Yet another new study debunked the basis for the anti-trans sports bans. It was never about sports but for creating legal avenues for exclusion and abjection. This is one of the largest analyses ever conducted, involving 52 studies and 6,485 trans people. Read the study here.
Fans of Danmei same-sex romance stories in China say the government is cracking down harder than ever on the popular genre.
to the best of my knowledge, AP News is now the first (only?) western journalistic outlet to confirm that 袁依楣 Yuan Yimei (MXTX) was detained in 2019 for "tax evasion" ("非法經營罪"), imprisoned for 3 years, and paroled in 2021—there were sinophone reports but with dubious sources. i think we can now take this to be factual.
Yuan Yimei was also (according to 港聞 Hong Kong News) fined 400k RMB, and as always when accosted with this information I have to put my face in my hands and dwell on the unutterably vast amount of capital her IP has been generating (in the United States alone) since June 2019, and ask myself: has she seen even one cent of it.
and, like. far be it from me in these unprecedented times to harsh the global danmei buzz. i can only hold these facts in one hand, and gesture towards @penguinrandomhouse and @sevenseasentertainment with the other, and ask them how well they sleep at night without ever making a single official statement.
anyway here's a petition you can sign! thanks to @elizabethminkel for pointing out this article, and I hope all our beloved and unfathomably nervy writers are safe tonight, at home with people they love.
Creators are being imprisoned. Where is Seven Seas Entertainment?
I think a lot of people forget that Wen Ning is hot. We know that both Lan Wangji and Jiang Cheng are jealous of him, but this is generally assumed to be because Wei Wuxian prioritizes Wen Ning over the two of them during the events of the novels. He prioritizes Wen Ning as a member of his found family, as a partner in crime and as his closest friend. But it is so much funnier—so much juicier, drama-wise—to remember that Wen Ning is described as physically beautiful many times in the books. An enemy of the state just stole Wei Wuxian from right under your nose, and he’s also hot. Humiliating. Devastating. 2 dead 3k injured
Just some thoughts but tbh it’s hard for me to understand the whole idea with “WWX’s mistakes lead to horrible events” in flashbacks. I wonder which mistakes exactly bc one big decision that he has made post Sunshot Campaign is deciding to protect the Wen Remnants and leaving the Jiangs. Is it the mistake ppl are usually referring to?
Because I feel like there are a couple of factors contributing to WWX becoming “the enemy of the cultivation world” and I think saying that it’s only about the Wen Remnants is a bit not it. Him sheltering the Wens is the visible cause of why he becomes so inconvenient all of a sudden. A pretence, you might say.
I also deeply disagree when people paint WWX’s arrogance as the reason he becomes a target for the clans. I’ve seen quite a few “if only he would have been nicer and explained the situation and used diplomacy! The clans would have understood him and JC would have surely helped him!” I honestly have no idea what in this book says that they are willing to listen to anything. WWX is a servant who has power way above his station and he isn’t willing to compromise on his morals. Like I can’t empathise enough how this story isn’t about misunderstanding.
The real reason we uncover throughout the book is a political play: WWX’s powers are such a game changer that all the politically ambitious folks (aka JGS and JGY) have already clocked in that they need Yin Tiger Tally for themselves to be on top of the game. WWX saving the Wens was just a very convenient thing for the Jins to use to go down the whole “public enemy” scenario, I feel like if there weren’t any Wens, they would have just made up smth else.
What I wanna say is when we oversimplify the situation with WWX saving Wen remnants as “WWX was choosing between his family and saving the Wens” we tend to make the deaths of JYL and JZX the result of “choosing the Wens” which just a fake consequence imo.
It’s kinda connected to another thing that I see from time to time (often due to donghua and cql but also mb because of the whole demonic vs ghost cultivation translation issue) is when people set up those deaths as the proof of WWX’s ghost path being evil by default like “of course everyone in the cultivation world knew WWX would lose his pebbles! Whatever WWX did his cultivation was a ticking bomb waiting to kill a bunch of people”. Which again misses a lot of context of these situations.
JZX’s death is the direct result of JGY’s political machinations that had a double purpose: to ambush and kill WWX/or set him up for killing the hosts and hopefully get rid of the direct Jin heir to uplift JGY’s position. It’s very likely that (unfortunately for JZX) he would have been dealt with by JGY either way. It isn’t directly connected to WWX making a “poor decision” of saving the Wens and leading to people having a valid reason to show him as dangerous. I also don’t see this death as a proof that ghost cultivation was evil and unstable from the start. I think the way this scene is framed: starting with WWX’s excitement about JL’s celebration and culminating in WWX’s gift being broken is pushing us as readers on an emotional roller coaster to help us understand exactly what a turmoil WWX is feeling in the moment, so when JZX comes to him with a sword without calling away Jin Zixun’s men, we feel the danger that made WWX act the way he did. I think the book very purposefully sets it as a sort of “overuse of self-defence” where WWX didn’t control the force of his command which makes him responsible for using the weapon but doesn’t mean that the weapon essentially was at fault. Was WWX’s cultivation the reason for this death? Yes, but in a same way a knife can be a lethal weapon if you push someone far enough to use it as one.
JYL’s death was the result of the sects uniting to kill WWX. WWX calls for the dead as a response to people attempting to kill him (which again looks like desperate self-defence to me) and he looses control of gui dao when he hears that JYL has arrived there. But I also think it’s very purposeful on mxtx’s behalf to show that JYL gets HURT by WWX’s inability to control ghost cultivation but she gets KILLED by a cultivator aiming to sneak kill WWX from the back. I feel like if mxtx really wanted to say “ghost cultivation is evil by default and will end badly for whoever the user is” she would have made JYL die from the wound that was caused indirectly by WWX failing to stop his rampage.
I started mdzs with reading the book and honestly, I didn’t see the ghost cultivation as some sort of Star Wars-esque dark side that corrupts the user the more he uses it. I feel like a lot of instability and negative effects we see of it comes from high-pressure situations where WWX’s life is directly endangered. It isn’t to say that he isn’t responsible for the consequences of his actions, WWX himself takes that responsibility but that imo doesn’t make WWX wrong for using his cultivation. At least that was the vibe I’ve got from reading the book and I was pretty surprised to see that his cultivation is seen as some sort of evil magic 101.
The Venerated Triad - or the three poisons of MDZS
I’ve been sitting on this for literal years, it was something I was chewing on back when I was more involved in MDZS fandom and despite the passing time, nothing I’ve seen has changed my mind on this reading of the book, that the three poisons of Buddhist belief are all well represented in each member of the Venerated Triad/3Zun, and that it’s not an accident.
Let’s start off with the three poisons, or the Sandu (and yes, this is incredibly relevant to Jiang Cheng as well, even if he’s not mentioned in this essay, given that his sword is named after them) are a Buddhist concept, and refer to greed, wrath and ignorance as the greatest flaws a person can hold and must strive to overcome. Yes, ignorance is held to that same standard, and I can see where MXTX is laying that out in her story very clearly. Most of the cast struggles with at least one of these, and how much it impacts them is balanced by what their particular blinding trait leads them to do, especially among the antagonists both of past and present.
(Also to clarify on wording, while ignorance is the direct translation, I am more inclined to think that ignorance is closer to willful ignorance than just being too young to have learned everything yet, though it’s not wholly divorced. If you are unwilling to learn when young, it is still a bad thing and brings harm all the same. Just look at Jin Ling’s journey to see how this might be applied to young people who have yet to learn better and need to do so)
Now that you know what it is in theory, let me move on to the Venerated Triad in specific.
We’ll start with Jin Guangyao and Greed, since this tends to be the one missed most when talking about 3Zun as his reactions are more pointed at than his initial actions.
Meng Yao has been characterized as a man who’s always wanted and hungered since he was young. As a part of the Nie, he strives to make himself respectable enough in order to achieve his goal of being recognized as Jin Guangshan’s son and to be welcomed into the clan as an heir, and every action and reaction he takes is in response to that direct goal. When taking the honest path of a recommendation from a clan leader does not get him everything he wants, as he’s permitted to join the clan but is not immediately adopted and lifted up, he first resorts to backstabbing his allies for slights against him, then runs off to join the Wen instead, only switching sides again when he sees an opportunity to make himself too valuable in the optics of the war to be ignored.
Yet when he gets that goal of being adopted and made a part of the Jin family, it proves to not be enough as he still doesn’t have the respect and adoration he feels he deserves. He follows up by ingratiating himself with new allies who will either do his dirty work (Xue Yang, Su She) or turn a blind eye to his actions out of sympathy for his stated plights (Lan Xichen) and first helps his father divide all threats to their growth by sowing dissent between Wei Wuxian and Jiang Cheng, spinning their actions against the Wen as righteous and continuing the war against them despite a nominal peace having been struck, and swearing brotherhood with the other two clan leaders so that he personally is too valuable to get rid of despite his father’s distrust of his ambitions. In addition he also gets Qin Su pregnant in the days leading up to their wedding so that no one can dissolve it, only for that to backfire on him when it turns out that they’re secretly half siblings.
This culminates in him machinating the death of his half-brother and the other heir who would have been placed ahead of him when Su She curses Jin Zixun with the hundred holes curse and then blames it on Wei Wuxian before sending Jin Zixuan to fan the flames as it is very well known that he and Wei Wuxian have past enmity for his mistreatment of Jiang Yanli, which cements his goal of becoming the heir of Lanling Jin.
A great amount of the tragedies in MDZS can be traced back to his greed and ambition, as he used and discarded everyone in his desperate attempts to climb to the very top. Despite having gained far more than most in his place ever could have, it transparently is never enough, and his habits of discarding people who know too much once he’s done with them or if they’re aware of the things he’s done to climb so far only further to destabilize his very shaky position as his staircase to chief cultivator is drenched in blood. His greed and belief that he deserves the things he wants and should not be denied them no matter what is his chief flaw and marks him as one point in the triangle of Sandu, the three poisons. While he carries a good amount of wrath as well, it usually tends to be provoked by people reacting to the things he does to get ahead, thus locking in greed as the main element of the three.
Next we have Wrath and Nie Mingjue. From his very first mention in the cloud recesses lesson arc in the backstory, we know that he is a man characterized by anger. His own brother is frightened of his anger should he not be doing what Nie Mingjue thinks is best for him, and while this does come from a more genuine place, it is still telling that his reaction to anything not going his way is anger.
It is followed up in the war where he is one of the most vicious fighters, and while again that is needed at the time, the fact that he turns his anger at Wen Ruohan’s actions against anyone with the name Wen is still notable. The Wen clan is thousands strong, there’s no way that they all agree with his actions or would do the same, and they are too being ruled by a tyrant, yet that means nothing to him. His wrath is already driving his actions in the war to what we will see after the war, where he is perfectly happy to not only look the other way but champion the continued abuse and murder of the Wen as they are a part of the now former Wen clan and he never lets go of that anger even once the clan is completely dead and gone.
It’s also apparent in how he treats the other members of 3Zun, especially Jin Guangyao. Once he sees Jin Guangyao kill the Jin captain in a Wen style, his every thought of him afterwards is colored by that anger, and in death he turns that anger onto anyone who shares that blood with him, including Wei Wuxian in Mo Xuanyu’s body and Jin Ling, who was still a baby when he died. When he qi deviates at the end of his life, he goes on a killing spree and takes down anyone in his way, and in undeath he is fueled entirely by his wrath. It consumes him as fully as it did everyone who he saw as a perpetrator of his anger, no matter how tangentially connected they were to those who actually caused him and his harm.
He shares a touch of ignorance as well, in that he refuses to look at perspectives that aren’t his own or acknowledge that people might not be able to fight back in the ways he approves of. In addition, he’s perfectly willing to turn a blind eye to Jin Guangyao’s actions as long as they’re turned on someone he approves of hurting. He throws aside any question of the potential of the Wen Remnants being wrongfully persecuted, but turns on Jin Guangyao only after he saves Xue Yang, despite backing him up before then. In this we can see how his ignorance is fueled by his anger. As long as the people he doesn’t like are the ones being targeted, it does not matter what happens to them and he will do nothing to help or stop those injustices.
So that covers greed and wrath, and now we move forward to the third member of this triad and the only survivor, Lan Xichen.
Lan Xichen can stand out a lot to first time readers, and even more on a reread as many of his actions take on new tones, both good and bad, once you know the whole story. He’s a much more passive character than most of the others, including his sworn brothers, he has a kind bearing and stops to listen to people who others may not, but is very rarely driven to act of his own accord, and tends to take his own feelings about someone as the right interpretation, especially when it comes to someone he likes. He’s also strongly unwilling to look closer at the conflicts between those he cares about and will do his best to pretend that he can’t see it so that he doesn’t have to pick a side. This is notable not only in how he handles pretty much every conflict that comes his way up to Guanyin Temple, but especially in how he talks about his parents backstory. He does not want to believe that either his clan or his mother was in the wrong, and he knows that he is missing huge gaps of the story, but he refuses to look closer out of fear that he may have to reconcile that the people he cares about and trusts are capable of committing evil acts and instead chooses to remain in ignorance and do nothing to change things.
Thus he aids and abets Jin Guangyao’s greed as he chooses to trust that the things he’s doing he’s doing for the right reasons, and tries to assuage the enmity between Jin Guangyao and Nie Mingjue while listening to neither of them about how the other behaves. To face the fact that one or both of his friends are not who he would like them to be and that his words are fixing nothing is something that he cannot handle and so he doesn’t, and instead he turns his face away.
That being said, I think that the fact that ignorance can be broken down when irrefutable facts are laid out is part of what spares him in the story and also what makes him more sympathetic. We see it as a weakness that hurts him and others around him, yet over the course of the present day he does make an effort to stop turning away. He trusts Wei Wuxian’s information enough to actually verify it rather than refuting it outright, when he is given proof he revokes Jin Guangyao’s pass to the Cloud Recesses, and even later in the Guanyin Temple, when he realizes that Jin Guangyao truly has done everything he’s done either out of ambition or to cover up the costs of his ambition, he ends up stabbing him after rejecting his excuses where he would have accepted them before and rejecting his uncle’s words when they would have allowed him to continue along as willfully ignorant as before. It takes a lot of work and a long time, but his eyes are opened and he will not close them again, and thus he survives.
It’s very interesting how MXTX plays with these three concepts especially in MDZS, though knowing what they are adds depths to other relationships in her other novels, such as the balance between Shi Qingxuan, He Xuan and Shi Wudu, where we have another who chooses to trust what they have learned and to live a new life past that, someone who was so greedy and unwilling to sacrifice what they wanted that they destroyed someone else innocent for the sake of that greed, and then the shift to a wrath that does know when to stop, that was created by the actions of the greedy one and the ignorant one, which is a different dynamic than 3Zun ever had as Nie Mingjue is far less targeted in his wrath and never does let go of it as opposed to He Xuan who does move on once his grudge is settled.
Also while I called him Sir Not Appearing in this Essay, I will note that Jiang Cheng’s chief poison is actually a mix of wrath and ignorance. He has all the information he needs to make better choices and see past the illusions people lay before him, but his anger frequently leads him to ignore all of that despite knowing better and it is only when he is stripped of the ability to hold onto those illusions that he is given the chance to prove that he could be better, and that includes letting Wei Wuxian go at the end of the novel. While he definitely has greed too in that he wants the accolades and praise that Wei Wuxian has, as well as the connections that the other clans have made, he lacks the ambition to chase after them that Jin Guangyao has, so it turns to envy rather than avarice, and instead fuels his anger even higher.
It is up to him whether or not he’ll do better, but with the veil stripped from his view, he will no longer be able to pretend that his anger leads him to make the right decisions, and thus he also survives the end of the novel, but unlike Lan Xichen who was able to reach out to his brother and to Wei Wuxian when they gave him a chance, Jiang Cheng has poisoned those relationships too thoroughly for them to ever be close again.
"AI native" college graduates are hitting the workplace -- and, as experts warned, bosses are finding their performance disappointing.
As one New York financier told Financial Times journalist Gillian Tett, new hires who were seen as “AI natives” are turning out to have alarmingly shallow ideas. So much so, the anonymous finance worker admitted, that his firm now actively avoids seeking out AI-literate STEM graduates, and opts to comb through humanities students instead.
“We want critical thinking, not just AI,” the financier told the FT.
If it's during disciple days, he might be able to sense binghe's spiritual energy and help guide him into forming his foundation, at which point lbh will notice that something is up and eventually fall in love with the sy flea sucking his blood... Eventually by feeding flea sy enough spiritual energy-dense blood sy might be able to cultivate a human form and get wifed up
if its in binghe's post-blackening harem era, SY would probably figure out a way to whisper about any enemies in court that are trying to shmooze up to the demon empreror before striking at his back. binghe would soon fall in love as SY soothes him that he doesnt think binghe is an evil irredeemable monster with his little flea body, and binghe soon feels he should get his little flea darling a real life body. ensue plot where binghe gets his own way
Genuinely one of my least favourite fanon things that people often believe (or just say) about MDZS is the idea that Lan Wangji was waiting for Wei Wuxian in those thirteen years. Like, I know it's fun for jokes and all but one of the most crushing parts about all of that time is that Wei Wuxian literally was dead for thirteen years and there was literally no conceivable hope of him returning.
Like, by no means am I trying to weigh up the MXTX love interests' separation periods (as I like to think of them), but Hua Cheng had hope that he would find Xie Lian - he had so much hope that he actively searched for eight hundred years for him before he found him. Luo Binghe was able to bring Shen Qingqiu back, was in the midst of doing so when the mushroom body situation happen and then (while it wasn't Luo Binghe who did it) did bring him back.
Wei Wuxian died. Like straight up, no coming back, impossible to see him again, died. And I sometimes feel like saying that Lan Wangji was waiting kind of undermines the fact that this was a soul-crushing thing, and this was just going to be the rest of his life. There literally was no fucking shot of Wei Wuxian coming back in anyone's even remote comprehension, and the fact that he did come back was a fucking miracle in and of itself.
Lan Wangji mourned for those thirteen years. Hua Cheng searched, Luo Binghe (it's been a while so call me out if I'm wrong) was almost in denial over Shen Qingqiu's death even though he comprehended the sacrifice so he planned, but Lan Wangji mourned, and was going to mourn for the rest of his life. He just had to get used to the fact that he would never, ever get to see the love of his life again. There wasn't even a body to bury. It was just the memories and the gradual, slow descent of those memories disappearing with aging.
ALSO now that I'm thinking about it, the fact that he couldn't even talk to anyone else about it. Obviously, there's this whole thing of memories being kept alive through like sharing and talking about them, but Wei Wuxian cemented himself as basically a taboo subject. A monster who is only talked about to scare people or to curse out his name. Those who remember him can't or won't talk about him for one reason or another, and that means that Lan Wangji is left all alone, mourning someone who nobody even cares to talk about, and that will be the rest of his life. He has come to terms with the fact that he will die with the faint memory of Wei Wuxian's smile and that's all.
And, once again, this isn't trying to make a competition out of the separation periods, I could just as easily talk about how Hua Cheng's despair of not being able to find Xie Lian but knowing that he is alive somewhere (or is he? Has he gone? Faded away? Is Hua Cheng just looking for a memory?). I could talk about that desperation that Luo Binghe felt at losing the only person he had ever loved and been loved by, who had sacrificed himself to save him when he needed him most, who gave so many mixed signals, and then needing to get him back by any means necessary. But this post was borne of me being tired of the 'waiting' label being applied to Lan Wangji's mourning period.
Wei Wuxian was never, ever meant to come back. Lan Wangji was going to spend the rest of his life mourning a man who nobody else would ever talk about, memories fading until it was hard to pick apart what was actual memory and what was just his idealistic daydreams. Do you think he was waiting to die, sometimes? He never would, but do you think he just...passively waited for it sometimes, when he was alone and holding those few small reminders of the man he gave his heart to? Who he failed? Anyway. Lan Wangji just makes me so very sad and so very sick and I love him dearly.
It does get me that Lan Wangji spent those years thinking he failed Wei Wuxian.
It makes it so full circle when, in Guanyin Temple, Wei Wuxian (who doesn't need protection) wholly accepts Lan Wangji's protection for the first time.
The progression of that dynamic os so well done. Wei Wuxian subtly progresses from outright rejecting it and "trying to escape" it (but honestly, was he really trying to get away? Jury is still out) to fussing about it (are you trying to show who has the thicker face here?) to being unable to refuse it (comatose after a stab wound) to being "secretly delighted" at it... to wholly accepting that this person will do whatever it takes to keep him safe and healthy and whole.
I know it was hard on Lan Wangji in the beginning, but can you imagine the relief he felt at holding this man in his arms that first night in the Jingshi? The secret wonder at simply feeling this man breath?
It was probably the best sleep of Lan Wangji's life.
gamechangershow
s-u-f-j-a-n-s-t-e-v-e-n-s
blakekathryn
vaporwave
izzy806
prguitarman
dailybridgerton
