#a lot of this wasnt necessary but i wanted to add context cause i think a lot of ppl don't know that

[layzeal]

Hi! I have a mdzs question and I figure you are most likely to know the answer. In the scene where wwx and lwj are interrogating nhs about the stone castles, wwx mentions that the Nie's method of cultivation seems to deviate from the standard cultivation path. In the 7seas English edition, he says that it's "hitting a bit close to the demonic cultivation path." My question is, does he actually refer to it as "demonic cultivation"? It does make more sense in this context, but I know 7seas has a habit of mistranslating ghostly cultivation to demonic cultivation. Thank you very much for your time reading this!

Hi!! Sorry for the delay in replying. So, short answer is YES, he does refer to "demonic cultivation" (魔歪道 as written in the text), but he is not comparing it to his own cultivation (ghost cultivation, 鬼道).

Now, every xianxia novel will have its own worldbuilding and set of rules, even if they're all taking inspiration from existing tropes. Guidao, for example, while in MDZS is considered immoral by some, it still does not harm or make use of living human souls and lives, and so in MDZS's setting it is not considered actual modao (though whether or not one thinks it's moral or ethical or whatever it doesn't matter here!! we're just talking semantics), meanwhile in Liu Yao by Priest, ghost cultivation (as written there) is not only considered a branch of modao, but is seen as THE most evil and immoral type you could possibly use, because not only you're using human souls, you're imprisoning and enslaving them even after death.

@qourmet actually mentioned on twt a while ago that one close example of real demonic cultivation you can think of in MDZS are the mind-controlling nails they put into Song Land and Wen Ning, though even that's questionable considering they weren't actual alive. Xue Yang and JGY's human experiments (ie. living corpses) also come close. So in A GENERAL SENSE demonic cultivation refers to anything that makes use of and harms living humans in order to empower the cultivator, either by stealing the victim's cultivation/spiritual power, controlling them, forcing them to do things against their will, etc etc etccccccc

This is all just context to understand why WWX makes the little accusation that he did

(ch 6, 7seas)

so you can see there's nothing actually wrong with the translation in this part itself, because in this instance, "demonic cultivation" (or demonic crooked path, as directly translated) is actually being said (as it was in many other instances, like the prologue chapter where ppl talk abt wwx's death, or when jc finds the leaf doll on jin ling's back)

the only problem is that in later parts of the story, 鬼道, which is an entirely different term, is given the same translation as the former, which may cause confusion, and was a mistake also present in the original ExR translation that we all hoped would be fixed in an official one (but didn't </3). whether or not guidao counts as demonic cultivation or is evil or whatever doesn't matter here, but i only wish that the different terms had been translated as different words, so the reader could come to their own conclusion on the matter by themselves

so yeah! hope that was helpful

[julystorms]

i remember you saying erwin wasnt real guilty about the deaths of his comrades so i thought you might find his character monologue relevant as most of what he talks about is him feeling guitly and him naming the comrades who have lost their lifes

Thanks! 

YMMV ETC AND SO ON: THIS IS MY INTERPRETATION OF ERWIN’S CHARACTER PLEASE READ AT YOUR OWN RISK.

I wouldn’t say he doesn’t feel guilty at all, or even that he doesn’t feel guilt on a general level because he basically tells us this himself:

But IMO what we’re meant to see in this scene is that his guilt comes second to his goals. Always. The focal point of the conversation isn’t: “Wow I feel shitty about what’s happened to these people who I’ve sent to their deaths” so much as, “HOLY SHIT WE ARE SO CLOSE TO THE TRUTH man I hope I can pay back my debt later.”

This gets a tad long so please read under the cut.

First, I want everyone to look at the definition:

I highlighted the two that mattered here, but a feeling of guilt is feeling responsible for a specified wrongdoing; in this case, that is sending people to their deaths.

Erwin definitely feels badly about what he’s done; there’s a lot in the canon that would point to that statement. For example, the above panels. See also: shortly before his death, the corpse pile and ghostly images surrounding him. He feels personally responsible for those people’s deaths.

What the diehard Erwin stans tend to forget about (selectively, I might add) is that the guilt Erwin feels doesn’t exist in a vacuum. Context is incredibly important to understanding his character.

In the end Erwin admits he wouldn’t have done anything differently. Even here, in the above scene, Levi is horrified to see that Erwin’s reaction to this revelation isn’t fear or horror or even some form of self-loathing--not just for sending people to their deaths, but for sending people to their deaths to fight against and kill other people. We might simply see this as war, but these characters have no real concept of war considering how their world is arranged for them. Anyway, rather than showing some kind of negative emotion at this reveal, Erwin gives us a slasher smile. He’s so close to his goal of learning the truth. This is a huge step toward that goal. His smile makes sense to us, the reader, because we later learn what his goal is and what has pushed him toward it. Levi doesn’t know. Erwin’s reaction is completely out of the blue; it’s kind of disgusting in context. 

Erwin is now a step closer to the truth. But that knowledge, and further knowledge...was acquired at a steep price.

And he knows that it will continue to come at the price of hundreds more lives. That is a price he’s willing to pay. Other people’s lives are a price he is willing to pay. And I’m not saying this from a narrative standpoint: this is something he says and feels himself. His goals are ALWAYS #1 to him. Even to the detriment of others and the loss of human life.

There’s no remorse, no regret. Look at him talking about paying the debt back in the afterlife, like these soldiers and his pals who died for him did him a solid by giving up their lives--like they borrowed his car hauler or shoveled snow off his sidewalk once instead of giving their lives for a cause they believed in--one that wasn’t exactly the cause Erwin is passionate about/fighting for.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I think Erwin is much more complex than that. I think he’s a great character, probably one of the best Isayama has given us. Think about his history, about how his goals--both to prove his father’s theory and to prove that he didn’t get him killed for nothing--consumed him, led him to do what he did to his father, almost, but this time purposefully, knowingly, to other people--people he was in a position of power over.

I don’t think Erwin is an irredeemable asshole. I don’t think he’s a villain. But I do think he’s manipulative and lacks empathy. He had to become that way, though. He had to, if he was ever going to learn anything. That was worth it to him. He wouldn’t do it differently. That doesn’t make him a selfless li’l angel saint of a man. It just makes him interesting. 

Look: Erwin is a tragic character, but it’s not because of his guilt, not because he manipulated people into joining a cause that isn’t entirely the one they believed they were fighting for. Erwin’s place as a tragic character has nothing to do with his death, nothing to do with the serumbowl, nothing to do with losing his arm or his fighting spirit or casting aside some of his humanity. 

Erwin is ambitious to an extreme degree.

And what makes him tragic is that he didn’t get that way all on his own. There was a catalyst. That catalyst was a mistake, made not by just Erwin, but by his father as well. The tragedy is that if Mr. Smith hadn’t told his son what he thought, if he’d just lied to him, if he’d tamped down the curiosity Erwin displayed about understanding the truth behind the discrepancies in the history books, Erwin might have ended up a very different person.

The tragedy is that one man sitting down to tell his son the truth as he suspected it to be changed the course of a lot of people’s lives. Some for better, some for worse. It’s hard to imagine the kind of person Erwin would have been if his father hadn’t died because of him. It really makes you think.

(I do think he’d have still been ambitious and motivated but I think in many ways he makes a decent parallel to Grisha who fandom views as a much worse person despite the two of them being scarily similar.)

But like I said, his guilt is guilt without remorse. He admits to his guilt, to feeling badly, but he’s saying that with every intention of continuing on with it. No regrets. It was worth it to him. Which some people hate because they think it makes him a giant asshole, but I think makes him interesting as a character. He’s a guy whose goals just happen to line up with the plot of the story (not the characters, at least not at first). He’s sacrificing lives for his own goals but those goals aren’t too far removed from what we as readers want to know about the world these characters live in; that makes it forgivable for a lot of readers. But think about the characters who don’t have that goal, about the people who exist in the world who are fighting for humanity’s sake who don’t realize what Erwin is up to, who just want to fight for what they already have instead of something more. Man, it’s deliciously complex and terrible and I LOVE IT. We rarely get characters like Erwin--characters who are “good guys” literally ONLY by virtue of their selfish goals aligning in part with that of the main characters/readers. 

I don’t want anyone to think I hate Erwin. I find him a fascinating character. He’s complex in the best of ways. I don’t see him as a selfless saint, as a virtuous man, as especially considerate or caring of other people. I see him as an ambitious and motivated man who will accomplish his goals by any means necessary, even if those means get other people killed--even if deep down he doesn’t like what those means have to be.

And the best part about Erwin’s character is that his goals were selfish because he couldn’t possibly have known the extent of what we, the readers, now know about the world he lived in. Levi’s comment in the above scene about the cost not being worth it... I mean, Levi’s right, but what we know now is that the fight was going to come to Paradis eventually, anyway, and if humanity had continued to cover in the walls as Levi wanted to do, they’d be completely boned. So Erwin sacrificed a lot of lives selfishly, never knowing if doing so would amount to anything, never knowing if people were dying for fuck-all...

But in the end perhaps it wasn’t all for nothing--even Erwin himself died so that the truth was discovered.

See, people want to say Erwin was selfless in the end by giving up his dream, but really I feel his dream was that the truth BE DISCOVERED and yeah, it would have been nice to see it for himself, to discover it for himself personally, but that wasn’t the goal. The goal was that everyone would know it. And in leading that charge he tried to ensure that at least a few people would learn it and share it--and expose the lies and bullshit that he probably didn’t understand fully but knew had to be going on/hoped would be uncovered. ‘Cause seeing the goal for himself wouldn’t mean a goddamn thing if he couldn’t return to his people to share it. In dying, other people would have a higher chance of being able to take it back. 

So that catalyst led a hell of a lot of people to their deaths--including Erwin himself. It’s interesting to think about. This is why Erwin in an AU never ever feels quite right to me. He’s ambitious as hell but there needs to be a catalyst of some kind to make him as ruthless and remorseless as he is in the canon; his situation made him that way. Take it away and he’s just an ambitious businessman or something doing hardcore negotiations. 

Anyway, the TL;DR here is: Erwin feels guilty; I would never dispute that. But he lacks remorse because he’s incapable of regretting what he’s done. I guess you could choose to hate him over that, but honestly it’s rare that we get interesting characters like Erwin--someone selfish and ambitious and motivated with a goal in mind that requires a lot of sacrifices, someone ruthless and yet SMART enough to do what it takes to get to a place where he can pursue the knowledge he seeks. Like damn. I don’t like what he’s done any more than I like what other similar characters have done, and I acknowledge that the sacrifices of others were made meaningful by sheer luck, but it doesn’t make the overall picture any less fascinating to me.