Trauda38 - Bez Tytułu

Literally, the only people that find complaining about that stage performance and actor's are untamed ride or die fans

Its like I'm falling in love with Wei Wuxian's character again... I don't know anything about his stage actor but he seem slaying it. I like how playful and confident he is in the photoshoot. He reminds me of Audio Drama Wei Wuxian. People who hate on him are probably The Untamed only fans and never MDZS fans.

Really iconic of Meng Yao to have two henchmen, each one perfectly designed to piss off one of his sworn brothers

Vietnam and Opoczno girls 🏳️‍🌈💘

How MXTX characters would react to the assassination of the UHC CEO

Wei Wuxian: has anyone seen Wei Wuxian and Luigi Mangione in the same room? 👀

Lan Wangji: 100% ready to aide and abet

Jiang Cheng: Runs to review the sect healthcare plan - he has enough problems without looking out for assassins.

Lan Xichen: understands the motive but did Luigi try playing calming music for the CEOs before resorting to violence? 🥺

Jin Guangyao: oh so some people get lauded as heroes when they commit murder? SMH double standard.

Nie Mingjue: appreciates martial artistry when he sees it. The stance? How quickly he cleared the jam? A true warrior.

Xue Yang: it lacked a certain pizazz, a stabbing would have been much more visually effective

Wen Qing: 100% approves bureaucrats should have no authority over doctors

I am seriously concerned by the danmei-confession anons that seem to think that murder and extreme torture are okay as long as it's done to 'bad people'

Darling, dear, you need to see what a slippery slope of superiority thinking that is. That is in fact the kind of hard lined morality that lead to inprisonment and eventual massacre of the Wen Remnants. Because they were 'bad', they were on the 'wrong side' of the war, part of the invading force of Lotus Pier (Wen Ning said that his people didn't kill people at random, doesn't mean they didn't kill.) But it doesn't matter if they were good or bad, because to murder a bunch of people is still wrong.

The cultivator that accidentially killed Jiang Yanli, only attacked Wei Wuxian because Wei Wuxian had just killed his brother. The brother was killed because he fired the opening shot at Wei Wuxian. The guy and his brother were there, probably because their sect leader told them that they had to defeat a dangerous villain with dark magic, which did appear to be true because Wei Wuxian did invent a whole new type of fierce corpse and killed the heir to of of the big sects. So did they deserve to die?

Y'all need to let go of this storybook idea of good and bad. Morality is so much messier and complex.

And if MXTX really does think that Wei Wuxian is the ideal of goodness, I am allowed to disagree with her. While it is her story, she did put it out in the world, and readers are allowed to form their own thoughts and opinions based on the story she has written.

i think rednote has hope 🫶🏾

So I've said multipe times now (here and here) that thinking nmj is just so blinded by privilege he doesn't undertand that acting out of line gets people killed is, in my opinion, a misunderstanding of his character that ignores the part where he's, you know, actively dying the whole time and thinks that's a good thing. But that doesn't mean I don't think privilege plays no role at all in how he views the world.

Specifically, his view that death (at least premature or violent death) means something.

Death isn't always a tragedy to NMJ, but it is always meaningful. If you kill an evil dangerous person for your righteous cause, that death had meaning. There was evil in the world and now there is less of it. Similarly, if you die in the pursuit of your righteous cause, that death has meaning, because the sheer dedication you gave to it that you were willing to die for it will further that cause, and your bretheren will be invigorated by your sacrifice to fight even harder.

If a death isn't meaningful, that's an injustice and it is up to the living to give it meaning. That's what cuts so deep about his father's murder. There were no consequences, no changes, no meaning. Wen Ruohan was just going to get away with it! He fights and wins an entire war to make it mean something, to make it so that the unjust murder of Nie Mingjue's father is part of Wen Ruohan's downfall.

But this is a view he can only hold because he's the kind of person who's death will be meaningful. Most ordinary people's deaths are meaningless. Not ontologically, not inherently, but they are made meaningless because no one cares. For death to be meaningful you either have to be so powerful that anything you risk your life for will be impacted in some way. (Like, say, if you sacrifice a long life for immense martial power in a faustian bargain with a blade) Or if people with that kind of power care enough about you to do so for you. For most people, this isn't true. A starving street kid has no power to change the unfair world that put them there, even if they risk their life trying, and no one will do it for them once they die.

Nie Mingjue knows this in abstract, and of course rightfully believes it's wrong. But all that does is make it yet another righteous cause people should be willing to die for. Everyone's deaths should mean something, we'll make it so or die trying!

This is what the conflict between nieyao is about at its core. Because Jin Guangyao, fundamentally, cannot conceive of his own death as meaningful. Nie Mingjue grew up around powerful men who could change the world but refuse to do so because god forbid they risk a single hair on their perfect heads. Meng Yao, on the other hand, grew up in an environment where no one of importance would blink twice if you died. He was surrounded by meaningless death. Indeed his entire early life is defined by that lack of care.

Meng Shi dies and no one cares. Meng Yao gets thrown off a flight off stairs and no one cares. He has to be the one to do the caring, and once he's gone no one else will do it for him.

So he has to live.

Jin Guangyao eventually gets far enough that he actually does aquire the power to change some things... as long as he's alive. If he changes too much, holds on too tightly to his ideals, he'll die and it'll all be for nothing. He can't sacrifice himself for his goals because doing so would immediately render those goals unobtainable. No one will care about what he tried to do. He won't be a heroic sacrifice, he'll just be trash that finally cleaned itself up.

And well... Nie Mingjue dies, and someone makes it mean something. Makes it mean so much that the entire story of mdzs would not exist without it. Jin Guangyao dies and it doesn't mean anything. Most people are glad to be rid of him, and the few that are not don't do anything to change that.

Thoughts on Jin Guangyao's name

So the "Yao" in GuangYao/Meng Yao (瑶) means "precious; precious stone, jade, mother-of-pearl" (source is technically google translate as op doesn't know any Mandarin, but "jade" is listed in the novel glossary).

In chapter 10 of mdzs book 2, we learn that the token Jin Guangshan left Meng Shi a "love token" in the form of a pearl button, which she sends him off with to "seek a way out of this life"; gaining his father's recognition.

Meng Shi named her son "precious" as in something of value. She might have also named him after, or at least been inspired by the pearl JGS left her. If this is the case, the pearl button, and Meng Yao's name, come to represent Meng Shi's hope for salvation: "she waited and waited, yearning and hoping for this head of the cultivators to return and take her and their child away."

Which is literally the function Meng Yao serves, to his mother and in the narrative. Although his mother clearly loved him, he represents--- at least initially--- an object/tool/avenue through which Meng Shi's wishes (salvation, a way out of this life) will be granted. (I do think MS came to love him but I don't think she originally kept the baby, at least primarily, out of a uncomplicated desire to be a mother raising a child in a brothel so much as a way out of said brothel yk). This is an important distinction for later-- the pearl, and Meng Yao, are the object of wish granting, not the wish itself or the person for whom wishes are granted. Not that Meng Shi's wish wouldn't also extend to her son's salvation. But this is less about them and more about he role Meng Yao is placed in in this dynamic and by extension the world, especially once Meng Shi is dead and only the ghost of her wish remains.

Unfortunately JGS is. . . JGS, and the button is "hurriedly crushed the pearl to dust" as Meng Yao is kicked down the stairs.

Okay so JGS literally crushes MS (and by extension, MYs) hopes and dreams under his foot. But, this action only furthers the parallels between the pearl button (and so, Meng Yao) and Wish Granting Pearls, or boazhu. One of the Eight Treasures/Eight Precious things, "popular symbols often depicted in Chinease art" and the most popular combination from a greater list of one Hundred Treasures.

One version of this concept found in Buddhism is a Chintamani, or wish fulfilling stone, "sometimes depicted as a luminous pearl" [x]. Further, Jin Guangyao honors his mother by building Guanyin temple. Guanyin is often portryed holding a wish granting jewel in his right hand [x]. I'm not super familiar with this, but the point is. The connection isn't just "JGYs name can mean pearl and JGS gave MS a pearl button", there's multiple associations between JGY, his mom, and the idea of wish granting pearls. Also the pearl is something of inherent value (sometimes fell from the sky) but also a way for wishes to be granted.

Jin Guangyao, who seemed born to resolve conflicts,

Yeah no literally. Named for it too. Assigned genie at birth. Then there's this bit from the fandom wiki:

The name 'Jin Guangyao' may have been cheekily inspired by the idiom "光耀门楣 (guāng yào mén méi)”, "splendor shines on the family's door”. This means "to bring honor to one's family”.

Which. Maybe this isn't anything that's not obvious in the text. But again [something about the distinction between bringing honor to and being honored or honorable, which should theoretically go together but don't necessarily, except I'm not sure enough in my (nonexistent) knowledge of the connotations of that idiom to articulate further].

I find it interesting that we learn the story of the pearl almost as soon as Meng Yao is introduced. And kicked down the stairs. And the pearl is crushed to dust underfoot, like it's nothing. Which

[pearl buttons were] nothing special to the Jin Clan of Lanling. They were so abundant, in fact, that you could fling out a hand at random and come away with a fistful. Their most common use was to be given as gifts to the beautiful women Jin Guangshan dallied with when away from home. He would pass these pretty little baubles off as rare treasures and top them off with a pledge of undying and eternal love. He gave them out as he pleased and forgot all about them after the fact.

Just like his bastard children. Literally. (Also maybe some parallels between the worthlessness of the pearls and what finally gets JGY to decide to kill his father).

Maybe more importantly, the pearl is an object, and a tool, something which has a value inextricable from it's use. Meng Yao is precious, but not for who he is, but for what he can do for people. And he is destined, even in his name, which calls him something precious, to be born to resolve conflicts. Possibly even to be necessarily consumed or destroyed if the wish is to be fulfilled, though I couldn't find enough information on what typically happens to these pearls in stories to be sure.

But it at least seems foreshadowed here. Nothing good is going to happen to the boy born to grant wishes when the object he's named after and heavily associated with is crushed to dust the moment he's introduced into the narrative.

I saw this and I can't stop laughing.