Thanks for tagging me, @boldnightmarishreverbs! :D
Rules: list ten songs you’ve listed to recently. All of these are from Cdrama OSTs:
1. 原上草/Yuán Shàng Cǎo from Princess Agents OST
2. 恨别/Hèn Bié from The Untamed OST
3. 天地无霜/Tiān Dì Wú Shuāng from Ashes of Love OST
4. 秣马/Mò Mǎ from Novoland: Eagle Flag OST
5. 沉香流年/Chén Xiāng Liú Nián from Legend of Ruyi OST
6. 風起時/Fēng Qǐ Shí from Nirvana in Fire OST
7. 如昨/Rú Zuó from The Rise of Phoenixes OST
8. 你是我的王国/Nǐ Shì Wǒ De Wáng Guó from Lost Love in Times OST
9. 清河诀/Qīng Hé Jué from The Untamed OST
10. 天问/Tiān Wèn from Word of Honor OST
Tagging @careful-pyromancer, @novel-emma, @garcavisconde, @fayoftheforest, @bienmoreau, @never-wake-up, @thornypaths, @eccaiia, and anyone else who wants to do this! :D
Any general thoughts on Nie Mingjue that you'd be willing to share? I love your meta posts so much.
GUESS WHO FINALLY GOT AROUND TO WATCHING FATAL JOURNEY AND CAN FINALLY ANSWER THIS ASK
okay so full disclaimer, I was... not a fan of Nie Mingjue while watching CQL. Not for any particularly vehement reasons, but I was getting Real Tired of his rigid black-and-white morality, especially when it came to Jin Guangyao (I just think that if more people were nicer to Jin Guangyao, he could have turned out to be a perfectly pleasant young man? idk). Nie Mingjue, throughout CQL, is the embodiment of the TVTrope “Honor Before Reason” combined with the Berserker in ways that I found more frustrating than endearing.
Fatal Journey put so much of that in context -- I’d been tangentially aware through tumblr osmosis that the reason why Nie Mingjue wasn’t at Cloud Recesses summer school with the rest of the cast, watching One Braincell Trio’s shenaniganery with a smirk while standing next to Lan Xichen, arms crossed, Baxia slung over one shoulder, was because he was too busy single-handedly leading Qinghe Nie as a teenager. The show gives a lot of focus to Jiang Cheng rebuilding the Yunmeng Jiang Sect more or less on his own (for which he deserves much respect!) but he’s not the only sect leader thrown into his responsibilities at a terribly young age.
But the point I’m trying to make about Nie Mingjue is that he was forced to grow up much faster, faced with the pressure of leading not just an entire cultivation sect, but specifically one that stands on the border of Qishan, one that’s often invaded and attacked. Qinghe Nie is by far the most military sect of them all because they’ve had to become so through sheer necessity. We see this in Nie Mingjue’s militaristic demand for order and obedience; we see this in the unflinching, unwavering loyalty of the Qinghe Nie Sect cultivators in Fatal Journey. They all know going in that they might not come back alive, but in Qinghe Nie, that’s not exceptional bravery or loyalty -- that’s just a fact of life.
(which, again, contextualizes Nie Mingjue’s black-or-white morality -- when the survival of you and your sect is constantly balanced on the edge of your saber, there isn’t time for pursuing petty grievances or indulging gray morality. You’re either all in, or you get out -- and Nie Mingjue lets Jin Guangyao get out)
All of this context makes Nie Huaisang, the most un-Nie ever to Nie, even more fascinating, because it means that Nie Mingjue has been actively sheltering him from the brutal realities of Qinghe Nie for pretty much his entire life.
There’s this incredibly beautiful, wordless moment in Fatal Journey in flashback, when a young Nie Mingjue looks at the choice laid before the two of them -- 修刀 xiudao / cultivate the saber or 修心 xiuxin / cultivate the heart. A young Nie Huaisang scratches his head, looks up at his brother with a face scrunched up in confusion; Nie Mingjue unhesitatingly picks up 修心 xiuxin and hands it to his little brother, then blinks rapidly, betraying his own apprehension, as he chooses the path of early, violent death for himself.
But then Nie Huaisang looks up at his brother adoringly, and Nie Mingjue offers a smile back, and cannot bring himself to regret the decision.
Oof. Just, oof. CQL is full of older siblings making sacrifices for their younger siblings -- Wen Qing, Jiang Yanli, Wei Wuxian, Lan Xichen, Nie Mingjue -- and while we can sing praises for their sacrifices, we have to also recognize the cost these sacrifices exact, often from the younger siblings. Overwhelmingly, the younger siblings are left behind to survive, to grieve, to lead, to endure; and sometimes, the cost of an elder sibling ferociously sheltering their younger sibling results in greater emotional devastation when the sacrifice is revealed (cough goLDEN CORE REVEAL cough). Everyone has to grow up sometime, and for Jiang Cheng and Nie Huaisang, the process is harrowing, brutal, and vengeful.
To be clear, I’m not trying to assign any blame to Nie Mingjue or Wei Wuxian for their sacrifices; honestly, I think it must be terrifying for them, who literally do everything within their power to protect their younger sibling so that Nie Huaisang and Jiang Cheng don’t have to suffer the same fate they do. And yet, both of them come to discover that 'everything within their power’ isn’t enough. Despite everything Wei Wuxian sacrifices -- his golden core, his future as a cultivator, his reputation, his affiliation with Yunmeng Jiang -- he still ends up saddling Jiang Cheng with a motherless nephew and years of grief; despite everything Nie Mingjue sacrifices, he still can’t survive long enough to protect Nie Huaisang as he promised. Nie Mingjue watches his impending death come for him and has no choice but to pressure Nie Huaisang to take up the same saber that will consume him soon.
The most galling thing isn’t that Nie Mingjue will die tragically, painfully, young -- it’s that even with his sacrifice, he still hasn’t managed to protect Nie Huaisang from the family doom.
There is a line of Nie Huaisang’s in Fatal Journey that sounded strange in the moment, but has come to make more and more sense the more I thought about the relationship between the two brothers:
Nie Huaisang: 大哥,你看你现在究竟变成了什么样子。小时候,你一直都是理智[...]自从你练了刀法之后就变成喜怒无常暴力至极。你现在就像一个暴君! / Da-ge, look at what you’ve become now. When we were young, you were always rational*... ever since you began practicing the way of the saber, your temper has become inconstant, your violent force extreme. Now, you’re practically a violent tyrant!
*couldn’t make out these words and the version of Fatal Journey I saw doesn’t have burned in Chinese subs rip
In the moment, I was like -- Nie Mingjue, wise? Rational? Nahhhh, sounds fake... but then I thought about the fact that we never really get to see pre-Sect Leader Nie Mingjue, pre-saber Nie Mingjue. In that case, if we take Nie Huaisang’s words at face value about the shift in Nie Mingjue’s temperament, then the cultivation style of Qinghe Nie truly isn’t all that different from Wei Wuxian’s demonic/heretical/deceptive cultivation (‘此道损身,更损心性,’ anyone?) -- they both grant great power, but at the costs of one’s own sanity/temperament.
^ I made this post two months ago but it’s been coming back to me with a vengeance
It’s worth thinking about why characters in CQL strike down these alternative cultivation paths that lead only to early, violent death -- overwhelmingly, they’re driven not by power, but by need. The sword path is the righteous path, the traditional path, and the path of least risk -- it may be slow, but you’ll progress on your own merit and hard work. Demonic and saber cultivation take shortcuts, increase your power by exponential amounts; to make a bad analogy, it’s like taking steroids for sporting competitions. Sure, they’ll benefit you in the short-term, but the long-term consequences will eventually come for you. (the obvious solution being, of course, to die before the consequences come for you)
But for some, the short-term benefits outweigh the long-term consequences: Wei Wuxian needs the power granted to him by his alternative cultivation in order to be useful to the Sunshot Campaign; Qinghe Nie needs the speed and power of saber cultivation to fend off Qishan Wen attacks on the regular. Considered in this context, it just makes sense for an entire cultivation sect that constantly survives on the brink of war to live fast, die young Qinghe Nie does it well
The tragedy of Qinghe Nie saber cultivation is that it gets them the necessary power to survive, to keep clinging tenaciously onto the stretch of territory between Qishan Wen and the rest of the cultivation world, but it doesn’t give them the time or space to figure out an alternative, sustainable cultivation that doesn’t involve, y’know, violent death and hungry saber spirits. Which is why Nie Mingjue’s sacrifice is not in vain, because it gives Nie Huaisang the space to grow up and train his abilities in alternative, less destructive paths of cultivation.
words cannot describe how much I love this scene. I would like to request a feature-length film of just Nie Huaisang and Wei Wuxian doing cool sparkly shit with talismanic magic
Nie Huaisang solves his puzzle tomb in approximately two minutes, with no death (more or less); Nie Mingjue stumbles out of his puzzle tomb alone, having brute-forced his way to a solution. The two brothers then argue in front of the central doorway, in which Nie Huaisang challenges Nie Mingjue’s methods, to which Nie Mingjue counters that such methods have been performed so often in the past that they practically constitute family tradition.
Nie Huaisang challenges this too -- something only Nie Huaisang can do, because Nie Mingjue has never had the time or luxury to do anything other than pick up the terrible burden of his ancestors, to follow the footsteps of father and grandfather to die alone in a tomb that they’ve spilt blood and spent generations maintaining. Nie Mingjue came of age in a time of need, and reforged himself to fulfill this need.
Nie Huaisang comes of age in a time of possibility -- after the events of the Sunshot Campaign, there is no longer the need for Qinghe Nie to remain a military state, constantly on edge and ready to repel invasions. Nie Huaisang might be the only who can conceptualize change, a deviation from tradition.
Of the entire Nie family line, the saber path has no claim on Nie Huaisang alone.
serial drama historical andalan 4 jaringan china yang akan datang.
腾讯 (tencent)
1.梦华�� Meng Hua Lu - A Dream of Splendor - Crystal Liu Yi Fei , Chen Xiao, Jelly Lin
2.玉骨遥 The Longest Promise - Xiao Zhan, Ren MIn, Wang Chu Ran, Han Dong, Alen Fang
3.星汉灿烂 Love Like The Galaxy - Zhao Lusi, Leo Wu, Zeng Li
4.春闺梦里人 Romance of a Twin Flower - Ding Yuxi, Peng XiaoRan
5.重紫 Chong Zhi - Yang Chao Yue, Jeremy Tsui, Zhang Zhi Xi
6.说英雄谁是英雄 Heroes - Joseph Zeng, Yang Chal Yue, Liu Yu Ning, Baron Chen, Meng Zi Yi, Sun Zu Jun
7.雪鹰领主 Lord Eagle - Sheng Ying Hao, Sun Rui, Fei Qin Yuan
8.乐游原 Wonderland of Love - Xu Kai, Jing Tian, Zhao JIa Min, Gao Han, Zheng He Hui Zi, He Feng Tian
9.长相思 Lost You Forever - Yang Zi, Deng Wei, Zhang Wan Yi
10.天行健 Heroes (judul rencana akan diubah biar ga tabrakan) - Qin Jun Jie, Maggie Huang, Liu Yu Ning
11.飞狐外传 - The Young Flying Fox - Qin Jun Jie, Liang Jie, Xing Fei, Peter Ho, Sarah Zhao, Lin Yu Shen, Hei Zi, Yvonne Yung
12.只此江湖梦 - Love and Sword - Gao Wei Guang, Xuan Lu, Jia Nai, Martin Zhang, Yuan Yu Xuan, Ren Hao
爱奇艺 (iqiyi)
1.月歌行 - Song of the Moon - Vin Zhang, Xu Lu
2.云襄传 - The Ingenious One - Chen Xiao, Rachel Momo, Tang Xiao Tian
3.显微镜下的大明 - Great Ming Under Microscope - Zhang Ruoyun, Qi Wei, Wang Yang
4.明月入卿怀 - A Forbidden Marriage - Mao Zi Jun , Zhou Jie Qiong , Zhang Xin ,Li Jiu Lin, Eddy Ko
5.请君 - Welcome - Ren Jia Lun, Li Qin
6.七时吉祥 - Love You Seven Times - Ding Yu Xi, Yang Chao Yue ,Yang Hao Yu, Dong Xuan, Hai Lu
8.倾城亦清欢 - The Emperor's Love - Wallace Chung, Yuan Bing Yan, Jason Gu, Zhang Yue
9.九霄寒夜暖 - Warm Cold Night in the Nine Heavens - Li Yi Tong, Bi Wen Jun, Chen He Yi, He Rui Xian, Ma Yue
10.苍兰诀。 - Eternal Love - Yu Shu Xin, Dylan Wang, Cristy Guo, Xu Hai Qiao
11.花溪记(分销) - Love Is An Accident - Xing Fei, Xu kai Cheng, Wang Yi Nuo
12.花戎。 - Hua Rong - Ju Jing Yi, Guo Jun Chen, Liu Dong Qin, Lu Ting Yu, Ma Yue
优酷 (youku)
1.长月烬明 - Till The End of The Moon - Luo Yunxi, Bai Lu, Chen Du Ling, Deng Wei, Sun Zhen Ni, Wang Yifei
2.星河长明 - Novoland: The Princess From Plateau - Feng Shao Feng, Peng Xiao Ran, Cheng Xiao Meng, Zhu Zheng Ting, Liu Meng Rui, Kim Jin
3.沉香如屑。- Immortal Samsara - Yang Zi, Cheng Yi, Ray Chang, Meng Zi yi, Yang Xizi, Hou Meng yao
4.星落凝成糖 - Love When the Stars Fall - Chen Xing Xu, Landy Li, Luke CHen, He Xuan Lin
5.郎君不如意。- Go Princess Go 2 - Wu Xuan yi, Chen Zhe Yuan, LQ Wang
6.隐娘 - The Assassin - Qin Lan, Zheng Ye Cheng, Hu Lian Xin, Du Chun
7.安乐传 - Legend of Anle - Dilraba Dilmurat, Gong Jun, Liu Yu Ning, Xia Nan, Tim Pei, Chen Tao
芒果TV (mango tv)
1.落花时节又逢君 - Love Never Fails - Yuan Bing Yan,Liu Xue Yi, Xu Xiao Nuo, Ao Rui Peng
2.覆流年 - Lost Track of Time - Xing Fei, Zhai Zi Lu, Jin JIa Yu, Cheng Yu Feng, Zhan Jie, Han Ye
catatan: nanti saya update judul resmi inggris dan siapa aktor aktrisnya.
sumber: artikel topik upcoming chinese drama di cerita-silat.net dan Weibo
Finally made it through deadlines. Now, on to getting tagged by @jaimebluesq and @fortune-maiden...
Tag 9 people you want to know better
Favourite piece of clothing you own? oh boy, suddenly my memory is blank....uuuh i have a really neat green, yellow and black scarf that is soft and super warm, very useful since i hate the cold. OR red sweater that was hand-knitted for my mom which she passed on to me since it doesn’t fit her
Your comfort food? pasta alla carbonara (egg, some cheese and then bacon cubes (romani non uccidetemi, se gli dico ‘guanciale’ gli inglesi si perdono)
Favourite time of year? The tail-end of spring, just on the verge of tipping over into summer
Favourite song? currently: Return (归) by Wang JiaCheng (王家成) from the Word of Honor soundtrack. though Parting at Qinghe (Qing He Jue) 清河诀 from The Untamed rips my heart out every time I hear just the beginning notes so maybe that one
Do you collect something? Unfinished sketchbooks because I worry about filling them with bad art....
Favourite drink? I CAN FINALLY SAY SOMETHING OTHER THAN WATER!! Mango Loco flavour of Monster
Favourite fanfiction? lemme go back through my 129 bookmarks on Ao3....
So, honourary mention to Beneath by ninepen on fanfic.net, a Loki-centric fanfic that takes the premise of “what if Loki got banished at the end of Avengers and went on a (super well-researched) study trip to Antartica with Jane Foster?” and is currently 220 chapters and counting
Then, okay, I have to say Deadset by 1PB2PB3PB4 because the concept of NHS becoming a ghost is already amazing but I also get that sweet sweet exploration of his dark psyche and absolute fury that I crave always, at any time
In a similar vein but geared more towards worldbuilding is A List Of Names (yours is in red) by MarsDiogenes because I am so weak for Atla AUs and the POSSIBILITIES of this concept are ENDLESS.
For smut there is Our Eyes On The Road by etymologyplayground which is just... pure smut, wonderful, I love it, Wangxian are so in love and that’s so sexy.
And then the one and only This, You Protect by owlet which is the best Bucky Barnes post CA:TWS fic ever. The Olds are my favourite OCs ever and superheros (and adjacents) interacting with the public and just being smothered by simple humanity is THE BEST. Honestly this is what makes this one and Beneath wonderful fics, I’m a sucker for outsiders looking into a super complex and high-stakes world and providing stability by just being... so normal.
Thanks for tagging me! I’m passing this on to @pbaintthetb @ibijau @silliam-hill @dafan-wei-sect and @rbwannabe