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mxtxfanatic · 2 years ago

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Alright mxtx fandoms, let’s discuss class distinctions. I see a lot of people who discuss the theme of classism in mxtx works by collapsing all class groups into two categories: the ultra rich upper class who make all the rules and the poverty-stricken lower class who are oppressed by them. However, this is rarely the case in her books. The prime examples I can think of are in tgcf and mdzs.

In mdzs, a lot of people claim that Wei Wuxian and Jin Guangyao come from “similar backgrounds,” but this is most definitely not the case. Yes, Jin Guangyao went unclaimed by his father until later into his adulthood after his mother’s death, but Meng Yao did not grow up poor. Meng Shi was a famed courtesan with high-profile clients before she had her son, and having Meng Yao was a plan for her to be made into a mistress or second wife (which ultimately failed). Sisi was almost turned into a second wife, which is what caused her to be attacked and ruined her looks. Sex workers operated in a weird social space in ancient history where they existed as an industry, but class distinctions between different kinds of sex work still existed/exists and Meng Shi was definitely not on the low end of the scale. Even if Jin Guangyao had never been acknowledged by his father, he still found an honest job as a bookkeeper before meeting Lan Xichen. Meanwhile, Wei Wuxian was a street orphan with no family, money, status, who barely remembered his name, and definitely no benefit of an education due to how young he was orphaned, who was eventually taken in as the companion servant to a local lord-equivalent’s son. Neither of these characters started off as gentry, but they were not of the same class growing up.

In tgcf, Mu Qing is touted as a “poor”/working-class character by a large portion of the fandom, but… there’s no real evidence that he is? I mean, I have no doubt that, given the circumstances of his father’s death and his mother’s eventual disability, he was in poverty at some point, and this seems to be corroborated within the narrative by the fact that he is well-known and loved by the street orphans in the city. However, you cannot tell me that the personal servant to the crown (and only) prince to an entire kingdom is surviving off poverty wages. You’d be better-served making an argument to me about Anne Boleyn being an accurate historical representation of English serfs. Hong Hong’er, actual child living in poverty, is notably set apart from Mu Qing: from his fraying, patched clothes to his dirty hands to Mu Qing’s unwillingness to touch him… Mu Qing is set apart from the upper crust because 1) he is not of nobility but, more importantly, 2) his father was a criminal publicly executed for treason. And #2 is particularly damning for Mu Qing’s status amongst the nobility because Feng Xin, also not from a noble family, is (conditionally) accepted amongst the same elite snobs in a way Mu Qing is not (which makes sense since why would a noble like the son of a man who may have conspired against their rule?). Interesting to note, though, that the only time Mu Qing is unquestionably included in the array of the elite is when Hong Hong’er is being ostracized by the same group (minus Xie Lian). So while Hua Cheng and Mu Qing both had childhoods outside the nobility, Mu Qing was not anywhere near the level of poverty Hua Cheng had to live through.

I feel like svsss escapes this sort of broad-stroke application of class status to characters because most characters really do either fall into one of the two groups or we are not given background information on them at all. We know that Shen Jiu and Yue Qingyuan were child slaves, with the former being bought by a cruel master and the latter being able to escape and join a sect. We know that Luo Binghe, while not a child slave, was a child servant working with his adoptive mother under cruel masters who were directly the cause of his mother’s death. Slight distinction, but functionally not any different in their effects and outcomes. Shen Yuan is said to come from a wealthy family in his world, and Liu Qingge and Liu Mingyan do, as well. All the major demon characters are nobility. The only character we see who does not fit into this distinct divide is Shang Qinghua, but his background only becomes fleshed-out in the extras. Not to say that classism isn’t also a theme, but it’s function is used differently here than in the other two novels (especially since in svsss, we are working with parallels feeding into cycles of abuse and how to break said cycles rather than recreating them into infinity).

So with all this said, I think it may actually help discussions of the classism theme within these different mxtx fandoms to acknowledge and take into account the nuances within the class positions that these characters occupy. Why is it that the functionally middle-class characters, after gaining a crumb of acceptance from the elites, tend to turn against those lower on the rung? How do characters of the same background and class status interact with others of differing status, and what makes their reactions different from each other despite being raised under similar conditions? What is mxtx trying to say about class as a social or even moral divider by adding all these class nuances or (with svsss) lack thereof into her various narratives?

#mdzs #svsss #tgcf #human metas mxtx #just thinking out loud #i may have more to say after I officially finish tgcf again #but this is where I’m at

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jiangwanyinscatmom · 2 years ago

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Here's hoping thus doesn't disappear into the void.

What are your thoughts on how MXTX essentially fetishizes M/M relationship in MDZS as well as glorifies rape in its portrayal of Wangxian's relationship?

I've seen takes on how their sexual relationship is unhealthy but I feel like I'm missing a puzzle piece here?

You know, anon, I doubt this is in good faith given what I just posted. And you also harassed me with two other similarly worded anons. But fine, I'l answer.

Let me reiterate, this argument is bullshit as well as infantilizing adult queers. As if those of us that had lived within the actual space when we weren't allowed to breath the words gay or lesbian in a serious space. Because well minded people aren't gay, it's shameful. Further more, gay people even having SEX and KINKS while out, was debased. The only good queers were the ones that were celibate and their sex lives are none existent, because it was shameful to say you were interested in sex.

How dare a work explore a man's self-understanding. How dare Wei Wuxian be ignorant of gay relationships in a predominantly heterosexual world. How dare a gay man, in a heavily misogynistic world realize this, play into this, and be compulsive heterosexual for his own safety.

A good gay can't like roleplay non-consent, because that's buying into the patriarchy of men. Kink, is bad, because we're told to be ashamed of being sexually explorative with like minded gays, because it's "bad". Because we're not mature enough to actually understand what's for our own good. Like Wei Wuxian, we can't be individualistic. BDSM or in that scope of sexual exploration is dirty and bad for our health actually. Because I am uncomfortable, with a sexual kink, that is a common part of actual sexual marriage play, it's bad. If you are both willing to explore that kink, it's still bad, because you are now buying into the stereotypes of what's expected of us. Having a dirty dream about a school day turned to sex, is actually non-consensual now, because there isn't a script to follow like we've been told by other well-meaning queers who have told us what sex is ACTUALLY like. Reminds you of all that porn exploitation we're supposed to achieve a level of prowess to, but also, condemn that because we're actually better than that heterosexual sex we are forced to see casually in media. We're more enlightened! If I'm supposed to not be an individualistic gay, I have to worry about what others think of my sexuality that is meant to be private! I can't explore it comfortably with a significant other, because good god, what will the public think if they knew what I did in my marriage?

How dare a woman, write for men, in our world were cisgender heterosexual men are already the expectation of achievement, and be so non-traditional, obviously, this is just fetishized and glorification. We are not allowed to explore deeper sex consensually ever, because what would people think about me if I enjoy that?

#mdzs #mo dao zu shi #wangxian

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poorlittleyaoyao · 1 year ago

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I hate defending wwx, he has a lot of fans! But, in the iron extra wwx and jl were talking about the jin sect and wwx was asking how things were going. jl said that he wanted to help people (just how jgy did!) even if the elders didn't respect him enough. And wwx said something like :why don't you ask jc? And jl was like :"he is not a jin". The antis interpret it as him cutting his relationship with jc, but no, jl is trying to protect jc! jc had already dirtied his reputation going around with Zidian at hand to ensure jl's position, jl doesn't want to put a huge x behind his uncle back! And wwx hit jl saying "your uncle would be even sadder if you cut him off". You shouldn't hit kid! But, wwx there is showing growth! He is saying to us and jl that cutting jc off helping him, is going to hurt jc! jl needs to lean on his uncle for help! It's wwx saying that he has thought about the past and maybe he is a little sorry about how he didn't let jc help him!

Again, hitting kids is WRONG. But, mdzs isn't about people doing right things or at least, doing things in the best way.

Also yes jl shows still fear when lwj's name is made. When jl was making a fuss after being hit (because that is embarrassing, and not even his uncle has hit him before!), wwx says : do you want me to call lz? And jl stops. He fears lwj as a kid who was silenced in the past lol. Also, even ljy shows fear of lz sometime, when he says something he shouldn't say and he fears punishment. Maybe we shouldn't take it too seriously, idk what was mxtx editorial intentions. Still, I hope people don't take mdzs as a book about healthy parenting!

(Since it has been MANY hours since this Ask was sent, the extra in question is the one described in the post here.)

Ohhh, that is much much better in that context! It does show growth for WWX, and I like the full circle of going from "lmao why are you calling your uncle for help?" at their first meeting to "why AREN'T you calling your uncle for help?" at this point. (Also, going "well OBVIOUSLY you should do [thing I should also do but Will Not Do Under Any Circumstances], any reasonable person would!" is just. peak Yunmeng Shuangjie behavior.) It's also another instance of Jin Ling, age 13, fiercely deciding that it's his job to protect his uncle, just as he does when he tries to keep Wangxian from barging in to JGY's quarters early in the novel.

Still side-eyeing him threatening JL with LWJ yet again, though. In the other situation (situations plural?) earlier in the story, WWX wants/needs JL to immediately cease whatever behavior he's doing, so an abrupt threat to summon LWJ is, while not ideal, at least going to accomplish his goal. Here, JL isn't actually doing anything wrong. He's not breaking any rules. If anything, he's doing exactly what is socially expected of him, and is acting in a way that is politically sound (even though WWX is right that JC would want to know and help). "Stop pursuing your altruistic political goals that involve nobody but your clan in a way I don't like or else my scary boyfriend from a whole other sect will punish you!" is. Wild. Especially since JL as a whole entire sect leader is the highest-ranking person present!

#Wangxian in teacher mode is my favorite thing about them so it killllllllls me when they're tools to JL #I think LJY being afraid of punishment is whatever #he adores and admires LWJ so it's not that he's afraid of HIM; it's that he's afraid of the punishment or of disappointing Hanguang-jun #which is normal! because LWJ is his teacher! he's an authority figure directly responsible for LJY #he and JL don't have that relationship and LWJ isn't technically able to punish him the same way JC would #JL is just afraid of him personally

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qiu-yan · 3 months ago

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you raise a really interesting point, and i'm adding some tags from other people on this post because i think they're relevant to the discussion as well:

#this is what's so frustrating about mdzs#the world is not idealistic it's deliberately at odds with wwx and that's a major thing ok i get it yes#and i understand there is value in the ultimately futile but principled actions wei wuxian takes in the story#but the story acts as if there is not also value in the actions taken by jin guangyao and jiang cheng#just as much if not more#just as much good intentioned as wwx's actions but they make sense in the world they're given the constraints put on them#and that makes them far more *effective* which... *should* make them more valuable or at least as valuable as wei wuxian's actions#jin guangyao and jiang cheng's actions demonstrably make the world better and save people's lives#wei wuxian's actions demonstrably make the world worse and get people killed#wei wuxian isn't *wrong* but he's not the moral paragon he's portrayed as#and other people's righteousness is demonstrably more valuable to the society they live in#and wei wuxian's ultimate answer to this disconnect is just to leave. which... isn't exactly a bad choice for him#(other than also avoiding his own personal problems which... kind of is a bad choice)#but society still needs people who *can* do meaningful things and help people and make a difference#and in mdzs those people are not valued#wwx himself plays a big part in taking down the person doing the most in a meaningful way and we're left with the idea that things will not#fall apart and the guy driven solely by revenge who hates hard work will be able to do an even halfway decent job of what the last guy did#but the society is still not idealistic! It punished Wei Wuxian and could only be successfully navigated by these “lesser” characters!#it's clear they're all fucked but the story is over so we can accept somehow the impossible will happen this time#this time things will work out promise#but that's not where the evidence leads tags via @jin-zixun

#mdzs#wei wuxian#this is why I’m a far bigger fan of the side characters in mdzs#this is an excellent analysis of wwx and the question of morality#it also reminds me that I heavily dislike people that prioritize ‘taking the high road’#over doing what’s best for people in the long run#feels like a priority of ego over sense#I trust my life far more with the pragmatic characters in mxtx novels than the idealists tags via @alternative27angel

these are excellent tags, and they put into words a lot of thoughts i've had about both MDZS and the sort of heavily-idealistic philosophy MDZS and narratives like it espouse. i myself follow utilitarian moral ethics - something that will show in the haterposting below the cut - so i find MDZS's almost-insistence that the consequences of wei wuxian's actions don't actually matter to be frustrating.

as a utilitarian, i find the idea of "moral selfishness" here particularly interesting: that adhering to one's own moral principles despite the consequences to other people can be called selfish, because in doing so you prove that you're willing to allow others to suffer in order to avoid getting your own hands dirty. and unfortunately.....it does seem entirely true that MDZS lionizes the people who do this, and by contrast demonizes the people who instead put harm reduction above moral purity.

my own Extreme Hater Thoughts below the cut:

everything above describes something i think a lot of people take issue with in regards to MDZS, which is the sense that (as jin-zixun says) the story takes the positive consequences brought about by the decisions of more pragmatic characters for granted. the relatively peaceful backdrop against which the post-timeskip half of the plot happens was only made possible through the morally questionable decisions of these pragmatic characters, and yet the story seems like it's at once taking these positive consequences for granted and criticizing the decisions that even made these positive consequences possible to begin with.

i do actually quite like the tragedy of the pre-timeskip half of the plot, because it raises difficult moral questions and doesn't allow the protagonist to get away with his careless idealism without incurring consequences. that wei wuxian fucks around and then finds out makes the pre-timeskip half of MDZS more thoughtful than the majority of classic-heroism stories out there. the post-timeskip half of the story, though...seems to largely drop these interesting moral questions. instead, it just reads as one massive victory lap for wei wuxian.

central to this perception, and central to everyone's complaints, is as whumpbby and alternative27angel said - the story isn't acknowledging that, while admirable in a virtue-ethics sort of sense, [adhering to your principles at all cost] is also at once a selfish decision and a privilege.

first, adhering to your principles at all cost is also a selfish decision. you guys are completely correct to say that prioritizing your own personal moral values over actual consequences is, in a sense, prioritizing your own ego above the actual wellbeing of other people.

a while ago, i read this passage from this article on deontological ethics:

At the heart of agent-centered [deontological] theories (with their agent-relative reasons) is the idea of agency. The moral plausibility of agent-centered theories is rooted here. The idea is that morality is intensely personal, in the sense that we are each enjoined to keep our own moral house in order. Our categorical obligations are not to focus on how our actions cause or enable other agents to do evil; the focus of our categorical obligations is to keep our own agency free of moral taint.

this is a very "walk away from omelas" kind of moral framework. this is also the framework that wei wuxian, lan wangji, and MDZS itself follow: their focus is less on the concrete consequences of their actions for themselves and other people, and moreso on living without regrets. even if the results are ultimately not what you wished for, so long as you can say that "i strove to live by my ideals, and if i were put in the same situation again i would still choose to live by those ideals," then you can say that you don't regret anything.

from my point of view, this is also a very egotistical way of thinking. from a utilitarian's point of view (which tbf is addressed in the article later on), someone who thinks this way is less concerned with what happens to other people and more concerned with keeping their own hands clean. they are less concerned with the lives of other human beings and more concerned with keeping their own conscience undirtied. they are entirely able to accept the suffering of other people, so long as, at the end of the day, they can still look into the mirror and go "well, at least i've personally done nothing to feel guilty about."

let's consider the trolley problem. let's say that the person at the lever refuses to pull the lever, because he is morally opposed to killing at all costs, and because pulling the lever would entail killing the one person on the second track. now consider the number of people on the first track, who get run over and die as a result of this decision. for what minimum positive integer n of people on the first track does this individual's choice stop being morally admirable and start being selfish instead? five people? one hundred people? one million people? one billion people? at what point should the consequences for other people begin to outweigh the priority of you yourself not directly committing any moral violations?

now let's return to MDZS and consider another hypothetical. let's consider the case where, after wei wuxian liberated the qiongqi pass labor camp, jiang cheng did have yunmeng jiang fully stand by wei wuxian. the most likely outcome here is that lanling jin sees this as a declaration of war by yunmeng jiang, and that the fear-of-wei-wuxian-driven stalemate that follows eventually breaks into a war between yunmeng jiang and the three other great sects as allied by the venerated triad, with almost all of the minor sects standing with the lan, the nie, and the jin. such a situation would almost inevitably result in the complete annihilation of not just wei wuxian and the wen remnants, but also jiang cheng, jiang yanli, and yunmeng jiang as well. since this is all fairly obvious to anyone with a lick of political sense, if jiang cheng still chose to stand by wei wuxian anyways, he would be doing so while knowing full well that his decision entails the highly likely destruction of both yunmeng jiang and the wen remnants. he would truly be attempting the impossible.

in such a scenario, imagine that you are a yunmeng jiang disciple. during the sunshot campaign, you went to war for sect leader jiang, and now sect leader jiang's decisions have brought another annihilation upon yourself and your loved ones - an annihilation whose high risk he knew about in advance, and yet chose anyways. in such a situation, if sect leader jiang then told you "i was trying to protect my martial brother," or "i had a moral obligation to help the wen remnants," or "even if it ends in failure, what matters is that i attempt the impossible, what matter is that i try to live up to my moral principles,"what would you say? what would sect leader jiang's moral principles mean to you - abstract moral principles, given that no one survived the situation in the end? nothing. you would look at him and all of his moral righteousness, and you would say: fuck your moral obligations. you had an obligation to us as well, and you failed it. your decision to protect your own moral conscience above our lives was, at the end of the day, selfish.

it's not that wei wuxian doesn't care about consequences at all. he does care. he would vastly prefer for his actions to help other people than to end up harming him. however, wei wuxian's continued disregard of consequences leads me to conclude that he cares less about consequences than he does the inherent morality of actions. to him, actions are right or wrong in of themselves, and consequences are moreso afterthoughts to be dealt with afterwards. i wouldn't straight-up call him selfish for this, but to me, it does seem like what matters to him is less [how will my actions affect myself and other people] and moreso [how will my actions adhere to my own moral principles].

meanwhile, i feel like MDZS the narrative cares even less about consequences than wei wuxian himself. wei wuxian cannot forgive himself for some of the negative consequences his actions brought about (namely, the death of jiang yanli), but the MDZS narrative is all too willing to forgive him in his place. thus, wei wuxian himself would probably not agree with MDZS's central thesis on him: namely, that he is ultimately a morally ideal individual.

MDZS the narrative can only argue the thesis of "wei wuxian is morally ideal" because it cares so little about consequences. now, one may argue that, when it comes to assessing an individual's moral character, one should look at not the consequences of their actions, but rather their intent. certainly, utilitarian moral frameworks cannot be used to judge one's moral character, only one's actions; as mill says, what matters more when judging an individual's moral character and moral culpability is their intent. moreover, in my view, utilitarianism is not a moral framework that should be used to assess the entire moral characters of individuals at all. however, even in moral frameworks that do assess entire moral characters as opposed to just actions, a certain level of consideration must still be given to practical wisdom (phronesis, according to aristotle). from a virtue-ethics point of view, in order for someone to be morally ideal, they need both the natural, instinctual inclination to do good, and also the practical wisdom to analyze situations and figure out how to actually achieve that good. wei wuxian has the first one in abundance....but the consequences of his actions indicates that he does not have the second.

therefore, the fact that MDZS the narrative nonetheless posits that wei wuxian is morally ideal indicates to me that the MDZS narrative simply does not put much weight on consequences. instead, intent and remaining morally pure matter far more. this is why i think that the MDZS narrative takes the positive consequences the more pragmatic characters brought about for granted and then turns around and criticizes them. when you don't give due moral weight to consequences and instead focus on just heroic intentions and adherence to abstract moral principles, of course those who put their own moral purity above real-life harm reduction are going to come out looking better.

i think that, if one is speaking uncharitably (as i have been doing in this hater rant), the difference between [remaining morally pure at all costs] and [harm reduction achieved through compromise] can be referred to as "heroic egoism." and to go on a bit of a tangent, this sort of "heroic egoism," to me, is also the difference between "going where the chaos is" and the watchtower project. "going where the chaos is" feels good on a personal level - you yourself are going out there and saving people's lives, so you yourself will feel more heroic because you can look the person you just saved in the eye and see their gratitude. but you are one individual. the number of people you are able to save is limited by your own ability and the simple question of how much area you're able to cover in one day. the watchtower project, by contrast, is impersonal - you don't get to see the people whose lives are saved - and thus, probably does less to boost a heroic ego. it doesn't look or feel cool in the same way. and yet the watchtower project will positively affect the lives of many, many, many more people. it is an institutional change that will, so long as it remains in existence, continue to prevent suffering long after the death of its founder.

to me, lan wangji is morally admirable because he "goes where the chaos is": he uses his high levels of privilege to personally help people who desperately need it, who have been forgotten by the cultivation sects. unfortunately, most of the goodwill he earned from me for these actions was erased by the ending of the novel, in which his and wei wuxian's actions led to the downfall of the one politician genuinely invested in keeping the watchtower project afloat. jin guangyao was one of the only people in the entire jianghu who actually cared about prodding the cultivators into doing their basic jobs; now that he is dead and his one vision-sharer lan xichen is in seclusion, it really does not seem like there is anyone else left willing to defend the watchtower project from its many selfish detractors. if nie huaisang really is to become the next chief cultivator, as MXTX said he would, then the watchtower project is basically doomed: not because nie huaisang's going to try and tear those towers down himself or anything, but rather because maintaining those towers in the inevitable storm of opposition and hatred for their founder will be tremendously difficult, and nie huaisang has shown zero interest in working hard for moral causes in which he has no personal stake.

wei wuxian and lan wangji are not neutral agents. this state of affairs was brought about in part by their actions specifically; they therefore bear responsibility. and i'm sure that, in bringing about jin guangyao's downfall, they truly felt that their actions were in alignment with the virtue of justice. the truth must be uncovered! it's against our moral principles to allow an evildoer to escape justice! and all that. but to do everything they did and then swan off into the sunset without a care for the consequences for the common people was also quite selfish. this isn't to say that they should have let jin guangyao go or anything - however, they would have reduced more harm had they stuck around and tried to help fix the political situation afterwards. but instead, convinced that their moral principles had been fulfilled through their actions, wang and xian simply left, with nary a thought for how the consequences of their actions would affect the common people. that was selfish.

but i suppose that, from a writing POV, taking down the scheming evildoer and then swanning off into the sunset makes for a more glamorous ending than political intrigue for essential public infrastructure.

there is a difference between [what looks more heroic on paper] and [what actually helps a greater number of people]. for a character to adhere to their own abstract moral principles no matter the consequences, for a character to put keeping their own moral house in order above the impact their decisions have on other people, looks good on paper. "what matters less is the consequences and more that you tried to live by your ideals" sounds nice and heroic when wrapped up in a story. in reality, though, actually bringing about positive consequences for other people entails putting harm reduction above moral purity - which makes for a much less ~morally ideal~ tale.

second, adhering to your moral principles at all costs is also a privilege afforded to you by the sacrifices of other people. this is a bit of a tangent, since it applies not to wei wuxian but rather to lan wangji, but i feel it must nonetheless be said.

in the post-timeskip half of the story, lan wangji shirks his duty to his sect and family on many different occasions. first, for the last 13 or so years, he has been openly disrespectful towards the leaders and heirs of other sects and has encouraged his juniors to do the same - something that would logically cause diplomatic problems for gusu lan in the present or in the future. second, while it was very romantic of him to do so, lan wangji standing with wei wuxian against the rest of the cultivation world would have caused issues for gusu lan had jin guangyao not immediately Eaten Shit afterwards, given that hanguang-jun is a very high-profile member of gusu lan. third, gusu lan's position at the end of the story isn't very good, given that their sect leader has gone into seclusion and they've taken a reputation hit from lan xichen's connections to new public enemy number one jin guangyao - but instead of sticking around to help his sect in their time of need, lan wangji instead leaves to go on his honeymoon with wei wuxian, leaving his elderly uncle lan qiren to come out of retirement to do the hard work. fourth, lan xichen himself suffers a terrible personal tragedy at the end of the book - but instead of even sticking around for an extra half-hour to check if lan xichen is okay after the guanyin temple scene concludes, lan wangji immediately leaves with wei wuxian! thanks a lot, dude!

the above makes sense if we consider lan wangji's view of the jianghu as a whole after wei wuxian's downfall. from lan wangji's (and the reader's intended) viewpoint, wei wuxian was entirely morally correct to stand by the wen remnants, and he only ended up hurting others after he was driven to do so by the hatred and machinations of society. and yet, despite this, society still turned on wei wuxian and drove him to his death. after wei wuxian's downfall, lan wangji must have lost all of his faith in society's self-described "righteous cultivation sects" and instead came to see them as self-serving hypocrites. and this disdain probably extended to his own sect as well, given that gusu lan - doubtlessly led by either lan xichen or lan qiren - also showed up to the first siege of the burial mounds. given lan wangji's anger and disdain at the image-centered politics of the jianghu, then, it makes sense that he would no longer give two shits about helping preserve his sect's image.

this is all well and good. but...

why is post-timeskip lan wangji able to drag wei wuxian back to the cloud recesses? why is he able to buy wei wuxian whatever he wants? why is he able to protect wei wuxian from other powerful cultivators, why does him standing with wei wuxian against the rest of the jianghu actually have an impact on wei wuxian's standing, why is he able to shield wei wuxian from the wrath of the rest of the jianghu once the story ends?

why does post-timeskip lan wangji never have to worry about suffering the consequences from causing minor diplomatic incidents? why does post-timeskip lan wangji never have to worry about where his next meal is going to come from? why is he able to afford such expensive robes and equipment? why does post-timeskip lan wangji not have to worry about being solely responsible for every life in his sect? why does post-timeskip lan wangji never have to worry about the rest of society turning on him in a heartbeat?

because, despite all of his righteous disdain, he is still a venerated member of gusu lan. because gusu lan shields him, educates him, provides for him, and ensures that his needs are met. if lan wangji were a rogue cultivator instead, do you think he'd be able to earn enough money on his own to afford his and wei wuxian's current lifestyle? would he still be able to openly disrespect other sect leaders and sect heirs without immediately getting wrecked? would he still have the political capital to protect wei wuxian after wei wuxian's resurrection? of course not.

lan wangji is able to wear his disdain for the rest of the jianghu on his sleeve, is able to "go where the chaos is" instead of worrying about earning enough money to live, is able to ensure wei wuxian's continued safety postcanon, because of the privilege and power that being gusu lan's hanguang-jun affords him. he gets away with so much of what he does because he is personally connected to lan xichen, who in turn is connected to other highly powerful figures in the jianghu. the one time he does suffer major consequences for his decisions - that time he was whipped 33 times for injuring 33 of his sect's elders to protect wei wuxian - his punishment is still less than what would have befallen someone not of his specific high status: he only escaped execution because his high-ranking family members successfully argued the punishment down.

the reason why lan wangji is able to live in accordance to his principles and say "damn the consequences" is because the consequences in question have been absorbed by other people. because other people have already made the morally difficult decisions required to create his comfortable position.

and frankly, it seems like lan wangji takes this privilege for granted.

on one hand, he disdains his sect and does not uphold his duties to it due in part to his perception that his sect has failed its moral duties; on one hand, he gives zero shits about how his actions might have negative consequences for his sect. yet, on the other hand, he continues to accept the privileges and benefits his sect gives him. to me, this reads as insulting someone while simultaneously reaching your hands out for the perks they give you. if the morally bankrupt institution you live in really bothers you that much - then leave! or use your privilege to try and change the system from within! to do neither of those things - to instead passively reap the benefits of having a high status within this system without trying to change the system, while also failing your obligations to those giving you said benefits because you disdain the system - is embarrassing.

i don't think any of this makes lan wangji a bad person. he's still far kinder to the common person on an individual level than most cultivators in his society; furthermore, the above sort of behavior is in fact quite normal for human beings. what it does not make him, though, is morally ideal.

thoughts

also wasn't sure what to do with the lan simp brothers so i guess they can sit on the side

#mdzs #yanyan speaks #yanyan haterpost #i'm writing this at ass o clock so i'm not sure how much of this i'll stand by in the morning lol

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ganen-cheese · 2 years ago

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Hello :3 About mdzs, it's so nice you've tried all adaptations :) I'm curious but do you have a favorite moment in the book? also if I may ask again, between drama/anime/dramaCD, what is your favorite version of the wangxian song? :D sorry for all the questions, you can ignore if you want~ have a nice day, and thank you so much for offer us amazing mdzs content!!!

AHHH!! Thank you for all the questions heheheheh I love talking about MDZS sldfkj. Thank you so much!! And you read MDZS too!!!!!!!! <3333333

Spoiler warning!

Favorite version of the WangXian song:

Definitely the Chinese Drama CD's WangXian!!!! It's the MOST BEAUTIFUL THING EVER!!!!

I've repeated it 10 billion times.

Random favorite moment:

When Wei Wuxian was making drunk and dirty Lan Wangji take a bath to clean himself up after the chickens and vandalism and Lan Wangji also swiftly took off Wei Wuxian's clothing's tie and Wei Wuxian was like "No, no!? I'm not gonna go in with you!?"

It's the time Wei Wuxian wanted to ask drunk Lan Wangji how he felt about him (and kept telling himself that's all his motive). It's so cute how embarrassed Wei Wuxian was about the bath scene, even while he already saw nekkid Lan Wangji in the past. You can really see how conscious he is of Lan Wangji as a romantic interest and I think this kind of "first time" -ness of Wei Wuxian was really cute, even while he was actively trying to know Lan Wangji's feelings for him.

Meaningful favorite moment:

This is difficult!!! I love so many things.

I loved when Wei Wuxian was showing Lan Wangji around Yunmeng/Lotus Pier. Lan Wangji always overtly "rejected" Wei Wuxian's insistent invitations before, he "appeared" in Yunmeng before but it was never an "official visitation" and Wei Wuxian didn't think it was him Lan Wangji was looking for, and it ended in an argument when Lan Wangji insisted on Wei Wuxian to come back to Gusu with him again.

So when Wei Wuxian finally got the chance to have Lan Wangji in Yunmeng to show around, it was so cute (while also sad because of all the memories of his childhood he can't have back, but I am so happy that he got to actually go back, with Lan Wangji - he doesn't have to be alone).

It's like doing everything he wanted to do with Lan Wangji before, and more. He showed all his childhood trails, made Lan Wangji eat the foods he liked, visited the memorial of his foster parents to let them meet Lan Wangji no matter what (and did the two bows with him while holding off on the third bow for a hopeful some day ;o; ), climbed the tree he was stuck in (but didn't tell him the real reason ofc ;w; ), and of course, the moment he jumped straight into Lan Wangji's arms and he caught him (;-; ). It's so cute the way Wei Wuxian slowly realized his own feelings secretly and it was so nice seeing him just....... having a date with Lan Zhan (before he was only 3 year old Xian Xian asking his sister what it's like to like someone... but now he is... at least 10 year old Xian Xian XDDD), and then later slowly moved to know Lan Wangji's feelings as well. (;o; )

*****

Wei Wuxian to Wen Chao

"Oh, can you remind me again what punishment awaits those who humiliate a Wen cultivator? How are they punished again? If I remember correctly, I think they are cut down and killed on the spot. Is that correct? Yeah... That's nice.

So you can go die now"

******

"I have to make sure to repay the debt they have granted me"

"Nonesense! Why do you make other people pay the price for the debt that you owe!"

******

I also liked, in the cave, when Lan Wangji saved Wei Wuxian and got his foot bit by Xuanwu, and while he was being dragged away Wei Wuxian saved Lan Wangji then carried him away.

Oh and any image of Lan Wangi, Wei Wuxian and A-yuan.

(T.T )

******

"I REALLY WANTED TO SLEEP WITH YOU!!!"

******

And when Wei Wuxian lets Lan Wangji save him hehe in Guanyin Temple hehe.

I think there are so much more but I just can't remember right now but ahhhh everything is perfect. I love Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji. Times were so rough and sad before but everything is paid off in the end and they are happy husbands (;o; )!!!

Again, thank you so much!!! Hehehe I might edit if I remember more...

#Asks #miyakuli

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pumpkinpaix · 4 years ago

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Want a *really* unpopular opinion? I not only *liked* the Incense Burner extras but found them sexy, as a portrayal of two dorks using potentially dangerous magical R&D as a tool for exploring their past feelings and history and negotiating consent by trial and error and error and error.

slams hands on table C O R R E C T

you know what, i’ll do you one better, not only did i like them and find them sexy, i ALSO found them extremely meaningful and important!! i will defend the incense burners unto death, you can pry them from my cold dead hands!!!!

not to get super emo and personal about like, kinda silly smut, but you know what, it’s that kind of night so let’s GO oversharing time, and maybe it will help someone along the way!!! isn’t that what vulnerability is for!!!!

i don’t know if it’s common knowledge that i have ocd -- i haven’t made a secret of it or anything -- but: i suffer from pretty terrible intrusive thoughts and when you add that together with intense moral scrupulosity issues + a complicated relationship to shame and sex, you get some pretty rough thoughtcrime, self-hatred, and sex-related neuroses. i was so completely horrified by the idea of wanting sex that I thought i was ace for like, the better part of my teen years. i’m really grateful to the ace spaces i was lucky enough to find in that time because they gave me a place to feel safe while I was still figuring shit out, and I still feel a lot of kinship with them because even if i’m not ace, sex is still Difficult for me as a concept and aspec people Get It.

together with just my generally really fucked up thoughts, plus the rise of purity culture etc, i have A Lot of fear about my inner self being perceived because there’s a part of me that is convinced that if anyone really knew me, they’d find me disgusting, that they’d think i was a genuinely bad and dirty person beyond redemption. that no matter how hard i tried to be good, i was doomed to fail because there was something wrong with me internally and inherently. that like, no matter how kind or helpful or dutiful or accomplished or smart or thoughtful i tried to be, it wouldn’t make a difference!!!

im getting over it lol don’t worry

but the point is: the incense burners, especially the one in the library, really embody the ultimate fantasy of a person you love seeing your most shameful thoughts and desires and not only NOT abandoning you, but saying “oh shit, that’s hot”. can you understand the palpable relief of that!!!! ;A; and!! to take it one step further, it’s not even a big deal! wei wuxian laughs and is like ohohoho?? hanguang-jun? like this secret that lan wangji was carrying and fearing was just like. kinda cute and funny. that there was nothing to fear at all.

screams into my hands

i joke about being shuangbi kin all the time, except like, it isn’t a joke. the moment when wei wuxian notices that lan wangji is tense, when lan wangji says, “stop looking,” and tries to leave -- idk i just. i felt for him so hard there. stop looking at me. what if you don’t like what you see?

but wei wuxian does like it! and wei wuxian doesn’t think any worse of lan wangji, doesn’t think he’s fallen or disgraceful. lan wangji is still lan wangji, still hanguang-jun, still upright, still 雅正. and the narrative does the same: it never implies that lan wangji is any less of a good person because of this. it’s just an inside joke for the other extras: that lan wangji looks like the sort of person who’s a perpetual virgin because that’s what people expect from someone of his character and demeanor, but he isn’t.

i can’t like. begin to explain how much i treasure this dumb smut. it’s not the best smut i’ve ever read, not by a long shot, but it’s not anywhere near as terrible as a lot of people make it out to be. just. i got to read this thing. where a character i already identified with had his fucked up thoughts about sex perceived and accepted and loved, and it was a character who looked and sounded and thought like me!! down to the obsession with rules and fairness. a chinese character!!! and someone the narrative pretty consistently positions as a sympathetic and lovable person!! mdzs was my first danmei, so it’s entirely possible this isn’t revolutionary whatsoever. maybe this is a super common trope! idk! but it was really revelatory to me. that these really intensely complicated characters we’ve just spent like 500k learning about and falling in love with are also weird kinky dumbasses who don’t know shit. and that both can be true! and that’s presented as a fun, delightful thing! god!!!! i care them! i am so grateful to mxtx for it, regardless of anything else, i am grateful that she gave me this.

anyways, thanks for giving me this outlet anon and also like, letting me experience a version of that relief: oh i’m not alone!

(ko-fi)

🍵 ((un)popular) opinions meme

#Anonymous #asks and replies #mdzs #LET'S GO #mental illness #ocd #incense burners #mdzs incense burners #mine #mymeta #cyan dlc #this is really personal guys pls be gentle with me #it's probably embarrassingly earnest #ok to reblog #ask meme #opinions meme #mdzs meta #purity culture #in some way

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veilchenjaeger · 2 years ago

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Song Lan and Jiang Cheng for enrichment bingo!

I see you picked two narrative parallels. That's a very sexy choice. [points at them] They're the same character but also very much Not

Zichen first:

ZICHEN MY BELOVED! I love and adore him and would die for him. A true Blorbo. He's also so much fun to write; his brain is a very calming place to be in despite all his worries and guilt and phobias. I just love him so much.

I'm of the weird opinion that he didn't have enough screen time, but also... wasn't wasted or done dirty, per se? I wish we had seen more of him, but he's also a supporting character in a side plot, so I get why his screen time was limited. And I truly love how well he comes alive (lol) despite having, like, three lines. I always think it's impressive if a character who barely has any screen time is nonetheless well-rounded, and both MXTX and CQL/Li Bowen did such a good job with him.

Otherwise... uh, I don't talk about many of my Zichen opinions on main bc of the wasps' nest thing. Let's say that I strongly dislike his fanon and leave it at that.

The purple boy:

Everyone but me is wrong about Jiang Cheng not because I'm in any way knowledgeable about Jiang Cheng, but because everyone but like, three people is wrong about Jiang Cheng, period. Likewise, my opinions wouldn't be received as akin to hitting a wasps' nest with a baseball bat because I have particularly outrageous Jiang Cheng opinions, but because every opinion about Jiang Cheng would be received as akin to hitting a wasps' nest with a baseball bat. I've honestly never been this baffled by the discourse around a character before. Like??? He's not even evil. What is going on why is Jiang Cheng discourse like that why IS THERE Jiang Cheng discourse in the first place

Anyways, I really like Jiang Cheng! He's a great character with a great arc that addresses many very interesting themes! He just doesn't tickle my brain the way many other MDZS/CQL characters do, so I don't give him that much attention. That might have something to do with the only Jiang Cheng ship I actively ship being Chengning, which is such a rarepair for some reason? (The "The popular ships suck" square isn't fully accurate; I think they're valid and many of them have interesting aspects. I just personally like... one of them, which is Sangcheng, and I only ship that if it features them being sad 30somethings, which is not the vibe I'm getting from most Sangcheng stuff.)

But yeah. Love the boy, but not feeling the Blorbo Emotions.

#/thoughts about jiang cheng ships in this chili's tonight #/i think chengyao is fun but only if they're already divorced #/the zichen wasps' nest is less about me being potentially stung by wasps and more about me potentially hurting people's feelings #/i don't think any zichen liker would sting me like a wasp i feel safe from wasps in this corner of the fandom #[talk less smile more]#[epistulae ad atticum]#/thank you for ask!!! i feel enriched #song lan #jiang cheng #the untamed

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plan-d-to-i · 3 years ago

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want to rant pls AAAA! I am Asian, and I feel like most Western MDZS-related fandom on twitter especially (and some south east Asian fans) are being sinophobic towards MXTX and her works. They will just say anything to rationalize JC's abusive actions by the name of "culture" and some other south east Asians act like they understand Chinese culture but not really actually, and has never taken the time to truly understand their words and interpretation with the meaning and standards of -1

a true danmei/xianxia hero according to actual Chinese people with complex Chinese traditional and modern standards. Plus, even if they're asians, shouldn't they understand that our culture and other asian culture have always give us messages to prioritize doing good first? They (western fans and certain south east asian fans), especially big accounts will say shit like "oh JC&YZY are not abusive" and "wwx & jc are brothers" "oh i dont like when people say mdzs = cql blablabla" and excusing -2

every single shit that abusive characters did, just because these bitches of characters fit their very "specific personal experience" which obviously did not stem from actual Chinese people and culture from Mainland China. Anyway, I dont think that it's fair to say Western people in general do not understand that abusive behaviour and actions are OK bcs being abusive is not a cultural trait, since it literally takes someone with a sound mind and heart to know and differentiate things that -3

could and shouldnt be done. But the experience that I have with these particular western fans and some s/e asian fans in the fandom just left a bad taste in my mouthNot only that, they will always leave stupid metas that are not backed up by contextual evidence, and go around acting like they're facts, and then talk some shit about MXTX. Like bitch, thats my people and culture that you were shitting about. This kind of shitty behaviour and untrue facts were created by a lot of stans of -4

JC (obviously), JGY (lil meow meow), XY (uhuhu SoB sTorieZ), and LXC (this mf is on thin ice, bcs his fans keep on acting like he doesnt know shit and just a righteous figure who wrongly trust his friend, WHEN he was repetitively shown in the novel to know social clues and dirty shit, as well as gossips from his place as an authorative figure but STILL look away and blame the less for not knowing anyway, especially when they didnt fit HIS easy and privileged standards for wtv trauma that HE -5

HE hadnt processed, and yet, i have to respect him?)Hell no, LXC sounds like my local neighbourhood asian power figure who grew up very privileged and act like poor and less unfortunate people are the problems for not catching up, instead of confronting his friends for oppressing others to me. Lxc is that one tone deaf mf friend you have and no one can change my mind about him. What the fandom doesnt understand from MXTX's novel is that, the archetype of a moral and good hero in xianxia is -6

is a person that take good honorable ACTIVE ACTIONS even when it doesnt benefit them. Even when we are younger, we will always listen to these stories from parents, teachers, even strangers. THAT is the culture that WE share, not the abusive shit that JC did. So i always laugh when people say that wwx will become bff with lxc because where??? He even ditched JC lol and now you tell me that he's about to be buddy2 with someone who just stood there like a fucking tool, and judge things based -7

WWX himself said that good friends have similar characters and thats why wwx/lwj and wwx&wen ning worked so well together but lxc and wwx will not work at all because whatever pre-conceived notion, bigotry, classism, harmful prejudice etc. he might have gotten from his gentry privilege had made him so removed from the less unfortunate and the people at the bottom of his residence's mountain that he just cannot comprehend that doing good is more than the shit was written on his house's wall -8

Wwx wont even tolerate some hypocrisies and double standards said and done by some authorative figures, like lqr, yzy, wrh, wen chao for their bigotry, now why the hell whould he tolerate lxc's on a personal level? I can see them be polite politically to each other, but friends AND BFF. Oh hell nah, never unless lxc fix his shit! I sound like a lxc hater but im really not. I think MXTX wrote his character really well because mfs like him is everywhere in our Asians neighbourhood. The ones -9

who sounds like an ally but actually is not when it truly matters. And the reason that people always backed him up would always be "ohh he's a sect leader, he has other priorities". Sigh, MDZS morality and righteousness doesnt work that way... because everyone did suffer, and what they did with and about their sufferings were the ones that matter most. Sigh... im just tired with wwx and chinese values slander, sorry

Anon we were on the same page throughout the beginning of this but you lost me w LXC...

WWX doesn't have a problem w LXC and understands why LXC believed JGY. He doesn't blame him for not sussing out an incredibly talented manipulator who everyone else trusted. The way LXC treated JGY, who people didn't even want to drink tea from!, is the opposite of elitism and classism... LXC doesn't gossip about WWX & LWJ's love life, this has been clarified- by the author herself. LXC is similar to LWJ, putting his trust in someone others have heavy prejudices against. Unfortunately, JGY is not a good person like WWX (and LXC is probably not as good at reading people as LWJ). Although to be fair, no one else really figured out that JGY was a really evil guy (until it was too late - like the ppl in the Clan he exterminated). Even WWX thought JGY was an impressive, good person. In WWX's second life WangXian were aided in seeing JGY's true face by NHS's sabotages. LXC is not universally great at reading people just bc he can read his little brother's mind... There's no reason to think that WWX and LXC won't get along.

WWX is the one who suggest they go back to the CR after they elope. He knows LWJ and LXC are very close and he values that relationship for LWJ (as does LWJ). LXC=/= jc. LXC was a Clan leader of a different Clan. WWX wasn't a disciple of his Clan? If WWX's own Clan Leader and childhood friend thought he was evil enough to cut all ties w him why would LXC go out of his way and investigate? He has no knowledge of what the Wen siblings did for jc. His experience w the Wens consisted of them burning down Cloud Recesses, breaking his little brother's leg and almost killing him, and killing his father? Yet he still says words in their favor. He's also not chilling in the CR basking in his privilege. He's out night hunting to help protect people. During the war too:

During the Sunshot Campaign, stories of praise were told about all three of the Venerated Triad. The ones of ChiFeng-Zun were about how he swept over all obstacles, leaving not even a trace of the Wen-dogs after he finished. ZeWu-Jun—Lan XiChen—however, was different from him. After the situation of the Gusu area had settled down, Lan QiRen was able to defend it with great tenacity. Thus, Lan XiChen often travelled to aid others, saving lives from danger. In all of the Sunshot Campaign, he had countless times recovered lost territory and assisted narrow escapes. This was why people were ecstatic whenever they heard his name, as though they gained a ray of hope, a powerful trump card. (Chapter 51)

... As for him sounding like an ally but not being one when it truly mattered, sheltering WWX in his own quarters when the whole cultivation world found out he was back and having him treated in the Cloud Recesses and listening to his suspicions about JGY ... is the opposite of that. Sure no one is WangXian but I think it's disingenuous to lump LXC in w that company.

#mdzs #answers #wei wuxian #lan Xichen #lan wangji

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k1201a · 3 years ago

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I usually like your takes on things, how chill you actually are and like you replied to that anon, how I at least don't remember you calling people names over all these fandom "issues". Now, the only thing that bothers me is how I feel your talking about the wrong people when saying things like 'their r*pe fantasy' and so about this issue in particular and I also feel that even if someone explain to you why you got the wrong people, you won't at least give them the benefit of the doubt?

People who really is into dark tops, into dom/sub and all that... believe me, they leave mdzs alone and are better into other things. They're the first one who know about what they like. So of course they don't think lwj is the darkest, toppest top or w/e, lol. They still can like wangxian but I personally never seen them talking about them as the darkest couple in danmei. What's more, they actually recognizes that's wwx the one into things while lwj more into just favoring him? Haha.

The people who usually is this eager to talk about lwj "noncon-ing" wwx and morals in sex are the ones that are part of the anti movement. The ones that hate mxtx for being a "dirty fujoshi". The cql onlies who celebrate censorship and say cql did a better job with the characters and made their love story ~more beautiful~ and talk about kinky this and fetishization that in a negative way. The ones that think fiction shouldn't even portray anything sexual between same sex characters apparently.

And no, it's not that they secretly have a r*pe fantasy (while it happens in different areas, it's not true that every time people claim to dislike something is because they actually like it deep down)... in any case they're secretly, and not that secretly, homophobic.

I don't doubt that there are, like in every fandom, people who lacks reading comprehension and people who projects a lot on character. And as a result of this combination you get people who will write some fic about dark lwj... but usually the ones who are all the time babbling about how he kissed wwx without his consent and so are the ones who see it in a negative way, the antis I mentioned or even people who think "you can like dark but critically!".

Meanwhile, the people who genuinely ha a r*pe fantasy whether irl or in fiction, and prefer more intense romance and dark tops and cnc are chilling in other fandom from works that gives them exactly that (like, just for instance, most people I know who likes that and like mxtx, if they have to joke about a top being too intense with his feelings is about lbh and not lwj... just as I saw people who likes svsss better complain about how people are always comparing the 3 books and showing him in a bad light because most people luckily recognizes lwj is the most sensible of all them and the one who doesn't have a dark side or something)

I'm not really following, you mean anon was a mxtx hater? if they were, they shouldn't be upset by what I said. if they hate lwj, and thinks he's a dark sadist rapist, and he's disgusting, why were they upset I called dark lwj boring? if you mean anon was not into rape fantasy, then they shouldn't be upset I called rape fantasy boring.

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neverdoingmuch · 4 years ago

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hello! I just wanted to ask, which do you think in the mdzs novel has the most questionable morality? like they have done more bad things but they still had kindness in them somehow (?)

oh!! this is a hard one for me anon! i’m always bad at ranking characters but i’ll do my best! i’m not sure if you were hoping for like a quick answer or a long one but i’m gonna go with a long one bc that’s always fun and i’ll do a tldr if you don’t want to read through all that? yeah that seems like it’ll work because holy shit i didnt mean for it to get so long (and kind of away from the point of your ask too so sorry about that!)

okay! So, the three main contenders for morally dubious characters are, as far as I’ve seen, Xue Yang, Jin Guangyao, and Wei Wuxian. Not a big surprise, I’m sure. While they’re the more obvious options, they do have a lot of parallels and exhibit a lot of the themes and ideas that MXTX was getting at. I mean, I love looking at Jin Guangyao and Wei Wuxian as foils, and even other combinations of the three, so my answer will probably be heavy on the comparisons. I do think it’s worth touching on Jiang Cheng as well though. Also, I’ll try to stay as unbiased as I can because there’s a few characters on this list that I just don’t like … like at all.

Jiang Cheng tends to get brushed over a lot when it comes to some of the horrible things he’s done. From promising to protect Wei Wuxian from dogs only to immediately use them as a threat whenever he wants to to leading a siege on a group of people he knows are completely innocent of any crimes to torturing and killing people for thirteen years, he’s definitely not a good person. His concerns lie first and foremost with himself and his. That doesn’t seem like a horrible thing at first – he should owe his loyalty to himself, his family, and his sect – but it does mean that when the Xuanwu’s cave situation happened, his response was to get mad that Wei Wuxian helped Jin Zixuan and Lan Wangji. (And that’s why Jiang Fengmian got mad at him!). Later on, when pressure comes from the sects regarding Wei Wuxian, Jiang Cheng chooses not to stand with him, which, while understandable, isn’t exactly a kind move to someone who called Jiang Cheng his family and was trying to repay the debt the two of them owed Wen Qing. There’s no denying that he does care about Wei Wuxian, but when forced to make hard choices, he picks what’s easiest for himself. In general, I’d say that his sense of morality is selfish and somewhat flighty, but not necessarily questionable, so I’ll move on!

For the usual suspects, I’ll start with Xue Yang because I’m just going to immediately eliminate him from the running. I’ve seen people interpret his character sympathetically or try to justify some of his actions or the way he turned out, but I honestly just can’t. While you could feel sympathetic towards him because of his childhood, we have Wei Wuxian as a direct contrast to Xue Yang, as well as, to a certain degree, Jin Guangyao. Both Xue Yang and Wei Wuxian were street kids who had a horrible time in their youth, but Wei Wuxian was able to leave that behind him. That’s a lot easier to do when you’ve been adopted into a major sect and afforded comforts above your station (and also have terrible coping mechanisms), but even Jin Guangyao’s revenge isn’t quite as wide-spread and malicious. I know it may seem a bit obvious, anon, but some people really do try and treat Xue Yang like he’s morally dubious which confuses me a lot because how?? Even if we do say that he has suitable cause, one of the messages of the novel is that your past experiences don’t justify your future actions, so even within the context of the novel – a novel which is concerned with highlighting the grey areas of morality – Xue Yang isn’t afforded any sympathy. So, there’s really no way to construe him in a positive light. His only moments of kindness come with his time spent in Yi City with Xiao Xingchen, where Xue Yang doesn’t change much – he may have cared for Xiao Xingchen, but Xue Yang still tortured him as he did so. I never quite read that arc as Xue Yang learning to care or being allowed to be kind again so I’d just say that he lacks both morals and kindness. On that basis we can boot him from this competition.

Jin Guangyao may have been one of the antagonists of the novel, but he wasn't a completely bad person or like The Worst. His main crimes involved getting revenge for slights against him or his mother – being from Nie Mingjue, Jin Guangshan, or any number of other cultivators. I think that, to an extent, his actions are justifiable. While you can contrast this to the way Wei Wuxian gets called a servant's son, they do differ in the fact that Wei Wuxian is afforded a higher level of protection due to him being favoured by Jiang Fengmian. Additionally, when Wei Wuxian does have his birth used against him, he's usually the person who acted out first anyway. Jin Guangyao was insulted for doing little more than exist and was never the person to act out first, yet still faced a near constant onslaught of insults. I'm not saying his actions were justified by any means, but the reasoning behind his actions is sound. The one thing I will note is that he doesn't let go of his grudges – even when everything is all done and dusted and he has everything that he could possibly want from life, he still holds onto that hatred. I remember seeing a post where someone mentioned that characters who were able to move on and change for the better were able to get their happy ending in MDZS, which isn't relevant here but definitely applies to Jin Guangyao when thinking about why he got the ending he did. I don't agree with the degree to which he enacted his revenge against certain characters and I loathe the whole Qin Su situation. I don't care how much he cries about it, he could've at least told her, but I mainly just pretend that part didn't exist. So, he has suitable cause for at least some of his actions, and his other victims can just be classified as necessary collateral rather than being intentional innocent targets, if that makes sense, but he's definitely vindictive and spiteful.

On the other hand, he did a lot of good, too. He's a side character for the most part so Jin Guangyao didn't get the most screen-time, but we do hear of some of the good things he's done. The main example would probably be the watchtowers. One of the interesting things about Jin Guangyao and Wei Wuxian is that while both of them are capable of kindness, the breadth and scope of Jin Guangyao's is much broader – the watchtowers are an idea that not only showcase how Jin Guangyao's upbringing allows him to see flaws in the cultivation world that the other privileged cultivators can't, but also show how he does care about the people. I've seen a few people try and play it as a spying technique but I don’t really believe that in the slightest. I mean, the point of the towers is to cover the areas where the sects aren't, so I have no idea what Jin Guangyao's people would even be spying on. Anyway, setting up those watchtowers really didn't benefit him any specific way – unless you consider him endearing himself to Lan Xichen and garnering a good reputation with the common folk something that outweighs the absolute nightmare it would have been to make the sects participate in the project to begin with. In a more specific case, Jin Ling's dog was given to him by Jin Guangyao. It's interesting that, despite Jin Ling spending the novel being trailed by Jiang Cheng, the gift that he obviously cares for deeply is from Jin Guangyao. In the Guanyin Temple scene I definitely got the sense that Jin Ling had loved and trusted Jin Guangyao before the truth came out so I'm firmly convinced that he would've been a wonderful and conscientious uncle to him and just generally good to the people who worked for him and/or the commoners.

Okay, now Wei Wuxian!! As far as I've seen, people are relatively good at staying true to his questionable sense of morality. Like with Jin Guangyao, we know that he can be vindictive and pretty excessive when it comes to getting his revenge, but I'm not going to deny that I was definitely rooting for him when he went after Wen Chao and his little gang. The main issue with Wei Wuxian is probably the demonic cultivation – the stigma against it tends to get reduced to it being bad for the user and their temperament etc. etc., but there's more to it than that. I'm no expert on Daoism by any means, but from my understanding desecration of corpses and disturbing the dead is a significant cultural taboo. This isn't just Wei Wuxian doing something no one else can do (though it certainly is true), it's also him doing something no one else should do. I've seen the massacre at Nightless City being added as another tally to his list of crimes, but I honestly think that that isn’t a crime worth adding – he needed to defend himself so he did, simple as that.

As I mentioned above, Wei Wuxian's kindness is a bit more specific – where Jin Guangyao cares for the people, Wei Wuxian cares for individuals. We see his kindness more clearly, be it because he's the main character or be it because actions are clearer and stronger when it's for a single person or a small group. It's a bit easier, in my opinion, to care about people when you don't have to live with them and face them every day, but Wei Wuxian does. Even though Wei Wuxian led a lot more comfortable life than Jin Guangyao, we never really see Jin Guangyao get his hands dirty in the same way Wei Wuxian does. When a sacrifice needs to be made, Wei Wuxian’s the one who makes it. He doesn't relegate, he does it himself. We know that he would do absolutely anything for those he cares about and that's why he's able to commit a lot of the atrocities he does.

When it comes to deciding between Jin Guangyao and Wei Wuxian for most questionable morality, I think we need to look at the reasons behind their actions. Wei Wuxian’s sense of morality is definitely nowhere near that of the Lans but he has always been driven by his sense of justice and his love for those around him. In that sense, I've always read him as having a flexible sense of morality rather than a questionable one. I'm not sure how much of it ties in with his sense of duty, but it's definitely a lot. Wei Wuxian is, and always will, fill the role that is required of him – be it the childish and sweet younger brother, the talented but flippant older brother, the monster that wins the war, or the fierce protector that gives his all, Wei Wuxian will twist himself into whatever position he's needed in at that moment. Obviously, he went after Wen Chao for his own benefit, and the corrupting influence of the resentful energy does need to be factored into this, but at his core, Wei Wuxian will always value his duty (to his sect, family, friends, and innocents) and doing what is right over anything else. He may have stumbled along the way, but he did manage to form his own path to uphold all the values that he wanted to. Jin Guangyao, on the other hand, is similar to Jiang Cheng in how he's driven by his own motivations for betterment and revenge, albeit with more grace and intelligence. Jin Guangyao may masquerade as being motivated by any number of causes but he will never do anything at his own risk, and he will always be his top priority. So, while it's a close call between Wei Wuxian and Jin Guangyao, I'm going to have to go with Jin Guangyao on this one!

tldr; the fandom favourites for questionable morality are xy, jgy, and wwx so i mainly looked at them. I included jc as well but neither xy or jc demonstrate the dichotomy needed so they got eliminated from the running. Jgy and wwx both commit and are willing to commit horrible crimes as well as being capable of caring for others and being kind. but, where wwx is driven by his sense of justice and love for others, jgy is driven by his own motivations for betterment and revenge, making for a more questionable morality (as compared to wwx's more flexible morality).

#mdzs #mdzs text #mdzs meta #dfgrgt i was like hm but what if this post isnt good enough to tag as meta #modao zushi #wei wuxian #jin guangyao #xue yang #jiang cheng #grandmaster of demonic cultivation #asks #legal talks #i figured that since i wasnt giving a very interesting answer i might as well throw in some discussion too #i hope this answers your question anon!!#thanks for asking me i had a lot of fun answering this #in case you couldnt tell from the uhh 2k i wrote #Anonymous #but if you want to send any more asks please do!! i love discussing things like this

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ouyangzizhensdad · 4 years ago

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People praising the purity of the romance in cql (nothing wrong with that btw) while throwing insults to novel and author always forget that if it wasn't for the fans of the "dirty novel", cql would have a half assed het plot and flopped so bad most ppl would never know it existed.

I do see an issue with praising the “purity” of romance: there is a difference between having personal preferences and wanting to see variety in media, and claiming that a “”pure”” romance is morally superior compared to a “dirty” novel. This is particularly concerning with the stigma around queer’s people sexuality, and gay people in general. It is also weirdly puritanical, and I’m not sure how that became a thing in supposedly progressive spaces. Like, congratulations on sounding almost exactly like a conservative bashing gay content by calling it “gay filth”....

There are adaptations that actually improve upon the plot or the thematic explorations of the original, adaptations made by people who are more competent storytellers than the original creative. CQL is not one of those: most of its interesting set-ups, character traits, themes, the striking dialogue etc., imo, come from the novel. So to me the issue is not only that the novel and its fans are responsible for us all not getting an explicitly het version of MDZS, but that CQL did not imo improve upon the material, and only muddled parts of it in the process of adapting it within the context of their specific challenges they faced (censorship, budget, different medium, etc.). It is however certainly better than it could have been, and I will gladly give them that! So even if people choose or are not interested in reading the novel because it features explicitly sexual scenes or some dub-con or for whatever other reason (which is fine in itself!), the level of disrespect and dismissal towards it and its author is really hyperbolic and unjustifiable, particularly considering how many of the criticisms levelled at MXTX are actually baseless or result from people’s poor reading comprehension (for instance the ‘LWJ calls WWX his wife’ nonsense).

I also find myself exhausted by the ignorance regarding how and why media adaptations happen, or even the vaguest understanding of how the media works in China. The complete lack of engagement with the material (aka the economic) and the political in favour of moralising along the dichtomy of pure and dirty content..... It’s wack. Applauding a production team for showing two men gazing at each other in a show that managed to pass a government-backed media corporation’s internal risk assessment mechanisms with regards to both censorship and profit-making (a media corporation who benefits $$ from making sanitised version of danmei works that authors put themselves at risk to publish for very little financial gain) while shitting down on a woman who is literally taking a risk by 1) publishing her stories 2) having become an incredibly well-known figure of the danmei writing community (considering the fact that the Chinese government has, in the past, specifically targeted visible figures as a way to make a statement) 3) and also who got a relatively or laughably small portion of $$ resulting from the success of all the adaptations of her novel. That does not mean MXTX and her works is above criticism, but I think you get where I’m going with this.

Who’s really benefitting from CQL’s success? Who’s really benefitting from all the EN-language fandom shitting on the novel and encouraging people to not even give it a fair chance? Gay people? Pfft.

I’m exhausted.

#i don't mean to sound like subtext romance is wrong: i do enjoy subtext romances in many situations #but I generally like it when it's part of the how the story is crafted not just a byproduct hastily shoved in there bc of censorship #mdzs #mxtx #cql #anon ask #Anonymous

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crossdressingdeath · 4 years ago

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I think the biggest reason why people saying it’s sad JC basically has no one bugs me so much is because more often than not, the people saying refuse to acknowledge why that is. There’s a reason why JC isn’t close to anyone after 13 years. There’s a reason he hasn’t married, why his sect keeps to themselves, why people are afraid to anger him. Yes it’s sad he’s alone but there are reasons behind why that is 1/2

MXTX didn’t do him dirty like many like to claim. She uses JC to show what happens when you put your own interests over others too many times. When you let the negativity rule over your life. JC is meant to be WWX’s opposite from their skills to personality to their morals. There’s a reason why WWX ends his story happy and content with his new life while JC is only just realizing he needs to move on. It’s sad he’s alone but what makes it so sad is that he did it to himself 2/2

MXTX did a good job of giving every character still alive at the end of the novel the ending they’d earned. For WWX and LWJ, that meant a happy ending, finally free to be together. For JC, it meant as far as we can tell a lifetime alone, trapped in the knowledge that he could have had people by his side if he hadn’t chosen to drive them off. He is alone because he chose to be alone, even if he doesn’t realize that himself. Frankly it would’ve been a betrayal of the themes of her story for MXTX to give JC a happy ending, because MDZS does have a strong running theme that the past will always catch up to you. No matter how rich and powerful you are, eventually you’ll piss off the wrong person, or too many people, or just hurt good people too damn much, and it will come back to bite you. There’s no escaping what you’ve done forever. JC is powerful enough to avoid any political or legal consequences for his actions, at least for now. But his cruelty does have repercussions; just like how JGS was murdered by JGY for his mistreatment and JGY was in turn killed for NHS’s revenge, there’s a price to pay for the way JC treats those around him. In his case, that price is the loss of everyone who might have stayed by his side and loved him. WWX and JL would’ve stayed with him if he’d been even slightly good to them, if he’d done anything to support them and treat them with the love he supposedly held for them. He chose not to. They left because he chose to drive them away. He’s alone not because the rest of the cast is mean, or because MXTX did him dirty, but because that’s the ending he earned with his actions.

Also I hate the argument that MXTX “did JC dirty” in general because... no one’s arguing she did XY or JGY or SS dirty. JC may not have been an out-and-out villain but he was an antagonist, and he got an antagonist’s ending. I imagine she’d planned JC’s ending out before she started writing him, because everything he does from his first appearance is leading up to that moment in the Guanyin temple where he finally goes too far for even WWX to accept and he leaves. The last ally JC had left, the last member of the family he grew up with by his side... and JC drives him away because the thought of setting the past aside and moving forward is too much for him to even consider. JC loses WWX in the end, specifically because he was trying so hard to keep him leashed to the Jiangs through guilt and cruelty. That’s the ending the story was building towards for him. It’s what he earned, not something MXTX just... chose to do. Authors don’t tank their characters’ storylines just for shits and giggles. She didn’t just decide she hated a good boy character and give him a tragic ending because of that, she planned for JC to end up where he did. Perhaps consider that when an author sees fit to give a character an antagonist’s ending it’s because they’re an antagonist.

#mdzs #cql #grapehate #anon #asks

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hamliet · 5 years ago

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Reflections of Su XiYan in Scum Villain’s Female Characters

I did not realize it was MXTX ladies week until yesterday. :( So I want to do a post/meta on the amazing women in each novel (not without critique), so let’s start with MXTX’s first one!

Scum Villain’s Self-Saving System, which while it may have more obvious narrative flaws than TGCF or MDZS (it sets up some plot points it kinda drops later, whereas TGCF and MDZS pretty much maximize every single aspect of potential), I actually think is just as rich, clever, and coherent thematically as MXTX’s latter two novels.

The plot points that are dropped, though, are actually almost entirely related to the set up the female characters as deconstructing the idea that they were just things for Original!Luo BingHe to collect. While it does do this to an extent with Su XiYan, Ning YingYing, and Sha HuaLing, it kinda… dropped the arcs halfway through for Ning YingYing and Sha HuaLing, and sets up but never really begins Liu MingYan’s and Qin WanYue’s.

Su XiYan’s arc, though, despite it taking place in the past and being told to us, is entirely about refuting the role the men in her life ascribe to her... and all of the other female characters--all members of Original!Luo BingHe’s harem--represent a part of her. You could get, like, really Oedipal if you wanted to, but I’d rather not beyond simply saying it’s a pattern in stories that is definitely present here. Aspects of her story and character are reflected in each of the women who are love interests in Proud Immortal Demon Way.

Our first refutation of how men treat and categorize Su XiYan is through her foiling with Ning YingYing.

Shen Yuan notes that Shen Jiu sexually harassed Ning YingYing:

the original Shen Qingqiu had designs on Ning Yingying... [he] had dirty thoughts towards his lively and well-behaved disciples. Several times he tried to lay hands on them and almost succeeded at that.

Which is what the Old Palace Master did to Su XiYan:

He turned to focus his stare on Luo Binghe’s quietly sleeping face... nThe Old Palace Master gazed at him for a long while then sighed: “When you close your eyes, you resemble her the most. And also when you’re being cold.”

His eyes traveled over Luo Binghe’s face greedily. If he still had hands, he would have reached out to fondle as well.

However, the Old Palace Master never got anywhere with Su XiYan, because she fell in love with someone else and thereby refutes the idea that she’s his tool. In the original, Ning YingYing is rescued by Luo BingHe in the original. In the novel, Ning YingYing’s arc is about her discovering self-sufficiency. She doesn’t need rescuing from Luo BingHe; she can rescue herself, as is shown when she leads Ming Fan and the other disciples into a fight to protect Shen QingQiu’s honor after his arrest. When someone slaps her, she slaps back, twice--but Shen QingQiu gives her the energy. I would have liked (and think her arc was heading towards) her to grow to be competent on her own as well.

Next, Sha HuaLing.

Sha HuaLing represents TianLang-Jun’s assumptions about Su XiYan: that she was a deceptive seductress who would betray him for her own desires. However, in reality, like Sha HuaLing does in Proud Immortal Demon Way, Su XiYan betrays her race (for her, humanity, for Sha HuaLing, demons) for love.

Sha Hualing was a pure-blooded demon, cruel and ruthless, cunning and artful, but fell irrevocably for Luo Binghe. After getting together with Luo Binghe, don’t even speak about killing for him; she even dared to do an outrageous thing like betraying the demons for him.

Su XiYan, however, was never given the chance to fight back. In the actual novel, Sha HuaLing does much the same (betrays the demons), but Luo BingHe does not love her and she knows it. I think this is a good ending place for Sha HuaLing, assigned to fight against her father in the final battle (which she does), but we’re told rather than shown her development and we’re not told what led to this decision, which is a shame.

Sha HuaLing is perhaps most directly foiled both in Proud Immortal Demon Way and in SVSSS by Qin WanYue.

Qin WanYue, much like Su XiYan, is considered the perfect disciple of the Huan Hua Palace. Regarding Su XiYan, it’s noted:

“That woman had shocking talent, was intelligent and sensitive when making decisions, and she had the aura of a tyrant. The Old Palace Master loved and cared for this private disciple. He thought of her as a pearl that should be protected in his hands and trained her to be the next Palace Master of Huan Hua Palace. No matter where he went, he would bring Su Xiyan along with him. The importance that he placed in her was abnormal.”

Qin WanYue’s symbol is a pearl that lights the way.

Luo Binghe picked up Qin Wanyue’s Night Pearl that had fallen to the ground and raised it high, as though it were a beacon. It awakened those who had frozen in place.

Not to mention in the original novel Qin WanYue loses a child in a miscarriage caused by someone else (Sha HuaLing) much like Su XiYan almost lost Luo BingHe when pregnant with him. Qin WanYue clings to Luo BingHe after the loss of her sister as something who might be able to offer her happiness. She’s not much different than Luo BingHe growing up parents and clinging to ShiZun: she who lost her sister and then clings to the person who saved her. But in her case, Luo BingHe does not return her affection, and I really had hoped/ expected her arc to end with her finding her own path.

Qin WanYue is also tasked with an action beneath her (much like Sha HuaLing): taking care of the Little Palace Mistress, the Old Palace Master’s literal daughter and hence another foil to Su XiYan. Her defining trait is her pettiness and cruelty, the latter of which Su XiYan is also said to have been capable of, as she began spending time with TianLang-Jun in an attempt to bring him down.

However, the mistress isn’t really set up with the potential for an arc like Qin WanYue is.

From time to time [Qin WanYue] would cast a teary glance at Luo Binghe, as if expecting something...

[Sha HuaLing:] “how many times have you failed to seduce the lord yet still refuse to leave? If you don’t leave that’s fine, but you’re incapable of looking after even a single person. Her cultivation isn’t even as high as yours. You’re her senior martial sister. You didn’t stop her early and didn’t stop her late. All you did was to let her make this unreasonable scene in front of the lord. Who are you putting on this pitiful and wronged appearance for?”

Qin WanYue isn’t weak at all, but she puts on a weak act for Luo BingHe, hoping to attract a rescuer like she needed back then. I initially expected her arc to end with her accepting her strength and moving on form Luo BingHe (and from the little palace mistress). I still think it should have.

And then we have Qiu HaiTang, whom I don’t think is set up as much for development as the others despite having more backstory on her.

Still, Qiu HaiTang she was a woman mistreated and shamed by what had happened with her fiance Shen Jiu--just like Su XiYan was shamed for what happened with TianLang-Jun.

“That’s right, if she hadn’t been so ill-fated as to fall for Tianlang-Jun’s wiles, she would have had such a bright and promising future and be a person of great renown today.”

“I don’t care what fantastic rewards are promised to me━having an affair with a demon and getting knocked up with a monster child is just plain disgusting. This kind of merit, I wouldn’t accept even if it was served to me on a silver platter.”

“Su Xiyan was probably too ashamed to remain, and thus ran away from the sect master.”

The thing is, all these roles--perfect disciple with great potential, brave enough to betray everything for love, endearing and caring, mistreated--none of these really capture the complexity and beauty of who Su XiYan really was... which is represented in Liu MingYan, the noted female counterpart to Luo BingHe, the main female lead. Liu MingYan conceals her face, which is too beautiful to be seen.

Liu MingYan, like Si XiYan, remains mysterious; Shen QingQiu never sees her face uncovered, and the audience never really gets a clue as to what is going on in her head besides the mention that she cares deeply for her brother. Again, this is something I think could have and should have been developed more; she has the set-up for an arc with her conflict with Sha HuaLing being dazzled by her beauty and with her loyalty to her sect and brother, but it doesn’t go anywhere. She said to be “the number one female lead!” after all, and I think it’s entirely possible for her to maintain her aura of mystery and still... have an arc. Su XiYan did, after all, and she was dead before the novel began.

In the end, no one really can define whom Su XiYan was exactly, because she’s dead. What ultimately mattered, what defined Su XiYan’s legacy, was her final choice to save her son (and yes, it’s fair to critique that it’s again about a man, but it’s her choice). That’s why the story, in its penultimate chapter, has Shen QingQiu telling Luo BingHe:

“Su Xiyan risked her life to give birth to you...

“If I were in her shoes, I would not hesitate to drink [the poison for a fetus] regardless of how lethal it is. Then, after escaping from the water prison, I would absorb it all into my own body. Regardless of how agonizing and horrifying the process is, regardless of the price to be paid, regardless of whether it would be a painful death, I would never let this child suffer any harm.

“This is how I see it. You can take it as just an interpretation because there is no one who can tell you what Su Xiyan was thinking before she breathed her last. But if she really saw you as a disgrace, she didn’t need to do anything more. She could have just lowered you into the Luo River, on the coldest days of the year, in a harsh and frozen landscape━how could you possibly survive?... she also need not use the last of her strength and energy to put you in a wooden basin and push you away to safety…… You don’t even need to wait for someone to save you at all since you would have already become a wandering soul who met his freezing end in Luo River.

He’s healed, and he no longer needs to try to recreate his mother figure in over a thousand beautiful women like he did in the past. He can heal.

Imo, it would have been even more powerful if the women then stepped out of these roles more completely, and became their own people. But I really do like all four of the main women I discussed here, and someday I’ll write more for them.

#scum villain meta #svsss #svsss meta #the scum villain's self-saving system #bingqiu #luo binghe #su xiyan #shen qingqiu #shen yuan #shen jiu #sha hualing #liu mingyan #ning yingying #qiu haitang #qin wanyue #mxtx meta #mxtx #mxtx ladies week

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zhuhongs · 4 years ago

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Here’s my long ass review of TGCF that literally no one asked for it i have opinions and I have no one to tell them too so i must write them out and post them. (also part of this is abt the mdzs novel bc i can’t not compare them and I have a lot of thoughts abt that too)

This is very very long so it’s going under a read more. Spoilers ahead!!

Okay so first off this book was a fucking behemoth i can’t believe i read all of that (minus the extras) in under a week.. what the fuck. I definetly got reading fatigue halfway thru book 3.

I’m gonna separate my thoughts into sections bc i have a few points that don’t all relate

firstly, overall writing and organization:

I said it earlier but tgcf is a lot more structurally sound than mdzs imo. My biggest criticism of the MDZS novel (minus the bad sex scenes, homophobia, and general I hate mxtxness of it) was the way the flashbacks were presented.

Like OH MY GOD they were presented so badly. I hated that the flashback was told intermittently and only when one of the characters invoked the past. For example, when WWX meets Jiang Cheng and a second time, Jin Ling distracts JC to release “Mo Xuanyu” bc he saved his life in the Nie Ancestral hall earlier. WWX then proceeds to be the self sacrificing dude he is and take away Jin Ling’s curse and put it on himself. When he escapes and returns to LWJ, LWJ offers to carry him.

If you watched CQL, you know exactly what LWJ is referring to when he says smth to the effect of “You once offered to carry me too, remember.” HOWEVER in the novel you don’t know what he’s talking about. This is because the flashback wasn’t been revealed to you yet. The next chapter goes to tell the flashback. I think that this takes away all of the emotional depth away from the scene. But in CQL, having the flashback already be known, you make the connection on your own and are like “awww wangji remembers that.. even 16 years later.“ Its a lot sweeter bc you know what the two have gone thru. At this point in the MDZS novel its barely the 30th chapter or so and you have no real idea what wangxian have been thru together or what reasons wangji has for loving wwx. You just think, well obviously they like each other bc this is a danmei novel and they are the two leads, ofc they have to like each other. But in cql, you learn through watching them that they’re in love. It’s not just like”well they have to be!! its a bl!!”

Okay that was a rlly long side tangent but it makes me so angry. So what did any of that have to do with TGCF?? well tgcf doesn’t have this issue. In fact, i believe that it gains a lot from having the flashback withheld from the reader.

I really liked how the flashbacks were contained to books 2 and 4 respectively because it adds a layer of mystery. Hua Cheng is a very secretive man so it makes sense for us to not know everything about him upfront. The way that the author teases and hints little things at you make you want to know more, making it all the more satisfying when the truth is revealed. Because in a way you Know that Hua Cheng meets Xie Lian before and you know that he’s the child XL saved during the God Pleasing Ceremony but you don’t know all the details. Like obviously since Hua Cheng is a ghost you know that he’s died and it was likely for Xie Lian or Xian le’s sake but you probably never expected that he actually died twice. Once on the battle field and second when he took the human face disease. I think the difference between these flashbacks and the flashbacks in MDZS result from the length. In TGCF you get two long concise flashbacks that make sense to be placed where they are. Book 2 because you already have a feel and hint at what the characters have been through and book 4 because the White No Face appears again so then you learn how he and Xie Lian met before. It wouldn’t make sense to place book 2 any earlier bc there is no emotional impact. And it doesn’t make sense to place book 4 earlier because you don’t know what the white no face’s deal is so it’d be confusing. In MDZS, you get numerous short flashbacks happening alongside the main story and it makes it hard to piece together the timeline in a way that feels satisfying. Ik a lot of ppl grill cql for having a confusing intro episode and having a rlly long flashback but its much better than the mdzs novel. However the mdzs donghua handles the flashback in the most concise way imo.

Overall i think the way the story is structured is very good and is a step up from mdzs. Also the horror aspects of tgcf are rlly enjoyable and honestly i think mxtx should just write short horror stories at this point. like enough long ass novels chock full of fetishization. just write some fun horror with no romance and call it a day.. pls

Side Characters:

okay so straight up, i think the side characters arent used as well as they were in mdzs bc mxtx wanted to focus on hualian and didn’t want to give the side characters as much focus. This is a weaker point of the novel.

I’ll get into it more below but i think hua cheng was done dirty as a character by having him rlly only care abt xie lian. Since he doesn;t have any real relationships with others outside of xie lian this takes away from having more depth in the side characters. They’re really only related as far as xie lian’s relationship with them. Though thankfully xie lian gets rather close with a few officials and the ones we get to see more of are rlly interesting. I especially loved the reconciliation of mu qing, feng xin, and xie lian at the end of book 5. honestly their relationship was one my favorites and i’m glad they finally said what they had to say to each other after 800 fucking years. Also Shi Qingxuan is a delight. we stan sqx in this house.

The characters i wish we had seen more of were yushi huang (although she didnt rlly want to be there, good for her), Quan Yizhen and Yin Yu. I very much wish yizhen and yin yus story happened earlier on and we had more time with them. It felt strange to have their subplot occur towards the end and it was sort of out of place but i liked them a lot!! i wish there was more to it. and that there was a reconcilation but mxtx hates happy shidi’s doesnt she, (glares at novel jc). Also man yin yu did NOT have to die like that i’m sad.

Also, honestly.. i don’t think qi rong added to the story whatsoever and i have no clue why he and guzi were there. qi rong just pissed me off the whole time and added literally nothing.

going back to yushi huang, i’d like to say for the millionth time that i hate how mxtx uses any of her female characters. like we get it.. u hate women being useful... im still pressed but what i want to say has been said many times before so ill leave it at that.

Hualian:

I really really did like hualian at the end. They had a truly epic love story and it was so beautiful, especially when hua cheng repeated his words as wuming to xie lian as he started to disappear. But, I said it once and i’ll say it again. I don’t think Hualian is a super healthy relationship. As fiction its fine (i firmly believe fiction impacts reality but let me finish), i guess bc literally nothing about their situation can be replicated irl and none of it ended up containing manipulation or abuse or anything bad but there was a potential for it to and i’m really glad it didnt go that route.

Hualian is a highly idealized and romanticized relationship full of some truly troubling feelings of self worth. While its “beautiful” in a way that hc really was xls most devoted believer, it wasnt healthy for him to live for xl like this. Nor was it healthy for xl to feel so unworthy of hua chengs love.

Hua Cheng’s devotion to Xie Lian is a little too extreme and it bothers me. When the truth was revealed abt the Temple of 10,000 Gods I had the same reaction as Mu Qing and Feng Xin. I was like... HEY WHAT THE FUCKK that’s a little uh... thats NOT HEALTHY,, dianxia PLEASE say smth. But ofc Xie Lian didn’t say fucking anything and and i was so pissed. Like the whole thing of Hua Cheng living his life solely for XIe Lian is really kinda fucked up and not romantic. I was holding out hope that at some point XIe Lian would sit him down and be like “Hey! I love you and i’m really grateful that all these years you’ve still believed in me when no one else did. But you can’t just live your life for my sake. You deserve love from many other other people and deserve to have a life and happiness outside of me. I still want to spend the rest of my life with you, but you need to not only think of me.” or something to that effect

It bothers me that after Xie Lian learns the truth he doesn’t once reassure Hua Cheng that he didn’t have to make Xie Lian his reason for existence. Like.. idk i just think that’s rlly kinda unhealthy. Like I understand why Hua Cheng is so deeply devoted to Xie Lian-- he saved his life twice and was the only one to ever show him kindness and he’s seen xie lian suffer a fate worse than death multiple times. I get that he wants to protect him and make his life easier, but to not let anyone else into his life and spend 800 years looking for xie lian is just overkill. Like if the whole 10k statues thing never happened i’d be 100 percent fine with hualin but the whole devotion to that extent... uhhh yea.. no that put a bad taste in my mouth. Obsession should not be romanticised. I don’t think any reader of tgcf is going out and deciding to live like hua cheng obviously but still.

Also Side note, the whole 100 swords scene.. bro i felt for hua cheng, the way he screamed seeing that, i don’t blame him. I was so horrified reading that chapter. i don’t think i’ve been so horrified by a piece of media like that in a while. Poor fucking xie lian.. oh my god. I understand the intense reaction he had and how seeing that prompted such a degree of loyalty but still.. 10k statues?? the cave that mu qing and feng xin saw... thats a little too much obssession... like please.. dial it back.. im begging u.

I was talking to mary (liviahyes) and she said smth abt how Hua Cheng doesn’t have a character outside of xie lian. And she’s right, he kinda doesn’t. If Xie Lian didn’t exist neither would Hua Cheng. I get that that counds kinda romantic but in practice i don’t think its a good things. Especially because Xie Lian has a story outside of Hua Cheng, hehas goals, he has friends, he has something. Hua Cheng said it-- his only dream is Xie Lian. Which is romantic but very very unbalanced.

THAT BEING SAID, i still rly liked their relationship and i think theyre cute they just have issues they need to work through. I mean they have time but yea. It wasn’t perfect but eh. overall i’m bitter bc they couldve been THAT COUPLE but theyre so many bad implications as mentioned above and i.. smh. They still have amazing moments. Like the lantern scene, the alter scene, the “what matters is you, not the state of you”, the end when hua cheng helps release the shackles on xie lian, the scene where hua cheng disappears, the way xie lian waited for him, like they were so close to being THAT COUPLE but then mxtx and her fujo ass just had to make it uncomfortable like that. i’m so bitter. Like the reason why i wrote out all of this is bc this novel could’ve been great but so many little things added up and made the experience far more sour than it shouldve been.

MXTX did hua cheng SO DIRTY by not giving him a character much outside of loving xie lian and being good at everything. Like when I first learned abt how Hua Cheng beat 33 heavenly officials at what they excel in best i was like WHO IS THIS LEGEND but honestly.. he rlly doesn’t have any motivations outside of helping xie lian and I wish he had more to him . Like if we had more situations like the one where hua cheng dug out his own eye to save the group of mortals on mount tong’lu then he’d have been a much more well rounded character. Honestly, that’s rlly the only instance where he seems to have taken xie lians ideals to heart. I wish we had more of that bc that scene was so cool. i wish it hadn’t been revealled so late and there was more than one occasion where he defends others (minus xie lian ofc) without anything for himself to gain that.

To contrast hualian with wangxian, i think wangxian work so well bc at their core, they have the same life goals and same ideas about people and the world. Where in hualian, xie lian has core principles and morals and hua cheng is just like, anything for xie lian. SMH they couldve been great but overall i think hualian falls flat for me because of my own fear of dating someone who doesn’t have a life outside of dating me. Moreso, my parents had this sort of unbalanced relationship towards the end of their marriage and it ended very badly and yea, i just can’t whole heartedly love relationships that in any way resemble this, even if it ends differently. that’s a personal thing tho.

I don’t think Hua Cheng has ANY bad intentions towards Xie Lian or ever will. I don’t think he’s ever manipulated xl or tried to force him to love him. But again, it’s my own personal feelings that makes me feel kinda.. ehh conflicted abt hualian. There was potential but again.. fujoshis ruin everything... smh. Overall i think the way it ended redeemed the issues it had but still there were issues and i really wish xie lian like,, reassured hua cheng about living his life freely at some point but whatever.

IN CONCLUSION

TGCF had the potential to be better than mdzs, it rlly did but it was bogged down by the authors own toxic mentalities abt love, and mlm relationships, and treating women like ppl and it just leaves a bad taste in my mouth. I enjoyed this book, truly i did (otherwise i wouldn’t have stuck through and read 750k words of it) but there are some flaws that cannot be glossed over. I hope that tgcf when it does get adapted, goes through the same miracle that cql did and makes the characters more like ppl and less like tropes but i doubt it. Also i highly doubt that a live action tgcf is feasible given the supernatural aspects of the series but we shall see. I’m excited for the donghua when it eventual comes out but i will continue to be critical of the novel bc..well.. you see why. idk if i’d reccommend this book tbh bc like yes i would, no i would... well.. </3. yea. overall, it sure was something that i enjoyed in spades. especially the last 5 chapters. I generally liked it but had many issues with it at the same time, but honestly, yea thats the standard fair for a mxtx novel.

#text heavy #'like rlly fucking text heavy #tgcf #tgcf lb #and with that... the lb is over #i dont think i'll read the extra but who knows #also i reread this twice looking for missing words and typos so i HOPE its coherant #anyways if u read this.. bless u and feel free to ask me anything abt what i've said #i legit just finished it and i havent thought back on everything so im v willing to hear different standpoints

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