#taisuiposting

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I'm as much of a sucker for self-sacrificing hero complex protagonists as the next person, but there's something so evocative and crushing about seeing a protagonist introduced like "this is a self-obsessed douchebag who does whatever he wants forever and doesn't care about anything besides himself and his family," and then watching that guy slowly sacrifice himself for the greater good anyway.

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I've been thinking a lot about the Turmoilers' plotline in Tai Sui and the way the associated themes are executed. The slow unraveling of the truth that the world of steampunk cultivation we've come to know and love over the course of the novel could not exist without the Turmoilers' suffering. The way that everything technological would topple without the constant brutal resource extraction of the Southern Mines, the way that He's land had to be destroyed and its people had to be starved, disfigured, and exploited as a result. There is no other way for the era of Moon Plated Gold to function.

Tai Sui is a novel about realizing over and over that the world you know and love and live in comfortably is, in fact, a nightmare built on a foundation of horror, exploitation, and lies. It's about peeling back what you've always known to and taken for granted to find the nightmare of the machinery underneath. It's about Xi Ping realizing in the very first arc that Heaven's Design Pavillion protects him, but it does not protect Jiangli. It's about four sets of laws in Wan: for cultivators, for nobles, for people, and for ants. It's about Xi Ping discovering Xuanyin will kill him for the Hidden Bones. It's about Zhao Qindan discovering that her family will sell her for stability and wealth. It's about Xi Ping and Zhi Xiu and Zhou Ying discovering the truth behind the laws of cultivation and the fact that the Way of Heaven leads to nowhere but to fusion with the mountains, that unique and heretical Ways still lead ultimately to "immortality" through freezing/killing your humanity and losing/rewriting yourself.

And in the midst of all that, I think the Turmoilers are the incarnation of that theme that resonates most with my own real life. You grow up privileged and comfortable in a wealthy country only to discover that every comfort you take for granted is built on the back of brutal exploitation of countless foreign strangers. This is not a flaw in the system; the exploitation is an integral cog in the machine of modernity that the whole structure, in its current form, would crumple without. What do you do about it?

Because Tai Sui is not a doomer novel. It's not about just pointing out the horrors of its world to agonize over. It's about a very stubborn group of people who discover the horrors of the world and, over and over, choose to do something to fucking fix it. If cultivation is a nightmare, find a way to change cultivation. If the machine of society cannot function without the Turmoilers' suffering, build a better machine and find a way to dismantle the old one. Fight the very might of Heaven for it if you have to.

It means a lot to me to have a story that says "Yes, the exploitative nature of the world is a feature of the system, not an accident. But yes, you can and must work with allies to dismantle that system and build something better anyway." The problems of the world are systemic and baked into the structure of modern society. They are not something that can be fixed by getting rid of individual bad actors. But systemic problems are not unfixable ones.

It's a lot more resonant to me than fantasy stories where the problems can be fixed by killing the evil king, y'know?

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Chewing glass thinking about how Xi Ping, despite being with Zhao Qindan, Bai Ling, Yu Chang, and perhaps many more acquaintances at their deathbeds, is blindsided and left behind by all three of his oldest and closest friends. Zhou Ying's consciousness fades into the ether and leaves behind a small note carved in stone, Wei Chengxiang disappears at sea, and Zhi Xiu wanders off to travel and leaves behind a note that Xi Ping doesn't find until he's long since gone.

No clean endings, no perfect resolutions, no permanence. Sometimes you simply discover that your people are lost.

[morethanwonderful]

Every time I reread Traveler Abroad I'm always re-overwhelmed by how good it is. There are so many passages from that arc that I end up rereading over and over every time I revisit them.

Zhou Ying's pleading one-sided conversation with Xi Ping's empty corpse. Xi Ping's struggle to find the right "mask" to wear when he speaks to Zhou Ying. The "have you been mistreated" passage. Xi Ping's "I don't hate you, I know you" speech. Xi Ping's final conversation with his grandmother. Zhou Ying's return home. It's all so fucking good.

The arc starts with Zhou Ying being driven to his all-time most monstrous act for the sake of his love for Xi Ping. He wants to tear open the Impassible Sea and throw the world into horror and chaos to retrieve the dead body of his beloved murdered cousin. And the arc ends with Zhou Ying collapsing to his all-time most vulnerable and human state for the sake of his love for his grandmother. He's reduced to a miserable wreck because he can't be there for the last moments of the figure in his life who most deeply understood and accepted him. His need to avenge the death of one loved one brings about the death of another. He regains a cousin and loses his grandmother.

This is the arc about how nobody is ever truly beyond human fallibility. A great clan of immortals can be brought down by common Kaiming cultivators. One man's insidious meddling can drive a shed skin master to his death. Petty emotional squabbles can split apart a sect in the immortal mountains. A half-demon can struggle on a wrecked mountain road with the mortal masses. And the Demon of the East Sea can be rendered a drenched, bloody, travel-weary shell of himself by the desperate force of his love for his family.

Xi Ping doesn't actually do all that much during Traveler Abroad, at least not compared to other arcs. He convinces Zhou Ying not to wreck the demon seal, and he helps Lin Chi calm things down a bit at Xuanyin, but he spends most of the arc forced to just watch from the background and pass messages for others.

But even there, that's because the point of Traveler Abroad for Xi Ping is showcasing all the ways that he's already changed. That's the magic of all those heart-wrenching passages I listed out above. Xi Ping already knows he's not some perfect enlightened being. He's already matured from the spoiled, sheltered rich kid he once was. Xi Ping has already been brought down to the mortal dirt by his five years in Tao County. He doesn't need a reminder of the pain of a mortal life or the fact that he can once again be reduced to it. Instead he gets to play the voice of reason and maturity across from Zhou Ying, the cousin that's usually so much more composed.

Xi Ping decides to steal the Unbound Furnace during Traveler Abroad, and the first chapter after Traveler Abroad, Unbound Knife 1, ends with Xi Ping directly announcing for the first time that he's going to tear down the Bell of Tribulation. Traveler Abroad's core theme, this emphasis on the ultimate human fallibility of even the loftiest immortal mountains, is key for any of this to be believable. It establishes that, for all the incredible might of the Way of Heaven, its agents are not undefeatable. The immortal mountains themselves can be turned upside-down by the meddling of ants.

Zhou Ying causes the spiritual energy shutdown in Traveler Abroad that prevents him from making it home to see his grandmother when she's on her deathbed, just like he "bites his tail" by screwing over Xi Ping with his political meddling in the second arc. His attempts to be heartless and cunning lead inevitably to pain for him and his loved ones. This is his fallibility, and the drama of the Zhaos reveals the fallibility of the powerful and the wealthy, of the lofty immortals, all of which is key for everything that comes next.

And in the midst of all that, the infinitely fallible Xi Ping sits with his grandmother at her death, just as he's done for countless people in Tao County and just as he'll one day do for everyone else he's ever known and loved.

It's just such an incredibly human and heart-wrenching part of the story, not to mention a well-crafted thematic beat within the wider narrative.

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God, Xi Ping and Zhi Xiu have such fantastic chemistry as characters. From the moment they meet, their every interaction is a delight.

Xi Ping drives Zhi Xiu fucking insane (like he does everyone), but Zhi Xiu also clearly gets a kick out of him from jump. He adds him to the selection list just for a laugh after seeing his list of "crimes," and he's openly entertained by his audacity when he talks to Pang Jian and Su Zhun. Zhi Xiu scolds Xi Ping not to be rude out of obligation, but he never actually stops him from back-talking Shed Skins and such later in the novel.

Xi Ping is a fucking menace, but he's his menace. Big, emotional, Way of the Heart-shifting impacts aside, Xi Ping is Zhi Xiu's pet funny little guy. He's the problem that he knows he should be scolding, yet can't help but enjoy. He's like a rascally cat.

And on a serious note, I can't help but think that there's a reason Zhi "do not be a god" Xiu immediately gets along so well with the mortal boy who dares to drink from an immortal's wine pot. Frustrating as Xi Ping is, Zhi Xiu doesn't want to be revered, so of course he gets a kick out of the guy audacious enough to treat him like just another man.

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I think every Tai Sui fan should take a moment to listen to At The End of the Earth by The Dear Hunter and get really sad about Xi Ping and Zhou Ying.

For Enrichment.

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"Guy who's sad because the woman he loved died" has been done to death a thousand times in a thousand different ways, but god in my heart it's never been done quite like Lin Chi. Even in the same novel, Wen Fei has a similar backstory, and he can't even begin to compare. The sections about Lin Chi and Hui Xiangjun fuck me up so bad.

It's "guy mourning his unrequited(?) crush," but it's also "incredibly lonely guy mourning his only friend," and it's also "creative mourning the master craftswoman he was was endlessly inspired by," and it's also "guy with incredibly low self esteem mourning the one person who truly understood and encouraged him."

The way the passages about them are written are just. christ.

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One of my favorite little clever details in Tai Sui is how the state of Jinping at the very beginning of the story mirrors what's revealed to us much later about the state of the whole world.

Tai Sui's world is enclosed. Through the power of the immortals, at first for mortals' own benefit, their continent was severed from reality and encased by the axioms of the spiritual mountains. One of the main ways this is emphasized is through the fact that Zhou Ying knows he has never seen the true sky. The sky is blotted out by the constructed world that is supposed to grant them immortality and "prosperity."

Similarly, in the very first opening paragraphs of the novel, Jinping is described as a city of prosperity. Moon Plated Gold, a gift from the immortals of the spiritual mountains, has granted the city endless new mechanical power and economic growth. As a result of this, the steam generated by their prosperity has blocked out the sky.

One of my favorite lines is in that very first section: "The fog above Jinping couldn’t be called fog. It had to be called auspicious clouds."

This has to be a blessing, says the popular opinion! This fog has brought us wealth and power and prosperity, so who cares if we can no longer see the sky? It's written with a cheerful, insistent denial of the clear dark side to their prosperity. The fog "has" to be called something auspicious; there's no other option. The narration tells us to see this repressive smog as a gift, rather than a curse, as it came from the immortals and brings "prosperity," so there simply cannot be another interpretation.

And the same applies to the way the spiritual mountains block out the truth of the sky. The enclosed world Tai Sui's people inhabit is protective and auspicious and immortal. Who cares if their sky is false? Who cares if immortality is the loss of the self? The spiritual mountains and the chance to become an immortal are gifts given to the people! You can't possibly call them anything otherwise!

But you know, on some level, that eternal fog hiding the sky over the "prosperous" capital cannot be a wholly good thing, and the same applies to the axioms blocking the sky that are revealed much later on. No matter what the narration tells us, and no matter what the residents of Jinping try to tell themselves, we know it's not right to never get to see the true sun.

The whole introductory section of chapter 1 takes this sort of tongue in cheek tone that I think expands to the rest of the story extremely well. We hear of the obvious problems of choking smog, poverty, and rapid economic/environmental change, and then the narration tells us that this is all wonderful, actually. We're told migrant workers flooding into Jinping can't afford to live within the city walls, but there's so many they've built up nearly a proper town among the factories. We're told this is the picture of prosperity. Then the novel spends its entire first half (and beyond) hammering both the rich boy protagonist and the readers over the head with the horrific injustices of poverty and the widespread mistreatment of the poor by those in power.

Jinping on a whole, with its intense social stratification, rapid changes, and hidden sky, is a sort of microcosm of Tai Sui's world. The insistent, cheerful denial of the opening narration in describing it sets the tone for how the novel as a whole will go. Denial is everywhere in Tai Sui, and some of that denial (like the ignorance of true ways of the heart) will literally kill you if you let it go. And yet, Tai Sui is a novel about tearing down that denial anyway and looking right at the ugly truth of the world that nobody can bear to see, because confronting that truth is the only way you can ever hope to change it for the better.

Before you can hope to see the sun, you have to admit that maybe, just maybe, the "auspicious clouds" granted to you by immortal inventions aren't quite so auspicious after all, and the novel's opening paragraphs use their playful tone to gesture toward that all-important fact.