#nie mingjue had his flaws

[hannigramislife]

for my own gratification bc i just ran into nie mingjue hate in the wild, would you mind making a post that defends my poor good boy? he worked so hard and got gaslit to shit before getting murdered terribly ;; literally everyone sat there telling him "youre being too harsh" and he's just responding appropriately. like yeah, if you witness a murder, ya kinda got to do something about that as a clan leader. its kinda your responsibility, even when you care about the person who did the murdering. he was also a really young when he took on the role of clan leader and idk, it just made me rlly sad to see people dunk on him cuz wtf he's literally just trying his best in an impossible situation WHILE being perpetually fucked over by his clan's own traditional cultivation cuz now the stronger he is as a leader, the closer he is to going literally insane and dying bc of it. (mingjue did nothing wrong i will die on this hill) ((sorry for going on a tirade, im just sad and defensive of my good boy rn))

Oh no! I'm so sorry you had to go through Nie Mingjue hate! Truly tragic. I went through that once when in the beginning of me reading the books, when I still had no proper opinions, and never again.

I'm more than willing to make a post about Nie Mingjue! I'm always down to talk about Nie Mingjue tbh, he's my heart and love and if I were to have been given the opportunity to be his right hand person, I would have simply never betrayed his trust and married him. Rip Jin Guangyao but I'm different.

Anyways, I, huhhh, actually think you?? Covered it all??? Pretty much?? Yet I will talk about it. This will be long and non-coherent, because I don't have the books rn to find quotes in them and honestly, I could write essays on Nie Mingjue either way.

Nie Mingjue is a central piece of the narrative, despite the limited amount of appearances he made, and the fact that he wasn't close to the main characters at all. The entire second part of the plot revolves around him- it happened because of him. His murder is a tragedy; literally, by greek standards, man has Cassandra Curse all over him, so I don't get how people can tell me, confidently, that his death was warranted. I've been told the man had asked for it, and this has mostly been by Jin Guangyao apologists.

So let me make something real fucking clear.

Nie Mingjue did not deserve to die. Let's get that out of the way, anyone can fight me on that. Nie Mingjue had more good qualities than half the people in this fucking story, despite his flaws. After his father was brutally murdered when Mingjue was only in his teens, Nie Mingjue stepped up as clan leader. We can only speculate the hardships that await someone leading a clan at such an early age. Yet, political challenges weren't the only thing he had to battle; Nie Mingjue knew about his clan's harmful cultivation, and he knew he was going to die young. So what did he do? His best. Literally his best, always. He was always giving 100% of his abilities, because that's who he was.

Let's talk about who Nie Mingjue was, shall we?

When Jin Guangyao, still Meng Yao then, describes Nie Mingjue, he finds himself perplexed, because Nie Mingjue isn't like other men. He is not frivolous, and he has no vices; Meng Yao describes how Nie Mingjue never showed an interest in arts, or alcohol, or women. All he did was train, and fight the Wens during the war. It shows that he had a one-track mind from the start, and has got a strict discipline; yet this strictly disciplined man, leader of a clan that prizes strength, continuously indulges his lazy and undisciplined half-brother, his one and only heir, despite not understanding his interests. We gather, pretty quickly, that Nie Mingjue is a bleeding heart for his brother, and for the ones he loves in general. We see the same softer side displayed in the presence of Lan Xichen, and of course, for some time, Meng Yao.

People seem to think Nie Mingjue took Meng Yao's betrayal too harshly. As if somehow seeing a man he thought to have been just and honest commit premeditated murder, then cover it up, was something he was just supposed to get over. To this day, I can't believe how Lan Xichen was so understanding of it. But not only did Nie Mingjue catch him in a cowardly act - Meng Yao proceeds to manipulate him, using the fact that Nie Mingjue cared about him, to stab him in the back. Or front, however it happened. I get that Meng Yao was in a difficult position, that he suffered at the Jins, that he felt backed in a corner; but Nie Mingjue was a man that had extended his help to Meng Yao before, and even then, he went to find Meng Yao in righteous fury, ready to help him again. To Nie Mingjue, the idea that Meng Yao "had no other choice" but to kill - to kill in the manner he did - it could have been nothing but a betrayal.

One thing that I personally highly respected Nie Mingjue for was the fact that he did not judge Meng Yao for his background. This is not up for debate; Nie Mingjue stood up for him, quite publicly, quite vocally, when Meng Yao was being insulted over it. And not only that, but he promoted Meng Yao to be his right hand man, just like that. Because he's impulsive, and to prove a point, but it was still huge of him to do. Not even Lan Xichen would have done that - In a society built on power dynamics between social classes, Nie Mingjue was one of the few characters who did not let that define his actions. It wasn't because he was born privileged (though he was) but because he he didn't let anything other than his judgment direct his actions. Nie Mingjue also never shied away from anything; if it had to be done, he did it, no matter the cost.

Nie Mingjue was decisive, and had an iron will. When Meng Yao killed the Nie disciples in Qishan, he wanted to kill Meng Yao. Meng Yao told him, paraphrasing, that "don't you understand that if I hadn't done that, it would have been your corpse up there?" and Wei Wuxian takes it to mean "Translation: I saved you so you can't kill me, because that would mean you're in the wrong." So Nie Mingjue hesitated for a second, then said: "Fine! I'll kill you, and then take my own life!" And the only reason he didn't, was because Lan Xichen was there. Otherwise, Nie Mingjue would have killed his former friend, then followed him to whatever afterlife awaited.

Nie Mingjue is often portrayed like he doesn't understand stuff, like he's stupid, simply because of his black and white sense of morality. That's not correct: Nie Mingjue understands motive, but he doesn't accept the ends justifying the means. Scratch that, he doesn't accept or justify either, if they're unjust. The murder of the Jin commander, the murder of the Nie disciples, not executing Xue Yang - how can Nie Mingjue possibly understand Meng Yao's decisions, when Nie Mingjue would rather die, any day, than live thanks to vile actions?

And then, Nie Mingjue starts falling into qi-deviation. We know that it affected his temper the most, and his judgement. I don't understand how it works, really, so I don't know by the end how much was Nie Mingjue and how much was the mess that the spirit made of him - maybe a combination of the two. But what is certain, is that the rapid qi deviation changed him.

But I could write a hundred more pages on him, meticulously going over every single scene he has ever appeared in, because I find him that interesting. I find him the most interesting, and the most appealing character, because in a story where the navigation of the cultivation world's complex politics and hierarchies with tact and diplomacy is crucial, Nie Mingjue stands uncompromising in his principles, choosing duty and honor over anything else, even when it's hard.

#the untamed #mdzs #cql #mo dao zu shi #nie mingjue #nie mingjue had his flaws #and he had his virtues #i will not allow slander on his name #when he always did what he thought was best and just and good #when he was loving and kind and hot-headed but he was also just in his early 20s with the weight of the world on his shoulders #cold absolutely freezing day in hell when i'm over him

[lgbtlunaverse]

It seems the dash has been talking about the Lan Xichen - Nie Huaisang post-canon dynamics and it's gotten me thinking about how discussion around post-canon Lan Xichen's absolutely horrendous mental state often center around the question of "who is Lan Xichen angry at and who does he feel guilty about" which, at its worst, seperates into 2 camps where according to one side he feels guilty about not protecting jgy and hates the Nies and, on the other side he has completely flipped on jgy and despises him now while being filled with regret towards both nmj and nhs.

And I dislike both of these takes not just because it often feels like people projecting their own Blorbo opinions onto Lan Xichen which is never a fun time but also because that central question is flawed to begin with. It treats anger and guilt like opposing emotions that can't coexist or, if they do, have to compete until one wins and cancels the other out.

And that's not how that... works.

To be clear, the reason why Lan Xichen is so supremely fucked up at the end of the story is that he believes on some level he fucked over everyone in this situation. And, even more importantly, that even with hindsight he can't actually think of what he should have done instead. Every attempt to do better by one seems to involve fucking over the others even more because these people were in conflict with each other and choosing one would mean standing against another

And none of this would actually stop him from feeling angry at any of them. It's not "who is he angry at and who does he feel guilty about" it's: "he is angry at everyone and feels an immediate and bone deep guilt for daring to think badly of them."

Speaking from personal experience here, but feeling like you're not allowed to be angry at someone because you wronged them really doesn't stop the feeling, it just maks you feel like shit for feeling it. And this is all worsened by the fact that what he's in seclusion for is, at the end of the day, a moral question of what he, Lan Xichen, did wrong and every single emotion serves as further proof of the ways he's failed them.

Is he angry at Jin Guangyao, for killing his oldest friend, using Lan xichen's trust in him to do it, and then lying to him about it and countless other things for a decade when Lan Xichen thought of him as the person he trusted the most in the entire world? Yeah. That's a thing people get angry about! Except Jin Guangyao also saved his life and protected and helped him more times than he can count and never ever hurt him and can Lan Xichen say the same? No. He had to clean A-Yao's blood off Shouyue, he has to be haunted by the fact that if he just hadn't listened to Huaisang- hadn't been just like everyone else, in the end, and believed a lie about Jin Guangyao just to think the worst of him- then Jin Guangyao might still be alive.

Is he angry at Huaisang? For orchestrating the death of his best friend? For making him do it? For knowing what the real cause behind Nie Mingjue's death was and never telling him until he found out in the absolute worst way? Absolutely. But didn't Huaisang hide it from him for a reason? Wasn't it his clan's techniques and his personal faith in Jin Guangyao that cost Huaisang his brother? How dare he demand that Huaisang let him in on the secret of his brother's murderer when Lan Xichen is here wondering about how he should have protected that murderer better!

And I do even think he's angry at Nie Mingjue, sometimes I think it's pretty normal to be angry at your friend for kicking your other friend down the stairs and threatening to kill him, even when you know his mind is being poisoned. And years later the last thing he ever saw of Nie Mingjue was Nie Mingjue's thoughtless corpse coming to kill him before Jin Guangyao pushed him away and then proceeded to graphocally snap Jin Guangyao's neck in front of him. And if what he wants to do is protect Jin Guangyao, shouldn't he be mad at Mingjue? Didn't this whole mess start because Jin Guangyao was afraid Nie Mingjue was going to kill him?

Except holy shit, can you imagine? Lan Xichen feels like he personally has Nie Mingjue's blood on his hands. Your oldest friend is killed in front of you and you happily believe it's an accident for 11 years and now you think you have the right to be mad at him? You watched him get worse as he was being poisoned and attributed it to his illness and not to the techniques stolen from your library with the token you give his murderer. Does he think Nie Mingjue knew who he was in that moment and wanted to kill him? That he blamed Lan Xichen for his death? (For the record, I don't. I don't agree with most of what Lan Xichen thinks about himself, but I've been in a self-blame spiral and I know how it feels)

But what was he supposed to do then? Choose Mingjue's side and let A-Yao die? That's also unacceptable. But so is letting Jin Guangyao get away with it. Every single outcome is unacceptable. And really, if Jin Guangyao felt like he had to kill Nie Mingjue to save himself, when it was Lan Xichen who was supposed to keep the peace between them, isn't that another mark of his failure? That he couldn't protect Jin Guangyao well enough that he felt he had to do something so horrible?

But that's not an answer! He's supposed to know what he should have done different, and all he can come up with is "what you were already doing, but without failing this time" He can't pick a side because that means betrayal, but he's already tried not picking a side and it ended like this! There is no right answer, which can only leave him with the idea that he was simply doomed to hurt the people he loved from the start. No wonder the guy looks like shit when we see him post-canon. They put him in a real life trolley problem and gave him the lever as a souvenir.

#mdzs #mdzs meta #lan xichen #nie huaisang #jin guangyao #meng yao #nie mingjue #personally i LOVE high stakes ethical dilemma tragedies where there's not a clear right or wrong #and i can enjoy them without picking a side because it's fiction to me and i can admire the complex web of love hurt and betrayal from afar #but this is lan xichen's actual life. he HAS to have an answer to this question in a way I don't #but there isn't one

[fincalinde]

I see you have done some really thoughtful metas. What're your thoughts on Nie Mingjue? IMO he's a lot more complicated than he's usually assumed to be...

One of my classic absurdly late ask responses! Glad you enjoy the meta.

I think NMJ occupies a fascinating place in the narrative, because his ultimate fate is inevitable despite the fact that he theoretically has more agency than most (all?) of the rest of the main cast.

For a start he becomes clan leader at a young age, and while that comes with its pressures it's undeniably an influential position. He's the leading general of the Sunshot Campaign. Then, after the Sunshot Campaign, the Nie and the Jin are by some margin the most powerful clans. So, in a political sense NMJ has immense power. In theory he has the ability to make far better choices. He could stop persecuting JGY, who literally has no choice but to follow his father's orders, and he could choose to focus his ire where it belongs: on JGS. And he could also choose to counter JGS in ways that don't push the jianghu back to the brink of another devastating war.

Except he can't make those choices. And I want to make a strong distinction here: he is not like other characters such as JGY or LXC or JC, whose choices are limited by their clear understanding of their own limitations and the political landscape (including but not limited to the fact that a post-Sunshot descent into war between the Nie and the Jin would be catastrophic). No. NMJ's choices are limited because by the end of the Sunshot Campaign his mental capacity is irreversibly compromised.

Not only is NMJ terminally ill, but we're given clear examples of contrast between NMJ early in Sunshot and NMJ late- and post-Sunshot. Pre-Sunshot NMJ understands the Wen have political and cultivation power that utterly outclasses him and his clan, so he stands by and tolerates their existence. He knows it would be suicide to go up against them, and it's only when the Wen cross a line and all the clans unite that he's able to actually do anything about the fact that WRH murdered his father.

Contrast that to NMJ by the end of Sunshot, so irrationally obsessed with JGY that he's willing to jeopardise the hard-won (and fragile) stability of the jianghu by trying to kill him. Reminder: when NMJ kicks JGY down the stairs, he starts to follow him down with the express intent of killing him. As in, he fully intends to murder the legitimate son of his main political rival and an immensely powerful clan leader on the steps of his own home. That is ludicrous. Pre-Sunshot NMJ wouldn't have done something like that for his own beloved father, let alone for a grudge.

All of NMJ's flaws are obvious from the earliest point of his timeline: he's proud, he's inflexible, he's righteous but he's hypocritical. But early on we see examples of NMJ bending a little, of recognising nuance and showing, in his own inelegant way, his compassionate side. By the end, that's gone. The fan-burning incident alone (the fantrum!) demonstrates it. That's the way he treats his beloved didi, never mind how he treats his san-di.

Of course the narrative claims JGY can always talk NMJ round, but it's simply not true. In the end, the only way JGY can preserve himself is by making NMJ a promise he can't keep (to deliver XY's head) in order to buy himself enough time for NMJ to die and no longer be an immediate mortal threat. If JGY had not accelerated NMJ's decline, NMJ would have killed him and plunged the jianghu into another needless conflict.

I've spilled ink on the staircase scene already so I'm holding back on digging into this in more detail, but the fact is any discussion of NMJ's downfall is inextricably tangled up with JGY. The focal point of NMJ's descent is his obsession with JGY in particular, and it's important to remember what's relevant is not so much what JGY has or hasn't done but how NMJ treats him.

I do think one of the best ways to put it in context is to compare the way NMJ reacts to WRH to the way he reacts to JGY. WRH literally kills NMJ's father but NMJ has a cool enough head to know he has to bide his time. JGY on the other hand absolutely does betray NMJ's trust, in a situation where, again, if he does as NMJ wants (turns himself in) he's going to end up dead. And from that moment on, NMJ has no intention of giving JGY the benefit of the doubt. Yes, after LXC intervenes (remember, JGY would be dead without that intervention!) NMJ backs off and ends up agreeing to the sworn brotherhood, but he enters into the brotherhood in entirely the wrong spirit, seeing it as a way to monitor and subjugate JGY, who is already answerable to his father over and above any obligations to an elder brother.

Would NMJ at fifteen years old have listened to LXC and JGY's explanations in Qishan or later on the stairs at Golden Carp Tower? Possibly. But we don't have any examples of a time when he truly listened to JGY, and he was always going to end up this way regardless, taken out by a qi deviation and turned into the stuff of nightmares. JGY accelerated an existing process to save his own skin, but he didn't invent it out of whole cloth. So the tragedy of NMJ is not what JGY did to him. It goes back further than that, to when his ancestors first started cultivating the resentful energy of beasts.

Even then, contrasting NMJ to another character is illuminating. The text tells us NHS is in a bind: if he cultivates with his sabre, he's dooming himself. But if he doesn't cultivate with his sabre, he's pissing off his ancestors. The instinct then is perhaps to think—poor NMJ! He's in the same bind!

But NMJ never has a moment's doubt about sabre cultivation. NMJ knows the price and he pays it without question. NMJ doesn't agonise about how to balance his duty to his clan and his ancestors against his desire to not go violently insane. He accepts it as a fact of life and never thinks to question it or push back against it. He marches down the path that extirpates all his good qualities and leads straight to his worst self, and never so much as glances around in the hope of sighting a different way.

Again we're getting to that tension I find most interesting about NMJ: agency rubbing shoulders with inevitability. NHS finds a way to lead his clan and Word of God become Xiandu without cultivating with his sabre. Does that mean NMJ is responsible for his choices and he can't be absolved of his actions by blaming his inheritance? I don't necessarily have an answer for that, but I hugely enjoy exploring the question.

#ask #eastofakkala #i have so many nmj thoughts you don't even know #put that man under a microscope #my heart's so hardened i cannot repent! #roquen meta

[fannish-karmiya]

I've often noticed people in the MDZS fandom imply that the narrative essentially punishes all of the antagonists for their crimes and that, by extension, anyone who survives the end of the novel is thus not that bad, or at least redeemable. Personally, I find this a very flawed idea. MDZS is not a novel where justice prevails; it's a novel where those in power act with impunity and never face justice for it.

In fact, I think the only times anyone faces justice is when their victims happened to also be upper class.

No one in cultivation society cares that Jin Guangyao mass murdered prostitutes (twice). They don't even care that much about the smaller, less important sects who were massacred by Lanling Jin. They definitely don't care about the Wens. No, they care that he killed Nie Mingjue. They care that he married his sister, killed his father, and killed his son. Nie Huaisang only acted against Jin Guangyao because he wanted revenge for the death of his brother.

No one cares that Jiang Cheng led the siege and helped massacre 50 innocent people who were non-combatants (none of the Wen remnants had swords). No one cares that he spent 13 years hunting down people he suspects of practising guidao and torturing and killing them, regardless of whether they truly did or not, or whether they were using guidao to harm others or not. They also don't care that he sometimes killed people simply for having the name Wen and being unlucky enough to cross him.

That is why he survives to the end of the novel. Not because his crimes weren't horrific, not because he's been deemed redeemable or 'not that bad' by the narrative. But because his victims were people their society doesn't care about.

Dare I say it, it's the same with the Lans. Lan Xichen isn't being 'spared' by the narrative because he's just a hapless victim; his survival has nothing to do with whether he's a good person or not. In fact, he survived in the end because, to paraphrase MXTX: even scum has someone they care about. Gusu Lan's failings go unaddressed because their victims were people they could get away with hurting. Who will judge them as unrighteous for taking part in the siege, when all the other sects did, too? Who will judge them for how they imprisoned Lan-furen for life, when her fate was kept a secret and she had no powerful family to speak for her? Who will judge them for whipping Lan Wangji 33 times, when that, too, was kept a secret, and he was being punished for protecting Wei Wuxian, who the cultivation world only viewed as a dog to be put down? Who will judge them for not wanting to give shelter to Wen Yuan, an innocent child, when their whole world wanted to kill said innocent child?

Jiang Cheng is not left alive at the end because his crimes weren't 'that bad'. Lan Xichen isn't still alive because he's actually a good person (I'm sorry, when does he ever do anything actively good in the novel? he's very neutral). Lan Qiren isn't still alive and a respected elder of the Lan sect because he's a good person with no blood on his hands. All of the other sect leaders and cultivators who took part in the siege aren't alive because they were less culpable.

They're alive because their victims were people society doesn't care about, and still does not care about. That's it. That's the only reason.

#mdzs #mdzs fandom #mdzs meta #short meta

[dayurno]

who are your favorite mdzs characters??

(falling over myself panting and screaming) JIN LING ITS JIN LING JIN LING IS MY FAVORITE i will say i havent watched cql so i don't know anything about him in that but i love jin ling in the books and i loved that he was angry and that he was scared and that he was confused and i loved how hard it was for him to accept affection from wwx when he knew it was wwx, i love that he's the world's saddest and loneliest little boy, i love that his life is shaped by so much grief and trauma and that the adults around him have failed him constantly ever since the day he was born. and my only beef i'll ever have with wangji is that he has beef with jin ling. he's not a monster he's a 16 year old who misses his parents. so there!

other than that i'm easy and simple obviously i love wwx and lwj..... i'm a ride or die for xichen as well i think first of all there is something so kevin day about xichen in the sense that they're both positioned at the crux of so many issues and entirely unaware of it. the way jin guangyao and nie mingjue were passing xichen back and forth and xichen had no idea of the game they were playing because he wasn't invited into it at all. ugh! i love the jades of lan really, i think their relationship as brothers is so interesting and i think about their mother all the time. madam lan :(!

this is surprising even to me because on my first read through i didnt care if jiang cheng lived or died but now i actually think about him a lot. usually i don't enjoy jealousy plots but i think jiang cheng is so interesting and detailed and flawed and human..... he gets misunderstood a lot in my opinion so he's my friend now too. i know he'll never be happy but that's ok. he has jin ling and that will be enough. and also i love wen ning but i cant think too much about him or i start to get ill and sick. but i hope wen ning jiang cheng and jin ling can go out for dinner one day

#and i fw jin guangyao greatly even though he's insane #just such a great antagonist #so interesting and troubled and funny. in another world he would have been the hero #mdzs really has such good character work you could invest time and attention into all of them #also im not xiyao truther i believe nie mingjue was in love w xichen for the entirety of the time hes known him #and i think jgy definitely had feelings for xichen but xichen was too busy living his life #xichen: yeah yeah im the only thing you love besides your mother i have a meeting with uncle in 5 mins #LIKE DO YOU GET IT. he's so duty bound! he cant love you he cant even try #asks

[robininthelabyrinth]

Another for the mini fills... Xiao Xingchen didn't leave Baoshan Sanren's mountain because he wanted to make the world a better place. He came down because he was tasked with stealing gifted cultivators (or potential cultivators) away back to the mountain.

“I appreciate your offer, but I don’t want to go,” Nie Mingjue said frankly the moment they were alone, which meant that he’d gotten Baoshan Sanren’s offer already.

Good, good. That made Xiao Xingchen’s job much easier.

“You realize that if you don’t come with me, you’ll die,” he pointed out. “Your Nie sect cultivation has a flaw in it, one which regular humans cannot overcome without help. You’re so talented, so powerful; you’ll have a qi deviation sooner rather than later, and then where will you be?”

“Dead, I expect. But that doesn’t change my answer.”

“Why not?” Xiao Xingchen wanted to know.

“I have a younger brother,” Nie Mingjue said. “I have to protect him for as long as I am able, and that means until death. I can’t just disappear for two decades to get trained as an immortal. Two decades! That’s enough time for a child to be born and grow to manhood.”

That was exactly the point of the time gap, in fact, but Xiao Xingchen didn’t comment on it.

“Would you protect him any better if you did die?” he asked. “You’d be gone entirely, then.”

“My duty is my duty,” Nie Mingjue said firmly, immovable, and Xiao Xingchen sighed wistfully: he understood entirely what his master had seen in the man, and he was all the more determined to get him for her.

“Of course,” he murmured. “But – indulge me for a moment – what if you were imminently about to die? Would you agree to go then?”

Nie Mingjue heaved a sigh. “Yes, all right,” he said, sounding indulgent, Xiao Xingchen’s youthful face no doubt inspiring him to see him as a younger brother too. His face was quite useful that way; it had always been. “If I were about to die, I would go.”

“Wonderful,” Xiao Xingchen beamed, and started wondering how quickly that Jin Guangyao fellow could be inspired to try his hand at murder.

#mdzs #xiao xingchen #nie mingjue #my fic #my fics #alt headcanons

[mdzs-owns-my-ass-i-guess]

Top Three Reasons why NMJ is not a righteousness beacon

Okay screw poking the bear I'll share my possibly controversial Nie Mingjue thoughts below. Long post ahead!

Disclaimer: I don't condone what JGY did to him. At all. I don't condone what JGY did period. But NMJ is not perfectly just and fair in his dealings and I think we should acknowledge that as part of his character (which I love btw, he's very well constructed and having flaws is what makes him interesting)

Number One: NMJ is a hypocrite. The Nie cultivate a path that leads to gradual descent into madness, and is so severe that the resentment built up in their sabers lives on for years.

Knowing all this, NMJ joins the cultivators rallying against WWX and his ghost path of cultivation because it's "corrupting" and "evil" and "unorthodox"? As if your own isn't?! Bffr, Chifeng-Zun.

Number Two. His stance on justice and worth of life is inconsequential

Politically, I understand that defending WWX freeing the Wens would have been problematic, because the Jin made sure there was a consensus of hatred against WWX (and Jiang Cheng did nothing to alleviate any of that when he had the chance to explain why WWX saved the Wens).

And even if the Nie were a great sect as well, the Jin were still most powerful at the time, and the Wen work camp was in their territory (even if the staff was from multiple sects). Plus, NMJ didn't seem to be personally concerned with the fairness of the treatment the Wen had been subjected to... because they were Wens and NMJ had a personal vendetta against them as a collective

Why does this matter? Because NMJ makes it a point to emphasize that he never kills senselessly, for selfish desires or acclaim, and becomes angry enough to be violent when questioned about how he decides who deserves to die by his hand and whether he is certain his reasoning is right (Chapter 10, Volume 2, 7seas).

JGY popped off with this one, even if he rolled down the stairs for it - because he is right. NMJ can't be sure he made the right choice because such a choice is a matter of subjectivity and circumstance. JGY deciding his life is more than important than others' falls exactly in line with that, even if his views don't agree with NMJ's.

And NMJ himself illustrates it as well - he joins in the mob agreeing that the Wens at the work camp deserved to be tortured and killed even if they did not directly contribute to the war:

"Showed mercy how?" Nie Mingjue demanded. "Wasn't the Wen Clan of Qishan the culprit behind the Jiang Clan of Yunmeng's annihilation?"

(...) Nie Mingjue was indifferent to such logic. "She remained silent and raised no objections while the Wen Clan committed atrocities. That is no different from watching from the sidelines"

NMJ himself was merciless and silent to the slaughter of the innocent, even contributed to it - because his own principles told him it was fair to do so. Did he ever listen to anything but those? No. Was it right? Obviously not.

Nowhere in the book is there any Nie convoy sent to scout the Burial Mounds and see that Wei Ying wasn't building an army or a sect or anything the Jin were claiming. Because NMJ couldn't care less, because those were Wens and by his own principles, they needed to die.

And then he parades around as somebody who doesn't kill those who do not deserve it. Very ironic.

Number Three: his judgement comes from a largely privileged position.

Of course he doesn't understand (or even bother to try) what JGY means by his little speech on needing to make sacrifices and following orders to survive in the political realm - because NMJ himself never had to bother with such things.

He was feared and respected from the start as a Sect Leader and had a hard time understanding how life for someone below that rank could be like. He does support JGY as his deputy and writes him a recommendation letter - but that's obviously not enough for someone with JGY's past and the many prejudices against him due to it.

Even as many times as Lan Xichen tries explaining this to NMJ, he only seems to grudgingly listen but not agree. In his worldview, it is merit that should matter when building one's reputation. Reality is entirely different - but how could the son of a noble, sect leader all his life, understand and emphatize with that?

Of course, JGY absolutely did not need to do All That™️, but his struggle to prove himself to his father and the world (backed up by quite a bit of paranoia) becomes clearer if you look at it from the point of view of an outcast with a wretched origin trying to make a name for himself in the world.

NMJ didn't do that. Instead he labeled JGY as a power-hungry, manipulative, self-centered son of a whore and treated him accordingly - distrustfully and suspiciously.

Since JGY was already doing a lot of shady things (re: the Xue Yang issue that NMJ was keen on resolving via execution), having NMJ on his case was the last thing he could have possibly wanted - so, he resorted to the mdzs version of musical arsenic poisoning (because he would have never in the history of ever convinced NMJ he had no ulterior motives).

Again, that does not justify JGY speeding up NMJ's dying process. And JGY fucked around and found out big time about 13 years or so later. But if you look at things his way, what other solution was there for him to not only survive but also thrive in Jinlintai?

Could NMJ have prevented any of JGY's actions? Debatable. Personally, I think not. But he would have probably died later (by not making himself a direct antagonist to JGY and inviting death at his doorstep), and perhaps he could have even managed to prove (at least to Lan Xichen) that JGY wasn't as well-intentioned as he painted himself to be (by running covet investigations or something of the sort).

To conclude, NMJ is symbolic for a privileged class that believes in merit because it has never had to endure prejudice, and that is too divorced from the hardships of the underprivileged to understand them.

#mdzs #mo dao zu shi #original thots #nmj

[allthelittlecreepycrawlies]

(Posted on this blog because it started out on Twitter and Discord.)

Feathers and Trinkets Tags: Sangyao, Animal Transformation Curse, Gossip, Awkwardness, True Love's Kiss, Angst and Fluff, Potential For Happy Ending, Extended Concept, Partial Fic

------------

At the age of fourteen, Nie Huaisang is cursed and turned into a crow.

It happens in the marketplace below the Unclean Realms, with over a dozen merchants and shoppers as witnesses. 

All swear that he did nothing wrong; that his last action before the transformation had been to pick up a trinket from the ground after nearly being knocked over by an unfamiliar man, and that the last words out of his mouth had been “Xiansheng, you dropped thi-”

Despite there being so many of them, the witness statements do nothing to keep the gossip from quickly threading through the jianghu that the already notoriously useless second son of Qinghe Nie brought the curse on himself, and only has his own foolishness to blame.

While his brother is examined to find out what kind of transformation curse might have been cast, Nie Mingjue uses the descriptions given by the witnesses to start a search for the stranger who cast it.

Word eventually comes from the infirmary that his brother is under a true love’s curse, and the search for the caster comes to no avail, both pieces of news lending weight to a suggestion by Nie Hengbai that Nie Huaisang was simply unlucky enough to catch the attention of a magical being looking to start shit for its own amusement.

Further research comes up with nothing that can break a true love’s curse except, naturally, true love, so Nie Mingjue grudgingly begins accepting candidates looking to court Nie Huaisang.

Every interview starts with “So, tell me why you think my brother is good enough for you,” and inevitably goes downhill from there.

Nie Mingjue means well! He doesn’t want Nie Huaisang to get strung along by fakers who will never break the curse. And for someone to prove they actually have the capacity to love his brother, that means accepting the flaws as well as the virtues. He’s just weeding out those who would take advantage!

Unfortunately, his approach has side effects. Yes, it scares off the deceitful riffraff, but it also starts scaring off anyone who might have made an attempt in earnest. 

After all, If Nie Huaisang’s own brother can’t find anything good to say about him, why should anyone else even try looking deeper?

-----

As the years pass, Nie Huaisang remains unchanged, but the outside world doesn’t. 

His peers attend the lectures.

The Wen sect makes its move.

-----

When war begins in earnest, Nie Mingjue keeps his brother by his side. Nie Huaisang may not be able to fight, but at least he can understand orders well enough that he makes an excellent messenger.

By the time Meng Yao arrives in Heijan, the big black bird with a silver collar that has a qi-tracking token attached is a familiar sight among the Nie war camps. 

The healers and a handful of the servants who help with the infirmary and mess tents treat the crow well because most of them have been around long enough to remember the cheerful, generous boy he’d once been. 

The disciples and recruited rogues and common soldiers treat the crow with disdain because they see him as an embarrassment, a complete failure of a Nie.

Meng Yao starts to see the crow as a kindred, someone trapped in a similar social misery as he is, though Nie Huaisang at least has the luxury of not knowing he’s the butt of the joke. Unconsciously, he begins gravitating towards the bird whenever they are in a shared space, and, though Nie Huaisang is understandably wary at first, the bird begins to reciprocate.

Meng Yao has never had a pet in his life, but the more time he spends with Nie Huaisang, the more he understands why people would. The crow is easy to confide in and comforting to have around. As the pair of them gradually become friends, it becomes as common a sight to see Nie Huaisang perched on Meng Yao’s shoulder as it is to see him perched on his older brother’s.

-----

One night, Meng Yao discovers that a bracelet with a willow branch design carved into the center charm has gone missing from his things.

(It was stolen by one of the disciples who does not like him, but he does not know that. However, there is someone who saw the theft.)

It isn’t expensive -it isn’t even real cinnabar and gold, just painted wood and metal- but it had been his mother’s favorite piece to wear for the clients she actually liked and he has to find it.

After searching high and low with no luck, he's on the verge of a panic attack, when there's a caw from above and it drops into his lap just before Huaisang lands on his knee.

Grabbing the bird and kissing him on the head is an action of impulsive relief and gratitude.

Neither of them are expecting for Meng Yao to suddenly have a boy in his arms.

Almost immediately, before he’s even gotten a good look, a whole new panic sets in.

Breaking a true love’s curse… they'll be expected to marry! He can't marry a Nie! Especially not this one! That would completely destroy his plans to join his father's sect!

It’s a mistake! It has to be a mistake!

Flight mode fully activated, he shoves Huaisang out of his lap and flees, barely remembering to grab his mother's trinket when it had been so important to find in the first place.

He spends the next several days avoiding the family quarters as much as possible, afraid he'll either be forced to go through with the marriage or in trouble for rejecting the sect heir.

Then he overhears some disciples mockingly gossiping about how their young master has no idea who broke the curse, because he'd supposedly been asleep when it happened.

"Figures, that little idiot."

"I bet they realized they'd fucked up. Would you want to be stuck with that for the rest of your life?"

…

Nie Huaisang has to know that he was the one to break the curse. And yet whether out of humiliation at being rejected or -possibly worse- to protect him from Nie Mingjue’s reaction, Nie Huaisang hadn’t told on him.  

Guilt gnaws at his stomach and makes it hard for him to focus on his duties, even after he learns that Nie Mingjue has sent his still-recovering brother away from the battlefields and his secret is now safe. 

-----

When offered the chance to transfer to the Jin camps in Langya, he is relieved, at least until he arrives and finds himself back at the bottom of the heap, with the implication that his father is expressly punishing him for the audacity of coming back instead of crawling into a hole to vanish as expected.

He is so very close to snapping and killing his captain when Nie Mingjue unexpectedly arrives.

There’s been a kidnapping attempt on his brother by the Wens, and he needs someone who can both root out the spy within the Nie ranks and possibly pretend to take the place of whoever it is so they can get their own person inside the Nightless City.

He’s barely finished laying out the plan when Meng Yao volunteers to do it himself.

It’s riskier than he’d like, but between his current position and appeasing an unstable tyrant, he’ll take Wen Ruohan. 

Besides, if they can pull this plan off, the accolades will be such that his father can’t afford to keep ignoring him.

-----

With this setup, the Sunshot Campaign ends with much less acrimony between Nie Mingjue and the newly-renamed Jin Guangyao. 

With both Nie Mingjue’s and Lan Xichen’s good graces backing him up, Jin Guangyao finds himself in a much better position -even if the treatment by his blood relatives still leaves much to be desired- and he has almost forgotten about… that incident.

Until the Nie contingent arrives for the Flower Banquet.

At Nie Mingjue’s side is a pretty young man in a long fur-lined cloak that’s far too heavy for the mild spring weather. His features are softer than the sect leader’s, though they share the same green eyes, and his skin is almost ghostly pale, especially stark against the long black hair pulled into elaborate braids that flashes dark green where the sunlight hits it.

Like crow feathers.

Oh, Jin Guangyao thinks with a mix of awe and discomfort. This is…

After all the sects have arrived, Nie Mingjue formally introduces his younger brother, now freed from his curse.

Nie Huaisang bows politely to everyone in attendance, but says nothing and keeps his eyes on the floor, and as the whispers and murmurs start, Jin Guangyao sees his head lower even further, expression tinged with unease and embarrassment.

Thinking about the playful, gregarious scamp described by the healers, or even the cheeky, affectionate bird who’d steal from his bowl and pay him back later with a shiny thing stolen from elsewhere, and trying to compare either of those to the the silent figure that is now the center of everyone’s attention is painful.

They don’t cross paths during the banquet or the next day’s hunt -despite the intense headache he ends up with by the end of it, he’s almost grateful for the chaos stirred up by the Jiang sect and his own half-brother and cousin’s social ineptitude- but he can’t avoid hearing the gossip.

-----

“It could be worse… at least he’s nice to look at now.”

“Yeah, like a vase. Only a vase is actually useful.”

—

”Never thought such a wild little brat could finally learn some humility.”

“Perhaps a few years as a crow would teach that Wei Wuxian as well.”

-----

As preparations for the second banquet are being made, Jin Guangyao happens to glimpse a heavy dark cloak and green-black hair as he passes from the throne hall to the kitchens.

Nie Huaisang is standing dangerously close to the edge of one of Koi Tower’s cliffs, staring down into the open air and the forest below.

Immediately, without thinking, Jin Guangyao rushes over to pull him away.

“You- you don’t have a saber,” he says when pale green eyes blink at him in confusion. “If you fell-”

“I don’t have a core either,” Nie Huaisang replies mildly, and Jin Guangyao isn’t sure whether it’s the indifference to the danger or the quietly pleasant sound of his voice that sends a little shiver up his spine.

“Then why are you out here?”

“Nobody else is.”

After all the things he’s overheard said about Nie Huaisang -and the things said about himself- Jin Guangyao can’t fault that logic. 

Still. “Here, I’ll escort you back to your sect’s guest quarters. Your brother is probably worrying about where you are.”

The silence weighs heavier and heavier as they walk, cold and itchy on the back of his neck. He should at least try to explain himself, but-

“It’s fine,” Nie Huaisang says, cutting neatly through his spiraling thoughts. “I’m not mad at you.”

Caught off guard, Jin Guangyao stops walking. “What?”

“You couldn’t stay with the sect because it would mean never joining your father, and you couldn’t bring me with you because he would have humiliated you for it. I know all that.”

He can feel that chill spreading throughout his body, dread starting to make his stomach sink. “You… How do you know all that? Just from me leaving?”

“No. You told me.”

Told? But then that would mean- 

His stomach drops even further as the realization sets in. That someone else had been privy to his planning and complaints is frightening, but the fear is quickly smothered by more guilt, because this means that Nie Huaisang had understood everything that was being said around him the entire time.

The terrible betrothal interviews.

The rumors.

The insults. 

The threats. 

Four entire years of them.

And then Meng Yao had managed to make it all even worse.

Jin Guangyao closes his eyes and takes a deep breath, then lets it out and opens it again. “I’m sorry,” he says, then holds up a hand when Nie Huaisang opens his mouth to speak. “You aren’t angry and you understand, I know. But that doesn’t make the way I reacted any less cruel.” He makes a bitter, self-deprecating noise. “As a bird, you were one of my closest friends, but I never tried once to know you as a human, I just followed all the ru-”

“To be honest, I would rather have a friend again than a betrothed,” Nie Huaisang says, stopping a second spiral before it can start. “My brain is still stuck on giving stolen or foraged shinies as gifts. Not exactly courting material by either of our family’s standards,” he adds teasingly, an almost-smile finally lightening his neutral expression a little.

Jin Guangyao has to bite back his amusement at the mental image that creates. “What about your brother? Won’t he push you about it?”

“I can tell Da-ge I found out who broke the curse, but they’re not in a position to marry yet. If… we decide to do that later, okay. If not… okay.”

It’s a stunningly generous offer, all things considered. In it, he can see flickers of the crow he’d become attached to and the child the healers and servants had spoken so fondly of. “I would like that,” he says. “One step at a time it is. And speaking of steps, shall we?”

“Mm,” Nie Huaisang murmurs with a nod.

As they resume their walk towards the guest quarters, Jin Guangyao finally asks the one last question that’s been nagging at him since first seeing Nie Huaisang in human form. “Aren’t you overheating in that cloak?”

Nie Huaisang gives him a surprised look, then has to muffle a laugh.

It’s cute.

“Humans have a lower body temperature than birds, actually. So that plus losing the feathers means I’ve been freezing ever since I changed back, especially at home. Da-ge had this made for me so I’d quit burning through our winter wood stores and stealing every blanket I could find.”

Huh. Well, then. 

Now he has an idea of what the first gift of their shifting relationship should be.

#mdzs #sangyao #nie huaisang #nie mingjue #jin guangyao #fanfic

[jayktoralldaylong]

Some mdzs spoilers

No good deed goes unpunished seems to be one of the major themes in all the MXTX stories. Really a master at making you question the meaning of morality because everyone's sure they've figured it out but I ain't got no clue what being good even means at this point anymore.

Back when Mo Dao Zu Shi only had a season one, I would ponder over and over on the Jiang clan incident and my final conclusion is that Wei Wuxian sincerely did nothing wrong. Why did he get punished for saving a life? Why was it a bad thing to protect someone? Why did it become something that he might think back on with hesitation? Everyone seemed to pay for doing something kind. Wei Wuxian's biggest fatal flaw turned out to be that he can't watch people suffer. He will always step up and defend them. In anime, this is usually a good thing. This is where the power of friendship starts. Instead of having an army ready to rally behind him no matter what the foe, he instead amassed a society of enemies who would do anything to tear him down. They hated him, they feared him, they had no reason to. He would never go out of his way to hurt anyone. Yet they kept hurting his family, making him doubt his good deeds. Why was helping people wrong? It didn't make sense, and is a huge part of his tragedy.

It wasn't even unique to him!

Xiao Xingchen saved a life - a good deed! Guess what? He died for doing that. He saved the wrong life. But it's not like the wrong life has "wrong life" plastered on his forehead!

Lan Xichen trusted his best friend. I don't care what anyone says. People are always complaining that people in movies believe any shit about their supposedly closest friend way too fast. Lan Xichen stood by his friend, that wasn't something wrong. It wasn't like said best friend was killing people in front of him. Jin Guangyao did everything in his power to keep Lan Xichen in the dark. He was not a bad person for trusting and loving his best friend, and it is NOT his fault that his best friend turned out to be trash. He did not make Jin Guangyao into who he is. He got used, and he's the one living with regret simply because he's the one who lived and because he's nice like that. The only thing stopping him from Xiao Xingchen-ing his life is the duty and responsibility he has to his brother (Not his clan. Fuck his clan. They didn't do shit for his life).

And it just kept happening. Jiang Cheng saved Wei Wuxian and paid for it. Wei Wuxian saved Jiang Cheng and paid for it. Jiang Yanli tried to save her family and paid for it, so did her husband. There were people paying for their crimes but there were way more people paying for their good deeds. It's like MXTX was trying to say "The world ain't nice like that. Just pray that you're lucky or you will pay with your life." Nie Mingjue showed mercy and died for it.

And it's not unique to mdzs. I haven't gotten far with the other stories (No spoilers I'm begging you. On my knees and EVERYTHING). But so far, it's not looking good.

Xie Lian stood up for what he believed in when he chose to defend his kingdom and wowee did he pay for it. His entire life was wrecked for it. He got punishment that I think was way too much because wtf? He was 17. They could have done him a favour and just not make him a diety if this is the life they hand to him.

In SVSSS Donghua, no one in particular is paying for their good deeds just yet. SQQ did get a sting jumping in to protect Binghe. Now he's got poisoned for someone with plot armour. (SVSSS will never fail to crack me up. I'm glad MXTX wrote that story. Even if I know the depression is incoming. It's nice to have something to laugh about after all the pain and agony. How did her angst skills get even more intense? Heaven's Official Blessing is the latest book? That story is land mined with pain!!!!)

#mxtx #mxtx stories #the grandmaster of demonic cultivation #mo dao zhu shi #mdzs #scum villain #scum villian self saving system #svsss system #svsss #heaven's official blessing #tian guan ci fu #tgcf #mxtx thoughts #pain and misery #angst everywhere #what's even the point #of doing good in the mxtx world when you're just gonna suffer for it #with barely any compensation #mdzs spoilers

[jianghushenanigans]

Ask game! 7, 10, 11, 13 and 16

7: what is ur guiltiest guilty fave fandom

guilty fave FANDOM ummm ... well to start with i don't think you should feel guilty for enjoying things. that being said. there's some REALLY GOOD hockey rpf like everyone who says the best fic is in that fandom is really telling the truth. i'm still kinda squicked about rpf as a concept but that didn't stop me from reading the fic because Wow

10: what is the worst thing you want to become canon (character death, trash-ship etc)

i don't know if i would want anything to become canon? like canon is a sandpit to play in i don't need my angsty headcanons/theories/nonsense to be canon because i'm just gonna think about it ANYWAY

11: what is your most sinful headcanon

i don't believe in god and therefore i am incapable of sinning. everything i think of is therefore not in any way sinful. this is definitely a logical argument with no flaws in it. shhhhhhh

13: what is your heart-breakingist headcanon

(i feel like this should be easy to answer becuase half my brain is just 'hey you know what would be SAD' but obviously the moment i stare at the question i'm like... sad?? what is sad?)

Meng Yao believes his mother never found out he got thrown out of Jinlintai. Meng Yao believes she died thinking he was at his father's side, just as she always wanted him to be...

Meng Shi has been ailing for a long time, but it's hearing the rumour of a boy claiming to be Jin Guangshan's son being bodily thrown the stairs and no one knows if he survived that tips her over the edge. There was never any chance of her surviving if she had no one left to survive for

16: what is ur favourite ridiculous au

the Nie Mingjue/Jin Zixun fix-it. It's silly and ridiculous and funny and i love it

Questions from here

#ask game

[hannigramislife]

Nothing confuses me like being in the mdzs fandom.

Sometimes, I feel like I misunderstand the story completely by some of the takes I see. As if my interpretations of the characters are backward completely.

Like, y'all do understand that one of the reasons Jin Guangyao never harmed Lan Xichen is because he simply never had cause to??? Lan Xichen was always in his side, but let me be absolutely clear, if he had become as much of a problem as Nie Mingjue was, I don't doubt Jin Guangyao would have sacrificed him for his personal safety as well. Not because Jin Guangyao didn't care, but because his whole thing is that he'll do what it takes to survive.

In addition, Wei Wuxian is not innocent in all that mess. He is not a misunderstood hero who was turned on because society didn't accept his cultivation ways or whatever. Wei Wuxian died because in his first life, he did what he thought was right...with absolutely no pre-planning and no care for consequences whatsoever. He never thought past his own perspective and didn't realize how his actions could affect others, and he definitely didn't realize he doesn't live in a vacuum. Lives were lost to his arrogance/ignorance.

I have other hot takes, some of which I've talked about before; like how Jiang Cheng is actually a phenomenal character, how Xue Yang's actions are the easiest to understand despite their nature, how Lan Wangji's fatal flaw is his righteousness and how Nie Mingjue did not at first judge Meng Yao due to his birth status—

However, I feel like that might be a can of worms I'm unwilling to open, battles I'm not willing to fight.

...

What remains an undisputable truth however, is that Jin Ling is the best boy, who has done nothing wrong in his life, ever—

#the untamed #mdzs #mo dao zu shi #wei wuxian #jiang cheng #xue yang #nie mingjue #jin ling #jin guangyao #can you tell that jin ling is my baby?

[lgbtlunaverse]

I think one aspect of Nie Mingjue that is critically overlooked in fandom is that he failed.

What I mean is that I think it's strongly implied that a significant part of Nie Mingjue's moral rigidity and his tendency to universally fall back on his principles instead of trying to see the unique context of a new situation is that he is strongly aware that at some point his sense of judgement will be greatly impaired due to the saber curse, and he hopes that a strong rule-based morality system that he sticks to at all times-- ignoring any specfic feelings or doubts that may arise-- will help mitigate the damage when that happens. If he's trained himself to ignore his instincts and stick to the rules, he can continue doing the right thing even after he emotionally can no longer tell what the right thing is!

And it fails! Miserably! He essentially tried to destroy his ancestral curse with Facts and Logic and it didn't work! And he doesn't even realize that it's no longer working because surprise surprise: the curse that severely affects your sense of judgement also ruins your ability to gauge whether you're still standing by those rules you made up for yourself.

And the system was flawed from the get-go, because there is no such thing as a set of moral rules that are so universally applicable you'll never have to make unclear decision in edge-cases or re-evalutate the rules themselves based on new information-- a thing this system won't let him do because What If That's The Curse Talking? (nmj is basically a walking version of the slippery slope fallacy. Any small change is bad because it will lead to eventual catastrophy)-- and also because facts unfortunately do in fact care about your feelings and your attempt to be objective and unclouded by your emotions is still going to be subjective and informed by your own views, which is why Nie Mingjue's moral code has a core tentant that says self-sacrifice is not only Good but Mandatory and wanting to live is Bad, actually.

But even if the rules had somehow been perfect it would still, in the end, have failed. Right as the moment Nie Mingjue made that whole fucking system for arrives, it becomes useless. It's honestly really dark and tragic and deeply fascinating because of that.

Any fix-it that includes Nie Mingjue recovering from late stage saber poisoning should include him being absolutely horrified. Not just in the generic "oh my god I'm so sorry I hurt you" way, but in the sense that the thing he has committed to to the utmost degree since he was a child failed completely and instantly without him even noticing. Dedicated most of his life to it and it didn't matter at all. That's gonna fuck with a guy's head.

#it's not just a re-evaluation of what you thought was wrong or right but rebuilding your entire worldview from scratch #mdzs #nie mingjue #mdzs meta #like!! holy shit!! isn't it fucking tragic? isn't it compelling? it doesn't matter how hard you tried you were set up for failure #doomed from the start in even more ways than you thought #like nie mingjue had made peace with the fact that he was always gonna die but the idea that he was unavoidably going to hurt people? #worse. so much worse #Doesn't matter that you'll break before you bend if you were born with a crook in you

[luobingmeis]

my fatal flaw is that i very rarely ever see a nieyao take that im not incredibly picky abt but it does remind me of some unrelated thoughts i had while reading 7s vol4 of mdzs a couple days ago:

jin guangyao, after being questioned by lan wangji if wei wuxian was actually wrong in his confrontation with jin zixun at the jinlintai banquet (ie. accusing the jins of being just like the wens, saying that if the jins get to torture/kill anyone with the surname wen then he should also be able to kill any of the current family heads in attendance at said banquet who were associated with the wens), jgy says that wwx was right, but because he was right means he shouldn’t have said it. which other than itching so many of my jgy thoughts, does bring up some interesting points: jgy is either lying to placate lwj or just giving the answer lwj “wants” (bc frankly i would wager jgy is more concerned with his father’s good favor than what the jins are doing to the surviving wens), but is still publicly pretending to agree that what wwx said was correct. Or jgy actually agrees with what wwx said abt the jins and publicly admitted it, but still aligns himself with the jins bc of 1) once again his father’s favor and 2) adherence to the status quo. whatever it may be, something abt it still is scratching at my brain bc of the fact that jgy, while not making it a public announcement, still said at a jin banquet that wwx was correct in his assessment of the jins/the situation at hand. he’s a man who carefully picks his words so, whether he was just placating or being honest, i don’t think he said that carelessly

when jiang cheng is trying to vouch for wen qing and wen ning and nie mingjue questions why jiang cheng is vouching for the clan that killed the yunmeng jiang, lan xichen makes the assessment that “he knows nmj hates the wens more than anyone bc of the feud between the clans. he also knows that nmj would not stand for such injustice” which Again raises some interesting questions as to what this “injustice” is like. is lxc saying/thinking that, if the jins were treating anyone but the wens like this, nmj would be acting differently (which i think is a fair assessment)? is it that he thinks standing up for the surviving wens is the injustice being committed? bc not only does this highlight nmj’s black/white thinking (hypocrisy, even?) but something abt this coming from lxc, who is both more insightful than given credit for and is assumed to be close with nmj, is Getting Me. my only lingering question is what is the injustice being questioned? bc while there’s a similar outcome, the implications are overall different

being a 3zun stan is fun bc it’s like. bless this mess!

#i had more actual thoughts abt 3zun to put in the tags but. sleepy #i do however think 3zun all have. qualities or attributes of each of them that inherently conflict #and yet they each still contain those dichotomies

[scaredysap]

I will never stop laughing at how tone deaf Nie Mingjue must have been to not realise that Clarity suddenly had a new minor key section he'd never heard before

#'nmj had flaws too' yeah my man couldn't tell songs apart to save his life #nie mingjue #mdzs #cql #i've been relistening to clarity/turmoil and it's just too good #cql kinda went off with the soundtrack

[a-cutebird]

this is so fucking stupid but —

some sort of cyberpunk/near-ish future sci-fi AU where NMJ is a personal trainer & LXC is the AI that helps him out (tracks his clients’ progress & health, makes suggestions for routines, etc.). over time, NMJ starts becoming more and more disillusioned about his dream to help people achieve their physical health goals and LXC becomes his confidante for those fears/anxieties/insecurities because NMJ figures he’s just an AI so like whatever it’s fine if he has a breakdown & yells a bit in front of him.

anyways NMJ catches feelings for LXC and it’s very confusing & weird for the both of them

meanwhile this all happens in-between scenes where NMJ is like, showing some office worker how to do burpees

#mdzs #nielan #nmj #lxc #nie mingjue #lan xichen #i've just been thinking about artificial intelligence!LXC a lot these days #think about it #it fits so fucking well #LXC is helpful kind and puts others first #and he is also truthful which is def a thing that would be hardcoded into an AI #it's perfect #his journey as an AI would be the same as the journey i wish he'd had in canon #that is #learning that it's okay to prioritize himself over others #learning that it's okay to stand up for himself #learning that it's okay to be flawed #and that he is deserving of so much more

[kikyan]

MDZS Idea for the three musketeers Lan Xichen, Jin Guangyao, and Nie Mingjue trying to go after a rogue cultivator s/o who is like Robin Hood. Stealing from the rich and giving it to the poor. (And helping the poor out,) Has their own little gang to help them out and is very street smart.

NO CUZ THIS IS HIGHKEY AMAZING?!

Honestly, I can see maybe the rogue cultivator being like MianMian from the web series, she was from the Jin Clan and then left for speaking up to defend WWX reasoning. You know before she got mocked for being a woman and thinking with her heart rather than logic before she defected like the bad bitch she is? So that got me thinking, what if the S/O was from the Jin Clan?

I honestly think the only clans that had some sketchy ass people would be the Jin and the Wen clan. Regardless of the clan, I think that they defected as well because they could not STAND the leaders logic. They defected and are now assisting the people who would have to pay for protection. Maybe news started to spread about you after you defended a poor village from being exploited against by a group of cultivators. Other not so well known or strong cultivators ended up following you because you led with a kind heart and a desire to protect. Other clans started to put up wanted posters and maybe even lie about what you're doing to hurt your reputation.

You would use your skills to protect lower income class families who cannot afford to pay a clan to assist them. You may even fight against other cultivators and assist the villages they exploit to get back on their feet. Helping them farm and even help repair damage caused by ghosts and other people. Well, Jin Guangyao would be called to take care of this 'thug' that is plaguing the streets. Well, he'd probably be intrigued with this individual and invite Lan Xichen to help him search. Upon finding you, they find what you do to be admirable.

Lan Xichen sees purity that he wants to preserve because you're a kind and gentle soul who cares about doing good in the world. Nie Mingjue would probably admire and compliment your backbone and strength, it's not that often that someone stands up against injustice. You're not a pushover who goes along with morally and ethically flawed plans, you strive to change that. Jin Guangyao would admire your attempts to change the cultivating world into a place where even those who aren't born with a silver spoon have a shot at a decent life.

It would be hard for them to even approach you since you're always on the move, but you're also very aware. Lan Xichen isn't much of a threat at first, but Jin Guangyao? No, he is the leader of the same clan you defected from and there is simply no way this man has good intentions! Nie Mingjue may be a bit different, while he has a strong sense of justice, that's really his own motivation. So while he may love what you're doing, he may look down upon your methods of achieving it such as stealing and causing harm. It would be extremely hard to escape them because Jin Guangyao has eyes everywhere, Lan Xichen has ulterior motives and Nie Mingjue is strong. Combined they make up the perfect and admirable person.

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