#no where is that clearer than in mxtx's writing

[shiftysheep]

Xue Yang: was he nothing but a monster or are you guys just mean?

hey fellas, it's me! back at you with another unpopular opinion. this time about Xue Yang (from the book i haven't seen that part of the show yet)

i've read the Yi City twice and, while i thought that the first time might've been a fluke, both read throughs made me feel emotions.

and i know what you're thinking "yea no shit bro, it's an emotional arc!" yes yes i know I know. but!! both times, there was only one part of it that inspired these emotions. it was near the very end of the arc where Song Lan came to town and was talking and doing some recon with A-Qing

it becomes apparent, both through A-Qing's recollection and through Xue Yang's words and actions, that Xue Yang had changed from who he was prior to knowing Xiao Xingchen.

he was in the process of becoming, if not a good person, then at least a not-evil person. he had stopped killing people and manipulating Xiao Xingchen into killing people. he even assisted Xiao Xingchen on real, actual night hunts! Genuinely helping people that he wouldn't have hesitated to kill before and even still most likely viewed as being as unimportant as insects.

and yet!! he still refrains from killing anyone. he didn't even hurt anyone! Oh he threatened and gave dirty looks, but he never actually followed through. he was changing for and because of Xiao Xingchen.

and that is the point of this post.

Xue Yang had real genuine feelings towards Xiao Xingchen. he really, honestly cared about him and his opinion. he valued Xiao Xingchen's presence and thought it was worth giving up his very identity and favorite hobbies (ie killing people and doing demonic cultivation) just to get to stay by his side.

the life Xue Yang had traded away everything he had previously cared about for wasn't special or glamorous. it was difficult and about as far from the luxuries of the cultivation world as you could get.

but he still did it.

Xue Yang. One of the most selfish people in the entire series. Volunteered to go to the market. To do nothing but buy groceries. For no reason, other than the care of and for Xiao Xingchen.

isn't that amazing? isn't that wonderful? that someone could choose to put down their rage and hate, and instead, live in peace with the world they live in? is that not the goal for all criminals? rehabilitation?

is it fair that he should get a happy life? no, definitely not. his victims would have never gotten justice, including Xiao Xingchen.

but man... it sure is compelling.

[ninjakk]

Hey on the same note of asking your opinion about fanon things:

How do you feel about the very common thrope in modern au fics of wwx being some sort of vixen? I’ve seen it a lot, where he supposedly knows 100% he’s not straight so he goes around seducing men, sometimes for lols and sometimes for casual sex and then finds lwj and stops

Hey Anon,

Thanks for the ask ☺️

Hmm... well again, it's just so far from what WWX's character really is in canon, it's just odd to read!

I know exactly what you mean as well, as I have been unfortunate enough to come across modern au fanfic with a similar theme. The minute I see anything like that, I don't bother reading it any further. Everyone is entitled to have their own opinion of course, but when a character is so different from the original, I honestly don't see the point in using their name, as in essences it's just a totally different character.

I think when these people write WWX in such a way, they completely forget that he is a total romantic at heart. He's so sweet and wouldn't settle for anything other than a meaningful relationship. In fact, he's literally been holding out for his 'one', his soulmate, all these years. WWX is handsome and charming, there is no way he wasn't propositioned numerous times throughout his first life. Even if for some strange reason he was never directly approached by anyone, he never pursued anyone either - except LWJ on a subconscious level of course ❤️

Legends often gossiped about the YiLing Patriarch’s allegedly amorous life, but in reality, he’d never experienced such hectic feelings before.

Chapter 90 ExR

WWX even confirms he's never been interested in anyone or had such feelings before. Of course, this isn't entirely true and WWX later admits in hindsight, he's had feelings for LWJ all along.

This is the man who guarded his first kiss for 20 years, who carved sweet kissing heads on his wooden headboard above his bed and almost swooned at the romantic story of the Lan sect founder! Does that sound like a man who would have sex with just anyone?!

I think people tend to argue that it's not feasible for someone to be so sweet and save themselves for someone special in a modern au. But that's simply not true and a rather shallow way of thinking. Of course there are people who wait for someone special!

It's in WWX's character to guard his heart, because he actually values himself and what he has to offer a partner. Because he won't settle for anything other than someone sweeping him off his feet and being totally devoted to him, as he would them. Because deep down in his heart, he won't settle for anyone but LWJ.

Even if this is a hypothetical modern au, where WWX hadn't met LWJ yet, he would still be waiting for that special person nevertheless. It's in his character! So a version where WWX seduces people and sleeps around just because it's amusing to him is just the complete opposite to canon WWX. Yes, he absolutely loves having kinky sex marathons with his adoring husband at the end of the novel and in the extras. But this is with his soulmate, the person he's been waiting for his whole life.

Again, I'll let WWX say it for himself:

"...I really just like you so much I want to sleep with you. I don’t want anyone but you—it can’t be anyone but you..."

Chapter 100 ExR

He's only ever wanted to sleep with LWJ. It can't be anyone but him. WWX finally realises LWJ is the one he's been saving himself for, the person he wants to be devoted to, body and soul. LWJ is his soulmate. How much clearer can it be for people to understand WWX wouldn't just sleep around, when the character literally states as such himself.

Even MXTX has mentioned how hard it was to match WWX up with someone during the writing process. Because WWX simply refused to settle for anyone other than the first romantic interest she had written, which was none other than our beloved LWJ himself!

Just let WWX be sweet and romantic, yet kinky and seductive with his one and only LWJ- as it should be 💕

[esmeraldablazingsky]

I’ve finally hit my limit on the number of bad takes on the Lan parents I can see before I have to lay out all the reasons I disagree, so hello, I’m Blazie, and in this essay I will justify my visceral dislike of the assumption that Qingheng-jun married/imprisoned/had sex with Lan-furen against her will.

    Warning for mentions of rape (in context of Interpretations I Really Hate) and a very, VERY long post below the cut.

    Before I start going off about the finer points of all this, I want to make sure people are on the same page regarding what we actually know about what went down with Qingheng-jun and Lan-furen. What I say is based off the EXR translation of MDZS, for the sake of clarity, and although I don’t think the exact wording should be too important, feel free to let me know if you think I’ve missed an important bit of nuance or something (the whole story is in Chapter 64.)

    The story we get is told by Lan Xichen, and it goes like this: a young Qingheng-jun falls in love at first sight with Lan-furen, who doesn’t return his feelings, and at some point kills one of Qingheng-jun’s teachers over unspecified “grievances.” Although he’s understandably very upset over the murder, Qingheng-jun sneaks Lan-furen back to Cloud Recesses and officially marries her in order to announce to his clan that anyone who wants to hurt her has to go through him.

After that, he locks Lan-furen in one house and himself in another as a form of repentance. Wei Wuxian speculates that this was because “he could neither forgive the one who killed his teacher nor watch the death of the woman who he loved. He could only marry her to protect her life and force himself not to see her.” 

    A central detail of this story that I think people don’t give the import it deserves is that aside from marrying and protecting her, Qingheng-jun’s other option was to let Lan-furen be executed by his clan. His purpose in marrying her wasn’t just for kicks/out of a possessive sort of love, it was so she wouldn’t straight up die. How she felt about this arrangement isn’t stated, but I’ll get into that in a bit. In addition to that, Qingheng-jun and Lan-furen live separately, which was apparently purposeful on Qingheng-jun’s part, and runs counter to the interpretation that he intended to take sexual advantage of Lan-furen.

Though there aren’t many concrete details in Lan Xichen’s retelling, he does specifically inform Wei Wuxian that his mother never complained about remaining in her house. What exactly this signifies is unclear— whether she was simply putting on a brave face for her sons, or whether she was in fact at all content with the situation— but it at the very least serves to further muddy the waters on how she and Qingheng-jun felt about all this. 

Beyond what Lan Xichen and Wei Wuxian are saying out loud, there’s also quite a bit of subtext in this scene, especially in light of later events and revelations, like Lan Xichen’s confession for Lan Wangji at Guanyin Temple. 

So what is Lan Xichen trying to convey with all this? There’s a lot of memes about this scene, most of which err too far on the side of Himbo Airhead Lan Xichen for my liking, but one that I do find amusing emphasizes how Lan Xichen draws parallels between Wangxian and the story of his parents (Lan Xichen: [flute solo] please use your one brain cell to connect the dots.) If Wei Wuxian hadn’t completely lost his memory of Lan Wangji defending him against his own clan elders, one would assume that Lan Xichen’s story would have had a much better chance of hitting home. 

In hindsight and side by side, the parallels are much clearer— Qingheng-jun, “ignoring the objections from his clan… told everyone in the clan that she would be his wife for the rest of his life, that whoever wanted to harm her would have to pass through him first.” Similarly, according to Lan Xichen in Chapter 99, “for [Wei Wuxian,] not only did WangJi talk back to him, he even met with his sword the cultivators from the GusuLan Sect. He heavily injured all thirty-three of the seniors we asked to come.”

In that context, it makes a lot less sense to interpret Qingheng-jun as an aggressor towards Lan-furen, as in Lan Wangji’s case, the narrative clearly establishes that his actions are to secure Wei Wuxian’s safety. The action of Taking Someone Back To Cloud Recesses is— okay, actually, it’s a little more nuanced than I took into account when I started writing that sentence, so let me go a little deeper into Lan Wangji’s actions and how they relate to his father’s, story-wise. 

My intent is not to dive into the terrifying underworld of novel-versus-drama discourse, but simply put, Novel!Lan Wangji as he is written isn’t exactly the poster child for clear consent. (I’m going to entirely leave off the extra chapters for the sake of everyone’s sanity, so I’m just talking about the main body of the novel here.)

He means well, and I’m sure we can agree that he does actually love and want the best for Wei Wuxian, but his lack of communication on this point means that he accidentally gives Wei Wuxian the impression that he wants to imprison and/or punish him in Cloud Recesses at least twice off the top of my head (pre-timeskip, as we know, and post-timeskip immediately after Dafan Mountain when he actually drags Wei Wuxian back to his room.) 

That all likely has something to do with MXTX’s narrative kinks and regular kinks and all that, and can absolutely be taken with many grains of salt. However, these events establish how easy it is to misinterpret the action of Taking Someone Back To Gusu as an attempt to imprison rather than protect them (much to Lan Wangji’s chagrin.)

Failing to communicate his purpose to Wei Wuxian doesn’t mean that Lan Wangji actually had any intent of hurting or caging him— that was just a misinterpretation on Wei Wuxian’s part, and we, as the audience, find that out in due time— but as written in the novel, it can be really uncomfortable to read. Because of that, many people choose to accept CQL canon regarding Lan Wangji’s more possessive actions or mix characterization from different adaptations, which, to be clear, I completely understand and respect. 

However, Qingheng-jun doesn’t get the benefit of the doubt as often, which I frankly find baffling, because nowhere in the text does it state that Lan-furen objected to being taken back to Cloud Recesses, while even Wei Wuxian clearly objected the first few times. In fact, while we’re on this note, I’ll take it a step farther— I find it baffling that people seem to default to an unsympathetic view of Qingheng-jun, because nowhere in the text does it state that he overruled Lan-furen’s wishes in any way. The text doesn’t clarify a lot of things, actually, and that is part of the point. 

The narrators of MDZS are, in many situations, highly unreliable. This is, presumably, very purposeful! MDZS can easily be read as a sharp criticism of reputation and mass judgment and the concept of condemning people without knowing their motives! And I don’t want to sound mean, but guys… did any of us learn anything from that? Here, I’m going to put it in meme format for a second to convey what I mean. 

MDZS: It’s easy to condemn someone as a villain if you don’t know their story or the reasons behind their actions

MDZS: Anyway, here’s a character whose story and reasons behind his actions you know nothing about

Some Parts Of This Fandom: Ah, a villain 

    Memes aside, here’s what I want to point out. It’s entirely possible to assume Qingheng-jun was a bad person who disregarded a woman’s wishes in marrying and confining her when all you have is Lan Xichen’s (actually very neutral, thank you Lan Xichen for being an eminently reasonable and concerned-with-evidence character) account of what happened. It would also be at least that easy to assume Wei Wuxian was just an evil necromancer if he hadn’t un-died and brought his own story to light, or even to believe that Lan Wangji had somehow tamed Wei Wuxian into submission and being a respectable cultivator if you were an average citizen of Fantasy Ancient China with nothing but rumors to operate on. 

    The thing about Qingheng-jun and Lan-furen’s story, then, is that there is nobody left alive who knows the full tale. Nobody knows what they thought about anything, really. Nobody even knows why Lan-furen killed Qingheng-jun’s teacher. Wei Wuxian asks why, and Lan Xichen can’t tell him, but I think the best answer would be something along the lines of I don’t know, Wei Wuxian, why did you kill people? Your guess on the motivations of your own thinly disguised narrative parallel are as good as anyone’s. 

    So, while it’s not technically impossible to assign darker motives to Qingheng-jun, the cautionary tale of MDZS seems to warn against that exact assumption. 

    I’ve refrained from getting too salty on a personal level thus far, but now that I’ve said a lot of the more logical and story-based points of my argument, I will say that at least some of my annoyance with the interpretation of Qingheng-jun as a possessive rapist and Lan-furen as his victim stems from the fact that I just think it’s straight up boring. Where’s the nuance? Aren’t you tired of reducing these characters to the flattest possible versions of themselves? Don’t you just want to add a little flavor? 

    In a slightly more serious phrasing of that criticism, I find that making Lan-furen a helpless prisoner strips her of whatever agency she might otherwise have. To be fair, she’s more or less a non-character in keeping with the general state of the MDZS universe, but making her a damsel in distress only consigns her more deeply to hapless, milquetoast innocence. 

    It’s perfectly valid to enjoy ladies who have done nothing wrong, ever, in their lives, but like… Qin Su is right there, if that’s your ball game. There’s also really no need to make Qingheng-jun someone who doesn’t respect women. Isn’t Jin Guangshan enough for at least one universe? 

    Anyway, ultimately, you do you. I don’t like arguing on the internet, and will just ignore things I don’t agree with (or write an 1800 word vaguepost) like a mature human being. I’m just saying, if it’s a cut and dry tale of imprisonment and assault you’re looking for… you probably don’t want to turn to a woman who committed a murder and a man who loved her enough to forfeit everything to keep her safe. 

[zhuhongs]

Upon rereading tgcf, one of the biggest complaints I have is how lackluster all the extra chapters were. literally none of them were good and all contained rlly gross and harmful sentiments (like the amnesia one which.. yea.. or all the things implying xl should get pregnant for hc thus equating gay relationships with hetero ones and playing into the wife thing and just GOD I HATE MXTX) 

There were a lot of little plot points i wish that had been further elaborated on more in the extras as opposed to hualian being ... like that. I had enough. Like mdzs had actaully good extras (minus the incense burners) that were nice side stories that elaborated more on the characters. Like the hook one with the juniors was so cute and i loved seeing them grow more. Or the lotus pod extras omg.. im such a lotus pod extra stan. those were so cute and gave us a lot of good insight into just how lovestruck lwj was during the times when he didn’t see wwx. mxtx should've stuck to those sorta extras in tgcf but NOOO. SO I have a list of so many other more interesting things those chapters couldve been spent on like:

A resolution on He Xuan’s revenge and his character arc. Bc its implied He Xuan is still hanging out and watching over sqx and that taking revenge didn’t fully satisfy him bc ok.. yea shi wudu is dead but he xuans family will never come back. Now what does he have to live for?? i wish we couldve seen a look into his life during the entire ordeal. like a chapter from his perspective while he was posing as Ming Yi  and maybe a look at a conversation btw he xuan and the real ming yi or a chapter after SQX was banished to see what he’s doing now. Also what did he xuan owe hua cheng money for anyways?? Like ik not every little thing has to be explained but I Want to Know. PLEASE more goth boyfriend content now I just wanna see him :,((

a better resolution of yin yu and quan yizhens storyline. im still mad abt how that plot point was split btw books 3 and 5  when it was rlly out of place and  there were other more pressing plot matters and it just rlly deserved more time. Also i thought yin yu died!?!?!? but apparently one of the extras says he’s alive and man... i;m not reading any more of the extras to see that, give me a full yin yu and quan yizhen chapter.. fuck.

a day in the life of the guoshi fangxin or general hua PLEASE especially like one where hua cheng was SO CLOSE to meeting xie lian but had no clue that xie lian was there at the time but the two did smth that inadvertantly helped the other and they still were connected even though they hadnt met omg pls that’d be so nice. like imagine Hua cheng catching a glimpse of the guoshi in public in yong’an while he’s trying to follow some lead that points to xie lian or maybe following a lead to capture qi rong bc he said he knew qi rong was a part of the yong’an stuff and originally thought the guoshi was one of qi rongs pawns. like can you IMAGINE him getting so close. but at the last second he did smth small that impacted xie lian. like they bumped into eachother on the street or smth. god i’d go crazy

OR vice versa.. like a day in the life of the young ghost king hua cheng. Like again, one of my biggest issues was that hua cheng just knew everything and its never really explained how he got all of that info. like yes he’s been alive very long and has eyes and ppl working for him everywhere but like... how did he build that network?? I’d love to see a chapter of young ghost king hua cheng travelling around trying to learn as much as he can abt the world and how it can help bring him to xie lian. and the two maybe are in the same kingdom for a bit and they don’t meet exactly but hua cheng stops some fight or something and helps xie lian indirectly or maybe xie lian is performing on the street in some costume and hua cheng doesn’t recognize him and smiles and gives him a coin or smth. idk i’m just dying for any sorta extra chapter or fic like that. i’m honestly so tempted to write my own but i cant write

also!! we’ve seen how xie lian picks up people down on their luck near him and show them kindness (like banyue, lang ying, xiao ying, he tried to with san lang but we know how that ended lmao) so i’d love to see another little vignette of him doing that on his travels and how every person he meets teaches him smth about life and being a good person and idk, i just think it’d be rlly sweet. i love this facet of his character and feel like we didn’t see enough of it towards the end.

ALSO hua cheng only seems to respect one heavenly official besides xie lian and thats yushi huang.. i assume thats mostly bc she was the only one to help xie lian and let him use the rain master hat to bring water to yong’an. I was thinking maybe when he was a new supreme he had run into trouble and maybe was picked up by the rain master and helped him heal and in return he promised to help protect her village from harm in the future. Like i know a heavenly official wouldn’t cooperate with a ghost like that but yushi huang is different and doesn’t really care about the heavens so i think she would protect him if he could do something to benefit her village. ik this is kinda far fetched but when he first became a supreme I’m sure a bunch of ppl probably tried to mess with him and didn’t rlly believe him to be undefeatable bc he hadn’t proved himself yet also i doubt all his power came overnight. he had to learn how to use it once he escaped the kiln. and some group probably thought they could weaken him somehow. I’m thinking maybe a rlly well formed group of ghosts actually caught him off guard once and he had to retreat and was picked up by the rain master and stayed with her and learned from her a bit. i think it’d be a cool concept also i just rlly want more yushi huang content and i’m on their friendship agenda bc he rlly did seem to actually respect her when she first appeared and i think it’d be cool if the two had some history together.

Also idrc if this was addressed I couldve missed it But!! Did xie lian ever tell Hua cheng that the reason he got the curse shackles and was banished again in the first place wasnt bc jun wu wanted to punish him, but because he requested it. And specifically requested it bc he felt guilty abt letting wu ming take the human face disease and disperse for his sake. So he took the shackles and descended to atone for that?? Bc I dont recall hua cheng learning that bc his soul was already dispersed at that point so it didnt follow him and xie lian didnt say anything so uhhh... someone should tell hua cheng that. Like I dont think xie lian rlly said how much hua cheng meant to him and didnt show him he was loved in grand ways. Like xie lian did always care for bc in other ways but I think if hua cheng learned abt this on screen it wouldve been such a great moment and I'm rlly surprised mxtx didnt address this iirc!?!? Like imagine jun wu telling Hua cheng this in the kiln bc xie lian wouldnt say it himself. Imagine how cool that would be.

Also a small thing adding into the whole young ghost king Hua cheng stuff. Its implied and p much stated that hua cheng isnt his real name. That he likely doesnt have a real name bc his parents died? (It's not clear. I'm still mad at mxtx for not making his childhood clearer). So I'd like to see when and why hua cheng chose that name for himself. The new tgcf ending song kinda hints at its meaning with the lyrics "for you I'd fill a city of flowers" as xie lian is the flower wielding martial god so it's probably inspired by that. Also xie lian saved hua cheng from leaping off the city walls but I'd love to hear him say it bc the implication of his name didnt dawn on me for quite a bit and I dont know if everyone made the connection. Again I sure as hell didnt. So itd be cool to see a chapter that takes place in his past after just ascending as a supreme

Overall I rlly think tgcf had a lot more potential to be even better and a lot of that comes down to fleshing out the side characters and letting hualian have more of a storyline independent of one another. like i know the appeal and message of tgcf is that through love, people can overcome anything, but fuck man. i just wanna see what these two (mostly hua cheng) where like in the absence of each others presence. Part of what I really liked abt mdzs is that we got to see that longing develop btw wangxian when the two weren’t together and how they thought about each other and did things in thei others spirit bc they knew the other wouldve done the same thing. but whatever, mxtx was too consumed by her own unhealthy idea of what devotion and true love looks like but still. i rlly think the extras couldve helped the story be better rather than be fujoshi fuel that i try to bleach from my mind -_-

[perkynurples]

Hi there! I know you were probably joking about the "mxtx calling [Lan Xichen] an airhead" thing and I really appreciate you coming to his defense but I had to nitpick cuz MXTX never actually calls him that. This post (tonyglowheart. tumblr. com/ post/190530594096/), which includes the original Chinese text, tls it more faithfully as "doesn’t necessarily mean he has to have inscrutable intentions or be perceptive to minute details". aka "he wasn't secretly evil or masterminding anything guys"

Oh thank you for bringing this post to my attention! It really does a much better job of explaining MXTX’s words.

It’s interesting to me that she sort of hints at him being good reading LWJ doesn’t mean he’s good at reading other people - as if the fact that he understands his brother’s innermost impulses, doesn’t necessarily mean he can see through JGY. But these are just two completely different things, in my eyes at least - yes, he knows both of them (some might argue) intimately, but there’s a world of difference between knowing your baby brother you grew up with, on a familial level as well as an emotional one, and seeing through the carefully set up mask your master manipulator of a sworn brother has spent years polishing and perfecting.

I just feel like the fact that JGY was able to lie to him for so long isn’t a testament to how blind or stupid LXC was, but to how damn good JGY was at reading him, at picking out precisely which parts of himself to show to him, to make LXC sympathetic. And I also firmly believe JGY knew he had to be bulletproof in LXC’s eyes at least, because, again, the second LXC got wind of a shred of evidence against JGY, he immediately started investigating, even when he was uncomfortable with the whole ordeal, even if he’d rather do anything but.

That’s where his true skill lies, and that’s where they show us how good of a politician, diplomat and Sect Leader he really is, but because we don’t see him dramatically standing against the status quo like his brother, because we don’t see him brandishing Shuoyue to defend his beliefs (until, of course, it makes its very last appearance, ouch), because he’s not a man of grand declarations or dramatic larger-than-life gestures, he’s too easily dismissed as having been foolish enough to go along with JGY’s act this entire time (as to how much of it was an act and how much of it had to be true for it to work, well, I’d have to write another damn meta and we’re not here to talk about that rn). And I’m having none of it.

tl;dr thank you again for bringing this much clearer translation to my attention, that does make me feel a lot better re: MXTX and her opinions of her own characters, and you can always count on me to defend LXC at any given point in time.