#i think if he thought about it he would be like yeah ofc female cultivators deserve equal rights or whatever but as it stands i just dont

[piosplayhouse]

Also sorry I know I talk about this like every week but whenever I think about mdzs discourse I inevitably think about The Misogyny Discourse™ and - don't get me wrong I love wwx with all of my heart - but I don't think people consider that perhaps mdzs doesn't have many women because it follows wwx who... Just doesn't really talk to women normally LMFAO

[bipirate]

Female characters so often play a mechanical role in MDZS plot before being killed so MXTX can focus on relationships between men she finds way more fascinating. In the book, WQ is here just to do the GC transfer, and she apparently never thought about the ethics of what the other Wens were doing before WWX stumbled on her with JC and then she suddenly decided to risk her and WN’s life (ofc WN survived in the end no matter how improbably, not her) while in CQL, she has a whole arc about slowly 1

the rest + my response are under the cut bc it got kinda long 

deciding to do the right thing and shouldering the resulting burdens mirroring WWX’s and LWJ’s. 

JYL is here only to build WWX’s character as being violent only on other people’s behalf when he punches JXZ or goes berserk after her death, birth a kid (she’s dispatched right after) so MXTX might explore JC, WWX and LWJ’s relationships through him later on and have a weird romance with JZX to move the plot along. Her relationship with her family or absence of cultivation are never explored or explained, and her character arc is just taking everyone’s BS and staying understanding and accommodating and never wanting anything for herself like a good woman should for MXTX. 

To contrast with YZY, the only female character with actual power who very tellingly uses it only to abuse people and ruin her family and sect (plus she’s depicted as hysterical and irrational!), reprising that old misogynist trope that a women outside men's control will ruin everything with her caprices so women shouldn’t be trusted with power. Even such a minor character as madam Mo follows this trope, being depicted as in charge in her family and a pretty terrible person at the same time. 

LQY needs to be saved in the cave despite being supposedly a cultivator (it’s not framed as her needing someone to fight at her side like LWJ needed WWX, but someone to save her) then she needed a public argument about WWX to realize that there is sexism towards women bc she apparently never faced it before as a low status servant?! MXTX, really? And then after being accused of acting irrationally, she irrationally storms out, abandoning the cultivator position she fought hard to reach (in CQL, she was part of the Jin sect so at least refusing to be complicit in Jin’s crimes while in MDZS, she was just a bystander from a no-name sect) and just forgets about WWX, never trying to warn him or help him or anything. 

MXTX can’t have a woman having initiative, which is probably the same reason why XXC never tries to teach A-Qing cultivation so she can protect herself or have a job that isn’t panhandling bc then she wouldn’t be able to die helplessly to fuel man angst, so MXTX said no. Unsurprisingly, madam Lan has no backstory when it would have been such a good character arc for adult LWJ to try to learn the truth about her and come to terms with it, Lan Yi and BSSR are never shown when in CQL they create a parallel with LWJ and WWX and can be read as lesbians if one is inclined (I am). 

And to be clear I like many of those female characters though probably not in their MDZS versions, but I wanted to examine the sexist tropes that MXTX seems so fond of and makes such common use of to show that it wasn't just random coincidences but a choice on her part, and it can’t be blame solely on genre conventions either as there are often women characters with good characterizations and their own arcs in wuxia and xianxia (LoF has plenty!)

(breaks added by me) yeah you’re right, the way mxtx writes women is just appalling. i think the cql team did the best they could with the source material they were given. they gave the women a bit more agency. 

wen qing being introduced earlier did wonders for her character arc, not that she had one in the novel - she’s so one dimensional and unlikable in mdzs! but in cql we see that she only worked with wen ruohan because her little brother and the rest of the dafan wens were being threatened. just that little bit of extra information made her so much more compelling. still it would have been so cool if they’d written it so that wen qing (and jiang yanli) did survive, source material be damned.

i’ve also touched on this before but when i read the novel, i was so surprised at the lack of jiang yanli! jyl is one of the most important people in wwx’s life and she’s barely present. her death in the novel made me feel Nothing. i think it’s absolutely inspired of the cql team to not only introduce wen qing during the cloud recesses lectures arc, but also take jiang yanli along. they build up the yunmeng siblings relationship as early as possible and it pays off. i also love that she is present during the fall of lotus pier in cql. she was absent in the book and we never saw what an impact this had on her. i just cannot understand why mxtx would write her out of these incredibly important moments, only to kill her off later and expect us to feel any kind of emotion about it. it cheapens wwx’s reaction to her death, too. 

you’re absolutely right about the other characters too and i don’t want to write a Whole response to every single one of them, but i do want to talk about mianmian. i’m sad that she didn’t get much better treatment in cql. i would have loved to see her fighting, defending herself instead of needing to be saved. i also really wanted her and lwj to be friends..... i’m pushing the lwj + wlw agenda but like. i really wanted to see the conversation they had right after she left the jin clan. there was Such potential there. i like that they had her come back with her husband and daughter in the future and that she was adamant about teaching her child that the yiling laozu is not a bad man. i’m glad cql placed this reunion with mianmian where they did - it’s not a secret that i Hate the novel epilogue where she reappears, if only because mxtx wrote it so that mianmian’s daughter saw wangxian kissing and got scared of wwx for this reason. as if gay men corrupting little girls was not a dangerous homophobic trope already. 

also from what i’ve seen of the tgcf donghua (i havent read the book), she hasn’t uh. improved wrt writing female characters lmao

[valvntinass-blog]

me ?? late 2 the party ?? ofc ( it’s also be i’m a complete embarrassment & also wanted to attemPT to write smth worthy of reading ) but hey there, demons. it’s me, ya girl, aka shan aka probably the worst ?? anyway i’m chillin in the gmt timezone probs for the rest of my life bc who has the money to move anywhere else these days ?? i’m 19 w she / her pronouns & spend waY too much time on photoshop & instagram so i’ll probably disappear for hRS just to make smth or go cry over some insta model ?? ummm i watch too many tv shows ( s/o to the og joey tribbiani up there ) & am alsO a huge film buff !! ( kinda mad bc apparently the newest transformers is supposed to be the last one like ?? whY end it like that ?? ) anywaY imma stop rambling bc i’m a rambler & am literallY just gonna copy & paste most of my app bc i’m too lazy to write it all out !!

˚✧* ( CINDY KIMBERLY, FEMALE + SHE/HER ) welcome the exuberant valentina morales. this club’s great for twenty year olds. plus, i hear you’re the skux, huh?that’s interesting, since you’re so manipulative and devious. but i guess it makes some sense given you’re coquettish and alluring as well !

BIOGRAPHY ;

    ❛ congratulations, you’ve had a beautiful baby girl ! ❜

    these are the words that francisco & nadya morales would never forget. for years, the power couple of barcelona had been trying for a daughter, after being blessed with a handsome son, alvaro morales. & then by some miracle they had her. a gorgeous, tiny baby with jet black hair & dark brown eyes. her name ? they called her valentina.

    that girl was a sweet child. she had a smile that could make the wind blow & a laugh so contagious that when other hear it, they had to join in, afraid of missing such an beautiful experience. she lived to make people smile, to see them happy & be the one who makes them happy. she loved to pick roses & to smell flowers, be surrounded by nature & love. she was happy.

    her parents were naturally busy, however. her father, being the owner a well-known &successful business, which had been passed down from generation was always travelling to different places, sometimes taking his family with him. whereas her mother was a model who people loved worldwide, so valentina, so small & young was left in the HANDS of her older brother.

    valentina grew close to him. he was like her best friend, he confident. he helped her with her homework & protected her from anyone who would try to do her harm. he loved her, & she loved him, & whenever all the family was together it was complete bliss to her. she couldn’t think of anything she wanted more than this.

    growing up, it was clear to see that valentina had talent. not only were her features soft& pretty, much like her mother’s, but she had a love for the camera & the camera had a love for her. she wasn’t quite sure what career she wanted, however her mother did. but as a child, growing up in spain & knowing little english, how could you ever do something with that ?

    she did, though. she was taken to small photoshoots at home to kick start her career, &for a relatively shy & timid six year old, this was scary yet oddly exciting. needless to say, valentina loved it. but she loved something else, too. at school, they did plenty of plays &productions which valetina threw herself into. she loved it. she loved acting & singing &dancing, almost as much as she did modelling. then she knew what she wanted to be — she wanted to be a model, but she also wanted to be an actress.

    she was comfortable. she loved her life & wouldn’t change a thing. but then her parents dropped the bomb that they were moving & val felt her dreams shatter into a million pieces. moving to america was hard at first. she barely knew any english & the city was intimidating. but as she lived on & met the tempest, the hellion, & the quixotic, things started to even out & as time when by she was pretty much in the same place she was before she moved.

( TRIGGERS ; CAR ACCIDENT, DEATH )     but then came that night. when the crash happened, her heart broke. she never even got to say goodbye to her brother which just made her hurt more. it made her nights restless ; she couldn’t close her eyes without seeing it so she seeked comfort in other people. she slept around, not really thinking about what people would call her. she needed the distraction, & distracting it was. her parents disagreed but she ignored them. she learned to separate her emotions from her thoughts so she became devious, flirtatious, poisonous. anything to forget about the empty feeling in her chest.

    over the years, val has altered incredibly & now works as model for img models. she goes to college, however recent opportunities have made it so she hardly has time for it any more & so tends to cut class to work on her acting career. she tries her best to work her schedule around her friends as well as her arrangements for the night time. never the same person, is a rule she’s set for herself. she’s scared of attachment & anything that could mess with her feelings. god help everyone if that happens.

PERSONALITY ;

val has two sides to her. there’s the sweet side, which can throw people off when they experience her devil side. she’s been described before as a ’ quiet genius ’, meaning that she can seem all cute & innocent but in the meantime is probably planning your downfall. she’s incredibly destructive, reason being why she doesn’t believe in romance or love so her interest in the tempest is quite confusing &annoying for her. but val can be very possessive & jealous, so if she ever found out about the quixotic’s feelings she’d probably flash a smile but secretly would be thinking of all the ways she can destroy them. even though they’re one of her best friends & val is incredibly loyal, nobody gets in the way of what she wants. val can be very withdrawn, however, which would probably be an issue for the hellionbecause she’d rather be out sleeping with someone than she would talk about her issues.

ENTJ ; as an ENTJ, val is very leader-like. she focuses on the most efficient &organized means of performing a task. this quality, along with ger goal orientation, often makes val superior leader, both realistic & visionary in implementing a long-term plan. val tends to be fiercely independent in her decision making, having a strong will that insulates them against external influence. generally highly competent, val can analyze & structure the world around her in a logical & rational way. due to this straightforward way of thinking, val tends to have the greatest difficulty of all the types in applying subjective considerations & emotional values into the decision-making process. as an ENTJ she often excels in business &other areas that require systems analysis, original thinking, & an economically savvy mind. she is a dynamic & pragmatic problem solvers. she tends to have a high degree of confidence in her own abilities, making her assertive & outspoken. In her dealings with others, she is generally outgoing, charismatic, fair-minded, unaffected by conflict or criticism. however, these qualities can make her appear arrogant, insensitive, & confrontational. she can overwhelm others with her energy& desires to order the world according to her own vision. as a result, she may seem intimidating, hasty, & controlling. she tends to cultivate her personal power. she often ends up taking charge of a situation that seems ( to their mind, at least )to be out of control, or that can otherwise be improved upon & strengthened. she strivea to learn new things, which helps her become a resourceful problem-solver. however, since she relies on provable facts, she may find subjective issues pointless. she appears to take a tough approach to emotional or personal issues,& so can be viewed as aloof & insensitive. in situations requiring feeling & value judgments, she is well served to seek the advice of a trusted feeling type. when striving toward a goal, she often puts personal needs aside until the work is done ( & may expect others to do the same ). for this reason, she may be considered self-sacrificing by some, but ’ cold & heartless ’ by others, especially those who prefer feeling.

HOW VAL FEELS ABOUT BEING A MEMBER OF THE EXUBERANT CLUB ;val is very prideful, so being a member of one of the most affluent clubs in new york really does make her hold her head a little higher. she’s already boastful, but to have this privilege is just as good as winning an oscar to her. she loves the privacy & the inclusivity of the place, meaning that she finds herself feeling very comfortable & rewarded.

HEADCANONS ;

001 ; valentina is more known for her talent in modeling & acting, but what many people don’t know is that val loves to dance. since she was a child, whenever a song came on the radio she would be moving whatever she could in the back-seat of the car & one time, when she & her brother went to the mall her favourite song came through the speakers & she just dropped what she was doing & started dancing. she’s an avid fan of music & so can dance to any song, especially spanish songs because that’s a part of her heritage & they’re generally good for dancing.

002 ; val is a very dedicated vegetarian. she says it’s to aid her diet ( because god-forbid if anyone thought she cared about anything for one second ) but in truth it’s because she’s highkey against animal cruelty & won’t eat something that another creature has died for. to be honest, she has a huge love for animals & is the ambassador of a cause that’s fighting against animal cruelty, & although her reasons are genuine she tells her peers that it’s just for the promotion. yeah, right.

003 ; she absolutely loves roses, specifically white ones. whereas people are forced to believe it’s just because of the aesthetic — after all, everything val does is for the aesthetic — the reason is actually deeper than that. when she was little, her family went to a rose garden & her brother told her to pick her favourite rose. she spotted a pristine white one, the most beautiful thing she’d ever seen & he picked it for her to take home. the rose lasted a good couple of weeks before it died, leaving val feeling devastated. she’s never told anyone that story in fear they’ll see through her cold mask.

004 ; she’s an exquisite baker. before moving to america, she used to visited this bakery on the weekly. her parents were good friends with the bakery owner & so when val wanted to learn how to bake something new, she’d always go there &they’d teach her all their tricks. val likes to bake for her friends her friends on the daily yet claims that it’s just to pass the time rather than a genuine hobby, but if you go to her place you can guarantee that there’s always cookies on the table.

005 ; is still very connected to her life in barcelona. she visits her friends & family there as often as she can & loves indulging in her hispanic lifestyle. although spanish is one of her main languages, she’s fluent in many others & won’t hesitate in using them to her advantage should the opportunity arise. she’s very culturally orientated & still favours her old life, however she claims to love america more than anything & that clouding her emotions is the best thing she ever did.