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Guys, I just now noticed one more interesting little detail in the Untamed!

You know the names of the buildings in the Cloud Recesses: the lecture room/hall Lanshi (兰室, Lánshì, "Orchid Room"); Yashi (雅室, Yǎshì, "Elegant Room") – the reception room/hall; the spirit-summoning room/hall Mingshi (冥室, Míngshì, "Underworld Room" or "Room of Darkness"); Hanshi (寒室, Hánshì, "Frost Room") - Lan Xichen's residence; and Lan Wangji's Jingshi (静室, Jìngshì, "Quiet Room"), right?

The character used to write the "shì", room, in the names is 室, here seen in the Lanshi and the Yashi (the names are read from right to left):

As a side note, the Lan seem to use the traditional rather than the simplified characters, so the "lán" in the Lanshi is written with 蘭 rather than 兰.

BUT. Not so in the Jingshi! Instead of the 室, a slightly different character is used for the "room":

My trusty dictionary did not know the character in question, so I started to look at what was different:

As such, the character 凶 (xiōng) means act of violence, murder, evil. An evildoer. A murderer. And as Lan Xichen told Wei Wuxian, we know who lived in the Jingshi before it became Lan Wangji's residence: "It is the place where our mother lived in the Cloud Recesses".

So, it seems that when the house became Madam Lan's prison, the character was changed to reflect her crime, denoting the place as the quiet room of a murderer. Accentuated by the reversed colours of the sign:

This has probably been quite self-evident to anyone who actually speaks and reads Chinese, but was quite an oooff! to me as I realised. One more killer detail in CQL 😟.

And while I was at it, I just had to check what it says above the gate (seen here when LWJ returns home with the Emperor's Smile):

As far as I can read it, the characters are 影竹堂 (yǐng zhú táng), which I freely translate as "Bamboo Shadow Court". An apt name for the place.

Hopefully it offered some solace to Madam Lan.

And oh, I just have to add! As Hanshi is the Sect Leader's residence, Lan Xichen is living in their father's house, while Lan Wangji is living in their mother's. And the two houses are more or less identical, down to the furnishings (just check the scene where Lan Xichen confronts Wen Chao and his muddy boots in ep8 vs. The Wangxian Scene in ep43). So did Qingheng-jun have the house built for his wife, identical to the house she was not allowed to live in? That is quite plausible, in universe. Out universe, they probably had only so many buildings to shoot in :).

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The Indianapolis Star, Indiana, July 26, 1925

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Aand this comic is finally complete! Thank you all who read this and left feedback. Wish I could answer you all but I'm too mentally drained for this, still I appreciate every single comment I receive :> Title: "The Ghost King isn't dressed" Based on the extra of the same name. Contains potential spoilers for the book. Please don't reupload it anywhere.

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Eternal love

Someone on Reddit wondered why the pairing of Xie Lian and Hua Cheng is MXTX's most popular romantic pairing, when Hua Cheng is almost two-dimensional in his uninflected, undoubting devotion to XL.

I like all the MXTX romances. I don't have a favorite pairing but I really like that each of MXTX's pairs is very different - they don't repeat each other and in fact MXTX seems to go out of her way to come up with relationships that are entirely fresh each time.

HuaLian is a romance based on the idea that a religious devotion can somehow be turned into a literal love affair. It's a peculiar idea, and she has to set up a very complex situation to make it work. Religious belief is usually directed to a god (or an idea of god) that is not physically present. What would believers really do if their god showed up one day, as magical and powerful and perfect as in their imagination?

I think what makes it so appealing to many readers is the idea of absolute commitment, total devotion, unwavering and unstoppable. This does make Hua Cheng appear a bit 2-dimensional in some ways, because the very idea of so complete and unqualified a passion is sort of impossible. Who could sustain that feeling? And how could anyone sustain being the object of so complete a passion? So the answer is that neither of them is human. Hua Cheng became the Ghost King (and controls his own immortality) through the sheer power of his devotion. Xie Lian is an actual god, and being the object of perfect devotion isn't uncomfortable for him - he's not greedy for it, and he's not egotistic because of it, because he is a real god (unlike the people who live in the Heavenly Realm).

As the book's 800 year timeline points out, being immortal changes how one views not only events (history, time), but emotions, personalities, motives, feelings. For Hua Cheng and Xie Lian, love is actually, literally eternal and both are uniquely equipped to sustain that eternal unchanging feeling. Isn't that something we all wish we had?

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Heaven Official's Blessing - more about sexual healing - big spoilers

Someone over on Reddit pointed out that although Heaven Official's Blessing has no explicit sex scenes, unlike MXTX's other two books, it is literally about two protagonists whose immortality means that they can endlessly suffer physically and still survive, die over and over and not die. And so they have both (in different ways) come to view their own bodies with contempt.

The fact that sex is so central to the story is a bit obscured by the fact that Chinese censorship had ramped up while the book was being published in serial form online, so it's much less graphic than the other 2 books.

But Hua Cheng and Xie Lian's kinks are actually really important to who they are - to their history of extreme physical trauma. The book explores the way a healthy and intense sex life repairs the damaged way both of them have been inhabiting (and abusing) their bodies for centuries.

In addition to censorship, it may also be that MXTX wanted HC and XL to keep their privacy - like the way we never do learn what HC's password is, though we know it embarrasses the hell out of XL.

TGCF is the novel that invents the idea of sex pollen, that emphasizes the hero's virginity, and in which spiritual energy (which saves the hero's life and eventually leads to his freedom) is passed through sex. We may not get the blow-by-blow detail of coupling that shows up in the other two books, but in TGCF Hua Cheng literally goes into rut, and passes his time in isolated exile by creating enormous artworks depicting his beloved (at a minimum) nude and (probably) explicitly doing sexy things. Which in a later episode leads to giant statues of both protagonists fucking in the middle of the heavenly realm garden. Not to mention various forms of bondage (shackles, silk scarves, butterfly silk).

And once the two get together, Xie Lian retains his immense spiritual power because he is walking around with Hua Cheng's ejaculate inside him. To quote the Redditor: All the time. ALL THE TIME.

Despite censorship, there are very clear and specific references to rough sex - especially HC using XL aggressively and exhaustingly, with lot of biting, and sex play with pleading and begging. ("Gege! Help me!")

And this leads me to two of the most uncomfortable scenes in TCGF: the Land of Tenders episode, and the 3-part extra story in which HC is (apparently) tremendously amused to watch amnesiac XL wandering around thinking he has just been drugged and violently raped.

I was initially put off by both scenes. The Land of Tenders is incredibly funny right up until the moment when XL realizes that young HC is feeling sexual attraction to him and deals with it by stabbing himself through the guts, pinning himself hideously to the floor. The amnesia story seemed weirdly exploitive to me: HC seizing the chance to revisit the young, naive, virginal XL he originally fell in love with, while ignoring how traumatized XL is. But I trust MXTX's purposes, so let's unpack this a bit.

Let's start with the fact that HC and XL's happy ending includes a lot of sex, and their preferred kind of sex is forceful dom/sub. It's in-character for both in a superficial way:

HC is a dominating personality in every way, who operates through command, power, competence, confidence, and (often) intimidation. All that authority masks a deep sense of unworthiness.

XL is a person who learned long ago to distrust his own self-confidence, to avoid and de-escalate power confrontations, who never ever uses his power if he can use his intelligence instead. XL will always defer and submit if it serves a good purpose. He has neither embarrassment nor ego. He's the guy who publicly announces that he is sexually impotent, who takes a sword to the gut for even the most trivial reasons.

So when the two are alone and have nothing to prove, no agenda beyond pleasing each other and themselves, they go straight for the forceful dom/sub sex play.

It makes sense to connect XL's desire for this kind of sex with his particular history of using his own physical suffering to solve problems and redress his past errors. And however much HC hates that, and works to get XL to stop doing it, he also understands exactly why XL likes that kind of sex.

I don't think I had focused on this fact about TGCF, precisely because MXTX's other books are so much more graphically explicit. But it reinforces one of the major underlying themes of TGCF: the exploration of what it really means to be actually immortal, unable to die, always able to recover from even the most extreme physical harm - which is part of HC's history as well as XL's. Both have immeasurably strong and beautiful bodies, which are a source of terrible suffering and endless punishment for both.

So when they finally get to each other, sex is more than just satisfaction or even romantic communication. It's the very literal way they overcome their own history. For XL it means getting past his feeling of needing to redeem himself endlessly. For HC it's to give real value to his physical self.

I think the Land of Tenders scene is especially important here. That's the scene when HC, age about 15(?) has his big gay awakening, and realizes that he doesn't just worship XL; he desires him. And XL, rather than risk "corrupting" the boy (or himself), instead chooses to stab himself hideously. Instead of sexual fulfillment, we get monstrous torture.

If WWX and LWJ are just incredibly horny and wanton, HC and XL are doing something much more therapeutic: sexual healing, learning to value and take pleasure in their immortal physical selves. (Cue the Marvin Gaye soundtrack.)

Whether or not MXTX would have written more descriptive and detailed sex scenes if she could, the role of sex in the lives of XL and HC is very different from the other two books - where it is mainly a source of great pleasure and emotional bonding.

In other words, XL's original vow of purity and virginity way back when he was about the same age as HC in the Land of Tenders was a terrible mistake, which took 800 years to correct.

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Rainy day in NYC, for some reason leading me into a nostalgic mood, remembering downtown in the 1970s and 1980s, when this city was more marvelous and strange than the Emerald City of Oz, hospitable to artists and freaks and weirdos, pocked with strange

The city has always had magical portals - streets and corners that lead into other worlds. One was west 19th Street in Chelsea, an area now populated by mega-wealthy Wall Streeters who live in full-floor lofts and dine nightly at the wildly overpriced restaurants with named chefs. But then it was a district full of professional photographers' studios; at twilight in winter, if you walked down the side streets between 5th and 6th Avenues, the windows above would sparkle and flair with the flash of studio cameras.

At 35 w 19th Street was The Magickal Childe, the scariest store I've ever been in. It sold witch stuff, and was run by warlocks. There were dried bats and human skulls long before that stuff could be bought on Etsy. It smelled like incense and sealed tombs. In the back, behind thick curtains, was a little room where you could get a palm or a Tarot reading, and where, no doubt, unspeakable things happened after hours.

At 9 west 19th Street was Revolution Books, the communist and socialist bookstore (which still survives in Harlem). They carried books you couldn't easily find elsewhere, obscure collections of Fanon and translations of Ho Chi Minh's poetry. I found the collected writings of Subcommandante Marcos there in the 1990s. There was no Internet to order these things. Last time I looked, the storefront housed an upscale interior decorator's shop. We don't have nearly enough of those in NYC.

There were lots of other bookstores in the area too - used books and used records at Skyline Books a block down, at 13 west 18th Street, was one of many.

Also on 18th Street, at mid-block, was an enormous secondhand clothing store. I wish I could remember the name. In the window on a mannequin was the gold lamé halter dress worn by Marilyn Monroe in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. It belonged to the shop owner, a former Broadway dresser who was a master costumer. A lot of the clothes were former costumes from Broadway and the TV shows, or design samples from the then-thriving Garment District. He had hundreds of wedding dresses. When I wanted to make a huge costume dress for Carnival in Venice in around 1981, I bought a massive wedding dress from him for a few dollars. It was from one of the soap operas - I think One Life to Live. It still has the name of the character sewn into the label inside. He got enthusiastic about my project, so he added enormous padded side panniers and redid the already plunging neckline and filled out the immense puffed sleeves with tissue. We added a black lace train and I sewed small black feathered imitation crows that I bought in the wholesale flower district on 26th Street all over it. I was the Queen of Winter for many years, going to Venice for Carnival. I wish I remembered his name.

"She left me her Necronomicon, number 141 of the first edition of 666 hardcover copies, inscribed by Simon: 'To Greymalkin, As per the missing page of the Nec… ‘Blessed Is, Blessed Was, Blessed Will Be…’' " (https://www.nypress.com/news/the-doom-that-came-to-chelsea-EDNP1020030610306109999)

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TGCF Heaven Official's Blessing - first reread - more things I'm noticing, and how the clues hidden in plain sight work (spoilers)

It's so much fun to discover all the easter eggs. Vols. 1 and 2 are chock full of things you can't possibly remember to connect to events that happen 4 or 5 vols. later. For example, in vol. 2 (Seven Seas edition) at the end of the scene where Hua Cheng beats up Qi Rong in his cave, we learn that Qi Rong is Xie Lian's cousin. This is presented as a big reveal, and it leads us to rethink the whole scene, as we realize that Xie Lian knew all along that the perpetrator of the Gilded Banquet massacre was his own family member. This kind of reveal does two things: 1) It gives us a blueprint for how MXTX is going to unpack her story, to alert us to expect important information to be withheld and then dropped for greatest effect. 2) It distracts us from noticing what *else* might be hidden in plain sight while we're busy unpacking the supposed big reveal. Because there's probably at least one other reveal in there. So, in the cave scene, after we learn about Qi Rong, we get some backstory about him - but it's full of omissions, which we don't realize. We are told that Qi Rong was a big headache for Xie Lian even back in Xianle days. Xie Lian had to fix his messes constantly. For example: "There was even an incident where Xie Lian saved a child, not even 10 years of age, from Qi Rong's clutches. The poor boy had been beaten to a bloody pulp, miserable to the bone." (p. 260) It's only quite a lot later that we get a flashback where we see this event and learn that the child is Hua Cheng, but I did not remember that we are told about it this early. And here it's mentioned as if it's just one more small bit of bad behavior, with no consequences. In reality, it's a pivotal event in the formation of Hua Cheng. Most of that we can put together during the first read. But it's only on this reread that I now see that Qi Rong's vicious attack on a defenseless child is the central crime of his character - the most terrible, indefensible thing, done on a whim. But wait, there's more! Because a bit earlier in the cave scene, when we first see Guzi and his father, here's how he's described: "The one child in the group was probably not even ten years of age." (p. 218) In case we didn't get the parallel to HC, MXTX tells us as clearly as possible. Except we miss it because we don't realize it's important. Guzi is the same age that Hua Cheng was when Xie Lian rescued him from Qi Rong. [Edit: technically, HC is a little older, around 10, but looks much younger because his growth was stunted by maltreatment. The parallel remains intact, though.] So what's even more important is this: later, when Qi Rong adopts Guzi and very gradually becomes a real father to him, he is redeeming his original attack on the child Hua Cheng. And at the very end, If Qi Rong has a hope of regaining corporeal form, it's because he protected Guzi at his own expense, saving the child's life. Or else, even better: when he selflessly protected Guzi, perhaps for the first time in all his centuries as a ghost he stopped being resentful. Perhaps he has dissipated, and is at peace.

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This tattoo is very funny when you know that kerning is the fancy term for the space between letters. Very important in text design to get it right.

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Rereading Heaven Official's Blessing - spoilers here

I love rereading books, especially for the first time, when I see so many connections I missed on the first read. The first time you read a book, you're intent on discovering what happens next, worrying about the characters, and skipping past things you don't fully understand.

The first reread is all about looking at the structure, the patterns, the way things unfold, and learning more about character motivations. MXTX is a master at the meta, and she loves to seed innumerable hints and clues in her books, knowing they will not mean anything until the second reading. Plus, she lies like a rug and leaves out key info. This makes a first reread loads of fun.

Seven Seas edition, volume 1, p. 369:

At the end of the Banyue arc Xie Lian and Hua Cheng are finally alone in Puqi Shrine, and Xie Lian has let HC know that he knows who he is. Things are peaceful, and we finally get a sweet moment of flirting - which we have been hoping for through the whole volume. So is it any wonder that we completely miss the massive foreshadowing?

Xie Lian is unburdening some of his most private thoughts, memories of the past, and feelings about his history to this man he has just met. And HC is coming close to declaring why he is XL's devotee.

After a while, San Lang said quietly, "Something like saving the common people, it really doesn't matter how you do it. But, although brave, it's foolish." "Yeah," Xie Lian agreed. Hua Cheng continued, "Although foolish, it's brave." "..." "Xie Lian grinned. "Thanks." "You're welcome," Hua Cheng said. The two stared at the holey ceiling of Puqi Shrine in amiable silence, and Hua Cheng spoke up again after a while. "You know, Your Highness, we've only known each other for a few days. Is it all right for you to say so much to me?" "Well," Xie Lian huffed, "what's the problem? Whatever. Those who have known each other for decades can become strangers in a day. We met by chance, and we may part by chance. If we like each other, then we shall continue to meet; if we don't, then we shall part. At the end of the day, there's no banquet in the world that doesn't come to an end."

And now vol. 8, p. 118:

Xie Lian could no longer hold back the tears in his eyes, and they began to pour. As if he were hanging on to the last thread of his life, he pleaded, "You said ... you would never leave me." But Hua Cheng replied, "There is no banquet in this world that doesn't come to an end."

MXTX, you absolute fucking sadist.

The entirety of Xie Lian's little lighthearted comment, "Those who have known each other for decades can become strangers in a day. We met by chance, and we may part by chance" is the whole backstory of who HC is and is the absolutely most incorrect thing XL has ever said.

The space between vol. 1 and vol. 8 is so vast that there's no way to remember that HC is quoting XL when he is dying, which means that MXTX has built the necessity to reread into the book.

I'm also continuing to notice how often Hua Cheng is described as smiling, laughing, chuckling, snickering. If Xie Lian ever should happen to wonder whether he should laugh or cry, Hua Cheng has the answer.

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Sticking this here so I can find it again if I ever get bored with the Wang Yibo/Xiao Zhan photoshoot for Bazaar.

201012 | MEN’S HEALTH WEIBO

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you know what made me fall in love with lan wangji ? that he didnt spend the thirteen years he lost his love in mourning. that he didnt spend it in seclusion, he didnt grow angry or cold at the world, didnt burn it down. he did not rely on the impossible, a miracle, lose his mind to the motion that he could get his beloved back.

no. instead, lan wangji moved on. he moved on in a way that honoured his love, that would never love him back. he learnt from his mistakes, of letting his rules hold him back, of not standing up for what is right, in favour of the righteous path. he grows from a gentle boy with a big heart and good intentions, who could never properly convey his love to wei wuxian, whose want for righteousness was in conflict with the righteousness ingrained into him. who still stood up for wei wuxian in front of all the sects. the boy, who grows into a still gentle man, goodness still untouched by the world around him, who can properly differentiate between right and wrong, knows when what is right is against his rules, to chose what is right. who goes where the chaos goes, instead of where the glory is.

hanguang-jun does not spend those thirteen years waiting. instead, he takes in a boy who has been damned for being born impoverished, with the wrong surname. he teaches the new generation, with a kind yet firm hand, teaches them to be open minded. honors the laughing boy in cloud recess, who made his shufu lose his composure with his unorthodox ideas. he protects the juniors, lets them have the opportunity grow gentle and kind, good. he is a beacon of light to the common people, he does not forget them. he remembers the boy, who he will belong to forever, who will never be his, and honors his life.

lan zhan had no expectation of wei ying coming back. and that is why he treasures his second chance, so. because he did not think it was his right for his love to come back to him, loving and sweet, in his arms. he is no longer a boy, naive and unknowingly letting the cultivation world think he hates his beloved.

and even if yiling laozu had never returned, hanguang-jun would still live. he would never have forgotten the man who lost his entire life to protect the innocent, and would still raise juniors, see his son married, hold his grandchildren.

he would have lived up to his memory with ever breath he drew - by living free of regrets, wants or envies.

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you ever heard a lightning fucking scream?

youre about to

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John Astin and Carolyn Jones - The Addams Family (1964)

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richard siken posted this coloring worksheet today and i think it has some pretty good questions for engaging with poetry. and also deep sea fish :)

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Nice lil valentine

Not relevant to anything I usually post here, but there was a nice lil special election in New York yesterday, and the Republican Party got its ass kicked, as it very well deserved. Not unexpected, but still satisfying. This will be helpful in getting Ukraine funding passed, among other good things. Back to Cdramas, gender ambiguity, critical theory, rescue kitties, and silly memes.

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Heaven Official's Blessing / TGCF: He Xuan and his family

This just landed in my brain, a little late. I was rereading the Lantern Riddles extra story, which is my favorite of the TGCF extras for many reasons. I finally focused on the following details:

1) We don't know where the scene occurs when XL is first learning how to live abjectly as a rag-and-bone man. He is wandering the mortal world, far from home.

2) The small street stall where he stops is owned by a family named He. It is humble but not poor. The family is a portrait of a healthy, decent, loving, functional family - not particularly fortunate in material ways, but happy.

3) There is a father and mother, a young daughter, and a waitress who is attractive and friendly, clearly close to the family. There is also an older son, who is awaited but is late.

4) I guess I was paying attention to other things, so I didn't notice til now that this is He Xuan's family in the days before Shi Wudu stole his good fortune and annihilated all of them. The waitress is, I think, the fiancée. Not only that, but we may be seeing the very day when this happened - He Xuan is expected home, but something has delayed him.

Twist the knife, MXTX.

5) What's more, this entire scene is XL's memory: He's walking through Ghost City with HC during the lantern festival, when the sight of yuanxiao dumplings triggers the recollection. What makes him think of that particular day? He has passed through 800 annual Shangyuan holidays. Maybe this was the first one when he realized that he had no family and was alone in the world.

But XL now also knows the whole backstory of what happened to Blackwater and his family. So he's remembering not only his own deep, ancient trauma, but also a pivotal moment in the bigger history. He's meditating on how precious family is, and perhaps feeling still that some losses can't be repaired. So he goes into a fugue state, which HC notices, and figures out.

**

Edit

When I first read the story, I noticed that the surname was He but I think I assumed it was a common name. MXTX often does a trick where she mentions some important piece of info in passing, without emphasis and surrounded by more dramatic info that you focus on. So we're looking at Xie Lian's sad life, and wondering exactly when this scene is, and where. And then the whole thing is dropped and we're suddenly in the the middle of a happy little Ghost City story. When I reread the story, I realized that MXTX would not give us the name of the food stall - and it would not be the same as He Xuan's name - if it weren't meaningful. Like, we never learn the name of the village chief at Puqi, for example. So I wondered what the two halves of the story had in common - why they were put together.

So then I found the place where He Xuan describes the deaths of his family members and it all fit.

One reason I especially like this story is the way MXTX riffs on the theme of "family" from multiple facets, bringing together several different examples of families from different parts of the novel - He Xuan's happy family, unjustly destroyed; Xie Lian's less happy childhood as an overprivileged only child of somewhat dysfunctional parents (whom he nevertheless loved and misses); and finally, the silly but sweet found family of all the little ghosts of Ghost City, who adore their Chengzhu and his Gege. Whether it was the little ghosts or HC himself who devised the riddle "My Husband Hua Cheng," the message is clear: Xie Lian has his found family.

The theme of the Shangyuan festival is "family reunions." That's also the theme of the story. Xie Lian is acknowledging that he and Blackwater will never reunite with their families, but unlike Blackwater, Xie Lian has not devoted himself to bitterness* and revenge, so he earns a new family.

--

*Bitterness being the opposite of sweetness - the flavor he had lost the ability to enjoy until he married Hua Cheng.

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One of the big differences I've noticed from getting into Chinese dramas is how spoiled you get from gifsets of shows you've never watched. You see a gifset from an American show of one person cradled in another person's arms, pierced with multiple arrows and spitting blood, and suddenly you've been spoiled for a major character death. You see the same thing in a Chinese drama and you've gained a net zero information wise.