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crossdressingdeath · 3 years

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Seeing your post about how JYL has a 'ranking system' in her head when it comes to WWX and JC hits so hard, but honestly, the more I read into the Jiang family dynamics, the more I agree. JYL obviously loves WWX, but I don't know if she's capable of putting him above JC. And we see her defending him, and she obviously gives her life for him, but she was also reacting in the moment. Not to speak lightly of her sacrifice of course, but I just feel like there are certain limits to how 1/7

far she's actually willing to go for him. I was initially one of JYL's staunch defenders, and always said that, unlike JC, she didn't have the same amount of political power as him, wasn't in a position to do anything about the Wens, ect. But...I'm starting to question if that's really true. JYL may not have had much direct political power herself, but she was the sister of a sect leader, and even if JC was unwilling to help, JYL had just married into the richest and most powerful sect 2/7

at the time. It was a love marriage, JZX adored her and would've done anything for her if she'd just bothered to ask him for it. Madam Jin also cared for her and respected her, and between her and JZX, had JYL actually bothered to tell them anything, I'm sure they would have been able to sort something out. Or she could have had it as a condition of her marriage - I'm not marrying into the sect that's trying to kill my brother unless you tell your father to stop. Had it been reversed and 3/7

The Lans were calling for JYL and JC’s deaths, no way in hell WWX would’ve just married into the sect, regardless of LWJ’s involvement. Instead she just doesn’t really do anything. We see no proof that she ever tried to see WWX after the wedding dress incident, which — god I instantly saw it as a sweet gesture, but now it just bothers me, because your brother is living in squalor, and you decide to show if the expensive dress that you’ll be 4/7

wearing when marrying into the sect that's trying to kill him, you bring along one bowl of soup for him, and don't even try to explain WHY you're marrying into said sect. Beyond that, we don't see a single moment up until her death where JYL actually seems concerned about WWX, puts in effort to try to see him - she doesn't even ask him how he's doing the one time she does come to see him. When we compare that to how WQ treats WN, yeah, she's outwardly not as loving or sweet, but she 5/7

goes to the ends of the earth for her brother, even going as far as to betray her sect and risk WRH's wrath because he asks her to. And now we come back to that ranking system you mentioned before - yeah, it really does seem like JYL places her blood family first, which definitely hurts, but in comparison, despite only knowing him for a shorter amount of time, WQ truly grows to think of WWX as a second brother. And she treats him as such, at an equal level with WN - after JZX dies 6/7

WQ doesn't attack WWX for what happened. She doesn't try to come up with a way to sacrifice WWX instead and let WN survive in his stead. She and WN, two people who have become WWX's family, both give their lives to protect both him and the rest of their remaining family members. And it's just frustrating to think that the one member of WWX's adopted family who we all thought treated him like an actual brother, might not have really been on his side after all. 7/7

Yes! To start with the wedding dress thing, because it drives me nuts when people treat that like some super sweet act of love: JYL shows up in the Burial Mounds with no money, no sign of having tried to talk the sects around, no news outside of her own, no food beyond a couple bowls of soup (one of which she gives to the guy who can’t eat), and doesn’t so much as ask WWX if he’s okay. She literally came all that way to have a family meal, ask WWX to name the future nephew it’s becoming increasingly clear he’ll never meet, and tell him about her impending marriage into the family that’s currently doing everything in its power to destroy WWX’s life. Like, if you think about it that entire visit is such a slap in the face; “Here’s a bowl of soup while the people under your protection are starving, oh by the way I’m going to marry the son of the guy actively trying to get you killed, okay bye”. All you can say in regards to her helping WWX is that she does potentially manage to persuade JZX to invite him to JL’s one month celebration, but if memory serves the novel never actually specifies whose idea that was and it was JZX who decided to go get WWX after JGY told him about seeing JZXun heading in the direction of the Burial Mounds. And even then JZX does the same thing JYL does; sees WWX outnumbered and surrounded and tells him to stand down. At least in JZX’s case you could argue that the actual fighting hadn’t broken out and JZX probably trusted in his authority to be able to sort the situation out so long as WWX wasn’t actually acting aggressive (or defensive, rather), and he’s also physically strong enough that he may well have been able to intervene if the cultivators had attacked. JYL, when she does the same thing, has no authority and no physical power to defend WWX with. And yeah, both JZX and Madam Jin adore JYL, and neither of them seem super fond of JGS (JZX respects his father, but I don’t get the sense he loves him); if JYL had asked them for help it’s entirely possible they would’ve started at least circulating her version of events and demanding a proper investigation into what happened. But there’s no mention of her so much as trying, and she doesn’t offer to ask them when she visits WWX.

And yeah, compare WQ to JYL and it’s... well. WQ is so quick to offer WWX her love and care? She’s harsh, but she loves him and views him and WN on such equal footing that she and WN willingly hand themselves over to the Jins for WWX’s sake without her so much as bringing up the possibility of saving WN instead. There’s no ranking for WQ; WWX and WN are her brothers, and she loves them, and she’d do anything to protect them. When it becomes clear she can’t save WN (like hell the sects would let him live, and by this point it’s pretty clear that WWX won’t be able to protect them forever) she throws her whole weight behind defending the brother she thinks she might still be able to save, even if it means bringing WN with her to die. WQ knows WWX for... a year or two? Maybe? The timeline is a little hazy. Not long compared to JYL, anyway. And yet she’s willing to walk all the way to Lanling to die in the hope of saving him. It’s for her whole family, yes, but she makes a point of including him. Basically, I think this fandom needs more stuff wherein the Jiangs and Wens survive and the Wens are fully like “Our brother now, you don’t deserve him”.

The thing with JYL is... she loves WWX, she genuinely does, but he is never going to be first for her. To the point where she outright enables JC’s abuse, in places; she always expects WWX to be the one to grin and bear it. Hell, one of their first conversations involves JYL cheerily allowing WWX to cover up JC locking him out of his bedroom and scaring him out into the woods by threatening to set dogs on him! Let me rephrase that: she allows a traumatized nine-year-old to hide the fact that the kid her dad expects him to share a room with locked him out of said room on his FIRST NIGHT and threatened him with his LITERALLY WORST FEAR, and as far as we know makes no attempt to tell JFM herself. To keep JC out of trouble. That is such a thing! WWX was scared to the point of running away and JFM expects him to share a room with the person responsible for that and JYL goes along with him promising not to tell JFM so that JC won’t get in trouble! And from that day forwards everything is just “Boys will be boys” to her. Like, let me put it this way. Before LWJ (and arguably the Wens before that, although WWX saw himself more as protector than protected there) JYL was the person WWX trusted to protect and care for and comfort him above all others, yeah? She’s the one he thinks of as having his back? He doesn’t tell her about JC trying to kill him. JC tries to kill WWX three times before JYL’s death, and WWX doesn’t say a word to her about any of them. You could argue that he doesn’t want to involve her, but... JYL pretty clearly takes JC’s side every time JC starts having a go at WWX. When he chases him out of their room, when he starts snapping about how annoying WWX is, when he stabs WWX... She never outright says it, but there really does come a point where by staying neutral you’re siding with the aggressor, and she reaches that point a lot. Hell, the stabbing is one of those aforementioned near-murders! JC stabbed him! According to WWX (who downplays serious injuries, he never exaggerates them) he had to hold his guts in! WWX is talking about a pretty fucking serious injury (and JYL grew up in a cultivation sect, I don’t believe for a second she doesn’t at least know what constitutes a serious injury) while JC whines about a broken arm like it’s worse than having to physically hold your guts in until you can reach a doctor and JYL acts like those are equal! JC could easily have killed WWX and has enough training with the sword to know better than to go for a blow like that in a staged fight and JYL doesn’t even suggest he should apologise.

Honestly? The more I think about JYL the more it pisses me off that she’s treated like WWX’s best sister more than WQ is. Imagine WQ seeing one brother stab the other in the gut and take the former’s side because the latter broke the former’s arm. Imagine WQ so much as considering allowing a child to cover up the kid he’s supposed to share a room with locking him out and scaring him into running away. She wouldn’t! Because WQ sees her brothers as equals. She won’t pick WN over WWX just because they’re blood siblings; she loves them both, and will choose based on who she thinks is in the right. And she wouldn’t just stay neutral to avoid rocking the boat, oh no. If WQ heard WWX say that WN stabbed him and did enough damage that he had to hold his guts in... oh boy would WN have a bad day. The thing with JYL is that she seems like a good sister in comparison to the rest of the Jiangs; stick canon JYL into a family that genuinely loves WWX and sees him as equal to their other children, and she would not look anywhere near as good.

#mdzs #lotus sister #i still love jyl but... well #she's not actually a good sister to wwx despite being the only jiang to claim him as family #she looks good in comparison to the rest of the jiangs #but i'd pick wq over her any day #anon #asks

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pumpkinpaix · 3 years

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*waves* Hi! New(ish) follower, I followed for your posts about translation which are beautiful (especially the one about the imagery of "Zewu-jun") and thought-provoking; I don't have a good segue so here are some Salty Asks I'd like to know your answers to concerning MDZS: 5, 9, 10, 12, 23

oh, that’s so sweet of you!! thank you I’m really happy you enjoyed them 💛

okay salt incoming let’s see--all opinions are my own, no one has to agree with me, etc! and in true cyan fashion, this ask meme response actually needs a readmore l m a o

5. Has fandom ever ruined a pairing for you?

fandom has not ruined any ships in mdzs for me, but it has made me way more critical of both wangxian and xicheng interpretations. not in the sense that like, I think they are bad! i love wangxian and xicheng, but I have very very specific feelings about them that I rarely see reflected in popular fandom interpretations. (because i am a picky bitch lol)

wangxian tends to get the “they did no wrong and their love is righteous” treatment which I find disingenuous and believe directly contradicts the point of mdzs. i think that wangxian is fundamentally a very selfish relationship, and that that is, in fact, a good thing. i love that about them. i care so much about the assertion that your desires do not have to be perfect and righteous to still matter and be worthwhile. i don’t understand the impulse to make wangxian into a pure ship that triumphs and “deserves” a happy ending because they were right all along. I always felt like the entire point of mdzs was that--you can be the most terrible person, you can do unspeakable harm, and still be loved and deserving of that love. i think wangxian is compelling and moving specifically for that reason, and I often have to back out of interpretations that don’t acknowledge it in the way that i want them to. a lot of interpretations tend to idealize wwx and lwj in ways that I disagree with, and I’ve seen a lot of vitriolic pushback over anything that’s seen as even vaguely critical of either of them, when the point isn’t that “wwx/lwj is a bad person because he is selfish” the point is that “wwx/lwj’s choices are selfishly motivated” -- that’s not meant to be a value judgment, at least for me.

(i understand that a lot of this has to do with CQL’s influence, in which wangxian IS narratively rewarded for their righteousness, but as I’ve discussed at length, I think that positioning undermines what makes mdzs so powerful to me in the first place. not that i don’t love CQL!! i do love CQL--they have made a beautiful thing within the constraints that they had. but I think the novel is much stronger thematically.)

as for xicheng: i think that their relationship could be extraordinarily interesting if done in specific ways--I do not think they are well-suited to each other at any point in the canon timeline, but that they could be something really good maybe 10 years post-canon. I used to really like the idea of xicheng romantically, but as time goes on, I’m leaning harder into friendship. I think they have a lot of uniquely shared life experiences, and that it would be really good for both of them to have a person that they knew understood those experiences intimately: the pressures of leading a sect before adulthood, the grief of losing your family in a massacre and being unable to save them, the betrayal of someone who was once so close to you--that’s a lot. and i think there are very few people in their generation who could truly understand that. (for this reason, I also think lxc and xxc would be a very interesting relationship to see many many years post-canon, if xxc were ever revived) but during canon? no, absolutely not. i don’t think lxc has the slightest interest in jc, and i don’t think jc is particularly moved by lxc either, beyond a distant “yeah i mean, he’s the first jade everyone loves him sure moving on” kind of way. they both have their own shit to deal with, and before lxc’s seclusion and also before the core reveal, i think jc is too angry and vicious for lxc and lxc is too soft and toothless for jc. for someone to really convince me on xicheng, jc has to move towards some kind of self-forgiveness and peace and lxc has to move towards self-assertion. then I think they can meet somewhere in the middle of all that.

and like, it’s not that i won’t read silly fluffy aus or like canonverse stuff with them in a ship, but i admit that because it’s grown so popular but not at all in the ways that i personally want, I’m frustrated with and have retreated from reading it. unless it’s done in the specific way i like, it has too much of a pair the spares vibe for me to get behind it anymore.

9. Most disliked character(s)? Why?

jin guangshan, obvious reasons, next

ok well, i guess to elaborate even slightly: jin guangshan, to me, is the embodiment of the systems within mdzs that cause tragedy. he and chang ci’an are similar in that respect? like, the callousness with which they treat people they consider beneath them. what is nothing to them is ruinous for another, but why should they care? but jgs really had every advantage handed to him and chose to use that advantage to hurt others in really insidious ways and i can’t forgive that. jin zixun is also on this list, but like, still ahead of jgs bc he’s younger. -_- i suppose in that respect, i also very much dislike chang ci’an, but that’s a bit harder to quantify, given that we know almost nothing about him.

10. Most disliked arc? Why?

huh. uhhhh. i think i actually really like all of them? in the novel anyways. if we’re talking CQL, yin iron plot ugh.

12. Is there an unpopular arc that you like that the fandom doesn’t? Why?

I think for similar reasons to 10, not really! I don’t see a lot of hate for any specific plot arc. Oh, maybe the incense burners? I completely unironically love those. people rag a lot on mxtx’s smut, but it’s very important to me for a number of like, personal mental health reasons lol.

23. Unpopular character you love?

xue yang! i think xue yang’s character raises a very interesting point about equivalent justice that kinda gets swept away in all the uhhhh murder. and it’s a point that has really big thematic repercussions, I think? but the way it’s worded makes it very easy to dismiss.

very briefly: xue yang is right when he says that 50 lives cannot pay back his finger, because there is nothing that can pay back that finger. no vengeance or sentence visited upon chang ci’an will ever be equal to the injustice that he visited upon xue yang. i think there’s a bit of naivety in the way xxc says “why didn’t you cut off his finger then? or his whole arm, if that wasn’t enough?” and the answer I think is very obvious--xy cutting off cca’s finger would not in any way be the same kind of trauma that xy losing his finger was, esp if chang ci’an knew who xue yang was. there would be an understanding in that: i am losing my finger because this man blames me for the loss of his finger. but to xue yang, a 7 year old? the pain he experienced was completely senseless and cruel and terrifying.

does that mean xue yang was justified? no jesus christ, but i do think it ties very neatly into the general themes of what it means to get vengeance, what it means to get justice, and how cycles of trauma eventually end. so i love him for that.

on a lesser note, but a similar one: i rather like su she, I think. there is something about like, jgy’s “all i had to do was remember his name and he was willing to die for me” that gets to me. there’s a huge tragedy in that somewhere.

wow i have no idea if any of that was coherent im very sleepy

salt asks

#cyan gets too deep in the weeds #ask meme #mdzs #rip i hate that the 5 tags thing doesn't work anymore rip to me i guess #the untamed #nice people saying nice things #ajax-daughter-of-telamon #asks and replies

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absynthe--minded · 3 years

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The Consent discourse regarding the sex scenes?

oh boy this is gonna be a long one.

tl;dr up front: MDZS is a romance novel, and I’ve read a lot of romance novels, and I think it handles its consent issues way better than a solid 95% of the other books in this genre that I’ve bothered to go through cover to cover. that being said, nobody should ever have to feel like they need to defend or tolerate something that triggered them, or upset them, or hurt them in some way, and I am absolutely fully in favor of these issues being discussed and talked about in a way that warns people they’re there. I am fully in support of anybody who doesn’t like the book because of the presence of dubiously consensual sex. that’s a super legit reason to be uncomfortable or triggered or upset. I’m also not ever going to say that not liking dubcon in a story is a bad thing. my frustration with the consent discourse is basically that I feel like it’s a conversation being held by people who aren’t familiar with romance as a genre, or with the places where MDZS rises above other romance novels, as well as a conversation that ignores that romance uses sex as a narrative device and a metaphor and not just as an idealized portrayal of true love.

more below the cut - tw: discussions of rape, dubcon, and consent in fiction.

I’m not a scholar of romance novels the way I’m a scholar of Tolkien, so I can’t really trace the development of trends in the genre, but I do read a lot of romance, because I’m a lesbian and I like urban fantasy and historical fiction and stories about women having fun adventures and getting what they want, and romance novels are an easy way to get those things as fast as possible. most of my observations are in this kind of fannish capacity.

but. romance has a consent problem, and it’s had a consent problem as long as the genre has existed.

this isn’t the post for a long drawn-out exploration of things like “how many humans on average tend to have rape fantasies?” or “why is it a statistical average that most people are bottomy in their sexual fantasies, rape or otherwise?” but one of the things that I think is worth bringing up wrt MDZS and WangXian is that constrained consent or a lack of consent and how the characters react to that is often endemic to romance as a genre. and I’m not just talking about sex scenes, either (though we’ll get to the 80s bodice rippers, I promise)

you’ve got plots like “My shitbag father fucked over an angsty rich guy so he’s keeping me hostage in his mansion and I’m not allowed to leave” (Anne Stuart, Night of the Phantom) or “I was going to be executed for stealing food but the local lord took pity on me and brought me to his house explicitly to be his wife and I’ll be expected to sleep with him whether I like it or not” (Amanda Ashley, Beauty’s Beast) or “I’m the heir to a substantial percentage of England in terms of sheer amount of land and I’m an orphan and the King has to marry me off to someone who’s both popular with the common people and strong enough to fend off attempts to seize my assets” (Kinley Macgregor, A Dark Champion). you’ve also got the eternal urban fantasy plot of “I’m a normal human woman/human-seeming woman with Power I Didn’t Know About who saw something forbidden to mortal eyes/otherwise became a target of the bad guys, so now I’m being held against my will by a brooding angsty magical creature so he can Protect Me”. that one is actually worse than a lot of the others because the woman in the standard urban fantasy plot usually tries to escape or constantly talks about how she’s being kept hostage, and it’s intended to be a signpost to the audience that she’s not a weak and passive damsel in distress but that she has Backbone and Intelligence and all that.

all of these are, on some level, about the main character(s) being placed in situations they didn’t consent to, and how they cope with that. (a lot of the time there’s also really clumsily written Threats To The Heroine’s Virtue from a cartoonishly unrealistic would-be rapist, in addition to whatever else is going on. the amount of times that I’ve read a book where a hero all too happy to dubcon his way into the woman’s bed then turns around and saves her from Evil Snidely Whiplash Rapist as a way of proving he’s a good person underneath... sigh.) and a lot of other plots are that way too! the Consent Discourse about MDZS is tapping into a conversation that’s existed wrt romance as a whole for a long time.

here’s why I think MDZS is different from basically every other romance novel: it knows it’s about consent.

the vast majority of the stories I alluded to up there really don’t seem to know that they’re dealing with a plot that centers around the heroine (and sometimes hero) coping with a loss of autonomy. she winds up being totally happy to be held hostage, or married off to some stranger, or protected by a brooding angsty dark magic man, or bound up in destiny and fated to fall in love. the violation of her consent is the framework for getting her in the same environment as her love interest, and we-the-audience are supposed to accept it as - well, if not okay, then acceptable, because it’ll all work out in the end. (there’s a lot of sometimes-unintentional commentary here about how specifically AFAB people in Western societies are often expected to deal with/make the best of/find happiness in situations outside of their control, but that’s also for another post, perhaps.) MDZS doesn’t do that. MDZS addresses the fact that neither Wei Wuxian nor Lan Wangji have been taught how to effectively communicate with one another, and their failings have consequences.

Lan Wangji ambushes WWX and kisses him while he’s blindfolded. This is done without permission, and without WWX even knowing who it is that’s put him in this position. He then goes on to treat it like one of his most egregious moral failings, and lose confidence in his ability to be honorable when it comes to dealing with WWX, and this matters to the story. LWJ viewing what he did as more or less unforgivable means he doesn’t open up to WWX about his feelings, which means WWX has no clue LWJ loves him. And as one of the many consequences to this, they spend the majority of the book married but one party has no idea it’s actually happened! They blunder around, and refuse to acknowledge how they feel, and need alcohol for any semblance of honesty because it breaks down their inhibitions. They almost completely fail at being a couple because when it comes down to brass tacks they cannot spit it out.

this lack of openness and lack of communication manifests in their lives further when it comes to the various dubiously consensual moments of intimacy that they have. their sexual incompatibility is a direct consequence of their failure to talk. they do have problems, and when those problems come to light, they’re meaningful and impactful. there is dubious consent in the first time they have sex, in their making out, in their near misses and their brief meetings. this is the point. they’re not supposed to be a healthy, functional relationship yet. they have sex for the first time and then have to deal with the fact that it happened under false pretenses and due to miscommunication. the theme of the book is learning how to come together and work together. they have to learn to communicate before their dysfunction is fixed.

and they do! the climax of the book is WWX admitting his feelings for LWJ, and LWJ realizing the depth of their miscommunication, and both of them coming together finally. the theme of this book is made manifest in their healing and joining. and only then can they have a true healthy marriage. and I like that? I like that the problems and the issues matter, and that both parties have to resolve it? I also like that just because WWX liked being kissed doesn’t mean his consent wasn’t violated and that this transgression doesn’t matter, because that’s in stark contrast to the 1980s bodice rippers where the heroine can be basically sexually assaulted or raped but it’s totally fine, she secretly enjoyed it so it doesn’t matter. (there’s yet another post I could make here about how this is a direct response to sexual mores harshly applied to women, where the only way they could feel safe admitting their desires was in situations where resistance was impossible, but that’s not for here)

I’m just one person, and this is a lot of text about consent, but ultimately? I like that MDZS deals with these issues realistically. I like that violation and miscommunication and unintentional deception are all weighty and meaningful.

this is one of the most realistic-feeling romance novels I’ve ever read, and its flawed characters that are supposed to be flawed are part of that.

#replies #anon replies #mdzs #I'm still a Tolkien blog I promise

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ouyangzizhensdad · 3 years

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19 & 25 for salty ask (￣ε￣＠)

What is the one thing you hate most about your fandom?

I don’t know if I can pinpoint one thing that I hate the most (except perhaps the easy answer of, like, the fact that people cannot keep CQL stuff out of the MDZS tags).

I guess that one of them would that like people take the “there does not exist a True Reading/a Single Interpretation to a text” to the dumb extreme of like “anything goes because I just need to say that that’s how I see it 🙃 and all of our readings are all equally Valid”. Please, you still need to be able to justify and support that reading beyond “well that’s just how I prefer to think about this/that’s My Interpretation 🙃” if you want to have any credibility when you say that these readings hold as much water as readings/interpretations for which we are presented arguments supported by what can be found in the text or meta-textual engagements with the text. I couldn’t just show up to the fandom and be like “Zidian is an allegory for the fall from grace and MDZS is rooted in christian ideology, actually” with nothing to support that wild thesis and just expect people to be like “well, I guess we all have different readings of the text, uh, how valid of you.”

But honestly I am Boo Boo the Fool to expect otherwise....

How would you end MDZS/Would you change the ending of MDZS?

That’s a good question because MDZS is such a beast of a book that it’s quite hard to tie it all off and chose what note to end it on. I guess as well that with the extras we have technically “two endings” in the sense of what the novel ends on and what the last extra ends on. And, uh, I’ll probably need to unpack both so let’s get into it (only I would turn a salty ask into meta)

Last chapter: “Wangxian part III”

So after meeting MianMian, Wangxian continue to travel to a small town in their efforts to go where the chaos is. WWX is playing footsie under the table at the wine shop, holding onto LWJ’s ribbon. In contrast to this domestic scene, suddenly:

One of the few sitting at the table gloated, “I knew Jin Guangyao had to plummet sooner or later with the things he did! I’ve been waiting for this day for so long, and now he’s finally exposed, hah! One’s deeds will be paid, one way or another—what goes around always comes around!”

The last chapter directly references the prologue, which is something I personally adore in writing, this idea of taking your story full-circle. The difference, this time, is that the villain to be despised as entertainment is not longer WWX, but JGY (I could have done without WWX explicitly telling us so in the text because it is pretty clear however I also know readers miss the most obvious cues so maybe that hand-holding is deserved).

Aside from gossip about JGY, the sects, and the sealing ceremony of the coffin containing NMJ and JGY, there is a moment where an unnamed youth raises a point about the yin hufu.

Suddenly, he heard a young man’s voice, “Then is the Yin hufu really inside the coffin?”

A cloud of silence fell over the wine shop. A moment later, someone answered, “Who knows? Perhaps. What could Jin Guangyao have done with the Yin hufu except for carrying it on him?”

“But there’s no way of telling. Didn’t they say the hufu has become just a piece of scrap iron? There’s no use for it anymore.”

The boy sat alone at a table, holding a sword in his arms, “Is the coffin really firm enough? What would happen if someone wants to see if the Yin hufu is inside or not?”

Immediately, someone raised his voice, “Who’d dare?”

“QingheNieShi, GusuLanShi, and YunmengJiangShi all sent people to guard the cemetery. Who in the world would have the guts to do it?”

Everyone expressed their agreement. The boy didn’t speak up again. He took the teacup from his table and sipped, as though he gave up on his idea. Yet, his eyes hadn’t changed at all.

Wei Wuxian had seen those types of eyes on many faces. And he knew that this definitely wouldn’t be the last time he saw them.

This continues the idea that the cycle that brought about the issues and conflicts in the cultivation world that fueled the story of the novel are not likely to disappear, and that once again it is likely that the “common wisdom” of public opinion will accelerate or allow such troubles to brew.

After they leave the wine shop, LWJ and WWX share a more domestic moment. Amongst others, they discuss the song Wangxian. Through parallel imagery, the novel also reaffirms that LWJ and WWX have become a family by mirroring one of WWX’s few memories of his parents (”Listening to his nonsense, Lan Wangji only grasped the reins of Lil’ Donkey with Wei Wuxian on it and clenched the thin rope in his palm, continuing on their way."). As well, WWX suggests they go back to the CR with a casually comment about missing tianzi xiao which is in reality prompted by the fact that he knew LWJ would be worried about his xiongzhang and shufu since one of the man in the wine shop said that LXC had looked terrible during the sealing ceremony and another commented “What would you expect? In the coffin were his two sworn brothers, while his sect’s juniors kept on running around with a fierce corpse—they even need its assistance on night-hunts! No wonder he’s in secluded cultivation so often. If Lan Wangji still doesn’t go back, I bet Lan Qiren’s gonna start cursing…”. This shows how Wangxian are taking care of one another in their own way, which is very cute.

WWX also provides an in-universe explanation for his bad memory:

Wei Wuxian knew that ‘for once’ referred to how his memory was good for once. He couldn’t help but smile, “Don’t always be so angry about it. It was my fault in the past, alright? Besides, my terrible memory should be accredited to my mom.”

Wei Wuxian propped his arm on Lil’ Apple’s head, spinning Chenqing in his hand, “My mom said you have to remember the things others do for you, not the things you do for others. Only when people don’t hold so much in their hearts would they finally feel free.”

And then we get the final lines of the novel:

Facing the wind, Wei Wuxian squinted at Lan Wangji’s silhouette. As he criss-crossed his legs, he shockingly found that he could somehow manage to balance himself in such an odd position on the back of Lil’ Apple.

It was only something trivial, yet he looked as if he just discovered a new and interesting occurrence. He couldn’t hold himself back from sharing this with Lan Wangji, calling, “Lan Zhan, look at me, look at me now!”

Just like before, Wei Wuxian called his name with a grin, and he looked over as well.

From then on, he could never move his eyes away again.

I am overall pretty satisfied with this ending, although I wish the last few lines had a stronger thematic resonance, but hey, it is still a romance novel at the heart of it so it also makes sense that it finishes that way. I am sure that there is a case that could be made about how the ending could have been stronger or more impactful, but I do think that it is a perfectly competent one. There are of course more things that could be discussed about how the novel ties in a lot of plot threads, but it is interesting to me to focus on what MXTX decided to show in the ultimate chapter of the novel.

Last extra: “Dream come true”

This extra is basically the equivalent of a book adding another chapter after “and they lived happily ever after” in order to show you what that happily ever after could look like for these characters. If the novel had only had the tone of this extra, it would have gotten boring pretty fast. But as it is, as an extra, it is just this little delightful piece of fluff that also gives us more backstory about WWX’s infatuation with LWJ during his first life. It is sweet to the point of cavities, but hey nothing wrong with an indulgent fanfic being stapled at the back of a story. It’s my favourite extra and I love how the audio drama gave life to it.

“Be honest about whether or not you thought about me in the same way.” In a solemn tone, he spoke, “Rejecting me like that so coldly every single time—it really made me lose face, don’t you know?”

Lan Wangji, “You can try, now, to see if I would reject you over anything.”

The sentence so suddenly struck his heart. Wei Wuxian choked, yet Lan Wangji was still as calm as ever, as though he didn’t at all realize what he just said. Wei Wuxian put his hand to his forehead, “You… Hanguang-Jun, let’s make a deal. Please warn me before you say something so romantic, or else I won’t be able to take it.”

Lan Wangji nodded, “Okay.”

Wei Wuxian, “Lan Zhan—what a person you are!”

Tens of thousands of words were left unspoken, in exchange for endless laughter and hugs.

Well that wasn’t very salty, but 🤷‍♂️

Salty asks

#salty asks #anon ask #mdzs #wangxian #Anonymous #long post

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paradife-loft · 4 years

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Close reading all the Jin Guangyao scenes: episode 10

Episode 11 | Episode 22 | Episode 23

So, when I was talking to @fatalism-and-villainy the other day, I mentioned how while doing this third watch of The Untamed, I was feeling really quite tempted to make a semi-liveblogging project out of doing a close analysis of basically every episode where Meng Yao/Jin Guangyao has a substantial scene.... Their response was only to encourage me in this further obsessive descent, and well, here we are.

I’m starting with episode 10 where we are in this watch right now, rather than going back to episode 4, because while ep4 is utterly delightful, I don’t really feel like I have a lot to say about it that hasn’t already been hashed to death.

Meanwhile, episode 10... oh boy! So much going on here. This episode is most interesting to me because the main theme we see in a majority of Meng Yao’s scenes, is how wholeheartedly invested he is in advancing the cause and prominence of the Nie Sect that he serves. Particularly in light of how we see him later giving the same loyalty and effort to the Jin sect, it’s a really cool (and tragic, tbh) precursor that shows a lot about how much he’ll make a point of doing well by those who’ve elevated him in turn.

So he first shows up with Nie Huisang, when WWX/LWJ/JC are all discussing with Song Lan and Xiao Xingchen what they ought to do with Xue Yang. Noticing the latter two (who are established already as being well-known heroes throughout the cultivation world), he asks if they wouldn’t come along to Qinghe to figure out how best to punish Xue Yang, and also what the best course of action would be for dealing with the Wen sect. Xiao Xingchen and Song Lan rebuff this offer... because they understand, accurately, that what Meng Yao is suggesting/asking about is for them to establish a relationship tying them, however informally (for now), to the Qinghe Nie sect.

(^This, incidentally, is the face he makes when they say “yeahhh, but no thanks,” or specifically, “We give less value to blood heritage and more to like-mindedness. We don’t want to depend on any cultivation family.” This is the face of “oh, okay, tell me no in such direct terms, when I went to the trouble of phrasing my suggestion a bit more obliquely, thanks so much,” and also, “Wow, doesn’t that sound nice to be able to do :/”)

Then a few minutes later, we get this wonderful facial expression! ...which I don’t actually have a whole lot to say about, except that I take it for... curiosity, mostly, about someone who’s had such an outsize effect on the local area, what with murdering a handful of minor cultivation clans? Interest in what inter-clan strategic advantages could be gained in one way or another with Xue Yang as a bargaining chip, source of information, etc.? Possibly also interest in the sense of, this is also someone who came from nothing and has been able to get a lot of important people to pay attention to him (even if not for a good reason), depending on how much he’s heard about Xue Yang as a person? There’s a lot of possibilities this is opening up, and I think he’s basically curious to see what happens.

Again, we just have him being very good at working the angles to get an advantage to the Nie sect (compared to the Wen sect in this case). Jiang Cheng even comments on him being thorough and formidable! (And Huisang mentions that Nie Mingjue really admires him; and Wei Wuxian says it looks like Jin Guangshan doesn’t know how to recognise talent... anyway.)

Mmmm, yep, douchebags gonna douchebag.... Nothing terribly interesting here that hasn’t already been noted a zillion times, since the basic fundamentals of his character relate to how poorly others treat him for his birth. (It is noteworthy though, I think, how the condensed timeline & events for Meng Yao killing his superior and ruining his relationship with Nie Mingjue in the process compared to the extended version in the novel, alters the first bit of screen time we get here seeing what Nie Mingjue is actually like as a leader. In the novel, his men in the army have a bit of a nasty gossip problem, but the person who mistreats Meng Yao and takes credit for his ideas later is a part of the Jin clan; in the drama, various Nie sect disciples have a gossip problem that he berates them for, but even so he still is, at best, ignorant of how his men’s mistreatment of the person he promoted and thinks highly of has continued.)

Oh boy, here’s where it starts to get fun! This is Meng Yao’s face as Wen Chao has just threatened to do “housecleaning” of the Nie sect if they don’t hand over Xue Yang, and it’s looking as though Nie Mingjue won’t be able to contain the conflict in a single one-on-one duel with Wen Zhuliu. It’s curious - he has a smirky face looking over toward Huisang when NMJ initially throws Baxia out in front of Wen Chao, like he’s thinking clearly the offered duel would go their way. Was he expecting the duel to be between NMJ and Wen Chao, who he’d clearly clean the floor with, and Wen Zhuliu stepping up instead took him off-guard? - Because that’s when he looks down thinking very quickly for a couple moments, and then tells Huisang he’s going to go check on Xue Yang.

As @veliseraptor and @ameliarating and I hashed out as this scene continued: what makes the most sense here is that, seeing how things might be going downhill for the Nie sect very quickly if something isn’t done to get the Wen sect off their backs, Meng Yao makes the snap calculation that the best course of action to keep them from getting massacred would be to free Xue Yang to hand him over. He doesn’t really look happy as he heads away from the entrance here; he looks like someone making the unpleasant decision to let a known murderer avoid justice because it will be better for his immediate concern of preserving the sect and clan he serves. Mingjue is uncompromising, but Meng Yao will look for the most advantageous option he can see and go for it, even if it’s a bit shady and perhaps not what his sect leader would prefer. Nie Mingjue respects him and listens to him well when he explains, after all, so with so much at stake, taking this gamble is probably worth the risk.

Aaaand, then we get to the part where he quite deservedly stabs the army commander who’s been treating him like shit for the past while! It’s not terribly clear (especially at this point) the exact chain of events that occurred before NMJ showed up, but from the number of other bodies in the back of the scene, I do think it’s quite plausible that Xue Yang actually did kill most of the dead Nie disciples there, as that would be... a lot of people for someone with a weak cultivation base to off very quickly. And the commander himself - I take that as a highly relished stroke of opportunism, honestly. Meng Yao picks up a Wen sword to use to kill him because he is good at quick thinking to avoid self-incrimination, but I don’t think he’d been intending on multiple homicides when he initially went back to grab Xue Yang before Wen Chao ordered his men to attack everyone and all hell broke loose.

Oh, ow! NMJ is getting ready to attack him, as Meng Yao frantically tries to talk him down - and Meng Yao still instinctively jumps in front of a sword for his sect leader! Like, truly, honestly, I do believe he had great regard for and loyalty to Nie Mingjue at the very least up through the end of this episode. Whether or not this particular sword thrust could have been fatal to either of them, it still says quite a lot about how he values Chifeng-zun’s person more than his own, even as he’s quite possibly gearing up to kill Meng Yao for what he’s done. That is just... a real intense instinctive sense of obligation and value differential between the two of them that he has, here. Ouch, ouch.

When they resume in the throne room, I think there’s a lot that’s already been said and/or is obviously central, with the line about “fame for merit” and how much it matters to him being the big one. (Why should being recognised for your merit matter so much??? says the one who essentially always has been - lining up one of the central conflicts that continues between the two of them until the ends of their lives.) But I do think it’s pretty fun and telling how seamlessly (performance-wise) Meng Yao slips in the definite lie about the army commander freeing Xue Yang, amongst all the other (pretty certainly true) reasons to condemn him, and then claims it’s all true. I think it definitely speaks of... familiarity with being in a position where others won’t take your own actual reasons for doing something as a good enough justification, and so you develop an intuition of how to mix in motives that also target and appeal to the person you’re talking to as well, to avoid harsh punishment.

Also... hmmmm..... >>>

Hey look, I’m just saying there’s some interesting thematic comparisons going on in this show regarding moral worth and who a person considers to have enough ethical standing and goodness in them to judge them for their actions and have them accept it, okay?

Jin Guangyao and Wei Wuxian are amazing narrative foils and I am probably never going to get tired of saying it.

Bonus round!

(When you’ve just been stabbed but you’re still really worried about the attack on the Cloud Recesses that Wen Chao has just revealed, because of what it means could be happening to one incredibly wonderful person! Better go make sure he’s okay, right?? ~*~ XiYao feels intensify ~*~)

#holy fuck this was a lot more than I was intending on writing at least for a first post here :'D #BUT HE'S WORTH IT <3333 #jin guangyao #meng yao #the untamed #meta #op #long post for ts #no good things for the poor sad cultivators #CAN'T STOP WON'T STOP

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fondofeveryprickle · 4 years

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MDZS and The Untamed comparision

let's preface this by saying this is my opinion. and I know my opinion is not universal. but I wanted to put my thoughts someplace. you can agree or disagree, and I would love to hear your takes on both. also, I may get information mixed up, I read the novel really fast and then went straight to watching the show. please, correct me if I'm wrong.

so I need to start saying I loved both so much. they both have things the other lacked and I had such a joy while watching/reading.

On the main plot:

the novel wins this one easy!!!

I particularly don't like the idea of Yin Iron. it takes from Wei WuXian's story. if the yin iron already existed and was used to control corpses/resentful energy, what Wei WuXian did with the stygian tiger Amulet was not as impressive as him doing it without any precedent.

but I also understand why they did it, so Wei WuXian and Lan WangJi had reasons to work together at the beginning

still on the yin iron and the whole wen clan thing. I really prefer the novel, where it shows that the wen sect just wants power. it's not anything supernatural or whatever.

the whole "corpses" being censured from cql made the show lose so many opportunities. I really wanted to see the horror of it. those black clouds of resentful energy were just okay for me, not scary enough. and it didn't feel powerful enough (specially on the nightless city battle)

and I really wanted them looking for body parts and discovering that people had been buried with wrong body parts and all. and having them taking a really long time to discover it was Nie MingJue, because they had just some body parts that could have been anybody.

and not having the corpses took a lot of power from Wei WuXian. and made wen ning not make any sense (the explanation from the dancing statue makes no sense, really)

all in all, novel wins this round

On the characters:

on this one I have mixed feelings. I feel like a lot of characters had a better development on the show (specially on the scenes from before 16 years), because the novel was from Wei WuXian's pov, so there were lots of things he was not really paying attention to.

I still prefer wwx from the novel. his character arc is more interesting for me. specially because he is actually guilty of the things people accuse him of (even if he had reasons, and I agree to those reasons), and the show took it away from him, and laid the blame on jgy. I feel like the show took the easy way out, not letting wwx deal with the lack of control on those situations. but I also love him in the novel in all the ways he's always ready for chaos, on the show he seems more calm, I guess. I also love him coming to terms that he likes guys (or at least lwj). it was a long way coming in the novel, and the "oh" moment was so good.

also the whole mo XuanYu/resurrection thing. it doesn't make sense that he went back to having his own body. and made it really hard for him to hide himself. although story-wise I don't like that he has his own body because it doesn't make sense. I am really glad they didn't change, because the actor is simply perfect as Wei WuXian, and I wouldn't want it to change either.

on Lan WangJi I have mixed feelings. since we read the novel through wwx's pov, we mostly know what he knows. and I think the show and the actor did an amazing job of portraying lwj that felt faithful to the novel but also a little more fleshed out, mainly past lwj. but they also made him softer than the book in a way. I like both versions very much. I can't choose. but I really don't think he would ever become chief cultivator, and I don't really like this ending for him. it doesn't make a lot of sense. he doesn't really enjoy talking to people and making compromises, which he would have to do a lot, being the leader of all clans/sects. he's the person who likes to travel to help whoever needs help, he likes teaching the juniors.

we also deserved more drunk!Lan WangJi than what we got

YanLi!!!! the show for sure!!!! ❤ her role is much bigger on the show and I love her very much.

the same with wen qinq. I loved the little we got of her from the novel, but I loved that she had a much bigger role on the show (still bitter she's dead - I want modern!au fics where she and wwx are best friends)

another thing. I think because the show is mostly in chronological order it made me care more about the characters (and not only wwx and lwj) and so I cried more (not sure if it's a positive thing).

on the novel, the flashbacks were all mixed up in the middle of the story, and even then, they were not in chronological order, but the thing we needed to know because it related to things that were about to happen. so I already knew who was dead, and who was friend or foe, so when they appeared in the flashback chapters, I couldn't care a lot about them so I wouldn't suffer.

even reading the novel first, watching the show gave me a chance to care about a lot of people, because they were always there, and so I suffered a little more.

the show also gave me a chance to fall in love with nie MingJue and then take him away from me. I feel like the novel didn't talk about him enough.

On the relationships:

both. both is good. no, actually both is great and they complement each other so well!!!!

this is a point that I really really can't choose one or the other. maybe most people say the novel, because the relationship is canon and they are married by the end of it. and that's a great point in its favour for sure.

I think their relationship has more time to develop in the past on the show than on the novel. there were a lot of moments they had together in the past and we can see lwj, and see him getting soft near wwx. there are a lot of declarations of intent on the show as well

but I also love their relationship on the novel, post resurrection. I love how lwj creates all the reasons they need to stick together, even when wwx wants to run away.

I do love that it is canon. I love so much. I love that wwx gave the rabbits to lwj when they were teenagers, and 13 years after wwx died, he still had rabbits. I love all their stolen kisses, and I love that they are actually married travelling the world, and stopping back at cloud recesses sometimes.

I love how we discover that lwj always loved wwx, even when the world hated him. and wwx didn't know. but he also didn't know that he loved lwj. but we can see it in all the times he talks about him, and how much he really wants to befriend lwj and everything.

but I miss the teasing on the show. I miss drunk! lwj letting wwx do whatever. I miss a little lwj holding wwx by his hands tied with his headband in front of all the juniors and wwx doesn't really know what's the big deal.

but for a show that had the gay censored, I really love the development of their relationship through smiles and soft looks and little touches and protections. and some big gestures (staircase scene? rain scene?)

I liked Wei WuXian & Jiang Cheng relationship better on the show. their sibling love is so strong, and so beautiful, all the more painful after everything that happened. again, I think this one for me feels like that because the show is chronological, so. made me love Jiang Cheng, for later to feel so sad and betrayed for what he did to wwx.

another one, Jiang Cheng/Wen Qinq. I don't know how I feel about them. they don't exist in the novel. Jiang Cheng met her once right after his parents and his whole clan died, and he was really rude to her, and then they meet again, when he goes to burial mounds to talk to wwx. but on the show they have an awkward something going on, which makes it all more sad that he won't help her and her family and then just watches her die.

Other:

the whole importance of Jin GuangYao during the show was a little annoying to me. it was never a surprise that he was not really the good guy. I preferred the surprise of discovering all together from the novel.

the ending. without a doubt the novel wins this one. making them go their separate ways? after everything lwj did to have wwx back? makes zero sense. and I already said what I think about lwj becoming chief cultivator.

I guess that's it. all in all, I prefer the novel, but I also love the show. and I believed they can be complementary to each other (as long as I ignore the ending of the show).

(i guess I'm ready for the fics now. I just wish it were easier to find out if they use novel canon or show canon)

#the untamed #mdzs #cql #wangxian #wei wuxian #lan wangji #my thoughts #I still need to finish the special edition #what are your thoughts?

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inessencedevided · 4 years

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The Untamed, episode 46 - watching notes

Full disclosure: I'm not in a particularly good mood today. Have you seen that "no productivity. Only guild." Meme flying around? That's me today :|

Hopefully this will distract me (though distraction was the problem in the first place 🙈)

I apologise for any typos you'll finde in this post 😅

To recap, the last thing I learned was that apparently, Jiggy married his own sister because Jin Guangshan was a scumbag who raped more women than he could possibly remember

I was told by several people that this episode is their favourite. No pressures or anything :D

The way someone is dragging up Jiggy's secrets has a lot of poetic justice to it. Everyone is outraged and gossiping. Consensus is reached quickly. Kinda makes me feel that that someone (who probably also wrote the letter to jgy) knows exactly how to use the sect world's worst qualities as a weapon

Yao what's-his-name, resident gossip queen, at it again

Don't look at me my memory is as bad as wwx when it comes to names :D

I was about to write who is Lianfang Zum again and then I remembered that it's jiggy's honorary title. See what I mean? ^^

What does it say about me that my heart makes a leap when I simply see wwx leaning close to lwj to whisper to him? 😅 I'll probably die reading the novel, that's what that says

Oh so it was the maid who sent the letter

Come on Wei Wuxian! That was cruel

Yeah Yao what's-his-name, why would you need to know the identity of who ever is behind this? It's not like you've ever been deceived before!

What's... with that bracelet?

I love it how everyone looks positively startled when Lan Wangji says something unprompted :D

Wait ... Zwei Jun is in his hands? Shit, i don't remeber what happened there. Where did Xichen go again? 😬

I'm so confused right now 🙈 I can't watch and read the subtitles and type

Okay, watched the whole conversation again, now I'm following

I reiterate my earlier statement that whoever is pulling the strings here knows exactly what strings to pull to get the clans to act

Great, another mob 🙄

Loooool

NOW you want his help? 😂

Sure, as soon as he can serve YOU with his "evil tricks", that's okay!

You can see how much wwx changed because he does not hold their hypocrisy to their faces. He mostly seemed tired of it

And Jiang Cheng just realised that wwx might indeed not be responsible for Jiang Yanli's death, didn't he? He's almost stunned 🥺

Or is BEAUTIFUL to see Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji move in such unity! 😭

Oh ... those are the graves of his foster parents, right? :(

And Yanli ... oh God I forgot about Yanli 🥺

I'm crying again. Nothing on this show will ever hit as hard to me as the Yunmeng siblings' fate

I couldn't help myself, I legitimately just stroked my laptop screen where Yanli's plate was 🥺

So many conflicting emotions

Thanks to a friendly anon, I know that these three bows together are marriage thing! 😭😭😭

So yeah, they're married now. I dont make the rules :')

Somehow, this feels like them asking wwx's foster family's blessing

And now I'm imagining Shijie smiling back at them gently and I'm crying 🥺

And by God, I love lwj's gentle teasing :')

This whole scene, he's so soft! 😭

And it think that Wei Wuxian probably thought that he'd never get to step into Lotus Pier again. But here, he can finally say his goodbyes to his Shijie properly. He can heal! 🖤

And again, I cannot stress enough how wonderful that is! And how rare and precious in a show like this. So often character's get put through unimaginable trauma, but they either brush it off no problem or the show/movie ends immediately after the main action and you are left to imagine the number it did on the character's psyche. There are so rarely fantasy shows that really dive into the emotional fallout the plot has on their characters and then give them time to heal. Thus show does both and I'm so goddamn overjoyed my it!

Come to think of it, it reminds me of a very good hurt/comfort fic 🤷‍♀️

Jiang Cheng pleae, fir once, try not to be angry immediately when you're hurting :(

He still takes special offence that lwj is there. Makes me wonder if he still feels like wwx chooses lwj over the Jiang sect and is still hurt by it 😔 (note that at the same time, he reminds wwx that he's very much not a member of the Jiang clan anymore. God, the man has not worked through his own feelings ...)

For once, as much as I love it when lwj defends wwx (especially when it's not against any physical harm, but because he doesn't want wwx to be hurt emotionally) I think him interfering with this particular conflict does not help

Okay sorry, but no! lotus pier was not destroyed because wwx saved lwj in that cave. That was just an excuse for the Wen sect. They would have come eventually anyway

Ohhh

So there's my answer

He's still hurt because he feels wwx chooses anyone else over his family, which is to say him

And he probably can't understand because their positions are so different. The (future) sect leader and the son of a (dead) servant and a rogue cultivator who never felt quite like he belonged 😔

It's so goddamn tragic how much between these two was destroyed simply because they have such a different status in society and could never quite understand each other's perspective

And again, wwx just takes it 💔

Until, that is, lwj's honour gets besmirched

Don't fight in front of Shijie 🥺

Jiang Cheng's every action screams that he still loves his brother and that amidst all that pain for his lost family, is also deep betrayal and grieve for the brother he thought he could always count on 🥺💔

Can we appreciate for a second how much this shot tells us? From Jiang Cheng's angry desperation, to Wei Wuxian's quite acceptance of his rage (which must be so confusing to Jiang Cheng and probably hurt him even more. Because fighting is always how these two resolved their issues!) to Lan Wangji who is in full on protective mode (which I find more than heartwarming,but still think probably isn't helpful rn)

He ... what?

I still don't quite understand when exactly wwx's lack of golden core shows. Why does he have a nosebleed here?

What?

Oh!

Wen Ning 😱

I get what he wants to do!

Have we ever seen him this calm and determined before?

Abd they understand 😱😱😱

The look on all of their faces! Shiiiiit

I'm crying again

Oh wangii is crying 🥺

Wen Quing 💔💔💔 I'm crying even harder just looking at her. I've MISSED her 🥺

Lan Zhan your FACE!! 😭

The way he's looking at wwx in his arms, as if he's seeing him fir the first time

And by god, I can only imagine what he must be thinking

He must be reevaluation every single interaction they had since wwx started down the path of demonic cultivation 😭

I'm a bit in awe of Wen Ning here and how much he must have been holding in. That's the steadiest and most confident he's ever been

Oh Jiang cheng 💔

That looks like a man whose entire world has just been shaken to its core

And Lan Wangji is crying so much 🥺

God I hope he doesn't blame himself even more 🥺

Aaaaaaahhhh, so that is why he wouldn't just carry the sword for appearance sake and why he just had a nosebleed!

Jiang Cheng probably needs about a month to process all that :/

And therapy ...

Aaaaaaahhhh! The boat scene! I've seen gifs! 😍😍😍

A penny for Lan Wangji's thoughts ...

Oh I'm so so so so glad that Wen Ning gets to say thank you to the man who raised his ... cousin (?) :')

Oh god we get to see!!!!

Oh little a Yuan 😭😭😭😭😭😭

I wonder now, did Lan Qiren know who the child was that his nephew suddenly brought back to cloud recess?

I'm glad that we all learned from this that keeping secrets from the people we love, especially secrets that concern them personally, will eventually come back to bide us in the ass. Than you for delivering that important lesson, wen Ning!

Which reminds me that I hope they eventually tell wwx that they know 😬

I swear to god, one of these days I will melt from the gentleness in lan Wangji's gaze :')

Shit. He had to be awake? 😳

You can pinpoint the moment Lan Wangji's heart breaks for all the suffering wwx endured and how close he came to loosing him even then 🥺

Waking like that in you lovers arms in the middle of a lotus pond - that's the dream *sighs* (minus the passing out bit)

It's weirdly cute that wwx thinks that it's Jiang Cheng's insults that have lwj so upset 😅

Oh GOOOOD ...

I can't

The moment Yanli's themes started to play and she appeared I started to bawl 😭😭😭

And he's sharing the lotus pods with them ... oh please, lwj, please understand what he's saying. That's his pove language! His sister's food was how he received love and right now he passes it on to you! Please, please understand it! 🥺

Oh lwj, don't 🙈

Awwwwww ....

He's breaking the rules for you!!! Just to make you smile!!! 😭😭

And holy shit look at their expressions 😭

By now you should know that he's willing to break the rules for you :')

And poor third wheel Wen Ning 😂

Now there are glittering butterflies???

Do they have some kind of romantic aesthetic bingo going on in this episode???

Oh okay, messenger butterflies

Please appreciate wwx almost climbing into lan Wangji's lab in excitement :D

Thay scene transition was pretty af!

Hey! Why do they bully wen Ning? 😤

*shakes wwx by the shoulders* DO YOU GET THAT HE LOVES YOU NOW???

Huh, this episode was a roller coaster. you guys did NOT exaggerate! I loved it to pieces. I'm floored once more by all the actor's performances. Wen Ning revealed a lot about his character, Jiang Cheng broke my heart, Lan Wangji made it melt and Shijie is still able to make me bawl in an instant. But ... I'm not left with a bitter feeling. Sure, jiang Cheng and wei Wuxian havebt reconciled, but the truth is the first step to even have that possibility. Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji are both healing and whatever happens in the last 4 (4!!!😭) episodes, I'm not dreading it that much right now. I feel like we're climbing upwards :)

@sweetlittlevampire @fandom-glazed @elenirlachlagos @allhailthedramallama @luckymoony @kyrrahbird @i-love-him-on-purpose thank you guys for staying with me for this crazy ride 💙🖤💙

Also one last thing: please don't tell me what happens differently in the novel in any given scene. I am still reading it (about half way through rn) and I'd like to still be surprised by stuff like first kisses and love confessions 💙🖤

I should have put something like this at the end before, but I always forgot. That's on me 😅 so don't feel bad, if you've shared something before :)

#the untamed #sophie watches the untamed #wei wuxian #wwx #lan wangji #lwj #jiang wanyin #jiang cheng #jiang yanli #wen ning #a yuan #the untamed liveblog

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untamedunrestrained · 4 years

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I have to do this!

I recently came across this post made by @vespertineflora and I hesitated before reblogging it because I knew this was a hornet’s nest but I fully agreed with it so I eventually decided to reblog it, because that’s my philosophy if something jives with me a 100% I reblog it, if it doesn’t I don’t. Anyhow, after this I came across multiple posts by @vespertineflora where they put forth their POV in the various sex scenes in MDZS and I really liked their answers which compelled me to write this post.

The one thing I have realised when it comes to MDZS is that all my posts in this fandom are beyond chaotic so I don’t think this will be any different though considering the sex is confined to only one canon of this story hopefully this will atleast make sense. Though as I start this I have no idea where this is going so it is definitely going to be a little chaotic.

At this point I feel it’s important to mention what experience I have already had with danmei. Because if MDZS is your first foray into danmei I can appreciate how crazy the sex scenes must seem. Anyhow, my first foray into danmei was with “Hua Hua You Long” and if the sex scenes in MDZS are problematic believe you don’t want to be within a 100 yards of “Hua Hua You Long”. But, I have a very high tolerance for writing that makes me uncomfortable so I persevered for very long with HHYL but when it became amply clear that the only kind of sex our two main characters are going to indulge in was going to be straight up non-con I gave up. Like, I think I even tried to see if it changed by the very end before DNFing but it didn’t. I get the feeling that non-con/dub-con might be a big part of danmei.

Anyhow, before jumping into MDZS and this was straight after I finished “The Untamed”. In fact, it was the very same day, I came across this post talking about how the sex scenes in MDZS were fetishizing and that the novel presented a rape scene between minors as erotica and touched briefly on their first kiss. Now this post was very vague so I really couldn’t prepare myself one way or the other but knowing my limits I delved into the novel anyway. But, I was hyper critical of any kiss /sex scene between WWX and LWJ because of that post because I was perpetually on the lookout for that rape scene which I had no idea how I was going to swallow.

Having read the novel, there is one point I want to make before we dissect MDZS in particular. This novel was written in an online serialized format so the end of each chapter had to be something that would have to be compelling enough to have people subscribed and to keep people reading the work which is a big reason in the novel the past and present are presented as they are because if you read the novel, LWJ and WWX are never apart for long, if they separate in the past we immediately jump to the present. If we jump to the past it is always to a scene where they will meet. There are very few scenes where they are separated for any length of time, one of which is at the very beginning and the second is at the time the YunmengJiang Clan is attacked and the novel while covering the bases doesn’t dwell for long in this period because it is a period LWJ and WWX are separated and your audience are mostly here for those two. So, you try to make the scenes where your main characters are separated as few and far between. This directly implies that you are catering to a specific audience and we need to realise that we are not that specific target audience.

This book is written in a very niche genre and it is meant to be consumed by people who like stories in that genre and sex is a big part of that and unfortunately so are the non-con/dub-con elements in sex. So, I feel that the reason the author mostly put the sex scenes in the extras was to cater to her audience that do expect these scenes while reading danmei.

The fact is that the story of MDZS is so good that it got multiple adaptations and the live-action show propelled it to a stage the author didn’t intend it for. She wasn’t writing for such an international audience, she wasn’t catering for it either. The worldwide acclaim this story has gotten is unprecedented, I can tell you this because I have never in my life watched a Chinese Drama (well, except for The Untamed now) and I have never in my life completed a novel in the danmei genre (well, except for MDZS now). The fact that this story has found such a stage and the only fault people can find with it are the sex scenes should actually be pretty extraordinary considering when this story was being written it was expected to be consumed by Chinese readers who enjoyed this specific genre.

So, yeah the story isn’t written keeping in mind the sensibilities of the West. The author never intended so many people from different nationalities and cultures to read her story and it was written for a target audience who reads this genre expecting it to meet certain expectations and sex is very high on that list.

Now, I agree that just because we aren’t the target audience doesn’t mean we can’t have an opinion on the work. The fact that the sex scenes in MDZS are non-con/dub-con to please a certain audience doesn’t mean that you can’t call them out for being problematic. They are and you can but remember don’t paint everything with a broad brush. Nothing is as black or as white as people make it out to be and ultimately that is the moral of MDZS.

So, instead of broad sweeping statements, I want to take this opportunity to really dissect the nuances in the kiss/sex scenes between LWJ and WWX because at the end of the day I do really love the story of MDZS.

Blanket Spoiler Warning for all novel scenes from here on out!

First Kiss at Phoenix Mountain

I probably wouldn’t have noticed this scene if not for that post that had me in a hyper-alert state but just because this is something I would have normally given a pass still doesn’t mean it’s okay.

The very first kiss between LWJ and WWX is a kiss that takes place on Phoenix Mountain while WWX is blindfolded. Basically, in the Phoenix Mountain hunt when Jin ZiXuan bulls-eyes his target in the archery competition, WWX tries to one-up him by doing the feat blindfolded which he succeeds at much to Jin ZiXun’s chagrin who then tries to rile him up and which ultimately has WWX claiming that he can do the entire hunt blind-folded and still be the better one at the end of the day. So WWX is blindfolded when he feels someone approach who then proceeds to kiss the living daylights out of him, literally he is so weak-kneed he can’t stand up after the kiss. But, given that WWX doesn’t know who kissed him there is no question of consent, he can’t see who is kissing him and therefore he can’t consent to the kiss. This is definitely dubious consent if not outright non-consensual.

There are certain hints that he isn’t completely at the mercy of his secret admirer, first being that the reason he is able to approach WWX is because WWX doesn’t perceive any killing intent from this person and secondly WWX is elated that this lone cultivator is approaching him at a time when most cultivators are atleast somewhat afraid of him, so he lets him (yes because we already know it’s LWJ) come closer than he would have otherwise and doesn’t even take a protective stance when he is smashed against a tree. When both his wrists are captured he decides to kick his assailant but is shocked into stillness because his assailant starts kissing him at this point. He struggles when he comes to his senses but when he realises how badly the person kissing him is trembling he can’t bring himself to struggle any further. But, he again struggles when the person starts to french kiss him but at this point is overpowered.

So, breaking it down, he consents to this person’s approach into his personal space, doesn’t consent to the kiss but backs down when he realises that this person is struggling with their own emotions, definitely doesn’t consent to being French kissed but is overpowered. So, consensual followed by dub-con followed by non-con. Of course, it must be reiterated that WWX can always kick his assailant away but for whatever reason he doesn’t. Overall this entire kiss is dub-con at the most and isn’t the healthiest thing in the world.

But, in the context of the story it is viewed differently. For whatever reason WWX sees this entire experience in a positive light.

The previous scene seemed to be an absurd yet erotic daydream. Recalling what it had felt like, formless tickles crawled up all the way to the tip of his heart.

LWJ on the other hand is furious at himself because soon after this scene he can be found disintegrating a tree. Well, this proves two things, one he isn’t proud of his actions and second, that despite everything this is the only way he can express his love for WWX with WWX none the wiser. This scene highlights his struggle with what he already knows, he loves WWX yet he knows no way to express it. His parents were the worst role-models in that area and he has no concept of a man loving another man. His actions are wrong but the story portrays them more as cry for help, to showcase his struggle with his relentless feelings.

He had no idea that Lan WangJi was mad at himself—mad that he acted upon his urges, that he couldn’t control himself, that he took advantage of another in a way that was neither righteous nor abiding by his sect rules.

It is definitely dub-con but I guess it is more in service of character development than anything else. I’m curious as to what people feel about this first kiss.

Second Kiss with Drunk Lan Wangji after the Yi City Arc

Well, according to WWX it’s the first and it’s anybody’s guess if LWJ has any idea it happened.

We all know LWJ has zero alcohol tolerance and for somebody who has only had alcohol for the second time in his life that’s to be expected and unfortunately there can be no proper consent under the influence so yeah, this one is definitely non-consensual.

But, people might not see it that way. In fact, I’m pretty sure (okay not so sure) they don’t see it that way. Well, LWJ is plenty eager for being licked by WWX and well WWX is fully in his senses but since you can’t consent to something you can’t fully comprehend, it is still non-con.

The Hand-job with a once-again Drunk Lan Wangji

WWX really loves taking advantage of a drunk Lan Wangji. Well, this time things definitely go out of hand. To the extent that WWX realizes that his actions might be very cruel and selfish. Again taking into account the fact that LWJ is drunk these again become non-consensual but surprisingly the reason LWJ has such a violent reaction to the whole act is probably because he believes he took advantage of WWX and then when he tries to help WWX clean up he is rejected making him believe that WWX didn’t want to participate when nothing could be further from the truth, considering he initiated it.

My God, these two are really horrible at figuring out what’s going on between them. No wonder it takes a huge intervention for them to come to their senses.

The Sex Scene at the very end of the novel

Well, this is the only fully consensual kiss/ sex scene in the main novel. There are kisses followed by a blowjob followed by anal sex and all three are fully consensual. Though the third one seems to be rather painful, it’s still consensual. Also, while they are having sex WWX is constantly mouthing off that LWJ should have taken advantage of him back when they were fifteen and at the Cloud Recesses.

“If you liked me since such a long time ago, why didn’t you take me sooner? The back mountains of your Cloud Recesses would be quite a good location, wouldn’t it? When I snuck out to fool around alone, you should’ve tied me up and dragged me away, pinned me onto the grass like right now to do whatever you want to me…”

“You’re so strong, so I couldn’t have resisted. If I screamed, you could’ve silenced me. Or your Library Pavilion also would’ve been a great place, right in the middle of the scriptures scattered on the ground. We could’ve bought a few cutsleeve booklets to compare and learn, any position at all…”

Well, at this point the novel ends and as you can see despite it being about 900 pages long when translated into English it definitely doesn’t deliver much on the sex front so the author wrote a series of extras to make up for that deficit and it’s your choice if you want to read the extras with the sexual content. They don’t contribute to the story so it’s truly your wish.

Banquet (Parts 1-3)

This one doesn’t have any explicit sex scenes though WWX does try to play out a rape scenario but it fails rather spectacularly because LWJ has no idea what to do and when they try to reverse the positions WWX just gives in instead of actually putting up a struggle.

Incense Burner (Parts 1-2)

I’m finally here at the infamous incense burner extra. So, let’s do this (cracks her knuckles).

This extra is set on the premise that LWJ and WWX use an incense burner that transports them to a dream world where they both get a glimpse of each other’s dreams. WWX’s dream is of the two of them retired and living in the countryside in his own version of domestic bliss while LWJ’s dream is well, where this entire conversation on consent started. Now when LWJ first realizes which of his dreams they are in he doesn’t want to explore any further, he hesitates but WWX decides to investigate. While in the dream he tries to prevent WWX from seeing it to its full extent because he is definitely embarrassed by it. The dream they came across is of a fifteen-year-old LWJ raping a fifteen-year-old WWX and then seeing this the real WWX gets rather turned on and has very consensual sex with his husband, LWJ.

Truthfully, the weird thing is that this might be one of the best ways to deal with this kink and I don’t understand why people are so hung up on the rape scene because hasn’t it been made clear that those two boys are nothing more than figments of imagination. Really, we can’t impose consent on dream versions of people because they aren’t actually people. The only people who have sex in this scenario are the grown-up versions of LWJ and WWX who have consensual sex.

I feel that a rape fantasy is more easy to accept if the victim has it, like in this scenario if this was WWX’s dream the sentiment might have been different but considering this is the aggressor’s dream sympathies change and this is something LWJ definitely acknowledges, he fears being judged but all things considered it’s good WWX knows this side of him because considering how much he keeps spouting off about being raped he definitely wants to indulge in this fantasy. Though in no sex scene in the main novel or the extras do they actually indulge in such a fantasy.

There was also the point that we have no idea when LWJ first had this dream and considering how closely this dream follows WWX’s fantasy during their first sex scene might put the genesis of this dream at a later date which would imply that this wasn’t a dream born out of LWJ’s initial frustration and inability to understand his feelings towards WWX which does alter the perspective a little.

In fact, the second incense burner dream is more problematic when WWX gives a blow-job to an eighteen-year-old LWJ (for my sanity he’s eighteen) who is actually a dream consciousness of his much older husband, then proceeds to use the hilt of Bichen as a dildo till his husband in a much younger body decides to save his sword from the horror and fucks WWX himself. But, then he discovers that he likes spanking WWX and he proceeds to do so despite WWX’s discomfort with the act. Again, I don’t know how much the concept of consent can be applied to dream selves, but all things considered this would have been the more problematic of the incense burner extras. Because, the first part is definitely non-consensual followed by a sex scene that is at best dub-con. Again, this is all in a dream and WWX is never going to get the opportunity to have sex with a younger-version of his husband because he didn’t and now he can’t. So again, I have no idea if this should even be brought into the consent issue.

But, one of the best things about this extra is that when WWX wakes up from the dream he is scared that LWJ will spank him something he didn’t like at all and doesn’t desire to repeat. He tells him that and LWJ immediately tells him that he will not. Which speaks a lot about these two, they know they have to communicate with each other and I feel like they have a good idea of each other’s limits and while these two might be kinky as hell neither actually wants to do anything that the other will not enjoy. So, even though they haven’t always dealt with it optimally I can rest assured that they will do better in the future.

But, I truly feel like everyone in all this uproar regarding the alleged rape forgot that this extra is written for a completely different purpose. I feel like the real reason the author wrote this was to allow LWJ and WWX to have sex in their own bodies which is something they have never done!

From Dawn to Dusk - Rather shameless sex but all consensual.

Intrusion (Parts 1-3) - No explicit sex scene though it is implied.

Villainous Friends, Iron Hook (Parts 1-2), Lotus Seed Pod & Dream Come True - No sexual content.

#if you didn't know now you know #mdzs #mo dao zu shi #mo xiang tong xiu #wangxian #wei wuxian #lan wangji #all about the sex #myposts

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butterflydm · 5 years

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The Untamed Rewatch (ep 3)

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aka they are all babies and I can't protect them

What stood out on rewatch (contains spoilers for entire drama);

We get several introductions in this episode. The first is to Mian Mian. I love Mian Mian both for herself and as a parallel for Lan Wangji. For now, I will talk about how their introductory scenes parallel but it happens with them a lot, so this will not be the last time.

Both Mian Mian and Lan Wangji are trying to abide by the rules of their sect and do what their sect would want them to do. Wei Wuxian would like to talk them into making an exception, please. In both cases, Mian Mian and Lan Wangji do consider his arguments and accept his case (Mian Mian in the same conversation and Lan Wangji going up to talk to his brother after the path introduction). Mian Mian and Lan Zhan are both generally rule-abiding but also reasonable.

Jin Zixuan doesn't actually speak much in his scenes. On the heels of the Mian Mian scene, he is coming across as a second parallel for LWJ but a different side of LWJ. He does still come across as arrogant but in my rewatch, I'm wondering how much of that is genuine vs him just not speaking up when other people assert how they believe he's feeling. Which is something LWJ certainly also does.

Also, WWX's blatant disrespect of Jin Zixuan both as a person and for his position really stood out to me in rewatch. He's very deliberate about it, both in words and actions.

I also wonder if JZX might have been deliberately wanting to talk to Jiang Yanli before she left, but he wasn't able to come up with words before his attendant 'helpfully' arrived to tell him he went to the wrong room. Same attendant does a lot of talking for JZX in the earlier confrontation too.

Then WWX arrives and takes over the situation again.

Much like LWJ, JZX seems to have a difficult time expressing himself in words, and he has no idea how to handle WWX's entire personality.

Also: is it possible that, like his mother does later, JZX wonders here if there's potential romance vibes between WWX and JYL, since WWX kind of dominates the conversation? I'm going to keep an eye on JZX's future reactions to WWX and see what I see.

Okay, so they start to set-up the additional drama-only scenes early, from what I've read, in the original novel, the Emperor's Smile scene is Wei Ying and Lan Zhan's first meeting.

So, what purpose does this brief intro scene serve and why add it? I think part of the reason is narrative cohesion — they aren't going to flip and and forth between the past and the present so they need to set out a clear storyline. And it creates that parallel between Mian Mian and Lan Wangji. Plus, it begins the set-up of the corrupted metal storyline. We get to see the beginnings of the interactions between WWX and LWJ but it's a very different vibe than their later solo talk, because they're in public. LWJ reacts to WWX a few notable times in the conversation — he hears WWX say the body is cursed, not dead, and that's what makes him turn around. He also hesitates on the path once he's out of sight, making the decision to go talk to his brother.

The campfire scene with Jiang Yanli and Jiang Cheng has two particularly interesting moments — we do have Jiang Yanli mentioning that WWX won't keep messing around once things are serious, and we have Jiang Cheng saying WWX might be spending time with either a 'Mian Mian' or a 'Yuan Dao' which… is pretty heavy subtext that both that WWX is bisexual and that his siblings know about it which, for the purposes of the drama specifically, would inform how I might read the scenes where Jiang Yanli or Jiang Cheng react to WWX and LWJ's interactions. So, I'm going to take that interpretation into account in the future. That is also, as I understand it, a departure from WWX's characterization in the novel during this time period, but given that they couldn't do a 'queer realization' on-screen due to censorship concerns, this seems like a really clever side-step.

Then we have WWX breaking into the Cloud Recesses and the rooftop fight and it is… so gorgeous. It's a dynamic and beautiful scene that is filled with little character moments and interactions that will matter down the road.

Lan Zhan. Omg bb. Not every problem needs to be solved with your sword. The image of LWJ putting his sword in front of WWX is going to be very common, so it's fun that the first time is a threat and not protection.

WWX trying to bullshit/charm/bribe LWJ to let him in. I love it.

WWX tries so hard to save his alcohol.

The boys each learn that they've met their match, talent-wise. The implications we get at various points are that there isn't a lot of real competition for either of them, until they meet each other.

It's just… it's just really good. Poor LWJ has never felt so simultaneously annoyed and turned on by someone before, I’m pretty sure. Who can blame him tbh?

Also, so: rooftops. They have their ‘first’ fight on a rooftop and their ‘last’ fight on one as well. I’m gonna think about that for a little while.

Oh, man, the punishment assigning scene is also priceless. Lan Xichen finds WWX both charming and intelligent and is intrigued by how much WWX affects his brother's normally calm attitude. Lan Qiren can tell WWX is smart but you know he's thinking "but at what cost?". The moment when WWX clunks his sword down against Lan Qiren's desk and is glared at is hilarious.

You can just really see how different the expectations are for WWX in Yunmeng than the expectations are in Gusu. WWX is good and smart and kind, even this young, and from his perspective, the Gusu rules are so rigid and arbitrary. But for people who thrive on structure, having rules can be helpful. It depends. The rules will definitely come up again.

Then we met Wen Qing!

I mean, Wen Rouhan is also introduced but w/e, Wen Qing is the important one here and we all know it. So, this will come up later and in more detail, but my reading of Wen Qing and WWX's interactions as a whole is that they remind each other of their respective big sister/little brother sibling relationships, so that's the lens I look at them from most of the time. If I recall correctly, they each get at least one scene where they look at the other one and explicitly flashback to thinking about their sibling.

Here, we establish that Wen Qing is under WRH's thumb and is not thrilled about it, but is made to feel grateful (she’s also not thrilled about that), and even when I was watching the first time, I didn't think she would end up permanently on WRH's side.

The scene with Lan Xichen and Lan Wangji is a good follow-up to the punishment scene earlier -- LXC has noticed that LWJ has a strong reaction to being around WWX and encourages LWJ to explore that potential friendship. I love how genuinely concerned LXC is that his brother might be lonely and overworked.

Our last introduction this episode is to Xue Yang. Here, he’s mostly interesting to me for how his lack of fear contrasts against Wen Qing's concealed terror in her scene with WRH. Xue Yang has no positive connections, nothing he needs to protect or shelter. He doesn’t have anything to lose, so he can play hardball against WRH without any concern. Wen Qing has her brother and her village, both of which are essentially being held hostage against her good behavior.

Xue Yang also mentions here his lack of ambition for power, which contrasts him against WRH but is one of the ways he is a parallel to WWX. Xue Yang was happy enough living in a city of corpses with no real luxuries. WWX is perfectly happy being a lotus farmer or rogue cultivator. Neither of them need the trappings of wealth and power, because both, perhaps, are so aware from their childhood of how easily that can disappear?

It's something about WWX that most of the Sect leaders have a hard time believing, that WWX doesn't want to be wealthy and powerful for its own sake. WWX uses his power but doesn't hoard it just for the sake of having it. He was never interested in challenging Jiang Cheng for the position of heir or to displace him as Jiang sect leader.

Which isn't to say that Xue Yang and WWX aren't competitive — they enjoy flexing their power and enjoy being 'the best' but there's no power-based endgame they care about. They aren't interested in ruling the world.

What people value and how that affects their choices is definitely a big theme in the series as a whole -- do you value your family name? Your reputation? Wealth and power? Helping people? Staying true to your own convictions? And whatever you pick affects whether or not you can keep the other things. WWX didn’t give a fig about his reputation and so he ended up with a very negative reputation that impacted both his relationships and what he was able to accomplish in the world of cultivation politics. Reputation is social currency, and WWX ended up losing all of his.

But that’s a while ahead.

Next time: more introductions!

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#mdzs meta #the untamed #wangxian #the untamed | chen qing ling #mdzs #mo dao zu shi #wei wuxian | wei ying #lan wangji | lan zhan #long post #cql rewatch

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grandmasterofwangxiancultivation · 5 years

Text

MDZS ch.104

WNFOJWROIFCJKEROGKER

Marks of the Hundred Holes curse!

AH!! SUSHI WAS THE ONE WHO CASTED THAT CURSE? THE ONE JIN ZIXUN ACCUSED WWX FOR?

HE IS DEAD

YOU HEAR ME

Do YoU hEaR mE-

But Lan XiChen had already looked to Jin GuangYao, “Sect Leader Jin, was this also part of the plan to attack Qiongqi Path?”

Jin GuangYao, “Why do you think so?”

Jiang Cheng’s was cold, “Is it necessary to ask? If Jin ZiXun weren’t cursed, nothing that happened afterwards would have to happen! The attack helped you remove Jin ZiXuan and Jin ZiXun, both of whom were of the same generation as you. It cleared away everything that obstructed your path to the LanlingJin Sect and the position of Chief Cultivator. Su She was behind the curse, and he’s a trusted subordinate of yours. Is it really necessary to ask whose orders he followed?!”

wow. wow okay. THIS IS A LOW BLOW, JGY, A LOW, LOW, LOW BLOW. THIS NOVEL IS GIVING ME TOO MANY MOTIVES TO HATE YOU, though i still can’t totally do that. BUT YOU PLANNED ALL THAT AND THERE’S NO EXCUSE. fuck you.

EDIT:

Wei WuXian, “Then do you hold enmity towards Jin ZiXun?”

Su She, “Those as arrogant as him—I’ll kill every single one who comes my way!”

KILL SUSHI RIGHT NOW, his fucked up logic justifies that

EDIT 2:

Caiyi Town, Biling Lake, the waterborn abyss, the sword that vanished underwater, and the Xuanwu of Slaughter, the disciple who pushed MianMian out—Su She!

All of a sudden, Wei WuXian burst out in laughter.

yeah, that’s him, useless and like a sticky shadow, pls get rid of him now.

i’m kinda sure sushi has a crush for lwj >.>

EDIT 3:

The cause of the attack at the Qiongqi Path was that Jin ZiXun was cursed with a Hundred Holes. If this cause didn’t exist, the LanlingJin Sect would’ve had no reason to attack him, Wen Ning wouldn’t have lost control and gone on the rampage, Wei WuXian wouldn’t have had to be responsible for a life as heavy as Jin ZiXuan’s, and the things that happened later wouldn’t have had to happen.

Yet now, he finally realized even the reason behind culprit’s curse wasn’t to frame him. Even the cause didn’t have anything to do with him!

Such a fact was truly difficult to accept.

I AM LIVID. I AM SO ANGRY RIGHT NOW I CAN’T TYPE CALMLY. i know keeping on passing the blame won’t solve anything, plus these things have already happened, but it angers me and strangling him would be such a great pleasure-

EDIT 4: someone needs to freaking close jgy’s mouth before he says something that’ll make me definitely want to kill him on spot.

EDIT 5: OKAY BUT can we all admire how, after jgy’s sharp soliloquy against wwx and jc, wwx shut him up with only a few words?? MY SON. I’M SO PROUD.

EDIT 6:

Just as he was about to reach out, something white and heavy suddenly plummeted to the ground before him. Alert, Jin GuangYao crossed over it. As his eyes focused, he saw that it was a pale body!

...what? a body? INTERESTING STUFF HAPPENING

EDIT 7:

Before Jin GuangYao could walk a few steps back, he tripped over something, turning around only to find two entangled bodies. One of them grabbed his ankle. At this point, a whistle came from behind. Su She seethed, “Wei WuXian!”

Without anyone realizing, on the Guanyin statue in the temple were painted in blood many jumbled talismans.

The eye of the array was right inside of the Guanyin Temple. And now, since it’d already been destroyed by Wei WuXian without anyone noticing, those that were sealed inside now surged out incessantly!

IS MY BABY DOING HIS TRICKS AGAIN, HE IS SO SO SO CLEVER AND POWERFUL AND STRONG SOJVOSJVPKG, BEAT THAT, YOU SHITTY BASTARD JGY

EDIT 8:

As the two swords hit, Nanping snapped into two!

Right then, Su She’s palm tore. Blood dripped everywhere. All of the joints in his arm crackled. The sword felt to the ground, and he held his right arm with his left, face as pale as ash. On the other hand, Lan WangJi gripped Bichen in one hand as he grabbed Wei WuXian’s waist with his other, pushing Wei WuXian behind him for better protection. In reality, Wei WuXian had no need for his protection, but he still leaned against his body with both comfort and compliance.

THE HUGE SATISFACTION THIS PART IS GIVING ME, SUSHI WAS INJURED BY LWJ AND WANGXIAN BEING WANGXIAN MY HEART FLIES AND TREMBLES AND LAUGHES EVILLY

EDIT 9:

Wei WuXian glanced at Lan WangJi, who stood beside him. He thought it’d be a bit too unreasonable to make someone who responded to pornography with extreme embarrassed rage when he was young view such a thing. He protested, “I only wanted to let out the ghouls he sealed at the Guanyin Temple so that we could delay them for as long as possible. I never thought I’d let out these things…”

wangxian warming our hearts, act 382935824359′295023

EDIT 10:

Wei WuXian nodded immediately, continuing in all seriousness, “Yes. All of these ghouls were burned to death. It looks like a big fire once erupted here, burning quite a lot of people to death. And afterwards, to hide everything as well as to seal away these ghouls who formed because of their deaths, Sect Leader Jin decided to build a Guanyin Temple here.”

Lan XiChen, “Sect Leader Jin, is the fire related to you?”

Jiang Cheng’s voice was cold, “Those ghouls abhor him. Is it possible that it isn’t?”

OOOOOOOOH SO IF THOSE PEOPLE DIED IN A FIREAND THE FIRE IS RELATED TO JGY, IT ONLY MEANS THAT HIS HUMANITY IS SMALLER THAN AN ATOM, WAY TO GO YOU FREAKING BASTARD. so next up is jgy’s story? let me guess, i’ll cry.

#the grandmaster of demonic cultivation #grandmaster of demonic cultivation #the founder of diabolism #the founder of evil magic #mdzs #mo dao zu shi #mdzs fangirling mode #mdzs novel #mdzs ch.104

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millenniumpatriarch · 5 years

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And here is, on sunday of course, a headcanon post about Wei Wuxian’s k*nks! Yes I’ll be censoring the words just in case any s*x related one would trigger flags.

Before I go into it, I do take into accounts all k*nks shown in the novel, however I also interpret them as I feel fit best. I also believe most if not all of those k*nks are not something he is conscious of, and so would notice them when they’re first done, and/or context make him think about it.

(This does mean he can discover more k*nks with time).

I’ve bolded the k*nks before speaking about it, so they can be skipped (I put last the whole dub-con thing too to be extra safe).

Being restrained: applies mostly to his hands, he will enjoy his hands being tied and/or pinned down. He would need a high(er) amount of trust/comfort to allow more restraints (or actual b*ndages).

Roughness: he has a complex relation with pain. He would expect it, and he doesn’t necessarily want to go out of his way to feel it. He does enjoy when pain&pleasure mix, so it depends a lot of how much he’s enjoying it and the emotional aspect. What please him greatly is when the roughness come from his partner’s desire.

Being manhandled&show of strength: they go hand in hand; he would enjoy a partner that has physical strength; and he would enjoy things like being moved into positions, suddenly being carried/thrown down/pinned down. In short: if a partner gets domineering with him, he often will like it (as long as it’s not too controlling or violent).

Dirty talk and praises: he loves both; however I headcanon he doesn’t like humiliation and degradation. One example to illustrate: “you like it, you little b*tch?” is not going to sit well with him, but “you like it, you dirty boy?” will work. The best for him is to mix some dirty talk with praises, seduce with words. It’ll make him feel all hot and bothered to be the one receiving dirty talk and praises, especially praises. (This meme shows what kind of dirty talk he likes, I realized seeing it)

Seducer: He loves to tease and seduce, no matter how it’s going, he will enjoy and look to tease his partner. He’ll test many ways, and continues to do whatever please them.

Top/Bottom/Submissive/Dominant: First, he does adapt to his partner, he can be anything. He can equally let his partner take the reigns, take the reigns himself, anywhere in between. The fun part is when he’s the receiver, he’ll enjoy all the k*nks; but as a giver, he’s deeply sweet and wants to give pleasure above all. He can adapt to his partner’s k*nks, but for the most part, he has a hard time not being loving&sweet to his partner (though still with teasing).

Biting: it tends to make him a small startled reaction (especially the first few times) but, unless the person is biting too much like a dog, it doesn’t frighten him. He does enjoy nips, and being marked; and he can totally grow to enjoy bites. And he himself can enjoy nipping and biting, though it’s not something he does often (he prefers kissing, sucking and licking).

Hairs: he loves to play with hairs, touch them, to have the same done to him, and also to feel a slight twist or pull that indicates pleasure. I wouldn’t say he like if it’s too painful, but a controlled pull/twist/touch tends to be okay.

Toys: he would enjoy their use, be it on him or his partner; but note that he wouldn’t actually use a sword in real life, it’s only in dreams that it might happen. He can, however, tease a bit with his partner’s sword.

Wife/Carrying children: I can see him tease/joke about using “wife” but it’s very rare. He can also tease about carrying children (that if he was a maiden, they would be lots of little ones). For the most part, I can see if test once to tease about “wife” and carrying his partner’s children, and base himself on the reaction. “Wife” being very rare even if his partner reacted positively, as ultimately, he is (officially or in heart) his partner’s husband.

Consentual dub-con: this includes if, with his partner, there’s a previous trust agreement about dreams (in fact, unless it develops as a proper desire for real life roleplay, this k*nk is more about dream dub-con). He would never dub-con if he doesn’t know his partner’s feelings about it. He’s also particular about how it goes depending who does what; he is totally okay with being “forced” himself, but if his partner is the “victim” he is turned off by the idea of “forcing” them and would only have a seducing style of actions (and thus, often ending up on the receiving end). What he enjoys is the sensation of pure trust, of the feeling of being desired by someone he wants to be desired from (so much they “snap”/lose control), and the slight pain&pleasure mix. So again, be it in dreams or real life roleplay of it, it rely almost exclusively on the idea/knowledge both party desire the other.

(This all comes from how I interpreted the incense burner dreams; when WWX was the one to go after LWJ, he relied on seduction, knowing that teen LWJ did have desire, and knowing his husband’s consciousness was dormant in there; I don’t believe he would have actually do what he did to the genuine teen LWJ. The same way, in LWJ dream, WWX enjoyed to know that LWJ once felt like he could have lost control, but the very important fact being that in real life, LWJ didn’t).

(And so: that’s why I say it’s dub-con, and he’s more likely to enjoy dream dub-con but can develop a curiosity/wish for real life roleplay of it; it’s all about context making it not real and/or consensual).

#Headcanon #lime #(is it still a thing that tumblr can flag anything tagged as ns//fw)#(which was why people started using lemon and lime again x))#(but yeah reminder i use lemon and lime!!)#(lemon would be mostly for actual threading of ns//fw topics)#(lime for hcs and small ns/fw things)

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crossdressingdeath · 3 years

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There’s a lot of points that can be made when discussing characters and what privileges and status they have and get and how they use it.

WWX had privileges as the Head Disciple but that didn’t give any kind of social status beyond being a prodigy warrior and often had his servant background held against him but he was okay with his family background. Once he marries a second master heir, he doesn’t change anything beyond being extra respectful. JGY was lowerclass despite his fathers background and was treated horribly because of his mothers status and when he finally did make his way up the ladder, despite doing things better than his father did he still ended becoming became a class traitor once he got the privilegeshe never had before. MXY was welcomed as his fathers son despite a low status mother, but then we find out his sexuality was used against him and was partially used to strip him of any privileges he had gained being taken into the Jin Sect.

LXC seems to know his place but at times misunderstands just because he sees someone in high regard, doesn’t mean others do (like with JGY and how people view him) or he misunderstand their actions and situation(like saying WWX’s heart changed, not realizing he gave NMJ a pass with the Phoenix Mountain after finding out people criticized WWX for the exact same thing). LWJ had to loose his parents and realize he’ll never know the full story about them because the people around him are biased, and then lost WWX and almost lost an innocent child for him to fully understand his privileges and limitations and how that destroyed the people around him because they didn’t have that backing them up. There were many times LWJ did things similar to WWX or was with him and people praised him while criticizing WWX.

JGS knew his status, flaunted it but was very good at how he used it in a political power vacuum. NMJ didn’t care for status but never seemed to fully understand just how it can limit a person, even just mentally and how it can push someone to make the choices that they do. JC cares too much about status and abuses his privileges and is shown to be hypocritical talking down about MianMian’s daughter of a servant status, but right after saying WWX’s son of servant status doesn’t matter.

The novel gives so many branches and types of privileges/status and how it plays into the characters actions and personalities, it’s a discredit to them and the story to dismiss it all.

Privilege is a major part of MDZS, I don’t think there’s any way to deny that without sounding like an idiot. And the thing is... it’s not always bad. LWJ uses his privilege to help the people around him, as the most obvious example. Acknowledging how a character’s position in their society gives or doesn’t give them privilege isn’t the same as denouncing them for having that privilege. Every character in MDZS is affected by the privilege they do or don’t have; it would be really hard to talk about them without acknowledging that!

#mdzs #cql #anon #asks

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pumpkinpaix · 5 years

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You do realize that not allowing Wei Ying the ability to just freely be a bottom, and hell, even a little feminine is being problematic in itself, right? Acting like either of those are shameful things for a man to be, just because he's in a relationship with another man, is gross. Acting like they absolutely HAVE to switch to fit some standard that women or non gay men feel the need to hold them to is not being politically correct. It verges closer to being fetishizing. Not trying to be mean js

hello anon! i assume you’re referring to this post of mine (and potentially also the linked post within? though that one is more specifically about translation, so maybe not).

if so, i have to admit I’m… a little confused? i’m not sure where i said or implied any of the things you’re talking about, but i still want to address your accusations thoughtfully since they’re important things to consider.

if it wasn’t clear, i was only trying to explain my personal discomfort with assigning a fixed sexual role to wei ying (though this goes both ways—i would have said the same thing about lwj had the question been reversed) due to its complicated position within a larger cultural context. i say in that post that I don’t have this problem with a ship like crowley/aziraphale from good omens specifically because saying “aziraphale is a top” (or “crowley is a bottom”) simply isn’t as politically charged as saying that about wei ying or lwj because of how each ship relates to the source material and the cultural context that surrounds them.

good omens, while not a perfect show (i’m going showverse specifically bc i haven’t read the book in a long long while), makes a lot of concerted effort to be queer-friendly and is clear about its queer-friendly intentions, both publicly stated by the creative team and shown through its narrative choices. i’m generally familiar with current queer theory in the west, and i feel safer and freer to headcanon and write whatever i want because i’m not as concerned about the political statement my personal thoughts and choices re: a fictional character is going to make in relation to canon.

mdzs/the untamed is not that. we can argue about it all day, but i can’t in good faith really imagine either was written or made with real queer people in mind, given what i understand about queer rights on the chinese mainland, and also specifically about how queer people (mostly mlm) are portrayed in genres like BL. so i, personally, feel that i want to be careful about how i position myself with regards to that. if i decide wei ying only bottoms, like is implied in the mdzs novel, how does that read? what, if anything, am i implying about real mlm? regardless of my intentions, i don’t think i can escape all the cultural baggage that comes with it. the personal is political, as they say. alas!

does that mean that i think wei ying HAS to switch? no!! but by that same token, i don’t think he HAS to bottom either! what i want is to promote more respectful diversity in the way a character like him can be portrayed or headcanoned when the original text is so thoughtlessly restrictive, so that maybe in the future i would feel fine about writing/headcanoning him as anything i want without getting bogged down with all of this. that’s the dream, are you kidding me?? respectful portrayal of a bisexual chinese character that i personally love??? of course i have intense personal stake in that lmao, how could i NOT. on that note, regarding your first point, i can’t “dis/allow” wei ying anything because wei ying is, again, a fictional character who has no agency and whom i cannot personally ask about his preferences. none of this has anything to do with respecting him—only how our treatment of him impacts real people.

i never meant to imply that being a bottom is shameful—i meant that when a mlm character is LIMITED to being a bottom BECAUSE of preconceived, heteronormative notions about mlm relationships by content creators, that is uncomfortable. neither bottoming nor being feminine should be considered shameful, of course not, but we don’t live in a perfectly equitable world, and historically, those are traits that are associated with shame by larger societal forces—my point is that we don’t interact with media in a vacuum. even if i’m not saying “bottoming/effeminacy is shameful”, someone is. because that previous ask was focused on wei ying and bottoming, i understand why you might think that because my stance on it wasn’t unequivocally positive/validating, it sounded like i was implying it was shameful because that’s what we’ve all been primed to assume. if i rewrote the response to that ask, only this time talking about lan wangji being pigeonholed as a top, would that have made my stance more obvious? because again, it goes both ways.

you say that i’m trying to fit mlm into a standard that i, as a non-mlm, am imposing upon them, but i really have no idea where you’re seeing that in what i’ve written. if you still think i’m doing that, then i want to state here that that is the furthest thing from my intentions.

the top/bottom dichotomy that exists in mdzs is just an expression of a larger trend that sees and fetishizes mlm as defined by their sexual roles, especially asian mlm (looking at you, seme/uke terminology). i cannot see it as existing divorced from that. what i really want, more than anything, is for this to not even be a conversation i feel like i have to engage with every time it comes up. it sucks that queer people’s identities and private sexual choices are politicized!! i, too, just want to live!!! i don’t want to feel like i have to endlessly, carefully debate mlm’s sex positions as a political statement, but i also don’t think that i can stay silent as a bi woman(?) while they’re used and disrespected for others’ gratification. they’re my siblings too.

here’s the thing: i like bottom wei ying! I love feminine wei ying! i want to read fic containing both of those aspects! i want to write fic like that! in fact, i probably will! is everything i make and say going to be perfectly unproblematic? of course not! everything is problematic because everything is nuanced and everything is complicated. all i can do is try my best to make sure what makes me happy isn’t at the cost of someone else’s human respect.

so, i hope that makes my position more clear? i’m not trying to say that everyone has to do exactly as i do, or think exactly as i think. i just want to encourage more complex, critical engagement with media because i think interrogating why and how we like what we like helps us grow. i get that sometimes we just want to enjoy things, and that’s okay! i get it, it’s exhausting!! feel free to block me and never interact with another one of my posts again if they make you too angry. i love mdzs, and i love the untamed just. so much!! i haven’t felt so overwhelmingly moved by a piece of media in a while, and i happen to express my love by…. well, doing things like this, which i’m FULLY aware is not everyone’s cup of tea. (sometimes, it isn’t mine either!)

i just want to end by saying that i’m certainly not trying to outright condemn anyone with these posts. this is largely prompted by my own personal, discomfited reaction to comments i’ve received on my fic/things i’ve seen tossed around by the fandom at large. i absolutely don’t think any of the people making those comments are bad people (i mean it!!), but that doesn’t mean i can’t still feel conflicted about it to the point where I feel i need to address it. i can’t police the way someone else enjoys their content, and i’m really not interested in trying. i’m trying to control the way I engage with and present myself to fandom. haha, as wei ying said, to live my whole life with a clear conscience. that’s all i can do.

EDIT 16 APR 2020: My views have changed since I wrote this post. I will not delete this post because it reflects my views at the time it was posted about 7 months ago, but I now feel very differently about the issues discussed here. Hopefully, my views are more nuanced and carefully considered in the present, but you know! Please keep that in mind when you read this.

#mdzs #the untamed #i... really did it again huh #comin at u hot with 1.3k words of... something #mine #mymeta #again idk if this counts as meta but it's the only tag i got for it #meta #Anonymous #asks and replies

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crossdressingdeath · 3 years

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Another thing that bothers me other than uwu baby JC stans that I think popped up because of CQL is LWJ stans and NMJ stans. I've seen people say that WWX is lucky LWJ loved WWX after WWX constantly bullied him and act like WWX is LWJ's prize for all his suffering ignoring the fact that pre-seige LWJ was an asshole to WWX as well. He abused his position as head of discipline in CR and was a jerk to WWX everytime he got jealous or angry about his crush on WWX and people act like it is WWX's fault because he was "oblivious" to LWJ's feelings. In CQL he also drew his sword on WWX unprovoked during the Sunshot campaign. As for NMJ, they make him out to be a big softy which is ridiculous because he probably killed just as many Wens as WWX. I cant remember if something similar happened in CQL, but in the novel NMJ threatened to kill JGY if XY wasn't executed. I find it hypocritical that people excuse the Nies and Lans for not investigating the labor camps because it would be overstepping their bounds in a dispute between the Jins and Jiangs/WWX, but it's okay for NMJ to threaten to kill a sect heir and war hero over something JGS was doing and JGY had no control over.

To be entirely fair NMJ did have good reason to suspect that JGY was more involved in the XY business than he said he was (caught him murdering a man over an insult and all) and in fact he was probably right, we do know that JGY at the very least had a hand in the matter. NMJ knows exactly how clever JGY is and I’m sure at least suspects that JGS hands more over to him than JGY lets on; JGY protesting that it wasn’t his doing is going to sound pretty suspicious to the guy who once saw him fairly convincingly arguing that he had no choice but to murder an ally in cold blood with a sword in the back! NMJ isn’t by any stretch a harmless softy and it bugs me when people act like he is, but at the same time he’s not a bad person; he has every reason to distrust JGY, and re the Wens... well, he was a commander during a war against them, of course he killed a lot of Wens (although I’d say he didn’t kill as many as WWX, seeing as WWX can wipe out entire armies singlehandedly; NMJ is good with Baxia, but I don’t think he’s that good!), and in stories like this you can kill a lot of people and be a big softy. He’s a flawed character, good points and bad, yadda yadda. Also I’ll admit, I think he does deserve a little slack in his treatment of JGY because if memory serves it was around that point where JGY started, y’know, poisoning him to death with sheer rage; if JGY wasn’t prepared to handle NMJ being increasingly harsh with him he should’ve picked a different way to kill him!

Also LWJ didn’t abuse his position; he punished WWX because WWX broke the rules and that was LWJ’s job. When WWX is mentioned as being punished you can always tie it to specific incidents where he broke the rules. If anything not bringing WWX in for punishment would be abusing his position; he has a responsibility to bring troublemakers in to be punished, and he carried out that responsibility. If anything not punishing him would be abusing his position. I’d argue he wasn’t exactly a jerk to WWX; remember that LWJ and WWX aren’t actually... friends, exactly. LWJ is cold to everyone, and while he is colder to WWX than is maybe polite he’s never really aggressive or mean. Basically, while saying WWX was a jerk to LWJ is entirely inaccurate I’d say it’s also inaccurate to say LWJ was a jerk to WWX, and in both cases if they are being jerks it’s not deliberate; it’s mostly just two people with very different outlooks and approaches to relationships clashing a bit due to lack of experience. Also he was a teenager; again, I think he deserves a bit of slack on that point, being kind of a dick as a teenager because you don’t know How To People isn’t exactly uncommon and he does grow out of it. The sword thing in CQL was A Bit Much, though, and not something from the book if memory serves (pretty sure that while there were stories about WWX and LWJ fighting whenever they met WWX himself debunks that and says they never actually came to blows).

Basically... people arguing that NMJ and LWJ did nothing wrong are misunderstanding the point of the story, which involves a lot of “no one is entirely good no matter how hard they try”; however I’d argue that it’s also common for people to go too far the other way and blame them for too much. Also I’ll admit I like them both very much, so I’m a tad biased. But basically this fandom has a problem with people over-simplifying incredibly complicated situations into “this person is in the right and this person is in the wrong” when that’s only occasionally accurate, and it’s a real pain.

#mdzs #cql #nie mingjue #lan wangji #anon #asks

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