gekidasa

Two more chapters in my MDZS reread!

Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji learn about the man-eating fortress at Xinglu Ridge and the state of Qinghe Nie under Nie Huaisang is discussed. They go in search of the man-eating fortress, where they find the saber tombs and Jin Ling stuck in the wall along with lots of skeletons.

Chapters 21 and 22 of the webnovel

I posted my backlog of MDZS reread notes on my blog:

In which our heroes encounter the waterborne abyss

The end of the Cloud Recesses flashback. Wei Wuxian gets punished, rabbits, Jin Zixuan gets punched in the face, Wei Wuxian leaves Gusu.

Back in the present timeline, something goes wrong in the Cloud Recesses.

Lan Wangji and Wei Wuxian set off to find the rest of the arm's body and arrive in Qinghe.

For the start of the CR study arc flashback! Enter a little someone named Nie Huaisang!

Blog post here

Notes I took while rereading, from the spanish edition. Mostly notes to self, maybe I'll expand on some in a tidier fashion later (the stuff about what is fact, what is supposition, and how the narration doesn't really distinguish).

Notes on chapters 1 + 2

Okay, in an effort to actually post about fandom stuff in a format I actively like more, I am copied and expanded a thread from fedi and bsky... basically, about Nie Huaisang and whether I believe he was really responsible for everything.

An idea someone had in the cx server: NHS realizes the soul switching array didn’t work, WWX is already in someone else’s body and so must figure it out. Fun enough, but it ultimately doesn’t work for me because it underscores why I don’t think it makes sense for NHS to be behind MXY doing that: WWX being at Mo manor is unnecessary for his plan to be put into effect. All he needs is LWJ, and involving the Lan juniors ropes him in.

Wei Wuxian is actually a potential complication, if you think about it. He's a wildcard. Can Nie Huaisang really anticipate, much less control what he will do? Adding to that, well, why would Nie Huaisang think putting Lan Wangji and Wei Wuxian together in this situation lead to something better and more productive than just Lan Wangji? He would not assume they'd collaborate and work well together. As far as he knows, they were constantly at odds (of course this is different in CQL, but I am not a CQL girlie, I am always will be going from novel canon). This is actually potentially bad if the goal is to the truth about Dage's death come to light and especially, to make sure cultivation society believes this. Lan Wangji has the reputation to be believed. Wei Wuxian... not so much, not necessarily.

So personally I think Nie Huaisang’s plan as presented through Wei Wuxian’s deductions at the end is unnecessarily complicated and doesn’t make sense, which is why this is one aspect of mdzs where I just ignore probable authorial intent… at least I assume mxtx does probably intend for his deductions to be true, even if it’s not actually verified within the story. It's just Wei Wuxian's suppositions, really. So I can and will do what I like with my headcanons.

Does this mean I think Nie Huaisang is an innocent little lamb? No. I just don’t think he did everything Wei Wuxian thinks he did. Because it just does not make sense to me.

Some of it (luring the juniors to Yi City) makes more sense if mxtx had gone ahead with her original idea to give him an accomplice. But that’s not what she wrote, so that leaves me, again, to find an interpretation that makes sense to me given what we DO know in canon.

In most of my fandoms, I seldom write fic, and I only do short little fics when the mood strikes, generally that can be finished in one day, or 2 or 3 at most. MDZS has been different. I've probably written more sangcheng fics than I've written any other fics in total.

However, for awhile now, the well has been running dry. It's a combination of losing spaces where I can discuss the ship (which is probably what fueled the fic writing in the first place) and real life being busy (not in a bad way).

Anyway, I feel like it's now been over a year that I've been wanting to get back in the mood for it, because I do love to live with a story for the ship I like, to be plotting and writing, and I miss it. But on the other hand... I don't know if it's time to just accept the urge to write is either disappearing or has already done so, and just... move on.

I used to find it so effortless to post (shitpost?) on LJ. And I WANT to post on here more but somehow making posts seems like more of an effort, not sure what it is. Like I need to MAKE time to think and do it, instead of just... posting whatever at the drop of a hat. Not sure why it is. Anyway. Which it didn't feel like that.

I'm not sure I'm going to finish this WoT reread. There's more parts annoying me more than ever before.

Kinda sad about it, tbh. WoT has been with me since I was 14 (admittedly with a 10 year gap because of The Slog).

I'm running a sangcheng romcom themed prompt fest for Qixi 💜💚

Info at the SangCheng Comm

💚 Existing prompts
💜 Submit your prompt!

Actually remembering to save my threads somewhere!

Watching the MDZS audio drama, season 3 ep9:

Sisi says her story happened 11 years ago, and I promptly go "wait, did the novel also say 11 years?"

I go to check. As always when I wonder if something in the audio drama was that way in the novel... it is 😂

So hard timeline fact: JGS was killed 2 years after WWX's death

Also now that I know more about cultivation beliefs and genre tropes, it seems to me it wasn't simply make an old man have sex so his heart gives out (what I thought when I first read this). The point was probably a version of making him a human cauldron and somehow having all the women suck out his yang energy, despite not being cultivators.

The thing about JGS's death is that it's pretty sadistic. If JGY merely wanted to kill him, he could have chosen a different way. So the point was to do it like THAT.

Sisi says he looked sick to the point of dying (also that he looked 30 to 40, which is probably an under estimate what with him being a cultivator, but still: a man who looked to be in his prime). We don't hear about him being sick any time before this, including when the argument with Nie Mingjue over Xue Yang happens.

Which leads me to conclude it wasn't a natural sickness. JGY could have been poisoning him. But given the thing with HOW he died and the yang energy/human cauldron angle, I think it's more likely this was not the first time JGY procured women for his father. Maybe it was even JGS's idea the first time and JGY figured out how to use that to kill him. Or more likely had XY figure it. I think it's very telling that XY is there.