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joys-of-everyday · 1 year

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On the fifty shades of morally grey

So quick thoughts on how MXTX writes morally grey.

Sorry, I mean, excessively long meta post on how MXTX writes morally grey. Light spoilers for all three books.

A gazillion caveats to begin with. Firstly, I don’t want to argue about whether character x is morally good, bad, grey, pink or whatever. In my books, arguing about whether someone is or is not morally grey is like arguing whether a colour is green, blue, teal, or turquoise – we’re arguing definitions. To add to that, I’m not saying that concepts like ‘this person is overall good’ doesn’t exist, but I would posit that a morally unquestionable person does not exist. Secondly, I also don’t want to pass moral judgements on any of the characters. That’s for a different post. I strictly want to focus on the storytelling techniques that make the reader think ‘hang on a second, are they good or bad?’. Thirdly, this whole post is mainly based on How Arcane Writes MORAL AMBIGUITY (9 Methods, 4 Rules) - YouTube. Great video, great channel (no knowledge of Arcane required). Would recommend if you are interested in story writing techniques!

1) The information gap and the poor narrator

Best example is Shen Jiu from SVSSS. We barely know anything about Shen Jiu. Almost everything we know is from SQQ’s notoriously unreliable perspective, so we’re left to fill in the gaps ourselves. Depending on exactly how those gaps are filled, you can get two completely different people. E.g. Did he have designs of NYY, or was he just ridiculously misunderstood? Who knows! We’re never told. Even if we were told, we should doubt it because it’s SQQ telling us.

2) 4D characterisation

Schnee’s video goes into this in more details, but this is where you build two narratives on top of one another. Best example is Jin Guangyao from MDZS. Is he an underdog who did what he could out of his situation and tried his best to be a better person working for the good of the common people? Or is he a selfish, manipulative, ambitious snake who at every stage pretends to be good in order to win the favour of those around him? The point is that both narratives make sense in the story. There are moments that lean more one way or another, but you can never quite pin him down completely.

3) Moments of weakness

Best example is Xie Lian from TGCF. On the whole, XL is a wonderful human being who you 100% want to root for. Except… there was that one time he made a mistake. He let his hurt and pain overcome him; he became hurtful himself. The point here is to add in just a few ‘moments’ which fundamentally impacts how the rest of the world perceives them from that point forwards. They are forever trying to redeem themselves, forever weighed down by what is a tiny proportion of their life. The underlying question is ‘is a moment of weakness a moral failure?’

Another good example is Qi Rong from TGCF. On the whole, he’s a piece of s***. But then there are moments when he’s a genuinely good father to Guzi, and that’s confusing.

4) Well-intentioned idiot

Trying to do the right thing and absolutely failing. Best example is Wei Wuxian from MDZS. His intentions are always good. There are extremely few moments where he is selfish or overly cruel. He is always fighting for justice, always self-sacrificing, always kind. And yet the outcome of his actions is pretty bad. The underlying question is ‘should you judge a person based on their intent, or on the consequences of their actions?’

(btw the name of the method is from schnee’s video. No shade on WWX. He is very smart… well, unless it comes to LWJ’s feelings.)

5) Excuses

Yes, they’re bad. But we feel sorry for them! Almost everyone fits into this boat, because doesn’t MXTX love trauma dumping? As one example, let’s look at Jiang Cheng from MDZS. JC’s behaviour towards WWX is pretty bad on its own. But given the context of his childhood being compared to him, of having his self-esteem brutally crushed by both parents? Knowing how much he’s done and sacrificed for him, how much he truly cared for him as family? It hits different.

A small point: ‘excuses aren’t enough’ we say a lot (and I agree, to an extent). But compare, for example, Jin Guangshan vs Xue Yang. JGS seems to be a power-hungry asshole for absolutely no reason. On the other hand, put XY in different circumstances and we feel like he might have been a better person. Just as food for thought, there was a Japanese monk Honen (1133-1212) who said: ‘The good person can reach the Pure Land, so of course the evil person can as well’. The point being that the people who struggle with anger and hate because of their circumstances are most in need of salvation.

6) World building and presenting hard questions

What is acceptable sacrifice in war?

Is it okay to make a super dangerous weapon for the sake of deterrence?

How much personal responsibility does someone hold for a lifetime of circumstances pushing them towards a morally questionable path?

What are the responsibilities of a leader – to do what is right, or to do what is best for their people?

The world of MDZS is imperfect. It’s full of horrors and disasters, as well as a mob of outsiders all trying to impart their opinions despite knowing little about the situation. An imperfect world presents unanswerable questions. We see the characters struggle with these questions, come to decisions, and make mistakes, all naturally arising within the complex world that’s been presented.

TGCF does this most explicitly. We literally have Kemo and Pei Xiu arguing about the ethics of war and XL concluding that it’s a Hard Question. In fact, every backstory of every Heavenly Official presents a new Hard Question. I don’t know if I like this method over the more subtle style of MDZS, but I have Thoughts about the storytelling styles of both (long story short, I love them both for different reasons).

7) Worlds are colliding

A slightly complicated method that takes a huge amount of set up. To summarise, set up two arcs that we the reader both feel invested in. Then set up a point where the ‘good’ outcome of one is the ‘bad’ outcome of another. For MDZS, we have 1) JC and WWX’s brotherhood arc. 2) WWX standing up for justice arc. They’re both merrily developing all the way through the conflict with the Wens… right until the moment WWX has to make a choice: stand up for justice and leave JC behind, or to fulfil his promises to JC and turn a blind eye to the injustices against the Wens. The decision is a lose-lose scenario because of the way these arcs have been set up.

8) Spectrums, Spectrums, we love Spectrums

Gongyi Xiao is a cinnamon roll. As is Wen Ning and Quan Yizhen. Meanwhile, the Old Palace Master? Literally no redeeming qualities. Wen Chao? Absolute scum. Then there’s everyone lying somewhere in between. We like Lan Wangji more than JC (I think that seems to be the case for most people?) but we certainly like JC more than JGS. Having a spectrum of morality is important because it gives us reference points to contrast and compare. It also emphasises the moral greyness of everything, because sure, Mu Qing isn’t a noodle like Shi Qingxuan, but is he worse than White No Face?

9) Spectrums aren’t enough – adding depth

Almost all of WWX’s moral ambiguity comes from the fact he has hard decisions to make. And for each of these decisions, the outcome is murky. He developed a new technique to fight against the Wens, but at what cost later down the line? He defended the Wens and gave them a few years of life, but was it worth it?

Compare with JGY. JGY does a lot of good. He also does a lot of bad. The magnitude of both lists is ridiculous. Sure, you wouldn’t usually find someone who’s killed most of their family members in any way likable, but how often do you come across someone who literally ended a war?

So one way of creating moral ambiguity is to make each decision difficult, but another way to go about it is to just… make them do loads of things. Like loads of things. Good things, bad things, all the in between things. Judging each thing is not that hard, but then trying to judge the overall person based on it is extremely difficult.

10) Pulling from the real world

Often, moral questions in fiction is hard because (surprise, surprise) moral questions are just hard full stop. Idk enough Chinese history and culture to accurately pin down all of MXTX’s references, but things like stupid misunderstands leading to conflict, poverty and inequality, less than ideal family situations, the horrors of war… these are all things that happen irl. No matter how fantastical the setting, grounding moral conflicts in reality makes us feel more emotional and invested.

Anyway, I hope that was an enjoyable rundown! This is an imperfect list, so comments, criticisms, suggestions greatly appreciated!

#i cannot get over how good mdzs is #a moment of appreciation here #mxtx #mxtx meta #svsss #mdzs #tgcf #svsss meta #mdzs meta #tgcf meta

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thosedangnuns · 5 months

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Assigning d&d alignments to Warrior Nun characters

This was not as easy as I thought it would be - feel free to disagree! Many characters change throughout the course of the show - so often I'm giving a before/after. WTH am I talking about? --

Ava starts CN - caring only for herself, without a moral compass but no malice to her actions.

But as she starts to care for her sisters she is willing to make the ultimate sacrifice: CG

Bea starts as the paragon of LG, fighting for good (and God) even at the expense of her own identity

But when the usual methods fail to protect Ava and her sisters she says to hell with the rules: NG

Camila starts LN - the rule follower at the OCS, doing her job even if it's not always the right thing to do.

But when she receives her message from god she slips to NG, willing to bend the rules and her faith for her sisters.

When we first meet Superion she is a solid LN, burned by rejection but still faithful to the church (if not god)

But after the betrayal she positively rejoices in breaking the rules to protect her daughters: CG

Mary is the epitome of CG - she is doing the right thing, for the right reasons, but she is doing it her way

And if you disagree with that you can talk to her two shotguns.

Lilith is LN throughout - fueled by her own righteousnous, for better of for worse - morals be damned.

Even final Lilith I don't believe is inherently evil, just misguided, fighting for her own justice.

Yasmine is NG throughout - willing to go against the church when necessary but still appreciating traditions.Traditions say not to eat anything that looks like a penis but corn on the cob is ok I guess ily Yasmine

Everything Shanon did she did for her sisters, and while she hid secrets from the OCS...she did so only because she knew about Vincent. She's definitely a G - probably an LG.

Fight me on this one Vincent is NG throughout, despite what is perhaps a CN or CE past. Even 'evil' Vincent's actions are for his version of the greater good. He is under a classic charm person spell (which is btw NOT mind control)

Duretti, power hungry, is a textbook LN. He wields it to get what he wants. While most of what he does is good, he is willing to commit atrocities to achieve it.

Salvius is the epitome of TN, while she loves her son her sacrifices for him are not even close to selfless.

And even her assistance to the sisters is more self-preservation and hope for Michael than altruism.

Kristian starts LN, using power to his own ends, but not malevolently. And by S2 he is classic LE, corrupted by power and clearly enjoying it.

JC and pals are classing CN, they're out for themselves, without intent to harm anyone else. While you could argue that JC started to drift towards CG he was just smitten with Ava (we've all been there)

(Chanel is an exception, because while she appears to be in it for the grift, she's the only one of the gang who shows Ava selfless and unconditional love). She is also objectively perfect. CG.

Miguel has some of that Lilith righteousness to him, so while his sacrifice is for the greater good... I'm not sure it was good that motivated him rather than duty. Iffy LN.

Adriel talks a big game, but he's only looking out for one man - Adriel. As a petty thief he may have once been TN, but he is now blatantly evil, though whether NE or LE is maybe unclear.

Can you assign an alignment to a god? If Reya has an alignment I haven't seen it. Just like ants probably can't tell if the human that stepped on their nest by accident is actually a decent person.

My man Carl will prob plead the Nuremburg defence but assuming he has free will then his actions are his. Even his final defeat of Adriel comes at Reya's behest, not his own. Carl is LN at best.

🤷‍♀️

#save warrior nun #warrior nun #ava silva #sister beatrice #sister yasmine #avatrice #mother superion #sister camila #sister lilith #dnd #dungeons and dragons #I kind of forgot Tumblr exists sorry #who knew you could only add thirty images #hi nun friends #bird app trash

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twinclownsoflotuspiers · 1 year

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On Jiang Cheng and whether what he did was “redeemable” (why is this even an argument?)

DISCLAIMER: While I am cross-posting this from Twitter from when I wrote this in the wake of a discourse there a while back, small note that I DO NOT APPRECIATE MY META TO BE USED FOR FANWARS be it for speculations re “who is better between jc and wwx” OR “jc stan vs wwx stan”. Let’s just have fun conversations like mature people please.

Regarding whether Jiang Cheng is sensitive and an asshole sometimes, yes he is (and I love him for it) but is he only just that and not a compelling character of his own with layers? I’d argue there by saying as “questionable” as a lot of his decisions feel, he actually never went the wrong way or took wrong decisions despite everything. Controversial take? Hardly if you judge it according to the setting and the circumstances.

Was his part in the siege "problematic" and difficult to reconcile with? Yes. Is it difficult to love him for his grudge against the Wens? Maybe so. Did he hurt Wei Wuxian, whether willingly or impulsively? Also yes. Did he hate Wei Wuxian? It's more complex than hate but let's say he did. But did he also love and mourn Wei Wuxian in his own way? Absolutely. There have been several meta in the past on how Jiang Cheng’s hatred of Wei Wuxian is directly proportional to the amount of love he holds for the man so I shall not go into more detail on just how much Jiang Cheng actually loves Wei Wuxian. You guys should get it already.

Not taking into account the "morality" arguments of his actions because that's a discussion for another day, I'd say he had his reasons for what he did. Don’t know why people forget the fact that Yunmeng Jiang was the only sect to have its root clan completely annihilated AND their sect entirely plundered in the Wen attack. He LITERALLY BUILT THE ENTIRE SECT FROM SCRATCH and I'm not talking about the structure alone. I'm talking people, reputation, fighting power, making cultivators out of non cultivators, financial alternatives blah blah. A reminder that Jiang Cheng also mostly did it all alone.

Jiang Yanli while a Jiang is ultimately a woman (always read a book according to the period it's set in). She will be married into the Jin household and will be called “Jin Furen”. Wei Wuxian during the bulk of that time was stuck in the Mounds & unable to assist in the rebuilding. Jiang Cheng had to rebuild both recruits, gather enough funds to rebuild the sect structure or merely only for enough food for all perhaps, teach them the Jiang martial arts because he is literally the last Jiang standing AND somehow convince the rest of the great sects to allow Yunmeng Jiang into the war. If we look at it from the war perspective, the Sunshot Alliance also had no reason to necessarily trust a recently destroyed sect so easily when Yunmeng Jiang literally had nothing to offer apart from one battered Jiang heir who was determined to fight, one Jiang daughter who wasn't a cultivator and a missing head disciple (more on war politics some other day because I personally love the Sunshot Era and want to discuss it in detail).

And you'd think Yunmeng Jiang would miraculously suddenly become rich overnight right after the war? No. The Sunshot campaign continued for an approx. 3 years. That means much more resources and manpower used up. More deaths. Which also means the death of even some of the new Jiang recruits because Yunmeng Jiang was the weakest during that time, the only sect with an uneven motley of new recruits - possibly more non cultivators than cultivators because how many people even take up cultivation. Jiang Cheng would have to continue rebuilding and garnering support even after the war for the sake of his people. And Yunmeng Jiang wouldn't be credited majorly for the Campaign either - the main credit went to Gusu Lan, Qinghe Nie and Lanling Jin who ALSO formed an alliance along with the Venerated Triad (there is also geography factors in play here). Yunmeng Jiang was literally left alone and fighting to even exist.

We can have morality based arguments regarding Jiang Cheng’s participation in the Siege, but politically it was the best decision he could have taken because it was either that or waiting for a second annihilation of Yunmeng Jiang. Had he decided to stand by Wei Wuxian and Wei Wuxian chosen not to defect? They would've branded Yunmeng Jiang the next "Wens" and in want for power and crushed them. Jiang Cheng had to make a choice between saving one person and saving the people he looks over and he made his choice as a GOOD leader. And Wei Wuxian understood that, which is why HE also decided to defect on his own accord.

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.”

Wei Wuxian, “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 the Yunmeng Jiang Sect.” [GDC Chapter 73: Recklessness. Cr. ExR]

There is also a bit in the lower paragraphs in the same chapter where Jiang Cheng demands if Wei Wuxian has a savior complex and Wei Wuxian doesn’t answer instead insists on cutting ties so whatever he does wouldn’t affect the Sect which is followed by an inner monologue where Wei Wuxian can’t even guarantee what he himself do. (Very cool foreshadow). TL;DR: Wei Wuxian defected by his own choice because he wanted to PROTECT THE SECT TOO.

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 the Yunmeng Jiang Sect in the future.”

Or else, he really couldn’t make any guarantees on what he’d do in the future.

DESPITE it all, let me remind you, Jiang Cheng did in fact try to defend at least the Wen siblings. He didn't have to because that could actually put Yunmeng Jiang into an awkward position yet he did. Jiang Cheng wasn't privy to the core exchange so he didn't know what they'd done and hence had no reason to be grateful to them. The most he knew was, the siblings helped shelter them and got back his parents’ bodies and he does show gratitude for it or at least tries to explain why they owe them a debt but he is cut off before he could even complete saying how and why they owe gratitude. Quoting once again:

“.....I apologize to all of the Sect Leaders. Everyone, I’m afraid you don’t know that the Wen cultivator whom Wei Wuxian wanted to save was called Wen Ning. We owe him and his sister Wen Qing gratitude for what happened during the Sunshot Campaign.”

Nie Mingjue, “You owe them gratitude? Isn’t the Qishan Wen Sect the ones who caused the Yunmeng Jiang Sect’s annihilation?” [GDC Chapter 73]

(Small addendum, but I personally believe Jiang Cheng doesn’t have to be grateful for the golden core sacrifice either but that’s a discussion I shall not touch here because MDZS fandom is not capable of nuance regarding this subject at all, and I’d just spark either Wei Wuxian hate or Jiang Cheng hate, neither of which is my goal and both of which I think is absolutely stupid. On to the rest with no more tangents.)

As for the "Jiang Cheng went around killing demonic cultivators", literally the only source is from an INN KEEPER. And MDZS at its core is a novel that talks about how the truth is so often distorted to fit the popular narrative. Did he go around killing demonic cultivators? Who the fuck knows, we headcanon as we like. But the fact remains that IT WAS NEVER CONFIRMED. I have also seen people use in argument the lines from the first Jiang Cheng appearance (I forgot the scene exactly) where there is a small POV shift and Jiang Cheng is thinking to himself “It’s alright, I have done things like this before.” which, okay, valid point and argument but it can also easily allude to atrocities done during the war. I personally find it interesting that Jiang Cheng has to personally soothe and convince himself before capturing a demonic cultivator like this at all. But anyway, my first argument still stands - it was never CONFIRMED. (I’d love to meta, albeit GOOD FAITH, on this subject just saying.)

Whether Jiang Cheng hunted demonic cultivators to find Wei Wuxian in order to "kill" him again, I don't think that's it. Or at least, I don’t think it’s so simple. Grief is multifaceted and different people deal with it differently. Lan Wangji indulged in self-destructive behavior (Branding himself with the Wen brand) in grief before gradually beginning to accept. Jiang Cheng did it in other destructive ways like being in denial of Wei Wuxian's death and masking his grief with hatred when in fact he was mourning too. The reason why he gives Chenqing in the end and the fact that Chenqing is sleek and new and obviously well cared for is symbolic to Jiang Cheng's underlying care and grief that continued to stay despite how much he tried to pretend he absolutely despises Wei Wuxian. And his "giving away" of Chenqing is symbolic to his final acceptance of things as they are. If Jiang Cheng truly hated Wei Wuxian, he would've done everything to expose his identity to the world and get him killed or killed him himself in that inn instead of questioning him about things and telling him to apologize to his parents. Quoting because I think this bit is actually pretty significant:

Jiang Cheng interrupted, “It’s just what? You can’t say it? Don’t worry, you can go back to Lotus Pier and say your excuses while kneeling in front of my parents’ graves.” [GDC Chapter 24. Cr. ExR]

THIS BITCH, FOR ALL HIS DRAMATIC INSISTENCE ON HATING WEI WUXIAN, TELLS THE VERY MAN HE CLAIMS HE HATES THAT HE WANTS EXPLANATIONS FOR WHATEVER HE DID IN THE PAST AND THAT WEI WUXIAN CAN “GO BACK TO LOTUS PIER AND KNEEL” AT THE ANCESTRAL HALL. If that isn’t just the Jiang Cheng way of saying “this is me giving you a chance. Just tell me why you did all that you did” then I don’t fucking know what else is. (He is so pathetic and has such an ironically huge heart I love him)

Jiang Cheng is bad at feelings. He’s bad at being honest with his feelings. I made another meta long back on how Jiang Cheng always addresses the hurt of people close to him but never his own hurt because he is second to even his own self but that’s for another day. It even actually took him until nearly the last chapter (102) to admit verbally he was hurt, so goddamn HURT that Wei Wuxian left him so the above quote IS in fact Jiang Cheng genuinely wanting explanations from Wei Wuxian. Quoting once again on the chapter 102 bit:

He choked, “....You said I’d be the sect leader and you’d be my subordinate, you said you’d help me your whole life, you said you’d never betray the Yunmeng Jiang Sect....you said so yourself.” [GDC Chapter 102. Cr. ExR]

A small tangent because I just think it’s interesting again but in the reveal scene in Jin Guangyao’s basement/secret room, Jiang Cheng was actually given an opportunity to directly expose Wei Wuxian yet again where he is directly addressed but he just teethered and debated with himself because “yes I already knew Wei Wuxian is back” and “I can’t agree with Jin Guangyao or else I will expose my idiot shixiong” AND “I can’t oppose him either because MY IDIOT SHIXIONG JUST PULLED OUT SUIBIAN IN FRONT OF EVERYONE”. See, that particular bit could have just easily stuck to “Jiang Cheng decided to stay silent and hence agree without agreeing outright” or any other vaguer wordings for that matter but the narrative makes it a point to show that he is in fact fucking conflicted because he still wants to protect Wei Wuxian. Quoting:

Jin Ling suddenly shouted, “Wait! Uncle, wait! D-didn’t my uncle hit him with Zidian back at Dafan Mountain? His soul didn’t get whipped out, so it must mean that he didn’t possess this body, right? And so he can’t be Wei Wuxian right?!”

Jiang Cheng’s face looked very dark. He didn’t speak as his hand pressed onto the hilt of his sword, as though he was thinking about what to do. [GDC Chapter 50. Cr. ExR]

This is turning out too long, pardon the tangents. But regarding Shuangjie’s bond, breaking and tale in its entirety, it's way more complex than deciding who is the true villain between them or who is more redeemable between them. Heck their temple talk ENDS at the fact that who should truly apologize when they both hurt & got hurt.

Suddenly, he said, “I’m sorry.”

Wei Wuxian hesitated, “....You don’t need to say sorry.”

At this point, it was impossible to figure out who should apologize to whom. [GDC Chapter 103. Cr. ExR]

To end on whether Jiang Cheng was right or is he “irredeemable” for all he did; Jiang Cheng is as much a victim as is Wei Wuxian. He was hurt as much as Wei Wuxian was. He has as much valid reasons for his actions as Wei Wuxian does. Whether or not Jiang Cheng is a good or bad guy depends on perspectives and your tastes. But I can say with confidence that he isn't irredeemable, nor is he unreasonable. And more importantly he is very deeply human in a very raw and poignant way. And humans are flawed and that's the beauty of them. Besides what is the concept of “redemption” anyway if not an extremely personal one?

Jiang Cheng was right to grieve. He was right to choose to save Yunmeng Jiang. He was right to be hurt and not pretend otherwise. Jiang Cheng is complicated and morally grey but ultimately very much relatable and understandable as a character but if only you choose to look at him without the bias that comes with the narrative perspective.

End meta/rant, OMFG THIS WAS TOO LONG.

#jiang cheng #jiang wanyin #canon jiang cheng #mdzs meta #mdzs

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sect-leader-jiujiu · 1 year

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so this is regarding the jc page on the mdzs wiki, because the way some people twist the source text is getting ridiculous.

fanfiction is one thing, free card to do whatever, but the wiki?? please don't mask your opinion as facts. it's fine if you hate jc and think that everything he did is wrong. seriously. i couldn't care less about menial thoughts floating around in your head. but PLEASE don't go out of your way to purposefully taint every jc-related event in the novel. don't base your fandom experience on hate. do you think he should have tried harder to support wwx in backing up the wens? fine! write a jc-bashing fic and vent out those feelings. but don't pretend that it would have been the responsible choice, in-context.

wwx was being selfless on his own behalf, putting himself at risk. if jc had publicly supported him, he would have been selfless on his people's behalf. he would have been risking not his own reputation, but the safety of the many people he was in charge of. think of your kids, siblings, pets, or whoever you are responsible for. would you purposefully endanger them just to get activist brownie points on the internet? just because a mutual you love tells you it's for a good cause?

remember that wwx was not responsible for anyone: he could make his own choices and deal with the consequences himself. jc, on the other hand, could only make choices on the sect's behalf, never forgetting that they would suffer the consequences. and sure, in the present timeline yunmeng jiang has influence and power, but they didn't have that after ssc. there was no influence he could use as leverage. he had no way of intimidating the other sects into not taking advantage, into not punishing them for supporting the wens. and don't even start with the "lxc and nmj wouldn't have done that!" because you know what they didn't do? help the jiang rebuild. so yeah, it was each man for their own. and jc had to act like it.

so, next time you type out

Jiang Cheng prioritizes the preservation and survival of his family and clan, and has been known to do so even at the expense of others. (source: the wiki :eye_roll:)

to twist it and make it sound like it was unreasonable of him and like he kicked wwx to the curb, please remember that not everything orbits around wwx, even if he is the protagonist. characters make choices based on their circumstances, not based on who is the narrator of the novel. jc had no moral obligation to do what wwx felt like doing at any given point. and you can think jc was wrong, but you can't say that he made that choice "at the expense of others". like what? why, pray tell, would he choose the wens over his own people??? why are the wens more deserving of protection, according to you?

and because i know that you have to clarify everything on the internet i'm going to say that no, i'm not saying wwx was wrong. neither of them was wrong. they were both protecting vulnerable people, and both cases are noble individually. they just made choices based on their responsibilities and their conscience at the time. like normal people do.

again, think and feel whatever you want, but don't spread these kinds of takes as if they are solid claims. you are wrong and i do not want to see it.

#mdzs #canon jiang cheng #ironically #it just baffles me that everything he does is seen as a mistake #mans was right in not backing up wwx's suicidal plan #AS THE STORYLINE PROVED #cw vent #i am probably going to regret getting into this but eh #curse you for making me want to participate in pointless discourse

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admirableadmiranda · 1 year

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Something that annoys me about this “if you say this character is evil, you’re reading MDZS wrong” is that MXTX didn’t actually mean to write this “oh we’re all grey” story. She openly dislikes JGY, and she thought of JC as WWX’s crazy ex shidi with deep problems. Like, they aren’t there for you to justify their actions (god knows they did it a lot of times already) or to try to make them look good by putting them in the same bag as the protagonists just because “they’re all well fleshed and complex characters that are morally grey and flawed”.

What a way to miss MDZS’s actual message. It saddens me because WWX’s hero journey is as tragic as it is beautiful. I wish I was as brave as him, to oppose injustice even if I am alone against the world.

Yeah I totally get you anon! I’m not sure why it’s so hard for people especially in MDZS to figure out (though I have seen it for her other two works too, but not to the same extent), but she’s actually pretty clear in her work on who’s admirable and who’s not. Even when she’s deliberately using framing to get you to question what you’re hearing versus what you’re seeing, it’s pretty clear who you’re supposed to doubt the narrative about and who you’re not. Jin Guangyao is revealed as the main villain less than halfway through the book, after all!

There are works where that would be an appropriate reaction. Sometimes the heroes can too, be deeply flawed, negative people. But that’s not where MXTX is writing from and from what danmei/xianxia I’ve consumed so far, she has some of the least morally gray characters scattered through her works. She’s clearly very big on the idea that people can and will choose to do good if they want, and also that while it certainly doesn’t exempt them from flaws, that also flaws do not have to be hero killers.

Wei Wuxian is killed not because he is occasionally a little tactless and also keeps people at a distance because it is a very slow journey to trust them enough, but because his morals and willingness to stand up for them are inconvenient to the people in power. He is a flawed, well rounded character, but that’s not why he was hated or why he died. Similarly Jiang Cheng having sympathetic backstory and losses does not exempt him from being a shitty person because as we see in the novel, he’s not the only person who loses everything in his life, but he’s the one who decided to stew in it.

MXTX is so big on your choices define who you are, not your position or history. What matters most is what you do in the shadows and the light. That’s why Wei Wuxian is so heroic, he is always willing to stand by his morals even to the bitter end. It is tragic, but also it’s so full of hope, even! Look at what he has in the end of the story, it is so solidified that his choices and sacrifices did make a difference! Lan Sizhui is alive, well raised and cared for, because Wei Wuxian made that sacrifice for him. Mianmian is out living her best life with Mr. Mianmian and Mini Mianmian because she chose to follow Wei Wuxian’s bravery and has never regretted it. Jin Ling is blossoming under his patient guidance into a wonderful young man who can hold his head high with pride. It may be tragic, but so much good came from it too even if in the immediate moment it was hard to see.

And you know what, anon? We can be that too. Maybe not as far as he goes, but we can still shine bright and make the choices that have positive impacts down the road. We can be Mianmian, inspired by him to do the same that he did on the scales that we can.

The world may be a big thing to save, but we can always save little pieces of it here and there and the more of us that there are, the more powerful it becomes.

#mdzs #wei wuxian #wei wuxian is our guiding light #canon jiang cheng #asks #anon #anon asks #morally gray is a useless term in this fandom

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jiangwanyinscatmom · 1 year

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This might be a bit odd, but do you think MXTX left the ending to be interpreted openly across adaptations re: JC and WWX? Wei Wuxian has let go of a lot of his pride and learned some hard lessons about self-sacrifice and protecting people, and the younger generation is making so much room for nuance and kindness and thereby challenging society. I personally assumed they’d have that conversation eventually, but we didn’t need to see it to assume it would happen.

However, reading your translating of the phrase kinda made sense to me as well. Not all conversations, even if's about JC sacrificing his own life to save WWX from the Wens, need to lead to a point of reconciliation. Sometimes, we can acknowledge that we've come too far to restart or rebuild. It's bittersweet but I'm feeling conflicted on either end.

I honestly don't think she left it open ended at all, for either characters.

Simply because, that conversation doesn't matter anymore, what does Jiang Cheng's sacrifice matter after the extent of what they had gone through? Jiang Cheng built up a hate against Wei Wuxian because he viewed Wei Wuxian as ungrateful, and used that idea of debts to continuously cast Wei Wuxian as selfish and a martyr to show up others. Wei Wuxian hid the truth simply to coddle Jiang Cheng's pride and let his own reputation be besmirched because as he had said, it would seem as if he was using his sacrifice as leverage to downplay his own responsibilities for his actions. What is Wei Wuxian to say that Jiang Cheng will take well, he already hates that he has Wei Wuxian's core and his own hypocrisy about his own tantrums. Wei Wuxian tells him to take it as repayment, as Jiang Cheng had insisted he was owed since Lotus Pier's attack, which only goes into the same circle that neither can think of the other without debts having forced them together as friends to begin with.

Wei Wuxian's core and that reveal didn't stop Jiang Cheng to get over his jealousy of Wei Wuxian being kind enough to give his everything to make other's life easier. He doesn't like that part of Wei Wuxian, and doesn't understand it, his own "kindness" is reserved for himself and those he does love to an extent, but he is still resentful of unconditional equality and suffering that he may have to deal with. Note that he is still harassing Wen Ning despite the former saving his life multiple times already, the lesson did not extend to leave others be aside from Wei Wuxian.

Jiang Cheng said his "good bye" by letting Wei Wuxian walk away to his own future. That's not a bad way to close a relationship, is it satisfactory? Maybe not, but when you have nothing better to say, other than letting someone go, it's not supposed to feel like a victory for you. Letting go of hate isn't always cathartic, and it's something that you don't always have the easiest time ever getting rid of. You do not change your whole self when you just can't or want to, despite letting another person make their choices without your say. Jiang Cheng doesn't expect anything more, and it's why for the first time in his life, he doesn't try to have the last word in on what Wei Wuxian is doing.

Does Jiang Cheng seem upset post-canon? No, as Lan jingyi says he is the same nasty person as ever picking fights, and that's all the confirmation that Wei Wuxian needs to know that he's living and having his own life. Those sort of relationships always feel anticlimactic with resolution, but it is what it is, especially when no one needs to feel entitled or guilted into rebuilding something that neither of you really want to when you just don't get the other anymore or, only maintained it out of obligation despite having different wants and morals.

#mdzs #mo dao zu shi #canon jiang cheng #he does not get inherent kindness in others #that's his problem despite what he may love or try

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rynne · 2 years

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I’m someone who *wants* to see WWX as morally ideal, the way mxtx intended him to be, but I think I’m too old to be convinced that subjecting even “bad” people to forced autocannibalism is a “just” punishment under any circumstances :/

I have a few things to say about this, so bear with me.

The first is something I've talked about before in regards to conflating personal morality with the story's morality. I go into it more here, so I would like to direct you to that post. Ultimately, I think that WWX can make decisions that a reader personally disagrees with, but that doesn't affect that he's meant to be a moral ideal within his setting.

Second is a bit of a discussion on the "WWX's morality" debate in general. I think the context is a little important here, which is that this debate typically arises from some readers trying to elevate their favorite members of the cultivation world, most often JC. Because the story ultimately shows that the cultivation world is in the wrong and WWX is in the right, if anyone wants to absolve their fave of the bad things they did to WWX and the Wens, they have to first bring WWX down to their level. They have to find ways to prove that WWX is not as good as he's talked about being, which means more of what the cultivation world did to him can be justified.

So now I would like to ask you a question, Anon. Why does WWX having done something you see as wrong matter to you? What purpose does it serve to you to decide that he's not quite morally ideal in your eyes? (And tone is hard to convey in this kind of discussion, but I'm trying to be sincere, not accusatory, here.) If it's just a personal acknowledgment that you don't think WWX's actions here were acceptable, then okay, you're allowed that personal view. But if you're trying to make an argument about WWX's morality in the story based on your personal view, then I think you need supporting evidence from the story that backs up your perspective. Do you think that WWX's actions here are supposed to undermine his moral authority in the rest of the story?

That leads me into the third point, which is that even in a story with some very important moral choices, not everything is about morality and that's not always a very useful framework to discuss an event. Personally, I don't think discussing his morality here adds a whole lot to our understanding of his character or this event's role in the story.

MXTX shows us neither WWX's time in the Burial Mounds nor much of what he did during the war, so this sequence shows us part of what made him so terrifying, which further sets up how the cultivation world reacts to him after the war and what they decide to use against him. It sets up the core of WWX's clashes with LWJ, which are essential to the development of their relationship.

This chapter also ends with one of the very few times we get LWJ's perspective. The scarcity of LWJ's perspective I think emphasizes its importance -- so what do we get from it here?

The night had passed. The sun in the sky was about to rise.

And the sun on the ground was falling.

(Chapter 62, ExR)

This is about the depths to which WWX (the sun on the ground) has fallen, but I don't think LWJ is really thinking about it in moral terms here. His moral concern may be part of it, but what LWJ tried, and failed, to get across in this scene is that he doesn't want to judge WWX, he wants to help him. He sees that WWX had to have endured absolutely horrific things to have reached this point, and while WWX interprets his reaction as "Wei Ying, you have done something evil and bad here and I want to judge and punish you for it," his actual reaction is closer to "holy shit, Wei Ying, what are you doing, what happened to you, that you're doing this is a bad sign for your mental and emotional and spiritual health, I want to help you."

So I think that LWJ's perspective is a more useful framework to evaluate what's going on with WWX here than judging him. This is about showing how bad what WWX endured was without having to do a Burial Mounds montage. He is in absolutely terrible shape here in about every way possible, and I think it's meant to be more sad and alarming than worthy of censure.

My final point is that even if what WWX did was something the narrative condemned (which I don't think the narrative does), it still doesn't compromise his moral authority in the rest of the story. Morally praiseworthy people don't have to never do a wrong thing in their lives -- that doesn't leave a lot of room for the actual human experience. But WWX does do something I think is important, which I've also talked about before, and that is reflect on his past actions.

During the Sunshot Campaign, all of these things were praised, used to inspire the people. However, the further the Sunshot Campaign became, the more fearful the people were when they mentioned it again. Not only others, even when he, himself, thought about it afterward, he felt that he had done a bit too much.

(Chapter 66, ExR)

I don't necessarily think he's talking about what he did to WC here, because his thoughts on this were inspired by that couple talking about his actions during the war. He doesn't seem to think about WC again after his death, so we don't know how he feels about what he did on reflection. He might decide that WC earned what he got, or he might also think that this was a place he went a little overboard.

But this moment is something that helps me reconcile when I disagree with WWX. He isn't a static character. He is capable of looking back on things he's done in the past and deciding to do better.

And that's more than most people in this story can do.

#mdzs #mdzs meta #wei wuxian #the morally gray discussion #anon #asks #but also I'm pretty tired of discussing wwx's morality #can we just be done with that #and talk about other things

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fincalinde · 2 years

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so i saw that ask about jgy and how he killed jin guangshan, and it reminded me of how i’m still not really sure what to make of that whole situation, even when i AM a jgy fan

it feels kind of like that scene in matilda where the kid stole a piece of cake, and the head lady, as punishment, had a gigantic cake made and forced him to eat it all—in mdzs, it’s kind of a fanservicey schadenfreude at jin guangshan getting his just desserts (heh, pun intended). except in the context of jgy and jin guangshan, the “cake” is actually like twenty otherwise uninvolved people who are forced to rape someone and then are killed.

at least with wen chao and wang lingjiao, wwx wanted revenge against both of them, but jgy didn’t know who the prostitutes were specifically, so that isn’t the case here

it just seems so incongruent with everything else we know about jgy. even if he was determined to have jgs raped to death, there are ways to achieve that without dragging in (and subsequently killing) uninvolved outsiders, or at the very least, so many outsiders. so why did he do it the way he did?

(please forgive the poor timing after that other ask: i’ve been dying to know what other jgy fans think about it since i finished the book, but i only recently felt confident enough to really start engaging with the fandom. I consider you a Trusted Jgy Source, so i was just curious what thoughts you had on the matter, if any. i hope you don’t mind me asking, and please don’t feel obligated to answer.)

I don't mind your asking at all! I'm always happy to answer good faith questions.

The way JGY has his father killed is certainly an exception to his normal mode of operation. Where I generally take issue however is fandom conflating that exception with the assertion that it is The Worst Thing Anyone In MDZS Ever Did. In a story where the nominal hero is desecrating thousands of corpses and forcing his enemies to autocannibalise, it's really not feasible to apply a modern real-world moral framework to the characters.

Take WWX for example, since he really is the most obvious comparison in terms of fandom reception. WWX does regret the extremity of his actions later on, but he seems to mostly feel embarrassed and awkward about it. Resolving not to commit similar acts in future (now he's in a situation where he doesn't need to!) is sufficient for him to move on. His most terrible acts are also generally disregarded or viewed in the broader context of his situation, his goals, and his other commendable qualities such as his attempts to save the Wen and his love for JC and JYL. Everyone is going to respond differently to different characters according to their own preferences and that's absolutely fine, but proclaiming that nothing WWX did is as bad as what JGY did to the sex workers is utterly baseless.

Yes WWX wanted revenge against WLJ, but does that mean what he did to WC and WLJ was proportionate or moral? Not if we're applying real world morality, and based on LWJ's reaction and WWX's later feelings of guilt, perhaps not within the confines of the setting either. I would be interested in seeing anyone argue that WLJ or even WC genuinely deserved their fates and how this reflects on WWX's supposed virtue—not because I'm personally interested in applying a modern moral framework to the text, but because I do think it exposes fatal inconsistencies in that approach.

If we assume that WWX was in some way justified in killing WC and WLJ in such a cruelly protracted manner, the rationale is probably that in light of everything they did to him and his clan it is if not perhaps entirely ethical then at least understandable. In that case I don't see much difference between what WWX did to WC and WLJ and what JGY did to JGS. JGY has struggled his entire life, and when he finally wins the entire war and attains legitimacy he is mistreated and misused and forced to commit repeated atrocities while his own ideas for the betterment of society are rejected again and again. His mother died because his father couldn't be bothered to save her. He ends up married to his own sister. It's really small wonder he finally snaps and lashes out.

It's also small wonder he chooses death by irony for JGS. This is JGY's lowest point: he's achieved everything he set out to do and yet his life is nothing but exhaustion and misery and physical and mental abuse. In terms of bringing in unrelated outside parties, JGY has absolutely no reason to feel any sense of solidarity with sex workers as a class, considering that with the exception of Sisi every single one of them ostracised him and his mother and subjected them to abuse and ridicule when he was growing up. It certainly is out of character for him to be flamboyantly vicious rather than simply efficient, but if there were ever a time to go big then this is it.

JGY makes it very clear he feels no allegiance to the social class he was raised in, and we're shown exactly why: that class rejected him and treated him just as badly as any other. To JGY there is no meaningful difference between the abuse he receives from cultivators and the abuse he receives from prostitutes. Why should he feel any sense of solidarity with a class of people who have never offered him the same courtesy?

I understand that people who engage in sex work are often in vulnerable positions and are subject to harassment and violence and other dangers. I understand that in the real world it's important to protect vulnerable groups.

However. It does also seem to me that an eagerness to signal support for sex workers can result in a reading of MDZS where the lives of sex workers are counted as being worth more than the lives of other characters. Why are the deaths of the prostitutes JGY uses to rape his father to death so much worse than the deaths of the inhabitants of the brothel he has XY burn to the ground with everyone inside? What about Baixue or the Yueyang Chang, or the cultivators NMJ hacked to death in the throes of a qi deviation he knew could happen at any time?

The characters do react strongly to the way JGS dies, so we know that it's considered a particularly shocking and awful thing to do. However the characters are more focused on what a horrible method of death it is for JGS rather than the suffering of the women who raped him to death and were executed for it. Therefore if you do consider it a manifestly 'worse' crime than the murder of children or enforced cannibalism, you should be just as appalled by the reactions of LXC, WWX, LWJ etc. and should therefore be rethinking your assessment of their moral standing rather than handwringing over the poor fictional sex workers and how this makes JGY the absolute worst ever of anyone in the cast.

To sum up:

1. Applying a modern moral framework to MDZS is impossible in light of the atrocities committed or tacitly endorsed by the entire cast. Violence and sexual violence is endemic to the setting and condemning JGY is only consistent if WWX and other characters are condemned for similarly appalling acts. I won't propose my own framework as that will vary from reader to reader, but if one intends to write fanfiction or meta then the most important thing to do is apply one's chosen framework consistently.

2. The way JGY kills his father is inconsistent with his typical behaviour but is consistent with what we know about him when taking into account the years of abuse he has endured and the fact that he has no reason to feel solidarity with or sympathy for sex workers as a class.

#ask #labyrynth #roquen meta

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pharahsgf · 1 year

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Feel free to ignore this ask but I'm not really sure how to feel about LQR/Lan clan in mdzs. On one hand I really buy the idea that he loves his nephews and enjoys teaching and in general his teachings are good, as well as the Lan rules. But I do think it's stressed a bit, especially in the novel, that the Lan clan and LQR by extension have strayed a bit from "spirit of the rule" to following and making rules that are very repressive (off the top of my head: don't laugh or smile without cause). And while I know that LQR loves LWJ and had no reason to believe in WWX after everything, I forgot how the discipline whip almost killed LWJ and the scars are designed to never heal and are a representation of ultimate shame. I know LWJ needed to be disciplined in some way bc he did hurt Lan elders but there is this sense that LQR punished LWJ so much hoping that he would break and when he didn't, he doubled down. Idk like I hate the way the fandom engages with the Lan and LQR without nuance but at the same time I don't think it would be out of character for him to continue to try to make WWX and LWJ's lives difficult. I really adore fics etc that explore the idea of him changing for the better though and am really tired of takes that are like nothing gets better and WWX has to deal with both JC and the Lan clan hating him. Its exhausting. You're the only MDZS blog I trust so I just wanted to ramble about this issue to you :)

aw thank you! it's nice of you to say that

wrt lan qiren... i can't fault him for his dedication to the rules and to orthodox cultivation when he is safeguarding hundreds of years of tradition and legacy, and when his attitude allowed him to not only maintain but elevate the pristine reputation of the sect he suddenly had to lead. the teachings and values of the lan have always served him well, and he never had the incentive to re-evaluate his understanding of the rulebook like lan wangji eventually would; as a result, the lan precepts become the framework through which he analyses wei wuxian's actions, and not knowing the important context behind these actions further condemns them in lan qiren's mind.

his treatment of wei wuxian is unfair and lan wangji's punishment is undeserved, but the reason he behaves like this is not because he's an unreasonable abusive conservative who lives to make wangxian's life difficult - it's because, from his point of view, wei wuxian is morally bankrupt and leading lan wangji down a path of depravity in an uncomfortable parallel to the drama that destroyed qingheng-jun. protecting his nephews and his clan are always his priorities and the knowledge available to him, alongside the values that have been instilled in him, led him to strongly believe that wei wuxian was an enemy to those goals. so, imo, if he grew to understand wei wuxian's motivations and the way he fits into the narrative of heroism painted by the lan sect's teachings, the animosity would end. that's what redeems lan qiren to me.

#also the fact that he like. doesn't commit war crimes lol #his mistakes are not catastrophic and his reasons are understandable #replies #anonymous #long post

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llycaons · 9 months

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ep28 (1/2): jc comb L

I burned out most of my allocated images in this first conversation because !!! it's EVERYTHING!!!

well first of all wwx saying that not living up to his promises would impact his reputation is hilariously ironic given the situation, and he knows it. but jc is not messing around

I've said before he's easily manipulated and not a great political mind, and I stand by that, but he's got a decent grasp of the situation here honestly, and this cnversation is so painful and emotional because they both care so much but they can't get around their differences. I don't even think there was much miscommunication. but I'm getting ahead of myself

yeah he noticed. also sorry for getting that shot of wwx. my bad, man

and here's the kicker. jc and wwx are in agreement here. jc says 'this is dangerous, you have to completely stop this or else they'll find a pretext to kill you'

and wwx counters with 'if these people are doomed, I have to stay with them because there's no other way to protect them' and jc says 'WHY DO YOU CARE ABOUT PROTECTING THEM'

and wwx gets so mad at that he doesn't even deign to emphasize 'murdering innocent people is wrong' because...obviously

jc says keep your head down! this is a lost cause! nobody will help you or support you!

the barehanded sword grasp oof

and this is honestly jc's most iconic monologue (?)

like he kind of gets is. he understand the trials that wwx is facing. he's just unwilling to face them with him. he's a pessimist, and has no genuine moral compass.

I actually don't judge him too harshly for these choices until postcanon, until we see how entrenched he's become in this position. he never once expresses regret for deciding that turning over the wens was the right choice. he never reflects on his behavior. he fails to take responsibility for the role he took in this. too insecure, too traumatized, too fragile, too grief-stricken to look inward. he bears some of the blame for what happened and he knows it but he's too burnt out on his own losses to care

and wwx goes FINE! then I'll do it alone! because jc is right, this is doomed. but wwx is also right, he can't just abandon these people

this is the line that kills me. bc it's clear how painful this is and it's clear that jc wants to protect wwx but he just doesn't see a way he can. not the imaginative type. but this is as clear communication as we can get

another strike to the heart! wwx loves his family and his home so much! he's not doing this because he wants to!

but even if these were all total strangers he'd do the same. ugh he was too good for this world

now that is a very hurtful thing to say, jc. you know what your mom was like

THEY ARE BOTH CRYING??? I NEVER NOTICED

we get a shot of jc in his pjs with his little sleeping boots (?) and he doesn't have a blanket. anyway

very very funny that jc asks wq why she didn;t come to him and she was like 'well would you have HELPED me' and he can't even say that he would have. WHY DID YOU OFFER THEN. in his mind he's like 'of course wwx did exactly what she needed because he's better than me,,,,he just HAS to be a hero....the woman I love likes him better and he doesn't even care bc he's gay...fml'

not haunted by the people there he wants to condemn to death, but by his own failures and inadequacies. he really is quite a self-centered character and it boggles the mind that he's portrayed as anything else. I mean in his essential characterization, not one-offs

missed the shot but there are truly so many fucking candles in this place. aren't they worries about wasting them

HE'S SAYING HOW MUCH IT HURTS 😭

wwx playing rest out in the night in his iconic outfit....love it

#cql re-rewatch

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cathygeha · 11 months

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REVIEW

Code of the Hills by Chris Offutt

Mick Hardin #3

Stepping back into the Kentucky hill country with Mick, two years after he left, sees him drawn away from his retirement plans to once again deal with local crimes and solve murders. Great addition to the series!

What I liked:

* Mick Hardin: * retired Army CID officer, born and bred in the hills the story is set in, knows the culture, has an interesting moral compass, protective, puzzle solver, intelligent, lethal, someone I would want on my side, a bit of a loner, finds peace in the woods, a good man

* Linda Hardin: town sheriff, Mick’s sister, intelligent, professional, a bit of a loner, good leader, injured on the job in this book, wondering what her storyline will look like in the future

* Sandra: police dispatcher, divorced, seems to see Mick for who and what he is, might still be a potential love interest for Mick in the future

* Raymond: ex-marine, in relationship with JC, helps with JC’s taco truck business, an equal to Mick in many ways though more capable of maintaining a relationship

* Johnny Boy: deputy sheriff, map collector, talkative, wouldn’t mind being in a relationship, methodical, intelligent, has much to ponder

* How the community values and expectations play such a big part in the stories in this series

* The descriptions of the area and how they played a part in the story

* Police procedural aspects of the story, where they led, and how the various cases were tied up and dealt with by the end of the book

* Wondering what favors will be called in by Flowers and Shorty that Mick will one day need to repay

* Thinking about what will happen next in the series

What I didn’t like:

* Who and what I was meant not to like

* The idea of revenge and how family feuds never actually end if one person is always needing to have their death avenged

Did I enjoy this book? Yes

Would I read more in this series? Definitely

Thank you to NetGalley and Grove Press for the ARC – This is my honest review.

4-5 Stars

BLURB

In this blistering return to Chris Offutt’s acclaimed crime series, Mick Hardin is tested like never before as familial allegiances and old wounds collide, threatening to destroy everything he loves Master storyteller and award-winning author Chris Offutt’s latest book, Code of the Hills, is a dark, witty, and propulsive thriller of murder and secrets in a town where little is as it seems. Mick Hardin is back in the hills of Kentucky. He’d planned to touch down briefly before heading to France, marking the end to his twenty-year Army career. In Rocksalt, his sister Linda the sheriff is investigating the murder of Pete Lowe, a sought-after mechanic at the local racetrack. After another body is found, Linda and her deputy Johnny Boy Tolliver wonder if the two murders are related. Linda steps into harm’s way just as a third body turns up and Mick ends up being deputized again, uncovering evidence of illegal cockfighting, and trying to connect all the crimes. An explosive return to the mayhem of the Kentucky hills, Code of the Hills is a harrowing novel of family—of what we’re willing to do to protect and avenge the ones we love.

#Chris Offutt #Mick Hardin 3 #Grove Press #NetGalley #Fiction #Crime #Murder #mystery #murder mystery #small town fiction

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leatherbookmark · 2 years

Text

thoughts, part 6! aka time to release this post into the world already i think, it is almost two weeks old orz;;

1. after wen ning relays him what wwx said about how jc’s life would be over if he lost his cultivation, exr says that lwj “looked down. his pale eyes gazed at wei wuxian’s face (...)” and while it’s correct, i’d like to add that both the chinese original and the japanese translation describe his eyes as “pale like glass”.

specifically, the japanese edition uses the word 玻璃 hari, meaning either glass or quartz, meanwhile the word used in the chinese novel, 琉璃 liúlí, means:

furthermore, it’s the chinese title of the “love and redemption” drama lol. now, if you google “hari”, you get your usual, transparent-but-slightly-teal glass panes. however, if you google liuli,

swoon.

that aside, though, i really like this phrase! lwj’s light eyes allegedly make him look cold*, but the glasslike imagery... the fragility! the slight lack of focus! the shiny tearful quality. ach! wonderful

*there was i think a post about how han chinese writers portray light eyes as creepy/unpleasant to look at because of their prejudices again inner asian people, who can have lighter hair and eyes. there was a post like that and i wanted to find it, but in the process of looking i found blogs of those “m*t*-critical” people who casually drop “i wish they died” about people they don’t like, as well as use such terms as “morally abhorrent gay sex”. so i stopped looking. i hope you forgive me

2. the part where wn asks if lwj knew (about wwx’s core), and lwj says “i only knew that his spiritual energy has suffered somehow, and there was something off about it”, and then the context parade begins because in exr,

But to think— this was the truth. Wen Ning said, “If not for this…” If not because there really hadn’t been a second path to walk on.

and it’s... understandable, in a way, but also a bit muddy. “if not for this” -- but what, exactly, is the this, and what is the rest of the sentence that wen ning dropped? “if wwx didn’t give away his golden core, if everything that happened because he had no golden core didn’t happen... things would have gone way, way differently”?

the japanese sentence is sort of scrambling my brain the more i think about it, and it hurts me on a personal level. anyway,

―― もし、どうしても他の道を選べない理由などなければ。 (moshi, doushitemo hoka no michi wo erabenai riyuu nado nakereba)

the fun thing about japanese sentence structure is that if you start translating them from the beginning, in most cases you’re already dead. which is why we start from the end. as you do.

if there wasn’t (nado nakereba) + a reason (riyuu) + why he can’t choose a different path (hoka no michi wo erabenai)

flipped: 他の道を選ぶ理由があれば hoka no michi wo erabu riyuu ga areba, if there was a reason to choose a different option

--> “if wei wuxian didn’t think he had no other option”?

^ as in, wwx did think that -- not necessarily that he had no other option, maybe even that there was no other option -- if wwx wasn’t convinced there’s no other option but to give jiang cheng his core, if his situation wasn’t so hopeless, if there was someone who stood by him back then, who would offer him help; i feel this sentence is both about the specific situation of wwx thinking “jc’s life would be over if he lost his cultivation, he literally lives for it and he was raised to be the sect leader”, but Also this sentence has a thick Wrapper, and my brain is whirring trying to figure out how to put in in a nice, easily understandable, powerful way that doesn’t have the reader squint and wonder what it’s about... TRANSLATING, MAN

and a very fun thing is that there probably IS a very easy answer to this question, but i’m hips deep in this sentence so i can’t see it. which is why a translator needs a/ time and b/ someone who’d also work on the text, understand the language and the context WHILE having a clean mind. HAVING A CLEAN MIND IS INCREDIBLY IMPORTANT so that you can look at me, sweaty, haggard, struggling to fix a complicated machine, and go “oh, have you tried turning it off and on again?” thereby SOLVING IT.

i am not normal. about anything.

that being said finally━━━━(ﾟ∀ﾟ)━━━━!! i finished chapter 19, loyalty (or: 丹心 tanshin, sincerity, faithfulness)!!!

CHAPTER 20: 寤寐

or Longing! OR IS IT.

hm!!

however considering the first example, it does kind of have the “longing” connotation, doesn’t it!! isn’t language exciting!!!

4. i love this sentence

The sight of droplets of blood on Lan Wangji’s sleeve, like plum blossoms scattered on the snow, slowly reminded him what happened before his anger overtook him and he lost his consciousness.

before he lost his patience and also his consciousness?www i don’t know but the japanese translation specifies that he 怒りで気を失った okori de ki wo ushinatta, lost his consciousness because of/with anger, and i just. love it. ah, those cultivators!

5. another part of a sentence i like is 胸にも血生臭い息がつかえている mune ni mo chinamagusai iki ga tsukaeteiru. it’s about wwx, and exr translation has it as “a heavy scent of blood felt stuffed up in his chest”, so the usual “well yes but no” (mostly yes but the sentence is a bit awkward). chinamagusai literally means “reeking of blood” or “bloody” (about battles or crimes), and while the “tsukaeru” was written in kana (syllables) without any kanji specified, it’s either 閊える or 痞える, both used for describing something being clogged, stuck in; for example, when “one’s chest feels clogged because of illness/sadness/anxiety”; it apparently also means just “to feel pressure, pain”.

so it’s a word choice that you almost feel in your body yourself when you read it. in english you’d probably swap the stench of blood for the taste of it (the west, i feel, is a bit less focused on smelling stuff), and coupled with a feeling of something stuck in, filling your chest cavity... yeah, poor wwx.

6. this is probably not funny at all but. when wwx asks how did the get away from lotus pier, according to exr, “Wen Ning’s expression immediately grew nervous, and he stopped rowing“. however in japanese he “stiffens, his face nervous” and like. hehe stiffens. get it because he’s

7. I LOVE UNDERSTATEMENT HUMOR so you can imagine my delight when a sentence that in exr was “Hearing how displeased [LWJ] sounded, Wei Wuxian paused in surprise.”, in japanese translation used a phrase 友好的なものではなかったため (yuukouteki na mono de wa nakatta tame), “because [the way LWJ spoke about JC) wasn’t particularly friendly” 💛💛💛

8. godddd the part where wwx wonders what lwj feels towards him, and it’s said that it’s his first time feeling Like This about someone, and that he worries that he’s reading into lwj’s behaviour too much and just being overconfident when he wonders if there Is something... dear god my dude COME HERE I’LL GIVE YOU A FUCKING HUG :((((

10. THAT WAS THE FUNNIEST DOUBLE TAKE I’VE EVER DID lwj and wwx were described as 蓝魏二人 (lan-wei futari), futari meaning just two people... misters lan and wei... god

EDIT: YELLS IT WAS IN THE ORIGINAL NOVEL AS WELL... oh god i love it sm

11. “when they arrived in lotus pier (or yunmeng, like it says in the exr translation) it was around 3 in the morning; then, quite a lot of things have happened, and now the dawn was breaking slowly”

what... season it is? i’m associating the guanyin temple with the red leaves on the trees, but that’s cql, i’m not sure about the novel. but even so, when does the sun rise in autumn? six, seven am is when you have “daylight”, so i’m assuming it’s a bit brighter outside than just “sun rising”. that’s three, four hours! there was a banquet that probably didn’t last half an hour, some people probably needed meds or other forms of care, jiang cheng was absent for an hour, then bicao and sisi came... it just seems like a lot of things have happened in a rather short time. hm

#liveshrimping

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righteousinadversity · 3 years

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THE RIGHT THING IS NEVER EASY

What makes MDZS a great story, and not just a good one, is that WWX is an incredibly moral person, who puts doing the right thing above everything. Societal rules, personal relations, even his own health. This is not him being insecure or not having self-worth. It is him having an incredibly strong moral core, and recognising that sacrifices are often necessary when you want to do the right thing because the right thing is never easy. So, we have the general goal of the protagonist: Stand by what is right.

And why is the right thing not easy? This is where the conflict comes in. In MDZS, the conflict is man vs. society. It is WWX's tenuous position in the high society of the cultivation sects, which by the way, is filled with classist assholes, that lead to him being villainized. MDZS is a story of how society exploits rules and traditions, and turn dark. No one is wholly blameless in the fact. After the war, LXC, NMJ, and JC were all in positions of power to stop the brutality of the Jin Sect.

LXC's sins are more forgivable, perhaps, because LXC does stand up for WQ, and we really don't know the extent to which he and NMJ were aware of the wen remnants only being civilians. However, even when WWX points out very, very relevant points at the banquet, LXC, who leads the sect with the motto, 'Be Righteous' is unswayed, and doesn't pursue the matter.

NMJ, for all his strong sense of justice, clearly has no idea what it is like to live under a tyrannical dictator when he says,

Nie MingJue spoke coldly, “If she responded with only silence and not opposition when the Wen Sect was causing mayhem, it’s the same as indifference. She shouldn’t have been so disillusioned as to hope that she could be treated with respect when the Wen Sect was doing evil and be unwilling to suffer the consequences and pay the price when the Wen Sect was wiped out.”

The crime NMJ accuses WQ of is the same crime he is guilty of. Indifference. The only difference is that WQ actively went against WRH's command to join the battle lines, saved YMJ's heir and ensured its survival. NMJ, on the other hand, not only did not but later on, joined the siege against the innocents.

Again, we don't know how much the Nies and the Lans were aware there were only civilians. We don't know if the Jiangs and the Jins were the ones who carried out the slaughter, while the Lans and Nies fought the fierce corpses there. It is likely they believed there were cultivators and war criminals at the Burial Mounds, But, it is also likely that they had some idea that civilians were there as well.

And JC... well, we have absolute proof of JC's crimes. I have talked about this before, others have talked about it, and the gist of it is this. JC does nothing to pay back the enormous life debt he owes both Wen Ning and Wen Qing. Instead, he condemns them to death. He abandons his sect brother and turns the world against him. He leads a siege against a mountain full of civilians.

The Cultivation Sects would do nothing for the Wens, and this is further emphasised by the fact that even LWJ recognises that WWX has 'no other path'. This is not about MoDao. It is about protecting the Wens.

So, society exploited the ideas of 'righteousness', of 'justice', of 'honour'. During War, they all did awful things. But the absolute horror of what happened to the Wens was that they were brutalised during peace. The horror was that a dictator was removed, and in its place, arose a society that plundered and murdered innocents.

The thing is, we don't know, really, if even WRH was ever this blatantly cruel to civilians. We know he didn't care for their safety or anything - case in point, waterborne abyss, but QishanWen Sect was a vast, vast behemoth. We don't really know how much was his direct orders and how much was idiots like Wen Chao slacking off. We know he slaughtered the entire Jiang Sect, but again, cultivators. We don't know if Wen Ruohan pulled civilians into his power play in the cultivation world. (If there is actual textual evidence against this, please reblog and share. I read the novel quite thoroughly multiple times, but if I missed anything, please let me know.)

So, if the result of the SunShot Campaign was a society that slaughtered innocents, then how could they even call it righteous

So, again, conflict is Man vs. Society. ( In most fix-it fanfics, people remove this conflict, and are left with rather a shell of a fic. I theorize this is where most of the insecure WWX tropes come from -> so conflict becomes, Man vs. Self)

But Karma is an actual, real thing, and we see it happen. WWX, who stood by the right thing, who refused to let society declare cruelty as justice, was reborn, with a body that has a core he can cultivate and is able to live without regrets and live happily, with a man he loves. JGS, who was responsible for the whole thing? Look how he died. LXC's actions in response to JGY's crimes, lead him to being devastated, and goes into seclusion (Note that if a similar investigation was held with respect to the Wens, the tragedy might not have happened) is by far the kindest ending because it shows potential for growth. JGY and NMJ, one slightly better than the other, certainly, are sealed as fierce corpses. JC is faced with total abandonment from the last person from his past, and the realisation that he has no right to compete with WWX, that WWX owes him nothing, which for him is devastating, as we see from how easily JGY uses it to manipulate him. The Jin Sect is surrounded by rumours and general dislike from the cultivation sects (Not you Jin Ling, you're doing lovely, sweetheart.)

That's why MDZS is an absolutely brilliant literary work. It shows that doing the right thing isn't easy, it is a slippery slope and you can fall very easily. But life always rewards those who try, and always punishes those who don't.

#mdzs #mo dao zu shi #wei wuxian #wei ying #karma #this is mostly a rant #But there is fact #As always #rage is very relevant #Critical of many many characters #I don't dislike all of them #But the BS they pulled is canon #So yes fuck them #anti cultivation world

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vrishchikawrites · 3 years

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I’m having a bit of a hard time reconciling NMJ and LQR being a part of the first siege - not denying that they were there but how it played out and thus what I think about them as moral characters. Though I loved the Wen Remnants, I can see why their rigid morals would make these two want to kill any Wen cultivators but idk how harshly I should be thinking about their capacity to for evil.

So we know they both disliked WWX for straying from the right path and protecting Wens. So I get why they went, but what about after that? It’s been established that JC and JGS lacked morals enough to kill old people and possibly even kids, though Wen Yuan was hidden, but what did LQR and NMJ do in the siege? Just fight the corpses WWX raised, waited for JC (well actually the Stygian Tiger Seal) to kill him and never saw the Wen remnants at all? Or saw him later and just meh, left that there?

What do you make of all that?

I think I've mentioned this before but aside from Wangxian, the juniors, and Wen Ning and perhaps WQ, absolutely no one comes away unscathed upon critical examination. To me, they are all asses that look better because JGY, JGS, and JC are worse. LQR's only saving grace is that he allowed LSZ to be raised at CR and treated him as a member of the family. ( AFTER MUCH BEGGING FROM HIS WHIPPED TO NEAR DEATH NEPHEW)

Honestly, I believe in calling spade a spade. Everyone who participated in the siege knew what they were doing. They gave into their hatred. That's it. That's all there is to it.

We don't excuse JC, why excuse anyone else?

WWX questioned people about the treatment of the Wen remanents, NMJ and LXC were present. Nothing came from it.

There was a child at BM and the siege was still carried out. WQ and WN made a deal. The sects made a deal with a people set to die. They dishonored it. NMJ, LXC, and LQR were there.

LXC was perfectly willing to excuse arrogance in NMJ but when WWX did the same thing, it was said something about WWX's character🙄

NMJ looked at the warrior who had played a vital role in Wen defeat and didn't even deign to acknowledge him.

Honestly, I don't feel the need to contemplate any of their morality. If their morality didn't fail, would MDZS's story even progress as it did? What happened to WWX, the Wens, NMJ, and the rise of JGY- everything is a consequence of their morality failing repeatedly, in many different ways.

I don't bother even thinking about it? They will never touch the standards set by Wangxian and already displayed by the Juniors.

#reader asks #re: cultivation world

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robininthelabyrinth · 3 years

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CQL-verse! The characters have the same age gaps between them as their actors and actresses! Wwx and Jyl are the same age, jc is 5 years younger than them. Lxc is 3 years younger than wwx&jyl and lwj is 3 years younger than him. Nmj is two years older than wwx&jyl and nhs is 8 years younger than him and the same age as lwj. (1/2)

Meng Yao is 2 years older than nhs and jzx is 2 years older than MY. I'm leaving the Wen Sibs out of this because otherwise WN would be the same age as wwx and WQ would be 4 years younger than him. But hey! If you want to go with that, go crazy! I was thinking more of Yunmeng Sibs focus, but I will be happy with anything! (2/2)

ao3

Untamed

Nie Mingjue hated the Wen sect to the point of death and war, but he had always had trouble hating sad and gentle Wen Ning.

Wen Ning was technically his peer – there were only two years between them in age – and therefore capable of the same sorts of responsibilities and duties towards righteousness as Nie Mingjue, meaning that he ought to hate him as much as all the rest. But at the same time, Wen Ning was only part of the main branch family indirectly, a ward of Wen Ruohan; he was constantly suppressed and even tormented by Wen Chao, the eldest son of that family. If anything, it seemed almost as if he’d been brought into the family just to act as the family’s scapegoat, the inferior copy that was so hapless that he made that self-indulgent hedonist Wen Chao appear somewhat competent in contrast.

Nie Mingjue couldn’t imagine treating any of his own cousins that way.

He and Wen Chao were often compared, both being about the same age, and their young brothers were of similar age as well, both of them only fourteen; this juxtaposition made sure that every single person in the cultivation world talk of them in the same breath. Nie Mingjue always came out the better in the comparison, and Wen Xu the same for his, which in the minds of most people balanced out, but which caused Wen Chao no end of rage. He knew he couldn’t take out his anger on the talented Wen Xu and so took out on poor Wen Ning instead.

Nie Mingjue hated the Wen sect.

He did not hate Wen Ning.

Wen Ning, who should not be here.

“Please,” Wen Ning said, nearly in tears, as he threw himself down to the floor in front of Nie Mingjue. He’d burst into the room in the inn Nie Mingjue was staying at, the guards that no sect leader could do without no matter what they wanted following close behind in alarm until Nie Mingjue had waved them off with a gesture; he’d been panting so hard that he’d only just now caught his breath. “Please help this useless older brother do one good thing with his life.”

Alarmed, Nie Mingjue reached out and caught Wen Ning by the shoulders, pulling him to stand and even forgetting himself enough to reach forward with a sleeve to dab away the tears staining the other man’s face.

“What is it?” he asked, feeling anxiety curdling in his gut. He’d spoken with Wen Ning before during the discussion conferences, both when he was younger and even, in a few stolen moments, after he became sect leader; he knew Wen Ning had a steady personality, if a weak one from all the bullying he endured, and that he was not given to unnecessary hysterics. If he could tolerate Wen Chao’s endless torment with a faint smile and a don’t worry sect leader Nie once you’re used to it it’s more funny than anything else, then what could make him act like this? “What is that you need help with? I do not understand.”

Wen Ning looked tired. He always had, his health had always been poor, but now it seemed worse than ever; there were circles under his eyes, and Nie Mingjue had no idea how he’d managed to get away from the Nightless City to come find him. The town he was currently in was close to the border the Qinghe Nie shared with Qishan Wen, but it was still an effort, especially for someone like Wen Ning. He might be a member of the Wen family by name, but his freedom was significantly curtailed, and it wasn’t only because he was sickly.

“My little sister is going to be attending the lectures at the Cloud Recesses,” Wen Ning said.

“The - Lan sect lectures?” Nie Mingjue repeated blankly. It was a stupid thing to say; of course it was the Lan sect’s lectures, who else would give lectures at the Cloud Recesses? And yet, at the same time – “The Wen sect hasn’t gone to them in generations.”

“Sect Leader Wen asked A-Qing to look for something,” Wen Ning said. “I don’t know what. He talks to her more than he talks to me, when she’s treating him with acupuncture and other such things – he only wants blood relations treating him now, so she’s passing along what she can do, the doctors all say she’s talented – he told her something, I think, but I don’t know what, he doesn’t talk to me…and she doesn’t talk to me, either.”

“She’s sixteen, they’re like that,” Nie Mingjue said, trying to offer comfort, but he didn’t like the sound of that – Wen Ruohan growing reliant on the medical skills of a teenager, talking with her as if she were an adult…it didn’t speak well to the Chief Cultivator’s state of mind. “So she’s going to go spy on them?”

“She is. And maybe more. There’s – there’s something back in the Nightless City, something Sect Leader Wen is refining in order to increase his power. Whatever it is, it’s powerful and evil.” Wen Ning looked paler than usual, somehow. “It was something that was kept in a cave near our village when we were younger, once. Sect Leader Wen took it away to study, and it made something go crazy, I got hurt, and my parents – anyway, it doesn’t matter. I can’t go near it without losing my senses, so I really don’t know anything about it. But I know that Sect Leader Wen only has a piece – and the Lan sect has another.”

Lan Xichen had never mentioned such a thing, but then again, he wasn’t really old enough that Nie Mingjue would expect him to know everything about his sect – he was after all a full five years younger than Nie Mingjue, three years younger than Wen Ning; he was still only seventeen, having only just graduated from his uncle’s classes the year before. He was only very technically sect leader, in the same way Nie Mingjue had only been technically sect leader after his father’s death, although unlike Lan Xichen Nie Mingjue had fought his way to step up to the task for real early on. He himself was only barely considered an adult at the age of twenty-two; it was no surprise that in the Lan sect, which had Lan Qiren to rely on, Lan Xichen might not know it all.

Or perhaps he knew, and simply didn’t say. Each sect was entitled to its secrets.

“What are you thinking?” Nie Mingjue asked.

“I’m thinking that my sister is constantly afraid for me, even though she’s younger than me,” Wen Ning said solemnly. “I’m thinking that she will break her own principles into pieces to protect me. I’m thinking that she’ll find whatever it is, or find a hint to it, and then Wen Chao will take his forces to burn the Cloud Recesses to the ground in search of it.”

Nie Mingjue could see that.

He didn’t want to, but he could.

“My brother is attending those lectures,” he said blankly. Nie Huaisang was there right now. He could be in danger – no, he would be in danger. Nie Huaisang wasn’t a good cultivator, and at fourteen, he was just a baby. Nie Mingjue had sent Meng Yao with him, nominally as his attendant, but in fact to get the benefit of the classes himself and also bully Nie Huaisang into actually learning something – he’d brought Meng Yao into the Nie sect after Jin Zixuan, full of guilt over how his father had treated a boy only two years his junior, had sent him a letter beseeching him for help following Meng Yao’s public and humiliating rejection from Jinlin Tower – but Meng Yao was only sixteen, of age with Wen Qing; what could he really do?

Moreover, sending Wen Qing and not Wen Xu, even though Wen Xu was the same age as Nie Huaisang and Lan Wangji, indicated that Wen Ruohan didn’t want his more promising son to get involved in whatever it was that he was planning, or maybe in whatever consequences followed. If Wen Chao really were to try something violent, they couldn’t afford to have a weakness already there…

“I need to get A-Qing out of the Wen sect,” Wen Ning said, and Nie Mingjue turned to look at him in shock. “Permanently. I’ve begged her to go, but she won’t leave me, she won’t leave our family of the Dafan Wen, but she has to. Something bad is going to happen soon. I know it. I don’t mind trading my life for hers, but she has to live.”

“Is there any way you can go to the Cloud Recesses as well?” Nie Mingjue asked, his mind already racing. He’d long ago given up on helping Wen Ning because he knew the other man wouldn’t turn traitor against his family, being an upright and filial child, but if his family had reached such a depth of corruption as that, then it was only right to leave them behind. If Wen Ning was finally accepting that, maybe there was something he could do. “You’re sensitive to the – whatever it is. Right? Maybe Wen Qing can suggest bringing you around to help her find her way to it.”

“How would that help?”

“It gets you somewhere safe, while I can rescue Dafan Wen – without a threat to you or to them, your sister would have no reason to insist on staying,” Nie Mingjue said, though it wouldn’t be him, exactly, that did the rescue – he’d need a firm alibi lest Wen Ruohan use it as an excuse to start something with his Nie sect. He might have prepared for war as much as he could, but the Wen sect was still stronger; if war broke out, he needed to make sure that he had the moral high ground.

Luckily, Wei Wuxian, that walking calamity of a head disciple of Yunmeng Jiang, had of late developed the habit of wandering over to visit various other sects, including Qinghe (and Nie Mingjue in specific), at his leisure, and no one ever would think to blame him for such a strange thing as a subsidiary sect of distant Wen sect cousins disappearing.

After all, Wei Wuxian had no reason to know or care about the Dafan Wen, and everyone knew he abjured politics completely, violently and repetitively, so as to make no mistake about anyone who might otherwise see him as competition for the Jiang sect’s true heir, Jiang Cheng. The five-year gap between their ages kept them from being compared – you couldn’t expect a child, and at fifteen Jiang Cheng was still very much a child, to keep up with an adult just turned twenty like Wei Wuxian – but there had always been whispers given everything with Cangse Sanren, and Wei Wuxian had had to work very hard to put a stop to them.

Wei Wuxian’s wandering habit had started back when he’d been trying to find Jiang Yanli a new fiancée to replace the engagement he’d broken by fighting with Jin Zixuan, however shameful it was for him to fight with a boy two years his junior. It was for that that he had come to Qinghe to meet Nie Mingjue, leading to them hitting it off as friends despite Nie Mingjue expressing that he had absolutely no interest in getting married to Jiang Yanli, or indeed to any nice young lady at all; then, in turn, Nie Mingjue had brought him to the Lan sect to meet Lan Xichen. They’d gotten along as well, although the most notable outcome of that visit had been little Lan Wangji developing a crush on his elder brother’s new friend while Wei Wuxian remained blissfully oblivious. His wanderings had continued even after Jiang Yanli and Jin Zixuan had found their way back to each other, affianced once again through their own choice rather than their parents’.

Said parents had not yet been informed of this new situation, as they were waiting for the right time to mention it. Or perhaps more accurately, the right situation to exploit with it…

Now, Nie Mingjue thought. Now was the time. It would work perfectly.

And not just as a distraction.

“Are you sure…?”

“I am,” Nie Mingjue said. “Whatever it is, Wen Ruohan must be kept from obtaining all of the pieces; he’s already too powerful, and more power will only make him more arrogant. I’ll speak with Lan Qiren. Once I take the Dafan Wen back to the Nie sect, your sister will be able to testify to whatever it is that she was asked to search for, which will give Lan Qiren the evidence he needs to get his sect’s approval for retaliatory measures. Moreover, using Wei Wuxian to help me will force Jiang Fengmian to support me as well; there’s no way he’d ever refuse to back him to the hilt.”

“The Jin sect –”

“Will join us,” Nie Mingjue said, thinking of Jiang Yanli and Jin Zixuan’s yet-to-be-announced engagement. Once Jin Guangshan realized that he would be pulled into the same boat as the rest of them whether he wanted to or not, any resistance he had would crumble like a structure made of sand being beaten down by the tide. “They won’t have a choice. Is there anything else I should know?”

“There’s a child,” Wen Ning said, biting his lips. “Around the same age as your brother or my sister, or maybe the Jiang sect heir, I don’t know, around that. He helps Sect Leader Wen with whatever he’s doing.”

“A child helps him?”

Nie Mingjue didn’t like the sound of that.

“I don’t know. Some secret his family knows, I think…his surname is Xue.”

Nie Mingjue frowned.

“I don’t know much about him,” Wen Ning added. “Only that he has some history with the Yueyang Chang clan. Bad history.”

“That’s a good start,” Nie Mingjue said. He realized that he hadn’t yet released Wen Ning’s shoulders, and gave them a small squeeze before doing so. “Thank you for bringing this to my attention. I will do everything I can to help you.”

Wen Ning looked at him with admiration in his eyes, making Nie Mingjue feel a little hot under the collar.

“Thank you, Chifeng-zun,” he murmured, and Nie Mingjue shook his head.

“Call me by name,” he said, and tried to smile. “You’ll be here a lot in the future, if all goes well.”

Nie Mingjue hated the Wen sect, but he didn’t hate gentle and sad Wen Ning.

He didn’t hate him at all.

#mdzs #nie mingjue #wen ning #my fic #my fics #count your age #I know you said Yunmeng focus but this is what came out #sorry #full list of ages on the ao3 page

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