extrapenguin | In order: asdfhakjfh, Wei Wuxian, and Yuletide

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b: modao zushi

In order: asdfhakjfh, Wei Wuxian, and Yuletide

I had an idea about what I wanted to post, but then I received an e-mail with a job offer, and my brain was taken over by AHHHH. Details of starting date up in the air, but I'll have to move city next year. I'll generate the

space_swap schedule once I'm clearer on mine.

Oh, now I remember what I wanted to say originally! I am apparently very super blunt or something. On a MDZS Discord server, in response to another person saying something offhand, I posted my opinions on Wei Wuxian being called dense. (He ... isn't.) Lightly edited, mostly in punctuation and replacing potentially-vague pronouns with phrases:

Unpopular opinion, but I wouldn't call Shen Qingqiu or Wei Wuxian "dense" – they're both quick on the uptake and smart, but they're both limited by the fact that they never reassessed their starting assumptions of the love interest. They both thought "ok love interest is Like That and hates me" and it might've been valid at the start, even if not now, so they try to fit all the love interest's behavior into the "love interest hates me" mental model they have of him. They're oblivious to the love interest's advances because of that, but they're not dumb, and they have reasons for being oblivious. Basically people going "aww wifi so dense" makes me go "??? are you skipping all the scenes that aren't about the main couple being cute at each other?" since no, he's not dense about human interaction or power dynamics or whatnot at all, unlike how a bunch of people characterize him.

Alas, I can't ignore it, due to the above showing up in eg fics as an opinion the author genuinely holds, and people really widening it so that Fanon Wei Wuxian is kinda dense and dumb, whereas Canon Wei Wuxian isn't really dense: he just doesn't see himself as a valid life partner to Lan Wangji due to eg class stuff and genders, so he can't even begin to consider Lan Wangji's actions from a potentially romantic perspective. Ergo, I try to push back against it, since the "wifi so dense" thing isn't the most accurate way to phrase it, doesn't imo capture the background, and tends to engulf actual canon characterization and make for OOC fic.

(A mod thought the above was super impolite and unfriendly, and threatened modly action should any more "negative conversation" take place. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ I stand by my words, and while I may have been blunt, me being rude doesn't look like that. Mostly sharing it here for the content.)

I am also going to humblebrag about my Yuletide wordcount: it is Lots! It is more than last year! I might even add to it still, with another treat! :P I have also shaken my gift, and it looks appealing.

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I just went ??? at the idea of Wei Wuxian being dense. He's very much not, I mean, he's a master at deduction, socially he's very skilled, he has leader abilities, and a whole lot of empathy, too! (Preaching to the choir, I know.) It's just that everybody has blind spots, and especially smart people might tend to believe that their reasoning is sound even when it's not, for once - because they're usually right ;)

The only way I can make it make sense is that people skim all the ~~interesting bits~~ bits that aren't the main couple interacting. A bunch of the fandom is very, very young (the "yaoi-seeking children", as

chromemuffin terms them), and doesn't seem to be capable of making the analytical leaps required to realize that he's smart. Or the animation de-emphasized his smarts? I dunno. I have no idea where these people are actually coming from. His blind spot is Lan Wangji's affections, so lots of people go "oh he's so dense for not spotting them", which gets simplified to "oh he's so dense", and then we get fic where an OC who is for some reason called Wei Wuxian is dense?

The only way I can make it make sense is that people skim all the interesting bits
Ahaha, you're so right! To me, the plot itself is most interesting, but the romance kind of helps set off the darker parts of the storyline (all the maiming and whatnot) and is also where the comic relief is at? (I'm reading chapter 71 at the moment, btw, and haven't finished the novel, yet.)

Yeah, it baffles me that people only read for the romance! Sure, it's there, but the other bits are more interesting, and this is not a book that's worth reading just for the romance bits. There are loads of danmei novels with more romance and less plot, why read this relatively plotty one if you're just going to ignore the plot?!

(This revelation was brought to me by another person in the fandom suggesting that the reason my fics are unpopular are because people can't just skim for the shippy bits...)

Wei Wuxian and his attitudes are the only reason this book isn't grimdark. In the flashbacks, the main levity is his relationship with Jiang Cheng; in the present, Lan Wangji. (Wen Ning also, on occasion.) I look forward to hearing your thoughts, once you're done – I'm reading the translation that's at ch 84, but I've been spoiled for future events via the fandom. Are you reading the original draft version, or the edited, published version, and is the smut included?

I think it's the edited version? There hasn't been any smut, yet. It's the only epub I found... Then again, it includes some of the author notes, so maybe not? I noticed some differences when I read the translated chapters after first reading the Chinese ones. My version doesn't include how Jin Guangshan is supposed to have died, for example, and I saw a few other instances where stuff was missing in my version. I haven't compared them in a while, though.

Eta: I actually have two different versions! I might read the other one if I ever get around to a re-read. That one seems to have even more author's notes, so maybe it's the original, unpolished version (that I should check for the smut >.>).

Edited 2018-12-18 21:36 (UTC)

The smut only happens well past ch90. The original version (but not its smut) is being translated at

qinghe-nie. Both are available in smutty versions AFAIK, but the smutless, censored ones are based on the edited version. As a warning, the smut is ... not anything that would fly in 2010s Western media fandom. It's more akin to early 2000s anime fandom smut.

... that's kind of what I was afraid of - and the early 2000s were the time when I read anime fandom smut, hahaha.
What bothers me more is the way there are nearly no female protagonists, and the female characters often are so *lacking*, if you know what I mean? Zhu Hong's role in the novel especially bothered me. She gets a better deal in the TV series, and that says a lot!

She gets a better deal in the TV series
She... WHAT. How. Just ... how. Does she only get the "oh noes I am passionately in love with Zhao Yunlan" bit, without all the other, snappy interactions?

MDZS did have some decent female characters, but they all were present for only short amounts of time, and died in the flashbacks. (Yu Ziyuan, and I also ended up liking Wang Lingjiao.) The closest thing to a main female character, on the other hand, was Jiang Yanli, who was very blandly inoffensively feminine. While it's understandable that she grew up like that in the Lotus Pier, I really just wish that she'd resembled her mother more in personality. Or make Lan Qiren the scary maiden aunt.

The porn is very early 2000s anime fandom in its lack of both lube and consent. Nevertheless, a large chunk of the yaoi-seeking children think it's the best smut ever, and that the ship is Important Representation for queer people and thus the smut is sacrosanct. See icon for my opinion.

I get not wanting to shiptease het, even by accident, but it's possible to still have women present. Give the main characters sisters, for one! Or add lesbians, but I don't know where Chinese fandom stands on queer people as people, or is it still at 90s levels of "slash is okay, but actual gayness is morally wrong".

MDZS did have some decent female characters, but they all were present for only short amounts of time, and died in the flashbacks. (Yu Ziyuan, and I also ended up liking Wang Lingjiao.) The closest thing to a main female character, on the other hand, was Jiang Yanli, who was very blandly inoffensively feminine. While it's understandable that she grew up like that in the Lotus Pier, I really just wish that she'd resembled her mother more in personality. Or make Lan Qiren the scary maiden aunt.

I agree whole-heartedly!

As for Zhu Hong, she gets the snappy dialogue, but way less agency. She is always side-lined when the main action starts.

She is always side-lined when the main action starts.
:/ That's sad.

I did find a list of differences between the versions of MDZS, but: spoilery.

Thank you for the link! I'll read it once I've finished the novel, I think. If I can hold out for that long. Then again, I've been making good progress. The author's style is very clear and easy to understand :D

Thank you! Apparently I'm reading the old version. And I'm close to the finish line, too! It's so gripping.
There was some smut by now, but it actually wasn't all that bad? Considering the setting, it made a lot of sense in how it went down, and (without being spoilery), Wei Wuxian didn't suddenly turn meek or anything ;)

The author was recced to me as being "good with consent". My first exposure to a sex scene by her was a translated extra that was ... heavy on the authorial rape kink.

froliczxc has also translated some of the steamy stuff from the new version that goes into dubcon land IMO, though version edits or translation might have made it more or less dubcon.

(The fandom, of course, is full-on into No Archive Warnings Apply untagged rape, and kinking on every relationship squick of mine, including ones I didn't know I had. Rarepairs fare slightly better, but I basically can't read the main ship's tag.)

I'll see what else turns up in the last few chapters. The scene that happened already is definitely not great with consent in some ways. I guess "we as the readers know they both want it" is a stand in for actual consent (not for me, just how the assumption of "being good with consent" came about?)? I would definitely rate it dubcon, though for other reasons.

In the reccer's defense, she'd only read the author's other two works. Heaven Official's Blessing at least is sex-sceneless, so less opportunities to flub it mid-sex scene. For MDZS, the other sex scene I was Not Impressed with is further on/one of the final ones. I'm also not thrilled at how the novel handled Lan Wangji's drunk persona, and imagine I'll be tl;dring about that aspect as well as others when I've finished the novel via translation. (The translation will likely complete sooner than I can learn enough Chinese to make reading the novel that way worth it. Though I did order some simple Chinese texts to practice with!)

I've finished the novel proper and started on the extras, and the smut really... is not great at all. The extra plot is interesting as always, though.
The one named 恶友 (Villainous friends) really doesn't pull any punches, it's about Xue Yang and Jin Guangyao (and no smut \o/).
I've not finished all of them, yet, and I think I'm missing part of chapter 113 (my epub included parts of the extras but is conspicuously missing the parts with smut in them, it was a weird read until I noticed).
I'm definitely a fan of the novel, though, and the main romance actually worked quite well for me. I also like the thematic resonance between the Yicheng arc and WWX's story. And WWX is such a great character --- I can't say I can think of another one like him in the fandoms I've been in. With a bit of a stretch, he might be compared to Duo Maxwell (Gundam Wing), the fandom version, I guess? Who would you think WWX reminds you of, if anyone?

Anyway, I'm hooked, but before I start another of Mo Xiang Tong Xiu's novels, I'll read SCI谜案集. It's very different, a good palate cleanser.

I think my main problem with the main romance was that I waded into the fandom and read the fics. It was a very ... interesting ... experience, in that seemingly every. single. fic either made me discover an all-new squick, or was untagged noncon. To make matters worse, the squicks (frex possessiveness) were present in the source material, but just played up to 11, so it retroactively kind of soured me on the canon once I'd seen the core relationship's flaws. (It dances pretty close to some of my DNWs in places anyway, but a lot of the fandom seemed to unwittingly kink on those DNWs. I suspect I draw the boundary between "acceptable heightened reality in fiction" and "epic DNW" in a vastly different place to the average fan, or just have radically different desires for a happy ending for Wei Wuxian. (I admit to being super charmed by his banter with Jiang Cheng, and I'd like someone he can have that easy camaraderie to be the love interest. Or just someone who's capable of communicating, and doesn't want to lock him up at all, and will let him run around inventing stuff.)

I would count myself as a fan of the novel, too, even if only due to absolutely loving Wei Wuxian! I think that of the characters I've encountered, Miles Vorkosigan (from the Vorkosigan saga) counts as being the same archetype of "shameless kind smart adrenaline junkie who's very good at scheming himself (herself?) into even further troubles". I don't think I've encountered anyone else of the same archetype, and I prefer Wei Wuxian's iteration to Miles Vorkosigan's. Shuos Jedao (of Machineries of Empire) and Ilia Volyova (of Revelation Space) are a few steps removed, though there's that similar core of maybe-scheming. On the other hand, Wei Wuxian is also an excellent teacher and mentor and cares for the duckling collection he's acquired, in which he resembles (my take on) Lan Qiren and dramaverse Shen Wei, in addition to others. (As a side note, if Wei Wuxian is my novel protagonist preferences made flesh, Shen Wei is my id made flesh. It's interesting how those two need not necessarily intersect.)

Though as much as I'm apathetic to the main ship and find Lan Wangji unappealing to uninteresting as a love interest archetype, at least he isn't as colossally punchable as Craig Ryder. There, I can only boggle at how anyone could think he's an appealing love interest.

I actually find Lan Wangji pretty uninteresting as a love interest, too ;) It's one of those archetypes where I go "aww, he's pining!" while reading but if I had to deal with such a person in meatspace I would tell them to get the words out or get lost! The saving grace for Lan Wangji, for me, is that he saved A-Yuan/Lan Sizhui. My heart melted when Wen Ning recognized him ;__;

Huh, I realize I'm also not interested in pining! Lan Wangji really is a very uninteresting love interest. :P Especially considering how a bunch of Wei Wuxian's interactions with others read like this was originally supposed to be a dating sim, except the player character Wei Wuxian went way off the rails of the plot and ended up inventing necromancy instead of romancing anyone because he didn't realize he was in a dating sim, then completely accidentally managed to get into the "love interest Lan Wangji" route. (Other possible routes would include Jiang Cheng and Wen Ning at the very least.)

Another part of my antipathy for Lan Wangji and the central ship is that I've heard what the author has said of it: "ideal relationship" with a "perfect boyfriend" and um... Lan Wangji is very far from my ideal relationship partner, and the dodgy smut + way Wei Wuxian gets basically sequestered from the world, and the way Lan Wangji is very very obsessive make the relationship nonideal. Basically the remarks are kind of alarming, and death of the author and all that, but ... they'd need some sort of counseling. 13+ years of pining do not relationship skills make.

Another part of my antipathy for Lan Wangji and the central ship is that I've heard what the author has said of it: "ideal relationship" with a "perfect boyfriend" and um... Lan Wangji is very far from my ideal relationship partner
Oh yes, I totally agree!

And I actually really ship Wei Wuxian with Jiang Cheng. They need all the happy AUs (especially b/c of something that hasn't been translated yet, iirc)! And yeah, Wei Wuxian/Wen Ning would also work.

And I actually really ship Wei Wuxian with Jiang Cheng. They need all the happy AUs (especially b/c of something that hasn't been translated yet, iirc)! And yeah, Wei Wuxian/Wen Ning would also work.
YES! I am a multishipper at heart, but Wei Wuxian/Jiang Cheng is a ship I love to pieces. All the happily ever after AUs! A bunch of even currently-translated things imply that Jiang Cheng was really into Wei Wuxian, and that sort of obsession, well, it's twisted, but it'd make sense if it were born from a frustrated love, no?

I'm willing to ship anything once, though. In addition to Wei Wuxian/Wen Ning, I'm also intrigued by the potentials of Wei Wuxian/Lan Qiren, Wei Wuxian/Mo Xuanyu, and Wei Wuxian/Wen Zhuliu, and my attitude towards other rarepairs is basically "convince me!". (Then there's the stuff that doesn't involve the main character, like Song Lan/Xiao Xingchen, but that's a different thing entirely.) I'd also like Wei Wuxian-centric gen a whole lot.

I'm willing to ship anything once, though.

Me, too, but I don't tend towards romance involving "the bad guys" in general, with few exceptions. I like morally grey just fine, or even redeemed villains - but not plain villains.

Hm, I can do romance with "the bad guys" – if they're morally grey villain protagonists, or they're in the process of being redeemed, or there's lots of loyalty kink, so idk Wen Ruohan/Wen Zhuliu is fine, but I'm uninterested in Wen Chao/Wang Lingjiao.

Both the Vorkosigan saga as well as the Machineries of Empire books are on my to-read list! I actually read and enjoyed Shards of Honour a while ago, but then I got pregnant and thought reading on might be a bit hard to bear during pregnancy, seeing as what's to come next in the timeline, afaik.

I really need to read the third book of the Machineries trilogy; I was heavily preoccupied last summer and just never ordered it. I do think Barrayar would not be that good pregnancy reading, so wise choice skipping it/leaving it for later. Even if it's one of the better books in the series IIRC.

I read a couple more danmei and my general impression is that danmei is still stuck in the early 2000s BL era, including the treatment of women, unfortunately...

Also with China clamping down on sexual stuff, the website where MDZS is published is locking chapters that cross the line so the writers there don't tend to write explicit smut anymore. I have also read the extra that's only in the physical book and it's not...good. I want to send Lan Wang Ji for sex ed ngl.

Edited 2018-12-21 01:48 (UTC)

Oh, yes, danmei is ... well, I would not call it progressive by any means. The women are nonexistent at best. The Chinese smut ban means all the (nonhet) smut is being hosted on the other side of the Great Firewall. Fanfic's gone to AO3, but I don't know about original works.

I want to send Lan Wang Ji for sex ed ngl.
10/10 would read the fic. ~~Please write it.~~

Honestly, I was pretty thankful for the fade to black in (my version of) ZH/Guardian.
It's mostly curiosity for me in this case, because I think smut-wise I've seen pretty much everything I want to. I don't look at new to me stories for the smut - the curiosity in this case is mostly language-related.

Even though I know why most readers find these characters dense, I still don't understand how you can put the blinders on yourself so thoroughly as to not see how both Wei Wuxian and Shen Qingqiu are self-aware characters acknowledged in-story as decently intelligent and and perceptive. It would be weirder if they didn't have the misconceptions they did for their MLs (Luo Binghe and Shen Qingqiu especially...Shen Qingqiu would edge on the border of jackass if he didn't assume the poor kid would be hurt, betrayed, and angry that the teacher he trusted stabbed him and shoved him into hell). And I wouldn't have devoted so much time to the MDZS fandom if Wei Wuxian really was as dense as BL protags tend to be. In fact, I liked how the misconceptions in this case weren't overblown drama, but quite reasonable given each character's personality and their past with the other party.

(And I am just going to state for the record that if they think your comment was impolite, then they will find the passive aggressiveness that I am capable of absolutely repulsive, lol. I don't like conflict, but when I get annoyed enough, it happens. You were very reasonable, on the other hand.)

I was going to copypaste your first paragraph sentence by sentence and +1 it all, but I should probably condense it into one +4.

LOL, please shower them with passive aggression! When it came to the Great Ping Debacle, where I pinged one person with relevant information, then got told off twice, I considered simply pinging myself with every message of mine just as protest. (I will do it if I get told off for pinging people again. Watch me get kicked off the server, lol.)

First of all: congratulations on the job offer! :D

Second: reading the above as someone who does not know canon, it sounds reasonable and polite?? My only guess is that the mod/close friend of mod holds the opinion you argued against and so took it very personally?

Thanks! I will spend the next weeks panicking about everything involved. :P Expect to see stress-fic in January...

The weird thing is the mods didn't even jump in immediately? The conversation had drifted through "oh hey you managed to put a finger on my nebulous gut feelings" to some good-natured back-and-forth to a lull in the conversation. I guess the person I disagreed with must be friends with the mods, or just took it super personally.

Congrats on the job offer!

I have always regarded Luo BingHe to be the only dense person out of all 3 mxtx pairings if one must be chosen. IMO people tend to take distill a few traits from a character and use it to define them. I'm still kind of not over how some of the western fandom characterized akashi seijurou from knb lmao.

I think some also only end up remembering certain stuff. I can barely remember the yi city arc and I'm not sure if it was because I intentionally repressed it or is it was that I finished the whole thing in two days lol.

MDZS also suffers from the 'unfortunate' categorization as danmei - the people reading danmei are usually there for the CP and not the plot. The plot may have better reception(?) if people read it as a fantasy book or something.

ETA: Upon further thinking the only truly dense mxtx character, including side characters, is this one guy from Tian Guan Ci Fu. Not sure if you have read it so I'm not mentioning the guy's name, but gdi he's so dense and I love him for it.

Edited 2018-12-20 16:35 (UTC)

Thanks! If you don't see me around next year, send Wei Wuxian to summon me back from the dead. *g*

Ah yes, the "one descriptor and 1-2 quirks" characterization! I loathe it from the very bottom of my heart, especially when the descriptor/archetype chosen is Wrong, or unrelated to the character. (Very often Wei Wuxian is comprehended only as The Uke, which leads to him being replaced with someone unrecognizable. His most-chosen quirk is also forgetfulness, when his memory isn't actually that bad, considering the trauma he was undergoing at the time. As a result, Wei Wuxian is mischaracterized as a dumb, ditzy uke, when in reality he's That Engineering Student who aces every test despite never studying. With a bunch of issues and a hero complex, too, but that'd be beyond these people's ken...) I understand not having perfect recall for canon details, but I've yet to encounter such blatant misunderstandings of the main protagonist and narrator in any other fandom!

MDZS also suffers from the 'unfortunate' categorization as danmei - the people reading danmei are usually there for the CP and not the plot. The plot may have better reception(?) if people read it as a fantasy book or something.
I have to agree. People read it only for the romance, because it's marked as Romance - M/M, but I've read stuff marked as Science Fiction that had similar, if not greater ratios of Romance to Non-Romance. If it were marketed as Fantasy ... well, it'd probably get a Hugo Award for its M/M sideplot romance and the fact it wasn't anglophone originally, since Chinese SF is quite big on that circuit, currently.

I've read the first 14 chapters of Tian Guan Ci Fu, via Sakhyulations' translation, but have yet to encounter a super dense character. I have noticed that MXTX's characters tend to be patient people and also quite willing to think, not the stereotypical "dumb ukes".

Yeah, Wei Wuxian is definitely more complex than how most of the fandom characterizes him. I suspect that may be the case for Xie Lian too as more of the novel is translated :(

Personally I do enjoy seeing the kind of cracky fanart/fic where there's stuff like Shen Qing Qiu running away from Luo Bing He etc., but I had wished that there's an implicit acknowledgement that the characters are more than that..

Yeah, if MDZS was treated as a fantasy novel the readers may have been quite different. It's another effect of being having a novel with a M/M romance published in China - the so called 'controversial' part takes precedence over the rest of the novel. iirc the website where it's published in has a filter for F/F in their search but M/M is nowhere to be seen.

As for Tian Guan Ci Fu, the overly dense character appears quite late in the story so it's no surprise. And I agree MXTX's characters are patient. In fact, the timelines in her stories seem to be getting longer and longer lol.

I think the Tian Guan Ci Fu fandom will be 100% based on the animation that's been confirmed for 2020, since the MDZS one is also seemingly super animation-based. Based on the first few chapters (14) and my knowledge of the general outline, I immediately picked out Xie Lian as being too weary to care. I told this to my friend who recced it to me in the first place, and she was very pleased, since the (Chinese fandom?) seems to be very much into the misconception that he's but a pure white lotus. Chinese M/M tends to attract an audience of "yaoi-seeking children" looking only for the smut and some romance, so characters seem to be slotted into the nearest archetype immediately, and any evidence for the contrary, or the fact that archetypes don't describe stuff completely accurately tends to be discarded. It's a shame – Wei Wuxian is the platonic ideal of my ideal protagonist, and all the fanfic of him is unreadable, because the fandom completely ignores all the things that make him appealing. (The animation, too, seemed to de-emphasize the intellect and caution, and nerfed him badly.)

Personally I do enjoy seeing the kind of cracky fanart/fic where there's stuff like Shen Qing Qiu running away from Luo Bing He etc., but I had wished that there's an implicit acknowledgement that the characters are more than that.
Same. It's a lot like rapefic: even if it's written to titillate, as long as it's marked as rape, I can enjoy it. If it's untagged, it's one of my worst squicks.

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In order: asdfhakjfh, Wei Wuxian, and Yuletide

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