#mo qin

[fistfuloflightning]

The main cast of The Villain Has Something to Say

[edithshead]

Jennifer Connelly by David Roemer styled by Alison Edmond for Marie Claire Australia, July 2022

[littlesmartart]

inspired by this post by @drwcn... all the Jin bastards canonically see Stab as their way of solving a problem when the situation gets dire, which I think in a universe where the sibs get a chance to get to know each other, might give poor JZX a bit of a complex

[eva-sim]

Nostalgia for summer 🍃🍃🍃

The tablet has been successfully tested!

(I will write to everyone who sent me screenshots, and gradually draw requests)

We will do a lot of summer art! So many ideas have accumulated!

[peupeugunn]

an mdzs transmigration fic where the characters transmigrating into canon are just. the same characters from a different au. like, lan wangji transmigrates from a modern au where everyone's just normal*? or nie mingjue transmigrates from a chef au where he was a world famous chef and ran his own restaurant**. or wei wuxian transmigrates from a spy au where he had a torrid romance with a dangerous assassin***.

or jin zixuan, qin su, meng yao and mo xuanyu transmigrate from a dystopian au and honestly don't know how to feel about the fact that canon is worse. or lan xichen and jiang cheng transmigrate from a pacific rim au and are equally incredibly confused and elated by the flying on swords thing, and also cultivation in general.

bonus points for the transmigrator knowing literally nothing about the plot. extra bonus points if there's multiple transmigrators from different aus and all of them are desperately trying to act normal, which is fruitless because everyone who knows them is also a transmigrator and trying to act normal.

*lan wangji somehow becomes the most well adjusted person in the jianghu. literally no one was expecting that.

**he also finds out that being a sect leader is kind of like managing employees except for the horror movie elements of night hunts and people get scandalised when he wants to cook his own meals. nie huaisang figured him out within five minutes of conversation, which is slightly embarrassing but whatever. he also gets into a fierce competition with jiang yanli that he carried with him from his previous life.

***the assassin being lan wangji, obviously. wei wuxian is kind of confused about this new lan wangji being so morally upright but it's kinda endearing, in a way.

[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.

[red-garden]

I submit for your consideration: type 1 diabetic Jin Guangyao.

It developed when he was fairly young- Meng Shi, trying her best not only to give her son a better life but also keep him alive at all, finds him all the books on cultivation she can, knowing the golden cores of cultivators help regulate their bodies.

He would actually be a much higher level cultivator if so much of his spiritual energy isn’t devoted to regulating his sugars. While his golden core can burn of excess sugar- much the same as lxc burning off alcohol- it can’t prevent a low. He’s like a hummingbird, always in need of something sweet.

Nie Mingjue, after whitesesing a low, starts carrying a sealed jar of honey with him- just in case. Even after he kicks Meng Yao out of the Nie, the bottle still lives in his pockets, a part of his routine. Xichen finds it one day and asks, to which Mingjue has to confront the place in his life Meng Yao had carved out before he was discarded. The place he was glued back into and no longer fits properly.

Qin Su mixes sugar into their tea in the mornings, aware that nights can be the most dangerous times. She keeps candies on the table by her side of the bed, just in case she wakes in the night at exactly the right time.

After Jin Guangyao dies, Jin Ling keeps finding little stashes of sugar, syrup, and candies secreted away in carp tower- unclear if they were placed there by his uncle, or his aunt, a kind older maid who cared for the sect leader, a guard Jin Guangyao had saved during the war, another bastard of his grandfather taken into the ranks of the Jin’s disciples quietly by his uncle.

Lan Xichen never buys sugar sculptures, taffies, or tanghulu when he goes to town anymore- if he leaves home at all. The Lan sect leader loved sweets all his life, a rare treat on the mountain, but left with boxes and jars and bags of them, they start to sicken him.

[limitbreaker23]

Jiang Cheng and Lan Wangji seem to have grabbed the wrong weapons. Can you help them solve this predicament before Jiang Cheng hits someone over the head with the guqin?

Cute commission of my confused boys I asked matchasakura2 to draw, thank you! <3

[qiu-yan]

poll for curiosity reasons

[tbgkaru-woh]

Jin GuangYao and Jin ZiXuan of Lanling Jin

[symphonyofsilence]

Daily reminder that when the Cloud Recesses got attacked, and LXC went on the run and JGY saved him and helped him hide, the Wens were in full power. They were the undisputed ruling clan. So much so that they could demand the other sects to send their heirs to them as hostages, and nearly kill the said heirs, fearing no consequences. And no sect had decided to try anything against them yet. They didn't think that ALL THE OTHER SECTS TOGETHER could do anything against the Wens. (And they truly couldn't if it weren't for Meng Yao.)

A little insignificant outcast like Meng Yao was FUCKED if he was caught hiding away THE Zewu-Jun.

And yet he did it! He didn't like...drag LXC to a doctor and said "I found this mysterious wounded man with an unknown identity. He's your problem now. Ciao. :)" No! He fully took care of him and hid him away and helped him rebuild the Cloud Recesses! (And listen, the Xiyao agenda of the show when Meng Yao specifically thinks of "Zewu-Jun" when he hears about the fall of the cloud recesses while he himself is bleeding on the ground and goes to save LXC after his banishment is very beautiful, especially for LXC. Imagine seeing this cute guy that you developed a crush on with one look and a total of 5 minutes of interaction before the guy left. And then suddenly in your worst & most desperate situation, the guy suddenly appears like an angel like you've manifested him and saves you and nurses you back to health and takes your hand in rebuilding your sect every step of the way. BUT! Book!Meng Yao didn't even know LXC! There has never been a tender hand touch and LXC gracefully saving him from an awkward and cruel social situation! He just saw a man and saved him out of the kindness of his heart regardless of the risks for himself!)

And LXC wasn't even the only person he saved individually. He saved Qin Su, too. if he's saved these two individually who knows if he had saved more people. Daily reminder that JGY is the kind of person who will go out of his way to help people when he can.

[luanna801]

Funnily enough, Jin Guangyao's "Even if he hadn't been murdered, A-Song still had to die" line is actually a significant part of what makes me think he didn't kill him. Because if we assume he's lying through his teeth and totally did murder his son, and he's just saying whatever lie will calm Qin Su down and put her off being suspicious of him... why even admit that much? Why not keep pushing back as hard as he can against the accusation, double down on "Of course I would never have hurt him, I never even considered such a thing, he was my son and an innocent child and I loved him, how dare you even suggest otherwise"?

It just seems like a really weird and counterintuitive move, if he's trying to falsely convince Qin Su he had nothing to do with this, to go the "I didn't do it, but if I'd done it, how could you tell me that I was wrong" route.

(More thoughts under the cut.)

It's not totally out of the realm of possibility - I know of real-life murderers who said roughly comparable things about their victims (see, for example, this infamous statement from historical murderer Richard Loeb, who looked a reporter dead in the eye and said "Yeah, actually, that kid is exactly the victim I'd pick if I was going to murder someone" about the kid he did in fact very much murder). But I don't really think it fits Jin Guangyao's MO - he's not an arrogant braggart seeing how much he can get away with, he's someone who's incredibly careful and doesn't just go blurting out incriminating things about himself.

I guess he could be hoping that if he convinces Qin Su it was ~totally all for the best, actually~ she'll just drop the whole line of accusation and stop feeling like she needs to dig into this any further. But again, that doesn't really seem like his strongest argument if he's just going to lie here anyway. Despite how upset and horrified she is here, he still has fifteen-odd years of her knowing him as a kind, seemingly? decent person working in his favor. I don't think that view of him would have entirely evaporated in an instant (although it's clearly severely shaken by the things she's learned).

So I think if he'd stuck to insisting he was horrified at the very thought and outraged she'd accuse him of such a thing, she might well have backed down and possibly even apologized for thinking he'd go that far. By contrast, him acknowledging that he did think Jin Rusong needed to die, even if he simultaneously claims not to have actually killed him, is just likely to make her feel like she's on the right track by suspecting him and he's probably just trying to downplay his culpability.

It's also true that it's a very emotional conversation that he does not handle well in a lot of ways, so like. He could be lying but just doing it in a really dumb way because he's panicking. But everything else he says in that part of the conversation (about being grateful to her for accepting his background, wanting to lie to her so she'd be shielded from knowing the awful truth, etc. etc.) seems to be an attempt at actual honesty, however warped and incredibly mishandled that attempt is.

And I think it makes the most sense to me that the "A-Song had to die" line is more of the same. He's genuinely trying to explain his perspective to her and get her to understand how he's constructed this in his mind, not getting that this is only going to understandably horrify her even more. And that is very much a thing you see in his confrontations with other characters, for all his ability to lie - he's just as likely to respond to accusations with at least some form of how he genuinely justifies things in his mind, even when it's something the other person is not remotely inclined to accept and ends up backfiring spectacularly (see for example also his confrontations with Nie Mingjue).

So to me, that's the reason that makes by far the most sense for why he'd say this. If he was going to lie, it would make more sense to claim total innocence and deny that such a thing had ever so much as crossed his mind. It's only if he's actually trying to be honest, in his very messed-up way, that saying he thinks this death was inevitable and maybe even for the best makes sense as a thing he'd willingly admit in that moment.

[jcs-singular-slut-strand]

The Untamed/MDZS but it's things that my Father has said

Part 2 // my mother's version

[littlesmartart]

from this audio clip, for @guqin-and-flute's MBMSAM AU!

[raine-hearts-art]

@qin-su-week Day 7: Monsters and Demons

Never mess with a mother.

[yunmeng-jiang]

every day i wish there had been a better solution for the qin su marriage problem.

in my fix-it fics i either have some other sect leader claim that he was actually madly in love with her this whole time and sweep her away for jgy's sake, have her mom confess earlier, make jgy decide to tell her for her own good and have them work together, or not give them a chance to meet and fall in love in the first place (i guess i could also make qin su have a miscarriage, but that's really sad and awful and not my preferred option at all), but all of those require tweaks to the circumstances, sometimes early on so they don't meet or jgy feels safe enough to talk with her or another confidant, or sometimes later like madam qin finding out they're pregnant before the marriage prep is too far along and telling one or both of them right away so they can make other arrangements.

with the situation being what it was, jgy didn't find out soon enough to do anything that wouldn't involve either marrying her anyway (and he didn't think telling her about it would do anything except make her upset and depressed) or leaving her essentially a ruined woman with no prospects and an illegitimate child who would inevitably grow up fatherless, which is pretty much exactly what his dad did to meng shi. this would be a crueler option than pretty much anything else, and given that he clearly still cares about her, he couldn't do that in good conscience. jgy tries his best to protect the people he loves, unless there is literally no other way for him to survive.

it's one more example of jgy being faced with a situation where the only choices are bad ones, and making the decision that he thinks will hurt the fewest number of people. metatextually, it's one more example of women in fiction being shoved aside and not given agency in their own lives, and getting killed off instead of surviving and growing as people like the male characters are allowed to do. it's just a tragic situation all around and i wish there had been something they could have done.