#jewish lan sect

[piosplayhouse]

I heard there was fandom drama maybe before my time about someone trying to do Jewish Gusu Lan and I was wondering if you knew anything about that and would be willing to go into that? Out of all the people I follow I feel like you’d be the most likely to know about this sorry. If you don’t want to talk about this or if Jewish Gusu Lan was just a weird dream that I had or something just delete this I won’t mind at all

Why am I always the go to guy for shit like this what makes you guys think that I would be a Jewish gusu lan expert why doesn't anyone just ask me normal stuff like what are your go to stir fry flavorings what the fuck!!!!!!!!

... but yeah I know what you're talking about. Prefacing this by saying that I did not actually read the au(s?) in question and I am also not Jewish so I hold no authority over this subject and you should trust other people's words over mine! Basically a while ago someone wrote a fic where I believe the Lan and Nie sects were Jewish, tagged it "canon compliant", and (from my understanding) doubled down when both Chinese and Jewish people criticized them by saying that because MDZS is a fantasy world, it's only loosely connected to Chinese customs. Now, I want to make it clear that there's absolutely no issue with making Jewish aus-- Chinese Jews exist and have a very rich cultural history! The issue that many people had, again through my understanding, was that this was not Incorporated in the au at all. Apparently they just replaced all the Lan customs with Judaism and denied that the sect is canonically very Buddhism and Confucianism-inspired, but still called it canon compliant. Again, I was not closely connected to the situation and only learned of it from the ripples on my feed, so I can't claim expertise in any means, but this is just a brief summary from what I had seen and remembered of it. I believe it was somewhere around this time where mdzs fandom was reconciling with a very strange argument that mdzs is not an inherently Chinese story, and there were a few conversations going around debating to what point an au goes too far removing significant cultural aspects into disrespect.

I hope this helps a little bit, anon! You can probably find better sources from people who know what they're talking about on twitter, but you definitely didn't dream it up lol. Hope everyone's having a nice night and shout out to all my Jewish and Chinese followers ily and I'm so sorry if I said anything wrong, please lmk so I can fix it !! : -)

#long post #long posts

[theleakypen]

been thinking a lot about how the fact of the Gusu Lan sect having 3000+ rules means that it’s almost guaranteed that some of them will contradict each other and that’s not getting into interpretations

so i propose an AU where the Gusu Lan sect has 3000+ rules and also a strong and thriving tradition of, like, talmudic scholarship, commentary, and debate

I bet a sect founded by a former monk would require its students to have a grounding in rhetoric

Lan disciples breaking rules, writing their lines, but their lines have to include justification + commentary for why they broke the rules

“Indeed, as our second sect leader Lan Yong wrote in his commentaries on the Chapter of Conduct, rule 233 implies not only a requirement to...”

#the untamed #gusu lan sect #姑苏蓝氏 #headcanons #rhetoric #debate #i feel like this would be really cool #陈情令 #mo dao zu shi #魔道祖师 #being jewish on main #talmudic debate

[ameliarating]

lan wangji davens shacharit every morning at mao hour

#my posts #please let SOMEONE think this is funny #the untamed #mdzs #lan wangji #lan qiren #cql #jewish #I was davening and it jUMPED OUT AT ME #honestly that whole section after birkot hashachar and before the akeda is VERY lan sect

[goldencorecrunches]

@lady-of-the-lotus I’ve done it. I’ve written, G-d help me, YaoYang fanfiction. I hope you’re happy. I hope you forget about your soup on the burner and it scorches. (Also on AO3 for fancy linked footnotes)

---

Must one dread what others dread?

--Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching

.

What have I done? Sweet Jesus, what have I done?

--Jean Valjean, Les Misérables (Musical)

.

Baruch atah Adonai, Eloheinu Melech ha-olam, hamotzi lechem min ha’aretz.[1]

 --Jewish blessing said prior to eating an olive-bulk or more of bread (unless, of course, you disagree).

---------

It was a bright and balmy day, the third of the cultivation conference, and Sect Leader Yao was being insufferable. He was well outfitted for it. He had woken from his insufferable, snoring sleep and demanded an insufferable breakfast, the specifications of which made the most highly-ranked, honor-festooned cook in Jin Tower break down into tears and resign on the spot. He put on his most insufferable underpants on under his most insufferable robes, and tied back his hair in the insufferable style that he favored, the one that made him look like a badly turned rotten beet.[2] He had even spent fifty minutes manipulating his face in an insufferable series of facial expressions in the mirror, involving him at several points “losing” his own reflection only to “find” it again at the corner of the polished bronze, much to his own amusement—though not, it might be stated, to the amusement of the junior launderer he demanded watch his performance.

The hall had been surprisingly vacant of other unoccupied servants, when Sect Leader Yao had checked. All that scurrying and burrying! Well, servants should be busy, anyway: that was the way, and the way was right, HRRGNH. “That Was the Way, And The Way Was Right, HRRGNH,” was the latest of the updated mottos Sect Leader Yao had thought of for his sect. Though it was an excellent guiding principal and pure poetry upon the senses, it had two drawbacks. The first was that the tonally-important HRRGNH at the posterior end of the phrase was obtained by means of thrusting the hips forward, curling the torso, and letting the resulting force of air displaced escape through the mouth. This was, Sect Leader Yao allowed, not very dignified.  

Still, all was not lost. Sect Leader Jiang had scowled upon seeing it, but he was always scowling so he didn’t count. Sect Leader Lan had looked intrigued. Sect Leader Nie had applauded, and asked whether it would be possible to pass gas from below at the same time; a very tactless comment, Sect Leader Yao had thought, considering the gastrointestinal distress he was so often plagued by, which Sect Leader Nie should know about, as Sect Leader Yao had described it to him at length, frequently. He had reminded Sect Leader Nie of this with appropriate grace. It was good to show these young sprites how to conduct oneself with the proper manners. The second problem was that Sect Leader Yao did not, and had not for several years, have a sect. It was not something Sect Leader Yao liked to think about, so he largely didn't.

On the way to the discussion hall Sect Leader Yao felt a whisper, on the back of his neck. It was the slimiest whisper anyone had ever felt, and it carried with it the vague sense that someone had been watching you, through a crack in the wall, the last time you were alone in the bathroom. It also carried the powerful scent of moldy incense. Sect Leader Yao turned and spread his arms wide. “Sect Leader Ouyang!” It was his best, insufferable, friend. His worst friend, too, being his only, but Sect Leader Ouyang took on both roles with ease. They’d stabbed each other, once, over a hunk of demonic metal. Ah, memories were truly the jewels of life. Sect Leader Ouyang grimaced like a dead cat, which was his version of a pleased smile, and bowed. Sect Leader Yao bowed back. When he rose he waggled his eyebrows. Sect Leader Ouyang snapped open his fan and wafted, with the gentle flutter of a category five hurricane, several lungfuls of moldy incense. They had totally sucked face last night. It had been swag.[3] “What’s on the docket for today?” “I believe it is something to do with that Jin boy. An honor ceremony he’s attempting to put together. If he expects my sect to pay for it, I’ll want to know why.” Sect Leader Ouyang sniffed. He did that a lot. Sect Leader Yao lovingly passed over a handkerchief.

The Jin boy’s proposal was indeed the first major case discussed, after the necessary canapés and complaints about the accommodations had been passed around.[5] It was a matter the boy had clearly put much thought into, and one dear to his heart; he presented it with an earnest timbre that would have swayed a petrified forest. Unfortunately, earnestness was outside of Sect Leader Yao’s testicular-sized sphere of understanding. “He’s grubbing for money, you’ll see,” Sect Leader Yao said, in an overtone[6] to Sect Leader Ouyang. Sect Leader Yao considered himself wise to the ways of the conniving, since he, the aforementioned, sometimes cheated at cards. His friend-now-daring-conquest nodded and glared across the room. He was aiming for the Jin boy, but missed, and caught a rather startled wine-pourer on the side. “You ought to say something,” Sect Leader Ouyang said. That was an excellent idea. It was always, in Sect Leader Yao’s opinion, the right time for him to be talking. “Hey!” he shouted, waving his arms over his head like an extremely drunk aircraft marshal. “Hey! What’s this got to do with Wei Wuxian?” “It…doesn’t,” said the Jin boy, who was in fact Sect Leader Jin, and who while admittedly young outranked Sect Leader Yao to a degree that would make you wince and say whoee it’s a scorcher if you saw it on an outdoor thermometer. “Ridiculous!” Sect Leader Yao said. “We all know it does! Stop trying to bamboozle us with dacquoise!”[7] Sect Leader Jiang had stopped scowling in approval and had begun to scowl in apparent constipation. The history between him and Wei Wuxian was somewhat rocky.[8] “Exactly as he says!” Sect Leader Ouyang, the most and least loyal of Sect Leader Yao’s comrades, cut in. He leapt to his feet; several of his neighbors checked, instinctively, to make sure their pants were still up. “You won’t catch us sleeping!” “Hear, hear!” Sect Leader Yao thundered. “Please don’t shout,” Sect Leader Nie hangovered. He had one hand clasped around his temples, the other clutching a cup of water. Sect Leader Yao was surprised he was so bad off. He’d seemed quite sober when he’d stumbled across the totally swag face-sucking betwixt Sect Leaders Yao and Ouyang. Speaking of. Sect Leader Yao turned to look sideways conspiratorially at Sect Leader Ouyang and shoot him finger-bow-and-arrows.[9] Sect Leader Ouyang mimed catching one. Damn, Sect Leader Yao was for sure going to propose marriage after this Wei Wuxian dacquoise was smoked out.

Oh yeah, it was all comin’ up Yao, baby. That was the way, and the way was right.

HRRGNH.

----------

1This blessing has no relevance to the contents of this work. “Honestly,” the author said when questioned, “I’m just trying for all the help I can get.”[return to text]

2A confusing feat, as this was China prior to the year 1000 BCE, Gregorian, and beets had not been invented yet.[return to text]

3“Swag” is neither a genre- nor period-accurate term for the emotion Sect Leader Yao was feeling. However, translation is an art rather than a science,[4] and more atmospheric words fail to communicate to modern English-speaking audiences the true depth of Sect Leader Yao’s douchebaggery. Thus: swag.[return to text]

4"An art rather than a science” is a common phrase used by people who are neither artists nor scientists to describe what they believe to be the difference between these disciplines. One might as well say “a boot rather than a canary”—that is, not the same, but having more in common than people might think.

5There was nothing wrong with the accommodations, and especially nothing any of the poorly-used common folk the attendees lorded over would have found, but if there is one unifying factor among humans it is that they love to complain.[return to text]

6Like an undertone, but the opposite.[return to text]

7A word Sect Leader Yao thought meant “deceit,” but which in fact refers to a tasty meringue-and-cream French pastry.[return to text]

8If by “somewhat rocky” you mean “a high-speed chase over deadly-fast rapids between simultaneous avalanches, and also, there are sharks.”[return to text]

9Small handheld firearms, aka “guns,” had also not been invented yet.[return to text]

#mdzs #cql #the untamed #yaoyang #sect leader yao #sect leader ouyang #my fics #*deep sigh* #*pause* #*DEEPER SIGH*

[veliseraptor]

Unpopular opinion: the Lan rules are good actually? And following them will make you a better person

strongly agree | agree | neutral | disagree | strongly disagree

I don’t think that they can be called a pure good in and of themselves, but I do agree that - at their best - they probably can serve as a useful guide to behavior. It’s just that they don’t, in canon, typically work at their best.

Any strict code of behavior is always, in my opinion, going to be a double-edged sword. On the one hand it can provide safety rails and inculcate a sense of not just discipline but moral guidance and structure, and having those things codified helps make them more concrete and more universal. (They’re right there, carved in stone! Makes them a little harder for anyone to ignore.)

There’s also some discussion somewhere on my blog (though not by me, I think it was @theleakypen and of course I can’t find it now) that brings in Jewish law as a possible point of comparison to the Lan Sect rules (I know it’s different, but it’s an interesting perspective that I like poking at) - namely, the way that having a codified law of behavior that extends beyond just moral strictures can serve to bind together a community.

But - and this is a not insubstantial but! - that kind of code, in some instances, can also lead to rigidity and discouraging dissent or questioning, and that can be dangerous - as we see in canon with what happens with Lan Wangji. Excessive rigidity is never a good thing, I don’t think, and with a codified set of rules where there are (carried out, public) punishments for trespass, it’s a very easy thing to fall into. 

#unpopular opinions meme #lise memes #the sad queer cultivators show #anonymous #conversating

[robininthelabyrinth]

Can you talk more about your thoughts on the Nie's being Jewish.

I mean, I figure I’ll write a fic about it eventually, but I can ramble a bit - in fairness, though, this is 100% my own take on many, many things, and is very likely idiosyncratic. I’m Jewish, not an expert on Judaism XD 

But basically, in my head, it’s what I said: the Nie version of Judaism would be closer to the Maccabees - a group of warriors who were faced with oppression by a tyrant that they managed to defeat despite being vastly outnumbered which, *cough*, is definitely in no way something you could parallel to the Nie vs Wen fight which is also being led by a military leader named after a weapon

Going away from the obvious, though, the way I write the Nie sect more or less is informed by the type of Judaism I would see them having - an emphasis on righteousness, on justice, on doing good works, on making the world a better place. Very much of the “tzedek tzedek tirdof/justice justice you shall pursue” school, with a moral obligation to actively do good in the world. 

Plus a lot more of the Jewish flavor of mercy? The more Christian ethos sometimes prioritizes mercy/forgiveness over all else, whereas Judaism in many cases tends to focus on the balance between mercy and justice; after all, excessive mercy towards the perpetrators of a crime is a cruelty to the victims. There’s an expectation that you will forgive even the most serious of crimes but only if the wrongdoer sincerely repents; if you don’t really repent - not just apologize, but actually stop and change your actions, change the fundamental thing that drove you to do the wrong thing - you don’t deserve to be forgiven. 

(I sometimes feel like this difference in viewpoints makes it difficult for me to argue with people online about the NMJ-JGY relationship post-Sunshot Campaign because I just don’t understand all the people who insist that JGY should have been wholly forgiven and that NMJ was wrong to continue to bother him about doing the right thing - NMJ’s mistake, post-Sunshot Campaign, was in fact the fact that he DID forgive JGY more than he should have despite JGY’s repentance not being sincere, not in his attempts to confirm that he was in fact repentant!)

The Lan sect, in contrast, would be more like the yeshiva - take their emphasis on following rules and turn it into an emphasis on understanding the rules, on debating the meaning of the rules and the application thereof, and you basically have an entire sect dedicated to Torah study. After all, there’s a Talmud extract that points at all the various duties required to be a good person and concludes “and the study of Torah encompasses/leads to them all” - rather a different take than the activism of the Nie sect, and one that fits in very well with their different responses to the Wen sect. 

and the Jin sect are like the Renaissance Jews in Italy who took over moneylending because they didn’t have a choice and the Jiang sect are a bit like the Israelis in the early years, attempt the impossible whether it’s getting out of Holocaust Europe or surviving multiple genocide attempts by their neighbors, and - I’m going to stop while I’m ahead, but long story short everyone is Jewish

#mdzs meta #except extremely specific #of interest to maybe five of you let's be real #Anonymous

[robininthelabyrinth]

Okay, fic plan for the next two weeks!

Jewish Lan Sect

Delight in Misery

Pastime (with Good Company)

Light on the Door

Strange Creatures Brothers Be

more WWX brought back by Qin Su 

accidental telepathic bond between unlikely people fixes everything

XXC is early 

Please vote for your top four! the remaining ones will be put up for vote again next week so you’ll have another shot at the order :)

[robininthelabyrinth]

Current plan is to post fics Tuesday-Wednesday-Friday-Saturday. This marks the end of the last round of prompts, and the beginning of the new ones! I feel like I should do something to celebrate, but have no idea what XD

As always, please feel free to vote on what order you want to see things in!

Time-travel JGY spills the beans about WWX

more Getting Bored - aka that JC/NMJ one (here)

more Polyphonic - aka LQR recruits WWX to solve a mystery (here)

more Initiative - aka NMJ/JYL (here)

Jewish Lan Sect, or “how many obscure and ridiculous things about Judaism can I find to make MDZS-relevant jokes: the fic”

Yes, there are five - I couldn’t decide which one to put on this week or the next, so whichever one is last gets pushed to next week :)

#fic schedule

[robininthelabyrinth]

9 out of 10 problems I am having with the Jewish Nie and Lan sect fic that I’m writing is figuring out what concepts I need to actually explain rather than just name because not everyone will know what I’m talking about it

the remaining 1/10 is spending way too much time looking up things in the Mishna because the Lan would be the sort of people who throw in paraphrased quotes to rabbinic authority every other sentence

#at first I was trying to keep track of timelines #to try to avoid imposing customs that post-dated their separation #and then just said fuck it I'm going with what's funny and/or emotionally scarring #they live in magical fantasy cultivation china #they have potatoes #they get to have yiddish

[robininthelabyrinth]

Slightly odd question. I saw a comment about modern mdzs fics turning into Chinese Diaspora fics where the characters turn into an insular community that avoids white people. And I like Diaspora fic, but I was like, it's not Diaspora fic until someone's marrying cross-culturally. And then I thought of my various Jewish aunts and uncles, and I was like, I'd like a Jewish character in an mdzs fanfic. Could I send robin a prompt for that? But would that be weird? Or would you have restrictions?

...I have the sudden desire to write a fic in which one of the Great sects is a very lost ancient tribe of Israel, per the old apocrypha of them ending up in China, and I can’t decide if it’s funnier for it to be the Lan sect (with their famous school being a yeshiva!) or the Nie sect (since I do see NMJ at least as a tzadik - though presumably not a lamedvavnik, even though that would be HILARIOUS). Or alternatively a truly awful joke about Baosan Sanren’s celestial mountain, though that would be turn into a bit of a depressing metaphor...

Unfortunately, I don’t write modern AU fic that isn’t specialized (aka, I’ll write a everyone-is-a-marine-biologist fic - one of those is in the pipeline to be published actually) but I won’t write it about them just hanging out in modern times, and I think diaspora fic is more the latter. So if that’s what you’re looking for, it probably does run against my restrictions. 

You could always send me a prompt for “Jewish!Character X” though and I would be delighted to try to figure out how to make that work in canon-era?

oh man if they’re a lost tribe then they presumably don’t follow rabbinical Judaism and it would be so weird - I’m going to stop now

#Anonymous

[ameliarating]

I read through @pumpkinpaix‘s deeply thoughtful post about cultural appropriation and dismissal of Chinese cultural concerns (two related but distinct phenomena) in non-Chinese MDZS/CQL fan-spaces and should-be-obvious-but-painfully-is-not disclaimer: 

When it comes to these things, the voices that should be rising above the rest are the Chinese fans speaking out about what they’ve seen.

I’m only here because I feel I have what to say on this bit here: 

For context, we are referencing two connected instances: the conflict described in these two threads (here and here), and when @/jelenedra tweeted about giving Jewish practices to the Lans. Regarding the latter, we felt that it tread into the territory of cultural erasure, and that it came from a person who had already disrespected diaspora’s work and input.

Context

The Lans have their own religious and cultural practices, rooted both in the cultural history of China and the genre of xianxia. Superimposing a different religious practice onto the Lans amidst other researched, canonical or culturally accurate details felt as if something important of ours was being overwritten for another’s personal satisfaction. Because canon is so intrinsically tied to real cultural, historical, and religious practices, replacing those practices in a canon setting fic feels like erasure. While MDZS is a fantasy novel, the religious practices contained therein are not. This was uncomfortable for many of us, and we wanted to point it out and have it resolved amicably. We were hoping for a discussion or exchange as there are many parallels and points of relation between Chinese and Jewish cultures, but that did not turn out quite as expected.

What happened next felt like a long game of outrage telephone that resulted in a confusion of issues that deflected responsibility, distracted from the origin of the conflict, and swept our concern under the rug.

Specifically, we are concerned about how these two incidents are part of what we feel is a repeated, widespread pattern of the devaluing of Chinese fans’ work and concerns within this fandom. This recent round of discourse is just one of many instances where we have found ourselves in a position of feeling spoken over within a space that is nominally ours. Regardless of what the telephone game was actually about, the way it played out revealed something about how issues are prioritized.

(Big surprise, I’m going to talk about Jewish things and MDZS)

I haven’t read the fic in question, but I have certainly made many posts about Jewishness and the Lans, imagining certain traditional Jewish educational settings and modes of learning and argumentation as superimposed onto the Cloud Recesses. I’ve also written other posts, mostly for me and the three other people out there who would find it funny, imagining different sects as different Jewish sects - or at least, who they have most in common with.

Never was I imagining these characters or worlds to be actually Jewish, but, as people often do in fandom, I was playing around in the spaces, delighting in overlaps I found, out of a deep-seated wish that I could have anything like MDZS or so many of the other fantasy I loved with Jews.

I’m jealous. I’m so jealous. 

Here’s how I was relating to it: 

China is a country of billions with an immense media audience of its own, its own television, movies, books, comics, etc. The only Jewish equivalent could ever be Israel, very tiny, and while there is a lot of good Israeli television, books, etc out there, it doesn’t approach what’s available from China, and certainly none of it has broken through to be a fandom presence of its own, not even in Jewish only or Hebrew speaking spaces. And even when that happens, the creators don’t often draw on Jewish history and myth. (One example I can think of a show that does is Juda, a Jewish vampire show from Israel, but I know exactly one (1) person on tumblr who’s seen it.)

So I was treating MDZS the way I treat American media - as a playground. Since I can’t find Jewish stories, especially in fantasy, I’m going to play around with it in non-Jewish stories.

Here’s how I should have been relating to it:

There are so many people who, like me, have been hungry to find themselves and their stories and their magic in fandom spaces. They have a show that’s made it big. Is it fair to, even playing around in tumblr posts, set so much of that rich cultural context aside in order for me to find room for my own? 

In the U.S., at least, where I am, it’s not the same as doing the same thing with, say, The Lord of the Rings (where I wrote a fic making use of Jewish mourning practices and assigned them to the Beorians) or Harry Potter, because that’s taking a dominant culture which is all I usually ever see and make room for myself. 

In MDZS, especially in the English language fandom where the Chinese cultural context is never dominant and is often shouted over and overlooked, and where there just aren’t many other examples of media that made it big in the fandom, I am only making room for myself by shoving aside something else that barely has any room at all.

In many ways, I became the fan that frustrates me, that writes about Jewish characters celebrating Christmas, rather than the fan that I wanted to be, which gets excited about cultural overlap and similarities. I’m sorry and I apologize.

My first reaction was not to. My first reaction was to say it’s not the same. Because it isn’t the same. It’s never the same when minorities do things to each other. But even if that’s less destructive, in some ways it’s more painful, because that’s where we should be able to look to each other for solidarity. (Obviously this is in English language fandom - Chinese fans are not a minority in Chinese language fandoms!)

I do believe that there should be room to make silly posts about the Lans doing things that Jews do, because the Lans do do things that Jews do. When I made an edit where Lan Wangji was responding to Lan Qiren quoting in Hebrew from the Jewish prayerbook rather than the sect rule to distance from evil, I did that because he was saying the exact same thing. It was wonderful to me, that a Lan sect rule could be exactly the same as something I pray every morning.

That’s very different from when I wrote imagining the Lans as Jews which left no more room for the Lans as Chinese Buddhists. It’s those later things I apologize for and what I’ll be careful about in the future.

I do still want to return to something I said just above, however: “Because it isn’t the same. It’s never the same when minorities do things to each other.”

I worry, as I wrote in a separate post, about the tendency I see in anti-colonial, anti-imperialist spaces to look at Jewish practices and laws and culture and see it as an example of Western hegemony rather than as a survivor of it. Especially in a post that talks about the Chinese diaspora experience, where the very word diaspora was coined to describe the Jewish scattering across the globe and only much later was used for other cultures and peoples.

I don’t object to its now much more universal use as a word. It’s useful and it’s powerful and I believe it can be used to build solidarity. I do ask for, however, recognition that while Jews, especially in the West, might reproduce Western hegemony and use it against others, our own ethno-religious experiences bubbling up is not one of those reproductions.

In other words, when we erase, accidentally or purposefully, the Chinese cultural and religious contexts of characters in MDZS/CQL in our rush to write in Jewish cultural and religious contexts, we are doing harm as ourselves, not as representatives of Western/European/Christian hegemony. And in fact, what inspired us to write in our own contexts is that there are certain things (deference to elders, life carefully regulated by a series of laws about everything from interpersonal-ethical behavior to food habits to modes of speech, cultural horror regarding desecration of the dead, etc) we find in these stories that we don’t find in many Western stories that resonate with our own cultural background.

Which is not to erase the harm itself. I am sorry for it and I will do my best going forward to write about overlaps without erasing or replacing what is already there from the beginning and should remain so.

#my posts #too nervous to tag #but people may reblog #and if I'm wrong about any of it #please let me know