#actually... okay so part of what i did when i was interpreting these fantasy sects into the modern world is translate that into

[micamicster]

While you were sleeping au! You mentioned the subway and I think? The F line, a while ago. I’m curious which subway stops are the most important to the story. Also which NYC neighborhooods do you think matches the vibes of the various mdzs characters in this au/in general. Also if there’s anything you want to share I’d love to read it!

Hi honey thank you for asking! Yes we did decide on the F line, good memory haha

I've put a lot of thought into the route and setting of this story. I needed the setting to do a lot in terms of character (wealth, community, cultural background) and in terms of plot (need both my main characters to regularly take the same train a long distance), but luckily I think that neighborhoods and subways are equipped to do all of that!

I settled on both Wen Qing and Jiang Cheng regularly commuting in from Queens, but for different reasons. JC is coming from queens because his family has owned a large townhouse there for multiple generations, while Wen Qing, a more recent and more broke arrival to the city, lives out there because the rent is cheaper. Queens has its own massive chinatown, but it's more recent (comprised of a a newer wave of mandarin-speaking immigrants entering an older hokken-speaking population) compared to the historic Manhattan Chinatown (hundreds of years old, overwhelmingly cantonese-speaking). I have placed a lot of my action in the Manhattan chinatown, partly because it's historic and partly because it's most familiar to me. Both JC and WQ commute to the East Broadway stop on the F line, WQ to go to work at a nearby hospital and JC to go to his job (the Jiang family own a restaurant).

Here is an excerpt of a scene from the subway! thank you for being interested <3 <3 <3

The train shudders to a stop and they part to let people stand and push past them. He nods at the seat that’s appeared between them. “You should take it.”

“It’s fine.”

“Please. I know you’re about to be on your feet all day. Just take it, before some ass with no appreciation for essential workers steals it from you.”

“I can’t. I’m afraid if I sit I won’t get up again.” It’s the truth, but she didn’t mean to say it. There’s no reason to worry him about her. She’s stood on the train a thousand times, she can stand one more.

“I’ll get you up if you need it. Promise.” He nudges her forward gently. It’s just the drag of his knuckles against the small of her back, but she sways into the touch before she can stop herself. Hastily Wen Qing overcorrects the other way, and drops into the seat as quickly as she can.

At the next stop even more people crowd on, pushing him forward. He scowls and braces himself with one hand on the bar above them, back stiff and unyielding. She recognizes the stance from years of navigating the subway at rush hour—don’t take up more space than is your due, but don’t give an inch or the crowd will take a mile.

The train takes off with the familiar rocking of the crowd, as people lurch forward and back, renegotiating space and balancing against each other. It sends him stumbling right up against the seats, his leg knocking into hers for a moment before he catches himself.

“Sorry.”

“It’s okay.”

He looks at her carefully, like he’s searching for any sign she didn’t mean it. He steps closer, letting the people behind him expand into the extra space in the way that crowds are always so liquid. She shifts to let him even closer, his leg settling between hers, his knee braced against the hard plastic edge of the seat. Whenever either of them shift it sends the expensive wool of his suit dragging across the machine-starched stiffness of her fresh scrubs.

She’s in a strange sort of sleep daze, like maybe she hasn’t really woken up at all yet. Soon she’ll open her eyes to her cold bed, her dark room, her relentless alarms. But for now she’s warm. She’s still too tired and the train is too crowded, but sitting down she exists in a little bubble, with Jiang Cheng’s broad back curved over her and his arm above them.

[esmeraldablazingsky]

I’ve finally hit my limit on the number of bad takes on the Lan parents I can see before I have to lay out all the reasons I disagree, so hello, I’m Blazie, and in this essay I will justify my visceral dislike of the assumption that Qingheng-jun married/imprisoned/had sex with Lan-furen against her will.

    Warning for mentions of rape (in context of Interpretations I Really Hate) and a very, VERY long post below the cut.

    Before I start going off about the finer points of all this, I want to make sure people are on the same page regarding what we actually know about what went down with Qingheng-jun and Lan-furen. What I say is based off the EXR translation of MDZS, for the sake of clarity, and although I don’t think the exact wording should be too important, feel free to let me know if you think I’ve missed an important bit of nuance or something (the whole story is in Chapter 64.)

    The story we get is told by Lan Xichen, and it goes like this: a young Qingheng-jun falls in love at first sight with Lan-furen, who doesn’t return his feelings, and at some point kills one of Qingheng-jun’s teachers over unspecified “grievances.” Although he’s understandably very upset over the murder, Qingheng-jun sneaks Lan-furen back to Cloud Recesses and officially marries her in order to announce to his clan that anyone who wants to hurt her has to go through him.

After that, he locks Lan-furen in one house and himself in another as a form of repentance. Wei Wuxian speculates that this was because “he could neither forgive the one who killed his teacher nor watch the death of the woman who he loved. He could only marry her to protect her life and force himself not to see her.” 

    A central detail of this story that I think people don’t give the import it deserves is that aside from marrying and protecting her, Qingheng-jun’s other option was to let Lan-furen be executed by his clan. His purpose in marrying her wasn’t just for kicks/out of a possessive sort of love, it was so she wouldn’t straight up die. How she felt about this arrangement isn’t stated, but I’ll get into that in a bit. In addition to that, Qingheng-jun and Lan-furen live separately, which was apparently purposeful on Qingheng-jun’s part, and runs counter to the interpretation that he intended to take sexual advantage of Lan-furen.

Though there aren’t many concrete details in Lan Xichen’s retelling, he does specifically inform Wei Wuxian that his mother never complained about remaining in her house. What exactly this signifies is unclear— whether she was simply putting on a brave face for her sons, or whether she was in fact at all content with the situation— but it at the very least serves to further muddy the waters on how she and Qingheng-jun felt about all this. 

Beyond what Lan Xichen and Wei Wuxian are saying out loud, there’s also quite a bit of subtext in this scene, especially in light of later events and revelations, like Lan Xichen’s confession for Lan Wangji at Guanyin Temple. 

So what is Lan Xichen trying to convey with all this? There’s a lot of memes about this scene, most of which err too far on the side of Himbo Airhead Lan Xichen for my liking, but one that I do find amusing emphasizes how Lan Xichen draws parallels between Wangxian and the story of his parents (Lan Xichen: [flute solo] please use your one brain cell to connect the dots.) If Wei Wuxian hadn’t completely lost his memory of Lan Wangji defending him against his own clan elders, one would assume that Lan Xichen’s story would have had a much better chance of hitting home. 

In hindsight and side by side, the parallels are much clearer— Qingheng-jun, “ignoring the objections from his clan… told everyone in the clan that she would be his wife for the rest of his life, that whoever wanted to harm her would have to pass through him first.” Similarly, according to Lan Xichen in Chapter 99, “for [Wei Wuxian,] not only did WangJi talk back to him, he even met with his sword the cultivators from the GusuLan Sect. He heavily injured all thirty-three of the seniors we asked to come.”

In that context, it makes a lot less sense to interpret Qingheng-jun as an aggressor towards Lan-furen, as in Lan Wangji’s case, the narrative clearly establishes that his actions are to secure Wei Wuxian’s safety. The action of Taking Someone Back To Cloud Recesses is— okay, actually, it’s a little more nuanced than I took into account when I started writing that sentence, so let me go a little deeper into Lan Wangji’s actions and how they relate to his father’s, story-wise. 

My intent is not to dive into the terrifying underworld of novel-versus-drama discourse, but simply put, Novel!Lan Wangji as he is written isn’t exactly the poster child for clear consent. (I’m going to entirely leave off the extra chapters for the sake of everyone’s sanity, so I’m just talking about the main body of the novel here.)

He means well, and I’m sure we can agree that he does actually love and want the best for Wei Wuxian, but his lack of communication on this point means that he accidentally gives Wei Wuxian the impression that he wants to imprison and/or punish him in Cloud Recesses at least twice off the top of my head (pre-timeskip, as we know, and post-timeskip immediately after Dafan Mountain when he actually drags Wei Wuxian back to his room.) 

That all likely has something to do with MXTX’s narrative kinks and regular kinks and all that, and can absolutely be taken with many grains of salt. However, these events establish how easy it is to misinterpret the action of Taking Someone Back To Gusu as an attempt to imprison rather than protect them (much to Lan Wangji’s chagrin.)

Failing to communicate his purpose to Wei Wuxian doesn’t mean that Lan Wangji actually had any intent of hurting or caging him— that was just a misinterpretation on Wei Wuxian’s part, and we, as the audience, find that out in due time— but as written in the novel, it can be really uncomfortable to read. Because of that, many people choose to accept CQL canon regarding Lan Wangji’s more possessive actions or mix characterization from different adaptations, which, to be clear, I completely understand and respect. 

However, Qingheng-jun doesn’t get the benefit of the doubt as often, which I frankly find baffling, because nowhere in the text does it state that Lan-furen objected to being taken back to Cloud Recesses, while even Wei Wuxian clearly objected the first few times. In fact, while we’re on this note, I’ll take it a step farther— I find it baffling that people seem to default to an unsympathetic view of Qingheng-jun, because nowhere in the text does it state that he overruled Lan-furen’s wishes in any way. The text doesn’t clarify a lot of things, actually, and that is part of the point. 

The narrators of MDZS are, in many situations, highly unreliable. This is, presumably, very purposeful! MDZS can easily be read as a sharp criticism of reputation and mass judgment and the concept of condemning people without knowing their motives! And I don’t want to sound mean, but guys… did any of us learn anything from that? Here, I’m going to put it in meme format for a second to convey what I mean. 

MDZS: It’s easy to condemn someone as a villain if you don’t know their story or the reasons behind their actions

MDZS: Anyway, here’s a character whose story and reasons behind his actions you know nothing about

Some Parts Of This Fandom: Ah, a villain 

    Memes aside, here’s what I want to point out. It’s entirely possible to assume Qingheng-jun was a bad person who disregarded a woman’s wishes in marrying and confining her when all you have is Lan Xichen’s (actually very neutral, thank you Lan Xichen for being an eminently reasonable and concerned-with-evidence character) account of what happened. It would also be at least that easy to assume Wei Wuxian was just an evil necromancer if he hadn’t un-died and brought his own story to light, or even to believe that Lan Wangji had somehow tamed Wei Wuxian into submission and being a respectable cultivator if you were an average citizen of Fantasy Ancient China with nothing but rumors to operate on. 

    The thing about Qingheng-jun and Lan-furen’s story, then, is that there is nobody left alive who knows the full tale. Nobody knows what they thought about anything, really. Nobody even knows why Lan-furen killed Qingheng-jun’s teacher. Wei Wuxian asks why, and Lan Xichen can’t tell him, but I think the best answer would be something along the lines of I don’t know, Wei Wuxian, why did you kill people? Your guess on the motivations of your own thinly disguised narrative parallel are as good as anyone’s. 

    So, while it’s not technically impossible to assign darker motives to Qingheng-jun, the cautionary tale of MDZS seems to warn against that exact assumption. 

    I’ve refrained from getting too salty on a personal level thus far, but now that I’ve said a lot of the more logical and story-based points of my argument, I will say that at least some of my annoyance with the interpretation of Qingheng-jun as a possessive rapist and Lan-furen as his victim stems from the fact that I just think it’s straight up boring. Where’s the nuance? Aren’t you tired of reducing these characters to the flattest possible versions of themselves? Don’t you just want to add a little flavor? 

    In a slightly more serious phrasing of that criticism, I find that making Lan-furen a helpless prisoner strips her of whatever agency she might otherwise have. To be fair, she’s more or less a non-character in keeping with the general state of the MDZS universe, but making her a damsel in distress only consigns her more deeply to hapless, milquetoast innocence. 

    It’s perfectly valid to enjoy ladies who have done nothing wrong, ever, in their lives, but like… Qin Su is right there, if that’s your ball game. There’s also really no need to make Qingheng-jun someone who doesn’t respect women. Isn’t Jin Guangshan enough for at least one universe? 

    Anyway, ultimately, you do you. I don’t like arguing on the internet, and will just ignore things I don’t agree with (or write an 1800 word vaguepost) like a mature human being. I’m just saying, if it’s a cut and dry tale of imprisonment and assault you’re looking for… you probably don’t want to turn to a woman who committed a murder and a man who loved her enough to forfeit everything to keep her safe. 

[midshipmank]

*I don't know what The Untamed is and at this point I'm too afraid to ask* (would you mind giving me a quick overview/telling me what you like about it?) ((also you doing Howl's Moving Castle with your class is like the best thing since sliced bread))

Oh my gosh, yes! I’m sorry it took me a few days to get to this! I did try to keep this short. (And I’m so flattered you think my lesson plans are cool! Thank you!)

Okay, so in the simplest terms The Untamed* is a Chinese drama based on the novel Mo Dao Zu Shi (MDZS) by Mo Xiang Tong Xiu. I’m not that familiar with the novel, but as I understand it, it was originally a web novel, but may now have been traditionally published in China (and possibly censored? I’m really uncertain about this). “Mo Dao Zu Shi” is usually translated as “The Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation.” The novel and all of its adaptations** are Xianxia, which is a genre of Chinese fantasy that incorporates a lot of elements from Taoism, Buddhism, Chinese mythology, traditional Chinese medicine, etc. 

For the plot, I’m gonna stick to The Untamed since it’s what I know! It’s about two cultivators who meet when they’re teenagers. Wei Wuxian (the titular Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation) is the first disciple of the Yunmeng Jiang Sect--he’s considered to be a genius, but he’s also a mischievous troublemaker. He was adopted into the Jiang family as a child and would 1000% die for his siblings and it kills me. Lan Wangji is the Second Young Master (Er-gonzi) of the Gusu Lan Sect, and is known for being one of the “Twin Jades” of the Lan Sect (along with his older brother). He follows all 3000 of the Lan Sect’s rules to the letter and he’s also an excellent cultivator and super repressed (at first!). They meet, fall in love (though, yes, it’s all subtext because of censorship), there’s a war, Wei Wuxian kind of goes to the dark side for Reasons, then dies, and comes back to life 16*** years later. The first two episodes of the show actually take place in the future/present when Wei Wuxian is resurrected, then there’s a 30-episode flashback. The pacing is 100% ridiculous and I 100% love it.  

As for what I like about it....there’s a lot. I’m gonna try to stick to the main things.

1. The romance is so well done. Even though the creators of every single version of MDZS have to contend with censorship, the subtext is there and purposeful, and I am just going to steal this quote from this excellent Vox article because I can’t put it any better: 

“Their bond — which Netflix translates as “lifelong confidantes,” but which alternate translations usually interpret as “soulmates” — becomes transcendent, a chaste but heady yearning holding them together across time and tragedy. Wangji exudes soul-spilling longing, which Wang Yibo conveys primarily through mesmerizing infinitesimal facial adjustments that somehow contain Grand Canyons of emotional depth that will leave you clawing the floor. It’s like watching an inflamed Victorian melodrama, except instead of North and South it’s 50 hours of Wangji pledging eternal love to Wei Wuxian with the smallest curve of his mouth.” 

As someone whose formative years were full of shows that were all queerbaiting, watching a show full of subtext that actually means what it’s implying is some seriously addictive wish fulfillment. 

2. The Untamed absolutely bulldozed me where I’m weakest, and I will never recover--aka, the adopted family content makes me lose my entire mind. For some reason, adopted families (in which I do include found families, but by which I especially mean families that involve adoptive parents and children) are one of those things that get me right under the ribs without trying. The Untamed has so much adopted family content--Wei Wuxian’s relationship with the Jiang family (please don’t touch me) is the largest part of it, but there’s also some quality angst between Lan Wangji and his uncle (who was his primary parental figure), and [SPOILERS] Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji also have a child that they adopt together. Kind of. Almost. Listen, it’s complicated, and I’m going to keel over just thinking about it.

3. The way it tackles themes of morality is astoundingly well done. There is so much complexity, so much grey space, and so much angst--I have seriously never been so delighted to have my heart ripped out of my chest and mashed to pulp. I love complex villains, I especially love anti-heroes. This show delivered in all fronts, and I feel almost spoiled to be honest. As I understand it, the novel is even more brutal in this regard, and that is the biggest temptation to me to read it (it’s currently only available in English through fan translations).

So, those are the top 3 things I love about it! I could go on. I’m not gonna lie, there was a steep learning curve at first, and I would not have made it without the character/sect/Mandarin honorifics guide my twin made for me, but it was so worth it. I have not watched (or read, or listened to) something so escapist and delightful and angsty in years, and it’s definitely my go-to distraction in These Dark Times. 

*It’s Chinese title is Chen Qing Ling, which is why some people call it CQL. As far as I know, Chen Qing Ling does not translate to “The Untamed” at all. 

**There’s also a graphic novel that closely follows the novel + has an official English translation, a donghua/animated show (unfinished) that follows the novel more closely than The Untamed, and an audiodrama that I know very little about. I’m forever fascinated by how many adaptations have been made in such a short period of time. 

***So it could actually be 12-13 years? The timeline of The Untamed is not exactly the same as the timeline of the novel, and seems to collapse almost everything in the past into a single year, whereas in the novel WWX and LWJ knew each other for several years before WWX’s death. It’s much less clear in The Untamed.