#even if it isn't JGY

[khattikeri]

one of my favorite things about mdzs is that for how heavily its plot involves politics of classism and misogyny... even the characters most directly impacted by it can't and don't free themselves from it. literally the closest exception is mianmian.

meng yao being the "son of a whore" wasn't some sort of commie awakening for him that led him to wanting everyone to be socially equal. he played the political game, climbed the ladders, sucked up to and backstabbed and murdered people, including other prostitutes who actually had nothing to do with how he and his mother were treated at the brothel he grew up in.

he put in so much extra excessive effort for even a fraction of the same respect that members of gentry cultivation clans got. and he did deserve to be treated more humanely! but he feeds into the exact same system that created him, leading to his own undoing.

his efforts were for a fragile upward mobility that was never going to hold up. he never surpassed his origins nor did he empower others in similar stations, because the society he lives in is not one that would accept that.

the second he got caught and all those crimes exposed, he was scapegoated to hell and back, replacing wei wuxian as society's terrible one-sidedly evil boogeyman overnight.

speaking of not-quite male gentry, i think it's interesting that wei wuxian explicitly doesn't try to climb the ladders in BOTH lives, knowing full well that anything he does will be punished just for the sheer fact that he is wei wuxian.

wei wuxian is scolded for giving intelligent and correct answers in school. lan wangji does the same and is praised.

wei wuxian occasionally lounges around with fellow disciples and is punished. jiang cheng does the same and mostly escapes.

wei wuxian refuses to carry his sword around in public (after losing his golden core, which nobody knows) and is scorned as an arrogant upstart. nie huaisang has been doing the EXACT SAME THING for YEARS and nobody bats an eye.

unlike jin guangyao, wei wuxian knew subconsciously from the start that his acceptance was superficial and that he could be cast out any time. when he was 10 and recently taken in by the jiangs, he canonically would not eat or use "too much" food and water because he thought they'd find him a nuisance for "wasting their things" and kick him back out.

now away from just the classism, yu ziyuan is a proud and strong noblewoman in a society that belittles and derides women for everything they do. her strong cultivation doesn't matter. she's victim to the vicious rumors of her husband loving another woman who is strong like her but apparently had a more likeable personality.

it doesn't matter even if jiang fengmian didn't cheat or that wei wuxian is wei changze's son with cangse sanren; yu ziyuan can't bear with the humiliation of herself (and by extension her children) not being "good enough". she's ridiculed for "failing" in that one duty as a wife, mother, and woman.

she lashes out and takes out that anger on everyone present for years, giving her children lasting trauma and also being a key element in how the jiang family and yunmeng jiang sect are effectively wiped out at the hands of the wen clan.

madam jin doesn't even have a name outside of the fact that she's married to jin guangshan. i don't even remember reading anything that indicates if she's a strong or weak cultivator, or what, which in itself proves that to most people, it doesn't matter. she's "just" a woman.

of course she's angry at her husband's affairs and all the bastard children they bring in. but she also can't do anything about them, so she lashes out at the few people she can: servants. non-cultivators, probably. those very same bastard children.

shoutout to meng yao getting shoved down a flight of stairs at age fourteen, because if madam jin tried that move against her husband instead, it would make her lose even more face, which as a noblewoman she'd never do.

and that's not getting into how jiang yanli is consistently sidelined for being physically weak.

that's not getting into how mianmian was actually a good cultivator, but was mocked by everyone around her for trying to stand up for wei wuxian when everyone was turning on him. how everyone scoffed at luo qingyang's words as "just some lovesick woman" who "obviously wants to marry or bed him since he saved her".

luo qingyang is the only one of these characters who HASN'T died. she didn't play society's games like jin guangyao. she didn't dig her heels in confidence of her own abilities like wei wuxian.

she didn't bitterly lash out like yu ziyuan and madam jin. she didn't gently accept it like jiang yanli.

she just LEFT.

she married an ordinary merchant and cultivates separately from mainstream cultivation society, and therein found her own peace and happiness.

mxtx doesn't bother with particularly class conscious or feminist vocabulary to hand-hold readers into understanding these disparities, but that choice highlights them & the deeply entrenched politics of their society even more. i really love it.

[benevolenterrancy]

this description made me realise what one of my favourite MXTX character tropes is: Over-Worked, Under-Appreciated Employee Who Is Not Above Becoming Somewhat Evil About It

[daily-suyao]

[ivoryratdoggerythethird]

i love that very specific mdzs flavour where the random background disciples of any given clan are like. the opposite of the people who most represent them in the book. the characters we think define the sect are actually the odd ones out.

lans are actually constantly ready to fucking Throw Hands with wwx like they see a red ribbon flutter and lqr is already preparing the scrolls and practicing his aim, teen lwj is cracking his fists, jingyi is sliding an axe out of his shoe, the rest of them are all following and unsheathing an unholy amount of dog shaped knives because fuck restraint-

sizhui, xichen and adult wanji are like. the only ones who don’t want to gut him, at least before getting to know him in his second life.

or that one post about yunmeng disciples just being a mob of wei wuxians but more purple and less demonic. people see ymj disciples in all their disciplined, elegant glory, standing straight and firm to represent their sect and beloved leader with honor- while very likely having a mental debate about blowing up a building or stuffing 6 buns in their mouth in one go.

jiang cheng is standing there all regal and intimidating, trying to build his sect’s reputation, “whichever clan you offend you should not offend the jiang clan” and all that, while his gremlins are back in lotus pier like >:3 holding a chicken in one hand and the bell in the other and no one is brave enough to ask.

what is nies are actually just buff nie mingjue-style but all act like nie huaisang so the reason he managed to survive as the head-shaker for years is cuz most of his subordinates are just him but less murder-y. for now. 

[thatswhatsushesaid]

didn't anyone ever tell u it's rude to interrupt, da-ge

[little-meowyao]

Something that drives me up the wall with CQL NMJ and JGY is the age gap.

Like, in the novel, it's not really that significant because JGY only goes work with NMJ when he's 19-20, but in CQL, I don't remember well but we see JGY as at least NHS's aide when he's 15-16

That drives me insane because while in the novel NMJ's behavior towards JGY is already pretty fucked up and violent and entitled

And while I don't believe NMJ to be more than 3-4 years older than LXC, that kind of age gap on teenish years is a lot

And that, because of meeting so much earlier while JGY was an (admitedly very mature, but regardless,) teen, you know what they feel reminiscent of for me?

It feels reminiscent of an increasingly abusive and emotionally imature parent and a former golden child who made one mistake once and everything went south from there

And it fits because of NMJ still having that pesky entitlement to JGY's time and attention (see: where he calls him MY and the times he interrupts his conversations w/ LXC)

[jin-zixun]

I'm sorry but if you, as my friend, introduce me to one of your other friends and then your other friend tries to kill me and ends up killed by me, to avoid me being killed by them... I have not wronged you. If anything you have wronged me by introducing me to someone who tried to kill me.

Especially if you insisted it was a misunderstanding after having to stop them twice and then continued to push for reconciliation, between the two of us in private no less, without even acknowledging the possibility of a third time happening while your other friend is literally screaming about how they will definitely be attempting to do it a third time. Please don't be coming to me years later like "why didn't you say something I could've helped" because like. Seriously? Are you serious?

[leatherbookmark]

pretend to be shocked if you wish but i don’t even see mxy’s incestuous harassment of jgy as something like... Bad™, twisted or something that proves how Wrong In The Head he was. it’s just sad. chances are jgy was his first and last love, because -- how incredibly easy it would have been. i don’t think mxy was, hmm, mentally equipped to process “half-brother! off-limits!” -- he’s never seen this man before in his life, that’s a stranger! but what a stranger. he’s kind, respectful, capable and brilliant, hardworking despite the way he’s treated in jinlintai -- and mxy probably isn’t well-liked either, so even if jgy wasn’t also handsome, he would’ve gravitated towards this cool older dude who Understands. and hormones do the rest! and it didn’t even have to be immediate, or particularly sexual in nature, because i assume teens often don’t realize their crush is Obviously Showing. i’m just thinking about mxy who likes jgy so, so much and wants to be around him all the time, asks him about things, looks at him, catches a whiff of the incense on jgy’s robes as he walks past, blushes at the way jgy looks at a particular angle... just this sweet, innocent young love that’s so similar to the way jgy’s wife loved him before she was his wife So Fucking Doomed and mxy can’t even process it because he’s not even aware. :(

[random-mdzs-thoughts-dumpster]

Since people who hate JGY love thinking about all the things he could have done, why do they always ignore the fact that he didn't actually do them and the implications of that? Yes, he could have killed JL but he let him live for 15 years (and would likely continue that way if he hadn't died). Think of all the opportunities he had for it that he didn't take. If he wanted his son to be his heir so much that he tried killing his nephew (but he accidentally killed his son. BTW that kidnappers must have been very stupid) why didn't he have another child (even by remarrying if you keep enough of his canon personality for him to be disgusted by being in an incestuous relationship) and kill JL later? He had plenty of time to wait and all the different ways to kill him so it wouldn't be suspicious, people would just pity him for losing both his son and his nephew. I'm sure if people tried to look at his actions as they were and not the worst possible version of what could have been (and going yeah, he did that), they wouldn't hate him so much.

[add1ctedt0you]

that fic idea where WWX is sent to a universe where JC isn't paying attention to him/being sad about him because JGY was JC's childhood bestie... effervescent

the many stages of WWX's reaction

YEAH. THE FEELINGS. THE MANY STAGES OF WWX'S REACTIONS INDEED

(sorry I got overboard while thinking how things would play...) it's very long!!

you haven't asked, but imo at the start, wwx is very excited! He is in his old body again! He has his strong golden core back!( Imo he is scarred by being 'the number one cultivation world's enemy'.) So, it's nice having cultivators who admire him! He is happily married with the love of his life, he is an accomplished scientist and a fun teacher! He didn't even kill 2000 people or his shijie! Everything is perfect.

So he goes to visit jc: his shidi isn't mad at him anymore! Why should he be? He didn't have crimes under his belt anymore.

Lotus Pier, the SAME lotus pier as before the massacre (there was a war, wwx knows that. Maybe during the rebuilding jc has found someone with great memory! Nice!), doesn't throw him out. He feels welcomed.

And then he goes to the sect leader (he has to ask before the disciples let him in the throne room. Rude, but he understands, jc loves formality. - lwj is quite confused... Why would sect leader jiang immediately run to welcome them? But wei ying is happy, so he holds back)

And then, they arrive at the throne room... And jc is there, at his rightful place, proud and scowly, and wwx is so HAPPY. He's at home again!

"jiang cheng, I am back!"

"..."

"..."

jc is so confused that stares at him, unimpressed. He doesn't know this wwx, but he has heard how weird he can be. Still, his inventions are amazing and useful and he is lwj's husband, and lwj is important to lxc... He can't be rude, he has to maintain a good relationship with the Lan. "I didn't know that wei-xiansheng has already been at Lotus Pier before, but I am glad to host such honorable guests. I would say to make yourself at home, but you have already done it forgetting formality", he sneers and wwx is confused. What the fuck jc?! Do you want formalities?! I beat your ass so many times, do you want me to bow to you???

Before wwx can say something, jc calls his second in command and Meng Yao arrives. He escorts them, under jc's order, to their guest room.

wwx is so confused that he lets it happen. Then, he asks his husband what the fuck is happening. Why is meng yao here? Isn't he dead? lwj is worried about his husband' deteriorating memory, but he answers. He would do everything for his husband. But then wei ying's face goes white, then red, then purple! Is wei ying sick?????? He needs to find a good healer to help his husband!! So he leaves the room with an excuse.

In the meantime, wwx is fuming! MY killed shijie!!! He killed jzx, shijie, 2000 people, then comes back (how?? Idk. plot. plot), and JC LET HIM AT LOTUS PIER. JC WHAT THE FUCK!! YOU COULDN'T STAND MY SIGHT FOR ONE SECOND, NOW YOU LET MENG YAO IN!! BASTARD.

It's unacceptable! He needs to fix things!!! He has to, if jc doesn't!!! He goes to jc's personal pavilion ('see, meng yao, I know lotus pier! Even better than you!' he mocks MY speech and suggestions about lotus pier's best inns).

When he arrives, - he sneaks really, now lotus pier has an hell of security system, he almost got caught! That never happened to him before! - he sees jc, MY AND jl eating at a low table. All together. Happily.

WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK? JL EVEN YOU! THE BETRAYAL! wwx knows that jl in the other universe forgives him (he is shijie' son, at the end of the day) but jgy's too???? Now???? jgy wasn't stabbed by jl! What right does he have to sit at his side?!?! And jl and wwx's relationship was still fragile, they were still working on trust and shit like that, what's the easy way they talk???? JC STOP PEALING LOTUS SEEDS FOR MY TOO. ONLY JL CAN HAVE THEM.

Unfortunately wwx is caught by the jiang disciples. They brings him to jc and wwx snaps: "jc what the fuck?!?! He killed shijie!!! You should be skinning him alive not feeding him!! Or just whipping him because you are boring. Whatever. But what the fuck?!"

And jc gets mad, but not 'wwx has pissed me off but it will pass'mad or 'I am rightfully even if unfairly mad about shijie and the peacock' bodies 'mad. No, he is 'you are pissing me off and I would kill you without thoughts - but REALLY KILL you'mad.

jl snaps "how dare you talk about my mother like that?! Do you wanna die???"

And jc" mister wei has overstepped his stay and bounds. I'll forget it for the sake of our clans, just this one time. Nonetheless, what happens to meng yao is a jiang family matter"

Lwj arrives and apologizes in wwx's stead. Then lwj drags him out of lotus pier. wwx is confused and angry. What is lwj doing?? He explains to his husband that jgy's the devil! He is bad and mean and a cunning manipulator! He killed wrh! He killed nmj! He killed jgs!

But lwj is even more worried: yes, Meng Yao - who is jgy? - killed wrh, but both jgs and nmj are still alive. Maybe wei ying is tired. Lwj is so worried about his husband's memory.

No one,- lsz, wn, ljy- believes him... And it's just as before, when he was all alone against the world, where no one believes him or in him... The food is tasteless, the world seems again to not have a place for him... His home isn't his home anymore...

But wwx has shit to fix! He needs to help jc and jl to see jgy's real nature! HE NEEDS TO FIX THINGS

And that's the fic:

jc's unmovable love for his family plus jl's good heart plus jgy cunning scheming vs. wwx inability to handle jc's emotions (indifference is unacceptable! How does jc dare to forget wwx?) plus his exaggerated reactions

[drinkingteainthedark]

Y’know, when Jin Guangyao was doing his whole “Oh, you were so cruel to your brother weren’t you? Oh yes you were!” tirade all Jiang Cheng had to say was “At least I didn’t fuck him.”

End of conversation. Jiggy is back on the defensive. There is no way he can respond to that without somehow making himself look even worse (which is saying something)

[waitingforminjae]

although i did remember "freedom is a length of rope and god wants you to hang yourself with it" earlier and that is admittedly one hell of a line

[phoenixcatch7]

Something that always bugs me is that the way fanfic authors have it, there's absolutely nothing between 'beloved son treated and raised precisely the same as the two blood siblings in the blood based ruling lineage' and 'despised and excluded indentured servant psychologically manipulated into having no self worth cut off from any emotional support'. This is, historically, a very, VERY recent binary, as the fostering system outgrows things like orphanages and the idea of the nuclear family is cemented.

There is a whole range of different statuses that exist between those two extremes just in Western society, and more than that outside of what I already know. Wardship, for example. Fostering without adoption. Room and board apprenticeship.

Wwx is older than jc. Him being adopted and legitimised, despite not being jiang, would cause a succession crisis. By rights, as the eldest male (and prodigious and well liked besides) he would be first to inherit in some people's eyes. Being adopted formally in this way would cause those rumours of bastardry madame yu was always banging on about (though I'm never convinced those rumours were as prevalent as she believed). Jfm would lose reputation and status, yzy would take a tremendous hit to her reputation, jc's place as heir would suddenly be cast into uncertainty, coming under intense scrutiny as people suddenly feel as though they had a choice in who to support, and wwx would be forced into a role and potential future he has absolutely no desire for. And by putting him in a position where he could become head of jiang, there's the risk that he might assassinate jc to become the undisputed heir, something impossible if he isn't brought into the family officially. Would wwx ever dream of doing so? No! Not even slightly! But it is a valid fear of the time and culture, jgy just proves that worst case scenario.

Instead of being the child prodigy coming out of nowhere, the son of respected rogue cultivators so generously taken in the jiang and well trained, suddenly he'd be 'proof' of infidelity, both families involved would become scandals, even post-humeously. As jgy and mxy prove, being a bastard is a lower social status than the right hand man of the sect heir, head disciple of a major sect. Now wrapped in gossip and scandal, they would no longer be called the prides of yunmeng.

And then of course that kind of divisive succession would backfire horrendously when lotus pier is burned and jc tries to rebuild the clan while wwx goes demonic cultivator! It would be DISASTROUS for the jiang, jc having lost a lot of his legitimacy and political support, wwx's now filthy reputation being tied even tighter to the clan, reflecting on them so much more. Worst case gossip would be that the jiang as a whole are turning to demonic cultivation. People who wanted wwx for heir would be in a very dangerous position! People who disliked jc as heir would make it even harder for him! Not that the jiangs would/could have predicted the war and the burning of the sect but fr it would have made an already nigh impossible situation even harder and more volatile.

And it's not like wwx is treated purely like a servant! He isn't going round fetching tea and carrying jcs sword and keeping one step behind. He eats every meal with them, he gets pocket money from them, he is openly and pretty universally considered siblings with the other two, and nobody except yzy acts like it's weird, or he's acting above his station for it (though people like the wens and jin aren't above trying to use that 'son of a servant' thing when they're targeting him to get their own way).

Yes, yzy is deeply insecure and blames him, yes during their goodbyes jc gets hugs and wwx gets orders. They're far from perfect. That's the most affection jc ever got from either of them. Jyl got nothing, she wasn't there. Which is pretty representative of her treatment from her parents, ngl. But wwx had support from jc, had sorta paternal support and a safe authority figure in jfm, had maternal support and care from jyl (though she shouldn't have had to, but that's a different conversation). There are actual family servants (yzy's twins) who grew up with her and were trained for it and they act very differently to wwx. For all yzy throws her weight around and jfm is a bit of a doormat, wwx grew up well cared for and well loved.

The fact that the family as a whole was pretty messed up and his part in it made it worse? That's on the family members themselves. His never arriving would not have fixed that family. For wwx, genuinely, there really wasn't anywhere else he could really go once he was orphaned. If he hadn't died on the streets perhaps he could have made it as a civilian working for someone else, dabbling in cultivation because we know him.

The wen and jin would have eaten him alive. The lans? Don't make me laugh. I love a good 'wwx gets betrothed to lwj as teens and he moves to gusu and Fixes Everything' as much as the next person but let's not kid ourselves, canon wwx would have ended up whipped to death or expelled with the way he is. As a visiting disciple he got so many punishments and kicked out not even halfway through the year! Him living there with lwj as adults is due to him 'redeeming' himself through mystery solving and lwj being fully, openly ready to ditch the sect for him. Even then they're constantly on the road night hunting and lwj being the lightning rod of all of wwx's trouble making tendencies (and being 100% down to breaking the rules with him without enacting punishment). They might accept him now but it would not have happened without lwj doing it first (and the juniors all loving him lol).

The nie? Maybe, but that would have left NHS in pretty much the exact same position as jc: inferior second fiddle, unskilled, constantly compared to him. Wwx would be in the exact same position of being pressured to tone himself down and keep his dangerous ideas to himself, and NHS would have double the fear of inevitably losing both his brothers. And of course, the nie aren't exactly as patient and laid back as the jiang sect as a whole, with their hyper aggressive murder resentment swords. The first sign of wwx acting 'outside' of the clans best interests and getting risky and he's going straight down those stairs the same way as jgy.

Tldr: there's more options to raise a kid than full adoption or abused servitude, even today, and though officially adopting wwx would have made everything SO much worse, his other options would not have survived him. He deserved better with the jiangs but frankly so did the blood kids (and the mother and the father). All three were emotionally neglected and adoption would not have fixed that.

This is why I believe that if wwx had been even a day younger than jc everyone would have been so much happier.

[lancabbage]

Personally, I think the real reason people keep insisting MDZS is told from WWX's POV, even though they admit it's third person omniscient, is because JC is addressed by his birth name 'Jiang Cheng' throughout the entire novel and not his courtesy name. So people wrongly assume it must be from WWX's perspective...

Well, those that cling to such a take aren't going to like the real answer to this... But that's still not the case. If it were from WWX's perspective, JYL would be addressed as 'Shijie', LWJ would be 'Lan Zhan' and JFM would be 'Jiang-shushu' etc. JC is addressed by his birth name throughout the novel because even the narrator thinks he is a clown.

Sorry, but that's the reason. They do not think he deserves respect, just as the rest of the cultivation world doesn't either. If you actually look at the text, you'll notice behind his back, nearly everyone calls JC by his birth name out of disrespect - it's literally in the first few chapters for all to see. He's rarely called by his courtesy name by anyone other than LWJ, WWX when he's pissed and later by JGY and XY in the extras. That's it. It's a show of disrespect throughout the novel and the narrator shows the same. JC isn't called 'Sandu Shengshou' for nothing you know, it's a running theme of disrespect for a character that doesn't deserve much if any at all.

[thatswhatsushesaid]

was watching a stream where chat was arguing whether x/ch/ng or s/ngch/ng was the better ship... couldn't help but think of that meme that goes "they having a mid off"

i am not familiar with this meme but just judging by the vibes it extrudes into my mind, it fits lol

that said at least sangch3ng is based on a preexisting relationship between jc and nhs. like, their lan summer camp hijinks are very funny, esp in cql, so i can see why some people would enjoy it as a ship! it is just very much not my thing.

[littlesmartart]

DRAWTOBER #12 - Something is Rotten in the State of Lanling by @eastofakkala

In which Madam Qin tells her daughter instead of her daughter’s betrothed about why she and Jin Guangyao can’t get married. Angry and humiliated, Qin Su comes up with a way out for both of them. Or, Qin Su saves the day.

Jin sibs bonding fic!! in which Qin Su and MXY are far more happy jumping on the violent enthusiastic patricide bandwagon than JGY is quite prepared for, and he isn't certain whether to be proud or horrified of his bloodthirsty younger siblings! though there are a few emotional ups and downs, this is largely just a super fun hilarious fix-it with the three younger Jin sibs trying and failing to murder their dad, and what more could you ask of from a fix-it???? not only is there wonderful genuinely heartfelt bonding between JGY, QS and MXY, but even JZX gets some character development, and the plot is a really enjoyable romp through the twists and turns of attempted patricide.