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jiangwanyinscatmom · 3 years

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This is a bit of a long rambly mess, but I just to vent somewhere! When I was at first getting annoyed at JC’s depictions, I thought fanon JC was painted as similar Mu Qing, right down to JC being given MQ’s secret care for children. But I then realized that even that comparison was inaccurate.

Even MQ apologizes (more than once across the story!), says that XL was right, and says he wants to be his friend. And if JC did that in most fics, that would at least be fine. But fans don’t even do the courtesy of giving JC that arc! Instead, it’s always JC being right -- whether about the GC transfer, or he’s suddenly become a person who’s willing to help the Wens and WWX is just a stupid idiot for doing it on his own -- and WWX has to admit that JC was right.

And where MQ becomes more comfortable with the fact that he used to be a servant, accepting and overcoming the insecurities, JC’s arc in fic could be learning to overcome his insecurities that WWX is better than him at many things even despite their class differences. But no, fanon JC has to be AMAZING at something, or even SEVERAL things, SO much BETTER at them than poor stupid WWX. That’s the BEST solution for Yunmeng bros reconciliation, obviously.

At this point, I honestly wish JC was actually given MQ’s character arc in more fics, because at least he could be said to have one, and not just have always been a perfect person, best brother, best jiujiu, bestest sect leader. Ugh.

It kind of feels like another side of purity culture from the people who should be against it. If JC and WWX reconcile,if JC loves WWX, then JC can’t have ever been a bad brother. Instead, it’s Wei Wuxian who has been the bad brother (the character who’s more easy to change since he a) has already gone through this characterization in all versions of the canon, so his development can be reversed for the fic and brought back up to speed by the end, and b) has actually had character growth, unlike JC, so it’s easier to write that growth). It’s Wei Wuxian who needs to change to match where JC is at. It’s fine if the “bad brother” is the character who tried to do good, but fucked it up because he “doesn’t know how to ask for help!” or “is too stupid to know other people care!” or whatever other excuse. That’s easy to fix! But it’s not fine when it’s the character who never really cared about people outside of his sect and is terribly low on empathy/mercy/compassion/caring. JC has to have been secretly good all along! He loves his brother, so obviously he never did anything terrible to him! Or to other people in the name of hating him! Love cannot be unhealthy or messy or crystalized over by and wrapped up in hate!

(I mean, if we’re comparing characters to JC, Severus Snape also has an unpleasant personality yet was actually revealed to not have been evil all along, and the discourse around him is more interesting than the stuff surrounding JC. It’s still often stupid discourse, but at least it’s based on evidence from the text and not a made up secret narrative where JC hasn’t been a bad person this whole time so fans can just make up whatever characterization they want.)

Instead of dealing with JC’s and WWX’s canon relationship and trying to find a way forward from where they left off in Guanyin Temple (if they’re ignoring the extras in MDZS, or going off CQL), fanon JC is just retroactively made into having always been a good person to justify the ease of their reconciliation.

And as someone who loves delving into fictional complex, complicated, messy, ugly relationships, I find it so...bland, boring, childish, and exhausting.

"As someone who loves delving into fictional complex, complicated, messy, ugly relationships, I find it so...bland, boring, childish, and exhausting."

Hello there anon, the above as well as what you said about reversing Wei Wuxian's character to be on par with how awful Jiang Cheng was to him is especially resonating. As a person Jiang Cheng himself for all intents was considered at least above average from the normal cultivators.

Yet his downfall always relied on his hate of Wei Wuxian (as a person, in talent, socially) it is a core part of his character that is woven into the work itself and the catalyst for Wei Wuxian's death itself. Jiang Cheng if anything, is coldly upfront on just why he refuses to help Wei Wuxian out of his predicament as well as framing Wei Wuxian. The text itself says he puts little fight in pretending to even speak for Wei Wuxian's behalf when Jin Guangshan begins to sully him and conspire about him wanting to be a sect leader. He is meant to be the complete contrast in Lan Wangji and Mianmian trying to speak for his good-will, in fact he contradicts this by saying that Wei Wuxian has always been tiresomely reckless and uncontrollable, something that holds little truth as Wei Wuxian worked in trust for Yunmeng Jiang's benefit for years. Their actions simply are not of comparable fault and the end of the work (in the least the novel) makes this message clear. Jiang Cheng, as a character, like MXTX said is a product of following what his environment made him as well as him putting no fight on his end to amend that to be better and learn. Love is very complicatedly explored in this work in all it's ways and that's what is very beautiful about it. It does not shy away from the forms it manifests in. Including Jiang Cheng's who at the base of it, the rivalry there was as much one-sided as Shu She's for Lan Wangji, the layers of irony are the best part of the novel for each of it's characters.

As for fandom. I do think a lot of it is petty stupid discourse (oh and I have never said I am particularly immune to it, I am far too sarcastic for my own good and have a bit of a loud mouth when I see something particularly ridiculous for this fandom and I do not know when to shut up my filter). But, so much of it is coated within personal resonance towards certain characters which leads to feeling personally hurt, especially when the block features exist on this site. Multiple tags have been implemented to block for this exact purpose, yet their comes the takes that you can not use these sarcastic tags that are blockable because "it's not the right ones". Fandom is ever shifting and as such it is curated as much as you want it to be. Being ordered to not use these tags or to avoid posting all together is a moot point as well as demanding others to read how you want them to, even when the work textually supports or does not certain interpretations. As lovely as the thought is that "all interpretations are valid", logically it does not work quite so well when you attempt to push that on so many others with little helpful evidence other than flimsy fanon popularity (Ron the Death Eater And Draco in Leather pants are infamous fandom tropes that are despised for reasons). JC is not a case of questionable good for selfish reasons as in the comparison to Snape, he is simply a show of selfishness who has an ambiguous opening to do better, in terms of those in the future. Too much clout though is put on that idea when the work itself is not shy to say real good, kind, supportive people are hard to come by.

#mdzs #mo dao zu shi #canon jiang cheng #jiang cheng #I love him but he is very much a trash racoon king #fandom also needs to chill with is elitisism and faux intellectualism

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pocketfulofrecs · 3 years

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Our first Author Spotlight is finally here! And the first author in the spotlight is justdoityoufucker!

They have published 31k+ words on mdzs fic on ao3 - 7 works and 1 series. You can find them on @whiteflowercrimsonparasol on tumblr and @justdoityoufucker on twitter.

Their fics:

i’ll keep on walking (our post) - [teen | 2.6k | wen qing time travels and changes things]

violent delights - [teen | 4.3k | no golden core transfer]

i had to abandon myself (you took all of me) - [mature | 10k | wip | everything changes after the staged fight]

the world wags on (our post) - [teen | 3.4k | wei changze is alive]

in payment, a hand (series) - [teen | 10k | yzy cuts off wwx’s hand]:

and there was a new voice (which you slowly recognized as your own)

moved through my heart (like the thinnest of blades)

such music (you stood stock still)

Dee’s favourite: Honestly, violent delights is just so sweet? I love all of their works, but violent delights has a special place in my heart. The sheer hilarity of WWX’s Golden Core just refusing to reside in JC’s body made me cackle. Also, it ended so sweetly. I really love it!

Ju’s favourite: This was hard, but I’m between “i’ll keep walking” because I love time travel and Wen Qing, and she is so badass on this one, and fixes everything, and in the end she has her family safe, including her new brother Wei Wuxian. And “in payment, a hand”, that is a very interesting series, and Wei Wuxian gets a family that he deserves, and the Jiangs also get what they deserve. It’s sad in the beginning, but it gets so soft at the end, and we can see wangxian intimacy, and how they love each other. It’s just really lovely, okay?

The interview:

Q. When did you start writing fics? Did you have fandoms before this one?

A. I started around 2009. My first fanfiction attempts were for the 2003 Fullmetal Alchemist anime and movie and pretty quickly petered off, but I really got into fanfiction when I reread and finished watching Naruto around 2016. It’s still the fandom I’ve produced the most published (and unpublished) fanfiction for, but I’ve also written some works in the Voltron: Legendary Defender and Bleach fandoms.

Q. What made you start writing for MDZS?

A. I actually wasn’t planning on writing for MDZS! I wanted to write SVSSS fanfiction when I first got into danmei and c-novels! But I found some really thoughtful meta posts on characterization in MDZS and the MDZS fandom, as well as some fics that I felt were really good and showed really good characterization, which made me lose most of my self-control. And then I found some prompts that were going around, and I lost the rest of my self control and now, well, here we are.

Q. What’s your favourite fic you’ve written?

A. For MDZS, it’s a work-in-progress, but i had to abandon myself (you took all of me). It’s allowing me to explore philosophy for the first time in a few years, and it’s given me a reason to really research what the setting of MDZS might have been like and how cultivation (in the context of xianxia novels) works and could work.

Q. What’s your favourite type of fics to read?

A. I love love love fluff fics in general! I also have been really enjoying canon-divergence fics for MDZS, there’s some writers in this fandom who do those “what if?” kind of scenarios really well. Honorary mention, also, to fics where Wei Wuxian is raised in another sect

Q. What’s your favourite comment? Or type of comment?

A. Any comment!! Honestly, the entire idea that people like my writing enough to tell me will always boggle my mind, especially if it allows for me (as the author) to engage with my readers.

Q. What motivates you to write?

A. Most of the time, just the simple need to get an idea down and tell a story. I’ve been writing fiction since I was in fourth grade and fanfiction has been a really good outlet for me in that regard. Occasionally I’ll dive back into original fiction, but fanfiction in particular already has a basis for characterization which makes it easier, for me, to write.

Q. Who’s your favorite author?

A. I honestly can’t choose a favorite fan author because there are soooooo many who are incredibly talented, but in terms of professional authors I love MXTX (of course) and Tamora Pierce! If you like historical fantasy, I highly recommend her Tortall and Emelan books.

Q. What is your favorite trope to read and/or write?

A. I loooooove soulmate AUs (as evidenced by how many of them I’ve written for other fandoms)! I also really love, in the MDZS fandom, to read and write time travel AUs. They allow for really cool exploration of what could happen and how one person’s actions could change the whole course of the story.

Q. Do you have any advice for new authors?

A. You don’t need to finish everything you start. I have folders just full of WIPs that I’m probably never going to finish, but all of those words and all of that plotting and planning still contributed to where I am today! Also, I highly recommend keeping those unfinished works because one day you might use them! I’ve reused ideas, dialogue, and even actual passages from my WIP when writing something new.

Q. What do you think is the most important element in writing? Plot, characterization, relationship?

A. Of course, all elements are important, but characterization! Characters usually drive every other aspect of the plot, the setting, and are usually make-or-break for me as a reader.

Check out their stories on ao3 and remember...

Comments and kudos feed the author’s soul.

#mdzs #author spotlight #justdoityoufucker

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llycaons · 3 years

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final thoughts on mdzs pt. 1/2 - pros, cons, and my understanding of novel wwx/lwj. major spoilers for both the novel and cql drama. overall? i feel conflicted about this novel, but I found it very troubling and hard to read with some strong good points.

see trigger warnings under the cut

before starting I do want to note that I am, obviously, not Chinese, I really don’t know a whole lot about Chinese history or culture, and in this novel there are absolutely nuances and subtleties and references I have missed, and I apologize in advance for any judgements I make out of misunderstanding or misinterpreting the cultural or linguistic context. I do not know what it’s like to live in China, especially as an lgbt person, and it is not my place to judge how Chinese lgbt people relate to mxtx works. these are just my own reactions and opinions, viewed through the lens of my own experience.

tw for discussion of abuse, ableism, suicide, homophobia

I encourage anyone considering reading the novel, who wants to know what to look out for, to check to the summary at the bottom of this post, below the bolded warning. nsfw text and discussion of rape/sexual assault in that section

Pros

VERY good concept. thrilling compelling horrifying electrifying fascinating a multi-generational tale of war and love and sacrifice and revenge and identity and family and healing and devotion. genuinely the plot was excellent and the themes were really well done - reputation, alienation from mainstream society, corruption, legacy, ambition, hypocrisy, politics

i like the exploration of mob mentality in mdzs and the demonization of the other running back to corruption of the wealthy and rich. as in cql, I wish the protags actually could have changed the system instead of just separating themselves from it (or joining it to change from the inside)

the level of worldbuilding, giving each sect a distinct character, each sect a unique political leader - these are really solid as a foundation for a complicated and realistic fantasy world! it makes for a massive and dynamic setting with a lot of moving parts

i complain about her complicated plots but nie huaisang. holy shit. credit where it is due. and I liked how long it was! if a story is good enough I’m willing to read through a lot. and the details are really cool

i’ve read some analyses of the names and from an English speaker’s perspective, she nailed it. the use of courtesy names to indicate levels of intimacy/formality, whew. I wonder how common that is, in the genre. tgcf doesn’t do that.

commentary on the arrogance and small-mindedness of the rich and powerful compared to the resourcefulness of the common people! how out of touch the wealthy sects are. the privilege of them all!

it was funny! a bunch of little asides that made me snicker, and wwx as a character was absolutely vibrant. the first couple chapters where he wakes up and you meet him are still among my favorites. it was more awkward in cql and less funny as a whole

wwx taking the juniors on a hunt and then taking them out for food afterward is great. class trip with yllz

some of the romantic scenes were breathtaking. not many, but they were there. by the end it really felt like they knew each other and could speak openly to each other which was huge growth from their first meeting/scenes. some wwx’s internal thoughts while he falls in love are very touching and there are scenes where lwj is so gentle w wwx who had never been treated so tenderly before… also the married domestic comfy scenes were very cute

there was a sense of levity and humor in their later scenes. lwj with the dry wit and the flirting was so funny. and when wwx encourages him to step out of his comfort zone and they work together so well on cases and lwj cooks food he knows wwx will like…

don’t judge me for this but I thought the torture and death of wen chao was horrifying in the best way. i do love some gore. i do love some revenge. i do love some horror

right from my first lb post bc its still true - i really love the poetry of wwx waking up in mxy’s body, with all his old hurts erased and with a new gc and a chance to start again. a clean slate. conceptually i just…find that so compelling

“Face-to-face for only an instant, Wei Wuxian was immediately moved by the slight disdain in its eyes.“ lil apple having a character establishing moment was so funny i need to reiterate it

also - gentry refusing to say the name of wwx’s sword bc its too embarrassing for dignified cultivators to say

novel necromancy fucked. with a few hand movements or whistles or snapping of fingers wwx drew corpses up from the ground to fight for him or give him information. and he INVENTED that shit. nobody else before in the history of the cultivation world had done that. all him. three months in the burial mounds with a cursed sword. what a badass.

there was a lot of subtlety in the plot and political and sometimes even romantic dynamics. some of those passages were very graceful and beautiful descriptions of places or events or feelings

i was concerned that the 13 years passing would result in a creepy age gap when wwx came back, but wwx does feel like a mature adult and mxtx didn’t really go in that direction. the romantic scenes in general were sometimes not as bad as they could have been. the massive height difference, forcing one or both into gender roles, and exaggerated personalities are all somewhat based on canon but the fans also make it much worse than what it really is. so…pretty bad but not as bad as it could have been

wwx wanting to show lwj to madam yu and uncle jiang…i firmly believe those bows were meant to be marriage-adjacent in the show too

at the end there was a somber atmosphere and a sympathy for how jgy was torn apart by the eager malice and self-aggrandization of the cultivation world that i missed in cql. there were details and information for characters postcanon I liked to see too

i know it was probably not in good faith as mxtx is a fujoshi but I would like to see wwx in makeup and i liked that wwx expressed an interest in it

its neat to see a slightly different take on the lan clan and how wwx views them and his reluctant admiration of their ways

Cons

obviously the big one is how godawful wx was written because the author is a homophobe who wanted to explore her sick fantasies and used gay men as pawns. often they do not read like real people. more on that below

the women get absolute shit and so does mxy

lord was it fanficcy. writing like this is the reason I hate 99% of fanfiction and fanfiction culture

it is truly astonishing how dry, bland, and emotionless most of the book turned out considering the high-octane angst and drama potential (cql knew. cql milked this for all it was worth. call it corny - and it is - but the writers understood how to shoot an emotional scene)

the flashback sequence was extremely frustrating and confusing. while it was exciting to draw to both finales as once, it seems like she just forgot to write the section where wwx died and left it to rumor and gossip and conjuncture. i did not like the messy rushed pacing of early flashbacks, the sense that we’re getting information relayed to us by passersby and not from a character’s POV, nor the slapdash sense of time passing. I understand gossip is a huge theme in the book but it alienated us from characters we needed to be inside the head of to get the full emotional impact. maybe this is just a taste preference - her goal was not emotion

thematically I get not showing wwx’s death but it really takes the punch out of your story to kill your main character and not even show it. I know that she didn’t show it bc wwx couldn’t remember, but by that point in the novel, the narration was jumping fairly regularly into third person omniscient. thats how we knew about the wen brand on lwj’s chest, among other things

omitting any wwx or lwj pov about sunshot was weird to me. really, the plot was as convoluted as any of her smaller mysteries. and that’s not even a bad thing it’s just that the execution was hard to follow

this was perhaps a problem in translation but most of the scenes felt awkwardly written, the pacing was often very rushed, and the lines were sometimes difficult to understand. there were definitely good chapters throughout and the entire novel took an upswing in quality at about the halfway mark, but overall it was not a pleasant or enjoyable read, not even considering the content I talk about below

i didn’t care very much when most of the characters died. we had little attachment to anyone because barely anyone had any screentime besides wwx and lwj (and almost all of lwj’s scenes revolved around wwx)

this is 100% a personal taste thing but i don’t really care about the culpability of wwx? i do think his guilt and his responsibility for many deaths, including jzx, is a better writing decision and more thematically appropriate but that benefit was overshadowed by the other issues. i think the morality questions are neat! just not what im here for

also the novel does have timeline issues - how can jin ling be 14-15 when wwx died three months after his birthday, thirteen years ago? unless that was a 3-month celebration and so wwx dies when he was 6 months old. and we never get clarification on lsz’s age either except that he’s close in age to JL but that also doesn’t make sense! i feel like she just did not care about developing most characters who were not wx and like, jin ling and maybe jc.

relatively minor but i hate how the narration talks about how lwj’s scars ‘ruined’ his ‘perfect’ body. that’s something that bothers me a lot on a personal level

the scene where fairy literally plays charades with the forehead ribbon is really stupid

the way lwj and wwx ended their journey was simultaneously deeply anticlimactic and disturbing

novel wangxian - sfw section

in mdzs one of the big tropes is miscommunication (the other big trope i talk about below) so lwj is in love since they were 15 or so (for some reason…) and wwx maybe has a crush but doesn’t see it and doesn’t realize until he dies and comes back in a gay man’s body which is apparently a bl trope? for someone not to realize they’re gay for a long time and then realize it and immediately jump into a relationship with someone who’s been in love with them for years? wwx at one point wonders if being gay is contagious. yeah.

there are littler things too - individually many of her writing choices are like, fine but as a whole they paint a picture of relationship colored by a fetishist’s biases. any nice moments they have are in my mind overshadowed by the more troubling tropes that define their relationship

wx do not form a friendship in gusu, their interactions are repetitive and grating, they are barely on speaking terms, they fight a ton in sunshot, they barely talk in BM, lwj tries to save him and defends him and wwx dies without realizing it. wwx realizes he is in love postres, they have some sweet trusting scenes, he confesses with a heavy emphasis on sex, they end their post-temple retreat in legitimately one of the most upsetting and disturbing notes (more below), and that’s that. well, three months later lwj tells wwx the name of the song and he laughs. also they get married

in general there’s very weird overtones to the writing of that whole section. relationship. novel, actually. i do not like novel wx. more below

novel wx - nsfw text, pedophilia and rape m

Please read if you want to know what to expect in the novel - I want to emphasize that an important aspect of the relationship between the two main characters is literally a rape fantasy, and that the author romanticizes sexual assault. There are a lot of character interactions at play and a lot of plausible deniability and scenes/lines that really are up to a reader’s interpretation wrt consent but the fact is that the main character canonically has a rape kink. There are numerous instances of sexual assault from each mc to the other, all later forgiven/condoned by the narrative, and the second sex scene essentially treats rape as romantic. The Dafan mountain kiss and the sex scenes in chapters 96 and 111 are the most egregious examples of this writing, but the sexual harassment, violation of boundaries, and physical entrapment occurs repeatedly throughout the story from both leads towards each other.

details and more thoughts below

a relatively minor issues first of all - REALLY wish the bi mc didn’t tell a toddler about porn

i’ve said before I don’t like the terms “noncon” and “dubcon” because I think they’re easy outs for fans who try to pretend they aren’t just talking about rape. “dubcon” especially is a bullshit term bc there’s no such thing as dubious consent, consent by definition cannot be unclear and fans use it to excuse shit like what’s in this novel

so novel wx has two sides and one of them is this really sweet tenderness and attentiveness and loyalty and gentleness and support and the other is just fujo bainrot glorifying men sexually harassing and assaulting each other

i actually didn’t mind the wwx obliviousness as much as i thought I would, or the huge gap in between lwj falling in love and wwx falling in love, though it was annoying and detracted from the love story

much more concerning to me about their dynamic is the fact that throughout the story, from the beginning, one of the foundational aspects of this relationship is the treatment of sexual assault, the rape jokes throughout the book, rape jokes adults (presented as responsible) make in front of minors, the fact that the protag has a rape kink. there’s a constant underlying theme of imprisonment and silencing and escape, a strong emphasis on the love interest’s social/physical invulnerability and the mc’s relative weakness, and the love interest has a strong possessive streak. any one of these alone wouldn’t be cause for me to make this warning so strongly but it all plays together with the overall dynamic of the assault fantasy

it’s not that I think portraying SA is inherently bad, of course not, but you need to do it respectfully and sensitively and mxtx uses her characters as outlets for her and her reader’s fantasies. i do not think this woman cares about conveying nuanced commentary on consent or on relationships and fans singing her praises and going on about her genius have no critical thinking skills and treat mlm sexual violence as entertainment

novel wwx is such a brilliant character and you hate to see the author putting this on him. i don’t like calling these scenes ooc. the author had a plan for the dynamic and she went with it. thats not ooc, thats just a character written with bigotry. conscientious novel fans might omit these interactions from their understanding of the characters and proceed from there but i really don’t know if i can do that. this is their canon dynamic

im grateful cql completely revamped them. and i know part of that was censorship, but for whatever reason the characters from cql were written in such a way that we know they would never do these things to each other, and for that im glad, as I don’t want to associate such scenes with characters i love a lot

i know the scene on dafan mtn and the drunk scene in 96 were purposefully written as morally wrong and i know that both characters genuinely felt awful about what they did, but here’s where she really fails. i would have been able to accept those scenes (I would never LIKE them) if they sat down and recognized they hurt each other, set up boundaries, and agreed to treat each other with respect. maybe take some time away from each other to work on their individual issues. or work together on them. like partners do. like people who love each other do. like, please communicate! but she writes it so that neither of them are mad at the other for the assault bc, what, it’s okay to do whatever you want to your partner because they won’t mind? because they love you? and everything will be forgiven or accepted? because boundaries don’t exist? what bullshit

later on in 111, and i know this is complicated and real relationships are messy and won’t be perfect and sure there’s a lot of subtext i may missed as a non-native reader but that scene ends with a character going “we are going to have sex every day whether you like it or not” using his partner’s previous words against him because consent given once is what, always standing? and this is treated as romantic, this is considered THE big romantic moment and the climax to their love story. not even touching the textual rape and pedophilia fantasy in the extras which i am so thankful I was warned about and did not read

I’ve always avoided yaoi/bl and most fanfiction for treating gay relationships like this and seeing it condoned and romanticized in a popular original work is very upsetting. so my dni applies double now i do not want the rabid mxtx fans on my posts or in my inbox defending their fantasy with “don’t kink-shame” (an actual thing an ExR translator wrote) or some other bullshit excuse

i may reread the other translation of the novel when it’s finished (it will probably be about a year) but I am never reading any of her explicit scenes again

#mdzs lb

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