inclination toward loss of control doesn’t really match with the Earth Kingdom inclination toward toxic levels of staidness, however the Nie and the Jin are the most associated with material worldly concerns of the sects, with combat and wealth respectively, and also it just narratively works better if JGY is running a kingdom)

Which leaves the Lan sect to be the Air Nomads, in this universe probably called something else.  On the one hand, the Lan sense of humor is somewhat lacking.  On the other hand, I don’t think it’s that much of a stretch to take a slightly different view of air as an element and think of it as something...in need of management.  And more than anything, the Lan sect is the least associated with the physical world, the isolated sect in the mountains, with rules about letting go.  The Lan sect, in a lot of ways, is what the Air Nomads might have looked like if they weren’t joyful.  (They’re kind of what Aang tries to force himself to be, when he tries to be a better warrior, a better crusader, rather than leaning into his strengths, come to think of it.)  

Also, the best benders are always the ones who are able to combine elements of other styles into their own, especially apparently opposing ones--like Iroh, who uses a lot of waterbending-esque moves and styles in combination with firebending (and everything else, because Iroh is as close to an avatar as a single-element bender can get, really).  Lightning redirection, for example, sounds more like Katara’s healing than anything else, focused on redirecting energy through the lines of the body.  Lan Wangji is a siege-breaker of an airbender, is my point here, and when he’s questioned about it he scrupulously Does Not Mention that he actually uses fire- and earthbending techniques that he’s painstakingly integrated with airbending because once, when he was a teenager who hated being in love, a brilliant boy wondered if non-Avatar benders could blend techniques to improve them.

Anyway, that’s the logic I ran with, because LWJ is all about conflicting impulses in balance and the idea of an airbender being hailed as the finest warrior and siege weapon of the day is delightful to me.  I’m not writing this!  But if I was writing it I would love writing a siege-breaker Air Nomad!

NOW, Wei Wuxian.  Here’s the thing.  A couple things.

First, firebenders are different from other benders because they can make their element.  That’s not so much a problem for airbenders, sure, because if you don’t have air to bend, you have a bigger problem, but for water- and earthbenders, lack of their native element is really a sticking point.  Firebenders do not have that problem.  As long as they’re not hypothermic, they can make as much fire as they want, and enough training can render that a non-issue.  Firebenders can work with what they’ve got, even if “what they’ve got” is highly damaging to them (lightning, for example, which Iroh points out can kill the wielder as easily as the target).  Since working with what he had is what got Wei Wuxian in, like, a whole narrative’s worth of trouble, I couldn’t resist making him a firebender in this AU I’m not writing.

Second, and more narratively interesting to me personally, Wei Wuxian’s righteousness must be easily corrupted, in the view of the world.  Even as an Avatar.  It’s Wei Wuxian’s entire narrative purpose, to be corrupted in the view of the world.  With my usual disregard for “making sense,” I think if I did this I would condense the timeline of the war in AtLA to be closer to the timeline of the Untamed, because that first generation of people probably really hated the Avatar for leaving them.  If I was going to write this (I am NOT going to write this!!!!!), I’d say that Wei Wuxian did something that convinced everyone (or rather, that allowed JGY to convince everyone) that he corrupted the Avatar chain so severely that, when he died, another Avatar wasn’t even born.  This is where my concept of WWX running for it when WRH tried to use the Avatar state of a weapon comes in--if I was going to write this I would make it so that there was some kind of Incident with terrible collateral damage on all sides before WWX booked it.  The most effective way to do that and retain some of the core elements of the Untamed is to align him with the Fire Nation, and say that, when the Fire Nation attacked, depending on the Avatar as their ace in the hole, the other elements rallied hard to put them down and nearly wiped them out.  

With the Fire Nation in the losing seat rather than the winning, JGY wrote the history books and said that the Avatar was corrupted by the hand of the Fire Lord, and that the reason there’s been no sign of a new Avatar in 16 years (more than enough time to not only locate the new Avatar, but start training them accordingly) is because Wei Wuxian destroyed the chain.  Sixteen years later, earthbender Mo Xuanyu runs away from his abusive family, all the way to the Southern Water Tribe, where he has no power and no friends and he gets so thoroughly reamed out by Chief Jiang Cheng that the kickback cracks an iceberg.

Lo and behold, turns out the Avatar chain is alive and well, but also, Wei Wuxian is faced with being a Fire Nation Avatar in a world that’s spent sixteen years learning to hate him personally and the Fire Nation as a whole.  Also Yanli, Wen Ning, and Wen Qing are alive, I don’t make the rules, and also everyone thinks that Sizhui is a nonbender.  Everyone is wrong.

YOU KNOW

IF I WAS GOING TO WRITE THIS

WHICH I AM NOT

#the untamed #mdzs #atla #atla au #wei wuxian #lan wangji #I'M! NOT! WRITING! THIS! #I'M NOT DOING IT! #I ALREADY HAVE ONE SHAMEFULLY UNFINISHED AVATAR AU ON MY CONSCIENCE! #but like hey listen...wwx's animal companion died in the Incident #he's the first avatar ever to have two animal companions and everyone is quick to denounce him as a monster for it #probably wrh killed suibian to force wwx into the avatar state and then he takes chenqing as a companion after his return #NO! I'M NOT WRITING THIS! #.....if y'all wanted some Animal Companion Angst i might have more thoughts though #ANYWAY!!!! PLEASE GO FORTH AND WRITE AIRBENDER WWX #I JUST HAVE A WHOLE NARRATIVE PLOTTED OUT IN MY HEAD THAT REVOLVES AROUND WWX BEING HATED AS A FIREBENDER #AND ALSO LIKE I SAID: SIEGEBREAKER LWJ!!!!!!!! B I T C H!!!!!! #this plot is a really nonsensical mashup of the two narratives involved so w/e #if i was doing it straight up...idk. honestly maybe xxc would be the avatar. and sl could be the banished prince. #and wwx and jc and jyl could be the water tribe sibs who find themselves an avatar #wwx as an airbender descendant maybe? suppose that cssr escaped and survived and had children and he's hidden his bending all his life #lwj is maybe...toph...honestly? rich kid with issues who ditches his life to go avatar adventuring? #yeah i think if i was just straight up going to shoehorn people into roles i'd do it that way maybe #idk i'd have to think about it i came up with this other thing with firebender!wwx in a single blinding moment of Clarity #but those are rare with me #AND I'M NOT WRITING THIS ONE #a queue we will keep and our honor someday avenge #Anonymous #asked and answered

[paradife-loft]

Close reading all the Jin Guangyao scenes: episode 24

Episode 10 | Episode 11 | Episode 22 | Episode 23

The title of this is a lie, actually, since the first half? two thirds? of this is going to be finishing up with episode 23, but ah well.

So, I left off with the previous episode right after the deeply unfortunate clusterfuck of a conversation between Jin Guangyao, Lan Xichen, Nie Mingjue, and Jin Guangshan, followed by “sometimes war crimes can double as grooming your extremely emotionally vulnerable son, and that’s terrible”. Which means now, it’s time for…

Swearing an (extremely ill-advised) oath of holy fratrimony!

This is a bit of speculation, since we see almost no detail on what went into the decision to become sworn brothers, but my read is that it at least partially reflects a political motive – tying prominent members of three clans together, rebuilding the rather demolished state of firm alliances and power left in the wake of a major war – while also reflecting a personal desire I think on Lan Xichen’s part to repair the rift between his two good friends, and offer them each a promise that they won’t be left isolated in the middle of larger forces trying to break them down.

The political aspect becomes a bit more apparent when considering the wording of the oath itself, actually: “We are liable to the immortal sects. We are to bring peace and stability to the commoners… If there is a change of heart, one will be faced with a thousand accusing fingers, and the wrath of Heaven and men!” – While this reflects a shared set of values, certainly, it also strikes me as relevant that these three, two of them current sect leaders, are swearing essentially not to become like the Wen clan that they’ve just deposed: they’ll be accountable to others, they’ll work for the benefit of those living under their authority, rather than capriciously throwing their weight around for personal gain.

Oh, and also - I’ve mentioned before, the dramatic irony here in how the consequences they invoke for failing to uphold the principles of their sworn brotherhood are in fact exactly what happens to Jin Guangyao in the end – given what’s to come, the oath he’s swearing ends up being more like a curse. Don’t swear oaths, kids, it never works out well. Of course, at the time, I don’t think he has any intention at all of betraying those principles – the “bring peace and stability to the commoners” part is certainly something he makes an effort to follow up on, once he has the power to do so! Still, for something that starts out with an explicit declaration to not be the sort of evil that Nie Mingjue so straightforwardly abhors, it’s… a very sad outcome.

Moving forward, we have… the most awkward set of greetings in the entire world, I swear. Mingjue shows up to the post-victory banquet and gets offered the world’s most politically-fraught location on the seating chart; Lan Xichen then reminds Jin Guangyao in front of the assembled members of three(!) separate sects to call him da-ge instead of Chifeng-zun. Jin Guangyao redoes his greeting/offer with the most intense deer-in-headlights look (pictured above), pretty clearly aware that Mingjue is not about to be happy with him. (This little exchange, including the encouraging nod also from LXC to NMJ, is further evidence beyond simply their general personalities I think, that Xichen was the driving force behind the brotherhood oath, especially in a personal sense.) But also, it serves as another piece of foreshadowing future events: knowing Mingjue is unlikely to be happy with the offer of Wen Ruohan’s old throne, Jin Guangshan hands the actual task of offering it off to Jin Guangyao. Here at least, Mingjue doesn’t get distracted from who’s really behind the offer, and addresses Jin Guangshan in vehemently refusing the seat; but it nonetheless continues establishing the pattern where JGS uses Jin Guangyao to be the primary face of his own less-than-savory political maneuvering.

(Which in general, makes me think it’s kind of interesting that he does have Jin Guangyao there greeting guests with him in the first place, and not Jin Zixuan? It’s a bit difficult for me to read what the status of co-greeter is supposed to be – second-in-command, or glorified servant? I think there may be a little bit of both, if JGY is there on one hand because he was the one setting the banquet up, but on the other hand also, because JGS wants to parade him around as his very own hero of the Sunshot Campaign, as Sect Leader Yao is so kind to remind us.

And then there’s... the one-on-one chat with Wei Wuxian.

First off, I’d like to link people to this post by @hunxi-guilai​, which honestly just goes over… a lot of what I probably would have liked to say about the implied meanings in this conversation. Essentially: Wei Wuxian is interested in what’s going on with this other Sunshot hero who also seems to be not carrying any sword (in a scene where we even see Jiang Yanli carrying hers!), and who had previously used a somewhat unorthodox weapon for his Wen Ruohan stabbing. Jin Guangyao though, is… not really interested in drawing attention to either of those facts (and I’m sure not in a way that would see him in solidarity with WWX), considering “unorthodox and outside the standard set of accepted behaviours in cultivator society” is the opposite of what he’s trying to look like right now.

Relevant to this, honestly, is the question of “what the fuck exactly even is a soft sword,” which CQL does approximately nothing to explain on the face of it, and only very implicitly does so if you’re obsessive like me and try to take blurry screenshots to compare the sword we see stabbing WRH with the sword that Jin Guangyao uses when fighting WWX’s paperman in episode 41.

Which do appear to be the same sword, inability to get a good clear look at it in either context notwithstanding. Oh, and JGY seems to have either repainted or swapped out the hilt, at some point in the intervening years – perhaps to better match the Jin clan’s aesthetic of white & gold sword decoration that we see on Jin Zixuan’s Suihua?

Anyway, for context on the “what’s a soft sword” issue, I am going to quote a relevant portion from the (EXR translation of the) MDZS novel, even though in general I’m trying to keep the canon cross-pollination in these meta to a minimum.

Back then, when Jin GuangYao worked undercover at Wen RuoHan’s side, he had often hidden the sword at his waist, wreathed the sword around his arm to use during critical moments. Although the blade of Hensheng seemed to be soft to the extremity, attacking with lingering motions, it was in reality both sharp and haunting. Once the blade had wrapped around the opposition, Jin GuangYao would apply it with a bizarre spiritual power, and one would quickly be severed into pieces by the sword, despite its tender appearance. Quite a few famous swords had been battered into piles of scrap iron just like this. At the moment, the blade of the sword attacked as though it was a serpent with silver scales, biting at the paperman without any hesitation.

So yeah – it’s an uncommon weapon, a sword with a blade that can bend and thus works very well for things like being sneaky and unassuming, and not fighting “fairly” in a way the vast majority of other cultivators would have any experience countering.

And... oh my god. Now we’re finally onto episode 24 properly.

The first input we get from Jin Guangyao this episode is this charming smirk as Wei Wuxian walks up into the center of the hall to interrupt JGS’s unpleasant “hey let’s renew this betrothal~” play. Personal amusement about a rather dramatic individual showing up to do something undoubtedly also dramatic? Entertainment about how a person not known for his skill at subtle political maneuvering is probably about to come in and make a mess that the Jin clan will be able to spin to their own advantage? Ehhh, why not both?

Though of course, the Jiang clan members function very well as a unit here once Wei Wuxian comes in to shake things up, and it’s not nearly the uncomplicated win for the Jin clan that he was probably expecting. Meanwhile, once that’s over, he takes the next opportunity to introduce his father’s next order of business, the invitation to the Phoenix Mountain hunt - and in fact, he does so with an absolutely seamless transition from Jiang Yanli’s rejection of the proposed marriage plan renewal:

“Everyone. For the previous Clan Leader Jiang to have such a daughter is already a great comfort to his soul. And not just Jiang Clan, but after the mess with the Wen Clan, every clan has experienced losses. This is a crucial time for us to rebuild and we critically are in need of manpower. For the past days, Father has spent a lot of time pondering over this matter. Luckily, he’s found a countermeasure. I dare to represent my father in inviting everyone back to Jinlintai during the fall. Jin clan will be putting all efforts towards reorganizing the round-up and hunting event at Hundred Phoenixes Mountain.”

It’s easy to overlook, I think, but the amount of rhetorical skill to put that together on the fly? It’s really not for nothing that Meng Yao was first introduced as being impressively sharp and well-spoken. He’s taking what starts as a loss of face for the Jin clan, redirecting it to focus on the virtue of Jiang Yanli, and then tying that in to the losses and worries that every sect now has in the wake of the war ending. And having reminded them of their own interests and present worries here, he steps in to offer a solution that slots the Jin clan in back at the top, looking extremely good, due to the wealth and comparative manpower advantage they have over everyone else after entering the war relatively late.

(Also, to clarify since it’s only ever implied rather than stated outright in the show, via the dialogue here and then another piece during the hunt itself – the Hundred Phoenix Mountain hunt, from what I can tell, is a regular event held for the purpose of showing off each clan’s skills so that they can attract new prospective disciples, hence why it’s a solution to the sects’ manpower being depleted by the war. Additionally, given the use in particular of reorganizing the event, I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that ordinarily, this event would be one put on by the Chief Cultivator. So with the Wen sect demolished, there was nobody readily available to step up and take over handling this event until now. Jin Guangshan may be fooling none of the viewers about his intentions in adopting a seat right next to Wen Ruohan’s old chair, but he’s certainly making good use of a-Yao’s rhetorical talent to get yet another instance of stepping into the role vacated by the Wen sect looked upon as praiseworthy benevolence.)

…And then what thanks does he get for it? Some dispassionate praise, more work, and no appreciation for the tea he’s made.

It’s a bit telling (and painful) the way he responds to being asked if he’s found the location of the Yin metal yet, also: “Not yet; I’m incompetent.” I think he’s definitely the sort to feel, even as he’s very aware of the worth of his skills and what sort of areas he’s good with in some respects, the foundation of his belief in himself is nonetheless incredibly rocky and it’s easy for a reminder of any sort of failure to loom suddenly very large over his self-assessment in the moment.

At the same time though, Jin Guangyao is very much an adaptable person, and we see that on full display with his next explanation: that the one who has the last piece of Yin metal may very likely be Wei Wuxian. It’s both an exercise in political savvy, pointing out a powerful and disruptive influence likely to cause problems for Jin Guangshan in the future if his interference in the marriage proposal is any indication, and a significant sewing together of information from several different sources: Wei Wuxian’s opportunity to be in the same place previously as Xue Yang, as he explains to JGS, but also the front-row seat for WWX interfering with the power of Wen Ruohan’s Yin metal using Chenqing and his new Yin Tiger Seal.

I don’t think he holds any particular animosity toward Wei Wuxian at this point? This reads to me like a calculation based pretty essentially on: his father is clearly invested in expanding the power of the Jin sect and diminishing the interest or ability of other sects to oppose him, and also in (instrumentally to that goal) getting his hands on the last piece of Yin metal. Jin Guangyao has been explicitly tasked with working on the latter concern, and probably implicitly at least with the former - at some point, and some point soon, he’s going to need to produce results on that front, or else be dropped from JGS’s incredibly conditional regard for not being useful enough. Given the confluence of circumstances, lining up suspicions (which for all he knows are likely even true!) against Wei Wuxian serves both goals, and gives him another safe place to rest for a day or two before having to continue worrying how to be helpful enough to keep deserving his newfound status.

And that’s it for Jin Guangyao in episode 24! Poor kiddo. Looks like you can climb another rung higher on the ladder, sure, but it doesn’t mean you’ll make it free of being used for quite a long while still.

#no good things for the poor sad cultivators #The Untamed #Jin Guangyao #meta #I think these are getting longer... send help.... #also: I lost my shit a little when I realised all those details I noted about the Phoenix Mountain hunting event #JGS is... such a master of political maneuvering. I hate it. #rambling

[cyb-by-lang]

Since Tomoe and Shinta are near WWX’s age-group... does that mean we get to see big sis!Kei despite her not having little gremlin brother Hayate yet!? (*looks at Wen Yuan and Jin Ling excitedly*) because if Wuya-jie doesn’t pull up her sleeves and dive headfirst into the clusterfuck that is the Wen Remnants, then what was the point of WWX getting another badass shijie?

(On another note, I find it fascinating how many strong, independent women WWX attracts/knows. There’s JYL, sweet lady that she is that burned JZX’s cousin at Phoenix Mountain; WQ, who is pretty much self-explainatory; MianMian, who stood against the Jin Sect and left; YZY, while a sour woman, still very bamf; BSSR, an immortal for heaven’s sake; LY, the only mentioned female sect leader and creator of the Assassination Chord Technique. Which, can any of the Nippon residents pull off?)

Long answer below the cut, with some spoilers.

Kei hasn’t been born in this part of the timeline. Right now, Tomoe and Wataru aren’t even officially together yet. They’re sort of writing back and forth, with Tomoe using Shinta as a messenger pigeon because she’s kinda holding off any character development with both hands and her bad attitude. Even her overtures to Wei Wuxian, Wen Qing, and Jiang Yanli are from a place of fairly obvious self-interest. At this point in the story, Tomoe’s early enough in her character arc that she’s not particularly nice, and Kei and Hayate are not even a thought in her head. 

From what I can tell, the Chord Assassination technique is...basically the same as if you garrotted someone with a wire, but with spiritual energy used to reinforce the wire/ensure cutting power. Originally used to silence dissidents within the Lan sect. Cheery, really. Anyway, there are a lot of spiritual techniques that are fiendishly difficult (if not impossible) for people without the correct training and/or spiritual structures in their bodies, but Chord Assassination is fairly straightforward. It’s just the exact opposite of what Tomoe does when she attacks someone with her katana. 

On the whole, the Japanese characters introduced in Dig Two Graves mostly don’t have access to the standard cultivator skill set. No flying on swords, no talismans, no ability to stave off starvation through inedia, and not much in the way of an increased lifespan/youth. They’re also too old by most cultivators’ standards to actually do the training necessary to forge a golden core. By the same token, cultivators almost all share a power source and general set of skills, but mostly can’t branch into the weird esoteric crap that the shinobi bring to the party. For example, there’s not really a means to give someone the Inuzuka sense of smell, or the Uzumaki blood magic/chain manifestation. On top of everything, most of these abilities are treated as secrets not taught to outsiders by both countries, which means there’s less crossover than there might otherwise be. It’s just that Tomoe and Shinta are in an area where their version of “everyone knows how to do that” doesn’t fly. 

Literally.

Wei Wuxian does seem to have Protagonist Syndrome; barring like… Qin Su, basically every character has some sort of reaction directly to him. The ones who don’t also happen to be dead. Then again, a lot of the ones who do are also dead. Mianmian is a glorious exception, but also very much an exception. There’s a bit of a body count in this story, is what I’m saying. (And since he’s never actually met Baoshan Sanren, I’m a little vague on their theoretical relationship and don’t think either character actually cares to pick up that thread.)

To give you an idea of what my and Beta’s opinion of Madam Yu is, one of the conditions of actually having a beta reader on Dig Two Graves was that she needed to be dead. Her and Jiang Fengmian. I agreed immediately, because I didn’t like either of the Jiang parents and still don’t. Especially not Madam Yu.

#dig two graves #the untamed #asks #word of god #nyd-needs-cuddles

[inessencedevided]

The Untamed, episode 45 - watching notes

I'm at this stage of fandom rn where it's really hard to concentrate on anything else 😅

Every song I listen to gets dissected for how it relates to wangxian

I need to concentrate on my thesis but instead I'm pondering how the untamed raises questions about collectivism vs individualism and how my western perception of that might differ greatly from a native chinese person or even the author's intention

Can't I just write my thesis about THAT?

Alas, I digress ...

Back to our regular programming :D

Last time one Sophie watches the untamed wwx went all Sherlock on us and used his formidable skills of deduction to expose Backpfeifengesicht's plan of killing everyone and blaming it on wwx

I've heard from several people that the next few episodes are their favourites, so no high expectations at all :D

Nobody wipes the blood on their chins away. Might be about the aesthetic

I adore detective-duo-wangxian so much!! Especially because wwx does 99% of the talking but then lwj will chime in with a single word and it's 100% devastating :D

If anyone knows any well written case-fics for these two, please, I need recs! (For after the show)

Backpfeifengesicht makes good one point and that is that jgy already is at the top of the cultivation world. So what does he gain from all this?

Or is it simply that he's afraid of wwx because he's a rebel and might act against him? (Don't answer that. I wanna find out through the show ;))

Wwx just casually revealed that he's been to cloud recess and that he handles went to the restricted section forbidden chamber. What will you do about, Lan Qiren? Huh? 😂

Oooh! Backpfeifengesicht is the ghosted faced man! I thought it was Jiggy himself!!! 😱

That makes way more sense though!

Lan Sizhui! Jin Ling! Oh you brave boys! 😭

Someone hold me 😭

But why does he not take zidian now? He's done so before!

"You little fool!" Is "I love you" in Jiang-Cheng-speak :D

"We're done for! What can we do??" - wwx *strips*

Sorry

Bahahaha 😂😂😂

I just burst out laughing waaay to loudly for the fact that I've got people sleeping in the room next to mine

But look at Lan Qiren when he sees wwx strop to reveal anat is probably his nephew's undershirt 😂😂😂

He's probably questioning every decision that's let him to this point :D

This is completely inconsequential,but I couldn't keep quiet about it anymore because I every time he makes this motion, it always sends a shiver down my spine!!! Notice that wwx (or rather Xiao Zhan) is one of these people whose fingers bend in the opposite direction??? I know it's just a normal thing some people can do, but I can't watch it!! It makes my fingers hurt just looking at it 🙈🙈🙈

Is he turning himself into a demon lure flag?? 😱

Lan Jingyi 🥺🥺🥺

Also does wwx now just transfer his self-sacrificing tendencies to lwj?

Nothing is as hot as these two together in a fight scene

Jiang Cheng doesn't want to leave them behind. He does care! :') he just never unlearned how to unravel his love from his anger

Sizhui running up to greet his dads :')

Look at them! I'm soft guys 💔

He called him Yuan!! 😭😭😭

So this is it. Any doubts I ever had about Sizhui's identity are gone

Will he finally recognize him??

Why don't you say anything lwj? This one time, I beg you!!

Sect Leader Yao still at his gossip shit even 16 years later 🙄

Lam sizhyi is seasick! Why is this so cute! 😭

Oh Wen Ning!! He recognized A-Yuan? Right?

I want to hug Lan Sizhui for his openness and kindness towards everyone he meets, no matter their status or what other people say about them! (Wen Ning now or who he thought was Mo Xuanyu the supposed mad-man) and I wanna hug lan Wangji right after for raising him to be like this :')

Oh Wen Ning! 😭

That's how I'd look at Sizhui, too, if I met him - poor unadulterated wonder :')

And just think about what that means for Wen Ning! He's not the last of the Wens! All their fight wasn't for nothing. This child, their legacy, survived 😭😭😭

"Can I call you A-Yuan" "Of Course." God I'm gonna burst into tears 😭

I'm actually bursting into tears!!

Isn't this the dream of anyone who has ever lost someone? :')

"He's like a brother and father to me" :')

And he raised him from when he was 4 or 5? So ... A-Yuan was about 2 when the Wens died? Right? Then 5 would fit with lwj's 3 year isolation

Ob god, it's the butterfly-toy!!! 😭😭😭

Wen Nings smiling through his tears! I can't! 😭💔And he's got the one from the market!

Aww, wax isn't wearing the white undergarment anymore. Too bad

Oh poor Jin Ling ...

So much grieve that he could probably never process. There so many lost kids in this story, hurt by things they had no control over 😔

I mean, I get it. That's the person who killed his parents (without being in control, but he doesnt know that) and everyone is just talking to him as if it's normal and that didn't happen. But he can't forget,but he doesnt really understand either and he has no outlet. Of course he'd just ... crash 😥

And who would have thought I'd ever try at a flashback of Jin Zixuan's death :(

For once, it'd be nice if the adults actually acted like the parent figures they're supposed to be and explain things to their children 🤦‍♀️

I'm so thankful though, that no one even thinks of scolding him for crying. Jismg Cheng only asked who it was that made him cry (and looks like he'll kick their ass). Generally, thus show has a very healthy attitude towards tears. Most characters cry when they are faced with tragedy, regardless of gender. Men being allowed to have appropriate reactions to grieve (instead of a single men tear or just punching things) is really nice to see

Oh Yao dude whose courtesy name I can't remember, shut up!

Thanks Ouyang Zizhen! You get me

I live for these children standing up to their elders

Meanwhile Nie Huaisang is just on the sidelines, enjoying the show :D never change!

The Lotus Pier theme song alone is making me cry rn 😢

Why can't wen Ning come in?

Oh Sizhui!

He many times do you want to make me cry happy tears today?? :')

Little turnip-baby ❤

But why doesn't lwj say anything ??? 😭

Lan Wangji raised A-Yuan smong a bunch of rabbits??? 😭

Now he's a turnip baby with a taste for carrots, how cute is that? :')

Holy shit, wwx and lwj are really joined at the hip these days of lwj won't enter the hall if wwx isn't allowed to :D

Lwj 😑 "no misbehaviour"

Someone. Knows. Their. Husband.

Okay sorry, but as painful as these cuts must have been and yes, while you do see scars on this prostitute's face, they in no way warrant these horrified gasps as of they had all seen a monster 🙄

Xue yang. Fancy seeing you here in this not at all disturbing sub-plot 😬

Okay that's creepy. That's really creepy

Shouldn't Jin Guangyao have a bit more compassion for these women?

On the other hand, he was born to menacingly stand behind a curtain 🤷‍♀️

W. T. F. ????

Jin Guangshan??? o___O

That's the most skin we've ever seen on this show and it's in a scene like THIS? 😬

THIS IS HOW JIN GUANGSHAN DIED? 😱😱😱

How?

How can you die from sex?

And then jgy made them keep going?

UGH

These poor women :/

So there's someone who set her free on purpose, right?

Bicao has really interesting eyes!

Oh wait, took me some time to catch up. This is about Quin Su and why she killed herself, right?

WHAT??

They were siblings o_O

They just went full game of thrones on this ...

Hey Jin Guangshan, screw you for raping that woman

Wait, is that why jgy had him die like THAT?

I'm so confused about how that happened btw

But why would Jin Guangyao merry quin su anyway? Was this some kind of political marriage that he couldn't call off?

This episode answered some of my questions but raised about a dozen more 😅

@sweetlittlevampire @fandom-glazed @elenirlachlagos @allhailthedramallama @luckymoony @kyrrahbird @i-love-him-on-purpose

5 episodes to go. I'm both happy because I can't wait to brows the untamed tag without looking for spoilers and extremely sad 🥺

Right now I'm planning to watch one episode each day until friday and then watch the last two on Saturday, hopefully quite early, so I can spend the rest of the day crying my eyes out over it, without having to worry about such trivial things as being a functioning adult or a responsible student 😅

#the untamed #sophie watches the untamed #wei wuxian #wwx #lan wangji #lwj #wangxian #jiang cheng #jin ling #lan sizhui #wen ning #a-yuan #(I'm so happy i can put this tag here again 😊) #jin guangshan #jin guangyao #ouyang zizhen #the untamed liveblog

[izartn]

MDZS JGY fic promt

I’m thinking about Meng Yao/Jin Guangyao and I think I would love to read a fic of him snapping in the opposite direction of his desperate grab for power and respect from his shit father. We know, thanks to JGS gruesome murder that at some point, after already being a shitty human doing murdery things, JGY snapped hard and said: “if i’m gonna do the shitty things of running this sect i’ll do them for myself and fuck you to death”. Quite literally. 

So I’d like to imagine a world where he, like, not necessary becomes a much better person; I dunno about the JZX and WWX kill plot, or about NMJ. I think he’s very set in his auto-preservating self-beneficing ways, and if you don’t really work well with that part of his chara then he’s not JGY anymore. 

But instead of being, I’ll become the highest in the cultivation world, so i will be finally respected and listened to (uhm, didnt’ work especially well did it? they never let him forget his mother profession when it was his father who was the absolute worst) he decides that while cultivation is still something to aspire to -can’t forget about his mother dying dream, also longer life and health benefits + being a hero, doing the decent thing- he realises the cultivation sect system as it is horrible. 

He was in the middle of the war, he saw it from both sides. He then went to low to high but still a servant. And it’s always blood what counts. He sees what happens to his other bastard brothers, to WWX when he decides enough is enough, and how he himself is still treated by his Sect despite his intelligence and abilities. And instead of trying to take refuge in the system, he is a bit more self-aware or inquiring; maybe he is more idealistic in some ways? But still oh so bitter, and decides to destroy the system from within.

You know what? Do it so he still rises to Leader of the Jin Sect (without prostitutes murdering and necrophilia; he is now more on the side of the common, so maybe he gets the help of Sisi or someone he knows to aid him poison his father and after he gets them a nice reward and packs them to a new life in Japan or something. Or he simply uses another subtle method without intermediaries or with unaware ones, he is certainly able of doing that when he isnt being an ironic murderer shit.) because it’ll serve him, and to be the leader responsible of making sure the so estimated Jin blood is disposesed will make him smug pleased. To slowly gain power and bit by bit erase the division between the noble clans and people who learn simply bcs of talent, scouting youngsters witht the excuse of replenishing the clans after the war and quiting the idiots nobles from their spoiled positions. 

Hell you can even make LXC and NMJ (did he died before or after JGY becomes Sect Leader? Well if he is still alive, NHS doesn’t destroy him, but then WWX doesn’t come back. If he dies before, then the vengeance is still in play, but it’ll be even more fraughted bcs now JGY goals and methods are a lot more morally grey and watching WWX and LWJ confront that would be super interesting O-O), you can make them see those policies and be like, oh sure, that’s a good thing you’re doing A-yao. But also conflict with their positions in the nobility system, as time pases and JGY subtly passes more changes and brings to ruin those sect leaders more entrenched in the old ways and abusing of their people.

 Programs for literacy, for the spread of knowledge and the civil use of cultivation techniques with the excuse of avoiding beforehand the formation of ghosts and resentment appealing to the lazy nature of the rich while eliminating bit by bit the necessity of their existence, like boiling a frog, the creation of the watchtowers still fits nicely and we know in canon he faced oppposition there so here it’s more important still, even more so Su She I think, will be elated with this turn of events and even more loyal lmao if JGY sells it well and JGY sells his ideas really well. 

Maybe he helps XXC and SL bcs it’s in his interest they find success although he finds them naive; but JGY has a canon soft spot for people who treat him well regardless of his common born status, so. Maybe he intercedes with XY and convinces him to work with him taking out nobles reasonably (I bet XY will like that), and manages to avoid somehow XY elaborated revenge on SL and XXC? or executes him when he is too much of a wild card, but we know how that ended in canon... The best bet is making XY see on his own best interest to help in JGY vision but that’s well. almost crack fic lmao. 

OH! Maybe he finds XY before the massacre of the Chang clan bcs he is searching for someone to help him above table and gets to him by offering a more subtle but still suitable appropriate revenge with the pro bonus of getting to do the same to others after and access to WWX manuscripts. You know this has a much higher chance of working, let’s go with this scenario. So he keeps XY out of his father reach, when he is searching for someone to gain control of the stygian seal and wen ning. Yeah, this will appeal immensely to JGY xD

You know, and JGY being beloved by the people, and having more than a facade of being just or fair, but proving it although it isn't in the interest of the nobles. And as he is politics savvy, although with more effort he could certainly make it so he avoids assassinations or walking in a minefield like wwx etc. 

Depending on the NMJ situation... You could make it so NMJ doesn’t die and then they enter a stalemate of grudging respect bcs JGY wants more an ally in swaying people for his cause than his revenge, although he sure could make non lethal things to inconvenience NMJ lol. And NHS as sect leader wouldn’t have the same power to his decisions and reach, no matter if he is more manipulable; after all isn’t NHS a pampered noble in JGY eyes? Who could be sure if he even would follow JGY anyways... 

And you could give it different endings depending on the development of JGY: a success where he gets to the point were factually the sects aren’t bloods based anymore, just a few like the lan (those traditionalists lol) resisting an unavoidable wave of change taht comes for everybody, and the money doesn’t flow in their pockets like a river to the ocean but instead it goes back to the people. 

You could make it so it’s a partial success bcs JGY is still himself and does more than a few morally grey things that come to light with the NMJ murder reveal, but his changes linger and the common people plus others of the same ideal now trained and in process of being cultivators won’t let themselves be cowered by the awful nobility -another big conflict breeding, and maybe it won’t be successful but people have long memories and books and the new ideals of equality would spread regardless, so it would start again and again each time a bit better-. I think WWX POV in this case would be delicious omg, LXC conflict even more pointed. This would be, I think the more realistic and interesting to write take on the idea. Iand you now, I’m in favor of a novel setting and characterization, but to make it more painful, use the 16 gap of the show and nothing else (i haven’t see the show beyond the first episodes bcs i couldn’t take it lol)  so JGY has more time to make changes. 

You could make a downer ending (this I wouldn’t like lmao, but it’s there) so that shows the cruelty and inability of making changes to something so integrated and supported by itself, that JGY loses much to his revenge he takes more and more radical actions that come back to bit his ass with NMJ and JGS murder revelation. I think XY in here would be appropriate, in an antagonist role as in MDZS. But it still has an impact; JGY’s life, despite his faults was still more inspirational, made better impact than his canon self. Make it poetically tragic and a comment on the futility of trying to change society by oneself, but find beauty in the attempt itself which has created community, which will in the future do the true work of overthrowing the yokes of the high ups, educating and helping each other in their messy human lives.

All this ending, and JL conflict, who at this point has learnt much at his uncle JGY side, who has decided to (dunno about marrying QS and A-Song’s death. depending on your take and ending it’ll have different impact) go on with his labor bc he sees the good on it and swears to not be like the worst of JGY. A legacy he can reconcile with himself thanks too, to the experience of meeting WWX. JL is in a more fraught position with JC in this verse, I think, bc for one, he is more mature/not so spoiled and that would make JC glad, but his ideas are at the same time understable and anatema to JC who puts so much of his life on honoring the clan on making sure the Jiang carry on and his name isn’t forgotten but who recruited from nothing during the war. Who sees the danger in alienating the powers of the cultivation sects bc he saw what it did to WWX and he believes in protecting his own and to hell with the rest. 

So very interesting!!! 

You could spin so many takes from this, it’d be so fascinating and satisfying. I’d love to see the chara of JGY developed in this direction, bcs he has so much potential to waste it in so petty goals. His ambition is certainly big enough to believe he will damn well do a silent revolution well. 

Just, using the classics to argue for equality and education and a good life even if you’re a peasant, using the cultivation basis and its suppose use to better oneself and the world in making a point of avoiding wars and violent retribution (to the public, he’s still a bit of an hypocrit bcs it serves him well to have a stick with which to beat his enemies lmao) and instead use diplomacy and a sort of rehabilitation or service thing. Because those ideas are there, in the different clasics and schools of thought (not confucianism, not as much) it’s just that the nobles and high scholars were never interested and used them to argue for a sort of natural hierarchy were they’re in top. 

 Let JGY create a new school of thought, and LXC and others seeing the merit on it. JGY has the reach and the intelligence and the ability. 

The best revenge is living well and destroying the system which allowed the other to harm you, the ideas, the means. Create a fantasy fulfillment ^^

#meng yao #jin guangyao #mdzs #cql #the untamed #i think tv folks will appreciate this #meta #writing prompt

[ceescedasticity]

MDZSBURB

I've settled on Classpects and moons and Lands but I've still got two distinct possibilities for timeline. Here's one of them.

It starts sometime in the chaos that should be leading up to the Sunshot Campaign but won't, exactly, in this timeline. It starts slowly, subtly even -- maybe there are meteors and maybe there aren't, but there's no rain of them, and people are already disappearing for months at a time. They could easily just be dead. There's no Game structure to lure them into it -- it just takes them, with little warning, and they have to learn the rules afterwards.

Maybe it's Wen Ruohan triggering it somehow -- he certainly tries to take advantage of it once he understands what's happening (as much as it's possible to understand anyway). He's powerful and cunning and he gets himself and some of his into the Medium, to try to seize the power there, and they do impressively well. For a while. He doesn't really understand how to deal with an environment where he is defined as a superfluous obstacle. Skaia has chosen its protagonists and will not be swayed.

I'm not sure of the full order entry, or the exact circumstances under which they're all taken, but I know a lot of it.

Wen Ning is taken early. He's Page of Life, a Derse dreamer, of the Land of Chains and Flowers. He is probably the Hero Least Traumatizing To Consorts.

Wen Qing follows not long after, and she was one of the very few to actually anticipate it. She's Seer of Doom, after all. --And she even understood it would be wise and safest to take her close kin with her, as little sense as that seemed to make, so she has quite a lot of company in the Land of Silk and Needles. She's a Derse dreamer, too, and wakes up fast to look for her brother.

Nie Huaisang goes pretty early, too, completely unobserved, out of somewhere that was supposed to be safe. He's just missing, no clues. (NMJ is Very Unhappy About This.) In fact, of course, the Bard of Void is sound if not safe in the Land of Wind and Whispers. He's not very happy about it either, but at least the current situation enables more unconventional fighting. Derse, again.

Jiang Cheng is snatched out of the ruins of Lotus Pier (before he can get his core destroyed). It is the opposite of subtle. The good news is that a handful of not-yet-executed disciples were hauled along to the Land of Mist and Causeways, too, and attending Wens helpfully were not. The less good news is he ends up with his mother for a sprite. It's stressful. He's Knight of Rage, and yet another Derse dreamer.

Wei Wuxian has his core intact but still runs afoul of Wen Chao and flunkies and still gets thrown into the Burial Mounds. A rather regrettably large chunk of the Burial Mounds accompanies him to the Land of Chimes and Ashes, leading to his not actually realizing he's in another dimension for about a month until he manages to get out through the borders which are at least not warded. He's still developed demonic cultivation, although in the end he uses Chenqing less for controlling corpses and more for his new powers as Rogue of Time. --The corpses do come up some, though.

I think at this point we finally get a Prospit dreamer with Lan Wanji, Mage of Space. He's not completely alone like some of the others, but he was off roaming. He may end up bringing some random people along to the Land of Rabbits and Frogs, but no one terribly interesting.

I'm not sure if there's any feasible way for Jiang Yanli to figure out where the hell her brothers have disappeared to and how to trigger the thing that will take her after them, but she's Witch of Hope, so maybe. She rounds out the Derse dreamers from the Land of Earth and Sky. Don't have more details here yet.

Next up we have a spectacular exit from Jin Zixuan, accompanied by way too much of Koi Tower, way too many hangers-on, and both his parents. It's frankly a nightmare. He spends as much time as possible out exploring the Land of Twists and Feathers. He's Heir of Light, although he's not particularly good at it. --Both his parents will end up sprites eventually, but he's fortunate enough that his is his mother. Prospit.

Depending on what canon we're going with Mianmian may or may not be in fairly close proximity, but either way she's next. Maid of Breath, and I can't say more about her circumstances of entry but I can say she's the only candidate for a Breath player in this horrifically unfree and entangled group (with the possible exception of WWX but I need him for Time).

I'm not sure what order the next two are in. By this time they definitely know something bizarre and catastrophic is going on at least.

Lan Xichen is Sylph of Heart, Land of Leaves and Hindsight. He probably gets pulled out of the Cloud Recesses survivors' camp; he probably has a lot of company; his sprite is probably either his father or Lan Qiren and I'm honestly not sure which would be worse. Prospit.

Nie Mingjue is Prince of Blood and probably gets yanked off the battlefront somewhere. (He's one of the top candidates for Wen Ruohan to follow into the Medium.) Prospit. He is arriving late if not last and a lot of other people understand the rules here a lot better than he does and he does not enjoy it.

And, finally, Meng Yao. Thief of Mind (I wanted to give him Vriska's Classpect but I was running low on Aspects and I didn't think JZX could carry Mind). I have no idea when and where he is when he falls off the map and into the Land of Mirrors and Stains. Has he become a spy yet? Did he even get a chance to start working for NMJ? Did he meet LXC? Had he fallen down the stairs yet? Which Meng Yao is being asked to become a hero? This is obviously a very important question but I do not know the answer. --But regardless of the answer he ends up with JGS as a sprite, and then probably kills him.

So anyway there's quite a bit of carrying on and fighting and reunions and dealing with Wen Ruohan's doomed but troublesome power grab, and it all ends up… I don't know. Everyone's alive, anyway.

—The other possibility is similar in its mechanics but kicks off right about when WWX absconds with the Wen remnants — they end up in LOCAA instead of the Burial Mounds, or possibly the Burial Mounds immediately followed by LOCAA. And then there's increasing chaos and confusion that's all blamed on the completely unlocatable Yiling Patriach (despite demonic cultivation's lack of association with giant meteors) as everyone else gets grabbed up over the next… while. (Not too long a while, though, because I have limits and I am not throwing JYL into a Game with an infant, let alone pregnant.)

#crossover classpects

[franniebanana]

CQL Rewatch - Episode 9

Let me preface this by saying we’re entering a period of episodes that I’m not that fond of. There’s nothing wrong with them really, but it’s just padding and a little bit of set-up for later arcs, but I personally think the set-up is unnecessary.

Anyhow, straight into it! I shouldn’t say “straight” when wangxian is on screen. I struggled to get a good shot, but the dichotomy between Nie Huaisang and wangxian here is hilarious to me. He’s such a good comedy act, flailing and being totally useless, other than being another warm body, but at the same time, he’s the only one really acting like a teenager here. Lan Wangji is always so cold and serious, while Wei Wuxian is a goof until he needs to be serious, but both of them are also extremely talented. We know Nie Huaisang isn’t an idiot, but I don’t get the impression he’s a great cultivator either.

I literally watched this scene this morning and totally missed this part. Lan Wangji stops Wei Wuxian from killing or attacking the puppets further, as he’s about to use his sword to defend them all. It’s a great little moment, actually, because it shows how Wei Wuxian is willing to do anything, but he’s not willing to murder innocent people if they can be saved. We already know, with all the Lan principles, that Wangji would not kill needlessly, but we don’t necessarily know that about Wei Wuxian. But he has morals, he has his own principles, and he’s not going to cast those aside for nothing.

Now, you could say he won’t do it now in the story, but what about later? What about Wen Chao? I’d say that’s totally different. That was revenge. And one of the things I like about this story is that it doesn’t shy away from revenge (something that a lot of Western media kind of disdains—we seem to be afraid to in any way make revenge out to be something good).

I can’t believe I managed to capture the exact moment that Lan Wangji used the Silencing spell on Nie Huaisang. I’m honestly really impressed with myself. Of course, it was totally by accident. I was initially going to just talk about how funny Nie Huaisang is again, because I love his flailing and physical comedy, and his expressions are fantastic. But can I talk about this glare that Yibo has right now? Haha, I love it. Again, if looks could kill. If I were Wei Wuxian here, I’d feel pretty satisfied for being the one not silenced at this moment. Honestly, it shows such a progression in their relationship: they’re really working as a team, no longer at odds with each other. It’s really apparent that they have become a team: it’s Nie Huaisang and WangXian—not Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji. There are also more moments where it feels like Wei Wuxian is really looking for Lan Wangji—like, it feels as if he’s more interested in the relationship than Lan Wangji. I don’t think it’s true at all, but that’s kind of what we’re shown. The thing is that Lan Wangji is so much more aloof and cold towards Wei Wuxian—very tsundere, I suppose. But of course, we know Lan Wangji is very conscious of Wei Wuxian.

I’m not going to pick on her specifically here, because overall, the fake instrument-playing is pretty hysterical. I do think she’s the worst at it, though, probably because she only does this in one scene or something. Wang Yibo has a double for a lot of the scenes where he’s playing the guqin, but what little we see is fine. Xiao Zhan is also okay—we know he isn’t really playing, but he does an okay job pretending to play. Like, his lip is on the flute. It kind of looks like Wen Qing doesn’t even have her lips on the flute—like she’s trying not to wreck her makeup. Anyway, I’m not going to harp (see what I did there?) on it—none of them are musicians.

Reminder to gif this part.

Any time Wei Wuxian comes to Lan Wangji’s defense is a good time, and coupled with a smile like this—my heart is melting, excuse me. I love these moments, because for just a few seconds, it feels like no one else is there—it’s just the two of them having a moment together. And Wei Wuxian is once again here proving how he’s loyal to Lan Wangji, how his friendship is worth something, and it’s not just skin-deep. I think Lan Wangji is touched here: the way his averts his gaze, as if he likes what Wei Wuxian is saying, but he still feels uncomfortable. Outside of his family, this is probably the closest relationship that Lan Wangji has ever had.

Wei Wuxian has a lot of cool magic, and it’s a shame we don’t get to see more of it. I like the idea that his talismans are more clever, if that makes sense. They aren’t just explosions or hitting people with waves of force to knock them around. He’s got golden nets, and talismans that can bind/bond people to each other, ones that can cause you to be pinned to the ground. It’s just very fun, and we don’t get to see a lot of that sort of magic in this world. Actually Lan Wangji has the Silencing spell, plus the body binding spell that he uses in the book, but that is, unfortunately, not in this series. And the first time you see it in the book is when he binds Wei Wuxian’s body so that he has to sleep right on top of Lan Wangji—great stuff.

WWX: So they are making use of my wisdom? LOL

Wei Wuxian stops to make a joke, saying he is most disturbed by the hallucinations because he has so many thoughts in his head—basically too smart for his own good here—and at the same time, poking fun at Lan Wangji, because he isn’t bothered by the hallucinations (ie. he doesn’t have many thoughts in his head). Okay, first of all, we know Wei Wuxian respects Lan Wangji a lot, so he is definitely joking, and it’s all in good fun. Lan Wangji rolls his eyes a bit, and he’s not bothered. He did, after all, tell Wei Wuxian to put the net over the other three so that he and Wei Wuxian could take care of the dire owl alone. He also respects Wei Wuxian and values him as a fellow cultivator and teammate. Second of all, again, Wei Wuxian is not an idiot! He’s smart! He’s clever! He’s not dumb! I don’t know who still needs to hear this, but I’m saying it again. I know it’s easy to put him into the typical BL “female” role: he’s smaller, he’s a bottom, blah blah blah. I honestly don’t like that at all. Every ship doesn’t have to be two opposites. It doesn’t have to be m/f, top/bottom, big/small, dark/light, smart/dumb, strong/weak. I’m aware of how the book is written and I’m aware of BL tropes in general, but I see two equals here. I like how they picked Wang Yibo, a shorter and younger man than Xiao Zhan, to play Lan Wangji. I like that they took out the fact that he has inhumanly strong arms. I like the different dynamic that it displays from the book characters. That isn’t to say that I don’t like the book—I love the book. The book is my favorite adaptation, both in terms of storytelling and in terms of plot. But that doesn’t mean that it’s perfect for me.

Anyway, enough ranting for now.

I love this shot. And I love how in sync they are in this fight—it’s like a dance. When I’ve heard about fight choreography in the past, I never associated it with the word “dance,” until I saw this series. I don’t know if it’s the costumes or the setting or the actors or what, but their motions are so fluid, so dance-like—it’s actually quite beautiful.

Oh, my god, look at that grin! I fucking love it!! Also, serious moment turns into a chance to tease Lan Wangji. I will accept it.

My sentimental heart loves how scared Wei Wuxian is for Lan Wangji here. All that time wearing the One Ring—I mean, holding the Yin Iron, is really wearing him down. (Sorry, I couldn’t help myself). But jokes aside, I love how Wei Wuxian is right there, instructing him on how to handle what’s going on and to not lose control, while the others are just kind of clueless as to what is happening or how to help. And even after Lan Wangji snaps out of it and says they have to go to the Chang Clan, Wei Wuxian’s expression still is one of great concern, and I doubt it’s out of fear for what the waiter has just told him. I think he’s just really worried about Lan Wangji. This is the first time that Lan Wangji has even been like this, even in the face of great danger, and Wei Wuxian is shaken by it.

Other episodes: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 |

#cql #the untamed #wangxian #wei wuxian #lan wangji #nie huaisang #wen qing #wang yibo #xiao zhan #mdzs #mo dao zu shi #sorry this was short #but like I said I'm not really into a lot of these eps until indoctrination starts #also I wanted to make a comment about how the last bit was like scooby doo bc all of them solving myseries #cql rewatch

[lotus-mirage]

untamed episode 34 liveblog

I’m interested to see where this goes now that we’ve caught up to the opening.  I have no idea what tone the rest of the story is going to take, frankly.

That is a very fluffy dog

Did - Is the dog trained to follow people??? That’s. That’s a very non-threatening pace for that sort of thing.

I cannot believe that LWJ front flips in to defend him from a fluffy dog barking in his direction.

Hahaha

So the Nie clan isn’t keeping up, then?

It’s Nie Huisang! Glad to see him even if he isn’t doing a good job at the moment.

Wait. Why is he the clan leader? What happened to his brother?

After all the times I wrongfully assumes that his brother died before, now he goes and dies off-screen? I mean I guess it sounds like it’ll be plot relevant, but. Pfft.

‘His cultivation went wrong.’ What? It can do that!?

:,( at both backstory and family angst

Didn’t LWJ not liked to be touched?

‘Wonder dog’. What

Malsoleum?

The. The dog is powerful??

So did Jin Ling just happen to walk into a trap on the same path that they were heading, or is this another set-up?

Did something break out of the tomb?? I’d say it looks too old to be, like, Wen Ning, but it’s damp and has been like 16 years.

Oh, it’s a bunker. Right.

That seems like too many bricks on the ground there.

Noisy like ghosts, or noisy like resentful energy?

Spirits, okay.

‘Blades shrine’ well that’s ominous

Would make sense for a place for the sword to have come from, though

Are those coffins!?

Sword coffins. Okay.

Okay, sword ghost doesn’t know anything, but... weird thought: he said the same thing Nie Huisang was just emphasized to be saying all the time.

Did we know that they could, like. Communicate with spirits this way before?

They actually brought up the Nie Huisang thing. I don’t know if that implicated him or. What.

These are some kind of complicated questions for a series of notes.

The spirit is who? No. Well. He can’t be dead, not already. Not with such little fanfare.

How does this world work

He’s in the wall!?

Buried and sealed in the wall!?

Well at least he’s alive

That’s a lot of people.

Okay, so the statues??

Was that a Lan disciple? Looked to be wearing white. Probably not the mystery instigator guy, at least.

Wait nvm not wearing white.

I don’t recognize the clothing

Definitely expensive though

Oh jeez that’s a evil looking infection.

Or spell, okay.

Yeah. Uh. That’s kind of an alarming thing to be woken up to.

‘One death is enough for me’ DO YOU NOT KNOW THE MEANING OF THE WORD ‘COVER’

I THOUGHT YOU WERE SUPPOSED TO BE SMART

it’s exactly the same thing he’s been doing the entire tome, though, so I guess I can’t really complain. can still be exasperated.

Is it the same pendant? If so - how’d he get it?

Oh! I recognize that voice!!

Proobably not great for WWX at the moment though

they walked right past his horrible hiding spot

I. Right past him.

The dog is smarter than most of the characters combined, I swear.

I guess that’s one way to get him to reveal his face.

Yeah he’s really just piling up evidence against himself isn’t he

:,(

This entire conversation is just painful

Ouch, flashbacks too.

Hmm. Not sold on the idea that it was Wen Ning.

I’m kind of trying to distance myself from the conversation here because it. Kinda hurts.

Wait, he’s letting him go and going with him!? Was not expecting that at all, frankly.

Nor was I expecting him to be able to use Zidian, but I guess that makes some sense.

Did he forget about meeting LWJ?

Jin Ling named his dog like his uncle named his and I find that adorable.

Okay yeah Jin Ling is oddly adorable by himself anyways.

Did. Did Mo Xanyu have a unique mask? I guess it’s recognizable and not a lot of people seem to be wearing them, but he’s referring to it specifically

Actually both his actual facial structure and mannerisms look a lot like Jiang Cheng’s. Props to both the actor and people who did the casting.

Did he knock him out so he wouldn’t get in trouble with Jiang Cheng or??

No, the curse, right.

Transferring it? I guess he doesn’t really have another option right now.

End notes:

So. He seems to have forgotten about the meeting with LWJ, which is probably going to escalate some things.

As is transferring the curse. That might endear him some to his brother and nephew, but frankly is going to probably be very troublesome in the near future. And also scare LWJ.

I do wonder what it actually does, though? And why he didn’t point it out to Jin Ling or Jiang Cheng?

So. Jiang Cheng has been catching people that he thinks could be WWX, but ah. This one is definitely him and I think he knows it. The both of them being gone is probably going to get him pretty mad/scared. Which may or may not be his entire state of being at this point. Or mad/grieving. Smad.

This is me being lighthearted about the whole thing, to be clear. I’m. Really not glad to see him effected like this. I can’t wait to be done with this series and be able to go read fix-its - there must be a ton of them.

I wonder who it was by the bunker?? Wen Ning was wearing his all-black combo+cape thing, I think, and the guy didn’t seem to be chained up.

Actually. That whole thing might have been a ploy by Jin Ling to get Jiang Cheng to go out searching. Smart, but a little cruel, given the circumstances.

The Nie Huisang thing got suggested and then dismissed, but I feel like it’s. I don’t know, the opposite of a red-herring? Like, an option is raised and dismissed, and then it turns out to be the solution all along (or to something related).

The guy at the bunker didn’t seem to be extremely coordinated and I don’t recall Nie Huisang being a fighter (aside from the original Danfan mountain fight, maybe), but I’m not sure that a clan leader would be able to just leave like that without an entourage, especially if he can’t fight.

We don’t really have many options, that I know of, really. What other named characters could possibly be there? Meng Yao? One of the two wandering cultivators? We haven’t seen those guys in a while.

#mdzs #the untamed #untamed liveblog #my thoughts

[caffeinatedtomato1]

I've fallen into the rabbit hole (hah, rabbits) that is The Untamed. I'm watching the live action, and I'm on episode 28. I'd like to read the novel too after watching this. I didn't realize how much media there is for this. The novel of course is the original, then there is the live action, a manhua, an anime, and an audio cd I think?? Anyway, I'm absolutely loving the live action. The show/actors excel in these beautiful subtle facial expressions that convey so much.

Spoilers ahead! Mostly me rambling.

The family theme in this is so beautifully done. I love the relationship between the Jiang siblings. Yanli is best sister, and the way she stood up for Wei Wuxian in the hunting episode was *chef's kiss*. Also, Jiang Cheng is best bro, even though he lets his emotions get the better of him. He also stood up for Wei Wuxian. And after the 3 month separation he got so good at expressing that he really cares and was worried about Wei Wuxian. I know things are about to go downhill fast, but for now I just love these siblings and how they care and take care of each other now that they've lost their parents. I'm so sad for WWX becoming isolated from his family. Like so far they haven't told us outright, but it is obvious from Wen Qing's reaction that back when Jiang Cheng lost his golden core, Wei Wuxian found a solution that Wen Qing was not happy about, but she agreed she would have done the same for her brother if she was in that position. And so, it's not hard to figure out, whatever solution they found required Wei Wuxian to give up his own golden core in order for Jiang Cheng to get his back. And the Baoshan guide was likely just Wen Qing since she was helping Wei Wuxian with the spell. But of course they didn't anticipate that Wei Wuxian would get caught by Wen Chao, so that ruined his plans to reunite with his siblings. And in those 3 months, well he had to survive by taking the demonic cultivation powers since he had no golden core to protect him.

I love how Lan Zhan figure out pretty quickly that Wei Wuxian is now afraid of swords, so he is always watching out for him and blocking swords for him. The facial expressions between these two actora is also *chef's kiss*. It's so beautifully done and conveys so much meaning. Lan Zhan cares about him so much, but he is having to question his own morals and values that he grew up with, which are now in opposition to what Wei Wuxian is doing. But his love for him still overcomes that difference. It is a beautiful literal representation of the metaphors they've been throwing around of things not truly being black or white, right or wrong. And thats where I have to bring up my love for the Lan siblings. Lan Xichen first of all is best bro, and also best wingman?? He just knows amd cares about Lan Zhan and really does want to help Wei Wuxian. So good.

It's interesting to see the difference in values thr Jiang brothers have. Jiang Cheng puts his family first and thinks guilty by association for the Wen siblings. But Wei Wuxian will treat everyone equally. He'd save his presumed enemy if they saved him. Despite being nuanced, funnily enough I think he actually is the most black or white character in terms of morality. He is very much: You help me, I help you, no questions asked.

Anyway, I'll probably post more ramblings as I continue to watch. I really love this show. It's such a good story, so glad I finally decided and got a chance to start watching.

#spoilers #the untamed #mo dao zu shi #the untamed spoilers #mo dao zu shi spoilers