#unfortunately for them it's easy to refute because mxtx also knew exactly what she was doing

[admirableadmiranda]

hello, i was on the bird app and i saw a thread regarding how mxtx wrote MDZS as a fanfic for OCs she wrote as a teen. i guess i was curious if this is true since MDZS isn't seen as a well researched or intentionally written masterpiece. i find that the fandom tends to really focus on interpreting intention into her writing when she simply maybe wanted to write her OTP as they are

Oh anon. You have run into the conclusion of the idiot brigade on the bird app. I was there in real time watching my friends who have twitter accounts arguing with this nonsense and I can spell out just how nonsense it is and how they know it's nonsense.

But first, Modaozushi is not a fanfic. It is an intentionally written novel, written to deconstruct common xianxia/danmei fan tropes and it is incredible at it. Something that becomes more and more apparent the more of them I read. She may have not intentionally written it to be a masterpiece, but she absolutely knew what she was writing. Also the "well researched" is nonsense because it's not meant to be set in any one particular historical time, it's like if we were to call all fantasy novels poorly researched because they mix up 8th century squabbles with 15th century armor. When you are writing fantasy, you are allowed to mix as many bits and pieces as you want together when creating your own world and Modaozushi is certainly a created world.

I have heard, though I cannot verify, that she created Xiao Xingchen and Xue Yang earlier in her life, but the fact that she did this does not make Modaozushi a fanfic for them. For one thing, they're only in the book for a maximum of ten chapters. Two, regardless of how they were originally created, they slot in seamlessly into the world which is much, much bigger than the two of them. Also it is no longer about them. At most it would be a sequel to some of her more youthful writing that is about a much larger story that was happening around them. That does not a fanfic make, especially when everything in Modaozushi is either common xianxia/danmei conventions or her own original creations.

Now that I've made that part clear, let me tell you why this thread came into existence. Because it is entirely the made up nonsense of butthurt JC stans on twitter.

I am fortunate enough to be friends with the delightful @jiangwanyinscatmom who wrote a fantastic meta on the Ancestral Hall scene and why not only were Wangxian not being disrespectful there, but by the very resources and arguments JC stans were making as well as cultural context, Jiang Cheng was the one being disrespectful and that's part of why everything went down as it did and it is meant to show how terribly Jiang Cheng is behaving.

Some very butthurt BNFs who make money off of drawing MDZS art decided to first lie about this meta because it directly shows their trash fave as he is and makes it harder to lie about how he's the only betrayed one in the book and everyone, especially Wangxian, is just out to get him. They were very upset that the book itself did not conform to their wild nonsense.

This did not go over well. After several fights and a bunch of blocking, they made up this thread when called out on lying about and dismissing MXTX's work in favor of their own headcanons and decided to invent a rumor that MDZS was just a fanfic that she wrote of "some characters she made in high school" to try and minimize the legitimacy of what others were saying about their attitude.

There are a few problems with this argument. One is that they know it's bullshit, they made it up because they were mad. Two is the point that I outlined above about how it does not meet the definitions needed to be fanfic. Three is that they think calling it fanfic demeans it while they make money off of drawing fanart of her work so they are being stupid and hypocritical there.

The last one is also that it shows how little they actually know of the world that MXTX lives in. MDZS is not her first published work even, it is her second. Scum Villain's Self Saving System had already put her on the map before she even wrote Modaozushi. She knew exactly what she was doing, she was setting out to lampoon common tropes of the genres she read, SVSSS is absolutely hysterical when you know more about the stallion novels she is cheerfully mocking, and MDZS is an absolutely brilliant takedown of many common xianxia/danmei tropes especially with the presentation of the lead and how modao/guidao itself is used almost as a trap to make people think that they'll be reading about the slow blackening and corruption of the protagonist as is common, only to find out that he is the one who is right, guidao was never harmful to him and what really brought him down was the classist cultivation world turning on him for being brilliant and of low rank. Wei Wuxian is a servant who is the son of a servant and a disciple of an immortal and that combined with his brilliance and unwillingness to be pushed down to be silent was enough for the cultivation world to bury him for it.

This is not something you write on accident. This is not something that you do when just playing around and doing some silly stories on the side. MXTX knew exactly what she was doing in MDZS and she executed it perfectly.

So no, it is not true, anon. It is not at all what they said. I do think there is an extent that people read way too much into her works when she just wanted to write things about the leads she developed, (don't get me started on the current crop of WWX would actually hate it in CR and he just wants to leave the world and go settle on a farm, he is not XL and CR is not the heavens and just because her extras are about Wangxian being deliriously happy in marriage does not mean that he's actually quietly suffering and being a miserable damsel in distress waiting for LWJ to see the light and rescue him) , but this is not it.

This is a bunch of butthurt, whiny JC stans who make money off of drawing art of him being mad that they don't get to control the fandom and that there are people who will call them out on their shit, continuing to lie and diminish the very work their reskinned oc fave came from. There is no truth in MDZS being fanfic. They know it's not true.

They're just mad they don't get to run the fandom anymore because there are too many of us who actually read the book.

Thanks for the ask, hope this cleared some stuff up!