#of them??????? unless mxtx said something about it but even then???????

[deep-sea-horror]

actually its a lot harder to be annoyed with qi rong when you realize he’s a direct parallel to hua cheng

[mxtxfanatic]

Hello, new danmei fan here. I'm really late into danmei, just started last year (so I missed the hype). Just when I confused which blog to follow, I found your blog. Thanks so much for this blog of yours, it really helped me to understand more of the stories. I just finished MDZS, TGCG, SVSSS and now I'm reading 2Ha.

For this ask game, can I ask MDZS or SVSSS?

Before I start reading, many people said that SVSSS is inferior to other MXTX works, after finishing the books, I disagree, because I enjoy them all the same....

I mean, if starting last year is considered "late," then I'm also behind, because I only started reading things a few years ago lmao! But it's never too late when fandoms are still booming (for better or worse). So I see we're finishing out the mxtx novels.

MDZS

Favorite Character: Wei Wuxian

Favorite Arc: all Drunk Lan Wangji encounters!

Character I Think is Underrated: Lan Wangji, if i have to hear “he’s boring” from people who can’t read one more time…

Character I Think is Overrated: all of the antagonists and villains. Jiang Cheng is not "single mother!jiujiu," he is just a bitchless Wen Chao. Jin Guangyao is not "poor little Meng Yao forced to do things against his will," he is a a calculating murderer who will scheme against, betray, and kill anyone who stands between him and ultimate power. Madam Yu is not a "girlboss" (unless we accept the real meaning of that word, which is a woman who gains power by ingratiating herself into oppressive systems as the female alternative to corrupt male leaders), she is a domestic abuser who made every single person in her family and husband's clan miserable.

Favorite Ship/Pairing: Wangxian

Something I Love About the Book: I love the way this book is adamant about good always eventually being rewarded. That even if the outcome of doing good was terrible, that does not make the effort wasted or useless. Lan Wangji protecting Wei Wuxian at Nightless City was worth it even if he was almost killed for it, because it made sure that the yin tiger tally did not end up in the Jin Clan's hands as a completed weapon. Wei Wuxian saving the Wen was worth it even though he was killed for it, because A-Yuan got to live. Wen Qing and Wen Ning saving Jiang Cheng and Wei Wuxian was worth it even though Jiang Cheng betrayed them in the end, because their clan still got to live through its last descendant. None of their actions were met with immediate rewards, but the larger implications of them led to better outcomes than had they just kept to themselves and the status quo of corruption, as everyone else had.

SVSSS (my favorite of the three 🤗)

Favorite Character: Luo Binghe, hands down

Favorite Arc: Holy Mausoleum Arc, cause y'all (Shen Qingqiu 😒) gonna stop falsey accusing my baby, today!

Character I Think is Underrated: Bing-mei version of Luo Binghe, not because he's "unpopular," per se, but because mainstream fandom's perception of him seems to be that he is just Bing-ge who cries, and this is a complete mischaracterization of his character based on popular fanon. I see too much hate for him in this fandom because of it

Character I Think is Overrated: Shen Jiu. The man was a child abuser and died to one of his victims because he chose to be a child abuser. There is nothing tragic or unfair about that. Leave that man in the ether where he'll hopefully never have a chance to harm another person again.

Favorite Ship/Pairing: Bingqiu

Something I Love About the Book: Shen Qingqiu. The man is trying his damndest to do right in what he considers a doomed narrative, but the moment he realizes that his efforts have actually made things worse, he immediately pivots his actions. He never tries to justify himself, deflect from criticism, or misplace responsibility. He has one goal in mind, and that is to make as many people's lives as he possibly can better than what they originally ended up as.

[rainydayrina]

I think I like shuangxuan more knowing they went through the BWA together. HX deserves revenge but SQX didn't deserve to be collateral damage. And HX basically killed him by turning him mortal. Maybe not immediately, it may take 60 years, but SQX will die.....UNLESS, yours truly adds a headcanon. Disclaimer: ignoring anything mxtx said about the ending _____________________

Imagine this: during the Puqi shrine party, HX raids the food then leaves BUT he's caught but a stunned little SQX.... "please, just answer me this.... was it all a lie? Was anything we shared real to you?" "Everything! Was real to me." HX replies. "He deserved to die but you.... you...." he clearly want to say something but it's caught on his tongue. But he would just slink away into the darkness.

But SQX would wake up to food every morning, even if it was something small. He would start to stay up all night in hopes of catching HX again. Clearly still devastated by the lost of his brother and slightly terrified of his friend's true identity, but all those little moments together kept him holding on for dear life to their memories together.He would leave little notes saying he missed HX dispite it all.And after a long time, there would be an awkward rekindling.

HX would use a healing potion on SQX to cure his wounds. And there is NO WAY that a canon mpreg pill exist but not a life elongater pill and HX would get his hands on one no matter how much debt it put him in, besides, SQX is worth it, the only flaw in his plan, is that he got attached to someone who didn't deserve to die.

I think he'd take care of SQX, romantically/ platoniclly, however you see them. I think HX would have a small home built on the island that is closest to his territory, SQX can't go back to the place that scarred him most but still wants to be near his person. I think HX would slowly just move in, subtly at first until he just lives there too.

I think they regret together. SQX still sometimes wakes up with nightmares that HX cannot help him with. And HX watches from a distant and waits for it to pass.

Two shrines in honor of their loved one, albeit on entirely opposite sides of the home. One for HX family and one for SWD. They accept each other's loss.

The BWA brought out the worst in all of them but the love and kinship before that was (canonically) real. And while healing is a long process, everyday is getting better.

[dvasva]

this is why i think the discussion of class, which is usually ignored in the mdzs fandom space unless talking about the antagonists, is VITAL to like understanding key relationships in the story, ESPECIALLY jiang chengs and wei wuxians. they do really love each other as brothers, but there is a class disparity there, an unequal power dynamic in the relationship. wei wuxian isnt just jiang chengs brother but also his subordinate and theres moments where jiang cheng is angry that wei wuxian is acting like one role when he wants the other role. wei wuxian is the son of a servant, its brought up more than once and not just cause its set dressing, its an important aspect of his character and defines a lot of his relationships. jiang cheng becomes upset at wei wuxian because of the promise that wei wuxian will always follow him, but when wei wuxian found something else he felt obligated to, the wen remnants, that was both a brother breaking his promise and a subbordinate betraying his leader.

i mean, thats part of the reason the book goes to such great lengths establishing wei wuxian as lan wangjis equal, because of the class dynamics in play. lan wangji always seems to ignore class dynamics, and always is defined by his distance and unwillingness to participate with the politics of cultivation society. Wei wuxians interactions with everyone else minus the wens, lan wangji, and the juniors, are defined by his place in the hierarchy, class, and what he has the audacity or gall to do based on that. Nobody complains when nie huaisang doesnt carry his sword but when wei wuxian does it, he is rude. Nobody bats an eye when jin guangshan is a womanizer, but when wei wuxian is rumored to be one, hes a crass dog.

this all comes back to a major point of all of mxtx novels that i mention all the time, which is that Mxtx novels are about outcasts to society trying and failing to find happiness in society because of their failure to adhere to the status quo, and how in order to find happiness, they need to reject that status quo, and society at large. This kind of theme is integral to mdzs, and jin guangyao is a big example of it. His downfall was being an outsider who did everything in his power to conform to society including things that were morally questionable or downright bankrupt, and in turn society turned on him, destroying him. Wei Wuxian rejected society before his death and society turned on him, destroying him.

I also habe said this before, but Jiamg chemg serves as a litmus test on societies opinion on wei wuxian. Jin guangyao says himself that if jiang cheng hadnt paid any attention to the rest of cultivation society, hadn't listened to the snake in his ear telling him wei wuxian was disrespectful and needed to be controlled, they would have been fine. Jiang cheng serves, in the story, as the voice of the status quo, and his relationship with wei wuxian, even at the start, involved a lot of him telling wei wuxian that he is acting in a way that isnt befitting of his station, or that is rude or shameful. he does it in the cloud recesses, does it during the cave scene, during the war, does it after the war, etc. His imternal struggle is trying to reconcile the position and power he holds over wei wuxian as his sect leader with his concern and feelings for wei wuxian as his brother.

And, unpopular opinion, thats why im ok they didnt reconcile at the end. Neither of them know how to create a relationship with one another that doesnt involve their class dynamics.

(Also, since i know people have brought/will bring it up, Every character in mdzs minus a few antagonists and the juniors, have engaged in a cycle of self sacrifice that ultimately ends in tragedy. Its a big aspect of the books. Wwx gives his core, jiang cheng runs out, lwj takes 33 whips for saving wwx, wen qing and wen ning turn themselves in, xiao xingchen and his eyes, etc etc. antagonists whos priorities are mostly selfish or who are acting in their owns elf interest like jin guangayo (regardless of how altruistic his actions are) and xue yang, are excluded mostly, and juniors arent apart of it as a way to break the cycle of trauma that the older generation has gotten invovled with. its not just wei wuxian and jiang cheng who do self sacrifical actions for the sake of a person that ultimately ends in a firther tragedy, its all of them)

currently crying in my place of work thinking about how jiang cheng fell in front of wei wuxian begging his mother not to hurt him, not to cut his hand off. how in the cave he screamed for wei wuxian to follow him out and promised he'd come back for him when he realized his big brother was staying behind with lan wangji in order to make sure everyone else could escape. how he let himself get captured by the wens so that wei wuxian could be safe, and lost his golden core. how devastated he was telling wei wuxian that if he continued protecting the wens, jiang cheng couldn't keep him safe anymore. and people have the audacity to say he was a bad brother...

[butmorethanthis]

Western Danmei Fandom Archetypes

2ha mains - ‘READ THE BOOK READ OUR BOOK NOW sobs about HYX something about hole READ THE BOOK NOW shout out to the absolute unit’ - your book is a terrifying masterpiece and CWN is the kind of character Shakespeare could only dream of crafting and all you do is scream and make terrible jokes, excellent work

mdzs mains - they’re hard to hear over the sound of their own ongoing wars tbh - ‘the author is DEAD unless she says something that proves me right - everyday means everyday!!!! BUT ONLY WITH LUBE! WWX desecrated my mom’s corpse but it wasn’t HIS FAULT, Alexa play wangxian.mp3’ you have all the best and all the worst things about being a massive fandom and if you are not Chinese you need to be throwing flowers at the feet of the Chinese members of this fandom (and every Chinese culture fandom tbh, translations, cultural explainers and endless patience, folks are generous as hell) cus y’all are ANNOYING. Anyway, special shout out for the yi city youts, living in their own darkest timeline cus CQL mains won’t let you have dark and disturbing things

TGCF mains - the simpiest gong and the most smiley shou so quite often y’all miss the heart of darkness in your own story! TGCF is a jamboree of pain, stop selling it as sweet autumnal walks! The delusion that is Beefleaf is a collective trauma response to a deeply harrowing side plot that involved arguably MXTX’s most loveable side character! Jun Wu gives 2ha villains a run for their money in terms of corpse heavy architectural structures! That being said, canonical Self insert porn, and you have a ferret in a cute hat, which is fresh and exciting, not a dog or a fox or cat or a dragon like every fucker else, well done

SVSSS mains - I have to keep it real y’all are a bunch of edgelords, and smug as hell but I’m finna allow it because your (reluctant) gong is the sweetest (sqq if you topped him he might not cry! Just a thought. Ok he might cry less) and you’re right, witty meta with one (1) harrowing scene of like borderline consensual non con (if your focus is sqq) or just plain non con (if your focus is lbh? But the perpetrator is the system? a sword? Their partner trying to save their life?) ent for everyone and people misunderstand your chaotic ass text a lot, because they don’t want to ask difficult questions about ‘what consent even means’ and ‘the intricacies of a meta take on a genre that is from a culture they did not grow up in and found out about on tumblr’ So you know. Frighten people out of your fandom with your in jokes, it’s ok. Also a cumplane is a horrific image when you don’t know what that means, exemplary work.

WOH mains - my beloved Shanrens, y’all and your beloved cast deserved so much better than 813 and you have my whole heart. You are a bit unhinged, cus you only eat ice. Y’all are horny as hell, which makes sense cus your leads were stunning and push hard at the F of RPF, let’s keep it real. All these danmei characters are pretty dark, but yours don’t have a war to hide behind, they’re just like that, (I’m over simplifying, sometimes you have to eat your daddy to survive and that’s ok 😭😭) so you are the most feral of them all. Congratulations. I’m happy for people who’s focus is Yexie, but there are about 6,368 lesbians who found love in hopeless place just waiting for you to write about them, please, I don’t ask for much but write some strap on content I BEG. Speaking of which, shouts to the Nya-Xu girls, you’ve got everyone doing pet play on main and THAT? That is what fandom is about.

Guardian mains - you staggered, limped, dragged yourself across the floor so everyone else could shimmy forwards. You got a good theme tune, well done on your musical taste. Everyone needs to put respect on your name but they don’t, because your show ran out of money half way through 😭 and what little they had was spent almost exclusively on getting two gorgeous leading men and giving them NOTHING to work with (and the snake ladies wardrobe) 😭😭😭

Advance Bravely mains - you’re right, it’s a Dadaist masterpiece, but this shouldn’t be your main, beloved, please watch word of honour, gong jun is in it and everything.

Winter Begonia mains - the thing is, you want people to sit with you! Your show is beautiful in every way, and you advocate for it so softly, with such love. But you look like high art and it’s scaring the sluts away. Make some memes!

Sleuth mains - this fandom seems to divide cleanly into 30 somethings that are tired and might wake up in the middle of the night to strangle you at the slightest provocation and gender fuckers that want to be topped by Jin San and honestly? Mood. Y’all are kinkier than you’d think, much like the source material, but mostly you are just here to eat and sigh wistfully at Fu Meng Paul thirst traps while you write service top porn. If you read that as a RongZhi main and couldn’t see yourself you need to read it again.

Qi Ye mains - we get it, you can read, and yes, ZZS is darker than we ever knew and JBY is more of a mess and we need to be more scared of Wu Xi than we are, and Helian Yi is not prince Jin. Counter point: Prince Jin is a simp and it’s FUNNY, it’s nice having Xiyuan as like, ethereal couple goals and ZZS kills a toddler in SHL and then dumps WKX just for REMINDING HIM, we know what he is, even if he is pretending he does not see. It’s a real good and funny book though, you’re right.

Thousand autumn mains - one guy in your animation looks pretty hot and slutty with his shirt all open and the non jiang purple but you never really sell it, come on! Do some evangelism, we’re never getting HYX so I may as well read something.

BONUS nirvana in fire (it’s not a danmei but if you don’t watch it they take your non problematic consumer card away, and do you know what? That’s fair) - y’all are sophisticated. Smart. Aesthetes. You’re here for POETIC CINEMA, and will accept nothing less. But no one needs your meta, the show is clever enough on its own, stand down. Make some memes instead. We need more porn in this here fandom.

[ninjakk]

LWJ's POV - Meeting WWX in MXY's body

I've often thought about what LWJs point of view would be during the novel. So I thought it might be interesting to write a little about what I think might be going through his head when he first meets WWX in MXYs body. Obviously this is conjecture, but I will try to base my thoughts on the text as much as possible. Also, as I've read the book many times, I already know the entire plot, so this will come into play as well. Otherwise we'd have no clue what LWJ was thinking, unless you're LXC I guess!

So I think it's pretty safe to assume that our lovely Lan SiZhui, being the exemplary junior he is, reported everything that happened at Mo Village back to LWJ once he arrived on the scene. LSZ probably would have told LWJ about someone controlling the fierce corpses and that MXY went missing once he arrived.

Chapter 8

Lan SiZhui had probably informed Lan WangJi of his suspicious behaviour in Mo Village already. Even so, he had nodded in acknowledgement, probably thanking him for helping out the juniors from the Lan Sect. Without thinking, Wei WuXian immediately returned a salute. When he looked up again, Lan WangJi had already disappeared.

When LWJ meets "MXY" for the first time at Dafan Mountain, he is polite and gives him a slight nod in thanks for helping the juniors back at Mo Village. At this point, LWJ doesn't know "MXY" is in fact WWX, so their interaction is brief. Although WWX does hold eye contact with him as he brushes past him - because he's a minx. So their first meeting is brief and interestingly enough, LWJ is the one to leave first - not WWX trying to get away as fast as he can, as he apparently does later in the chapters. (I personally don't think he tries much at all!)

After JL and the other juniors look like they are in trouble, WWX summons something to help defeat the soul-consuming goddess. To WWX's shock it turns out be WN. Eventually WWX has to play a calming tune to stop WN from developing a killing intent and harming others. WWX clears his mind and a soft song naturally comes to the forefront of his mind.

Chapter 10

To stifle it, Wei WuXian calmed his feelings and assuredly played another melody. The melody had drifted over his mind naturally. It was relaxed and tranquil, contrasting with the bizarre and ear-piercing one from before.

I just absolutely love the second interaction between WWX and LWJ. I can almost imagine LWJ hearing the melody of Wangxian being carried on the wind, floating down the mountain towards him. Calling out to him in a teasing, evocative tone - daring his heart to accept what he was hearing. Evoking so many strong emotions within him, it would have been such a moment of utter turmoil for him. Simultaneously wanting to believe that WWX was back from the dead, as the only logical explanation, and being frightened to let his heart believe such a thing could have actually happened. As no one else knows the song apart from the two of them, he really can't deny it.

We could even go as far as to say LWJ assumes WWX knows what the melody is called. When asked what the tune was called back in the Xuanwu of Slaughter cave, LWJ mumbled something to him twice before WWX passed out. So LWJ may well think, just like he assumes in the cave after the bloodbath of Nightless City, he heard what he said to him back then as well. MXTX likes drawing parallels, so it's not too much of a stretch to assume both apparent 'cave confessions' link up to the some of misunderstandings that surround their relationship.

Chapter 10

Wei WuXian retreated while playing the flute, guiding him to follow. Walking like this for a short distance, they moved into the forest, when suddenly, Wei WuXian caught the chilly scent of sandalwood. Immediately after, his back bumped into someone. With an abrupt pain on his wrist, the flute melody had stopped. Wei WuXian thought, oh no, and turned around to look. His sight collided with Lan WangJi’s eyes. They were light-colored to the point of appearing to be physically cold.

Hearing the music, we can assume LWJ probably got onto Bichen and flew up the mountain as fast as he could. He probably landed in the nearby forest up the top of the mountain and started searching for where the music was coming from. I think he would have been nervous, excited and very confused at this point. The back of "MXY" would have come into view as he edged into the forest, luring WN away from the crowd. Without any doubt, LWJ would have silently walked towards what he now knows is WWX. LWJ then grips WWXs wrist to stop him playing the flute any further.

He decisively ignored the hand that gripped him and raised his arm to continue playing. This time, the tempo was faster, as if it was urging or scolding. His air was not steady and each note cracked at the end, sounding shrill and harsh. Suddenly, Lan WangJi’s hand tightened, almost causing his wrist to break. Wei WuXian’s fingers loosened from the pain and the wooden flute dropped to the ground.

What WWX assumed is LWJ being angry at someone daring to use Demonic Cultivation in front of him, was in my opinion, LWJ trying to protect him. It is even confirmed in the text, that LWJ doesn't pay any attention to WN the whole time he is holding WWX's wrist. LWJ knows that JC is also somewhere around the mountain and that he absolutely hates anyone who mimics WWXs cultivation style. Which I think is why he is trying to stop WWX, to ensure he doesn't attract any attention from JC again. WWX continued to play the flute in order to make WN leave before more trouble ensued. LWJ intensifies his grip on WWXs grip to stop him playing.

Wei WuXian feared that Lan WangJi would chase after Wen Ning, so he backhandedly grabbed him instead. But, surprisingly, Lan WangJi never even looked at Wen Ning once, but stared at Wei WuXian the whole time. The two stood face toface, gripping each other’s arms, and stared.

I love the scene where they are gripping each other's arms and staring into each other's eyes. Whether WWX wants to admit it or not, there must have been some sexual tension there surely?! We aren't even privy to WWX's thoughts at this moment, which is quite interesting. As such, we can only imagine what's going through his head! Probably something to do with LWJ's sexy icey gaze - my personal headcanon! (Never mind WWXs obsession with his eyes - I think I'm developing one! ) On the other hand, LWJ is most likely thinking about how WWX must have seized someone's body, as I'm pretty sure he would not be aware of the technique MXY used.

At this point JC appears and is told about "MXY" summoning WN. JC doesn't need anymore proof, he knows this has to be WWX as WN was summoned - and he was supposed to be ash by now! JC decides to attack WWX with Zidian, in an attempt to whip his soul out of MXY's body.

He let go of his left hand, and a long whip dangled from it. The whip was extremely slender. Like its name, it was a streak of purple lightning which sizzled, as if it had just been taken away from a sky full of storm clouds. He held one side of it in his grip. As it was brandished, it seemed to let out rapid slashes of lightning! Before Wei WuXian moved, Lan WangJi had already placed his zither in front of him.

LWJ instantly protects WWX knowing that his soul will be whipped out of the person's body if it had been forcefully taken. So when WWX is whipped and nothing happens, LWJ (and JC!) are utterly shocked. LWJ is still convinced "MXY" is WWX, because he played Wangxian and no one else has ever heard this song - so he must be perplexed as to how WWX has managed to come back.

LWJ continues to protect WWX to ensure JC doesn't take him back to Lotus Pier and torture him. Personally, I think LWJ had every intention of taking WWX back to the Cloud Recesses this time around anyway - especially to protect him from JC. WWX tries to escape both of them by making them feel so uncomfortable around him they leave him alone. So he uses MXY's reputation as a lunatic and a cut-sleeve to try and scare JC and LWJ off.

Wei WuXian replied, “Which type? Well, I am very much attracted to people like HanGuang- Jun.” Lan WangJi could not tolerate this sort of frivolous and foolish joke at all. If he felt disgusted, he would definitely draw a line between them and keep his distance. Disgusting two people at once—this was killing two birds with one stone! However, as Lan WangJi heard this, he turned around. His face was emotionless, “Mark your words.” Wei WuXian, “Hmm?” Lan WangJi turned back, speaking in a mannerly yet resolute way, “I will take this person back to the Lan Sect.” Wei WuXian, “...” Wei WuXian, “...Huh?”

As we're assuming this from LWJ's POV, we are privy to information we weren't if we were reading MDZS for first time. With that in mind, LWJ is under the impression WWX remembers his confession to him after the Bloodbath of Nightless City. As such, he probably thinks WWX is being flirty and teasing him when he is acting as "MXY" out of gratitude towards him for saving him all those years ago. LWJ continues to protect WWX by taking him back to Gusu. Which I find quite poetic, considering LWJ wanted him to come back with him in WWXs first life.

Later still, WWX is apparently trying to get thrown out of the CR by climbing into bed with LWJ, attempting to 'disgust' him.

Chapter 12

Lan WangJi spoke, “Are you sure that this is what you want?” “...” For some reason, Wei WuXian felt that he should carefully consider his reply. As he was about to curl his lips into a smile, a numbness suddenly came from his waist, and his legs gave out. With a thump, he fell onto Lan WangJi’s body. The curvature of a half-smile was frozen on his lips. His head was at the right side of Lan WangJi chest and he couldn’t move at all. Lan WangJi’s voice came from above him. His voice was low and deep. His chest vibrated slightly as he spoke each word. “Then stay like this for the whole night.”

WWX teasing LWJ is something he has done since his first life, so LWJ probably assumes he's up to his old tricks again. LWJ has matured over the years and has accepted his love for WWX. As such, he can fully embrace WWXs teasing and can now even tease him back! Which is exactly what he does! In fact, I'd say LWJ has gotten very good at teasing WWX. WWX had already met his match with LWJ in nearly every way, but now he is competing for biggest tease as well!

Obviously everyone reads characters and text differently at times, so I'm sure there are many different ways to interpret LWJ's POV. But I just thought it would be fun to share my interpretation of one of my favourite characters.

[k1201a]

I'm not a jc stan, I don't care about jc, chengxian, yunmeng bros. The reason I gave that example is that they're the ones who had a bond at some point but, tbf, I also believe that lxc cared about jgy as a friend? The same goes for xxc and the person he thought was xy. I don't consider any of those ships as crack, just not romantically canon. Crack is a whole different thing 🤷🏻‍♀️ so anon should Google.

Anyways, the problem with you radical hateful people is that you take everything to the extremes. I'm not saying any of these relationship were the most ~devoted and beautiful~ thing in the world and "omg the deserve better!!😩" I'm just saying that they were what you would consider a friend and you love your friends... unless you're literally a sociopath, lmao. And that's what you think of wwx apparently, like even when you talk about wangxian you make it sound as the most superficial and boring shit. Like how you dare make wwx talk about his feelings with lwj, eww, that's not what dudes do. That's what happens when you maybe didn't have a long term rs with a man and believe their façade.

And, well. just as you think everyone projects, I think you're also projecting the lack of people you formed bonds with in your life and that's why you'll reply to some corny post about "the power of love", the oldest trope probably.

Yo DO see these characters as one dimensional that never think about the past, never get sad about it, that barely have thoughts and feelings. Did you know that wwx not wanting jc again in his life doesn't mean he never cared about him? That he sacrificing something important for him (and that it's not just bc he's a Good Dude who only do the correct as you try hard to believe) doesn't mean that they should be friends again? It's like you can't live with the fact that one thing don't cancel the other, that wwx actually doesn't care about jc anymore but he did once and it's ok. And don't even try any kind of discourse about me projecting because I find them relatable, more human, morally gray, imperfect, etc on me... because I hate those too. I hate extremes, I hate when people woobify assholes but also when they make of these characters robots with no feelings. Jc stans are the first but you're the latter. Characters are fictional so they don't have to be "human", even less when most people use it to justify they acting like jerks, but the other extreme is to think they're so empty, and that makes them one dimensional... When it's like the mere idea of wwx having a moment and maybe just pondering about something equals a sob story as dramatic as a telenovela for you and NO. It's not even about that, but that's what obviously happens when you're extremist. You're projecting your views on things as much as them.

But what you’re saying is not what op was talking about. You’re talking about basic friendship, What op was talking about was “love change everything”, mxtx didn’t write that, except for Luo Binghe, that’s my point. OP didn’t say “care”, they said “love”, they went further to characterize that love to be something that change, heal, redeem people. Basic friendship is found in most fiction. It’s present in mxtx’s stories is not the same as saying that’s the message she’s trying to send.

“…that's why you'll reply to some corny post about "the power of love", the oldest trope probably.”

I don’t have problem with this trope, I did say svsss is about that, I just don’t agree all her novels are about that. I think that’s projecting and lazy crowd pleasing. OP just picked one corny thing they think no one would disagree and tag it in ALL major tags, despite the 3 novels are different.

“the oldest trope”. I think that’s why some people force this trope into their reading of every story, they think it should be there, and you can’t go wrong with this interpretation, even when what the author wanted to write got nothing to do with that.

You said you’re not a JC stan but all you talk about is JC and wwx. I said shen yuan did love and saved luo binghe, if I have problem with corn good old fashioned trope, I wouldn’t have said that. You only have problem when I don’t validate your view of jc and wwx’s relationship. You’re projecting on jc. When I said svsss is about love, Didn't I go corny? But it left no impression on you, because to you, I wasn’t corny about the right characters, the characters you project onto. The only thing that triggered you was what I said about jc and wwx lol

[green-ray-blog1]

There's something to be said for toothless centralized leaders in history. In stateless societies, a leader appointed among their peers sometimes mostly carries a ceremonial role. Supposed to preside gatherings, to give their opinion as the wise one, but in the end, if their word isn't binding in any significant way, then that's all it is. Even in state societies, the political leadership position isn't necessarily that powerful. For a chunk of its history, Japan's emperor was a shiny mantelpiece to legitimize the Shogun's power (there's more to it, like in every case, but point is a theoretically supreme leader might only be a leader in name).

So I don't know if the role of chief cultivator is ever really explored in cql (only read the book), but I don't remember JGY straight up calling the shots to other sects. He seemed more that the title was respected because he's efficient, gets along with everyone and his watchtower project is perceived a good idea, and he's pretty much volunteering to oversee it. Basically, as chief cultivator, he's a good look, doesn't cause trouble, and has some neat ideas, which contrasts from WRH's power grab.

So when it turns out JGY did in fact fool everyone by hiding a bunch of murders including two sect leaders, and everyone turns on him, and then the sects discuss electing a new chief cultivator, i'm not too surprised by the choice. LWJ's been considered honorable forever, so he's less likely than average to be hiding a skeleton rave party in his basement (a few skeletons playing cards in the backroom is acceptable, it's still the cultivation world, just do a better job hiding them), he mostly just sits around looking pretty and lets other people talk, which is awesome, and he basically doesn't even watch the news unless they're about WWX. He can basically be shown off as the ideal honorable cultivator to make everyone look good and pat each other on the back.

So depending on how we're understanding the role of chief cultivator, I really think he's not such a bad choice. Book NHS, as suggested by MXTX, is also good for different reasons that also make him an unproblematic likeable guy to have around (even if he reveals himself as more competent and hard working after JGY's out of the picture).

Also, while WRH did try and take over the world (of cultivation), I don't think JGY had further nefarious plans (maybe in cql). Most of his actions during the present events are him increasingly desperately trying to cover up his previous crimes from before he was even chief cultivator. I feel there's very little of the recent crimes he couldn't have done if he hadn't been chief cultivator, so I don't think it's really enough to discredit the position itself, among sects. Again, history's full of leaders who turned out to be absolute disasters, and right after they're removed, everyone is eager to have the position filled again because, at best, they figure it's just a matter of getting the right person in there, not a problem with the position itself.

there’s a lot of differences between mdzs and the untamed that don’t make sense but i think the one that makes the least sense is lan zhan, of all people, becoming the leader of the cultivation world. lan zhan. the man who struggles to say more than 2 words to anyone ever. he’s the leader??

i mean i get it, they couldn’t wangxian get married and wander the world together, but idk i feel like even having someone take over as the leader of the cultivation world just wouldn’t happen at this point in time. people would be extremely wary about anyone being in control after the wen clan and then jin guangshan and then jin guangyao. and lan zhan would have no interest in being a leader. idk it’s weird?? there were other ways to end their storyline that didn’t end in them marrying or in lan zhan becoming the cultivation leader.

[leatherbookmarking]

wow it seems someone already outbitched* me in terms of being picky about the mdzs translation, and

* i am saying this with appreciation

oh dear. well that doesn’t look good... especially the part about 你叫谁 because i feel like thanks to cql’s change it’s Really a popular/meaningful scene, so the translator getting it wrong is like... not only a basic language mistake, but also hello? this is mdzs by mxtx, have you heard of it?

the reddit thread the reviewer linked also gives some examples that just make me wince with how stiff they sound. i saw lwj commenting “...” before and it rendered me speechless commenting “...” too, tbh.

the reddit thread also has people making excuses, saying that ‘translating is hard’ (yes. i guess we just gotta stop translating then?) and “they did their best” (i don’t want to even think about their not-best then) as well as my favourite “it was there in the novel, the translator can’t just change it”.

buddy? the translator is there to TRANSLATE.

to make the text understandable in target language, not to brainlessly shovel the text like snow from point A to point B. if you find a joke or a pun that works in chinese but doesn’t work in english, then what? do you die? do you leave it in chinese with a fucking footnote? no, you make something up! you move the joke to a place where it would work, or you try to construct a similar joke/pun in your target language!

the same goes for the general look and convenience of reading! are these people for real?! you can leave your lan wangji: “...” when you’re doing a quick translation online for your fellow fans to understand roughly what’s going on, but it’s a physically published book for Twenty Fucking US Dollars! “translator can’t just add things as they please”, holy fucking shit.

jesus.

lan wangji remained silent/said nothing, anyone? no? pity

anyway, uh. i thought i’ll manage if it’s just awkward phrasing, but it seems it’s awkward phrasing and basic mistakes that seriously make you wonder a/ if the translator knew what she was translating, or was that her first encounter with the text, and b/ if the translated text really saw any kind of editing.

that, and the character guides in the back just sort of... make me wonder about buying the next volumes lol;;; there’s no way the text will be checked again/fixed, unless a huge amount of fans rally for it, and it seems the majority of fans is just happy to have the novels, which. the bar is low

also, i was thinking about how to give a comprehensive/convenient pronunciation guide and not offend the diaspora, and... qr codes, maybe? the book i bought a while ago had qr codes on some pages, and if you scanned them, you’d get a link to a page with more information/photos on a particular topic. i think it would be a good solution

[spockandawe]

Well, this is interesting! So, in that post yesterday, there was one line that really baffled me, a thing about people brushing off a character as an asshole “because he shows literally zero growth.” I kind of set that aside because it was such a weird non-sequitur, and guessed that it was just someone’s sentences not quite keeping up with their train of thought, which has happened to me many times. Apparently I was wrong! I already spent long enough on that one post, I’m tired of talking about that, but this is new and interesting. 

Okay. I kind of wanted to see if I could talk about this purely in terms of abstracts and not characters, but I don’t think it’ll work. It would be frustrating to write and confusing to read. It’s about Jiang Cheng. Right up front: This isn’t about whether or not he’s an abuser. Frankly, I don’t think it’s relevant. This also isn’t about telling people they should like him. I don't care whether anyone else likes him or not. But I do like him, and I am always fascinated by dissecting the reasons that people disagree with me. And the process of Telling Stories is my oldest hyperfixation I remember, which will become relevant in a minute.

I thought I had a good grasp on this one, you know? Jiang Cheng makes it pretty obvious why people would dislike Jiang Cheng. But then the posts I keep stumbling over were making weird points, culminating in that “literally zero growth” line.

So! What happened is that someone wrote up a post about how Jiang Cheng’s character arc isn’t an arc, it’s stagnation. It’s a pretty interesting read, and I broadly agree with the larger point! The points where I would quibble are like... the idea that it’s absolute stagnation, as opposed to very subtle shifts that still make a material difference. But still, cool! The post was also offered up as a reason why OP was uninterested in writing any more Jiang Cheng meta, which I totally get. I’m not tired of him yet, but I definitely understand why someone who isn’t a fan of his would get tired about writing about a character with a very static arc. Okay!

Now, internet forensics are hard. I desperately wish I had more information about this evolution, because I find this stuff fascinating, but I have no good way to find things said in untagged posts, reblogs, or private/external venues. But as far as I can tell, that “literally zero growth” wasn’t just a slip of the tongue, it’s become fashionable for people to say that Jiang Cheng is an abusive asshole (that it’s fucked up to like) because he doesn’t have a character arc.

Asshole? Yes. Abusive? This post still isn’t about that. This is about it being fucked up to like this character because he did bad things and had a static character arc.

At first, that point of view was still deeply confusing to me. But I think I figured out the idea at the core of it, and now I’m only baffled. I’m not super interested in confirming this directly, because the people making the most noise about this have not inspired confidence in their ability to hold a civil conversation and I’m a socially anxious binch, but I think the idea is: ‘This character did Bad Things, and then did not improve himself.’

Which is alarmingly adjacent to that old favorite standard of ‘This piece of fiction is glorifying Bad Thing.’ I haven’t seen anyone accusing mxtx of something something jiang cheng, only the people who read/watched/heard the story and became invested in the Jiang Cheng character, but things kind of add up, you know?

Like I said, I don’t want to arbitrate anyone’s right to like/dislike Jiang Cheng. That’s such a fucking waste of time. But this is fascinating to me, because it’s like..... so obviously new and sudden, with such a clear originating point. I can’t speak to the Chinese fans, obviously, but exiledrebels started translating in... what, 2017? And only now, in 2021, do people start putting forth Jiang Cheng’s flat character arc as a “reason” that he’s bad? I’m not going to argue if he pings you in the abuse place, I’m not a dick. I’m not going to argue if you just dislike his vibes. I’m just over here on my blog and in the tag enjoying myself, feel free to detour around me. But oh my god, it’s so silly to try to tell other people that they shouldn’t like him because he has a static character arc.

I want to talk about stories. I don’t know how much I’ll be able to say, because it’s impossible to make broad, sweeping statements, because there are stories about change, there are stories about lack of change, there are all kinds of media that can be used to tell stories, and standards for how stories are told and what they emphasize vary across cultures and over time. But I think that what I can say is that telling a story requires... compromise. It requires streamlining. Trying to capture all the detail of life would slow down most stories to an unbearable degree. Consider organically telling someone ‘I made a peanut butter and jelly sandwich’ versus the computer science exercise of having students describe, step by step, how to make one (spread peanut butter? but you never said you opened the lid)

Hell, I’ve got an example in mdzs itself. The largely-faceless masses of the common people. If someone asks you to think about it critically like, yes, obviously these are people, living their own lives, with their own desires, sometimes suffering and dying in the wake of the novel plot. But does the story give weight to those deaths? Or does it just gloss by? Yes, it references their suffering occasionally, but it is not the focus, and it would slow the story unbearably to give equal weight to each dead person mentioned. 

Does Wei Wuxian’s massacre get given the same slow, careful consideration as Su She’s, or Jin Guangyao’s? No, because taking the time to weigh our protagonist with ‘well, this one was a mother, and her youngest son had just started walking, but now he’s going to grow up without remembering her face. that one only became an adult a few months ago, he still hasn’t been on many night-hunts yet, but he finds it so rewarding to protect the common people. oh, and this one had just gotten engaged, but don’t worry, his fiancee won’t mourn him, because she died here as well.’ And continuing on that way to some large number under 3000? No! Unless your goal is to make the reader feel bad for cheering for a morally grey hero, that would be a bad authorial decision! The book doesn’t ignore the issue, it comes up, Wei Wuxian gets called out about all the deaths he’s responsible for, but that’s not the same as them being given equal emotional weight to one (1) secondary character, and I don’t love this new thing where people are pretending that’s equivalent.

When Wei Wuxian brutally kills every person at the Wen supervisory office, are you like ‘holy shit... so many grieving families D:’ or are you somewhere between vindicated satisfaction and an ‘ooh, yikes’ wince? Odds are good you’re somewhere in the satisfaction/wince camp, because that’s what the story sets you up to feel, because the story has to emphasize its priorities (priorities vary, but ‘plot’ and ‘protagonist’ are common ones, especially for a casual novel read like this)

Now, characters. If you want to write a story with a sweeping, epic scale, or if you want to tightly constrain the number of people your story is about, I guess it’s possible to give everyone involved a meaningful character arc. Now.... is it always necessary? Is it always possible? Does it always make sense? No, of course not. If you want to do that, you have to devote real estate to it, and depending on the story you want to tell, it could very possibly be a distraction from your main point, like the idea of mxtx tenderly eulogizing every single character who dies even incidentally. Lan Qiren doesn’t get a loving examination of his feelings re: his nephews and wei wuxian and political turnover in the cultivation world because it’s not relevant, and also, because his position is pretty static until right near the end of the story. Lan Xichen is arguably one of the most static characters within the book, he seems like the same nice young between Gusu and the present, right up until... just before the end of the story.

You may see where I’m heading with this.

Like, just imagine trying to demand that every important character needs to go through a major life change before the end of your book or else it didn’t count. This just in, Granny Weatherwax and Nanny Ogg go through multiple novels without experiencing radical shifts in who they are, stop liking them immediately. I do get that the idea is that Jiang Cheng was a ~bad person~ who didn’t change, but asdgfsd I thought we were over the handwringing over people being allowed to like ““bad”” fictional characters. The man isn’t even a canonical serial killer, he’s not my most problematic fave even within this novel.

And here is where it’s a little more relevant that I would quibble with that original post about Jiang Cheng’s arc. He’s consistently a mean girl, but he goes from stressed, sharp-edged teenager, to grief-stricken, almost-destroyed teen, to grim, cold young adult (and then detours into grim, cold, and grief-stricken until grief dulls with time). He does become an attentive uncle tho. He..... doesn’t experience a radical change in his sense of self, which... it’s...... not all that strange for an adult. And bam, then he DOES experience a radical change, but the needs of the plot dictate that it’s right near the end. And he’s not the focus of the story, baby, wangxian is. He has the last few lines of the story, which nicely communicate his changes to me, but also asdfafas we’re out of story. He was never the main character, it’s not surprising we don’t linger! The extras aren’t beholden to the needs of plot, but they’re also about whatever mxtx wanted to write, and I guess she didn’t feel like writing about Jiang Cheng ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

But also. Taking a step backward. Stable characters can fill a perfectly logical place in a story. Like, look at Leia Organa. I’m not saying she has no arc, but I am saying that she’s a solid point of reference as Luke is becoming a jedi and Han is adjusting his perspective. I wouldn’t call her stagnant, the vibes are wrong, but she also isn’t miserable in her sadness swamp, the way Jiang Cheng is.

Or, hell, look at tgcf. The stagnant, frozen nature of the big bad is a central feature of the story. The bwx of now is the bwx of 800 years ago is the bwx of 1500+ years ago. This is not the place for a meta on how that was bad for those around him and for him himself, but I have Thoughts about how being defeated at the end is both a thing that hurts him and relieves him. Mei Nianqing is a sympathetic character who’s also pretty darn static. Does Ling Wen have a character arc, or do we just learn more about who she already is and what her priorities always were? I’m going to cut myself off here, but a character’s delta between the beginning of a story and the end of a story is a reasonable way to judge how interesting writing character meta is, and is a very silly metric to judge their worth, and even if I guessed at what the basic logic is, for this character, I am still baffled that it’s being put forth as a real talking point.

(also, has it jumped ship to any other characters yet? have people started applying it in other fandoms as well? please let me know if this is the case, I am wildly curious)

(no, but really, if anyone is arguing that bwx is gross specifically because he had centuries to self-reflect and didn’t fix himself, i am desperate to know)

And finally. The thing I thought was most self-evident. Did I post about this sometime recently? If a non-central character experiences a life-altering paradigm shift right near the end of the story (without it being lingered over, because non-central character), oh my god. As a fic writer? IT’S FREE REAL ESTATE. This is the most fertile possible ground. If I want to write post-canon canon-compliant material, adsgasfasd that’s where I’m going to be looking. Okay, yeah, the main couple is happy, that’s good. Who isn’t happy, and what can I do about that? Happy families are all alike, while every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way, etc.

It’s not everyone’s favorite playground, but come on, these are not uncommon feelings. And frankly, it’s starting to feel a little disingenuous when people act like fan authors pick out the most blameless angel from the cast and lavish good things upon them. I’m not the only one who goes looking for a good dumpster fire and says I Live Here Now. If I write post-canon tgcf fic, it’s very likely to focus on beef and/or leaf. I have written more than one au focusing on tianlang-jun.

And, hilariously. If the problem with Jiang Cheng. Is that he is a toxic man fictional character who failed to grow on his own, and is either unsafe or unhealthy to be around. If the problem is that he did not experience a character arc. If these people would be totally fine with other people liking him, if he improved himself as a person. And then, if authors want to put in the (free! time-consuming!) work of writing that character development themselves. You would think that they would be lauded for putting the character through healthier sorts of personal growth than he experienced in canon. Instead, I am still here writing this because first, I was bothered by these authors being named as “freaks” who are obsessed with their ‘uwu precious tsundere baby’ with a “love language of violence,” and then I was graciously informed that people hate Jiang Cheng because he experiences no character growth.

[potteresque-ire]

Can you talk more about the usage of the word "wife" to talk about men in the BL context? I've noticed it in BJYX (particularly with GG), in the (English translations) of MDZS, and then it came up in your recent posts about Danmei-101 (which were super helpful btw) with articles connecting the "little fresh meat" type to fans calling an actor "wife." My initial reaction as a westerner is like "this is very problematic," but I think I'm missing a lot of language/cultural context. Any thoughts?

Hello! First of all, for those who’re interested, here’s a link to the referred posts. Under the cut is arguably the 4th post of the series. As usual, I apologise for the length!

(Topics: seme and uke; more about “leftover women”; roster of feminisation terms; Daji, Bao Si & the origin of BJYX; roster of beautiful, ancient Chinese men; Chairman Mao (not part of the roster) ...)

[TW: feminisation of men]

In the traditional BL characterisation, the M/M (double male) lead pairing is essentially a cis-het relationship in disguise, in which one of the M leads is viewed as the “wife” by the creator and audience. This lead often possesses some of the features of the traditional, stereotypical female, but retaining his male appearance. 

In BL terms, the “wife” is the “uke”. “Seme” and “uke” are the respective roles taken by the two male leads, and designated by the creator of the material. Literally, “seme” (攻め) means the dominant, the attacking / aggressive partner in the relationship and “uke” (受け), the passive / recipient (of actions) partner who tends to follow the seme’s lead. The terms themselves do not have any sexual / gender context.  However, as male and female are viewed as aggressive and passive by their traditional social roles, and the attacker and recipient by their traditional sexual roles respectively, BL fandoms have long assigned uke, the passive, sexual “bottom”, as the “woman”, the “wife”. 

Danmei has kept this “semi” and uke” tradition from BL, taking the kanji of the Japanese terms for designation ~ 攻 (”attack” is therefore the “husband”, and 受 (”receive”), the “wife”. The designations are often specified in the introduction / summary of Danmei works as warning / enticement. For MDZS, for example, MXTX wrote:

高貴冷豔悶騷 攻 × 邪魅狂狷風騷 受

高貴冷豔悶騷 攻 = noble, coolly beautiful and boring seme (referring to LWJ)  邪魅狂狷風騷 受 = devilishly charming, wild, and flirty uke (referring to WWX) 

The traditional, stereotypical female traits given to the “uke”, the “wife” in Danmei and their associated fanworks range from their personality to behaviour to even biological functions. Those who have read the sex scenes in MDZS may be aware of their lack of mention of lube, while WWX was written as getting (very) wet from fluids from his colon (腸道) ~ implying that his colon, much like a vagina, was supplying the necessarily lubrication for sex. This is obviously biologically inaccurate; however, Danmei is exempt from having to be realistic by its original Tanbi definition. The genre’s primary audience is cishet females, and sex scenes such as this one aren’t aiming for realism. Rather, the primary goal of these sex scenes is to generate fantasy, and the purpose of the biologically female functions in one of the leads (WWX) is to ease the readers into imagining themselves as the one engaging in the sex.

Indeed, these practices of assigning as males and female the M/M sexual top and bottom, of emphasising of who is the top and who is the bottom, have been falling out of favour in Western slash fandoms ~ I joined fandom about 15 years ago, and top and bottom designations in slash pairings (and fights about them) were much more common than it is now.  The generally more open, more progressive environments in which Western fandomers are immersed in probably have something to do with it: they transfer their RL knowledge, their views on biology, on different social into their fandom works and discourses. 

I’d venture to say this: in the English-speaking fandoms, fandom values and mainstream values are converging. “Cancel culture” reflects an attempt to enforce RL values in the fictional worlds in fandom. Fandom culture is slowly, but surely, leaving its subculture status and becoming part of mainstream culture. 

I’d hesitate to call c-Danmei fandoms backward compared to Western slash for this reason. There’s little hope for Danmei to converge with China’s mainstream culture in the short term ~ the necessity of replacing Danmei with Dangai in visual media already reflects that. Danmei is and will likely remain subculture in the foreseeable future, and subcultures, at heart, are protests against the mainstream. Unless China and the West define “mainstream” very similarly (and they don’t), it is difficult to compare the “progressiveness”—and its dark side, the “problematic-ness”—of the protests, which are shaped by what they’re protesting against. The “shaper” in this scenario, the mainstream values and culture, are also far more forceful under China’s authoritarian government than they are in the free(-er) world. 

Danmei, therefore, necessarily takes on a different form in China than BL or slash outside China. As a creative pursuit, it serves to fulfil psychological needs that are reflective of its surrounding culture and sociopolitical environment. The genre’s “problematic” / out of place aspects in the eyes of Western fandoms are therefore, like all other aspects of the genre, tailor-made by its millions of fans to be comforting / cathartic for the unique culture and sociopolitical background it and they find themselves in. 

I briefly detoured to talk about the Chinese government’s campaign to pressure young, educated Chinese women into matrimony and motherhood in the post for this reason, as it is an example of how, despite Western fandoms’ progressiveness, they may be inadequate, distant for c-Danmei fans. Again, this article is a short and a ... morbidly-entertaining read on what has been said about China’s “leftover women” (剩女) — women who are unmarried and over 27-years-old). I talked about it, because “Women should enter marriage and parenthood in their late 20s” may no longer a mainstream value in many Western societies, but where it still is, it exerts a strong influence on how women view romance, and by extension, how they interact with romantic fiction, including Danmei.

In China, this influence is made even stronger by the fact that Chinese tradition  places a strong emphasis on education and holds a conservative attitude towards romance and sex. Dating while studying therefore remains discouraged in many Chinese families. University-educated Chinese women therefore have an extremely short time frame — between graduation (~23 years old) and their 27th birthday — to find “the right one” and get married, before they are labelled as “leftovers” and deemed undesirable. (Saving) face being an important aspect in Chinese culture introduces yet another layer of pressure: traditionally, women who don’t get married by the age agreed by social norms have been viewed as failures of upbringing, in that the unmarried women’s parents not having taught/trained their daughters well. Filial, unmarried women therefore try to get married “on time” just to avoid bringing shame to their family.

The outcome is this: despite the strong women characters we may see in Chinese visual media, many young Chinese women nowadays do not expect themselves to be able to marry for love. Below, I offer a “book jacket summary” of a popular internet novel in China, which shows how the associated despair also affects cis-het fictional romance. Book reviews praise this novel for being “boring”: the man and woman leads are both common working class people, the “you-and-I”’s; the mundaneness of them trying build their careers and their love life is lit by one shining light: he loves her and she loves him. 

Written in her POV, this summary reflects, perhaps, the disquiet felt by many contemporary Chinese women university graduates:

曾經以為，自己這輩子都等不到了—— 世界這麼大，我又走得這麼慢，要是遇不到良人要怎麼辦？早過了「全球三十幾億男人，中國七億男人，天涯何處無芳草」的猖狂歲月，越來越清楚，循規蹈矩的生活中，我們能熟悉進而深交的異性實在太有限了，有限到我都做好了「接受他人的牽線，找個適合的男人慢慢煨熟，再平淡無奇地進入婚姻」的準備，卻在生命意外的拐彎處迎來自己的另一半。

I once thought, my wait will never come to fruition for the rest of my life — the world is so big, I’m so slow in treading it, what if I’ll never meet the one? I’ve long passed the wild days of thinking “3 billion men exist on Earth, 0.7 of which are Chinese. There is plenty more fish in the sea.” I’m seeing, with increasing clarity, that in our disciplined lives, the number of opposite-sex we can get to know, and get to know well, is so limited. It’s so limited that I’m prepared to accept someone’s matchmaking, find a suitable man and slowly, slowly, warm up to him, and then, to enter marriage with without excitement, without wonder. But then, an accidental turn in my life welcomes in my other half.

— Oath of Love (餘生，請多指教) (Yes, this is the novel Gg’d upcoming drama is based on.) 

Heteronormativity is, of course, very real in China. However, that hasn’t exempted Chinese women, even its large cis-het population, from having their freedom to pursue their true love taken away from them. Even for cis-het relationships, being able to marry for love has become a fantasy —a fantasy scorned by the state. Remember this quote from Article O3 in the original post? 

耽改故事大多远离现实，有些年轻受众却将其与生活混为一谈，产生不以结婚和繁衍为目的才是真爱之类的偏颇认知。

Most Dangai stories are far removed from reality; some young audience nonetheless mix them up with real life, develop biased understanding such as “only love that doesn’t treat matrimony and reproduction as destinations is true love”. 

I didn’t focus on it in the previous posts, in an effort to keep the discussion on topic. But why did the op-ed piece pick this as an example of fantasy-that-shouldn’t-be-mixed-up-with-real-life, in the middle of a discussion about perceived femininity of men that actually has little to do with matrimony and reproduction? 

Because the whole point behind the state’s “leftover women” campaign is precisely to get women to treat matrimony and reproduction as destinations, not beautiful sceneries that happen along the way. And they’re the state’s destination as more children = higher birth rate that leads to higher future productivity. The article is therefore calling out Danmei for challenging this “mainstream value”.

Therefore, while the statement True love doesn’t treat matrimony and reproduction as destinations may be trite for many of us while it may be a point few, if any, English-speaking fandoms may pay attention to, to the mainstream culture Danmei lives in, to the mainstream values dictated by the state, it is borderline subversive.

As much as Danmei may appear “tame” for its emphasis on beauty and romance, for it to have stood for so long, so firmly against China’s (very) forceful mainstream culture, the genre is also fundamentally rebellious.  Remember: Danmei has little hope of converging with China’s mainstream unless it “sells its soul” and removes its homoerotic elements. 

With rebelliousness, too, comes a bit of tongue-in-cheek.

And so, when c-Danmei fans, most of whom being cishet women who interact with the genre by its traditional BL definition, call one of the leads 老婆 (wife), it can and often take on a different flavour. As said before, it can be less about feminizing the lead than about identifying with the lead. The nickname 老婆 (wife) can be less about being disrespectful and more about humorously expressing an aspiration—the aspiration to have a husband who truly loves them, who they do want to get married and have babies with but out of freedom and not obligation.

Admittedly, I had been confused, and bothered by these “can-be”s myself. Just because there are alternate reasons for the feminisation to happen doesn’t mean the feminisation itself is excusable. But why the feminisation of M/M leads doesn’t sound as awful to me in Chinese as in English? How can calling a self-identified man 老婆 (wife) get away with not sounding being predominantly disrespectful to my ears, when I would’ve frowned at the same thing said in my vicinity in English?

I had an old hypothesis: when I was little, it was common to hear people calling acquaintances in Chinese by their unflattering traits:  “Deaf-Eared Chan” (Mr Chan, who’s deaf), “Fat Old Woman Lan” (Ah-Lan, who’s an overweight woman) etc—and the acquaintances were perfectly at ease with such identifications, even introducing themselves to strangers that way. Comparatively speaking then, 老婆 (wife) is harmless, even endearing. 

老婆, which literally means “old old-lady” (implying wife = the woman one gets old with), first became popularised as a colloquial, casual way of calling “wife” in Hong Kong and its Cantonese dialect, despite the term itself being about 1,500 years old. As older generations of Chinese were usually very shy about talking about their love lives, those who couldn’t help themselves and regularly spoke of their 老婆 tended to be those who loved their wives in my memory. 老婆, as a term, probably became endearing to me that way. 

Maybe this is why the feminisation of M/M leads didn’t sound so bad to me?

This hypothesis was inadequate, however. This custom of identifying people by their (unflattering) traits has been diminishing in Hong Kong and China, for similar reasons it has been considered inappropriate in the West.

Also, 老婆 (wife) is not the only term used for / associated with feminisation. I’ve tried to limit the discussion to Danmei, the fictional genre; now, I’ll jump to its associated RPS genre, and specifically, the YiZhan fandoms. The purpose of this jump: with real people involved, feminisation’s effect is potentially more harmful, more acute. Easier to feel. 

YiZhan fans predominantly entered the fandoms through The Untamed, and they’ve also transferred Danmei’s  “seme”/“uke” customs into YiZhan. There are, therefore, three c-YiZhan fandoms:

博君一肖 (BJYX): seme Dd, uke Gg 戰山為王 (ZSWW): seme Gg, uke Dd 連瑣反應 (LSFY): riba Gg and Dd. Riba = “reversible”, and unlike “seme” and “uke”, is a frequently-used term in the Japanese gay community. 

BJYX is by far the largest of the three, likely due to Gg having played WWX, the “uke” in MDZS / TU. I’ll therefore focus on this fandom, ie. Gg is the “uke”, the “wife”.

For Gg alone, I’ve seen him being also referred to by YiZhan fans as (and this is far from a complete list):

* 姐姐 (sister) * 嫂子 (wife of elder brother; Dd being the elder brother implied) * 妃妃 (based on the very first YiZhan CP name, 太妃糖 Toffee Candy, a portmanteau of sorts from Dd being the 太子 “prince” of his management company and Gg being the prince’s wife, 太子妃. 糖 = “candy”. 太妃 sounds like toffee in English and has been used as the latter’s Chinese translation.) * 美人 (beauty, as in 肖美人 “Beauty Xiao”) * Daji 妲己 (as in 肖妲己, “Daji Xiao”). 

The last one needs historical context, which will also become important for explaining the new hypothesis I have.

Daji was a consort who lived three thousand years ago, whose beauty was blamed for the fall of the Shang dynasty. Gg (and men sharing similar traits, who are exceptionally rare) has been compared to Daji 妲己 for his alternatively innocent, alternatively seductive beauty ~ the kind of beauty that, in Chinese historical texts and folk lores, lead to the fall of kingdoms when possessed by the king’s beloved woman. This kind of “I-get-to-ruin-her-virginity”, “she’s a slut in MY bedroom” beauty is, of course, a stereotypical fantasy for many (cis-het) men, which included the authors of these historical texts and folklores. However, it also contained some truth: the purity / innocence, the image of a virgin, was required for an ancient woman to be chosen as a consort; the seduction, meanwhile, helped her to become the top consort, and monopolise the attention of kings and emperors who often had hundreds of wives ~ wives who often put each other in danger to eliminate competition. 

Nowadays, women of tremendous beauty are still referred to by the Chinese idiom 傾國傾城, literally, ”falling countries, falling cities”. The beauty is also implied to be natural, expressed in a can’t-help-itself way, perhaps reflecting the fact that the ancient beauties on which this idiom has been used couldn’t possibly have plastic surgeries, and most of them didn’t meet a good end ~ that they had to pay a price for their beauty, and often, with their lowly status as women, as consorts, they didn’t get to choose whether they wanted to pay this price or not. This adjective is considered to be very flattering. Gg’s famous smile from the Thailand Fanmeet has been described, praised as 傾城一笑: “a smile that topples a city”.

I’m explaining Daji and 傾國傾城 because the Chinese idiom 博君一笑 “doing anything to get a smile from you”, from which the ship’s name BJYX 博君一肖  was derived (笑 and 肖 are both pronounced “xiao”), is connected to yet another of such dynasty-falling beauty, Bao Si 褒姒. Like Daji before her, Bao Si was blamed for the end of the Zhou Dynasty in 771 BC. 

The legend went like this: Bao Si was melancholic, and to get her to smile, her king lit warning beacons and got his nobles to rush in from the nearby vassal states with their armies to come and rescue him, despite not being in actual danger. The nobles, in their haste, looked so frantic and dishevelled that Bao Si found it funny and smiled. Longing to see more of the smile of his favourite woman, the king would fool his nobles again and again, until his nobles no longer heeded the warning beacons when an actual rebellion came. 

What the king did has been described as 博紅顏一笑, with 紅顏 (”red/flushed face”) meaning a beautiful woman, referring to Bao Si. Replace 紅顏 with the respectful “you”, 君, we get 博君一笑. If one searches the origin of the phrase 博 [fill_in_the_blank]一笑 online, Bao Si’s story shows up.

The “anything” in ”doing anything to get a smile from you” in 博君一笑, therefore, is not any favour, but something as momentous as giving away one’s own kingdom. c-turtles have remarked, to their amusement and admittedly mine, that “king”, in Chinese, is written as 王, which is Dd’s surname, and very occasionally, they jokingly compare him to the hopeless kings who’d give away everything for their love. Much like 傾國傾城 has become a flattering idiom despite the negative reputations of Daji and Bao Si for their “men-ruining ways”, 博君一笑 has become a flattering phrase, emphasising on the devotion and love rather than the ... stupidity behind the smile-inducing acts. 

(Bao Si’s story, BTW, was a lie made up by historians who also lived later but also thousands of years ago, to absolve the uselessness of the king. Warning beacons didn’t exist at her time.)  

Gg is arguably feminized even in his CP’s name. Gg’s feminisation is everywhere. 

And here comes my confession time ~ I’ve been amused by most of the feminisation terms above. 肖妲己 (”Daji Xiao”) captures my imagination, and I remain quite partial to the CP name BJYX. Somehow, there’s something ... somewhat forgivable when the feminisation is based on Gg’s beauty, especially in the context of the historical Danmei / Dangai setting of MDZS/TU ~ something that, while doesn’t cancel, dampens the “problematic-ness” of the gender mis-identification.

What, exactly, is this something?

Here’s my new hypothesis, and hopefully I’ll manage to explain it well ~

The hypothesis is this: the unisex beauty standard for historical Chinese men and women, which is also breathtakingly similar to the modern beauty standard for Chinese women, makes feminisation in the context of Danmei (especially historical Danmei) flattering, and easier to accept.

What defined beauty in historical Chinese men? If I am to create a classically beautiful Chinese man for my new historical Danmei, how would I describe him based on what I’ve read, my cultural knowledge?

Here’s a list:

* Skin fair and smooth as white jade * Thin, even frail; narrow/slanted shoulders; tall * Dark irises and bright, starry eyes * Not too dense, neat eyebrows that are shaped like swords ~ pointed slightly upwards from the center towards the sides of the face * Depending on the dynasty, nice makeup.

Imagine these traits. How “macho” are they? How much do they fit the ideal Chinese masculine beauty advertised by Chinese government, which looks like below?

Propaganda poster, 1969. The caption says “Defeat Imperialist US! Defeat Social Imperialism!” The book’s name is “Quotations from Mao Zedong”. (Source)

Where did that list of traits I’ve written com from? Fair like jade, frail ... why are they so far from the ... “macho”ness of the men in the poster? 

What has Chinese history said about its beautiful men? 

Wei Jie (衛玠 286-312 BCE), one of the four most beautiful ancient Chinese men (古代四大美男) recorded in Chinese history famously passed away when fans of his beauty gathered and formed a wall around him, blocking his way. History recorded Wei as being frail with chronic illness, and was only 27 years old when he died. Arguably the first historical account of “crazy fans killing their idol”, this incident left the idiom 看殺衛玠 ~ “Wei Jie being watched to death.” ~ a not very “macho” way to die at all.

潘安 (Pan An; 247-300 BCE), another one of the four most beautiful ancient Chinese men, also had hoards of fangirls, who threw fruits and flowers at him whenever he ventured outside. The Chinese idiom 擲果盈車 “thrown fruit filling a cart” was based on Pan and ... his fandom, and denotes such scenarios of men being so beautiful that women openly displayed their affections for them. 

Meanwhile, when Pan went out with his equally beautiful male friend, 夏侯湛 Xiahou Zhan, folks around them called them 連璧 ~ two connected pieces of perfect jade. Chinese Jade is white, smooth, faintly glowing in light, so delicate that it gives the impression of being somewhat transparent.

Aren’t Wei Jie and Pan An reminiscent of modern day Chinese idols, the “effeminate” “Little Fresh Meat”s (小鲜肉) so panned by Article O3? Their stories, BTW, also elucidated the historical reference in LWJ’s description of being jade-like in MDZS, and in WWX and LWJ being thrown pippas along the Gusu river bank. 

Danmei, therefore, didn’t create a trend of androgynous beauty in men as much as it has borrowed the ancient, traditional definition of masculine Chinese beauty ~ the beauty that was more feminine than masculine by modern standards.  

[Perhaps, CPs should be renamed 連璧 (”two connected pieces of perfect jade”) as a reminder of the aesthetics’ historical roots.]

Someone may exclaim now: But. But!! Yet another one of the four most beautiful ancient Chinese men, 高長恭 (Gao Changgong, 541-573 BCE), far better known by his title, 蘭陵王 (”the Prince of Lanling”), was a famous general. He had to be “macho”, right?

... As it turns out, not at all. Historical texts have described Gao as “貌柔心壮，音容兼美” (”soft in looks and strong at heart, beautiful face and voice”), “白美類婦人” (”fair and beautiful as a woman”), “貌若婦人” (”face like a woman”). Legends have it that The Prince of Lanling’s beauty was so soft, so lacking in authority that he had to wear a savage mask to get his soldiers to listen to his command (and win) on the battlefield (《樂府雜錄》: 以其顏貌無威，每入陣即著面具，後乃百戰百勝).

This should be emphasised: Gao’s explicitly feminine descriptions were recorded in historical texts as arguments *for* his beauty. Authors of these texts, therefore, didn’t view the feminisation as insult. In fact, they used the feminisation to drive the point home, to convince their readers that men like the Prince of Lanling were truly, absolutely good looking.

Being beautiful like a women was therefore high praise for men in, at least, significant periods in Chinese history ~ periods long and important enough for these records to survive until today. Beauty, and so it goes, had once been largely free of distinctions between the masculine and feminine.

One more example of an image of an ancient Chinese male beauty being similar to its female counterpart, because the history nerd in me finds this fun. 

何晏 (He Yan, ?-249 BCE) lived in the Wei Jin era (between 2nd to 4th century), during which makeup was really en vogue. Known for his beauty, he was also famous for his love of grooming himself. The emperor, convinced that He Yan’s very fair skin was from the powder he was wearing, gave He Yan some very hot foods to eat in the middle of the summer. He Yan began to sweat, had to wipe himself with his sleeves and in the process, revealed to the emperor that his fair beauty was 100% natural ~ his skin glowed even more with the cosmetics removed (《世說新語·容止第十四》: 何平���美姿儀，面至白。魏明帝疑其傅粉，正夏月，與熱湯餅。既啖，大汗出，以朱衣自拭，色轉皎然). His kick-cosmetics’-ass fairness won him the nickname 傅粉何郎 (”powder-wearing Mr He”).

Not only would He Yan very likely be mistaken as a woman if this scene is transferred to a modern setting, but this scene can very well fit inside a Danmei story of the 21st century and is very, very likely to get axed by the Chinese censorship board for its visualisation. 

[Important observation from this anecdote: the emperor was totally into this trend too.]

The adjectives and phrases used above to describe these beautiful ancient Chinese men ~ 貌柔, 音容兼美, 白美, 美姿儀, 皎然 ~ have all become pretty much reserved for describing beauty in women nowadays. Beauty standards in ancient China were, as mentioned before, had gone through significantly long periods in which they were largely genderless. The character for beauty 美 (also in Danmei, 耽美) used to have little to no gender association. Free of gender associations as well were the names of many flowers. The characters for orchid (蘭) and lotus (蓮), for example, were commonly found in men’s names as late as the Republican era (early 20th century), but are now almost exclusively found in women’s names. Both orchid and lotus have historically been used to indicate 君子 (junzi, roughly, “gentlemen”), which have always been men. MDZS also has an example of a man named after a flower: Jin Ling’s courtesy name, given to him by WWX,  was 如蘭 (”like an orchid”). 

A related question may be this: why does ancient China associate beauty with fairness, with softness, with frailty? Likely, because Confucianist philosophy and customs put a heavy emphasis on scholarship ~ and scholars have mostly consisted of soft-spoken, not muscular, not working-under-the-sun type of men. More importantly, Confucianist scholars also occupied powerful government positions. Being, and looking like a Confucianist scholar was therefore associated with status. Indeed, it’s very difficult to look like jade when one was a farmer or a soldier, for example, who constantly had to toil under the sun, whose skin was constantly being dried and roughened by the elements. Having what are viewed as “macho” beauty traits as in the poster above ~ tanned skin, bulging muscles, bony structures (which also take away the jade’s smoothness) ~ were associated with hard labour, poverty and famine.

Along that line, 手無縛雞之力 (“hands without the strength to restrain a chicken”) has long been a phrase used to describe ancient scholars and students, and without scorn or derision. Love stories of old, which often centred around scholars were, accordingly, largely devoid of the plot lines of husbands physically protecting the wives, performing the equivalent of climbing up castle walls and fighting dragons etc. Instead, the faithful husbands wrote poems, combed their wife’s hair, traced their wife’s eyebrows with cosmetics (畫眉)...all activities that didn’t require much physical strength, and many of which are considered “feminine” nowadays.

Were there periods in Chinese history in which more ... sporty men and women were appreciated? Yes. the Tang dynasty, for example, and the Yuan and Qing dynasties. The Tang dynasty, as a very powerful, very open era in Chinese history, was known for its relations to the West (via the Silk Road). The Yuan and Qing dynasties, meanwhile, were established by Mongolians and Manchus respectively, who, as non-Han people, had not been under the influence of Confucian culture and grew up on horsebacks, rather than in schools.

The idea that beautiful Chinese men should have “macho” attributes was, therefore, largely a consequence of non-Han-Chinese influence, especially after early 20th century. That was when the characters for beauty (美), orchid (蘭), lotus (蓮) etc began their ... feminisation. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP), which started its reign of the country starting 1949, also has foreign roots, being a derivative of the Soviets, and its portrayal of ideal men has been based on the party’s ideology, painting them as members of the People’s Liberation Army (Chinese army) and its two major proletariat classes, farmers and industrial workers ~ all occupations that are “macho” in their aesthetics, but held at very poor esteem in ancient Chinese societies. All occupations that, to this day, may be hailed as noble by Chinese women, but not really deemed attractive by them.

Beauty, being an instinct, is perhaps much more resistant to propaganda.

If anything, the three terms Article O3 used to describe “effeminate” men ~ 奶油小生 “cream young men” (popularised in 1980s) , 花美男 “flowery beautiful men” (early 2000s), 小鲜肉 “little fresh meat” (coined in 2014 and still popular now) ~ only informs me how incredibly consistent the modern Chinese women’s view of ideal male beauty has been. It’s the same beauty the Chinese Communist Party has called feminine. It’s the same beauty found in Danmei. It’s the same beauty that, when witnessed in men in ancient China, was so revered that historians recorded it for their descendants to remember. It doesn’t mean there aren’t any women who appreciate the "macho” type ~ it’s just that, the appreciation for the non-macho type has never really gone out of fashion, never really changed. The only thing that is really changing is the name of the type, the name’s positive or negative connotations.

(Personally, I’m far more uncomfortable with the name “Little fresh meat” (小鲜肉) than 老婆 (wife). I find it much more insulting.)

Anyway, what I’d like to say is this: feminisation in Danmei ~ a genre that, by definition, is hyper-focused on aesthetics ~ may not be as "problematic” in Chinese as it is in English, because the Chinese tradition didn’t make that much of a differentiation between masculine and feminine beauty. Once again, this isn’t to say such mis-gendering isn’t disrespectful; it’s just that, perhaps, it is less disrespectful because Chinese still retains a cultural memory in which equating a beautiful man to a beautiful woman was the utmost flattery. 

I must put a disclaimer here: I cannot vouch for this being true for the general Chinese population. This is something that is buried deep enough inside me that it took a lot of thought for me to tease out, to articulate. More importantly, while I grow up in a Chinese-speaking environment, I’ve never lived inside China. My history knowledge, while isn’t shabby, hasn’t been filtered through the state education system.

I’d also like to point out as well, along this line of thought, that in *certain* (definitely not all) aspects, Chinese society isn’t as sexist as the West. While historically, China has periods of extreme sexism against women, with the final dynasties of Ming and Qing being examples, I must (reluctantly) acknowledge Chairman Mao for significantly lifting the status of women during his rule. Here’s a famous quote of his from 1955:

婦女能頂半邊天 Women can lift half the skies

The first marriage code, passed in 1950, outlawed forced marriages, polygamy, and ensured equal rights between husband and wife.  For the first time in centuries, women were encouraged to go outside of their homes and work. Men resisted at first, wanting to keep their wives at home; women who did work were judged poorly for their performance and given less than 50% of men’s wage, which further fuelled the men’s resistance. Mao said the above quote after a commune in Guizhou introduced the “same-work-same-wage” system to increase its productivity, and he asked for the same system to to be replicated across the country. (Source)

When Chairman Mao wanted something, it happened. Today, Chinese women’s contribution to the country’s GDP remains among the highest in the world.  They make up more than half of the country’s top-scoring students. They’re the dominant gender in universities, in the ranks of local employees of international corporations in the Shanghai and Beijing central business districts—among the most sought after jobs in the country. While the inequality between men and women in the workplace is no where near wiped out — stories about women having to sleep with higher-ups to climb the career ladder, or even get their PhDs are not unheard of, and the central rulership of the Chinese Communist Party has been famously short of women — the leap in women’s rights has been significant over the past century, perhaps because of how little rights there had been before ~ at the start of the 20th century, most Chinese women from relatively well-to-do families still practised foot-binding, in which their feet were literally crushed during childhood in the name of beauty, of status symbol. They couldn’t even walk properly.

Perhaps, the contemporary Chinese women’s economic contribution makes the sexism they encounter in their lives, from the lack of reproductive rights to the “leftover women” label, even harder to swallow. It makes their fantasies fly to even higher, more defiant heights. The popularity of Dangai right now is pretty much driven by women, as acknowledged by Article O3. Young women, especially, female fans who people have dismissed as “immature”, “crazy”, are responsible for the threat the Chinese government is feeling now by the genre.

This is no small feat. While the Chinese government complains about the “effeminate” men from Danmei / Dangai, its propaganda has been heavily reliant on stars who have risen to popularity to these genres. The film Dd is currently shooting, Chinese Peacekeeping Force (維和部隊), also stars Huang Jingyu (黄景瑜), and Zhang Zhehan (張哲瀚) ~ the three actors having shot to fame from The Untamed (Dangai), Addicted (Danmei), and Word of Honour (Dangai) respectively.  Zhang, in particular, played the “uke” role in Word of Honour and has also been called 老婆 (wife) by his fans. The quote in Article O3, “Ten years as a tough man known by none; one day as a beauty known by all” was also implicitly referring to him.

Perhaps, the government will eventually realise that millennia-old standards of beauty are difficult to bend, and by extension, what is considered appropriate gender expression of Chinese men and women. 

In the metas I’ve posted, therefore, I’ve hesitated in using terms such as homophobia, sexism, and ageism etc, opting instead to make long-winded explanations that essentially amount to these terms (thank you everyone who’s reading for your patience!). Because while the consequence is similar—certain fraction of the populations are subjected to systemic discrimination, abuse, given less rights, treated as inferior etc—these words, in English, also come with their own context, their own assumptions that may not apply to the situation. It reminds me of what Leo Tolstoy wrote in Anna Karenina,

“All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”

Discrimination in each country, each culture is humiliating, unhappy in its own way. Both sexism and homophobia are rampant in China, but as their roots are different from those of the West, the ways they manifest are different, and so must the paths to their dissolution. I’ve also hesitated on calling out individual behaviours or confronting individuals for this reason. i-Danmei fandoms are where i-fans and c-fans meet, where English-speaking doesn’t guarantee a non-Chinese sociopolitical background (there may be students from China, for example; I’m also ... not entirely Western), and I find it difficult to articulate appropriate, convincing arguments without knowing individual backgrounds.

Frankly, I’m not sure if I’ve done the right thing. Because I do hope feminisation will soon fade into extinction, especially in i-Danmei fandoms that, if they continue to prosper on international platforms, may eventually split from c-Danmei fandoms along the cultural (not language) line due to the vast differences in environmental constraints. My hope is especially true when real people are involved, and c-fandoms, I’d like to note, are not unaware of the issues surrounding feminisation ~ it has already been explicitly forbidden in BJYX’s supertopic on Weibo. 

At the same time, I’ve spent so many words above to try to explain why beauty can *sometimes* lurk behind such feminisations. Please allow me to end this post with one example of feminisation that I deeply dislike—and I’ve seen it used by fans on Gg as well—is 綠茶 (”green tea”), from 綠茶婊 (”green tea whore”) that means women who look pure / innocent but are, deep down, promiscuous / lustful. In some ways, its meaning isn’t so different from Daji 妲己, the consort blamed for the fall of the Shang dynasty. However, to me at least, the flattery in the feminisation is gone, perhaps because of the character “whore” (婊), because the term originated in 2013 from a notorious sex party rather than from a legendary beauty so maligned that The Investiture of the Gods (封神演義), the seminal Chinese fiction written ~2,600 years after Daji’s death, re-imagined her as a malevolent fox spirit (狐狸精) that many still remembers her as today.

Ah, to be caught between two cultures. :)

[mxtxfanatic]

Hi 👋. Saw your recent take on how fandom interpret MQ. And I would to here your thoughts about him being the tsundere people try to make him out to be.

MQ trying to make it up to XL when really FX was the only one still sincere. I've only read up to vol. 4 and reread vol. 1 and 2 to get a better look at details. But there are some concerning lines that even XL noticed. Like MQ seems excited at the prospect of XL becoming this mass murder during the Guoshi FangXin reveal. Even the first introductions in the book was him mocking XL's helpful nature.

"Mu Qing’s eyes were glimmering, however, and his restrained shock contained a faint underlying excitement." TGCF Vol. 2 chapter 18

"Since his third ascension, there could only be one phrase to describe the way Mu Qing treated him: passive-aggressive. It always felt like he was waiting for Xie Lian to get booted for the third time so he could make snide remarks. Yet now that Xie Lian might actually get booted that third time, he suddenly became pleasant—he even came specially to deliver medication. This complete reversal in attitude made Xie Lian feel quite disconcerted." TGCF Vol.2 chapter 19

Even XL was freaked out by MQ acting nice to him.

"Mu Qing suddenly asked, “Was everything Lang Qianqiu said true? Did you really kill those Yong’an royals?”

Xie Lian looked up and met his gaze. Even if Mu Qing had been forcibly hiding it, Xie Lian still detected a trace of uncontrollable excitement in his eyes. He seemed highly interested in the details of Xie Lian’s massacre at the Gilded Banquet—he followed with another question.

“How did you kill them?” TGCF Vol. 2 chapter 19

And after XL half lied about his involvement.

"Feng Xin paled. Mu Qing loathed that expression of his the most and said in annoyance, “All right, put that face away. After everything, for who are you looking so pained?”" TGCF vol. 2 chapter 19

I'm not reading this wrong to think MQ is just a very entitled b****** that got high on his position of power and is looking down on XL for coming from a place which is lower than what most people would go through? Is it appropriate for me to interpret him being downright hostile and reveling in XL's disgrace? Because the stans take for MQ questionable character is bothering me a lot. He is not some prickly cat with a soft heart. He is sharp thorns all the way inside and a heart colder than most.

Unless something changes in further volumes I haven't read which is unlikely. Considering MXTX penchant for consistent character writing.

Thoughts?

Something does change about Mu Qing’s character near the end of the novel, but it’s just character growth. You aren’t misreading any of his actions in the earlier parts of the story. What kills me is that yes, Mu Qing is a terrible person who is petty and jealous and insecure and thinks that the only problem with hierarchy is that he isn’t at the top, but he changes and people ignore that! In the best interest of not introducing spoilers, I will say that Mu Qing does explicitly, using clear language, acknowledge his mistakes and how wrong he was about how he viewed Xie Lian and his treatment of the other man. He acknowledges this on his own under no threat and with no prompting. And people ignore this because it does not fit into their perception of Mu Qing as either right or at least well-meaning. He is neither of those things. He knows it. Xie Lian knows it. But he can be those things if he puts effort into it, and for all people call me a hater about his character (which, yeah lol), I for one think he tries by the end.

So no, Mu Qing isn’t a tsundere because he’s not being mean or rude or petty to those he loves to hide a mushy middle. He’s doing it because he thinks he is right to and that eventually people will see that he is right. The story does not agree he is right and duly punishes him for his fuckery, and he changes into a better person who is actually nicer to his friends because he wants to be their friends and not their superiors. That’s his character.

[vrishchikawrites]

About YZY leaving YMJ/JFM with her kids Post-WWX Arrival

Dear Dee, feel free to delete or ignore this or post it, whatever floats your boat. This just stuck in my head after those posts and I had to blurt it all to someone. Thanks for taking the time to read my word vomit.

So I had to do this instead of an ask because it got long and I wasn't sure how many asks it'd need or how short I could cut it down without losing parts of the argument. And then other things came up as I was writing and, well.  Well..... >_>;;;; 

But you know, after that post/ask you had about YZY fics saying 'Fuck U' to YMJ/JFM & leaving both with her kids, I had a sarcastic 'yeah right' attitude about it. Mainly due to a lot of negation emotions to such an abusive (and delusional) bitch, partly due to how she wouldn't do that since it doesn't seem to be something her sort of character would consider either because she'd think of it as 'losing' (losing what, IDK, it's why I consider her type of person crazy) or she legit wouldn't think about such a viable action.

But then later, in the shower, I seriously went 'Wait, she can't fucking do that' and it wouldn't be about how MXTX uses her as a part of the narrative but entirely about the/their culture in the novel; the actions that have and would be taken in response; and her entire toxic personality as well.

1) We already know that the sects and the cultivation world in general is sexist, elitist and so Capital T 'Traditional' to the point that it's starting to petrify and any deviancy from this is an exception rather than the norm. YZY might be a madame of a great sect (for what that's worth considering how shit of a madame she's been and the titles she's chosen for herself) but she's still a woman even with her high rank and the things she's personally accomplished.

Even if she was in her rights to leave a 'bad' marriage, she'd be the one who'd get scolded more instead of JFM by her natal family, her former husband's family and by their entire society at large even if she had a few singular supporters. Because That's Not How Things Are Done in their society and I do believe that such a thing was rare even when it was accepted method by the upper echelons. Especially since it would have to be done by more than YZY simply deciding that She Wants Out and just- goes and Gets Out. With no serious allegations that would allow her to divorce or separate from YMJ/JFM without the input from her family, JFM's family and, I think, possibly some measure of compensation as well. And no, having or bringing in a 'bastard child' is not a serious enough offence for such a humongous decision. I think something more along the lines of treason or crimes against multiple, high-ranking parties would be more along the lines. Maybe.

And even if she does this, she'd be considered 'Used Goods' (such a terrible comment) and there'd be no other good/proper marriage prospects for a divorced woman with children let alone a woman like YZY with her entire abrasive personality and attitude put off even easy-going JFM.

(If she'd been widowed then it'd be more forgiven but I consider that a Real Bad End since, IMO, it would lead to the sudden and inevitable decline of YMJ either via mass exodus of disciples and/or residents of LP; being merged with another sect due to it's unstable leadership; or create an internal political war 'cause I bet you anything that the YMJ Elders/relatives (if they have any) Would Not Want YZY in charge of YMJ when she's already proven herself such a shit betrothed let alone madame.)

2) Speaking of families, while YMJ/JFM/LP as a whole might be glad to see YZY's back, I don't think her natal sect, MSY, will be glad to see her come storming back after all the effort they put into getting that particular marriage alliance with YMJ. And if she brings her children with her? Oh man, oh boy- mother or not, that could be considered as kidnapping or line theft (is that a thing?) especially if YZY is also seriously considering divorce proceedings and raising them as Yu and not Jiang. That could give leave to, for anyone more unforgiving and maybe JFM if he's pushed enough, disown both JYL and JWY from the Jiangs through no fault of their own (though I'm sure YZY would make it so as well as blame JFM for her own decisions and mistakes).

Therefore, any inheritance or benefits they might gain for being legitimised children of a great sect are forfeited. JYL will likely lose that betrothal with JZX because JGS will drop it like a hot potato and JWY won't be a sect heir because YZY literally decided to remove that by deciding to raise JWY as a Yu, no matter their blood relation to JFM. They leave him, they leave YMJ and everything attached with it. Which is if YMJ/JFM doesn't demand MSY to give back their heir/ess and to punish YZY for her actions. Or send all three of them back for the appropriate reactions/decisions.

Their society would demand no less in reaction because, to them, it would seem like YZY had gone mad and JFM would look weak (or weaker) and imply that YMJ is vulnerable and exploitable if JFM doesn't do something in response to her actions. That's not even getting into what the other smaller sects may try to do in an attempt to curry favour with YMJ or what LLJ or QSW would try in order to destroy or diminish YMJ. And whether JFM chooses to demand his children back or not, it may not change the fact that this may give him reason enough to choose a nephew or niece to be the new sect heir especially if, even after getting rid of YZY's poisonous influence, JWY grows up to be his mother's child more than his father's or even his own person.

Either way, such a thing would bring great backlash on YZY, and MSY as well as the collateral. No one would want to give face to her or her children because it would bring up some very uncomfortable questions and scenarios to the other sects- specifically, what would happen if the female members of their clans/sets decided to follow the footsteps of YZY and leave with their children and heirs. Especially if they use it as an excuse to leave for their own comfort and whims and not some legitimate wrongs and dangers. That would create some more restrictions on women thanks to YZY

3) And lastly, if any one of those idiot YZY stans think that she'd ever give up the status of being a madame of a great sect they'd be as crazy or crazier than her. YZY is all about status and power and face. Specifically, her status, power and face and how people in her reach reflect her or 'insult' her. She is a selfish, terrible, abusive and toxic person and can only see people in regards to how they would benefit her and the elevation of her and in no other way. Especially her family. They cannot be their own person, they can only be an extension of her and gods forbid they go against her.

We can see this in how she treats the people she supposedly loves. JFM? Arguments day in, day out along with accusations and slander of cheating, having one(1) supposed 'bastard' and being 'in love' with CSSR. Which all seems sus as hell. And that's when she's actually there and not out 'night hunting'. Even her 'training' seems to border on unhelpful rather then helpful if my vague recollections of juniors fainting from exhaustion can be relied upon (please call me out if they're not or find proof).

JYL? Berated by not being 'strong' but not helped at all to be 'strong'. It doesn't help that YZY seems to believe in the same standards strength in their society- that is, of martial masculine strength which does not and should not apply to JYL who has been said to be sickly. Which means h should have been learning a different way of cultivation/fighting anyway.  If that was something she wanted and had been offered in the first place- which I doubt. That isn't even getting into her repeated generational trauma mess of a betrothal which was decided only by those 'sworn sisters', accepted by her as a way out of her terrible home life and puts her squarely within reach of JGS who we know to be a womaniser, rapist, predator and a possible ephebophile considering we don't know the exact age of his youngest 'conquest' or the age of MZY's mother when they met which could be anywhere from 14 to 21.

JWY? Gods, so much meta on him and his(non-) relationships with his parents that I don't think I can contribute more to it. It's been all said and done. Unless people want me to stir the pot by saying that, maybe, just maybe, YZY resents JWY as much as she 'loves' him.Either because he's her son and yet never manages to 'accomplish as much' as WWX or because he's a boy and therefore, more benefits and allowances than a girl/woman- more than anything that YZY ever got without either a fight or screaming at someone about. *shrug*

So, in conclusion to this sudden an unexpected essay that I wrote(I'm so sorry about that, I thought it would be shorter -.-;;;;), YZY leaving YMJ/JFM with her kids? Impossible. Not without some sort of personality transplant or a complete AU. She's too prideful, too bitter, too angry, too everything negative and little positive. She's a resentful product of the values and restraints of her society taken to the extreme negative with a willingness to inflict her pain on others to an abusive degree. But she's also too obsessed and reliant on those same values and restraints to keep up the image of her status. So her? Giving those up? You'd be more likely to see WRH as a doting grandfather than that.

---

Dee - All of this is true and yes YZY leaving YMJ is highly unlikely. While there will be consequences if she decides to leave, she does canonically lives separately from her husband. They seem to be in a situation where they are married but living separately, which was a common way to end a marriage (at least in spirit) back then. She essentially had all the perks of being Madam Jiang but fulfilled none of the responsibilities.

Afaik, her training the Jiang disciples is a donghua thing? I may be wrong but I recall she spent most of her time nighthunting.

As for taking her children along with her- that's completely impossible. At that point, children were the property of the father. She could leave but she would've never been allowed to take JC.

[questionable-decision]

I agree with your opinion on LBH! Don't get me wrong, I have a ton of respect for MXTX, but the way SQQ and LBH's relationship was written, even in the extras, was horrible. It'd be one thing if that was the point, but SQQ still leaves CQM for him, still sleeps with him, still marries him, etc... and none of this is really treated as a bad thing despite everything. You can only blame Xin Mo so much. And I know it's a danmei, but since the story is all about subverting tropes anyway, I think I would've much preferred it if LBH had actually left on a sort of journey of self-discovery, only to return maybe months or even years later sometime in the extras and see where his relationship with SQQ goes from there before eventually marrying him.

Listen I received this ask ages ago and really debated whether or not I was going to post it and go into my 3-4 big problems with Bingqiu and then inevitably have to follow it up with "but I like LBH" and "Listen, I'm okay with Bingqiu if it's funny but as a serious ship...I have opinions" but I did not want to get into a Debate just yet.

Suffice to say: I agree with you! There are a lot of problems that can't really be excused. Also you saying you think LBH should go on a journey of self-discovery also changed how I decided to frame LBH's arc at the end of my Laments of a Sellout Author fic so THANK YOU! And I agree that it would have been a good solution! Like them getting together and LBH getting over everything happens so fast, there's no build up, and so much of that fast pace serves as a kind of "punishment" for Shen Yuan. Because that's the subversion, he turns the harem guy gay and now he has to deal with it hahahaha (sarcasm). But like, (and I said I wouldn't get INTO IT but....) that's one of the things that I thought could have been handled better. I understood the choice that MXTX made (which I think many people don't) but I think it could have been done differently. Like even just a time skip where SQQ at the end promises to wait for him and we skip to 2 years later at least acknowledging LBH did SOMETHING for his own mental health or whatever. It could have been integrated.

The other thing is that people will be like "oh, so a ship has to be healthy for you to ship it?!" like, for me? Unless both people are evil, like, yeah. But that's me. You can dislike a ship for a lot of reasons. For MDZS I'm not a huge fan of Wen Qing/Jiang Cheng for no real reason. I don't think anything negative or positive of the people who ship it, I just don't see it. No one would say that me not shipping that is a comment on the shippers.

In general, if a person is saying "I don't like this ship" that's not the same as saying "YOU can't like the ship." But if someone is going to say "freedom of speech" applies to shipping (🙄) then it also applies to criticism of that ship. So for me, I like the dynamics of serious ships to be more equal and less creepy. If you don't, okay! You're free to talk about that but you don't need to come to ME and act like I'm stopping you from doing anything. Anyway: Bingqiu is funny though. You have to give it that.

[rynne]

This bothers the shit out of me because I think mxtx did imply an Emperor exists . Because that means there is a divide between cultivators and non-cultivators. One would assume it's the same agreement as other magical societies in fiction which exists alongside the 'mundane world' where neither party is allowed to influence the politics of the other. (ie. Emperor can't tell the Wens to step the fuck down and Wen Ruohan can't kill off the Emperor and install a puppet Emperor in his stead, as the largest degree of example loll). Though that would mean that technically the non-cultivator Wens in Burial Mounds and the prison camps would actually be breaking the fundamental law of both the cultivation world AND the mundane world. Like, the Emperor would have grounds to execute Jin Guangshan for wrongfully imprisoning and torturing his subjects. Right?

Unless a whole family counts as cultivators if they have a majority of cultivators...but that makes no sense because most disciples of sects are just random dudes from families that manage to get their children into a sect. That would mean their parents count as cultivators even though they're just store owners. Just makes no sense, so A-Yuan and the elderly *had* to be subjects of the Emperor instead. Yet even though that must surely have been the case, NOT A SINGLE ONE of the Wens, Wei Wuxian, Jiang Cheng or Lan Wangji who knew about all of this, said anything at all to ANYONE. Worse in cql because they all just calmly watched people shoot arrows at civilians.

Whether or not an emperor and mundane government exist in the world of MDZS, there's no indication that they're meant to be relevant to the story. I don't remember if an emperor's ever actually mentioned in the text (I think MXTX said something in an interview?), but the story is in a fantasy setting. For "the emperor/mundane government comes in and saves the Wens" to make sense in the established xianxia setting, MDZS would have had to be way more integrated with the mundane world than it is. If nothing else in the story changed, the emperor coming in as a solution would feel a lot like a deus ex machina.

I don't know how the mundane and cultivation world would interact or how they would set their boundaries and rules. That is not something that the story establishes. All we know is what we can infer from the mundane world's absence in the story, really. To me, that means that any mundane government that might interact with the cultivation world has no ability to influence its politics or people, because it is just not a concern that any of the characters have. Otherwise, we can make up whatever makes sense to us.

Additionally, using the emperor as a solution would significantly change the story's themes. A big part of this story is individual vs society, fighting abuses by those in power and being vilified for it. For the government to come in and fix things would undermine the message about the importance of individual struggle and choices. This is not a story about benevolent authority and its positive effects.

Ultimately, I don't think an emperor or mundane government was really relevant to the world MXTX wanted to establish or the story she wanted to tell. Trying to fit them into this world would require an expansion that the author just didn't do.

[crossdressingdeath]

Wow I never knew MXTX bashing is so strong in this fandom... glad I’m not on any social media, following anyone except Japanese or Korean artists who just vibes (love to see it!)

To anyone who bash MXTX and said she didn’t knew her own cultures when she was clearly writing out a story set in fictional Ancient China, as a Chinese person, writing a story about the Chinese society as a Chinese person living in China, please don’t say that you, who probably might not be a Chinese who specifically lives in Mainland China, understand her culture better than MXTX herself.

If anyone thinks that the ending to the novel is so unhappy to everyone, please note that it’s MXTX and she gets to choose HOW she writes the story.

Second, MDZS is about our actions has consequences. And a lot of HCs I have seen in this fandom erased a huge part of the story theme because people are projecting their ‘traumas’ into it (like the Lans being anything but monks)

I suggest everyone who wants to bash MXTX and her choice of ending and why MDZS is like this to read the Buddhist scriptures, study the history of Buddhism and actually study the religion well. Understand the beliefs of Buddhist and understand why EVERYONE gets whatever is coming towards them. Especially since Buddhism believes in the law of Karma.

And please do read Tao Te Ching, familiarize yourself with other xianxia novels because surprise surprise, MDZS isn’t the first or last xianxia novels! Ashes of Love is one of the famous ones and internet is there for you :) You can disagree or criticize however MXTX wrote her novels but bashing her by saying you are superior in a culture you know nothing about is baffling.

People’s main beef with MXTX seems to be the usual misogynistic “A woman writing gay things????? This is improper!!! How dare a woman want to write about men being gay!” bullshit. You know, that old chestnut. At least that’s what I’ve seen; I avoid that section of the fandom (for lack of a better term). But yeah, it’s such a thing how people talk like they know for sure what this woman (probably, since we... don’t actually know she’s a woman for definite) is thinking about things, what her opinions on aspects of her culture are, things like that as if they think they understand mainland Chinese culture better than she does. Like... unless you talk to her personally and can directly ask her about these things, you don’t know what she thinks. We can extrapolate based on what appears in her work (for example it seems a safe bet to say she thinks ganging up on someone without bothering to get the full story is bad), but we don’t know. Even people who grew up in her exact situation would be unlikely to have every opinion match hers perfectly! Like, the whole... “Well historically YZY would have had the right to kill WWX if she wanted to so clearly MXTX wants us to side with her!” argument. Just because something was normal in a culture at some point in the past doesn’t mean the people within that culture now think it’s something good people should do! Or that a lot of the people living in that culture in that time period didn’t find this accepted thing morally abhorrent! To use my old favourite example, it’s like saying we’re supposed to side with open homophobes in gay period romances “because that was normal at the time”; even assuming people were okay with things that were classed as normal (which if the thing stopped being classed as normal clearly a lot of them weren’t) an author writing in the 21st century is going to have a different perspective no matter what period they’re writing in. You have to judge based on the work, not the time period the work is based on. Especially when it’s something like MDZS, which is ahistorical and so isn’t guaranteed to match up to the norms of the culture in a given time period anyway.