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MDZS Fanon VS Canon: 11/?

Jiang Cheng sacrificed himself to the Wens for Wei Wuxian

Rating: CANON

This is a small but important plot point that can get confused in the fandom, partially because it's often overlooked in fanworks, and partially because of the plot changes The Untamed made; although it appears in both versions of the story, this moment can be confused between "book canon" and "live action addition." However, this does canonically happen in the books.

In volume 5, this is mentioned after the final battle, when Jiang Cheng reflects on his sacrifice:

After a long silence, Jiang Cheng shook his head. “There’s nothing to say.” What was there to say? Perhaps there was this: “I didn’t get caught by the Wen Clan because I insisted on returning to Lotus Pier to retrieve my parents’ bodies. “When you went to buy rations in that small town during our escape, a group of Wen cultivators caught up to us. “I noticed them early and left the spot where I’d been sitting to hide in a corner of the street. I didn’t get caught, but they were patrolling, and they would have surely bumped into you while you were getting us food. “So I ran out and lured them away.” But just as the Wei Wuxian of the past who’d extracted his golden core for Jiang Cheng had been unable to tell him the truth, the Jiang Cheng of the present could no longer bring himself to speak up. (Seven Seas Ch. 22)

Because the books are set from Wei Wuxian's perspective during the aftermath of the Lotus Pier debacle, we don't see this moment until Jiang Cheng reflects on it near the end of the books. His actions here are done in the service of luring the Wens away from Wei Wuxian, who was shopping for food. There is no indication that he knew what the Wens would do to him on the chance he was caught, nor if he was prepared to be caught or if he intended to circle back after shaking his pursuers.

Regardless, it's confirmed that Jiang Cheng sacrificing himself to the Wens for Wei Wuxian is canon.

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Was supposed to be a warmup but eh…

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studies from the fellowship of the ring

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🌯🍱🍜🍲

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Ditto to all of that.

I come from a German-speaking middle & high school, and it's unavoidable that you get to read at least one thematically challenging and unsettling book from German literatureevery school year. From 10 to 18 years old, no exceptions.

What you see is a beautiful transformation from young kids declaring that a book shouldn't exist (after reading their first unsettling book) to older teenagers appreciating the writing style, author's intention, and themes throughout the years.

What I recall with the earlier books I read (I was around 13 when we first read unsettling books and at that age hated all of them xD): a novel about cyberbullying that depicts graphic SA, and another one on MC running away with his friend & trying to survive the real world (which includes the only main female character being sexualised by MC and sexualising herself). Speaking specifically about my class, we all hated them and we spent the next few lessons venting amongst ourselves and to our teacher.

Next up were 3-4 Holoucast novels in the next two years - some were fictitious, other were realistic like diaries or autobiographies. It was 50/50 - some we started enjoying and understanding the necessary brutal and unsettling scenes. With others we started criticising with how the Holocaust was treated (too romanticised, unnecessary violence, etc.) I.e. specks of literary critical thinking evolved.

(In those years, we read a romance novel of email exchanges leadong to the two people falling in love with each, which I absolutely hated and DNF'd, as iirc one of the MC's has a married spouse and I saw as cheating.)

Finally, with 16+ years, we students got introduced to the pillars of German literature. A novel about a 19th century family trying to live with their disabled adult son while being ostracised by society, Spring Awakening (the consequences of no sex-ed education discussed in early 19th century, which includes SA and abortion), Youth without God (a book criticising a fascist/authoritative government *wink wink the Nazis*, with emphasis on how it affects the youth), The Perfume (would you kill an innocent woman and make the best perfume out of her? Also cannibalism), another novel that alludes to the Third Reich with huge emphasis on Jewish persecution, etc. Oh and the Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka (when you wake as a "Ungeheuer" one morning) :p.

Around 80% of the class really enjoyed all these (disturbing) classics, with some even reading additional disturbing German books to really delve into the themes and author's intentions. Even with those who hated the classics, they now understood the necessity of why the novel was famous and were able to distinguish their personal opinions from literary critique. And imo, the transformation from "I hate it so it's objectively bad, burn it now!" to tipping toes into literary critique was mostly due to the school allowing/requiring us to read challenging books to challenge our moral understanding and in turn expanding our empathy.

Now, is this universal to every German-speaking class with German lit? Idk, maybe not. Were our German teachers perfect? Absolutely not. Imo, our middle school teacher failed to handle our "venting" situation when we mandatorily read these books. But our high school teacher was pretty god when we were teens starting literary critique. Was exposing such disturbing topics like SA cyberbullying to tweens as young as 10 *really* that necessary? Who knows. Nowadays, the German tactic of exposing horrifying images of the Holocaust during history with the mentality of "this is our fault. While we did not do, YOU alone are responsible that this never happens again." during history classes, with no warning, actually backfired. We have tons of Holocaust deniers thanks to that extreme tactic, and why countries such as Germany and Austria will always side with Isreal no matter what (the good and the horrible). So there's talk whether to change it, allow more trigger warnings and be more sensitive to tweens and teenagers. It's a whole different issue.

Tl,dr: Reading disturbing literature, especially as a school requirement, is a must and it comes with huge benefits and a few drawbacks.

I think some people forget that some literature and some media is meant to be deeply uncomfortable and unsettling. It's meant to make you have a very visceral reaction to it. If you genuinely can't handle these stories then you are under no obligation to consume them but acting as if they have no purpose or as if people don't have a right to tell these stories, stories that often relate to the darkest or most disturbing parts of life, then you should do some introspection.

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Zelimpa <3

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May the 4th be with you!

In celebration for Star Wars Day I am going to watch bad batch and cry my heart out

x | instagram

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getting yelled at by the skywalker siblings

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I think people forget that the Nazis never said they were the bad guys. If someone says, hey, I’m evil! You don’t let them take over your country. They presented themselves as scientific, not hateful. By their own account, they were progressives, and the superiority of White Europe over the other races was a proven and immutable fact. They had scientists and archaeologists and historians to prove it. They didn’t tell people they wanted to kill the Jews because they were hateful. They manufactured evidence to frame us for very real tragedies, and they had methodological research to prove that we were genetically predisposed to misconduct. Wouldn’t you believe that?

Hollywood has spent the last 80 years portraying the Nazis as an obvious and intimidating evil. That’s a good thing in some ways, because we want general audiences to recognize that they were evil. But we also want them to be able to recognize how and why they came to power. Not by self-describing themselves as an evil empire, but by convincing people that they were the good guys and the saviors. They hosted the Olympics. Several European countries capitulated and volunteered themselves to the Empire. There were American and British Fascist Parties. They had broad public support. Hollywood never shows that part, so general audiences never learn to recognize the actual signs of antisemitism.

People today think they can’t possibly be antisemitic, because they’re leftist! They abhor bigotry! They could never comprehend Nazi ideology coming from the mouth of a bisexual college student wearing a graphic tee and jeans. How could they? The only depiction of antisemites they’ve ever seen have been gaunt, pale, middle-aged men in black leather trench coats with skulls on their caps.

If the Nazis time-travelled from the 1930s and wanted to take power now, they’d change their original tactics, but not by much. They would target countries suffering from an identity crisis and an economic collapse. They would portray themselves as the pinnacle of what that society considers progressive. Back then, it was race science. These days it’s performative wokeness. Once they’d garnered enough respect and reputation, they’d begin manufacturing propaganda and lies to manipulate people’s anger and fears at a single target— Jews.

If the Nazis made an actual return, they wouldn’t look like neo-Nazis. They wouldn’t be nearly as obvious about their hatred. Their evil wouldn’t give them yellow eyes, and no suspenseful music would play when they walked in the room. They’d be friendly. They’d look like you. They would learn what things your community fears and what things you already hate. They would lie and fabricate evidence to connect the rich elites and the imperialists you revile to a single source of unequivocal Jewish evil. It wouldn’t be hard— they already have two-thousand years of institutional antisemitism they can rely on to paint their picture.

If you’re curious why antisemitism today is coming from grassroots organizations, young, liberal college campuses, suburban neighborhoods with pride flags and All Are Welcome Here signs? That’s why. It’s because, as a global society, we’ve forgotten that the world didn’t used to see the Nazis as bad guys. And what is forgotten about history is doomed to be repeated.

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wanted to add in addition: captured badass women being forced into wearing lingerie bikini-set while chained up, and immediately switching to the damsel in distress archetype

Just doing this bc I'm curious/research reasons

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Hi!

Just finished reading the first chapter, and the footnotes along with the links in your emails helped a lot. <3

What still gets me stumped is Mount Meru's four continents and what they all entail. Like I'm trying to figure out why the immortal three species and mortals live together in the Jambudvīpa continent (literally our world).

Are there any papers/links you know of that can explain it outside of "the three species and Buddha's enlightenment have roots in our real world, therefore they reside in our world"?

I'm here still questioning why immortal species don't get their own continent, or why Monkey King's continental home has extended lifespans but no immortality. XD

Thanks a lot and I really enjoy the read-along!

Thank you for your interesting question. Unfortunately, I'm no scholar, just a person interested in Chinese culture, daoism and buddhism. The continents thingie is a mixture of Buddhist cosmology and Daoist beliefs.

Humans not only live in Jambudvīpa continent, they live in other continents as well (such as the Eastern continent, where Sun Wukong is from. In the first chapter it is explained how he moved through continents and passed different counties. He met his master in the Western Continent, Aparagodānīya) but it is the only place where one can become enlightened just by being born human. Still, if inmortals and normal people live together is because those inmortals were people before, it's just that they became enlightened long ago

Unfortunately I don't know why Buddhist cosmology decided to make one of the continents special and the others not. It's just like in Tolkien's work, where we just know about a few regions in Middle Earth but not the others.

The mountain where Sun Wukong and his monkeys live is located in the Eastern continent, Pūrvavideha. According to Wikipedia, the people (I don't know about monkeys) here are about 12 feet (3.7 m) tall and they live for 700 years. Their main work is trading and buying materials. Why? I don't know, it's what it's written on Tibetan Buddhism Wikipedia :( The only thing that I can imagine is that in Chinese folklore, inmortals live in mountains, and the mountain air is full of qi and that kind of prolongs your life, so that might be one of the reasons, but I don't have a source for that.

I have read a paper called "GEOGRAPHICAL DATA FROM SANSKRIT BUDDHIST LITERATURE" on Jstor and it explains about the geography of early buddhist cosmology, but it doesn't explain why early buddhist assigned characteristics to certain places, and I think it's because nobody knows.

By the way, names such as Pūrvavideha and Jambudvīpa are names that were used in Buddhist texts probably referring to real regions in ancient India. It's just that our story takes place in kind of a fantastical China but they still use the same names (see: this map. See how Sun Wukong met his master in the Western Continent, aka India, and that's why he became englightened? In the birthplace of Buddhism?).

I hope I made you make peace with the fact that we can't know a lot about the cosmology of the world of JTTW because we don't know much about the cosmology of Buddism <3

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more ineffable domestic husbands

Moving in together has its challenges (don't worry, the books are fine. Crowley isn't a bastard)

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#Love triangle is out #Throuple is in

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La Vie En Rose

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romance is lame and overrated i love mentor/mentee relationships in fiction and especially when theyre sort of fucked up