#mdzsnetcc

Digital painting: Liu Haikuan made specially for @entigral 

Hope your new year is AMAZING!

Cheers! --CC

Hello my dear Bunny! Imma call you bunny, since you so adorably signed with one - is that alright with you? I hope it is haha So excited to meet you!! Daaang, that’s one question to kick it off! A nice one, but also a hard one. There are many lovable characters, all of them for different reasons. I put a few in the artwork but I honestly feel bad for all the others I left out. MDZS simply has a great cast, how could I possibly decide? I didn’t even manage to just put five in my artwork xD Also my interpretations are a mad mix - I am sorry. I did quick art for this because

what about you? 💕

I answered the first one (Tumblr, for once, did not banish something into the abyss), so: nothing really to avoid, but I don’t really want anything that might create controversy (like, “Least favorite character!”, that kind of thing) I didn’t reblog that salty questions post going around for that reason--I’ve already “stepped in it” enough without going out of my way to do so!

Now, regarding favorite characters...for a main, it’s hands-down Jiang Cheng. I related to him somehow. I’m nowhere near as uptight yet somehow I see him rolling his eyes and being grumpy and sarcastic and having sibling rivalry and having these high expectations for himself and I just want to scoop him up and feed him soup (I get you, Yanli) and go, “Me too, bud.” I just feel him. Plus I love the complexity of his dynamic with WWX and yes I too want to have a purple lightning whip and fabulous clothes. The actor’s performance contributed a lot. How can you watch him cry and not want to comfort him and tell him he’s enough?

the cql ost is currently 80% of my comfort playlist, though one of my mutuals and i (more like me and she just has to suffer through it and i enjoy making her cry) are making a wangxian playlist! it wasn't meant to be as angsty as everything turned out to be so far, but i'm not complaining. except for like one song everything is in english, the other song is in german actually and we're not sure if it categories as angst or happy. the acoustic version makes the song sound incredibly sad, the lyrics is somewhere between sad and happy, basically between "you make me happy" and "why did it have to be this way in the first place?". if you want to be specific, the song talks about the other person lifting a burden from your heart "freed it, revived it" is one of the lines, and.... it's a great song but 🤧🤧🤧 then there are these lines "[i] was stuck and didn't know what to do / and you took hammer and chisel / made an artwork* out of my cold heart" (ig to make it flow better you could say "made a masterpiece out of my cold heart" but he says "Kunstwerk" eng. artwork). idk the whole lyrics flows better in german but if you want to listen to it (i prefer the acoustic) it's Betonherz by Wincent Weiss (Cement-heart).

Today idk what to ask so: what are your favorite mutuals/the ones you interact with the most? was there anything you wanted to do this year but couldn't? a random fun fact over tea maybe? (btw i drunk tea this week and it was uhmmm mint tea? i think? and black tea but i can't say more about that tbh)

ahhh wait!!! if we include fantasy languages i'd like to speak quenya 😌😌 or sindarin, that would be okay too - ❄🐇

You did send me asks! Sorry i’m bad at responding. 

mandarin is pretty handy. i will vouch for that. i listened to erha audiodrama on maoer FM today while i was cooking. it was delightful. i had to google the languages you sent in. i know nothing of lotr. but @phoenixrisesoncemore is good with lotr. does neat art. loves untamed. great tea friend. so i would probably reach out to her! :D

cql ost is a lot of what i’ve listened to this year too. i’m really digging teh “I will take you life” song from Ever Night though. It’s so perfectly chipper. I come from so and so place, i’m here to take you life. I just giggle every time i hear it. a little morbid, but alas. Also, the end theme of ever night is cute and chipper too. and the words are really nice. I also LOVE the opening theme of love and redemption. it makes me think of some 80s rock ballad or something. and the words “Even if i drank the waters of wangchuan, I will not fail to meet you again” is really romantic. 

Uh... in case you don’t know what wangchuan is, it’s the river that make you forget your past life before reincarnation. so it’s a pretty intense promise IMO. I really dig that idea... maybe it’s because i read erha and wife is first back to back and now i’m all on board with the idea of “if i get a second chance i won’t fuck it up”. 

oh god. the two mutuals I talk to the most are definitely @needtherapy and @merelhyn. if i go more than 24 hrs without hearing from them i feel weird. I really wanna go on a trip post pandemic to visit merelhyn and spend a day drinking tea with her. and i really want needtherapy to visit me so i can make her crawl through the bowels of the place where i got married -- it’s a weird modern art, industrial playground space filled with mosaics and concrete and ironwork sculptures. it is actually that cool. but you can’t really wear nice clothes there. i’ve ripped holes in shirts before. AND it has a circus school inside. it’s the place of litte haoppo’s dreams. I also talk to lots of other people i didn’t mention (e.g. members of mdzsnet and other friends of mine) but that’s just because i am an extrovert and i talk to people. i like talking to people. and there are SO MANY AMAZING PEOPLE on tumblr. but the two i listed are people who i swapped irl phone numbers with so they get listed as special. i’m drawing my line here or i would probably end up writing a page of people who i adore and that might get annoying :/

random fun fact over tea snowbunny says. random fun fact over tea... uh... i saw @yumingyesfairy‘s previous url and asked if “duchess of orange” was a reference to “duke of orange” which is where we get the tea grading “orange pekoe”. i was correct! and made a tea friend! :D

you are by no means obligated to know tea or even care about tea. i just love it and love sharing about it. because someone isn’t actually good at compartmentalizing. 

-the axe cultivator

Oh, ac, I missed some of your question last time didn't I? So sorry. My head is kinda in the clouds these days

There are so many scenes that stuck with me, so I'll make a bullet list and probably still miss some ^^

It's such a small thing but in ep 1 the transition from the tale of how wei wuxian was killed transitions to the tea house via a shit from within sizhui's trea cup as he's pouring tea "onto the camera". It's nothing special but remember loving that shot so much the first time I watched that it was one of the things that kept me watching

Wangxian-wise in the first two episodes, I'd be remiss not to mention that handgrip when wei wuxian plays wangxian to calm wen ning down. Because it goes on ... and on ... and on. When I watched it for the first time I was like "ooohhhh so it's gonna be this kind of gay". You know the endless-longing-stares kind. And now when I rewatch it's just devastating. The last time they saw each other before this scene, they also held onto each others wrists but wei wuxian let go and fell to his death. And here lan zhan is, holding on for minutes and only let's go once jiang cheng threatens wei wuxian. Just ... 💔

i started shipping xiyao from their very furst sxebe together. Those two actors (i try to remeber their names but i always forget them again. My memory is shit when it comes to names :/) really just did want some of that sweet sweet homoerotic tension. Also, their first interaction stand out to me as the moment i really started to like lan xichen. In a setting that was shown early on to be highly hierarchical, he exhibited in the very forst scenes that he is willing to disregard someone's standing and look at their character and abilities instead. I just really love xichen ❤

Okay, i can't name one scene per episode, so let’s sum them up a little

I adore this progression during the cloud recesses and the yin iron arc from a flirtratious rivalry to genuine deep freindship and love. There are so many little moments that stand out because of the subtle acting joices made my wang yibo and xiao zhan, as well as the script, The lantern scene, when Wei Wuxian doesn’t betray the yin iron secret to huaisang and lan wangji goes “hu, so your bullshitting has reasons”, when they are in the market and lan zhan actually communicates that he doesn’t like crowds and wei wuxian pulls him closer but not into the crowd and so many others. When you watch closely, you see them realising little details about each other and I’m honestly so impressed with how amazingly the process of their falling in love was portrayed

fast forward a bit: obviously, the freaking montage quasi-fan vid in the middle of the cave scene set to their freaking love song. I remeber when I first watched this scene I actually, literally screamed. I could not believe it because their was no fucking way that this could be read as anything but romantic and I was not used to that much blatant queer romance!

A little less happy (okay a lot). The entire destruction of the jiang clan with a special mention to the scene when Jiang Cheng and Wei Wuxian just saw the bodies and run into fields where they fight and Jiang Cheng chokes Wei Wuxian and then they just fall back in exhaustion and sleep right there under the open sky. Everything about that scene was brilliantly done and also soul-crushing. The loss of innosence in that moment devastated me. It was so obvious that in the moment of deepest despair, all of these children’s traumas and deep-seated fears reared their ugly heads. So Jiang Cheng directs all his grief at the easiest target for his anger and Wei Wuxian just takes it because that is what he thinks is his job. And the real tragedy? This dynamic will not be broken until Wei Wuxian’s literal death. These children need therapy so goddamn badly and all they get is more trauma on top of their excisting trauma.

“The single log bridge” scene. I. Am. A. Sucker for the found family trope, especially for characters who cronically think they have to do everything on their own. So there Wei Wuxian is saying he will walk his dark path alone, but instead he finds lit lanterns and a humble feast prepared for him by people who love him. That juxtaposition kils. me. every. time. YOU ARE LOVED WEI WUXIAN! FOR YOURSELF!

(Shout out to the second time his word are refuted, this time by lan wangji and *gasp* verbally. Because there is NO better love declaration than that scene in front of basically every leader of cultivation world who politely wait for their turn to attack them)

Luo Qingyang removing herself from the narrative. I literally cry every time.

Talking about women: jiang yanli defending wei wuxian and calling him her brother. That moment is the "three things all wise men fear" quite incarnat, only it's the anger of a gentle woman

“Let me go” So ... I have SUCH a thing for couple who grapple with questions of when it is time to let go and when it is time to hold on. So Wangxian hits all my buttons. I will go further into this in my last bullet point (about the very last scene)

Oh god, this list is gonna get so long and i’m still going to forget things

In the present timeline:

Again, to sum it up, all the gentle wangxian moment where they look at each other and their entire face grows soft. Every almost-smile lan wangji sends wei wuxian, every "oh. He really loves me huh?"-look from wei wuxian. Especially in the Jingshi just after lan Xichen's loredrop. These two intensly guarded people (yes, wei wuxian is guarded,he just hides behind smiles) are so open with each other. I only have to see a guf of lan wangji with his heir down and I go feral!

Talking about that episode, the lan family backstory as a scene does things to me. And I remember watching that the first time and so much of lan wangji's behaviour suddenly making sense. Especially little lan zhan kneeling in front of his mother’s house and that being how he showed his grief really drove home just how this man exhibits emotion. I'm pretty sure that that was the moment he really became my favourite character.

Same episode and a start juxtaposition to the domestic scene between wangxian before: the talk between lan xichen and Jin Guangyao just afterwards. You could probably write an essay of meta about the parallels and differences between those two scenes and I think that's deliberate because they're back to back. The lan brother's share tea with the person closest to their hearts. One is finally able to open himself fully, the other closes up more than he ever has before with this person. The framing in that scene alone drives that message home, never mind its content. It's heart-wrenching and so well done!

Talking about xiyao: jin guangyao's death for similar reasons. Just ... arrrgh

I'm sure I've missed a ton but thus is already so long so I'll close with my favourite overall: the last scene. The parting and subsequent reunion on the mountaintop. I've stated before why this means so much to me. It is such a reassuring message to me: to have two intensely different people learn to understand and love each other exactly as they are. Being who they are, the occasionally walk different paths. But they don't limit each other. They learn to improve each other by just being there when they are and therefore know and trust that their love will return.

This was mostly cql because you asked for "scenes", but have some honorary novel mentions:

Lan Wangji: "The face says nothing. Listen to the heart-beat." 😭😭😭

The moment when wei wuxian collapses after the second siege and lan sizhui expresses surprise over this, lan wangji says something like "We are all human." I love that moment for many reasons. 1) it's one of the rare direct insights into lan wangji's thoughts. No matter how brief he is here, you don't say something like that just because. 2) and it's significant that he is the one saying it because he, too, is placed on a pedestal. In fact, I think a lot about mdzs boils down to the conflict between the inner self and outer perception and how that dichotomy can be both a deliberate shield (lan zhan being the perfect example) and a curse

HAHAHA yes chilling with the zombies, I doubt WWX has any issues with that XD Unless it’s Wen Ning, I’ll say no thanks though!!

Which actually brings me to the consideration that perhaps it’s Wen Ning who’s a good cook?

Did he make these?? Since later;

WWX: You made all these dishes? WQ: It’s A-Ning.

So I think we have another decent cook contestant!

Overall, the "control" theme that plays a huge part in demonic cultivation is what really gets me. This is personal now, but to me there are few things scarier than losing control. Plus, I recently found a very dark, angsty fic about LWJ bringing WWX back to the Burial Mounds where WWX is incredibly far gone already and basically insane, and just the thought of it really messed with me. What do you think of this? Which version of his death is more interesting for you, which one sadder? -✨

Wei Wuxian’s happiness makes me happy 😊 The boy has been through enough, he deserves to live in happy AU’s where his biggest concern is his feelings over Lan Wangji.

I started the office!AU you recommended CC, and oh my gosh. It’s so good! I’m absolutely loving it so far. Thanks again for recommending it, I can’t wait to see how it’ll end 💖 You got me invested in another fic, ha!

Oof, that is a question. I actually had to have a think about my response for a little bit, because although I have my preferences over which I prefer, I haven’t actually thought too much into why that is.

You’re absolutely right on the theme of control. In both versions of MDZS control is present - and it’s all about the unpredictability of a cultivation method that is so feared and misunderstood / unknown to the larger majority of the cultivation world. Wei Wuxian is constantly saying he can control it, but can he really? Even he doesn’t really understand the extent of what he’s utilising. 

I personally prefer the drama version of Wei Wuxian’s death. It’s the first one I was made aware of and until I learnt differently, I just assumed the novel followed the same pattern. My first instinct when I read what happened to him in the novel was to recoil and go ‘don’t like that’ to him being torn apart. I’m still not fond on it, but I get it in terms of the story.

I like the drama version more though because, even though Wei Wuxian’s death is really a suicide in it, his control over his fate was never taken from him. He honestly believed at that point in the story that he had nothing left to live for - his sister had just died for him, he’d lost the Wens, lost A Yuan. The cultivation world hated him to the point they were ready to murder him ... as far as Wei Wuxian was concerned, he wasn’t leaving Nightless City alive anyway. It was just a matter of how he was going to die. 

Yet although he’d lost everything, although he believed everyone hated him, although he knew he was going to likely die - he took that decision of how he was going to die into his own hands. His last act is his own: one which he has complete control over. He is exhausted and heartbroken, and no longer sees a place for himself in the world anymore. He thinks he brought more harm to those he loved than ever bringing any good, so Wei Wuxian decides no more. 

He decides to let go.

I even believe Lan Wangji understands that it is Wei Wuxian’s choice to die at this point. Although Wei Wuxian shakes free of the grasp he has on him and despite his own injury, Lan Wangji could have reached to grab him again. He doesn’t attempt a second time though, and it’s because - even though the act truly shatters his own heart - Lan Wangji loves Wei Wuxian so much that he even respects the choice he makes. 

I also just really love how the drama has this consistency of mirroring throughout it. Even Wei Wuxian’s death mirrors an episode that happened not long before, where they have the exchange in the rain and Wei Wuxian says things like ‘if there’s a war between me and them, then I’d rather battle to the death with you’ and ‘if I die, at least I will die by your hand. That would be fair.’ These are his choices and his decisions - he’s saying to Lan Wangji that he would welcome death by his hand which is ... oof. That’s a big thing to lay on someone!

That’s what I see from the scene, anyway. The book death is effective in it’s own right, and it’s still sad. But I just prefer the drama one because there’s so much tangled up within it and to me? It hurts more 😢 Especially when I think of this quote from The Song of Achilles which reminds me of Wei Wuxian’s choice here (and how it affects those who continued to live that did still care for him).

I choose LXC because he is a good, kind man. He is strong, resilient, intelligent and respectful. He is everything that is right in this world, and I admire that!

I am staying safe, I hope you are too! It indeed is very hard to look for a job, but the course is giving me tips so I know I will get one eventually! Thank you for your well wishes ❤

I hope you will enjoy your break! I don't doubt it's deserved!

Personally, I loved Handsome Siblings! I watched it so I could hopefully learn some Chinese from it, and I didn't expect to become invested. I absolutely loved it and I binged the entire thing! I love the twins so much ;-; The love in the bond they share just makes me feel things hahahah

It's been an ok week so far! Fixed my sleeping pattern (that I will eventually mess up again) so I'm more productive! I hope you'll have a great week!

My question for today is: if you could recommend one show/movie in Chinese to me, which one would it be?

- Sincerely, your Classified Cultivator

hello! (≧∇≦)/ oh that’s nice! hopefully that course will have some good tips that will come in handy~ it sounds really intense tho (＠_＠;) I don’t remember going for any courses back in the day (ok this sounds ages ago but it was like... 2 years ago???) when I was still studying and/ or looking for a job... more like I was too lazy _(:3」∠)_

oh man maybe one day I would check it out! my watch queue is insanely long right now and I take really long for chinese and korean shows especially since they typically have a lot of episodes and very long episodes respectively ヘ(＿　＿ヘ) I usually finish uk/us shows and japanese anime much faster (ﾉ･o･)ﾉ since they have fewer episodes... aha

oh noooo please don’t mess up your sleeping pattern again (＞△＜Uu my brother’s is absolutely terrible (he goes to bed around 4 or 5am and only gets up at... noon??) and it seems really bad for health in general... I used to only sleep at 2am (remnants of my addiction to a mobile game sigh but that’s another story there) and get up around 9 or 10, but for the past couple of months I’ve been trying to change that and exercise more often (sometimes in the early morning if needed alksdlksdf) and my sleeping pattern feels much better now! ^^ and yes, totally understand on that more productive thing! it feels like right now I can get more things done in the morning, at least. hope it will last for you~ (b^_^)b

ahhhh only one show/ movie?!?!?! (ﾟДﾟ;) hmmmmmMMMM......

eh well one of my all time favourite cdramas is my roommate is a detective, which is kinda like sherlock holmes. it’s set in the chinese republican era , and is centred around an ex-mafia-turned-police-inspector (acted by my tumblr url namesake) and a smartass-genius-rich-boy-eking-it-out-on-his-own and the crimes they solve together in 1920s shanghai. but since that’s pretty obvious from my tumblr in general, I’m gonna recommend another movie that I don’t think a lot of people here may be aware of but is still really good!

it’s this...

red cliff! it’s actually a super long show and got split into two separate movies, released in 2008 and 2009. I was like... 12 around then??? but I remember watching both parts in the cinema and going like...... wow

it’s a historical war epic, definitely not in the xianxia or wuxia genres that a lot of popular cdramas are in right now. and this is the one I would recommend because it’s based on an actual historical battle in ancient china AND is also one of the most famous arcs in one of the four Chinese Classical Novels (capitalising these here because this is a legit term ahahaa), the romance of the three kingdoms. 

it’s somewhat like a david vs. goliath situation, and besides the super epic fight scenes, there are also a lot of clever strategies being thrown around and used, mostly by that guy from the second right up there called zhuge liang (or kong ming). 

and some videos!

trailer in chinese:

and another trailer in english (UGH at that voiceover): 

each part also has its own theme song! they’re both sung by the same singer (a lan) and they’re both equally pretty and haunting. my brother and I couldn’t get the second one in particular out of our head for a reaaaally long time because they kept repeating that melody (that appears at 1:33 in the mv) throughout part 2 lolol

theme song for part 1, called 心战 “heart war”

theme song for part 2, called 大江东去 “the mighty river* flows east”

*referring to the yangtze river, at one point of which the actual historical battle was fought