#cql: all

[qinghe-s]

brothers (gif version of this post by @br-disaster)

[id: the first gif is of nie huaisang from episode 35 of the untamed. the second gif is on nie mingjue from episode 23. both gifs show them from the shoulders up, looking toward the left and blinking as they turn to someone on the right. end id.]

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Lap Pillow

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[yilinglaozu]

@asiandramanet december bingo - comfort

[lazycranberrydoodles]

sibling bonding moment!

[pixiefms]

[gentlegentian]

i feel like one of the biggest things the mdzs fandom tends to forget is that lan wangji is silly

like yes he's stoic and jade faced and perfect but he also:

blushes SO often

loves bunnies and anything related to them

throws little tantrums when he's away from his husband for too long

gets flustered easily

is a MENACE when drunk

messes around with his husband

buried his son in a bunny pile

is a biter

so yes, whilst hanguang-jun is a big scary warlord, lan wangji is just a silly guy who likes bunnies and messing around with his husband :3

[alightbuthappypen]

Wei Wuxian's binding/bonding talisman goes wrong...or right?

For the Close Quarters Exchange

[sandumilfshou]

the amount of hate jiang cheng gets is insane considering the only things hes ever done wrong are a) get lied to consistently and b) sometimes be angry

[khattikeri]

one of my favorite things about mdzs is that for how heavily its plot involves politics of classism and misogyny... even the characters most directly impacted by it can't and don't free themselves from it. literally the closest exception is mianmian.

meng yao being the "son of a whore" wasn't some sort of commie awakening for him that led him to wanting everyone to be socially equal. he played the political game, climbed the ladders, sucked up to and backstabbed and murdered people, including other prostitutes who actually had nothing to do with how he and his mother were treated at the brothel he grew up in.

he put in so much extra excessive effort for even a fraction of the same respect that members of gentry cultivation clans got. and he did deserve to be treated more humanely! but he feeds into the exact same system that created him, leading to his own undoing.

his efforts were for a fragile upward mobility that was never going to hold up. he never surpassed his origins nor did he empower others in similar stations, because the society he lives in is not one that would accept that.

the second he got caught and all those crimes exposed, he was scapegoated to hell and back, replacing wei wuxian as society's terrible one-sidedly evil boogeyman overnight.

speaking of not-quite male gentry, i think it's interesting that wei wuxian explicitly doesn't try to climb the ladders in BOTH lives, knowing full well that anything he does will be punished just for the sheer fact that he is wei wuxian.

wei wuxian is scolded for giving intelligent and correct answers in school. lan wangji does the same and is praised.

wei wuxian occasionally lounges around with fellow disciples and is punished. jiang cheng does the same and mostly escapes.

wei wuxian refuses to carry his sword around in public (after losing his golden core, which nobody knows) and is scorned as an arrogant upstart. nie huaisang has been doing the EXACT SAME THING for YEARS and nobody bats an eye.

unlike jin guangyao, wei wuxian knew subconsciously from the start that his acceptance was superficial and that he could be cast out any time. when he was 10 and recently taken in by the jiangs, he canonically would not eat or use "too much" food and water because he thought they'd find him a nuisance for "wasting their things" and kick him back out.

now away from just the classism, yu ziyuan is a proud and strong noblewoman in a society that belittles and derides women for everything they do. her strong cultivation doesn't matter. she's victim to the vicious rumors of her husband loving another woman who is strong like her but apparently had a more likeable personality.

it doesn't matter even if jiang fengmian didn't cheat or that wei wuxian is wei changze's son with cangse sanren; yu ziyuan can't bear with the humiliation of herself (and by extension her children) not being "good enough". she's ridiculed for "failing" in that one duty as a wife, mother, and woman.

she lashes out and takes out that anger on everyone present for years, giving her children lasting trauma and also being a key element in how the jiang family and yunmeng jiang sect are effectively wiped out at the hands of the wen clan.

madam jin doesn't even have a name outside of the fact that she's married to jin guangshan. i don't even remember reading anything that indicates if she's a strong or weak cultivator, or what, which in itself proves that to most people, it doesn't matter. she's "just" a woman.

of course she's angry at her husband's affairs and all the bastard children they bring in. but she also can't do anything about them, so she lashes out at the few people she can: servants. non-cultivators, probably. those very same bastard children.

shoutout to meng yao getting shoved down a flight of stairs at age fourteen, because if madam jin tried that move against her husband instead, it would make her lose even more face, which as a noblewoman she'd never do.

and that's not getting into how jiang yanli is consistently sidelined for being physically weak.

that's not getting into how mianmian was actually a good cultivator, but was mocked by everyone around her for trying to stand up for wei wuxian when everyone was turning on him. how everyone scoffed at luo qingyang's words as "just some lovesick woman" who "obviously wants to marry or bed him since he saved her".

luo qingyang is the only one of these characters who HASN'T died. she didn't play society's games like jin guangyao. she didn't dig her heels in confidence of her own abilities like wei wuxian.

she didn't bitterly lash out like yu ziyuan and madam jin. she didn't gently accept it like jiang yanli.

she just LEFT.

she married an ordinary merchant and cultivates separately from mainstream cultivation society, and therein found her own peace and happiness.

mxtx doesn't bother with particularly class conscious or feminist vocabulary to hand-hold readers into understanding these disparities, but that choice highlights them & the deeply entrenched politics of their society even more. i really love it.

[br-disaster]

Nie Mingjue: *is a little unsteady on his feet*

Nie Huaisang, immediately: 🏃🏃

[cattoru]

The Unhinged or whatever that chinese bl show was called

[qinghe-s]

[id: four gifs of nie mingjue from episodes 10, 22, 23, and 32 of the untamed. each shows him from the shoulders up, facing the viewer. end id]

[rhymesswith]

Obsessed with him. 

[momzawa-5]

Hear me out…

Ok. So. In the world of MDZS, sect leaders and their heirs are determined based on lineage following a fairly common order of succession.

Jiang Fengmian dies, it goes to his son.

Nie Mingjue dies, it goes to his brother.

And so on and so forth…

This is also true of the Jin sect, with the caveat that any child born of the sect leader’s blood seems to have a shot at becoming sect leader, not just those born of the sect leader and his wife (Also just realized this applies to the Nie sect, too, considering the Nie brothers have different mothers). Which is how “son of a whore” Jin Guangyao became sect leader, bypassing next-in-the-order-of-succession Jin Ling, who was still a child.

So, because Jin Ling is still a child when Jin Guangyao dies, leadership of the Jin Sect *should* theoretically go to the next adult in the sect leader’s bloodline.

And who would that be?

Mo Xuanyu.

…and that’s the story of how Wei Wuxian got the last laugh and became leader of the Jin sect.

[wangxian-the-zhijis]

The ship:

The shippers:

The anti:

The legendary third wheel:

[itsc]

2022 MDZS/CQL paintings! except for the two square ones (which are on cold press paper), these are all gouache paint on the backs of postcards.