#no worse than canon esp for mxy

[jin-zixun]

MDZS Chapter 2 - The Intractable (apparently chapters 2-5(Aggression)) - Manhua Ch 2-12

Because I'm really going ahead and rereading... Alright.

Alright, again starting with the manhua here because holy shit does Mo Ziyuan just come in busting the door down with this! Oh man, what a guy.

I have nothing intelligent to say about this but oh boy.

"Go k-- oh you did. shit. damn."

So like two things I appreciate the manhua for in this page, which I've so, uh, cut up to show off. Number one, cute lil guys. That's a cute lil guy up there. And number two, the emotion in that face? Like it's not a big picture it's just like, a lil face but you can see it. It's a little more than just sad boy up there. Goes hard, like Mo Zixyuan bursting into the room.

"Adding frost to snow, something had upset Mo Xuanyu. When he returned home, it was as a madman. His mental state had been upended, as if he had been scared silly"

I'm keeping this quote. I'm not commenting on it or anything. Just putting it there.

"After Mo Xuanyu returned to his old home, he was bombarded with ridicule. This time, it seemed, the situation was unsalvageable. Unable to take this blow, Second Lady Mo was choked to death by her own unappeasable outrage."

Now this I feel I need to comment on? Mo Xuanyu's mother didn't die until after Mo Xuanyu was sent back home? She 'choked to death on outrage'? Is that a thing? I feel like that's not a thing.

There's a lot of exposition here, on Wei Wuxian and the Mo family but uh. That kinda stands out. To me. MXY was sent home to his mother, not just her relatives, like, she was there.

Oh, and number three thing I like about the manhua?

cutest. little. lans.

(also like. inspired choice to have sizhui be the one laughing here?)

"The boy hadn’t been this crazy when he first returned, so it was probably the family’s doing."

So, you mean, back when his mother was alive? Before she died of outrage? I've gone through this scene in a lot of adaptations (cql was the best for it ngl) but this Second Lady Mo conspiracy is drawing me in! I'm sorry!

“He knew he was my little cousin, but he still didn’t observe propriety and keep his distance, so who is the more shameless one here?! I don’t care if you don’t care about your reputation, but I still care about mine!! I STILL GOTTA FIND A GOOD MAN!!!”

Is it a problem if they're just cousins, maybe mo ziyuan really wanted to compromise him, I'm sure there's fanfic out there--

Mo Ziyuan/Mo Xuanyu is apparently not even a tag on AO3. Damn. I think I originally had a point to say about WWX here, but like WWX himself, I don't remember.

"Yet it just so happened that this spirit-attraction flag had unintentionally summoned something more terrifying than walking corpses. And it was precisely this unknown evil spirit that had killed Mo Ziyuan and robbed him of an arm!"

haha. Unintentionally. Yeah, want to take a second pass at that WWX?

(I'm certain it won't be the first time I ask that question, but as he does later take a second pass at it and it's clear canon that there's nothing unintentional here I'm gonna leave it at that. This time.)

"Wei Wuxian couldn’t take it anymore. He thought, After so many years, the Lan Family still acts this way. What’s the use of all that self-restraint unless you’re looking to suffocate yourselves? Watch me!"

I like it when he defends the little lans...

"Lan Jingyi and the others let out a breath, no longer looking as upset."

and the little lans like it too <3 How sweet.

"It wasn’t that this group of youths was slow to react; it was that the intruder was truly ferocious in nature. The cultivation sects had strict criteria for determining whether something was a “malicious ghost”: one was considered such if it killed once a month for up to three months consecutively. This was a criterion Wei Wuxian himself had set, and it was probably still in use now. Dealing with this type was his specialty, and based on what he’d seen, killing once every seven days would make this creature a malicious ghost that caused particularly frequent mischief. However, this thing had just killed three times in a row, and in a short time span too. Even accomplished cultivators would have been hard-pressed to come up with a counter strategy, never mind these novice juniors."

Yeah... Maybe I'll change my mind on this later but... The Nie are genuinely kind of just evil. Their cultivation method is bad and they should feel bad. Cultivate a righteous path. Don't do this shit. Don't become this shit. And yeah, that goes for both of them here tbh. Not giving Da-Ge a pass just because he's dead! He knowingly cultivated all of this resentment while he was alive!

The idea that NHS becomes Chief Cultivator after all of this is astounding. Guess his mom's not a prostitute though so it's fine.

Drawback to the manhua as an adaptation, you don't hear that iconic music cue when Hanguang-Jun appears. Sad.

I guess I don't have more to say (I have more to say but I shouldn't) so uh. Bonus cute Lan roundup?

[jin-zixun]

i think it's actually very brave to fight for yourself when no one else will, to insist upon your own self worth, if only in your own actions and self-preservation, when everyone around considers you worthless or unworthy.

If no one else cares about you, you will care, if no one else loves you, you will try to show yourself love to the best of your ability, even if you don't know it, if no one else will protect you then you will fight for yourself. Keep yourself alive. No one else will and it's you're no less worthy than who you're being told to put yourself to the side for, to die for, to admit you are nothing for.

It's trauma, it's resilience, it's survival, it's fight, it's advocacy, it's perseverance, it's natural, it's difficult, and it's brave.