mylelovebei

[slythmultishipper]

Pete: I love you guys, you're the best thing that's happened to me.

Vegas: We're the best thing that's ever happened to you?

Pete: Yes!

Macau: I'm starting to feel a little sorry for you.

[wasted-women]

ROUND 1A, MATCH 1 OUT OF 8!

Causes of Death & Propaganda Under the Cut:

Jiang Yanli

Cause of Death: Stabbed; Self-sacrifice to save her brother.

Propaganda:

she's your pfp that's got to count for something

I love JYL don't get me wrong! But also. She is solely written as a part of the male characters and does not get much in her own right. She is Wei Wuxian's older sect sister, or Jiang Cheng's sister, or Jin Zixuan's fiance/wife, or Jin Ling's mother he never got to know. Even what characterization people give her (like liking soup/cooking or standing up for her family despite being gentle) are things that have to do with her brothers. I wish we got more of her in her own right.

AND ALSO. ALSO??? HER DEATH MAKES. NO SENSE. Okay first of all - she was in Lanling grieving for her very recently dead husband & taking care of her newborn baby. Who would let that woman out of Lanling????? WHY???? How did she get out of there SO FAST????? She doesn't have a sword/isn't a cultivator (at least in MDZS) so she couldn't have flown. And then after she got there WHO LET HER JUST OUT IN THE MIDDLE OF THE BATTLEFIELD???? WHY DID SHE GO THERE???? Even if there was a short part of her saying "I need to talk to Wei Wuxian about how he killed my husband and I'm going to get there no matter what" would've clarified things a little bc it's like okay she needs to go there even if we don't know how. Where are my answers MXTX, where are my answers????

Qin Su

Cause of Death: Suicide; Stabbed herself with a knife. (NOTE: In some versions of the story, she was being controlled and thus forced to kill herself.

Propaganda:

I'm fairly certain this character was only created as set dressing for the main villain's tragedy. We get zero insight into her inner life, zero hints that any such inner life might even exist, and after she dies basically no other named character other than the aforementioned villain is shown to be majorly affected by her death, even those who logically should have meaningful relationships with her.

Compared to the other two main female characters in this series (who are also fridged) Jiang Yanli and Wen Qing, Qin Su is probably the least aggravating because she's barely in the show and has very little character that we see. But I still think it's worth noting. I really wish that she could've survived and been there in Guanyin Temple IT COULD'VE BEEN COOL OKAY.

Wen Qing

Cause of Death: Executed; Burned to ashes.

Propaganda:

The fact that Wen Qing is the character that originally said the thing about "I'm sorry" and "Thank you", which is repeated multiple times in the post-resurrection parts of the series, but is so rarely mentioned by name is so aggravating! She's such an important part of the plot that did SO MANY THINGS but just basically disappears after her death!!! The only time I really remember her being mentioned is when her brother, Wen Ning, mentions her integral role in the golden core reveal. Jiang Yanli's ghost haunts the series after her death, but Wen Qing's really doesn't, and that's so fucked up to me. She even dies during the same time that Wen Ning does, but then it's revealed he survived (well, "survived", he is a zombie, but he was that beforehand too) SO WHY COULDN'T SHE HAVE SURVIVED TOO????

[danmei-confessions]

throwing myself into the snake pits with this but.... mxtx is not the greatest writer to ever write. her stories can be very flat, and she struggles with any character who isnt the main couple.

ive never been able to finish any of priests works, but from what ive read of similar works by meatbun and tjq both have a more nuanced take on world building and meatbun is just a straight up better writer. i think that the fandoms (mdzs tgcf AND svsss to some extent) tend to put her on a pedestal thats (imo) slightly undeserved. Her plots arent that complex and her villains are, while with understandable motives, generally undeveloped, and their popularity and depth seems majorly subsidized by fandom.

same goes with the themes of her work, where they're either forced upon you or else subtle enough to need an essay of reasoning. not to mention her characters struggles can sometimes be a tad... alienating? i cant think of the exact word, but the mc's tend to be very wrapped up in their own problems (which is fine!) but its sometimes at the cost of seeing how theyre affecting the world around them. with wangxian and hualian especially (though my boy binghe does in svsss too, just in a more unhinged way), the ml's don't really challenge our mcs. even if they know what their partner's doing wrong, they p much unconditionally support them or at least dont pressure them into challenging their ideas. the ml's growth, if there is any, is done off screen, and any changing isn't by the protag but by outside efforts. like, wwx doesnt really change? like hes not really learning anything he didnt already know (demonic cultivation = not good) and besides jin ling he doesn't really face any personal consequences (as in, the opposition is always either a group, faceless background characters, or characters who didn't have that much of a personal connection to him pre-death)(jiang cheng doesnt count for much bc wwx avoids him like the plague, jc would rather die than talk emotions with his brother, and both of them misunderstand why the other is Like That post return)

ahhh anyway i hope this made sense! i still love these characters, but i do think ive matured enough as a person and a especially as a writer to be a little more critical of them!

(/ω＼)

.

[touchlikethesun]

idrk how to formulate this, and like i know it's not that deep, but low key i almost always feel out of my depth when talking about mxtx's characters and works, and i think it's because if i retrace all my other main fandoms for at least the past 5 years, they've all been fandoms that i'd been in previously or that i've known for a long time, even if the intensity's different.

like i was not in the marauders fandom before 2022, but i had been a harry potter fan since birth. i might have stopped watching spn in 2015, but i had still seen the show and been involved in the fandom at least up until season 9 before getting back into it seriously in 2020. with haikyuu and snk i was majorly active in their respective fandoms for yearssss and with snk especially i still kept up with canon even when i wasn't following the fandom at all.

so like, for most of these, i have minimum a decade that i've known the characters, known the story, and even if i've not actively been thinking about it, that's enough time that i feel strong in my understanding of the characters themes narrative etc., and that strength of conviction means i feel able to speak freely (because i know i have the sources ready at hand to back up what i might say, and for things that might not require sources like headcanons, i have enough evidence that i can give a coherent reasoning).

but i point blank do not have that with svsss and mdzs. i really do not feel like i understand the characters to the same level, i really do not feel like i can speak on the themes being developed, and i certainly don't feel like i can give my own headcanons, because i simply do not have the information and understanding. like i have read mdzs 3 times and svsss closer to 5 in about a 6 month period, but i still feel like my grasp on these characters is incredibly loose. and i think it is mostly just because. i haven't been thinking about it for a decade.

like i'd love to make the sort of casual headcanon type post for mxtx characters like i did for hq and snk but geniunely i don't feel like i can. it's not a big deal and it literally only impacts me. but like. i do think about this

[unforth]

So as part of a discussion on "why the fuck are SVSSS, MDZS, and TGCF getting shelved/sorted in manga and/or young adult categories, where they clearly don't belong," (a topic about which I ranted to my wife last night, like, they have explicit porn, so they're not YA, and they're literally neither comics nor Japanese so they're not manga, just fucking shelve them in fantasy/sci-fi, whyyyyyyy are they being put in manga or young adult? Oh right, we know why)...and along the same lines I just discovered that DMBJ is, on Amazon, shelved in...

Yep, that's right. "Children's Asia Books." "Children's Science Fiction." You know what's in "Children's Science Fiction?"

Dear Amazon: WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK?

This led me to check some of the other categories...so here's some highlights.

Other works in "Asian Myth and Legend:"

Ah yes, that masterful example Asian myth (checks notes) J.R.R.' Tolkien's book about Santa Claus. The Asian-est.

Yaoi Manga:

At least these are all actually Japanese and actually shonen-ai...except the How To book, which again, what the fuck.

Meanwhile, tops in fantasy right now?

Oh hey look a bunch of books by fucking white people. Now, I will say, APPARENTLY they ARE cross-posted there...

But for fuck's sake, why is Amazon telling me that HOB is "#1 in Yaoi Manga" when it's LITERALLY FUCKING NOT YAOI MANGA and NOT telling THE ENTIRE FUCKING WORLD that this book is #16 in all of Fantasy on their entire fucking website like that's a huge fucking deal it's up there with Harry Potter (fucking HP) and Robert Jordan (who is hugely popular and just had entire TV series come out so is on the rise rn) but no instead they bury that information in favor of "#1 in a sub-genre that it's not even part of."

I'm sorry, but I'm so goddamn steamed about all this.

The casual racism, infantilization, lumping-together-of-all-east-Asian-cultures, and just flat-out dangerously incorrect nature of these shelving choices is really really REALLY fucking pissing me off.

Like, majorly.

DMBJ has graphic violence, constant swearing, horror aspects, body horror, I could go on, and Amazon has it shelved in the same sections as "read to me electronic Spiderman" and thinks it's appropriate for 8 year olds.

WHO THE FUCK IS IN CHARGE OF THESE DECISIONS AND HOW DO I SEND THEM A STRONGLY WORDED LETTER EXPLAINING HOW INCORRECT THEY ARE?

AAAAAAARGH Americans WHY.

[plan-d-to-i]

The amount of people on my TL who act like LXC would be a viable love interest for WWX, if WWX only got to know him and his "expressive loving" personality. LXC personality is as bland as white bread consistently. Half the fics I see run on the premise that if WWX didn't pester LWJ and instead fell in love with the "warmth" the LXC provides, that's a ship. I'm honestly quite literally done with multi-shipping when it comes to MDZS because either the takes are god awful or (1/2)

(2/2) or shipping is used to bash characters in a subtle manner. I'm so angry about this because what is with everyone hating LWJ? I'm not condoning using shipping as an excuse to hate someone's ship or diverge from canon, but when your takes are OC with a character's name stamped on them, that's when I have an issue because at that point, you're not writing anything that's grounded in the character. You're just projecting T.T Sorry for the rant, I'm just disappointed with the fandom so far :( 2/2

Anon, what's up w your timeline? I only saw one post about it and it was an ask that I'm pretty sure was majorly trolling...lol. Obviously in this fandom people will ship anything. I mean anything. Naturally fic is not canon.

Canonically it makes zero sense. WWX is immediately taken with LWJ. He can easily tell Lan Wangji apart from Lan Xichen. LWJ's taciturn (tsundere) personality IS THE DRAW. WWX revels in the fact that he can rile him up, get a rise out of him. That's a big part of the attraction and of their dynamic; The desire to make buttoned up LWJ lose control and put him in his place ...😉.

Although Lan XiChen looked almost exactly the same as Lan WangJi, Wei WuXian could tell them apart with just a glance. Yet, when he saw the face, he still couldn’t help but noting their similarity, thinking to himself, I wonder what’s happening to my body right now. If the paper body is invaded by resentful energy, would anything happen to the real body as well? Would Lan Zhan notice that something’s wrong?

and

Side by side, Lan XiChen and Lan WangJi walked over.

The two jades of Lan stood together, one wearing the xiao, the other carrying the guqin; one warmly gentle, the other coldly austere. Nevertheless, they were similarly stunning, similarly poised, truly the same color, yet two different airs. No wonder others had always stared and exclaimed with such a sight.

The current Lan WangJi still had some naivety at the edges, but the cold expression that kept everyone at arm’s length was the same. Wei WuXian’s gaze stuck to his face at once, unable to be move away no matter what. Regardless of whether or not he could hear it, Wei WuXian shouted happily, “Lan Zhan! I miss you so much! Hahahahahahaha!”

I wouldn't go shitting on LXC's personality tho. He's a kind patient person, and he does have a sense of humor and a hint of impishness but that's not WWX's person. He doesn't want to be WWX's person. He wants WWX to make LWJ happy. Stop pitting two bad bitches against each other fandom (⇀_⇀). Also if you see fic tagged w this ship obviously, don't read it.

[livingmeatloaf]

My Fics

Posted works :

AO3 profile I've written a lot of fics lately, way more than I want to put on this list!

Twitter sometimes i do little threadfics. If I remember to or want to save them, I compile them into my LivingMeatloaf AO3 account

Tumblr posts with fic (#My fic)

"Sweet and Stupid" AO3 link. Castlevania. Sypha/Trevor/Alucard. Canon-setting bakery AU.

"Royal Consort Liu Qingge" series. AO3 link. (#royalconsortlqg) Liu Qingge gets over his feelings toward Shen Qingqiu. He's promptly courted by newlyweds Shang Qinghua and Mobei-Jun. Eventual MoShangLiu happy ending. I've already written three installments for this and I have three more roughed out. This has absolutely taken over my brain thanks to twitter. Eventually I hope to have art to share as well.

WIPS:

Beast Peak Shen Yuan AU - #bpsyau AO3 compilation link. My first threadfic on twitter! SVSSS. Lots of headcanons and an exploration of what if Shen Yuan transmigrated much earlier and joined the Peak that concentrates on beasts and animals.

"Take Love by the Reins" (tag #Take Love by the Reins) AO3 link - first two chapters posted! MDZS. Nie Mingjue/Meng Yao Hallmark Horse Girl AU

"and you will make it with your own hands" (tag #Your Own Hands) unposted, still majorly in progress. Pacific Rim reimagining of MDZS.

"Self-Defense" (tag #Emperor AU) unposted. MDZS, part of @the-pudding-is-a-lie's Emperor Lan Xichen AU. Slow burn General Nie Mingjue/Advisor Meng Yao; the General teaches the Advisor self defense after an attempted assassination.

"Taking the Bite Out of the Bark" unposted. MDZS modern AU. Wei Wuxian goes to dog exposure therapy to heal his fear after Jin Ling gets a service dog.

"Cultivation Beach: Surf and Turf War, the Musical Extravaganza" SVSSS Teen Beach Movie AU. Listen, listen, this movie lines up TOO WELL with SVSSS for me not to make this. Blame @festeringfae for this

If you'd like to know anything about them, don't hesitate to ask! I'm very excited to write all of them. You can always do ask games about a specific fic or in general!

[lansizhuis]

I’m seeing so many posts lately on how problematic and fetishising danmei is and I feel very discouraged...danmei has helped me feel more confident in my own sexuality and I never thought it was a bad thing. Can you elaborate on what some people think is wrong about danmei? Thank you

disclaimer: my response is specific to my own experiences so it’s def not a universal thing but perhaps can hopefully be considered as another perspective. and whelp im on mobile so i cant add the read more function, imma edit this when i wake up

I think this is almost the same “issue” with JP yaoi genre and how much the West have vilified the term “fujoshi”. This issue has a long af history so let me just redirect you to this short collection of threads about it. Anyhow, connecting it to danmei which now deals with CN culture on the take of BL, I think it’s a lot about outsiders to said culture demanding they be put in the spotlight aka if it’s not THEIR standard then it’s “wrong” and is therefore ~problematique~. This kind of baby activism which is performative at best mainly takes root in the Western ideology/society. I’m not saying all Westerners are like this but that a large chunk of the really loud ones are most often than not — them. I’m not even going to touch the whole fiction vs reality mentality yet (again, the relationship between the two is CORRELATION and NOT CAUSATION) but would focus mainly on nuances.

An example on why they call danmei ~problematique~ is calling the “shixiong/shidi/etc” relationships as “incest” bc they “practically grew up together”. Martial siblings in CN cultural context are NOT the same as regular siblings. A very specific example I can think of is MDZS’ Jiang Cheng and Wei Wuxian (disclaimer: i don’t personally ship them romantically) who have the dashixiong-shidi relationship and are “martial siblings” but NOT (blood) siblings. Wei Wuxian is technically still an outsider to the Jiang family bc he isn’t theirs by blood. And trust me on this — relationship by blood is a BIG DEAL for this cultural context.

One of the examples on why they call danmei ~fetishizing~ is when the couple goes beyond the fluff aka having sexual intercourse of any kind. At the top of mind, the most recent discourse I saw was how antis were trying to cancel STARember (tgcf manhua artist) for making Hua Cheng sucking out the poison from Xie Lian “too sexualized” (whatever their standard is) even if it actually happened in the novel but you don’t see the same comments when they read the novel. This reminded me of when fans in EN fandom who are fluent in CN mentioned that Xie Lian gave Hua Cheng a blowjob in the temple when the ghosts were lowkey losing their shit and even gave “evidences” of it and a lot in the fandom got mad because of the same reason. These are cases of people demanding that LGBT+ content should only be “palatable” when it’s not always sunshine and daisies otherwise they’re going to brand it “fetishizing”.

Another example is the anger for when one half of the couple calls the other “wife” because it’s “forced heteronormativity” plus “fetishization”. For one, I personally know gay people who call their partners “wife” bc it’s their term of endearment and yknow most of the time it’s as simple as that. In addition to danmei context, we don’t really use or have a rule that the one being called “wife” (from those what I’ve read – 老婆) as something equal to “bottoming” but more on a ‘personality trait’ for the lack of a better word. A very specific example in mind is how Zhenhun’s Zhao Yunlan calls Shen Wei his “wife” bc Shen Wei is the one who can cook, actually cleans, etc. Note that Zhao Yunlan IS the shou/bottom which is even more contrary to the argument that wife = bottom. Of course there’s context to each story so this is not a blanket rule but just goes to show a sound point against those making a universal statement of anger against the term “wife”.

There’s a whole lot more and I definitely did not cover deeper cultural nuances but the answer got too long already haha

OKAY SO MAIN POINTS:

1. Danmei is a genre with thousands of titles under its belt — some may be considered “bad” or “good”, etc much like how in English Literature, we have “good” and “bad” ones. I bet you that those who make universal blanket statements against it hasn’t even read more than 10 novels.

2. A lot don’t understand that it’s more than okay to not like certain tropes or certain novels without having to justify it with “woke” issues. My friends have some novels I’m not very into and I have some novels they themselves are not very into. It’s normal. Human beings are, after all, different from each other in a lot of ways. What’s not okay is propagating hate over fictional preferences. Trust me, literally everything can be ~problematique~ if we try to reach hard enough.

3. MOST IMPORTANTLY — your experience with danmei is not going to be the same with the rest of the world AND YOU ARE VALID. It’s not totally about the content we consume but majorly on how we process it that matters the most. If you’re able to be more accepting of yourself with it, then that’s amazing! If others don’t feel the same then they should drop it and leave others alone who had better processing.

[drwcn]

Hello hello! I have been following you and loving the medical, cultural and historical context you bring to mdzs, especially as I am white white white and have no knowledge of it beyond what I read online. No pressure at all to get into it, but on one of your earlier posts you make mention of historical/cultural differences on the concept of medical consent, and was wondering if you could elaborate? I have been trying to separate my cultural biases from my interpretation of the text, and I had assumed that there was a cultural/historical/xianxia-trope-staple reason the text didn't portray wwx getting jc major surgery without his consent as being as majorly wrong as we would see it in modern day, but I didn't know what it would be. As a person who is an authority in both medical topics and cultural topics, I thought you'd be the best person to ask! Again, no pressure at all, I just love your analysis posts! ( Well, and your fic, I'm riveted by the harem wangxian fic right now)

Hi friend!! 

Hahahah...I am not an authority. I am.... a second opinion at best. 

But it terms of consent and cultural relativism, I think there is something to be said about Jiang Cheng’s situation. I’d say most Chinese people won’t look at that situation and be like omg WWX wtf are you doing??? I’d say most Chinese people would say he’s so selfless etc etc etc. Because that’s just the culture: you do everything you can for your family but you don’t want them to find out about it. I don’t agree with it but I can definitely see my own family pulling this bullshit on me. LOL

Anyways I wrote a little post about this topic here. Feel free to check it out! :D 

[plan-d-to-i]

God 🙄 "s!ssy" between "" I'm not calling him that, my response was to this anon:

Please accept my apologies if this comes across as rude: Regarding your issue on feminizing WWX, I recently saw a thread from Chinese diaspora that stated that WWX is feminine-coded in the book and it made me feel uncomfortable. It's the reason I can't get into the book, despite the fact that I've heard excellent things about it: I don't want to waste time reading another heteronormative book disguised as danmei… Do you believe this is the case with mdzs? I was under the assumption that the fandom was obsessed with making wwx hyperfeminine and lwj hypermasculine, and that this was canon because it’s so widespread. Is it truly canon, or is it just misinterpreted canon, in your opinion?

So can you please look for the context before giving an opinion? I'm joking about "Chuck Norris lwj" 🤦🏻‍♀️ because of this person sounding so ~triggered~ by the idea of hypermasculine lwj so I'm calling him that, as a joke. And it's the same for wwx when this person is talking as if the idea of wwx being feminine makes them uncomfortable. So, FIRST OF ALL like I did say, I don't think any of them is hyper masculine/feminine. They're not. But even if it was the case, my point is that I don't buy this person's fake woke discourse about caring about heteronormative and that stopping them from reading mdzs bc of it (again, it's not that hard to find they're not like that by yourself, just read some pages of mdzs and you will) but I think they were just venting about their dislikes and it sounds like what it makes them uncomfortable IS "s!ssy" men. Again, between "". Because we know better that's what people think of men that are too feminine.

Your joke didn't land. Feel free to phrase your shit better. Maybe don't equate feminine and "s!ssy". You're projecting majorly on that anon: "I think they were just venting about their dislikes and it sounds like what it makes them uncomfortable IS "s!ssy" men." You certainly sound way more "triggered" than them.

Considering this shitshow of a fandom it's fairly normal for someone on the outside to be confused about what actual canon is. There's certainly plenty of OOC untagged shit. So idk what kind of paradise alternate fandom you've been living in. None of what anon mentioned is canon, it’s fanon, as the og answer told them here.

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