dwelling mostly on dreams

and sometimes writing them down

[huahua]

wenzhou happy ever after ~ with english subs ♡

[678i0u]

WandaVision (2021), created for television by Jac Schaeffer

[untamedconnotations]

WangXian is the melody composed by Lan WangJi for Wei WuXian. It is how he recognized his soulmate after the latter’s death, even though Wei WuXian now occupies a different body. WangXian is also translated as Forgetting Envies, and is a portmanteau of their names.

But first, a little background on the connotations of the family names, all of which are common enough but will subconsciously shape how these characters are perceived in the minds of a reader who is a native speaker. If you know Chinese, you might even get the feeling that the author got pretty tongue-in-cheek about the naming of her characters.

The Jin clan is gaudy and loud about their wealth. The word Jin 金 is literally “gold”. The Lan clan has family emblems that are cloud-themed. The word Lan 藍 is literally “blue”. The Jiang clan has roots in a province with lots of ponds and rivers. The word Jiang 江 is literally “river” in reference to bodies of water in Southern China.

The surname Wei 魏 is familiar to history majors, as it’s one of the three nation-states in the Three Kingdoms Period. However, if you’re also a WeiLan shipper from the Guardian fandom, then you might have heard that Shen Wei’s name Wei 巍 means “Mountain god entrusts himself to Ghost”. (I might do another post on this sometime.)

In Wei Ying’s Wei 魏 there’s no mountain 山 involved; that’s the top part of the character in Shen Wei’s Wei 巍. The original meaning of the word 魏 is grand and majestic – the left half of that character means god or entrust, while the right half means ghost. Fitting surname for a grandmaster who deals with the deceased.

Now the fun part with the personal names.

Lan Zhan’s formal name Zhan 湛 means deep or clear, without impurities. It is often prefixed to the front of the word “blue” to describe the color of sunny cloudless skies, azure.

(As an aside, his elder brother Lan XiChen’s formal name is Huan 渙, and means an expansive spreading of water with connotations of dispersion. Both Zhan and Huan have the water word root on the left half of the character.)

Wei Ying’s formal name Ying 嬰 literally means babe. In ancient times it used to also refer to necklaces, but that didn’t stop people from naming their sons thus. Historically there are at least a handful of well-known figures with that name. The Taoist term YuanYing 元嬰 refers to a state of primordial transcendence, often considered an intermediate phase on the path toward deity.

The author really nailed it with their courtesy names.

WangJi 忘機 / 忘机

Wang 忘 means to forget. In English it may have negative connotations because it’s associated with a passive disease and loss of treasured memories. In Chinese the act of actively forgetting can also be a positive renunciation of worldly troubles, so the character is somewhat more romantic than an English speaker would assume.

Ji 機 / 机 is typically used in common speech to refer to machines, mechanical things, opportunities, worldly things that have many parts intricately connected with each other. In more metaphysical discussions, it implies the intertwined destinies and sophistication of the mundane.

I’ve seen a classy tea store selling leaf blends named WangJi, among a collection of other poetic references and reminders of the otherworldly. To forget the secular calculations and intricacies of the world is to live freely and without distractions; as an antonym of precision, it has heavy Taoist flavors because of its seclusive connotations.

WuXian 無羨 / 无羨

Wu 無 / 无 means none, nil, the lack of.

Xian 羨 means envy. WuXian is a perfect name for someone who embodies the untamed, envious of none. His outlook on life is never to bemoan his fate, come what may. He doesn’t know the meaning of jealousy. He is complete in and of himself.

WangXian as a portmanteau is so clever – even though the other portmanteau is brilliant as well: WuJi 無機 / 无机 is pronounced exactly the same as the Chinese term for “untamed” 無羈 / 无羁 (yes, those are the two characters you see inside the red stamp next to the show’s title logo).

When a native speaker hears the term WangXian 忘羨, they get the basic meaning of “forgetting envies”, but at the same time they’re inevitably reminded of this famous idiom:

只羨鴛鴦不羨仙 Zhi Xian YuanYang Bu Xian Xian Literally: Only envy the mandarin ducks, and not the deities. (Alternatively: A pair of love birds is more enviable than immortality.)

In a world of cultivators whose ultimate goal is to ascend into deity, lovers only envy the mandarin ducks, which are symbols of faithful monogamy and harmony, a tribute to growing old together, companions for life.

[attilarrific]

So I was thinking about Star Wars and The Untamed—as you do—and not to be like, “hot take,” but regardless of who went dark side in canon, Wei Wuxian would actually make a much, much better Jedi than Lan Wangji would.

[moonbelowsea]

hey OP these are some fantastically thought provoking tags please tell us more???

#actually he’d make a better jedi than most mdzs characters  #lxc might be okay but other than that  #and i mean i can’t think of a way to do a star wars au off the top of the head  #partly because i would want wwx to end up using the dark side because canon  #and uhhhhhhh bisexual disaster brain says yiling laozu hot  #but that really doesn’t work  #because genuinely in star wars canon he does not have the right personality to go to the dark side  #and again  #weirdly  #lwj DOES  #but i don’t tend to be that into role reversal aus so that’s not how i’d write it  #anyway  #JUST A THOUGHT  #modao zushi  

[attilarrific]

WITH PLEASURE, @moonbelowsea. I mean, that was a wild 4am brainwave, but I mostly stand by it anyway? SO LET’S TALK ABOUT JEDI.

(Also, this is gonna have spoilers by implication for anyone who hasn’t finished the show/book, so read with caution! And the spoiler will be for something that, from the bottom of my heart, I, someone who cares about spoilers not at all, would encourage you to remain unspoiled for.)

So first off, in the Star Wars universe, there is no way to recreate the circumstances that had Wei Wuxian inventing demonic cultivation in canon. You cannot take away someone’s access to the Force without also taking away their access to the Dark Side. In the immortal words of Han Solo, “That’s not how the Force works.” And if that’s true, then Wei Wuxian doesn’t end up in a situation where the only option available to him is his single-plank bridge, because either the Force is there or the Dark Side also isn’t. Yeah, sure, the Dark Side is dubiously more powerful than the Force, but I don’t think that matters much, because the Force is pretty damn powerful, and…

Wei Wuxian has never loved anything so much that he’s unwilling to lose it. He’s not ‘attached’ to anything. There’s a lot of stuff and people he loves very much, but never in a particularly possessive way, and never in a way that supplants his other goals. Wei Wuxian will fight to the ends of the earth and to his own destruction, but only for moral imperatives. Things he’s willing to give up: his golden core, his family, his home, his reputation, literally everything he has. He fights to save the Wens not because he doesn’t want to live without them, but because it’s the right thing to do. He doesn’t even know most of them. And when he does, he loses pretty much everything he has, which, so we’re clear, no one else is willing to do.

There’s no possessive side to his love, nothing that he clings to when the only other option is letting go of his moral absolutes. You can make an argument that his inventing demonic cultivation is this on its own—that his use of an ethically dubious method to preserve his life and save the cultivation world from the Wens is comparable to going to the Dark Side for similar reasons (save the galaxy from the Wens, etc)—but again, I don’t think that’s necessarily a useful comparison, because you can’t replicate it based on Star Wars canon.

LAN WANGJI, ON THE OTHER HAND. Lan Wangji’s love is deeply possessive (and not just in a kinky way, though, you know, that too). He’s incredibly attached to Wei Wuxian; he’s willing to go to incredible lengths to keep from losing him a second time. This turns out to be fine, because Wei Wuxian is, without a doubt, a good person and someone who deserves to be saved, but I don’t think that’s at the forefront of Lan Wangji’s mind—this is more explicit in book canon, but when they first (re)meet at Dafan Mountain and Jiang Cheng tries to hit Wei Wuxian with Zidian to force his soul out of the body he assumes Wei Wuxian is forcibly possessing, Lan Wangji blocks the strike. Zidian doesn’t work anyway because Wei Wuxian got resurrected via sacrifice, but Lan Wangji would have no reason to block it if he thought that—he assumes Wei Wuxian is forcibly possessing Mo Xuanyu (a Bad Thing) and therefore moves to prevent him being removed.

I’m not even a little bit saying this makes Lan Wangji a bad person (it’s actually a personality trait I’m extremely fond of in fictional characters), but I am saying that being willing to do morally dubious things to prevent the loss of people you love (another book thing, but saving Wei Wuxian after the massacre at the Nightless City is frankly another example of this) is literally exactly what turned Anakin into Darth Vader in canon. Lan Wangji has no interest in vengeance (except on a very petty and non-violent level), which is a point in his favor and definitely lessens the possibility of him turning to the Dark Side, and he’s got enough self-restraint that I’m not saying it’s a done deal, but.

Lan Wangji is the kind of character who would be an amazing Jedi, held up as a shining example to all, up until the point at which circumstances conspire to fuck Wei Wuxian over and he becomes a Sith Lord without warning, leaving people all around him going, “What? Him? Him???”

Wei Wuxian, on the other hand, is the kind of guy who spends days in the Jedi vaults inspecting Sith holocrons and having terrible ideas and being disapproved of for being too reckless and emotional (though he actually isn’t? Lan Wangji is way more likely to make a choice based on emotions than Wei Wuxian is—this is why Wei Wuxian is a better Jedi), but then when it comes right down to it, his interest is purely academic. The Dark Side can’t touch him.

I mean, to be fair, in Star Wars, your fellow Jedi can sense some of your feelings—so instead, Lan Wangji is always being reminded to chill and be more like Wei Wuxian, and other than Wei Wuxian’s distressing tendency to yeet himself out of speeders and go in without a plan, he’s the one the Council treats as the Perfect Jedi. And everyone around who isn’t a Jedi is just sitting there like, “What the fuck. What the actual fuck. How is this the dynamic. How does that guy need to calm down. THAT OTHER GUY JUST JUMPED OFF A BUILDING SCREAMING, ‘COME AT ME, WENS.’ What the fuck.”

[moonbelowsea]

WHY do you keep hiding delicious goodness in the tags, @attilarrific. why.

THE TAGS:  #i have a lot of feelings about star wars and mdzs okay  #and lwj isn’t like  #inevitably going to become a sith lord  #he’s a lot harder to manipulate than anakin for one thing  #and he’s got more self-control  #but he’s definitely the kind of jedi the council is always a little worried about  #who always kind of has the dark side hovering at his edges  #because he’s too emotional!  #he can’t accept his feelings and release them into the force!  #and under the right circumstances  #yeah  #between the two of them  #he’s the one who’d become a sith lord  #modao zushi  #meta  

THIS WAS ALL SO AMAZING. fascinating and well thought out and oh my god??? I loved reading it SO MUCH and it’s SUCH a wonderful and extremely well thought out look into their characterizations??? I want to print it out and carry it around with me for a while and see if a crossover comes fully formed out of the ether out of sheer obsessive will

although I’ll argue, for the sake of argument, that if we WANT to keep the original societal dynamic (aka LWJ considered to be shining paragon and WWX the Fall risk), we could take away the part where Jedi can feel each other tendencies and emotions (I don’t read a lot of Star Wars fic but I haven’t seen that used before in what I’ve read, so I’m pretty sure it’s optional, and actually where did you get it from?, it sounds super interesting!)

EITHER POSSIBILITY SOUNDS AMAZING AND HILARIOUS THOUGH. I now need 30 different crossovers with each exploring a different possible interpretation.

more things to say, um. did I already mention I am in awe of the characterization you’ve teased out when constructing the crossover possibilities? because I am. that was fantastic. thank you for writing it out.

Lan Wangji’s more morally dubious personality traits are something that are very very near and dear to my heart and which are actually fairly difficult to properly explore and it’s incredible to see them so clearly written out here. thank you.

finally, something that I shamefully refrained from saying to the original post but I definitely should have: Yiling Laozu is indeed smoking hot.

he shouldn’t be. he’s a disaster.

possibly that adds to the hotness tho.

[attilarrific]

@moonbelowsea: although I’ll argue, for the sake of argument, that if we WANT to keep the original societal dynamic (aka LWJ considered to be shining paragon and WWX the Fall risk), we could take away the part where Jedi can feel each other tendencies and emotions (I don’t read a lot of Star Wars fic but I haven’t seen that used before in what I’ve read, so I’m pretty sure it’s optional, and actually where did you get it from?, it sounds super interesting!)

Did I…did I make that up? *searches memory frantically* IS THAT NOT A THING? I have read a lot of Star Wars fic, but to be fair, it’s been a while; it hasn’t been a main fandom of mine in years. And now that I’m thinking about it…it might mostly be a thing in master/padawan bonds? (Either in canon or fanon, I regularly lose track of which is which with Star Wars.)

But if it’s only a master/padawan thing (or maybe I’m just making all of this up, damn, I’m going to have to go back and read more SW fic), that provides a THIRD FUNNY POSSIBILITY, which is:

The Jedi Council fucking loves Lan Wangji, clearly the perfect Jedi, so calm, so at peace, so one with the Force—except for his original Jedi Master, who’s just standing there going, “WHAT CALM. Can you guys not tell that that kid is three mean comments from Jin Zixun and a bad hair day for Wei Wuxian away from becoming Darth Wei-Ying-Protection-Squad???” And the Jedi Council is always saying to Wei Wuxian, you know, “Quit being like this, you must,” but his Jedi Master is like, “Nah, he’s good. We’ve got nothing to worry about. You keep doing you, kid. I mean, maybe stop jumping out of moving vehicles, that shit stresses me out, please don’t die, but don’t worry about your feelings, your feelings are solid.”

(I have no idea who their Jedi Masters are. MDZS canon suggests Lan Qiren and Jiang Fengmian as the most obvious options, but a) that gets into family dynamics we can’t have, and b) I’m actually very into the idea that an aged-up Lan Xichen is Lan Wangji’s Jedi Master, even though we’ve still got the family dynamic issue. But he’s the guy who Knows Lan Wangji.)

But yeah—Lan Wangji, dude who loves possessively and dwells on every little thing and has never let a single thing go in his Entire Life? Definitely on track to be corrupted by the Dark Side. Wei Wuxian, guy who’s always cheerful and gives stuff up whenever it’s required of him and can’t even remember Jin Zixun’s name? He’s gonna be fine.

(Also: Yiling Laozu thirst solidarity!!!)

[moonbelowsea]

reblogging once again for brilliance and also for the tags: #the trajectory of these au musings really went from  #thoughtful exploration of a given character’s capacity for evil  #to  #what’s the FUNNIEST WAY for these characters to interact with the jedi council  #and i’ve really got to figure out if i made up the emotion sensing thing  #or if one other fic in the universe did and i just adopted it instantly as canon  #i think maybe adult jedi can also shield some of that?  #maybe?  #so realistically when they’re adults people might not be able to feel that anymore  #but mostly what i’m saying is  #again role reversal aus not really my thing  #but just IMAGINE something really shitty happens to wwx and he disappears for a while  #or gets captured?  #idk he’s not dead no one thinks he’s dead  #the council has to leave him somewhere to preserve peace or something  #and when he gets back he’s like HEY GUYS WHAT’S UP WHERE’S LAN ZHAN  #and everyone else has to be like  #oh that guy went full sith trying to save you  #meet the new threat to the universe we’re trying to kill  #and then you know  #shenanigans  #saved by the power of love  #etc etc etc  #no one tell me to write that  #because dark!character fic ALSO not my thing  #but it’s a fun thought experiment  #the lwj always hovering on the edge of dark but not falling over is more in line with my actual character dynamic interests  #ANYWAY  #modao zushi  #meta  

[lovetincture]

Queer Adult Book Recs Crowdsourced from Twitter (mostly fantasy)

Exactly what it says on the tin. I’ve been making an effort to read more books this year, and while YA is a fine genre, it just isn’t for me anymore. I asked Twitter for queer, adult fantasy novel recs and oh boy, did Twitter come through.

Disclaimer: I’ve read exactly one thing on this list, and that’s the Kushiel’s Legacy series by Jacqueline Carey and it is excellent. Hands down my favorite series of all time. A+ worldbuilding, highly recommend. All other commentary on these books is not mine. The parenthetical asides are copied verbatim from the book reccers on Twitter so if you think they’re wrong, idk man, take it up with the strangers on the internet.

This list is messy as hell. In places, it’s missing authors, but I think all these books should be easy enough to find with a little googling. Without further ado: Multi-author Short Story Collections

Daughters of Frankenstein: Lesbian Mad Scientists

His Seed: An Arboretum of Erotica (m/m erotica with a tree/forest theme)

Time Well Bent: Queer Alternative Histories by Connie Wilkins

Murder Mystery

The Killer Wore Leather: A Mystery by Laura Antoniou

General

books by Leah Raeder

Fall on Your Knees

Historical Fiction

Hild by Nicola Griffith

Adult Fantasy

Mordred, Bastard Son by Douglas Clegg (Dark queer Arthuriana)

The Kushiel’s Legacy series by Jacqueline Carey

The Salt Roads by Nalo Hopkinson (sweeping alt-history with Afro-Caribbean magic and lore. Bi and lesbian characters)

Riverside by Ellen Kushner

Swordspoint by Ellen Kushner*

The Captive Prince

The Nevernight series (bi rep and grimdark)

Fifth Season

The Priory of the Orange Tree by Samantha Shannon (very minimal f/f romance)

The Administration series by Manna Francis (explicit BDSM in a dystopian future)

The Tiger’s Daughter by Arsenault Rivera

Widdershins series by Jordan L Hawke (what if a MOTW-type show was gay, well-written and packed with elegant and super satisfying foreshadowing?)

Every Heart a Doorway (contemporary fantasy novella but heartbreakingly wonderful)

The Tethered Mage

The Broken Earth Triology

A Taste of Honey

The Magpie Lord series/Charm of Magpies by K.J. Charles (not for children)

The Casebook of Simon Feximal

Spectred Isle

In the Vanishers’ Palace by Aliette de Bodard

The Raven Tower by Ann Leckie

The City We Became by N. K. Jemisin

The Tensorate series by JY Neon Yang

Magic For Liars by Sarah Gailey

Dragonoak Series by Sam Farren

Witchmark by C.L. Polk

All of Caitlin R Kiernan’s work

Thornchapel series by Sierra Simone (NC-17, gothic fantasy)

Luck in the Shadows series by Lynn Flewelling

Mangoverse by Shira Glassman (fairytale-like and light)

The Second Sister by Rae Magdon

The Riley Parra series

The Tensorate series by Jy Yang

Pantomime by Laura Lam

Black Blade Blues

Worth Her Weight in Gold, River of Teeth, Taste of Marrow, Upright Women Wanted by Sarah Gailey (Western fantasy queer fusion)

A Companion to Wolves by Elizabeth Bear and ____

Melusine and sequels

The God Eaters by Jesse Hajicek

The House in the Cerulean Sea by T.J. Klune

The Last God of Earth series by AJ Vanderpoel

Inda series by Sherwood Smith (wonderful worldbuilding and many queer characters)

The Steel Remains + series by Richard Morgan (grim trilogy)

The Unspoken Name by AK Larkwood

The Watchmaker of Filigree Street (historical fantasy romance about a British civil servant and a Japanese clockmaker)

The Monster Elendhaven (monster becomes psycho-sexually obsessed with a vengeful magician)

Farseer series by Robin Hobb (the character of the Fool is genderfluid writing done right)

Machineries of Empire by Yoon Ha Lee

A Pale Light in the Black by KB Wagers

The Jealousy of Jalice by Jesse Nolan Bailey

The Outside by Ada Hoffman

This Is How You Lose The Time War

The Tiger Flu (a bit more dystopian)

An Unkindness of Ghosts

Ancillary Justice

The Queens of Innis Lear and Lady Hotspur by Tessa Gratton

any works by Gail Carriger (recommendation to start with Soulless)

The Light Brigade by Kameron Hurley

The Crimson Empire trilogy by Alex Marshall

The Way of Thorn  & Thunder by Daniel Heath Justice

The Chronicles of Tornor trilogy by Elizabeth A. Lynn (older book that featured the first fantasy protagonists in an openly gay relationship)

There is Steel Crow Saga by Paul Kreuger

Craft Sequence by Max Gladstone

Anything by Amelia Atwater-Rhodes (she has YA stuff that doesn’t really read as YA and an adult trilogy)

The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern

Foundryside by Robert Jackson Bennett

Wayward Children by Seanan McGuire

A Big Ship at the Edge of the Universe by Alex White

The Last Sun by K.D. Edwards

Borden Dispatches duology by Cherie Priest

The Salvagers Trilogy

Sci-fi

Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir

The Wayfarers series by Becky Chambers

Into the Drowning Deep by Mira Grant (sci-fi/horror with scary mermaids)

Lise Mactague (wrote a sci-fi trilogy and a standalone steampunk novel with f/f romance)

[gusucloud]

Wei Wuxian’s first and last appearance : “In the end, he’s still smiling, cause the light he had been waiting for has finally arrived.” Xiao Zhan

[chnqin]

The Untamed (2019)

[mylordshesacactus]

[id: Road To El Dorado meme. “Tulio, did you ever imagine [2020] would end like this?” “The [Destiel] is a surprise.”]

[isozyme]

one of my favorite things about the untamed is that everyone is always there

nobody gets to be messy in peace. your entire messed up family WILL arrive and they WILL make it worse, no matter how implausible it is that ten people would show up just in time to start drama

are you having a fight in the woods with your ex-fiance? cool cool cool your younger brother is there, and your younger brother’s crush/soulmate, and your other younger brother, and your ex-fiance’s mom, half-brother, half-brother’s boyfriend, and cousin are also there. plus several random hangers on to serve as a peanut gallery

did your wife just stab herself with an Evil Knife because of incest? your side piece is definitely there to confirm that she’s dead (awk). so’s your dumb little brother, your disgraced pal who your boyfriend hates, your nephew, his uncle, his other uncle, and your boyfriend’s brother. several of these people are important dignitaries and one is supposed to be dead

how about this: your uncle is holding you hostage with a garrote? let’s count how many relatives are there: 5 additional uncles (one as a ghost), a cousin, your cousin’s dad who is common-law married to one of your uncles, and an old family friend (possessed by aforementioned uncle-ghost).

in the words of jin zixun:

[ruanbaijie]

10.31 祝你过个愉快的生日 (◕▿◕✿)

↳ @mdzsnet MDZS 5th Anniversary Day 1 Wei Wuxian: Unforgettable

↳ @fytheuntamed Untamed Fall Fest Day 31 Wei Wuxian

[lorelaigilmoure]

#same energy

[taylorswift]

S/O to all the moms whose adult daughters ask them to take a pic in a hotel hallway bc they’re feeling their outfit - you’re the real mvps 🏅

[anthenia]

Happy December!!

[kyloren]

The hall looked spectacular. Festoons of holly and mistletoe hung all around the walls, and no less than twelve towering Christmas trees stood around the room, some sparkling with tiny icicles, some glittering with hundreds of candles.

[macbethheadband]

Shout out professor rj lupin for not flipping absolute shit when he sees harry with the marauders map in the hallway that night. i seriously cant stop laughing he could have gone oh FUUUUUCKK!!!!!!!!!! but hes got like plus 15 repression and a proficiency in Bullshitting so he just says ‘hmm yes yes oh is this a? a zonkos? haha cool.’ Legend.

[harrysdimples]

harry tour pictures + films

[gaypeopletwitter]