#no one has it easy in mdzs

[tbgkaru-woh]

Smash or Pass 

[admirableadmiranda]

You know what? I think people forget that Wen Qing is realistically probably in her early to mid twenties at the start of the sunshot campaign.

Like I see a lot of people make her Wei Wuxian’s age or just one to two years older, but she’s a seasoned doctor running a supervisory camp and she calls Jiang Cheng and Wei Wuxian brats and bosses Wen Ning around and suddenly this all makes a lot more sense to me if she’s actually twenty five at the time and they’re seventeen.

It certainly gives her the time to build up the reputation and skill set that she has in canon without begging the question of how she’s had the time to train as a cultivator and a doctor and deal with Wen Ruohan on top of it.

[intertexts-moving]

read this au last night & ive been thinking abt it all day. also its a great excuse for me to daydream about ae86s.

[paran0rmality]

Slowly getting better at making robes!! My sewing machine is a picky bitch so this took a while (had the wrong type of thread ig??? Idk I swapped it out for a different color and it worked perfect lmao)

But here's the newest non-cosplay one made out of an old flat (queen size) bedsheet lmao

[takonxmz]

Nie Huaisang hadn’t moved out of the house to find a hopeless crush and a new appreciation for breakfast cuisine. But then, does anybody?

OR

In which Nie Huaisang is thirsty, Jiang Cheng is a good neighbour, and Wei Wuxian is a gremlin.

Podfic of “over easy (I'm not playing hard to get)” by @dytabytes is up! Listen on ao3 here: https://archiveofourown.org/works/45876769

(you can also rt the podfic here)

[suibiansubs]

Announcing: The Closure of Suibian Subs

It's never truly easy to make these type of announcements... but what would I know, I've never had to make one like this before:

I am announcing the permanent closure of Suibian Subs. The public discord server and translation work will cease.

As for our downloads, we are still deciding whether to offer them on our tumblr - which will stay open - or if there is a better solution going forward.

Please note that this doesn't mean everyone should race to upload MDZS audio drama to Youtube!! We still do not appreciate our wishes being broken.

However, if you have a friend who's downloaded the audio drama, you can have them share with you privately either online or in person. Do not upload it for the public anywhere.

Treasure Chest subs is currently working on MDZS audio drama subs. Please find their information to get access to their downloads, and respect their rules.

Thank you everyone for your kind words and support these 6-7 years.

If you're truly wondering, this closing is not about the server hack. It's 10% server hack and 90% member interest. The server being hacked is what really brought things into perspective for us. That is:

It's just time.

A little note from kittykat2010 down below:

From kittykat2010:

It's kind of hard to believe this all happened because I was impatient. LOL

I was impatient and decided to try MTL translating the MDZS audio drama, myself. We all know how well that would've worked. Luckily, the first person to contact me was iarrod before I released anything

"Since 2018, Suibian Subs has been providing quality subtitles, especially known for subtitling the MDZS audio drama, for fans to enjoy worldwide."

I never really thought it would be of such significance to hundreds of people. It was simply a passion project between iarrod and I. Then we added a bunch of other members: Gwyn, askcj1, Yen, and several more that have left over the years... and the rest is history.

Yes, people come and go, life changes, they need to take a break, then a "break" turns into leaving. Sometimes personalities clash and drama ensues. And the group either recovers from these types of changes or struggles to come back to its full glory.

I will certainly miss the camaraderie among us, the random chats, the streams, etc. It was all a fun time in my life that I will look back on and cherish.

Thank you especially to all of the team members, translators and subbing team, for sticking around, enjoying the good times and not-so-good times. Thank you iarrod for helping me out when I was so damn impatient - ha!.

Thank you to those members who have left for your work and dedication to the server.

Thank you fans!!!

Those who have donated (when we had donations for the MDZS audio drama team), those who have thanked us for our work, and those who haven't. Those who have told everyone that the MDZS audio drama is the best adaption of the novel and the best/only place to watch is through Suibian Subs.

Again, thank you everyone. Suibian Subs and its fans will truly be missed.

[shanastoryteller]

HAPPY GALANTINE’S SHANA

I would love some Momma Hera or anything MDZS. THANK YOU. ❤️❤️❤️❤️

a continuation of 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

 Xichen isn't in his room.

"Told you," Wei Wuxian says. "Bet you a bottle of wine he's in Da-ge's."

"Do I look like a fool to you?" Nie Huaisang demands.

Wei Wuxian whistles. "We'd need a lot more alcohol and maybe a flow chart to answer that question."

Nie Huaisang hits him with his fan.

Lan Wangji takes a deep, calming breath. There are plenty of reasonable explanations for why his brother is out of his room after curfew that don’t involve Nie Mingjue.

He can’t think of any, currently, but that’s because the two of them slap fighting each other behind him.

“Enough,” he snaps. He can’t turn them over to the one duty senior disciple because they’re clan heirs and any punishment could have political implications, which means Xichen or Uncle need to be the ones to issue them. But Xichen isn’t here and Uncle won’t be pleased to be woken up over a couple tardy disciples. The issue of the wards is concerning, but they’d been back in place when he’d gone to check, and there’s no real reason it can’t wait to morning. “Go to your dormitory. I’ll report your actions to my uncle in the morning.”

Xichen would have been more lenient, but he thinks they could benefit from a strict punishment.

“Why don’t you escort us there?” Wei Wuxian asks with a smile that makes Lan Wangji want to lean away from him or maybe lean cl – no, definitely away. “This place is so big. You don’t want me getting lost, do you?”

The paths are rather easy to follow, even at night. They hadn’t seemed to have any trouble getting here in the first place.

Nie Huaisang retches. “Seriously? First Da-ge and now you? What is it about the Lans?” He pauses, looking Lan Wangji up and down in a way that he’s not totally certain he’s comfortable with. “Okay, I mean, I suppose I see the appeal, but still.”

Wei Wuxian reaches out to punch Nie Huaisang in the side without looking at him. “Shut up.”

“Maybe we should get more alcohol,” he continues, not listening. “I think I’m going to need it.”

Lan Wangji leaves them still bickering.

~

The next morning Nie Huaisang wails all throughout his punishment. It’s not even that bad – he doesn’t even have to do a handstand, just copy rules of punctuality and prohibition.

Wei Wuxian, on account of meddling with the wards (Xichen had been impressed but Uncle hadn’t been), has to a handstand for several hours in the courtyard.

Doing it shirtless seems unnecessary.

Winking at him every time he walks by also seems unnecessary.

“Wow,” Xichen says, the time he’s unfortunately there to witness this behavior. “Are you sure he’s adopted?”

“Shut up,” Nie Mingjue grumbles.

Xichen listens about as well as Nie Huaisang had. Lan Wangji can’t mind, because he shouldn’t be saying that to him anyway. “Because I remember you at a certain age-”

Nie Mingjue draws his sword and Xichen is laughing as he mirrors him, the two of the sparring across the courtyard.

Lan Wangji is glad that Xichen has a friend.

He just wishes him visiting wasn’t necessitated by Wei Wuxian and Nie Huaisang making a mess of everything as quickly as possible.

[thedrunknextdoor]

bitches be like “lwj put wwx above his own morality, he’s so mean to jc, he didnt even help lxc post-jgy reveal, him and wwx are SO shamless and disrespectful” and it’s like. seriously. who are you, lqr???

you’re going to paint lan wanji lan zhan our light-bearing lord as less morally upright??? as if mdzs didn’t spend the whole novel going “BTW not everything is black and white also look at LITERALLY EVERYONE being awful while the few who try to speak up r ignored”

As if lxc, in his pacifism, didnt contribute to the treatment of the wen remnants and their slaughter thereafter. as if he didnt call wwx his brothers “biggest mistake” even though that biggest mistake is the reason lsz is even alive. (dont get me fcking started on lsz having to carry the name of the people who helped kill his family)

and its like. lan zhans whole character arc is him coming to terms with the moral failings of his sect. he wasn’t so blinded by love for wwx that he lost all sense of morality. his love for wwx gave him the COURAGE to stand up for wwx and by extension a-yuan DESPITE his sect turning the other way.

and to paint wangxian as selfish, uncaring assholes as if they arent one of the ones who suffered the most because of others failings. ofc lan zhan finds it hard to care for everyone. bc he’s seen which way the wind blows when it comes to what is right and what is easy.

that’s not to say he doesnt care about anyone but wwx. the juniors and the general public clearly respect him and that is bc lwj respects them in turn. he taught the next generation of lans to think for themselves. he respects those who learn from their mistakes. like he did. like wwx does. like everyone else from their generation fails to do.

Gusu Lan sect is lwj home. But they are not above HIS morals. lwj is one of the ONLY characters to consistently do what is right time and time again in the face of adversity and to call him disrespectful is so not supported by the text.

and ofc he hates jc. that man was actively antagonistic to wwx at every turn and would have killed a-yuan without a second thought. he was consistently cruel, no matter his reasons. ofc hes not going to be holding lxc hand after the jgy debacle or prostrating for his uncle when he disregards wwx.

lwj KNOWS what he has done and what he has not. he is not ignorant or blind or letting wwx “walk all over him” or whatever the fck antis believe. he is a man who spent 13 years GRIEVING and trying his best to uphold the ideals of righteousness the rest of the cultivation world has conveniently forgotten about. he finally has the love of his life back. who r YOU to paint him as selfish. wtf.

[tavina-writes]

MDZS Society! aka: there's a lot less killing than you'd expect

This follows from this post and also the recent translations of MXTX’s most recent interview (which I can now no longer bother to find bc this has been sitting in drafts for like, siiiix months? More? Oh god anyway.) which reminded me about my feelings regarding MDZS society and how different it is from the martial societies we see depicted in typical modern wuxia. (Small disclaimer, I am a wuxia genre fiend and I love like, thinking about fictional societies so this is like, “AHA! You’ve unlocked my trap card!”) 

For the purposes of this, I’m going to be looking at MDZS/CQL’s depiction of the jianghu (which I think is fairly similar! I don’t actually think the show writers made CQL’s jianghu/martial society more genre typical than it was in the book) and comparing that with modern classic wuxia (mostly Jin Yong and Gu Long works.) For this comparison, I’ll be looking at a Jin Yong book — Legend of the Condor Heroes (which is widely considered the starting point of modern wuxia as a genre) — and one Gu Long book — Dagger Li/Sentimental Swordsman, Ruthless Sword (widely considered his most popular work) — and seeing how their societies differ from MDZS society. 

This will likely come in two parts because this one was already getting long, and I don’t think we can fit “how often does nobility exist in a typical jianghu and what do bloodline sects look like normally versus what they look like in MDZS” in this post along with the main topic of “is MDZS society a particularly physically violent place?” 

This post discusses how often cultivators are socially expected to kill people. Like, actual living human beings instead of, say, monsters or ghosts which have been categorized differently than like, human beings. 

EDIT: I forgot to talk about Dagger Li but this was already much too long sorry. Feel free to hmu for more thoughts though.

Now, it might be easy to think that cultivators killing actual people is a really common thing in MDZS/CQL universe! After all, they do have martial arts training and one of the prominent things about the first life is just how many people die both in the Sunshot Campaign and the fallout afterwards. However, I would argue that a lot of the traumas and related issues and reactions that happen in MDZS happen because cultivators are, by training and education, not actually prepared for killing actual living breathing human beings! (And also that the morality of this world prevents it for the most part) 

Now, we do actually get a pretty good window into what the typical training is like for young cultivators in MDZS, because we get a fairly well defined schoolhouse scene where LQR is asking them questions about "how do you tell the difference between various different problems we have to solve?" and "how do you go about fixing this problem?" and none of those include the moral quandary of "if I, a young cultivator out in the Jianghu, see a guy who is doing something I morally disagree with, under what circumstances do I beat him up and/or kill him." This does not appear to enter the curriculum at any point, leading me to believe that the morally correct number of people not like, ghosts or ghouls or fierce corpses, a regular average MDZS cultivator is supposed to have killed is approximately 0.

Which. Is a thing you get in a normal martial arts wuxia jianghu. There is generally the threat of "oh yeah this that or the other faction will be doing shitty things and thereby try to murder you." Instead, in MDZS/CQL most of the heirs of sects are...attending school together. Doing teenage things like partying and gossiping and attending classes.

And sure yes, there was a case of WWX and JZX trying to beat each other up. But the sects did sure let their kids stay at Lan summer camp for months on end (sometimes repeatedly, see NHS) without fearing for their lives or that anyone would steal another sect's techniques or otherwise causing real havoc or intersect warfare etc.

Which is infeasible in any other sort of Jianghu situation. For example, contrast this scenario with this scene from LOCH where Guo Jing's shifus are giving him advice since he is newly 17 and about to set out by himself into the great big world:

Guo Jing therefore bid farewell to his teachers. They had witnessed his battle against the Four Demons of the Yellow River, and were not too greatly worried. The young man had proved that he knew how to use the skills that they taught him. Therefore they let him leave alone. On one hand, the meeting of outlaws in Yanjing worried them greatly, so that they could not ignore it; and on the other hand, a youngster always had to travel the jianghu alone, in order to learn lessons that no teacher could pass on. At the moment of parting, each made their last recommendations. As usual when the Six spoke after one another, Nan Xiren was the last one to express himself. "If you cannot defeat the enemy," he said. "Flee!" He knew that given Guo Jing's dogged character, he would prefer to die rather than to surrender, if he met a master, he would certainly fight to the bitter end, even at the risk of death. That was the reason Nan Xiren gave him this common sense warning. " Martial arts have no limits," added Zhu Cong. " As the proverb says, 'For every peak there is one yet higher', so for every man there is one stronger. Whatever your power, you will always one day meet a foe stronger than you. A true man knows to retreat when necessary, when facing grave danger, it is necessary to contain one's impatience and anger. This what is meant by the adage, « If one preserves the earth and its forests, one does not fear to lack firewood ». It is not therefore not cowardly to take good advice! When the enemy is too numerous and that you cannot face them there, it is especially necessary to avoid being too reckless. Keep in mind Fourth Shifu's advice!"

Does this seem like the sort of advice that any Young MDZS Cultivator would get? "You're a good kid, but when you go out into the world, there will be people who straight up want you dead even though they met you 15 minutes ago, you cannot persist in fighting with these people because they will want you dead and you are a baby cultivator who needs to learn to run away when shit gets rough or you will be dead."

And again I come back to how MDZS cultivators are more like occupational ghostbusters because this really does inform how their society functions and runs and how everyone reacts so badly to the Sunshot Campaign beginning and its aftermaths and possibly explains how JGS could get his way after Sunshot.

Because what happens when you get a society that does train heavily in martial arts and have Able To Kill Real People Weapons who spends most of their time solving very black and white situations of "okay is this ghost whose eating people's livers good or bad? y/n?" and a clear hierarchy of "how do we get rid of the ghost eating people's livers in town x" instead of say "is it morally correct to kill this group of bandits who's been threatening the town" or "is it morally correct to kill this shitty businessman who's been holding people hostage and threatening to hack off their limbs" you have a reduced level of philosophical musing on like, "what is the purpose of martial arts, which is designed to kill people and what do I use martial arts for?" and "under what circumstances and situations would I personally find it morally correct to kill a man?" Which are all questions that Wuxia coming of age stories typically have, and I think MDZS does have, but expressed differently.

Again, it appears that the number of Real Live Human Beings that it is morally acceptable to have stabbed in your life is approximately 0 in this universe, and the expectation that you, personally, might have to fend off people trying to stab you over brunch is also approximately 0.

This also leads to a situation where like, questions of vengeance have very difficult escape hatches! If your parents are murdered on the job by an evil rampaging ghost, this is very sad and tragic and now you're an orphan and of course that's not good, but this is a occupational job hazard, not like, "Yeah Joe Bob from the sect down the street murdered my dad because #Reasons~, and now it's my legacy to grow up to murder Job Bob from the sect down the street to avenge my dad."

(I have a whole essay about how this pertains to both of the Nie Brothers, and how it pertains to JGY and also Jin Ling, and how this seems to routinely fuck people up in MDZS in a very specific way we don't typically see in other wuxias, but this is getting SO long as it is).

But yeah "the socially acceptable number of real living people (instead of ghosts or demons or fierce corpses or whatever) to have killed in your lifetime as a cultivator is approximately 0" means that the Sunshot Generation gets really really fucked up by all of this "killing real people" they did.

Which! might be why JFM was so slow to move on "yeah the Wen are threatening to kill your heirs." <- socially inconceivable behavior. Why society in general is so shocked by Xue Yang and the murder of the Chang <- which would be bad normally but not quite like this. And why no one did anything specific about JGS even if they felt he wasn't entirely correct. What are they going to threaten him with? Death???? A trial of his peers? Social Shunning??? Public shame???

"But Tav how does this relate to CQL!Su She's morality?" I hear you ask. Well you see, the question of "he should've been ready to die for his sect!" is utterly baffling in a society where nobody is expected to be ready to die for their sect on a regular basis because the idea that you should be ready for someone trying to stab you before brunch is utterly nonsensical in a world where most people expect that the baseline number of murders a cultivator does in their lifetimes is 0. That's the world he lives in.

On this regard CQL!Su She is utterly blameless. Nobody handed him a rulebook or expectations sheet for "the sect down the street will try to kill you" nor SHOULD they expect he'd be ready to die at a drop of a hat when no part of the education or social expectations include "ready to die for your sect because it's routine for people to try to kill you."

If you don't even expect to be stabbed and possibly die at a discussion conference where there are lots of cultivators from many sects why on EARTH would you expect to be facing down death in your own home when there's. cultivators here to kill you, this situation is so out of left field?

[scrivenger-grimgar]

au of an au for mdzs where canon plays out exactly as it was supposed to except

wwx became a calamity after dying and cared for his coven of ghosts in yiling before mxy summoned him for revenge.

he still elopes with lwj after solving the corpse question

supreme ghosts have a similar ability to gods taking deputies, except since they're not sharing immortality they can have a lot more of them

wwx's "deputies" are (in order) jiang cheng, the wen remnants, luo qingyang, nie huaisang, mo xuanyu, jin ling, lan jingyi, ouyang zhizhen, lan sizhui, and lan wangji.

being a calamity's "deputy" means that you are soul bonded to them, with a kind of preternatural sense of the wellbeing of the entire coven.

one of the heavenly officials decides to fuck around with time, and only other heavenly officials were supposed to remember, except extremely strong ghosts and their covens also remember because there are TWO gods married to calamities, and calamities are weirdly cooperative with each other (hc, hx, wwx, & gL discuss trade agreements over tea and artistic process over alcohol).

thus like 75 people are now in the past.

wwx's child body cant stand the power his soul has and just kinda crumbles under the weight. thats mostly fine tho cause he can shapeshift.

of course he immediately comes up with a dastardly plan to inflict as much chaos onto the sects as possible while also protecting his loved ones at the same time. he gets in contact with the wen remnants (bigger and there's more of them) and slowly moves them over to yiling while he builds places for them to live on the mountain, and then offers the people of yiling a very good deal:

"we'll deal with all your ghost problems for free, and in exchange we get discounts on food, and you tell everyone who comes asking that the Yiling Wei sect has been here the entire time."

its almost too easy to set up, too. they forge some trade agreements and other documents to place in the other sects' files, waiting to be found, with ease, bc he knows what the filing for the jiang, lan, wen, and nie looks like, and part of the story is that the jin offended them so badly that they just stopped doing business with them altogether and also tend to actively hate them with few exceptions.

meanwhile, huaisang, qingyang, and wangji will reference the Yiling Wei and act like this is something everyone knows about, and jiang cheng catches on and starts doing the same.

wwx's plan is to drive them all insane by appearing out of nowhere and acting like he's been there the entire time. make them question reality.

wen popo, at a discussion conference: i'll be standing in for my grandson so he can participate in the games

jiang fengmian, initiating polite conversation: your grandson? what happened to your son?

wen popo, internally cackling: fengmian! are you so quick to discard changze like this?! for shame!!

jiang fengmian, who has never met this lady: what

wen popo: you know i trusted him when he said he wanted to stand by his sworn brother's side but if this is how you treat his memory after he was so unwaveringly loyal to you, only ever leaving for Cangse, the love of his life, then i'll have to have you stricken from the legacy registry!

wen popo, with unfaltering confidence: good evening wen-zhongzhu

wen ruohan, who has incurable face blindness: well met Wei-zhongzhu (do i know her???)

nie mingjue is the only one who's taking any of this well and thats solely because his brother has been spoon feeding him Yiling Wei propaganda for 13 years. lan xichen has a crisis because his baby brother eloped with a clan leader he met thrice and they're having a spring wedding.

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Bestie Deficiency

[First] Prev <–-> Next

[tbgkaru-woh]

hi! i was just wondering what it is specifically that you dislike about wangxian? i'm kind of intrigued, because while i get how someone could find them boring, i've never really considered anything about their dynamic (and as you mentioned in response to a previous anon, their confession scene) particularly off putting. no pressure to answer this, and this is in no way hate towards you i'm just genuinely curious <3 (i love your art by the way it's gorgeous)

Thank you for the compliment! ♥ This is gonna get ranty so I will hide it below read more as not everyone has to deal with reading this, so proceed with caution :'D

Wangxian is the weakest WWX dynamic. On god, even if I'm not fond of Yanli, they have very loving relationship where they are protective of each other and gentle with each other in a harsh world. I don't ship WWX/JC but their story and complicated love of someone you grow up with and care for deeply but clash constantly with is more interesting than anything wangxian ever had. Nie Huaisang and Wei Wuxian clicked together so naturally, they are chaotic and are similiarly not too interested in being up to rules. Jin Zixuan and WWX had a potential of going from enemies to partners in crime, to become family and have each other's backs but JZX was cut short and WWX never really cared afterwards either. WWX with the wens took time to build up but his YLLZ farmer era was one of the best WWX's in the story. Damn, even Lan Xichen who's always amused with WWX's temperament and secretly has a drink with wwx and is altogether looser with the rules while still being lawful matches with him way more than LWJ where there's... nothing. They were smashed together for convenience and we were suppossed to just go with it cause they are the two main characters. LWJ feels like he was just made so WWX has a "hot stoic top" to fuck him and the rest of the characters are actually build with the story and therefore feel more natural

Wangxian don't feel like they are in love, not in the way the fans make them out to be into some romantic picture perfect angsty deserved lovestory. LWJ's personal space is constantly disrespected, he's punished constantly for WWX's mistakes, he constantly needs to be the one to adjust to how WWX is instead of the other way around and after all that, LWJ doesn't really /know/ WWX so his attraction feels very idealized. WWX is the bad boy that goes against the rules and LWJ wishes he could be that (or with that) but it's almost a childish infatuation from their Gusu days that never evolved into something more mature. And WWX? I can't see how he'd like LWJ as anything more than in a physical sense. Even their obnoxious "Back then I wanted to sleep with you" confession scene is purely physical. He doesn't really know LWJ or respects him, LWJ is just a familiar face in a world that is against WWX and he's a hot body that likes him. LWJ is an easy score in a way, he's a safe option. And it'd be SO interesting if they went into that, but instead it's played like the only true love (dont forget, they are meant to be as the ONLY gay pairing in MDZS which I find insane when everyone else has more chemistry and in the end gets shat on so wangxian can fuck in a bush. I mean, LWJ leaves LXC to be depressed and alone after everything LXC stands for and did? Fucking ridiculous.)

It tries to "subvert" tropes but ends up being more stereotypical than anything. WWX was almost meant as this jock-y rebellious hotshot but instead we got a quirky twink, early 2000s shonen protagonist and every yaoi's Uke I've been seeing since like 2008. Are they suppossed to be different because the "stoic white-coded" one is not the bottom? Is the bar this low? If anything, this ornament top is the most usual top, let's be real, LWJ barely has personality or growth or focus, he's there to fuck WWX.

This is a petty reason but MXTX's "wangxian is the only gay couple" everyone else being implied straight as if to highlight just how real their love is that they are gay in time period where it's frowned upon, even though Yi City and 3zun combinations had more chemistry than anyone is. Annoying. And so is the "Don't ship them with anyone else and don't switch their dynamics" that fuels some of the most obnoxious people in the fandom to go after fanwork creators that do/like things differently.

All in all Wangxian is THE face of danmei, they are the most known even outside of danmei circles and they are extremely mediocry written for that. I mean, fuck, you put straight couple in their place and I guarantee no one would like it, it has the depth of a high school hormone-riddled couple who have different classes and "only" get to see each other during breaks and make out during lunch with others at the table, idk it's so fucking annoying to me when I know there were better options, when WWX had so many interesting dynamics that got shat on in favor of bland ass ship and I'm tired of having to like it/tolerate it just because it's gay.

Thank you for coming to my ted talk, this was extremely healing 🤣

[thatswhatsushesaid]

nobody has to like su minshan—my guy admittedly does not make it easy to like him—but i am endlessly baffled by the sheer number of mdzs fans who actively hate him.

i have to assume this hatred comes from a place of envy, because sms is the one who cursed the absolute shit out of jin zixun, and that’s something none of us will ever get to do.

[winepresswrath]

hi! i always love your MDZS/CQL takes; can i ask what are the questions you think CQL is asking, as compared to MDZS?

I haven't actually revisited either canon in ages, which is making me nervous. what questions the novel is interested in can be pretty contentious all on its own! @mikkeneko has an excellent answer in the notes here which I reccomend to everyone. My own thoughts are honestly pretty scattered- I keep on deleting things and going hm, that's not quite right.

So, for the obvious-to-me example, people reasonably zero in on the creation of innocent doctors/radish farmers who Wen Ruohan is holding hostage. In CQL it's easy to infer that Wen Qing and Wen Ning are maybe the only cultivators and almost certainly the only combatants among the Wen remnants, and their status is much more ambiguous in the novel, which I personally think is asking, essentially, "and so what? were they wrong to run, when they had a chance? Do they deserve what Jin Guangshan will do to them if they go back? Aren't they just people, actually?" Whereas the question that CQL is asking is more to the effect of "What does Wen Qing owe these people, when she is their only defence? What is she entitled to do to save them, at other people's expense? If she fucks up that moral calculus, what then? Does it matter if she's personally fond of some of the outsiders who are going to get hurt? If one of them saved her brother? Later, this question will flip to what Wei Wuxian and Jiang Cheng, and the parallel to Jiang Cheng's situation in particular is, I think, genuinely pretty fun. You're giving up the Wen as soldiers who've laid down their arms in exchange for Wen Qing also grappling with leadership and the question of how many horrors she can stand to look the other way on to protect her own people. one reason I keep deleting so much is that a lot cql's changes were motivated at least in part by censorship, which I think we mostly share a general and justified distaste for! but I also think that within the bounds of that censorship the creative team put a lot of work into actually doing something interesting with those changes. Or, for another example- nieyao! There's a much greater emphasis on the nmj-jgy relationship, it's unambiguously very close and they are clearly extremely important to one another, and I think that's because the cql team has a lot to say about love, trust, power, and the ways those things interact, and that reflects back on all of the other relationships in play, including Wangxian. Almost every time, when CQL chooses change a relationship they make the characters in question closer- that's true for Jiang Cheng and Lan Wangji, for Wen Qing and the Yunmeng contingent, for Zixuan and Mianmian, and Huaisang and Meng Yao. It's even true for Lan Wangji and Wei Wuxian, who have a close and trusting relationship in first life! CQL puts a much greater emphasis on "all right, so you care, what next?" How do you choose someone and then choose to be good to them? What if there's a massive power disparity between you? What if you seriously disagree about your priorities and morals? How do you trust someone who's betrayed you? When is it a stupid choice to trust at all? How do you have faith that you know someone well enough for that trust to be meaningful?

for legal reasons i would like to specify that it's not that mdzs isn't interested in these problems. i do remember wangxian's literal trust fall. cql is asking these questions all the time about everyone. also for legal purposes i'm not suggesting that cql lwj and jc love each other. but! they establish a three month wartime partnership looking for wwx and then jc immediately drops him on wwx's say-so despite apparently having a positive enough opinion of him to tell wwx he thinks they should make up twice. lan wangji will later tell wwx he thinks he should loop jc in on the second flautist! these are people trying to navigate some kind of relationship/shared interest/community, as opposed to a hateful void. cql wants to say hey, how do you go about this? while I'm here and rambling cql also puts a lot of emphasis on wwx's connection to yunmeng and changes things up so instead of feeling alienated right before he leaves our last glimpse of him there is happily picking lotuses and playing with a kid! in both stories the narrative is asking who do you protect? who do you leave behind? can you ever get it back? but the angles are very different.

[svsss-fanon-exposed]

just wanted to say thank you so much for this wonderful blog!! i enjoy it a lot and feel like i’m learning a lot from it. it seems to me that out of the three mxtx books, that sv is the one with the most prevalent fanon attached to it - or maybe the one with the most fanon confused for canon. i wonder if this is because of the nature of the text as a kind of au of pidw- there’s sort of more than one canon in text, and due to shen yuan’s relationship to the original book, and his narrative POV, maybe people kind of take on this more meta-textual approach to sv itself as a novel

You're very welcome! All I really want out of this blog is to learn things & also to share things with others to learn too!

While I won't necessarily say that SV has the most fanon of the three novels, since I'm not overly active in MDZS/TGCF fandoms, what you say does make sense. Because, even in SVSSS itself, we also are dealing with Shen Yuan's fanon the whole time! And as we find out through the novel that SY's original ideas of PIDW's background weren't all correct, then it's easy to wonder if there are also other things to blame on SY's PIDW fanon (such as the argument in real-world fandom as to whether SJ abused disciples other than LBH), or on his unreliable narration in SV canon (something like, were the three daoist nuns actually interested in LBH, or were they actually blushing upon seeing him after having read Regret of Chunshan and the like?).

Since a major idea in SV itself is that Shen Yuan as the reader didn't know everything about PIDW, it creates a situation that is so very ripe for speculation among fandom-- and of course, when there are different kinds of ideas, some of them will take off more than others based on who relates to them and in what way.

That, aside from the multiple timelines in the novel itself, can make it very easy for fanon to become so common that it gets mistaken for being canon.

And, of course, the fact that even with all the worldbuilding that does exist in SVSSS, there is still so much that hasn't been explained or gone into-- so of course, in transformative works, fans will have to come up with their own explanations.

[fateandloveentwined]

antithetical couplets

chinese couplets for tgcf/mdzs/svsss/2ha in that order (elaboration below):

仙花垂怜，川城倾谢

陈情一曲，忘羡无羁

秋霜垣断，洛水河绵

玉衡微晚墨夜燃，棠雨渐宁苍生渡。

elaboration

tgcf : huacheng x xielian

仙花垂怜，川城倾谢

xiānhuā chuílián, chuān chéng qīng xiè

Heavenly flowers empathise and shed mercy; entire rivers and cities bow down in gratitude.

mdzs : lwj x wwx

陈情一曲，忘羡无羁

chénqíng yī qū, wàngxiàn wú jī

I lay out my resentments and play a piece on Chenqing; I forget my covetings of the world and go out into the wild, untamed.

svsss : lbh x sqq

秋霜垣断，洛水河绵

qiūshuāng yuán duàn, luòshuǐ hé mián

In the autumn frost the walls fall down; in the Luo River the waters flow, unabating.

2ha : mo ran x cwn

玉衡微晚墨夜燃，棠雨渐宁苍生渡。

yùhéng wēi wǎn mòyè rán, tángyǔ jiàn níng cāngshēng dù

The Yuheng star, Alioth, of the Big Dipper dips slightly and burns in the ink-like night; the Haitang flowers rain, gradually calms, and ferries all mortals across the raging seas.

antithetical couplets, or alternatively, the lack thereof. these are known as 对仗 (duì zhàng) in chinese (similar to 对联 duì lián、对偶 duì ǒu you may have heard of), where the number of characters in each phrase are the same, while the position of the noun in the first part of the couplet equates the position of the noun in the second, the verb the verb, the adjective the adjective etc. there's also this thing called 平仄 (píng zè) in which the tonality of the first and second parts of the couplet has to be opposite (terrible explanation sorry for butchering it).

they aren't strictly 对仗 here. words like 绵 is more an adjective than a verb, while 断 is a verb. the 平仄 for the last one (2ha) should work alright, i didn't bother for the other four-char phrases.

Italicised words delineate main character-related words in chinese. It all began with Nirvana in Fire jingsu's "年景靖好，岁月长苏" (nián jǐng jìng hǎo, suì yuè cháng sū) which I loved to bits, and that led to me coming up with all these (very flawed) couplets stringing together character names and relevant things.

rough english translations. again i linked some of the words together in pinyin for easy understanding but officially they should be written apart.

reposted from ao3 on which i have not really written anything.