#book: mdzs

[factsilike]

Reading the extras again and crying over this;

WWX being so determined to be good and abiding by the rules for LWJ's sake, getting up early(ish), drinking his family's bitter medicinal soup (or at least trying), being on his best behaviour so that his uncle wouldn't have an opportunity to criticise him, understanding completely when the juniors were avoiding him and not being upset, being so hungry and bored but only sighing and resigning himself to bearing it cause he didn't want to break the rules and cause LWJ any trouble-

Only for LWJ to wake him up gently in the morning, pamper him and spoil him by bathing and clothing and getting him ready for the day (and "enduring" many kisses in the process) then letting him sleep to his heart's content, refusing to let him suffer on his behalf by forcing himself to eat a bland and boring meal that he really didn't want to, as well cooking a whole delicious spicy meal later just for him so that he wouldn't go to bed hungry and unsatisfied (because he knew WWX had been utterly bored and unentertained throughout the banquet, and he was NOT going to let that stand, and was going to personally make sure that his husband was well fed and happy).

Just the whole chapter being about WWX finally coming to Gusu, and willing to comply and cooperate with the rules of LWJ's family, all for LWJ's sake, only for LWJ to turn around and make sure to show through his own quiet actions that he didn't want WWX to abide by things, however minor they were, that made him unhappy on his behalf. That was the last thing he wanted.

He didn't care about his uncle's nagging and griping, nor about the "righteous" rules of his clan, as much he cared about his husband's happiness and satisfaction.

#mdzs #book: mdzs #mdzs novel #lan wangji #wei wuxian (mdzs) #wei wuxian #lan wangji (mdzs) #mdzs extras #and I am once again blown away by how high these two have raised my standards

[themandilorian]

I was wholly unprepared for the experience of watching the untamed in 2023. I’ve seen the gifs! I’ve read some character analysis! I vaguely knew the plot but I did not expect a.) the show to be a lot more tragic and nuanced and funny than what I thought possible and I cannot stress this enough b.) for Wen Ning to also be there on that damn boat

#the most show of all time #I’ll do a separate post about the book series because you also could not have prepared for that experience #mdzs #the untamed

[lazycranberrydoodles]

sibling bonding moment!

#oughhhhh #kind of mashed together the book scene and cql scene for this. also somehow invented a whole new dseign for yllz wwx #EVEN THOUGJ HIS NENDEROID IS RIGHT THERE ON MY DESK LOOKING AT ME??? #yes wen chao is in the family guy death pose but his fingers are all bitten off so its mot as effective :/ #yes at this point his legs have been chewed off. HE CANT DEATH POSE WITHOUT THEM THOUGH #art #my art #comic #mdzs #mo dao zu shi #the grandmaster of demonic cultivation #grandmaster of demonic cultivation #the grandmaster of diabolism #wei wuxian #jiang cheng #twin prides of yunmeng #lan wangji #wangxian #mdzs fanart #mdzs spoilers #wen zhuliu #wen chao #sunshot campaign #lmao #blood cw #hanging cw #violence cw

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Gaslight, Gatekeep, Girl found dead in a hidden room.

[First] Prev <–-> Next

#poorly drawn mdzs #mdzs #lan xichen #jin guangyao #jiang cheng #wei wuxian #qin su #EDIT: Tumblr published an earlier draft with only half the notes I wrote so: late entry on my JGY thoughts. #Unlike the mystic powers of the stockmarket (what the OG meme is referring to) I think this situation calls for more active investigation. #qin su is such a deeply tragic character to me and I really wish we got a bit more from her. #Love everyone who sent me messages about her after the last time she appeared. #I think she needs a spin off of her being a transmigrator SO badly. #MDZS has so many interesting characters - but it sometimes fails to give them the proper room to really develop past a role in the plot. #That's just the consequence of writing a story like MDZS. Not every character in a book *needs* to have a rich inner life and backstory! #To do so would bog down the story and obliterate any notion of pacing. It's just not possible. #Jin Guangyao (nee Meng Yao) is unfortunately not free from this leeway rule. He is the culprit of this murder mystery plot #and thus NEEDS to encapsulate the themes of the book. And personally he's a 7 out of 10 at best on this front (in the AD). #MDZS is about rumours twisting reality and working towards truth. And about how people & situations are rarely ever black & white #JGY has his motivations. He's well written in regards to his actions making sense for his character. #What started as good traits (drive to succeed & improve his image) became twisted over time (do anything to maintain his image) #and it's a good parallel to WWX! He has the same arc (with different traits)! Bonus points for IGY in that regard. #but man....by the time we confront this guy for murder there's not a lot of grey morality. He's just...deep in the hole *he* dug. #There's a beautiful tragedy to it! More on JGY in later comics - this is getting pretty long already!

[queer-book-character-tournament]

Character, book, and author names under the cut

Wei Wuxian- Mo Dao Zu Shi/The Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation by Mo Xiang Tong Xiu

Harrowhark Nonagesimus- The Locked Tomb by Tamsyn Muir

Andrew Minyard- All for the Game by Nora Sakavic

#Wei Wuxian #Wei Ying #Yiling Patriarch #Mo Dao Zu Shi #The Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation #MDZS #mxtx #Mo Xiang Tong Xiu #Harrowhark Nonagesimus #Gideon the Ninth #tlt #the locked tomb #saint nonagesimus #Harrow Nonagesimus #Tamsyn Muir #Andrew Minyard #aftg #the foxhole court #tfc #the kings men #the raven king #all for the game #Nora Sakavic #polls #lgbt books #queer book character tournament 2.0

[umeji-imeji]

So.......... I might have become obsessed with MDZS too I redrew my favorite book illustration, and added the color (original artwork by Marina Privalova)

#seriously all the book artwork was so good #and i simply loved the story #this scene #these two #my heart #lan wangji instant favorite #every time i finish the fifth book i want to start back from the first #to experience the evolution of wangxian again and again #so hello mdzs tumblr #i am new among you #how do you go back to normal life tho #mdzs #mdzs fanart #digital art #grandmaster of demonic cultivation #wangxian #lwj x wwx #wei wuxian #lan wangji #lan zhan #wei ying

[weirdplutoprince]

Reading mdzs and having the slow realization that a lot of this book has been Mr Lan Zhan being knuckle white gripping with his lust over a guy whose initial take on their relationship was 'idk we weren't close' despite playing the long game of insane insufferable guy flirting since they were both around 15 years old. unknowingly.

#truly god's strongest warrior stay strong man #mdzs #falando #book posting

[tringstarruuu]

Wei Ying bby hehe <3

#mo dao zu shi #mdzs #the grandmaster of demonic cultivation #wei wuxian #wei ying #mo xiang tong xiu #mxtx #GOD i havent finished the book BUT MY GOD HIM #sketch #digital art #artist on tumblr #my art

[factsilike]

Another moment of LWJ's unspoken tender care that I somehow missed-

He had quietly undressed and put a sleeping Wei Wuxian to bed. 🥺🥺

#book: mdzs #mdzs #wei wuxian #wangxian #lan wangji (mdzs) #wei wuxian (mdzs) #it's so subtle that I completely missed it #lan wanji

[buried-in-stardust]

Buying Emperor's Smile (from Mo Dao Zu Shi) in the Gusu district of Suzhou, Jiangsu province. OP bought a jar of both 12% and 38%, and according to others who also bought it, it is a sour fruity wine, and because of the low alcohol content, the flavour of the baijiu is overpowered by the fruit flavour.

The shop is on Pingjiang Road (平江路), a historic district in Gusu. The street also has many other shops selling Emperor's Smile. Another street with shops selling Emperor's Smile is Shantang Street (山塘街), also in Gusu.

[eng by me]

One of the other shops (?) on Pingjiang Road offers both white and black jars

Copied from my reblog: I hear that there's a shop on Shantang Street that sells a 52% ABV Emperor's Smile and is a spicy baijiu, which would be far more accurate to the type of wine Wei Wuxian would have been drinking.

#douyin #mdzs #魔道祖师 #mo dao zu shi #apparently one shop on shantang street sells a 52% emperor's smile #/that/ i feel would be more to wwx's taste lmao #also emperor's smile is supposed to be a baijiu #clearly shop owners are just naming one of their wines emperor's smile to get more sales #most people buying it are book fans who just want the jar anyways lmao #it's a win-win

[melonnade]

joked about this a while back and finally decided to make an edit

#wangxian #mdzs #wei wuxian #lan wangji #wwx #lwj #the untamed #mo dao zu shi #cql #jiang cheng #jiang wanyin #i think this is official art from the game iirc #i tried not to use any fanart so I grabbed it from the wiki #so hopefully it’s all clear #Jiang Cheng’s reaction to them during the Guanyin temple scene in the book is so funny #update: it is not from the game it is from the jp audiodrama

[khattikeri]

one of my favorite things about mdzs is that for how heavily its plot involves politics of classism and misogyny... even the characters most directly impacted by it can't and don't free themselves from it. literally the closest exception is mianmian.

meng yao being the "son of a whore" wasn't some sort of commie awakening for him that led him to wanting everyone to be socially equal. he played the political game, climbed the ladders, sucked up to and backstabbed and murdered people, including other prostitutes who actually had nothing to do with how he and his mother were treated at the brothel he grew up in.

he put in so much extra excessive effort for even a fraction of the same respect that members of gentry cultivation clans got. and he did deserve to be treated more humanely! but he feeds into the exact same system that created him, leading to his own undoing.

his efforts were for a fragile upward mobility that was never going to hold up. he never surpassed his origins nor did he empower others in similar stations, because the society he lives in is not one that would accept that.

the second he got caught and all those crimes exposed, he was scapegoated to hell and back, replacing wei wuxian as society's terrible one-sidedly evil boogeyman overnight.

speaking of not-quite male gentry, i think it's interesting that wei wuxian explicitly doesn't try to climb the ladders in BOTH lives, knowing full well that anything he does will be punished just for the sheer fact that he is wei wuxian.

wei wuxian is scolded for giving intelligent and correct answers in school. lan wangji does the same and is praised.

wei wuxian occasionally lounges around with fellow disciples and is punished. jiang cheng does the same and mostly escapes.

wei wuxian refuses to carry his sword around in public (after losing his golden core, which nobody knows) and is scorned as an arrogant upstart. nie huaisang has been doing the EXACT SAME THING for YEARS and nobody bats an eye.

unlike jin guangyao, wei wuxian knew subconsciously from the start that his acceptance was superficial and that he could be cast out any time. when he was 10 and recently taken in by the jiangs, he canonically would not eat or use "too much" food and water because he thought they'd find him a nuisance for "wasting their things" and kick him back out.

now away from just the classism, yu ziyuan is a proud and strong noblewoman in a society that belittles and derides women for everything they do. her strong cultivation doesn't matter. she's victim to the vicious rumors of her husband loving another woman who is strong like her but apparently had a more likeable personality.

it doesn't matter even if jiang fengmian didn't cheat or that wei wuxian is wei changze's son with cangse sanren; yu ziyuan can't bear with the humiliation of herself (and by extension her children) not being "good enough". she's ridiculed for "failing" in that one duty as a wife, mother, and woman.

she lashes out and takes out that anger on everyone present for years, giving her children lasting trauma and also being a key element in how the jiang family and yunmeng jiang sect are effectively wiped out at the hands of the wen clan.

madam jin doesn't even have a name outside of the fact that she's married to jin guangshan. i don't even remember reading anything that indicates if she's a strong or weak cultivator, or what, which in itself proves that to most people, it doesn't matter. she's "just" a woman.

of course she's angry at her husband's affairs and all the bastard children they bring in. but she also can't do anything about them, so she lashes out at the few people she can: servants. non-cultivators, probably. those very same bastard children.

shoutout to meng yao getting shoved down a flight of stairs at age fourteen, because if madam jin tried that move against her husband instead, it would make her lose even more face, which as a noblewoman she'd never do.

and that's not getting into how jiang yanli is consistently sidelined for being physically weak.

that's not getting into how mianmian was actually a good cultivator, but was mocked by everyone around her for trying to stand up for wei wuxian when everyone was turning on him. how everyone scoffed at luo qingyang's words as "just some lovesick woman" who "obviously wants to marry or bed him since he saved her".

luo qingyang is the only one of these characters who HASN'T died. she didn't play society's games like jin guangyao. she didn't dig her heels in confidence of her own abilities like wei wuxian.

she didn't bitterly lash out like yu ziyuan and madam jin. she didn't gently accept it like jiang yanli.

she just LEFT.

she married an ordinary merchant and cultivates separately from mainstream cultivation society, and therein found her own peace and happiness.

mxtx doesn't bother with particularly class conscious or feminist vocabulary to hand-hold readers into understanding these disparities, but that choice highlights them & the deeply entrenched politics of their society even more. i really love it.

#keri chats #mdzs #mo dao zu shi #long post #mdzs spoilers #im novel only but still tagging. #the untamed #cql #yeah yeah everyone's written meta addressing this aspect of the story BUT I THINK ABOUT IT ALL THE TIMEEEEE #maybe i just don't get to read a ton of books often; esp not ones that mirror my own culture. but it's just so. soooooo. augh #the fact that the setting itself enables so much of the tragedy in mdzs... which is true of all tragedies but STILL... #this isn't even getting into qin su and the power imbalance w her and jgy post-reveal... man. #man. so much going on here. man #THIS POST IS MESSY AND BARELY EDITED BUT IF U READ IT. ILU

[queer-book-character-tournament]

*it’s the finals for tournament 2 but don’t forget the winner has to face the tournament 1 winner

Character, book, and author names under the cut

Nathaniel J. Northland- Hunger Pangs: True Love Bites by Joy Demorra

Lady Ursula- Hunger Pangs: True Love Bites by Joy Demorra

Wei Wuxian- Mo Dao Zu Shi/Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation by Mo Xiang Tong Xiu

#you guys love pushing two characters from the same book into the final round 😂 #we did this last time too #Nathaniel J. Northland #Nathaniel Northland #Hunger Pangs #True Love Bites #Hunger Pangs: True Love Bites #Joy Demorra #Lady Ursula #Ursula #Wei Wuxian #Wei Ying #Mo Dao Zu Shi #MDZS #Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation #MXTX #Mo Xiang Tong Xiu #polls #lgbt books #queer book character tournament 2

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Why would you—That's not—I just wanted to ask for help, why did you have to go and make it awkward???

[First] Prev <–-> Next

#poorly drawn mdzs #mdzs #wei wuxian #xue yang #Its such a relief to not have to draw so many characters once again. #Redrawing the specific font from the English translated mdzs books was surprisingly fun! #Maybe I'm alone in this...but I think characters switching to a different font of speech for *emphasis* is peak comedy #you can't communicate voice changes of sound very well in non audio forms so this is the best I can do. #Anyways...rip Xue Yang. You finally meet your idol and he brushes you off #Rather— he doesn't live up to the expectations you built in your head #Kind of an on going issue there Jester (I refuse to call him king or sir) #XY is constantly making people out to be the versions he needed them to be to feel justified in his actions #but struggles to pivot when confronted with the fact that these ppl are *more* than just one surface reading! #wwx doesn't actually think xy is flirting. He's just tired of all the fake fans + wants to get out of this convo. #button mashing the A button to skip the unskippable cutscene #Lan Wangji is in the next comic btw. I've missed him dearly. I'm sorry he's been gone so long </3 #edit: poorly spelt MDZS strikes again. This is why I need more time to write my comics. So I can actually proofread B*( #edit2: I cast 'Power of Technology' and fixed my error. Everyone reblog this version instead please

[nanyangjj]

iconic

#mdzs #lan wangji #wei wuxian #jiang cheng #wangxian #* reads mxtx #snorts #mdzs book 1

[lilac-loserr]

I think the reason lwj is so quiet around wwx is because he goes completely fucking stupid when wwx is around. Like full on no thoughts head empty (except for gay thoughts). He can’t open his mouth because he cannot predict what kind of garbled disaster of syllables will spill out if he does. Everything he says in canon has been rehearsed in his head and whispered under his breath fifteen times at minimum before he can even dare to try to say it, lest he accidentally looks into wei ying’s eyes at the wrong moment, causing him to forget everything he was just about to say and also how to walk in a straight line.

Just. Give me stupid lwj.

#don’t get me wrong I love me a good stoic lwj #and I’m not saying I think he’s outgoing or anything #I’m just saying he probably talks more when wwx isn’t around #because that’s the only time he trusts his own ability to speak #I mean we all know the books/show is from wwx’s perspective and wwx is an unreliable narrator #so he may not have made that observation about lwj #I’m on team stupid lwj #mdzs #mo dao zu shi #wei wuxian #lan wangji #wangxian