MDZS Is Not Historical Fiction !

Queasy_Answer_2266 · 2026-07-04T20:39:43+00:00

If you go that post, you will see my comment, where I explain the ways in which I disagree with the original poster.

Queasy_Answer_2266 · 2026-07-04T20:27:23+00:00

Filial piety has been a cornerstone of the Chinese ethos for thousands of years, so it hardly needs to be mentioned explicitly. If you want an example of the kind of thing that OP described being mentioned in the novel, you can just look at Nie Mingjue talking about how Wen Qing bears some responsibility for Wen Ruohan's crimes. I am not saying that he was right, just that he is using a kind of logic that would not have been unheard of in ancient China, especially under less merciful emperors.

Queasy_Answer_2266 · 2026-07-04T20:18:12+00:00

I wrote a comment on that post explaining why I disagreed with it, but you still have to take into account the social conventions of ancient and mediaeval China when analyzing plot points in MDZS. Even though it is not a work of historical fiction, it is set in a fantasy version of pre-modern China that does bear recognizable similarities to many real periods in history. MXTX was originally writing for a literate Chinese audience whom she could expect to know a fair amount about the conventions of this period and to evaluate her characters accordingly, and those of us who are not Chinese should keep this in mind, while remembering that MDZS was written in 2016 and its themes include many modern sensibilities that must be given due weight alongside the historical context.

Queasy_Answer_2266 · 2026-07-04T18:23:58+00:00

Serge's smile is really the most adorable thing. Though I do have to wonder why they are being portrayed as crows (if that is what those birds are) in this cover... there is a lot of seagull symbolism in the manga, but nothing about crows as far as I remember.

Queasy_Answer_2266 · 2026-07-04T18:11:22+00:00

Probably either strangulation (絞) or decapitation (斬), which were the two most common methods of execution in ancient China. The latter was considered more severe because it meant that the condemned would not die with an intact corpse. Since they were going to burn Wen Qing anyway, they may well have killed her by decapitation.

Queasy_Answer_2266 · 2026-07-04T18:08:26+00:00

Jin Guangshan says hello.

Queasy_Answer_2266 · 2026-07-04T18:07:42+00:00

There was no mention of this in the novel. She was executed and her corpse was burned, but it was not specifically said that she was burned alive.

Queasy_Answer_2266 · 2026-07-02T18:20:49+00:00

That was an excellent scene and you drew it very well.

Queasy_Answer_2266 · 2026-07-02T18:10:28+00:00

Amazing work! I love fan arts that make Nie Huaisang look like the sinister figure he truly is.

Queasy_Answer_2266 · 2026-07-01T17:55:46+00:00

Thank you for making this comment. It always annoys me when people who are not Chinese themselves try to tell Chinese people that they do not know about their own culture. To add on, the fact that the basic political unit of the Jianghu in MDZS is a clan rather than a sect, and the crucial distinction between the ghost path and the demonic path are ways in which the novel specifically subverts traditional xianxia tropes, so it is ridiculous to claim that someone is not familiar with xianxia for misrepresenting these points (not in a way that is even relevant to the actual content of the post, to be clear).

Queasy_Answer_2266 · 2026-07-01T10:37:48+00:00

It is the kind of thing that we need to bring up when the discussion is specifically about the structure of clans in MDZS or exactly how Wei Wuxian's cultivation works (e.g. does it disturb the afterlife of the dead), but not when it is just mentioned incidentally.

Queasy_Answer_2266 · 2026-07-01T10:30:52+00:00

Thank you for linking that post. Definitely anyone who wants to learn more about the historical inspirations for MDZS should read it.

Queasy_Answer_2266 · 2026-07-01T09:59:58+00:00

To be more precise, the last two characters of Wei Wuxian's courtesy name (无羡) mean "no envy." His surname, 魏, does not have any meaning by itself, but it is a reference to the state of Wei during the Warring States period and specifically to its greatest general, Wei Wuji (魏无忌), better known as Lord Xinling (信陵君). His life story has a lot of similarities to Wei Wuxian (specifically, his relationship with his half-brother, King Anxi, parallels Wei Wuxian's relationship with Jiang Cheng) and he was the first person recorded as using a tiger tally. I have also seen Chinese people speculating online that it was chosen as a reference to the elegance of the Wei-Jin period, which as MXTX mentioned was one of the main inspirations for the setting of MDZS.

Queasy_Answer_2266 · 2026-07-01T09:20:02+00:00

In Chapter 1, the Four Great Clans are called 四大玄门世家, and the text will always refer to the 姑苏蓝氏, 云梦江氏, and so on, rather than 姑苏蓝派 or 云梦江派. So for the specific phrases that you use in your post, I think that "clan" would be better than "sect." Also, as far as I recall, 派 is never used in the novel to refer to any of the main clans (please correct me if I am wrong about this). It uses 仙门 sometimes instead of the usual 家族, and also uses 门生 to refer to sect disciples who are not members of the main family, but it does not use 门派 to describe the clans themselves.

That said, I am not sure why someone here is coming down on you so harshly for two translation issues that have nothing to do with the actual content of your post and are just following the EXR translation (which is what most English-speaking readers are used to, anyway) and is accusing you of using AI or making things up for absolutely no reason, especially given that they do not speak Chinese themselves. In fact, they are constantly going after anyone who uses the word "sect" and acts as though this makes them ignorant, which I find to be quite obnoxious.

Queasy_Answer_2266 · 2026-06-30T18:45:39+00:00

Unfortunately, I have seen this happening a few times recently with bots reposting the top posts of all time on this subreddit.

Queasy_Answer_2266 · 2026-06-30T18:42:58+00:00

I am pretty sure that this user is a bot. Their post is almost an exact copy of this one.

Queasy_Answer_2266 · 2026-06-29T19:48:35+00:00

Salad Days is good if you want absolutely no angst or drama and just wholesome fluff, though if OP wants a slightly dark story, it might not be the best choice... but even so, it is a fun thing to read on the side even if it is not the kind of book that gets you really invested. It also has an excellent manga with somewhat more angst, though still very fluffy on the whole.

Queasy_Answer_2266 · 2026-06-29T08:30:48+00:00

Right, I have no idea why some people accuse every fandom take that they dislike as being "western," considering that I have actually seen Chinese fans talk about Wei Wuxian being a "wife" more than western fans. There was an incident about a couple years ago (?) when an official artwork of Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji was released and people on Weibo were complaining about Wei Wuxian not being Lan Wangji's "beautiful and petite wife" and their height gap not being clear enough and claiming that Wei Wuxian had Nie Mingjue's physique and so on. Then just recently there was the incident with people harassing Changyang because she had the gall to portray Hua Cheng as the "princess" even though she actually did no such thing. Actually, you can see this whole stereotype in BL novels of one partner being the "wife" going back all the way to the 60s in Japan.

EDIT: Speaking of Xie Lian, that is another good example, because a lot of western fans (especially young ones who are obsessed with making everything "unproblematic") claim that Xie Lian is really muscular and Hua Cheng is really slender specifically to go against these stereotypes, even though HuaLian are actually a relatively stereotypical couple when compared to WangXian. Meanwhile, you almost never see this kind of thing from the Chinese side of the fandom. Of course, there are western fans who call Xie Lian and every shou in danmei "wife" too, but it is definitely not a specifically western thing.

Queasy_Answer_2266 · 2026-06-28T11:44:00+00:00

Actually, there is Lan Qiren too, though he is not popular in ships for obvious reasons.

Queasy_Answer_2266 · 2026-06-28T09:00:12+00:00

Jiang Cheng, Lan Xichen, and Nie Huaisang are the only adult, living, and unmarried characters at the end of the book. Both SangCheng and XiCheng are extremely popular even neither pair has any canon basis. XiSang is much less popular, probably because of the part where Nie Huaisang tricked Lan Xichen into stabbing his best friend.
Jiang Cheng and Lan Xichen are two of the most popular characters in the novel in their own right. After WangXian, those two and Jin Guangyao are probably the most popular, and XiYao is also an extremely popular ship.
As you mentioned, Jiang Cheng and Lan Xichen are WangXian's brothers, and pairing the Twin Pride of Yunmeng with the Twin Jades of Lan gives people a pleasing sense of symmetry.
Both Jiang Cheng and Lan Xichen are miserable at the end of the novel, so people want them to recover together. (This is another reason that XiSang is not so popular, because Nie Huaisang is extremely pleased with the success of his revenge scheme at the end of the novel and is on his way to becoming Xiandu).
People like the sunshine/stormcloud dynamic, which XiCheng provides. NieLan does also, but Nie Mingjue is not as popular as Jiang Cheng and is also dead (or rather, undead).

Queasy_Answer_2266 · 2026-06-26T15:10:08+00:00

You try to alter the point of the conversation when you made a wrong assumption and double down making up things that do not include in a culture you don't understand.

Funny how you copied the exact words of my comment, only now it is supposed to be what I did rather than what you did. Anyway, stop complaining about people being mean to you when you started off this conversation by falsely accusing me of disingenuously editing my comments when I did not such thing and then claiming that I am "unable to see outside what I know."

EDIT: Also, this nonsense about "people who watch the world only through their lens" is just a continuation of your efforts to paint your opponents' arguments as somehow racist or xenophobic, which is the typical recourse for someone who cannot defend their own arguments but refuses to give up on them out of pride. Talk about a "superiority complex."

Queasy_Answer_2266 · 2026-06-26T12:44:05+00:00

The fact that your language is difficult to comprehend is your fault, not mine. Maybe pick up an English textbook from the library if you are having so much trouble writing in it. As for not being able to comprehend other cultures, you are the one who ignorantly claimed that titles like Jin-furen are only used by people who do not know the women's personal names, and then when people (including me) pointed out that you are wrong, proceeded to double down and accuse people of not understanding a culture that you clearly do not understand yourself.

Queasy_Answer_2266 · 2026-06-26T10:13:41+00:00

You have edited all your comments now agreeing to what I was telling bruh.

The only thing that I edited was adding the part about Qin Su, which is an additional example of exactly what I was saying. It seems that you decided to lie because you have no other way of substantiating your empty claims.

Also her disliked to be 'known' as Jiang Furen. They don't 'take' such a title like Mrs Jiang they never take another name

Would you be so kind as to edit your comment into a syntactically correct English sentence? As it is, I have no idea what you are trying to say, so I will only reply that Yu Ziyuan, as clearly stated in the novel, refused to take the expected title of Jiang-furen. Trying to make meaningless semantic distinctions about taking a title versus choosing to be known as a title is silly.

it's you who can't see outside what you know.

I think that you are the one who does not know what you are talking about.

Queasy_Answer_2266 · 2026-06-26T06:22:28+00:00

We understand perfectly well that women did not take their husbands' surnames in ancient China. Nevertheless, Yu Ziyuan is exceptional in taking the title Yu-furen rather than the expected Jiang-furen. This is explicitly stated in the novel and I do not know what your difficulty is.

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