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Meta on "Thank you" and "Sorry" in MDZS

Inspired out of spite by a post where someone said Lan Wangji not wanting to hear thank you and sorry from Wei Wuxian in the novel is stupid because healthy couples need communication and this is why CQL is better. LMAOO

OK. Before starting I want to point out that one of the themes of the novel and Wei Wuxian's characterisation is the concept of indebtedness and owings . It is one of the reasons why he is so dutiful towards the Jiangs and why he sacrifices his golden core and the reason he resurrects Wen Ning.

The words Thank you and Sorry are very significant in the story and are very explicitly tied to the above mentioned themes. They are the words Wen Qing says to Wei Wuxian in her parting because she feels indebted towards Wei Wuxian as he has protected her and the rest of Wen remnants and even resurrected Wen Ning on her request. Wen Qing and Wei Wuxian have a cycle of debts where they both believe they owe each other. [Just to clarify I don't think it's just indebtedness that defines their relationship but it's definitely there ].In the next life Wei Wuxian uses the exact pair of words on Jin Ling as he owes him for insulting his parents whose deaths are caused by him.

As you can see these words are explicitly associated with indebtedness and owing.

Lan Wangji loves Wei Wuxian unconditionally. He obviously wants Wei Wuxian to return his feelings BUT he does not want Wei Wuxian to do so out of indebtedness or gratitude. Whenever Wei Wuxian says thank you to him, the narration describes as him being tense and sad, the cause of this is as I described earlier and also because in the past whenever they have exchanged these words they have parted on bad terms.

The text is very explicit about this.

"Lan Zhan you're really scared of me telling you 'thank you', aren't you? I suddenly remembered many of the times we parted ways in my past life, I said 'thank you' to you right before. And every time we separated, I worsened the next time we met"

The time they killed Wen Chao and Wen ZhuLiu at the courier station, the time they met each other through the flowers at the towers in Yunmeng, the time they parted at Yiling's Burial Mound. Every time, he used that word to mark a clear line between him and Lan Wangji, stretching out the distance between them.

The word that finally breaks their makeout session in the inn is one thank you from Wei Wuxian where Lan Wangji snaps as he believes Wei Wuxian is only doing this out of gratitude towards him and not because he returns his feelings. It is insulting and heartbreaking to him and he is angry because of this.

When the conflict is resolved with Wei Wuxian's confession that includes :

"... I swear it's not the heat of the moment or joking around like I have done in the past. I'm not doing it out of gratitude either. Anyways, it's not because of anything else. I really just like you so much."

He deliberately clarifies that there are no feelings of gratitude or indebtedness involved in reciprocating Lan Wangji's feelings.

"Between you and me, there is no need for 'thank you' and 'sorry'."

This line by Lan Wangji defines how he views their relationship i.e without indebtedness or owings. So far all the relationships that Wei Wuxian had been a part of have the feeling of obligation and indebtedness, the Jiangs for raising him and Wen siblings for rescuing him and helping him out . Ofcourse he loves them but indebtedness and his sense of duty to repay them are also his major motivations. He takes drastic steps because of this and we all know how they turned out. Lan Wangji doesn't want this kind of relationship with him, the one he had with others in the past. He wants him to be free of ever feeling like that he owes Lan Wangji something.

Thank you and sorry are not just courtesy words here but carry a hurtful baggage and choosing not to use them isn't a miscommunication but freeing from the feeling of obligations.

Mdzs Fandom: JC suffered so much, he lost his entire family and sister and even his clan, surely his taking out his anger and resentment at others is totally misunderstood and reasonable, I relate to him so much 🥹

WN (who lost not only his sister and entire family and clan but also his literal life, and was held captive and experimented on for thirteen years as a trophy, watches his relatives die a second time, is treated with prejudice and disdain and fear by most of the cultivation world, yet despite all this still manages to retain a bone-deep kindness and humility, as well as a sense of righteousness as fierce as himself): Am I a joke to you?

This is what I meant when I said characters who are constantly declaring what they went through are put up on a pedestal for their non existent resilience. It's so easy to forget that other characters went through much of the same pain and handled their circumstances better, like WN who went through literal hell himself, because he barely mentions and even downplays his suffering.

oh god, Lan Zhan obsessed besties gather the fuck around

Hanguang-Jun has a whole nother 500 layers of meaning now

i feel like one of the subtler bits of wei wuxian’s characterisation that is sometimes slightly skewed is that he is actually not the jump-into-the-heat-of-battle kinda guy, rather he’s one to hang back and observe before making a very clear and decisive move. look at the xuanwu cave predicament—wei wuxian did not immediately oppose wen chao, instead he stayed put as things escalated and once he realised how futile the situation was, he enacted a plan that was neither impulsive nor self-serving, but one that was optimal to benefit the most amount of people possible. similarly, he wasn’t pushed or blinded by his anger when wang lingjao came to lotus pier. even then, at the cost of himself (which imo, was much more calculated than people give him credit for but i digress), he chose de-escalation. same goes for the appeal he made to jin guangshan about the labor camps and same goes for every single instance of wei wuxian working his nighthunting and info-gathering knowledge to use before even approaching a danger-zone/haunt.

yes, wei wuxian is incredibly powerful and is formidable in battle but he’s not some violence-loving, battle-smug individual who would try to jump into the thick of things to flaunt his fighting prowess. the moments that people refer to as wei wuxian jumping the gun—the nightless city massacre, the ambush fight, opposing wen chao—are, infact, proof of how the battle is thrust to wei wuxian instead of wei wuxian thrusting himself into a battle. i would say that maybe the only example of wei wuxian getting heated into action is when he punched jin zixuan and even jin zixuan would agree to deserving those fists. i guess the reason i bring this up is because this sort of undermines another characteristic of wei wuxian which is his impeccable emotional regulation. if he was angered by every unjust circumstance and lost his wits about him as some of the popular fanon believes, wei wuxian would’ve never gotten as far as he did. it was because of his keen sense of seeing the truth in people and situations and then adjusting his own responses that helped him save himself and the wens for as long as he did and later stand tall before the cultivation world and show them the flaws in their mob logic. he’s not an emotionless man carefully tailoring his personality to suit his needs but he’s also not a emotionally volatile person pouncing at every opportunity to talk with fists instead of words. he’s as good at verbal sparring as he is at the physical counterpart of it and it’s always a bummer when his intellectual battles are reduced in favour of portraying him a certain, canonically divergent way.

all right guys, let’s have a conversation about soulmates

because I’m a nerd who majored in ancient China and still can’t let it go

okay so we all know that wangxian invented romance, but let’s talk a bit more about the iconic dialogue in episode 25:

Lan Wangji: 你把我當成什麼人? / What kind of person do you take me for?

Wei Wuxian: 我曾經把你當做我畢生知己 / I had once thought that, in my lifetime, you would be the one who knew me.

Lan Wangji: 現在仍是 / I still am.

I’ve seen various translations of the phrase “畢生知己” as “lifelong confidante” or “soulmate,” and I’m always so torn because these are both fine translations but like, not quite there

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In wwx defense (I don't do that a lot but imma play devil's advocate for a sec) jfm didn't love him for who he was, he loved him for who his parents were, if he were some random kid jfm would have left him on the street to freeze, that's gotta mess with your head. Jyl and jc loved him for who he was, and when he thought he lost that he went searching for someone who would. He's just a guy who wants unconditional love, would he get that from jc if they sat down and talked about their feelings for once? Yeah, but they're both fucked up from their childhood, so wwx replaced that with lwj. Not saying it's a good nice thing and he's done terrible stuff in his life, but I can understand wanting someone to just love you for you, not who they think you should be. Anyways thanks for the jc defense and support you always give, he gets way too much hate in this fandom I'll never understand it

omg I am definitely not saying WWX had it good with the Jiangs, they fucked up all three kids! and the appeal of a relationship like his with LWJ is very clear for his particular personality and traumas-- I just think it's really interesting that so much is left unresolved in favor of that relationship in a way that doesn't feel sustainable

like there are some/many romances where the resolution of the central relationship is the symbolic resolution of both partners' major traumas/issues/questions/whatever, and thus other threads can be left unresolved by the narrative in explicit terms because they've been symbolically resolved by the resolution of the protagonists' emotional journey. but that doesn't feel like the case in MDZS at all!

still kind of insane to me that people talk shit about jiang cheng without fully understanding what he has been through so lets just understand what his mental state is like BEFORE canon begins:

born via a dysfunctional marriage to be the sect heir

father doesnt care for him, mother expects too much from him/everything he does is not enough

has his three dogs just kicked out randomly with no notice because of some kid he's never heard of by the father who never gave him love and/or attention

said father then favours this kid more than him, to the point that the entire world basically thinks that this kid is biologically your father's son as well, which causes even more family dysfunction

despite this still learns to love this kid as his unofficial brother

works his absolute hardest but is always second-best because his new shixiong is naturally talented

nobody appreciates the hard work he puts in at being second place despite the fact wwx literally doesnt work hard for it

masks his emotions with anger as a coping mechanism to minimise the amount of hurt he feels

ok great so now lets actually take all of the above and apply this mental wellbeing to canon events FROM HIS PERSPECTIVE (keep in mind this is literally what jc is seeing/experiencing because he DOESNT KNOW what the reader knows):

brother is off being the protagonist and getting in trouble and gets their sisters marriage ruined

comes home from a year away and then almost immediately has to go and be a hostage where brother continues his protagonist behaviour

gets trapped and nearly dies in a cave with a 400-year-old monster, is in charge of finding a way out and making sure everyone else escapes

brother and a guy who maybe hates him get stuck behind in the cave so now jiang cheng has to boost it home ON FOOT, without food, to get manpower to rescue them, which takes a minimum of a few days likely without any food or sleep

no appreciation or thanks for doing that since brother was more heroic and killed the 400-year-old monster

gets scolded by his father for being annoyed by this

parents immediately get into another fight about father loving wwx more than jc

because of the above shenanigans their sect is targeted next

tries to defend brother against being whipped to death and/or having his hand cut off by mother

witnesses his entire sect being burned and murdered

loses both his parents

decides to sacrifice himself to save his brother's life, instead of dying he is tortured and has his golden core melted

on top of his inferiority issues, the ONE THING he was expected to do was be the sect leader for the yunmeng jiang. the sect that no longer exists. he is now a sect leader with no sect and no golden core. no shit he wants to mcfuckin die

miraculously gets a new golden core but loses his brother

immediately plunged into a war and he's only like 17

spends 3 months trying to find his brother only for his brother to show up doing the Forbidden Magic and necromancy which is Super Disrespectful in their culture like holy shit what are you doing

brother refuses to use his sword in favour of the Forbidden Magics and kind of keeps undermining jc's orders as sect leader which makes jc look weak in front of all the other sect leaders when he's actively trying to rebuild their sect and be respected as a leader

fights a war for [handwaves] an amount of time, certainly a few years minimum, while watching his brother descend further into Unhealthy Behaviour but brother refuses to do anything or talk about it

ends up lowkey being a war hero

the other three great sects (of which there are now only four) swear brotherhood, leaving out ONLY ymj/jiang cheng, which, what the Fuck dude

is now a teenager who has lost his parents who now has to rebuild his sect from scratch with fuck all money, supplies, and support

brother, who promised to always be at his side helping, is not helping, and in fact is actively just getting drunk and being a nuisance and STILL REFUSING TO SAY WHY

entire cultivation world starts to turn on his brother who is now looking like a loose cannon bc he has Forbidden Magics that are Terrifyingly Powerful and also it has been proven that he does not give a fuck about jc's opinion since he's constantly doing whatever the fuck he wants

literally out of nowhere said brother decides to piss off everyone, start fights, and then KILL JIN GUARDS at a camp and MAKE OFF with like fifty people who are part of the family that he just fought a war against and were responsible for slaughtering his family/sect

go to the terrifying haunted mountain where wwx and the wen remnants are and sees that he's essentially starting a new family with a kid and crops, doesn't seem to care that jiang cheng is still trying to keep the ymj afloat and look like they have any strength

brother is still doing Forbidden Magic and refuses to explain why, and now says he'll secede from the ymj so his bad reputation doesn't reflect on jc like he HASNT BEEN DOING THAT THE WHOLE TIME

so now shixiong wants to just abandon jc completely after jc has lost his parents, had to rebuild everything from scratch, while ignoring the promise he's made their whole life? ok fuck you

jc also can't defend him in public because that would turn the ymj into a target and please keep in mind he is a teenager who was expected to do this ONE THING by his parents and he has poured his heart and soul and blood and tears into rebuilding the ymj and they are So Vulnerable Right Now

uhhh what the fuck suddenly wwx kills their sister's husband ?? bro what the FUCK?

everyone rallies to go and attack wwx for this and again jc literally cant do anything about it and refusing to go will just make everyone assume he's on wwx's side and their sect can't afford to be attacked rn

bro what the fuck now THEIR SISTER IS DEAD?????

oh even better now said brother is DEAD

jiang cheng literally has NO ONE LEFT. no friends. no family. no parents, no siblings, everyone he knew growing up is dead. its literally just him and his infant nephew, who by the way, is living with the sect who are the most powerful and also most likely to be super fucking shady so jc has to tread very carefully

so jc spends over a decade raising his nephew ALONE while trying to make ymj powerful and also hunting/killing demonic cultivators that now p much only exist bc his brother invented/popularised the technique

oh yeah and also this whole time the guy who maybe hated his brother is now like EVEN colder and more antagonistic towards jc like it was HIS FAULT that wwx is dead? get fucked lan wangji you didnt even like the guy (or if this is cql/untamed canon: you literally did nothing either so where do you get off on acting like you're better than jc)

over a decade passes and suddenly his dead brother is alive again and causing more problems and acting like the things he did were not major contributors towards jc's entire family and sect dying

More Political Drama Happens and jc has to manage it

suddenly its revealed that the guy he's been co-raising his nephew with is the major villain who caused the entire world to turn on wwx in the first place oh and also it turns out that the fucking miraculous core jc has IS HIS BROTHER'S, WHO NEVER SAID ANYTHING, AND THIS IS THE REASON HE STARTED THE FORBIDDEN MAGICS AND STOPPED HELPING AROUND THE SECT, but he didnt even BOTHER to tell jiang cheng about it

by the way did i mention this was done via an entirely unconsented experimental surgery

and now the brother of the doctor who did the unconsented experimental surgery is ?? mad at jiang cheng about it ???? like he was supposed to KNOW ABOUT THIS when wwx was KEEPING IT FROM HIM ON PURPOSE???

and now theyre all nearly dying in this dumbass temple - and the ONE family member jc still has is literally being threatened with a garotte

oh cool now jc's brother is saying forget the past let's just leave it all behind !!! as though THAT ISNT JC'S ENTIRE LIFE AND TRAUMA and the ONE THING he EVER wanted was for him, wwx, and jyl to be alive and happy, and now wwx is saying just forget it! like FUCK YOU???? does jc truly mean NOTHING???????

oh and now his brother is off gallivanting with the guy who hated him - who it turns out doesn't hate him - and now they're getting married

and jiang cheng is meant to just. pretend all of this never happened and live his life normally. while wwx is out there. being happy and married.

like... if you can read all of this and still treat jc like he's the bad guy, i'm sorry, but you have literally zero empathy. dude had it probably more rough than any of the other main ensemble cast, and i am including jgy in that, because jgy Made His Choices. jc literally just had to let things happen around him helplessly

Wei Wuxian and Jiang Cheng’s (Lack of) Brotherhood

In fanfiction, it is extremely frequent to see Wei Wuxian and Jiang Cheng refer to one another as “brother”, either in dialogue, or described as such through the narrative. This always struck me as hitting the wrong note, because in the actual narrative of Mo Dao Zu Shi there is not a single instance where the word “brother” is used to refer to one another, not even once.

Yet it is obvious why fanfics go there. It does fittingly describe the nature of their relationship. Wei Wuxian was brought back to Yunmeng by Jiang Fengmian to be raised by him in a way that looks much more like an adoption than anything. It is probable that the main reason that he didn’t formally adopt Wei Wuxian was because Yu Ziyuan would never have stood by it. Despite her opposition and her worry that Wei Wuxian might usurp Jiang Cheng’s place as heir to the sect, it is obvious that Wei Wuxian wasn’t treated as a servant (as the son of a servant) or as a simple disciple. He was part of the family unit in more ways than not, and they grew up close and their relationship displayed a kind of intimacy and rivalry that is typical of brotherhood.

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ok i've never read the novel but your tags on that post about jc and matchmaker requirements...mxtx girl i don't think you wrote what you thought you wrote lmao (jc noticing beauty? doesn't seem like he does sorry that's whats on the page)

Exactly!! The only time that novel Jiang Cheng is even hinted at having sexual thoughts is when (after loudly decrying NHS and WWX for looking at spring books) he wakes up with a book next to his head.

I do kind of sort of enjoy the idea that MXTX shared, that while that's his list for the matchmakers, that's not actually what he wants in a wife. Emotional vulnerability? 0%, he can't be targeted. Tactical evasion: A+++. No one will ever know he wants to be held!!!

I feel like JC has some weird gender shit going on. Not even in the normal sense; in the ‘assigned ruined woman by the narrative’ sense. Like. Wow. JC, you really gonna get called childhood sweethearts with your rogueish evil shixiong? JC, you really gonna be left alone with naught but a single child, a widow in all but name? Wangji is out there trying to assign himself widower vibes but JC is getting constant woman scorned and wronged wife energies forced upon him from get-go.

Even his father was like *looking at an eight year old* “I see my nagging wife in you”

THAT'S WHAT I'VE BEEN SAYING

his parents really took a glance at that toddler and decided to project the most unhinged gender possible on him. JC, assigned neglected wife at birth.

JC performs it so conscientiously too! It's so so so important to how he is with WWX and how he views himself. 9yo JC after he's known WWX: "there he is. the cad that will break my heart." and can't ever everrrrrr stop loving WWX or break away from the utter grip WWX has on him. JC has known since before WWX came into his life that he was made to be neglected/scorned, by the person supposed to stand by his side and to whom he's supposed to be loyal.

Also lmao at the left with a child thing. It's totally that, except JC WISHES he was a widow!!! He's not even granted that dignity by society! But nah he's the ruined woman who was seduced and abandoned by someone who promised her marriage and then went off and died after making her look for a fool, while she was making excuses for him, and everyone knows what a chump JC was for it! Was WWX lying all along? Was is ever even real ?

(JC gets the answer to that question when WWX breaks it off at the temple by telling him nah, it was only duty to JC's family that made stick by JC's side. Probably not how WWX meant it! But wow, way to put it the least personal possible way. WWX's most intimate organ in JC's body had nothing to do with feelings for JC or JC as a person. Way to make sure JC never, ever reaches out for fear of being that nagging, clingy, shrewish, needy embarrassment of a person)

Hiii! I've read your tags about how wwx wouldn't probably do the core's transfer with lz because in his mind they are equals. So, do you think in some way wwx thinks less of jc? I am just very curious because it seems an interesting interpretation!

I mean, yeah, kinda, he does! He loves Jiang Cheng immensely, but there is absolutely a dynamic between them where Wei Wuxian considers it his job to protect Jiang Cheng from all forms of harm, whether Jiang Cheng wants to be protected or not. It’s complicated, and I think it’s kind of multifaceted. There’s an Older Sibling element to it (although it is canonically unclear exactly what the age difference is between them, and it’s not more than a year at most), there’s a your-father-took-me-in-and-I-owe-him element to it, and there’s the part where WWX has always been a step ahead of JC in all their mutual accomplishments (never mind that JC’s own accomplishments are very impressive! The view looks different from inside a sibling relationship, trust me on this one).

And also, I think there’s also the three-way mutual awareness between him, JC, and Jiang Yanli of how much emotional harm the Jiang parents are managing to inflict on each of them, and a deliberate effort on each of their parts to try to shield one another from that harm—but of the three of them, JC shows those emotional wounds the most overtly, because WWX and JYL repress their unhappiness (out of the shared, destructive belief that showing negative emotions to your loved ones is bad) while JC channels his into anger, yells, stomps off and openly sulks about it, etc, which is more recognizable as unhappiness. I suspect WWX has spent a lot of time doing what he does leading up to the Twin Prides speech/promise to be JC’s right hand man when he’s the sect leader: running after a JC whose feelings have been hurt, and giving him a hug or otherwise trying to cheer him up, because he can’t stand the sight of Jiang Cheng’s open unhappiness, and has to try to fix it.

The core transfer was objectively an insane extreme—so insane no one suspected it, because there was no precedent for it!—and one WWX was driven to not just by fear for JC, but also the overwhelming guilt from the belief that he was responsible for bringing the Wen to Lotus Pier in the first place (wrongly, of course, but Madame Yu spent her final words explicitly blaming him for it, JC repeated those words when he was having his own grief breakdown immediately after seeing his parents’ dead bodies, and then JYL dodged the question when WWX asked her if it was true, so you can understand where WWX’s head’s at at that point), and then guilt that he’d failed Jiang Fengmian and Yu Ziyuan in their explicit command to him to protect Jiang Cheng, by letting JC run off all headstrong and get caught by the Wen. The core transfer is both a OTT gesture to Fix Jiang Cheng, The One Who Must Always Be Protected, and a way for WWX to punish himself for failing to protect JC leading up to this moment (getting JC’s family slaughtered and home burned, letting JC get captured and tortured and maimed, because obviously the only person with any agency or control in this situation is Wei Wuxian himself!). There’s really no other character in the whole narrative that could push all the right buttons to get WWX to do something as extreme as the core transfer, not even Jiang Yanli (who on paper is physically softer and squishier than JC, but who is also clearly someone WWX views first and foremost as a caretaker) because Jiang Cheng is the only person he loves that much AND fundamentally insists on viewing as unable to take care of himself.

(In contrast to all this, five minutes after WWX meets Lan Wangji, he’s excitedly declaring that he’s finally met his equal in life. It’ll be a while before Wangxian get to developing the big swoony romantic feelings, but right from the start, WWX affords LWJ a level of personal respect he never shows to Jiang Cheng, Baby Brother.)

I will also add that Jiang Cheng is clearly aware that WWX sees him this way, and it drives him up a fucking wall. He obviously loves WWX and he absolutely wants him around, but I think he also wants an equality in their relationship that WWX consistently denies him, and that that is definitely part of his angst over the core transfer when he finds out—to him, it’s kind of the ultimate statement that WWX thinks JC is too weak to make it without him.

I do think there’s hope for them, post-canon, since they’re now alive and their relationship has the chance to continue to mature! But it’s going to require WWX to take JC out of that mental box he’s constructed for him marked “Fragile: Handle With Care” and to learn to respect JC’s choices and autonomy. Recognizing that JC managed to survive without him and continued to build the Jiang back up from nothing to being a great sect again will probably help!

so do you think wwx would still do the core transplant if he knew why jc lost his core? i think he might

Oh yeah. Actually it might depend on what scenario we're talking about here? Is this an AU where JC mumbles out the truth when feverish or something, or is this a time travel situation? Regardless, the following remain true:

Wei Wuxian loves Jiang Cheng very much and JC being sad in his vicinity is basically intolerable to him

Wei Wuxian considers himself to owe a debt to the Jiang

Wei Wuxian loves Lotus Pier and wants it restored and Jiang Cheng is the best chance they have

Wei Wuxian has rock bottom self worth and sky high self esteem, which means he does not consider himself of value while also simultaneously thinking he knows best and has the right to make decisions for other people

Obviously in canon or in a time travel AU where he didn't find out, he's ripping his organs out. If he does know, it kind of depends on timing. Teen WWX who heard JC's mumbled confession is drowning in guilt and self hatred and does it immediately. In some ways this improves the state of their relationship, because WWX now knows that Jiang Cheng considers him more important than his own life or even the sect. He's extremely upset by this, because "Your brother loves you" is the most devastating blow for either of them, but he is not questioning whether JC sees him as family in the same way as in canon. Wei Wuxian had to really tell himself over and over to consider the transfer as repayment or redemption to be alright with it, but this WWX is possibly trying to invent skin grafts to get rid of JC's scars. This is not a positive, but it does change things. However this also means that if JC ever finds out, not only will WWX have tricked him into a procedure he wouldn't have wanted, he purposefully and knowingly overrode his choice. This creates tension in relationships.

If it's time travelling WWX, if he has just found out and/or they haven't fully reconciled, he's having the same breakdown JC had in the Ancestral Hall and once again rips out his organs, possibly while whispering "Thank you and I'm sorry" because character development is not linear and WWX gets a little unhinged about his family. However if they've worked through things and communicated and hashed out where things went wrong and what they want their relationship to look like now and how they're going to achieve this, I think they can develop healthier habits. Wei Wuxian's postcanon advice to Jin Ling is to let himself rely on Jiang Cheng because being pushed away for his own good will just make him feel abandoned, and to respect JC's decision to risk his reputation to help and trust him to handle himself. As wildly hypocritical as this sounds, I think WWX has pretty clearly done some thinking about where he fucked up on that one. If WWX is able to come to this conclusion on his own without having worked through things with Jiang Cheng, I think he is capable of admitting that the core transfer while done out of love was maybe a touch fucked up. I do believe in these clowns being able to talk about the way they hurt each other and were hurt in turn and the misunderstandings between them. Wei Wuxian's character arc hasn't stopped at the end of the story, there's a reason WWX has that moment after Wen Qing and Wen Ning sacrifice themselves for him where he suddenly understands why Jiang Cheng hates when he does this. I think we can even out the self worth/self esteem ratio so WWX isn't constantly sacrificing himself because he knows best, and trusting JC specifically to make his own choices.

...Or at least that was what I was triumphantly going to say, until I saw a relevant gifset and contemplated Wei Wuxian suddenly being faced with a devastated Babie Jiang Cheng for the first time in decades. Jiang Cheng crying is already kind of a one hit KO for Wei Wuxian when they're the same age, can he really look at Babie JC's lip wobble without folding like a cheap lawn chair? I have long thought about them growing past their old mistakes and was confident that WWX could get there but now I am reconsidering this.

so i was thinking about lan wangji and how he has this reputation of being righteous while also in my opinion acting like an asshole? like he acts very petty and is ready to pull his sword on people a lot and isn't really involved in politics even in a way that makes sense as a high ranking member of a sect? like the silencing spell on jin ling is uh. bad.

it's like lan wangji has scary dog privilege by virtue of his reputation and his brother and uncle who will wreck you if you do or say anything to/about him. except thats not right because theyre not scary dogs at all, they just protect him. it's like lan wangji is a scary dog and lan xichen and lan qiren smooth things over and stop him from doing something too awful and calm others down after lan wangji does something not too great. and i guess with the reputation for being righteous (second jade of lan) is enough to deter people from saying/doing things like "hey he's a dick" because dude that's hanguang-jun, what are you talking about???".

and the people he saves on night hunts or whatever are random civilians who don't interact with him enough to see him behave badly, and a cool and aloof powerful cultivator saving them gets a lot of leeway on account of being a famous powerful cultivator and also being someone who saved them from fierce corpses or spirits or healed their kid or grandparent or whatever. who cares if theyre quiet and kinda rude they saved their sister!!!!!

so when lan wangji is a dick to jin ling or fucks off from political stuff or is ready to pull his sword on jiang cheng in the jiang ancestral hall or whatever he's doing so with the reputation of hanguang-jun who saves people and also is supported by lan xichen (lan sect leader and brother) and lan qiren (former acting sect leader, uncle, teacher) and they are protective and dare i say overindulgent of lan wangji???? like bro you are a political figure whether you like it or not, your actions have effects on things besides your own direct personal circle. like the heir of gusu lan pulling a sword on sect leader jiang is fucking political incident whether or not theyre both being assholes or not. the adult heir of gusu lan using the lan silencing spell on the teenage heir of lanling jin is a political incident. not engaging with other sects politically, ever, says important things about your priorities and your influence both within the sect and without.

also like. what if something happened to gusu lan? like say lan xichen is injured, and lan qiren is also out of commission for some reason? that means lan wangji is acting sect leader. can you IMAGINE lan wangji as sect leader. imagine it. really visualize it. there's a lot of jokes about lan wangji being a petty bitch and people love it but imagine a petty bitch as a sect leader. the situation would blow up faster than lans get drunk on a glass of wine. like dude. so much stuff would be totally fucked.

anyway lan wangji as he is in mdzs would be a shit sect leader/chief cultivator/etc. he doesn't behave like he's intimately involved in the politics of his world (which he is) and may or may not have training in doing so - maybe he has training and just doesn't do it? which is also really bad, then he would know better and still not do it or help in any way.

ok so your first problem was assuming mdzs is a story where Good People are Rewarded and Bad People are Punished.

your second problem was assuming that MXTX—who goes out of her way to showcase unresolved, tragic, undeserved endings in all of her works—would ever write a story with such a shallow notion of “deserving.”

the only reason wangxian makes it out unscathed is because they’re literally the protagonists. authorial intent and plot armor ensure their happy ending. that’s it.

I keep thinking if WWX had come back and JC had managed to have a kid or two, WWX would be feral about them. He’d be torn between complete adoration because they’re baby JC’s! Look their doing the little pout he did when he was a kid and WWX bullied him! And complete and utter rage at their existence. How dare someone make babies with JC without his approval, what if they’d muddied up his cuteness with their unworthy genes. No one should have even touched JC without WWX’s supervision. I think it’s extra fun when they’re WQ’s kids as well, if only for the killer frowns their kids would have and the confused disgust WWX would feel.

XD glorious!

But on a serious note, I think that he'd be overjoyed to know that JC found himself a wife and has a family that makes him happy. It would sting a bit that the same was denied to him, but WWX would be happy for his shidi and adore his kids.

...unless (and here on a less serious note) it's an omegaverse and JC is the omega in question and that's when WWX will go feral about some strange rude unworthy alpha having their way with his shidi???!! JC was such a finnicky and particular omega, there's no alpha in the world suitable to deal with his quirks and to protect him properly! There was one alpha to do that's but he died, but now he's back and even if Wei Wuxian wasn't in love-love with his shidi, he was prepared to be his alpha (platonically, of course, and for the purest of intentions of course;) and now...

Someone took his place.

They have to go.

Not to mention Jin Ling then trying to turn all of his hatred onto Wen Ning afterwards. He's a kid who's been reminded of his parents' deaths with every breath he takes, only having stories about them and being fed Jiang Cheng's unhinged hatred for all the love that was lost. If Wei Wuxian turned out to not be the monster he thought he was, then he...he has to hate someone else!

But then Wen Ning turns out to be even MORE gentle than Wei Wuxian, filled with guilt for what happened, flinging himself in front of Lan Sizhui and saying "I won't fight back, get your anger out on me if it'll put you at ease!"

That scene had me crying too yo. Everyone rallies behind Lan Sizhui and calls Jin Ling out for being too aggressive - no one takes his side, no one understands how much he's been affected by his life. Jiang Cheng's solution is to tell him to get angry, but now that's just turned all of his peers against him and calling him violent and unreasonable. So he just breaks down sobbing saying "Yes, I'm a horrible person!" even though NONE of what happened is his fault and he has a right to be angry and trying to find an outlet for his emotion. He just doesn't know HOW. No one ever taught him, everyone ridicules him for crying and distances themselves from his anger. People treat him delicately yet say he needs to toughen up.

I think the worst part is that Wei Wuxian's first scathing (accidental) comment, "Your mother never taught you any manners" is kinda really true. He never had a mother to teach him to express himself, to support him and be vulnerable with him. We joke about how many uncles Jin Ling has but I mean how many AUNTS does he have? How many mother figures does he have? Qin Su is basically traumatized by the death of Jin Rusong so is maybe not the motherly type. Nie Huisang, Lan Xichen, Jiang Cheng - unmarried, unmarried, unmarried.

Wei Wuxian is really the first one to A: tell Jin Ling to get over himself and doesn't treat him like some untouchable young master who no one has the right to lord over, B: openly admits when he's sorry and apologizes and teaches Jin Ling the concept of emotional vulnerability, C: stands by Jin Ling's side to teach him to be himself rather than scolding or threatening or guilting him to fit in better. The fact that Wei Wuxian is NOT a woman may even be better because Jin Ling is seeing that men don't have to fit into the unyielding mold of tough guys but can still have fun without being a pushover.

Jin Ling is such a tragedy because there really is no one left to blame. It's not that easy. Wei Wuxian and Wen Ning are responsible, but they're not maniacal villains laughing at the top of a mountain without a care in the world for the consequences. They cared, they had family who were lost, they suffered before and don't want anyone to suffer again - they hate themselves just as much for their part in what happened.

Even Jin Guangyao is such a complicated case for Jin Ling. It's the uncle who was always nice to him, who gave him his spirit dog, who was always putting on a smile. In comparison to Jiang Cheng, Jin Guangyao was a lifeline. And then Jin Guangyao turns out to be a villain who doesn't bat an eye at killing and threatening...but who also didn't WANT these bad things to be "necessary." He too was wronged by the world and lashed out at its unfairness.

This fifteen year old kid has gone through so much, simultaneously pampered into a spoiled brat and utterly isolated from his peers, filled with vengeance for his entire life but also trying to love and be loved. He learned from Jiang Cheng to pretend to be above it all, and he learned from Jin Guangyao to be kind and forgive, but all of it was lies and unhealthy coping. Jiang Cheng essentially taught him to argue with anyone who disagrees with him or looks down on him to assert his dominance, and Jin Guangyao taught him to suppress his desire to speak his mind and never start fights because of etiquette and self-preservation - to the point that he rejects who he is and wants to be.

At this age, Jin Ling's already having to learn the lesson that everyone's going to be throwing opinions around, no one is perfect, you can't easily sort people into categories. In the end, he can take advice from others, but it's up to him to make the choice of who he wants to be. And he's learned that unrelenting resentment makes for an easy path to walk in life, but it's not actually how life works. The cultivation world can turn on someone they worshipped unconditionally. That included Wei Wuxian, that included Jin Guangyao, and even to an extent Jin Ling himself.

He has to take over the Jin Clan after all these scandals and atrocities, but he's become the kind of kid who will answer an insignificant man's plea for help, who is making friends who won't judge him and will stand by him even when he makes mistakes, and by the end of the story he's matured, yet also finally learned to be a kid. Nothing's perfect, none of the tragedies of the past can be reversed (and Jiang Cheng's still gonna get into fights whenever he accidentally runs into Wen Ning), but at least now Jin Ling can choose how he decides to live, who he hates and who he forgives.

while reading the books, i remember wei wuxian’s relationship with jin ling hitting me especially hard. i was crying when the whole stabbing thing happened. but i truly adore what becomes of them and do you know why? because jin ling does something the others could never, something miraculous really––he actually unlearns the prejudice he’s been taught to hold against wei wuxian. he meets wwx, full of disdain, slowly learning about who wwx really is and it has nothing to do with wwx’s outward appearance. and when the truth is revealed, the internal warring for jin ling is plainly portrayed and even if he does give in to a hate intermingled with grief that he has internalised towards this one entity (wei wuxian was never a person in his mind, just the ‘killer’ of his parents, a phantom, before the events of the book happened), you can tell his heart has already turned, that it will keep turning and that’s what happens. you have jin ling, an orphaned child, who hated someone whom his mother loved dearly, because that man caused his parents’ death but it is such a commendable thing that wei wuxian was able to create a space in jin ling’s heart and jin ling was able to accept it. it’s the way both jin ling & jiang cheng blame the death of their parents on wwx but only the former was able to see wei wuxian clearly and actually forge a bond of love with him.

it’s the fact that if ANYONE in this story can actually rightfully hold a grudge against wei wuxian, it’s jin ling, but instead this teenager decides that wei wuxian is much too good and that having him as an uncle is lovely, after all.

One of my favorite additions that the MDZS adaptations gave us was the little detail that, in addition to storing Emperor’s Smile in his room, Lan Wangji also stored bamboo flutes and was implied to have learned how to carve them and did so on a regular basis.

I just really like the idea that even though he didn’t know if Wei Wuxian would come back, he was preparing for it anyway. He raised Lan Sizhui and tried to train the juniors to be open-minded and unbiased, he held the weight of his whip scars and the sun brand on his chest, he filled his room with Emperor’s Smile that he might never be able to give Wei Wuxian.

I like to think Lan Wangji was learning to carve bamboo flutes even before Wei Wuxian died, since his methods of expressing himself often manifest in secret actions rather than words. Before he knew it, he found himself taking an interest in making dizi flutes and had a collection of them building up - and Lan Xichen is watching with a knowing gaze and offers to tune the flutes to help him improve (does Lan Wangji know how to play any flutes? I assume Lan Xichen knows somewhat how to play a dizi even though his Liebing is a xiao but I'm not a floutist so idk). Bonus angst if Lan Wangji ended up burning a pile of flutes every time he had a breakdown about Wei Wuxian being dead. Then he just goes around carving more.

The original novel has Wei Wuxian using the same out-of-tune bamboo flute nearly till the end, but like - Lan Wangji seeing Wei Wuxian playing badly just to (poorly) hide his identity and then Lan Wangji being so madly eager to show off his skills that he prepared just to serve Wei Wuxian at any and all times. He just whips out a bamboo shaft and a carving tool, and masterfully makes a flute in moments, and Wei Wuxian is oblivious like "Wow, nice job, thx!" and doesn't fully grasp that Lan Wangji is saying "I will make you a thousand bamboo flutes because I love you and will give you whatever you desire, that little surprise and pleasure on your face is worth all the time I waited -"

You know?

Still working way too hard on an MDZS fic BTW, like it's way over 1000 pages in Google Docs and half of it is me just transcribing the novel and the other is me repeating my feelings on everything with an OC or three. What am I doing with my life?

What kind of saber is baxia anyway?

I love my bloodthirsty princess of a cursed blade, and in my heart of hearts i am nothing but a sword nerd, so i've been extremely fascinated by Baxia and how we know frustratingly little about what she actually looks like!

I mean, look at bichen, right?

Bichen in the donghua:

Bichen in the drama:

They're clearly not exactly the same. The scabbards are different, and the guards have a different shape. But these are recognizably different iterations on one theme, right? Thin jian with a white grip silver guard, light blue tassel and silver mounting accents on the scabbard.

Now this is baxia in the donghua:

And baxia in the drama:

????????

THAT'S A COMPLTELY DIFFERENT WEAPON

it doesn't stop there either, the audio drama is kind enough to give us ANOTHER COMPLETELY DIFFERENT BAXIA

pretty! But how is that he same sword??

And when we go back to the novel, we get very little information on her appearance other than the fact that her blade is tinted red with all the blood she's absorbed. Which none of these designs incorporate.

This is not a dig on the designs itself, they're all quite gorgeous in their own right and i'm going to spend a while discussing all of them! Because isn't it fascinating how, since we know little about novel baxia beyond "saber" all of these designs ended up so different? What kinds of sabers are these, anyway?

So, a chinese aber, aka a "dao" (刀) just means a sword that has only one cutting side. As opposed to a jian, which has two.

You can see how that leaves a LOT of room for variaton.

I've actually seen some people get confused because Huaisang's saber in the untsmed is thin and quite straight, making it superficially resemble the jian more than drama!baxia, but it is still clearly a saber!

See? only one cutting blade!

This, to me looks a lot like a tang dynasty hengdao

credit to this blog for providing his image and being a great source for all this going forward.

TANGENT: during all this I found out the english wikipedia page for dao is WRONG! Ths is what they about the tang hengdao!

So that sounds like the hengdao was called that during the sui dynasty, but then, after that, started being called a peidao, right?

WRONG

I LOOKED AT THE SOURCE THEY USED AND IT SAYS THIS:

IT WAS CALLED THE PEIDOU UNTIL THE SUI DYNASTY, AT WHICH POINT IT WAS CALLED A HENGDAO. Which would carry over to the Tang dynasty. This was the source wikipedia linked! and it says something else than they say it does!

Anyone know how to edit a wikipedia article?

ANYWAY

BACK TO BAXIA

Since we're already at the drama, let's look at drama baxia: She's also straight! the general term for straight-backed saber is Zhibeidao, but that's a modern collector's term, and doesn't really say anything about which historical kind of saber baxia could be based on. Another meta i found on the drama nie sabers already went on some detail here.

I'm gonna expand on that a little: The kinds of historical straight-backed sabers we see resemble the hengdao a lot more than they do baxia. They don't go to their point as harsly as she does (she's basically a cleaver!) and they're all way skinnier.

No, my personal theory is that instead of being based on any kind of historical sword, drama!baxia is based on a Nandao.

I mean, come on, look at it!

Baxia!

The Nandao... isn't actually a historical sword. It was invented for Wushu forms. There's a really fascinating article about its conception, but that's why the swords in the images look a little thin and flimsy. Wushu swords are very flexible and light, they're dance props, not weapons to fight with. There are actual steel versions of Nandao, but they're recreations of the prop, not the other way around.

So That's one way in which Baxia differes from the Nandao: she's actually a real weapon. The other is that, as you can see above, the nandao has an S-shaped guard. Baxia doesn't. She's also much more elaborately decorated, of course. Because she's a princess.

Now: audio drama baxia!

This is much easier. with that flare at the tip?

Oh baby that's a niuweidao, all the way!

There are more sabers with that kind of curved handle, but the broad tip is really charcteristic of the niuweidao. The Niuweidao is also incredibly poplar in modern media, often portrayed as a historical sword, but it originated i nthe 19th century! And it was actually never used by the military!

That's right, the Niuweidao was pretty much exclusively a civilian weapon! That makes its use here anachronistic, but so is the nandao, and considering that the origin story of the Nie is that they use Dao intead of Jian because their ancestors were butchers, portraying them with a weapon historically reserved for rebels and common people instead of the imperial military is actually very on theme!

Finally, Donghua/Manhua baxia. These two designs are so similar I'm going to treat them as one and the same for now.

Unlike both previous baxias, The long handle makes it clear this baxia is a two-handed weapon, though Nie Mingjue is absolutely strong enough to wield her with one hand anyway. Normal rules don't count for cultivators.

Now, this is where things get tricky, because there are a lot of words for long two-handed sabers. And a lot of them are interchangable! This youtube video about the zhanmadao, one of the possible sabers this baxia could be based on, goes a little into just how confusing this can get. This kind of blade WAS actually in military use for many centuries, making it the most historically accurate of all the baxias. But because of that it also has several names and all of those names can also refer to different kinds of blades depending on what century we're in.

So here's our options: i'm going to dismiss the wodao and miandao, because these were explicitly based on japanese sword design, and as we can see manhua baxia has that very broad tip, so that won't work

(Example of a wodao. According to my sources Miaodao is really just the modern common term for the wodao, and the changdao, and certain kinds of zhanmadao... do you see how quickly this gets confusing?)

Next option: Zhanmadao.

Zhanmadao stands for "horse chopping saber" so... yeah they were anti-cavalry weapons. meant to be able to cut the legs and/or necks of horses. That definitely sounds like a weapon Nie Mingjue would wield. But if you watched that youtube video i linked above, you'll know the standardized Qing dinasty Zhanmadao looked very different from earlier versions. It was inspired by the japanese odachi, and more resembles the miandao than its ealrier heftier counteprarts.

Earlier Ming dynasty Zhanmadao on the other hand were... basically polearms. the great ming military blog spot, another wonderful source, says these are essentially a kind of podao/pudao (朴刀) which looked like this

Now that blade looks a lot like baxia, but the handle is honestly too long. Donghua!baxia straddles the line between sword an polearm a little, but while zhanmadao have been used to refer to both long-handled swords and polerarms, this was undeniably a polearm, not a sword.

If you want to know what researching this was like, I found a picture of this blade on pinterest-- labeled as a "two-handed scimitar"-- and the comment section was filled with people arguing about whether this was a Pudao, Wudao, Zhanmadao, Dadao, Guandao, or a japanese Nagita.

So... that's how it was going. This has kept me up until 2 AM multiple times.

However! Thanks to this article on the great ming military blog I found out there have historically been pudao blades with shorter handles!

Specifically, Ming dynasty military writer Cheng Ziyi created a modified version of the pudao to work with the Dan Fao Fa Xuan technixues-- aka technqiues for a two-handed saber, which would alter heavily influence Miaodao swordmanship-- thereby, as the article points out, essentially merging the cleaver-polearm type Zhanmadao with the later two-handed japanese-inspired design.

This is the illustration for the Wu Bei Yao Lue (武備要略) a Ming dynasty military manual

This blade shape in the illustration doesn't match Baxia exactly, but since it's a lengthened Pudao-like blade and we've seen above that those can match Donghua Baxia's shape, i'm gonna say that calling Baxia a Zhanmadao with a two-handed grip isn't all that innacurate!

However, because all of these terms are so intertwined, there are a dozen other things you could call her that would be about equally correct.

To show that, here's a lightning round of other potential Baxia candidates:

Dadao (大刀)

Which are generally one-handed and too short. However!

Another youtube video i found of someone training with a Zhanmadao that resembles baxia a little also calls it a "shuangshoudai dao" (雙手带 刀) shuangshou means two-handed, and while 雙手带 seems to refer to a longer handled weapon, when looking for a shuangshou dao or shuangshou dadao (双手大刀) we find a lot more baxia-resembling blades like here and here

I also found that, while the cleaver-like Dadao is strictly a product of the 20th centuy, since dadao just means big sword or big knife, it has been used to refer to loads of different weapons! Some people could've called the zhanmadao and pudao "dadao" during the Ming dynasty as well.

Another potential baxia candidate that mandarin mansion classifies as similar to the later dadao (though longer, as seen in the illustration below) is the "Kuanren Piandao"

Which piqued my interest because this diagram classifying different tpye of Dao:

Claims that a Kuanrenbiandao (diferent spelling, same sword) is the same as a modern day Zhanmadao.

(So once again, all of these terms are interchangable)

Another opton Is the Chuanmeidao/Chuanweidao (船尾刀) below you can see a diagram, based on the Qing dynasty green standard army regulation, of blades all officially classified as types of "pudao"

The top middle is the Kuanren Piandao, and bottom left is the Chuanweidao.

Both of these have a lot of baxia-like qualities.

So there you go! live action baxia is based on a Nandao, audio drama baxia is based on a Niuweidao, and Manhua/donghua baxia is some kind of two-handed Zhanmadao/Pudao/Dadao depending on how you want to look at it.

I'm honestly surprised no one has made the creative decision to portray Baxia as a Jiuhuandao, aka 9 ringed broadsword yet.

I mean look at it! Incredibly imposing. Would make for a great Baxia imo. (@ upcoming mdzs manga and mobile game: take notes!)