#mdzs meta?

[lordmushroomkat]

I think the main reason that Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji became so obsessed with each other is their similar moral codes.

"Do what you know you cannot" means exactly the same thing to Wei Wuxian as "Be Righteous" means to Lan Wangji.

They are both people who will help, protect, and save others even and especially when it serves no purpose to better their own lives. They will both help others even at great personal risk to themselves. They will stand for those who stand alone.

Nobody else in their lives is like this.

For Wei Wuxian, Jiang Cheng is there, trying to talk him out of doing things that will get all of them in trouble. And Madam Yu is there, berating him for stirring the pot.

For Lan Wangji, there is Lan Xichen, who is righteous by nature but unwilling to step too far out of line when it might risk the peace that he works to protect as a leader. And his uncle is there, expecting absolute perfection from him at all times.

But these two, they both want to be wherever there is chaos, wherever they are needed. In this world where it is always safer to stay with the crowd, they are each willing to stand alone. But isn't it wonderful when the two of them can finally stand together?

[imafraidoftomorrow]

I'm rereading MDZS and it just hit me that Wei Wuxian's first impression upon meeting Lan Yuan post-resurrection was that he was a "good sprout"

You guys... you guys... that's his little radish... that's his good little sprout....

[lgbtlunaverse]

Fanon likes to portray Jiang Cheng and Lan Wangji as being jealous of each other because they fear wei wuxian will choose one of them over the other. Which is ignoring the fact that at least in novel canon Jiang Cheng did not even fucking know wangxian ever got along let alone that lwj was in love with wwx until at the very end of the story (in cql canon he does go through a wangxian phase early on and gets very confused by their "breakup" during wwx's sunshot era) and that Lan Wangji is mostly filled with loathing towards both himself and Jiang Cheng for 'abandoning' Wei Wuxian and not being able to save him.

It also ignores the much bigger point that both Lan Wangji and Jiang Cheng are actually jealous of Wen Ning. And why wouldn't they be? That is who Wei Wuxian chose in his first life. He left the Jiang, told Lan Wangji to fuck off no he is not coming to gusu with you, and spent his days with his little-brother-shaped corpse bestie on his mountain in yiling. And then when he came back he immediately called him up the second he could string together more than two notes on a flute. Wen Ning is the real competition. (And he's winning)

[randomness-is-my-order]

another thing that is simply amazing about wei wuxian is that he doesn’t give a fuck about hoarding the knowledge he attains. in the cultivation world where clans jealously hold their resources close and have techniques unique to their families because progress is meant for them and theirs–wei wuxian utterly breaks the mould with his inventions. the products of his genius are spread far and wide and his way of doing things is disseminated within the cultivation society as crucial pieces of information. the spirit attraction flag and the compass are used not only by the clans but also the rogues–the bottom most people in their hierarchy. all of them benefit from wei wuxian’s knowlege in a way that the clans are simply incapable of replicating because they would never allow their own methods to leave the boundaries of their clans. and when wei wuxian is back, he takes to teaching instantly and has no qualms against sharing both his experiences and hard-earned wisdom with the juniors and i think it’s important to note that he has literally no affiliation to them prior to meeting them, except jin ling. he doesn’t know sizhui is a-yuan, he just knows they’re lans and later the boys he leads at yi city belong to several different clans–clans that were responsible for his own death and the death of the wen remnants, mind you. but wei wuxian would never make the children bear the sins of their forefathers, of course, just that painting the background helps in understanding how open and willing wei wuxian is about sharing his knowledge with others. it’s very lovely, really. the cultivation society only took from wei wuxian but he only ever gave them back.

[icyolive]

When did WWX fall in love--before he died, or after he was resurrected?

I propose a third option: both are true.

I'm very firmly in the camp of WWX being head over heels pretty much right from the start, but that ignores a lot of the emotional growth between the two of them after his resurrection. On the other hand, calling that growth "falling in love" ignores his obvious feelings right from the start, and also just doesn't seem like what's going on. His thoughts and feelings about LWJ don't really change all that much.

But here's what does change: WWX starts thinking about himself.

He starts putting himself and his needs into the equation. He goes from seeing LWJ as a trustworthy and good paragon of virtue to seeing him as someone he personally trusts. From objectively the most handsome person in existence to someone he personally really wants to sleep with finds handsome.

So it's not that he fell in love after resurrection--he loved LWJ right from the start--but also he did fall in love after resurrection, because that's when he started thinking about LWJ as someone he could be with. Not that he didn't want to be with him before; instead, he didn't have a concept of personally wanting (being able to want, being allowed to want, being allowed to have) anyone at all.

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

You made her cry, time to die.

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[lurkinginnernarrator]

I think Lan Jingyi is important. Specifically in what he represents: In the Cloud Recesses Study Arc we see how stolid the Lan Sect is, and with Lan Wangji's whipping we see how blinded the Lan Sect can be by its own ideals that it forsakes the morality those ideals represent.

When we see Lan Wangji in WWX'S second life we see the change Lan Wangji has initiated in his own clan.

That change is embodied in the one Lan Jingyi.

He's loud, brash, emotive, unfiltered and sometimes rude, all of which are anathema to the Lan Clan's sacred ideals of comportment and image. While Lan Jingyi does get punished for infractions it should be noted that he's never dissuaded from his own nature. There is no alienation of Lan Jingyi from his clan. Lan Jingyi is fully Lan, we don't ever see him excluded and we don't see his relationship to his clan in any interpretable as estranged.

What does that tell us?

It tells us that the Lan Sect is changing. If we went purely on the Lan Sect we see in years prior it would not be surprising to see a character such as Lan Jingyi continually disparaged for his anathemic nature, looked down upon and excluded for his differences and punished for his 'undesirable traits'.

We do not see Lan Jingyi's passion being trained or beaten out of him. Instead, we see that the Lan Sect, especially through Lan Wangji's teachings and reforms, are doing their best to model Morality and Righteousness.

The flourishing existence of Lan Jingyi is a testament to the emendation of Lan Sect values; true righteousness being valued over the appearance of it, benevolence in action instead of in name. Mercy. Grace.

Lan Jingyi is the product of Lan Wangji's reforms and trials.

We see Lan Wangji suffer for his innate passion, punished for it by the hands of his own sect. But we also know Lan Jingyi never will.

Lan Jingyi is a sign of growth.

[whetstonefires]

i think i made a post about this already, but i think it's really important to understanding both of them and their relationship that (in the novel) the iconic part of Wei Wuxian's first impression on Wen Ning wasn't being kind and friendly to him, after meeting him practicing alone, and wasn't the mere fact of niceness.

and it wasn't standing up for him to his shitty cousin and talking him up, and making sure he got a chance to show off, either.

it was that after Wen Ning choked under pressure and fumbled that chance and made Wei Wuxian look stupid for championing him, Wei Wuxian was not even a little bit mad at him. it did not even occur to Wei Wuxian to be mad at him. most people would be mad at that point! he clearly expected to get yelled at!

but Wei Wuxian was so far from that kind of insecurity he did not even experience these events as humiliating, and he thereby revealed he had not taken those steps to build up Wen Ning on his own behalf, with any selfish motive, but purely from the unfiltered impulse to help.

Wei Wuxian did not in the least feel that having taken Wen Ning's 'side' (unsolicited, probably almost entirely unwanted) entitled him to anything from Wen Ning.

Wen Ning actually has high standards! it was not the little bit of kindness or the brashness that won him over, it was the fact that that kindness persisted undisturbed after Wen Ning provided the provocation of failure.

[two-corpses-in-the-burial-mounds]

Anyone else think a lot about how at the end of canon, Lan Wangji has had time to mature for 10+ years into a guy in his mid-30s, but Wei Wuxian still has the life experience and general maturity of a war-traumatized early 20-something?

Because like. Wei Wuxian died young and he died tragically, and everyone who was around him then that's still there after he's resurrected has gotten to live their lives. They got to mature. They've had 13/16 years to heal (or not heal -_-) and learn who they are. To become fully realized adults outside of the pressures of war. And Wei Wuxian hasn't had that. If you believe MXTX's interview that circulates on this site sometimes, he spent those 16 years in a suspended state of agony. And even if you don't believe that, he was still dead. Non-existant.

For Wei Wuxian, the war is fresh. The pain is fresh. He has no idea what's doing because he's barely an adult, if admittedly a highly skilled one for his age. The world has moved on around him and he has stayed in place. What does he do with that?

Wei Wuxian had no choice but to pretend that he's moved on, too, because that war that took so much from him was almost two decades ago, now. The Wen Remnants have been dead for over 10 years. What use is it to dig up old hurts? Except, those hurts are still hurting him.

When he died, Wei Wuxian was helping care for Lan Sizhui. Wen Yuan. When he died, Lan Wangji raised A-Yuan with the Lan. If Wei Wuxian was dead for 13/16 years and A-Yuan was 3/4 when he died, then Lan Sizhui is about his age, or very close to it.

This is the child he was raising. This child is now his peer.

Wei Wuxian has memories of war and tragedy, but no one to talk to. The juniors, who are closest to him in relative age, haven't known war, and everyone who has known it has moved on. He's trapped between generations, and that has to be so incredibly isolating.

Jiang Yanli, the Wen Remnants, Wen Qing of particular note, all of them died shortly before he did. Did he ever really get to grieve them? Will he be allowed to now? Especially with his reputation. Especially with the number of people who would really prefer him to simply leave the past in the past. Especially with all the people who think he is the cause of the deaths he wishes to grieve.

Will he be allowed to mourn, if the cultivation world thinks these deaths are his fault? Or that these people don't deserve to be grieved?

Wei Wuxian has the misfortune of being a man who is a decade out of time, and he will have to learn to cope with that, but how does he account for the missing years? When the pain is still fresh for him, how does he find a place in a society that has long since moved on?

[tea-cat-arts]

Sometimes I wonder what Jiang Cheng could've become if his parents didn't instill a mix of "crippling fear of failure" and "impossibly high standards" in him. Cuz like, his dad was holding him to the vague standard of being as good as wwx, his mom yelling at him whenever he goofed around like wwx, and then both of them expressed disappointment when he's less successful than wwx. The thing both of them seem to ignore though is that wwx got where he is entirely because he had the freedom to fuck around and find out- he trained tirelessly because he made training fun for himself, he was innovative as a cultivators because he experimented and persisted through failures, and he was able to act in line with the Jiang clan moto because his actions had less political pull than members of the main family. Jiang Cheng on the other hand- if he fucked around he got told to "stop stooping to the level of servants." If his achievements were lesser than wwx's, he got either dismissed by his dad or yelled at by his mom to try harder. And if he picked fights with the Wens, they'd have an excuse to destroy his clan. Like ya- no shit that'd create an adult who's terrified of failure.

The kite game serves as such a good metaphor/embodiment of this set back- with Jiang Cheng never being able to shoot as far as Wei Wuxian because he pulls back and shoots closer the second he misses.

And its sad too because he's shown to be pretty brilliant when he's in "fuck it, we ball" mode. Like, when he's not freezing up, he manages to pull off things like rebuilding his entire clan from the ground up, leading armies and taking back territories from the Wens, and I'm fairly sure he's the only character we see counter the Lan music cultivation techniques (feel free to correct me if I'm wrong on that last one. Also feel free to add any of the other cool shit he did that I'm blanking on at the moment, cuz I know I'm forgetting something).

That being said- even with his anxiety, he's still one of the top cultivators. Imagine what a force of nature he'd be if he could sustain "fuck it we ball" mode

[muqingapologist]

i think it’s interesting how people often characterize lan wangji’s perspective of wei wuxian during and after the yiling laozi arc like “free my man, he did nothing wrong.” but to me, i feel like this is just selling short his character and his devotion to wwx. the way i see it, when wei wuxian is at his worst and in the years after when wwx comes back, lan wangji isn’t condoning his actions of that era. it’s more like, “i know you were trying to do the right thing, and things spiraled out of control, and i failed to help you back then, and i won’t fail you again.” it’s not wei wuxian’s actions that lan wangji is so defensive of but his intentions. even if lwj didn’t know at the time (and even when he comes back, at first) why wwx chose the ghostly path and gave up righteous cultivation, he has an unshakeable faith in wwx’s moral code, that wwx will do what he feels is right. or at least, doing what he thinks he needs to do to survive. this doesn’t necessarily mean that lan zhan thinks what wwx did as his mental state eroded WAS right. we see this so many times when lan zhan tries to help him, hoping that wwx will return to gusu with him. it’s not until it’s too late, when wwx is truly breaking down, that he understands that that wasn’t the right way to help wwx. the right way is to just be there for him, which is what he does when wwx returns. letting wwx make his own decisions while showing him that there is still someone who believes in him. imo this is much more meaningful than the other interpretation that i see a lot that i mentioned above. it’s about being there for wei wuxian even if he does make the wrong decisions because at the end of the day he knows that wwx, at his core, has good intentions.

[unreliable-narratoe]

I find it funny how jiang cheng experiences misogyny despite NOT being a woman??

Like he is emphatically not a woman, alright, but he's an 'ex' in the narrative sense. The bitchy love rival between the BL couple fandom would have hated on a couple of years ago before we accepted it was cringe to hate on the rival, she deserved better etc etc except. He's neither a woman OR technically, a romantic rival. Most of the subtext is sibling subtext.

He's paralleled with his mother who is also somewhat given the hysterical woman treatment by her husband. Jiang cheng says "Father doesn't like me because I'm my mother's son". Did jfm take one look at this kid and go "I hereby assign him his mother at birth"??? Even in wei wuxian's narration he subconsciously parallels Jiang cheng to his mom. They both have tempers, wield zidian, wear purple if you want to go there lmao, but that's a surface level 'woman are unreasonable and somewhat the same' reading. Like.

He is actually not his mom. He arguably breaks generational abuse cycles because jin ling is confident Jiang cheng loves him in his own way. He did not set out to have that kid, he chose to be responsible anyway because that's his sister's son. Jiang cheng doesnt spend years not-communicating in a bad marriage and taking it out on his kid. He lets wei wuxian go at the end because there's no point in dragging it out and everyone being more unhappy after he somewhat gets an explanation on WHY wei wuxian went off the deep end (aka golden core reveal).

But the easy read is to go, 'quick temper and harsh words- that's yu ziyuan's next coming'

So it's deeply funny to me that he's assigned scorned-ex-wife by narrative, if I'm making sense.

[lgbtlunaverse]

I know that because the story takes place after wwx comes back jiang cheng's whole "i don't believe wei wuxian is actually dead i'm gonna keep obsessively looking for him" shtick got retroactively legitimized, but it is pretty important to remember that wei wuxian was in fact super dead the entire time and if it hadn't been for a depressed 20-something doing a suicide ritual, influenced to an unknown degree by a revenge plot that wasn't in play yet at the time of wwx's death, he would never have come back at all. And jiang cheng would've kept going "No! He's still out there I know it" for eternity with absolutely no proof or results.

Jiang Cheng, my man, what the fuck

[randomness-is-my-order]

one mild sentiment i see echoed around alot is that despite everything, wei wuxian failed to “save” the wen remnants, that him going to such great lengths was an effort in vain. but... no?? he did accomplish alot by taking them to the burial mounds. he gave them time. he gave them a period of peace and community life. he gave their elders a sense of togetherness. he gave them a chance to heal some of their wounds together. he prevented their slow, agonising, brutal, INDIGNIFIED deaths at the labor camps, prevented their daily suffering under the oppressive guards.

as wen qing said: they all should have died a long time ago but wei wuxian’s efforts did bear sweet fruits, however bitter the end might have been.

and here’s the thing. the wens survived through wen yuan. their legacy still remains because all the remnants and wei wuxian (and ofc lan wangji) fought to see that happen. imagine if they hadn’t, if wei wuxian wouldn’t have done anything. the wens would have seen their demise in the labor camps with nary a mention of their deaths. they would have been wiped out without ever getting the chance to say their piece or take their stance. as things went, atleast wen qing and wen ning faced their deaths bravely, as leaders of their community. atleast, wen yuan could live a fulfilling life. atleast the wen remnants had a year and more together, to enjoy some of the peace the post-war cultivation world was enjoying.

and that is what wei wuxian gave up everything for. a cause greater than himself.

[fateandloveentwined]

wuxia, xianxia, and cultivation differences meta

translations: wuxia 武俠, xianxia 仙俠, and cultivation 修真/修仙 (xīuzhēn/xīuxiān)

think i've seen posts on this eons ago, and i'm pretty sure there are tons of these online, but since this has been written up already let's just have another one.

wuxia 武俠

wuxia and xianxia sound similar, but basically for wuxia it is about the pugilistic world (江湖 jiānghú). It is relatively more down-to-earth, and people practice martial arts ("kungfu") in their current life -- they do not do it to become xians (仙) and gods (神) however.

Like Thousand Autumns and Faraway Wanderers/Word of Honor, it has more historical background and ties to the current court and kingdoms, because people are living in the moment and concern themselves with worldly issues.

Martial arts may seem unrealistic, but in view of chinese fantasy it would be considered "real". It consists of fighting moves and internal energy, which they call qi or nèigōng (內功), and at times you see people flying around, climbing hills and jumping across rooftops which is qīnggōng (輕功).

xianxia 仙俠

A level up would be xianxia, where characters in the story cultivate to become xians (and gods, like in the heaven official's blessing). They don't really care about earthly issues here now, because their ambitions lie beyond the current world, and cultivation, getting stronger, and an immortal life are majorly all their goals.

You may not always see them working towards that purpose, such as in mdzs they are considered a lower-xianxia society (低魔), meaning people don't go through all the steps of cultivation and only stay at the stage before the "golden core" stage.

In xianxia, characters still learn basic fighting moves aka. martial arts, but to direct the internal energy they use línglì (灵力), zhēnqì (真气), and fǎlì (法力), all xianxia terms you commonly see. "neigong" is practically nonexistent in this genre. That's why people building up their "neigong" instead of "lingli" are likely never going to be able to cultivate.

cultivation 修真/修仙

A subgenre in the xianxia category would be cultivation. Characters actively go through the stages of cultivation, and likely for the MC, because they are the main character, they successfully become a xian and exit the world at the end of the novel.

There are many stages of cultivation, usually defined at the beginning of the novel in the synopsis, and a typical example of the different levels would be this:

练气，筑基，金丹，元婴，化��，炼虚，合体，大乘，渡劫

And with a cursory search, an English translation would be something like this, albeit not with all the cultivation ranks identified.

Qi condensation (练气), Foundation establishment (筑基), Core Formation (金丹), Nascent Soul (元婴), and the names after that vary too greatly with translation and fandom so I'll jump straight to Immortal Ascension

extra info: getting into the philosophy of it all

It'd be interesting to note that the word "xiá" (俠) permeates all these genres. This is something akin to the concept of "hero", but not at all also, and I'd love to speak more on this but this post has already gone way longer than I hoped it would be, so perhaps another day.

Regardless, it is interesting to note that wuxia has a greater emphasis on "xia" than xianxia. (some joke that cultivation doesn't have the word "xia" in it, and much of that is because characters have foregone heroism and focused on gaining powers and working towards ascension instead). As a result, wuxia is more confucianism-oriented, though not without its taoism and buddhism influences.

xianxia, on the other hand, is mainly derived from "dào" (道), from taoism, which is another lengthy concept if I ever get to it.

And some may have heard of the "farming" genre, 种田 (zhòngtián). This has to do with golden fingers (mary sues) in imperialistic china, earning a wealth of money, and all that. It has nothing to do with cultivation, alike they sound in english.

that's it for now, hmu if you wish to ask/discuss!

(and apologies for the pinyin translations, hope it's understandable still! formally writing pinyin they are supposed to be two separate words not one.)

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

I'm a doctor, not a miracle worker.

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