Chen Qing Ling - Tumblr Posts

I couldn't find one with a quadruple

I didn't forget Ouyang Zizhen, just couldn't find one of four people

When the most disappointing character turns out to be the most dangerous

about sect leader nhs : that's why his hair is so big. it's full of secrets.

Hi 😊 I just wanted to say thank you for all the WWX LWJ fic recommendations on your page, I've been so happy since I found them. I'm very new to the fandom (I know I'm super late to the party) and just finished watching the untamed and I'm craving for more. I've read some of the LWJ POV stories and they were great so far. So I trust your taste 😁

So, I just wanted to tell you that I really appreciate you sharing them!

And can you tell me maybe, where I can find the novel (in English)?

Have a lovely day!

Aw, thank you so much! I'm glad you enjoyed them! If you have any particular kinds of fics you like, favorite tropes, that kind of thing, feel free to ask, & I'd be happy to make you a tailored rec list. It's usually how I end up making themed rec lists anyway. A friend will ask for something they're in the mood for or someone posts somewhere asking for something specific, & then I get inspired & off I go, haha.

As to your question about where to find the novel in English, I'm assuming you mean for free? I found them at my local library, & that's how I read MDZS the first time through before purchasing the e-books when I had the funds to. There are also fan translations floating around, though I know they tend to be pulled down a lot of the time once official translations become available.

a little something for a friend’s bday

A CQL ALIGNMENT CHART— but it’s all Wei Wuxian

why the nie sect leaders’ inevitable death by qi deviation isn’t (just) about the sabers

So, okay, this is a meta I’ve been working on/wanting to write/dropping hints to various people about now for quite a while! I think it’s significant thematically to some of the main questions MDZS/CQL asks, about cycles of justice and vengeance, the tension between personal agency and aspects of a situation outside one’s control, and good intentions often not being enough on their own, particularly to forestall problems resulting from imperfect or fatally flawed means to an end.

As a fantasy story, I think one of the strengths of MDZS/CQL is how it uses magic to reflect aspects of its thematic questions in certain cases as literal external forces, events that exist in a format outside just a character’s internal journey. The metaphors and proper social and personal orders these characters live by, have very real physical consequences in the world that result from the existence and manipulation of magical/spiritual energies.

And to my view, the part of this that I want to make the case for here, is how this relates to the Nie sect’s cultivation practises, and why I think the clan’s history of leaders succumbing to instability and qi deviation is a more complicated interplay of a few different factors, rather than just an externally-imposed illness whose source is purely their saber spirits.

* * *

Like, okay. The characters and narrative do, in fact, spend a lot of time discussing the Nie sect leaders’ early violent deaths in the context of their sabers’ spirits becoming angry and aggressive and affecting their mental and spiritual stability. So it makes sense to focus on those actual items as the essential reason behind why they qi deviate and end up dying the way they do. But there was something… logically unsatisfying to me about the idea that just the number of edges on your bladed weapon would make such a difference that sword spirits (also generally used for killing! because they’re also deadly weapons!) are apparently morally neutral but sabers, on the other hand, just Cannot Stop with the killing once they’ve gotten a taste of it.

But if you take an experimental step away from the idea that sabers must somehow be Inherently Different from swords in their response to violence - what possible explanations are left? Or, asked a different way - what makes the Nie sect’s ideological cultivation focus distinct from other sects’? The Lan focus on regulation and self-restraint as the path to goodness; the Jiang focus on self-knowledge and following what you know as right even against difficult odds; the Jin seem to emphasise value in beauty and unique rarity… and what the Nie seem to place the most value on, is dispensation of justice and abhorring evil, even to an extent that refuses attempts at compromise.

The only problem is, the justice that they (and plenty of others) seem to focus on most often, is justice for capital crimes - paying with a life for a life - and no matter how righteous and justified the motives, what this still ends up with is a spiritual path that spends a comparatively awful lot of time on seeking others’ deaths. And we see, throughout the story, more than one thematic hint that this is maybe not the best method for moving toward harmony or immortality.

Lan Qiren’s impromptu quiz of Wei Wuxian when the latter is fucking off in class. His example problem specifies the resentful spirit was an executioner in life (societally-sanctioned to kill others for heinous crimes), and Wei Wuxian notes that one who’s killed so many is a very likely sort to become a resentful corpse; meanwhile his many victims also remain tethered to cycles of vengeance and anger, able to be easily stirred up into a force of resentful energy that would target him if their corpses were disturbed.

The dialogue between Wei Wuxian and Fang Mengchen in the Burial Mounds after the attempted siege turns into the major sects being saved from a trap. It’s all very fine and good to hold a grudge, to see a lack of justice for a harm that can’t ever be undone or repaired when the one who caused it gets to be alive and well (or even not!), but as Wei Wuxian says - what are you going to do about it? It’s so easy for there to always be a wrong that needs righting (in a real or alleged guilty party’s blood). But will it get you anywhere? Can a person, can a society, mete out justice or vengeance once and have that wipe the slate clean, or will the wound reopen again and demand yet more suffering? Where does it end?

The discussion about the Nie’s ancestral saber halls with Huisang, where Wei Wuxian notes that the method of suppressing the saber spirits edges rather close to demonic cultivation. In literal terms, that question seems to be directed at the actual use of evil individuals’ transforming corpses to contain the sabers’ power. But I think the entire conversation, and Huisang’s need to swear them to secrecy and enlistment as backup if other clans find out and get angry, contains a certain amount of thematic subtext reflecting not just on the saber tomb itself, but the Nie clan’s cultivation as a whole. These are significant and revered family heirlooms, not easily or justly discarded, but maintaining them isn’t without cost, and the spiritual fallout rests on the edge of a knife, needing the perpetual presence of an evil to fight to remain in balance: the saber tomb is both the literal and metaphorical end result of the clan leaders’ cultivation path.

“But why,” you may ask, “if the principles underlying the Nie sect’s whole culture have an edge that’s sharper and more harmful to the user’s qi than other cultivation philosophies of the rest of the sword-using sects, do we only see “death by qi deviation” as an issue for the sect leaders, and not more widespread among a larger portion of the disciples?”

And that’s where the “(just)” part of the title of this post comes in, because that aspect is where the difference comes down to the sabers - or, specifically, the named sabers that have spirits of their own. The spiritual sabers aren’t bloodthirsty and excited to haunt and/or kill people right out of the gate, but rather, as Huisang explains, they become restless after spending their wielder’s lifetime destroying evil. A cultivator and their spiritual tools develop a relationship over time, as their cultivation is practised and refined - they bond, they recognise one another, and crucially, they seem to be able to share a kind of spiritual feedback loop, with the energies and intentions of one connecting to and ideally bolstering the strength of the other. The Nie clan in general seems marked by particularly strong relationships between individual cultivator and weapon, considering the sabers’ refusal to allow a clan leader’s descendants to inherent them, and both the circumstances of Mingjue’s father’s death and his own trauma reaction to that death.

So in this case, the illness and eventual qi deviations the Nie clan leaders suffer, the way the saber spirits come to weigh on their minds and emotions, make sense to me as a confluence of the particularly close bond and almost spiritual symbiosis between wielder and weapon, and the particular subject of emphasis that the clan leader lives by in how they train with and use that weapon. Focusing on justice as killing, as violent destruction of evil (the last resort one should aspire to after other solutions have failed, per Lan Qiren’s lesson), may not be the most spiritually healthy in any circumstance, but it’s only when you have half a lifetime’s worth of a mental feedback loop between you and this external, semi-sentient part of yourself that’s reinforcing the spiritual toll of that path, that you actually end up with a resulting qi deviation and death.

* * *

So, anyway, I do want to be clear having put forth this argument, that my point here is not to condemn the Nies, nor for that matter blame the sect leaders for their own deaths - that’s very much not in line with how the text itself displays flaws and virtues as two sides of the same coin (at times divided only by the context around them), and shows how destructive consequences can result from the best of intentions. For that matter, each major sect has unquestionably valuable basic principles at its heart, and just like microcosms of any culture, society, or group, displays instances of those principles being distorted, misaimed, or taken to extremes in ways that cause disharmony and pain to those in their path.

I think the way it plays out for the Nie clan just interests me in particular because of the way their uniqueness in cultivation method plays such known havoc with its members’ bodies and minds, and the way it straddles the divide between upright and demonic cultivation. MDZS asks, I think, more questions than it offers definitive answers to, and a significant one of those is, even if vengeance, even if death-as-justice is righteous, where do you balance all the harm done to others (up to and including) the justice-seeker in deciding whether to continue down that path of action?

And if it’s the Nie sect’s spiritual focus in combination with the spirits of their sabers that wear down a slow stream of damage to their qi, rather than simply the external threat of the sabers alone - that seems congruent, to me, with the suggestions offered elsewhere in the story.

post-canon wangxian is yunmeng for some reason (maybe dinner with jiang cheng) and while theyre there a big old fight breaks out and when asked "wha happen" the answer is "someone said someone else's soup was shit". while everyone around him is like "oh yeah" lan wangji is having a moment bc the soup drama was not an isolated incident, thats just how it goes in yunmeng

Wei Wuxian is gently touching Lan Wangji’s arm “I’m sorry you had to hear that,” he says, as Jiang Cheng grimly gestures for the tables to be moved out of the way to form an impromptu sparring ring so Satisfaction can be given. 

wang yibo for marie claire behind the scenes 

oh and another take that I feel the mxtx- specifically mdzs fandom needs to hear is that none and i mean none of the characters have any set morality. this applies to their mindset, actions, feelings- the entire point is that you see where all the characters come from and recognise their actions. none of them are completely 100% good or bad. the point of the entire novel isn't to see and judge their actions. it's to see where they come from, what mindset requires those terrible or honourable actions. is it okay to call out a character on their actions? yes. but please for the love of mo xiang tong xiu remember what caused those actions and whether your call out is necessary instead of making posts like "character A was just trying his best and character B came and ruined everything that's why I hate character C". no. almost all the characters are shitty to some extent albeit in different categories. recognise that and you will appreciate mdzs even more.

Hii everyone!!! And welcome to my fanart account. Please feel free to like and comment, because it's much appreciated.

Also any form of hate is not acceptable here.

The fanart is drawn by me, and it's mdzs/cql themed.

And yess there will be posts that are not art related💗

~~

P.S. I'm a multishipper, and I like 3zun.

Putting fun aside. Here's one of my drawings of Jin guangyao. A little something something.

It's my og artstyle so go easy on me

This is so Lan zhan🤭

Mdzs characters as memes ~~~~

Wei wuxian:

Wei wuxian, xue yang and Jingyi:

Wei ying and Jiang cheng:

Wangxian:

Nie huaisang, maybe Jinling, Jingyi

Jin guangyao to Jinling:

More Mdzs characters As Memes🌟🌟.

Yes there will be a part 3.

Wei wuxian

Xue yang, Wei wuxian, Lan jingyi

Wei wuxian:

Lan Jingyi (and wwx) answering Lan qiren.

These two are Nie huaisang:

Jingyi, jinling.

Jin guangyao and Jiang cheng @ the guanyin temple

Jiang cheng:

Mdzs characters as Memes 🌟Part3🌟

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The dilemma of being born in the Lan sect.

Maybe a little Lan zhan or a little Xichen. Maybe the Lan juniors:

If Nieyao were a thing.

Maybe they are?

Yaoyao and Dage:

Wangji! Lan wangji! Lan er gege!

Lwj: *inside* marry me!

This screams Wangxian:

Bedtime for Lan zhan!

I know he's Hanguang Jun but he gotta rest😁.

Gotta look fresh in the morning for everyday means everyday

Lan zhan:

Lastly, Jin Guangmeow:

Lol I should make more and make more commentary 😄