There Are Reasons For The Lan Rules! Imagine How Crazy GuSu Would Be If They All Roamed Around Wantonly

MDZS Vol 2 Annotations, part 1

I finished annotating my copy of MDZS, Volume 2!

First off, I think the translations are perfectly wonderful and I am forever grateful that Seven Seas has given us the ability to share this story with a wider group of friends. With that, I went into Vol 2 trying to pretend that I did not speak Chinese, had little to no knowledge of Chinese culture.

Any time I saw something that didn't flow well to my North American brain or that didn't feel like what I remembered feeling when I read the Chinese version, I made a note. I love this story, and I don't expect my non-Chinese friends to remember the 5+ different things that Lan Xichen is called, or what in the world "shishu" is, so I made a lot of notes. Here they are:

MDZS Vol 2, Annotations Part 1, pages 1 - 86 (I tried to include the page number in each photo).

Kestrel-dad not sure how to dad but he’s trying his best.

I feel like this performance by Zhou Shen isn’t talked about enough. I mean, yah it has over 2M views, but that’s, like, only slightly more than the population of my city. Not enough!

https://youtu.be/pJnRnhIEJgU

I never used to like breathy singing or slow, romantic songs until I heard Zhou Shen, and then I fell in love with His breathy, romantic singing.

And then he gets up and uses his unbelievably angelic voice to get totally goofy In The Same Song.

😍

MDZS Vol 5 Annotations 2

Part 2 of 6, pages 53 - 131

More annotations to help reading-flow! And another useless comment about another beautiful illustration.

JC is being disrespectful again, referring to LWJ as something akin to “that Lan guy.”

He is not talking to LWJ, but is instead complaining at Jin Ling.

More under the cut.

(Really? A GRE-vocab word here, where everything else is common-usage words?)

Yah… JGY isn’t supposed to have a right hand anymore by the time of this illustration…

As if LWJ would ever “call out” to anyone under less-than dire circumstances.

MDZS Masterlist.

All the Books I'm Annotating Masterlist.

I’m rereading 杀破狼 by Priest (Sha Po Lang) (“Stars of Chaos”). It took me forever to read it the first time, but I don’t really want to leave this universe, so….

I love how in the first 5 chapters, Priest perfectly conveys how Chang Geng is terribly in love with Shen Shiliu, completely against his own better judgement. Chang Geng is just entering adolescence and is having his usual nightmares, but now some of them are wet dreams, and he just doesn’t know what to do about all these feelings and Shiliu is not making it easy on him.

Shiliu is blind and deaf (or pretending to be) and lazy (not pretending there) and constantly trying to distract Chang Geng from his studies. He’s always calling Chang Geng over to play and waste time. He’s always throwing his arms around Chang Geng and giving him childish presents. He’s infuriating! And so, so handsome.

But Chang Geng is already building his life around Shen Shiliu. He has to become smart so that he can earn enough money to support Shiliu. He has to become strong so that he can protect poor blind, deaf Shiliu. He will be a good godson and take care of godfather, Yes.

Chang Geng is frustrated and confused out of his mind, and Shiliu keeps grabbing him as if one of them were a child!, but, even at this tender age, he knows who he wants to be with. Even if that person makes him mad in every sense of the word.

MDZS Volume 4 Annotations

Part 5, pages 174 - 208

And so begins my “Please No American Slang!” tirade, plus a few more grammatical / vocabulary changes to make the story flow more clearly.

The Chinese for this is super funny. I could totally see Jin Ling staring at his JiuJiu, staring so hard that JC felt the stare and looked over to see his teenage nephew absolutely googly-eyed as he tried to Jedi-mind-trick / wish his JiuJiu into saying something nice to him.

Jedi mind tricks don’t work on JC, of course. (Wishes don’t work on him, either.)

More below the cut:

https://youtu.be/X424BWOczS4

I now have something to aspire to. Imagine: a whole library of Just MXTX, or even Just MDZS ❤️

I watched that movie of Journey to the West! It was good. It didn’t register at the time that I was watching mpreg. But now I know, and knowing is half the battle.

Ah? What do you mean mpreg is built into the setting of MDZS?

I mean exactly what I said. It's part of the setting. Mpreg is part of MDZS setting.

Or rather, mpreg is part of any and all xianxia or Chinese fantasy settings. Mpreg is not impossible... or even truly rare... in xianxia setting. There are at least three different regular ways for men to get pregnant in this kind of setting, even for low xianxia like MDZS.

Xianxia is Chinese fantasy. Cultivators cultivate until immortality. The upper level of cultivation, an immortal becomes a facet of reality and bends the world to their will. Some can even create an entirely new world wholesale. What's getting pregnant compared to that?

Sure, the setting of MDZS is low xianxia. But we know at the very least a lot of MDZS cultivators are at the Jindan stage. Do you know which stage comes right after the Jindan stage?

元婴 Yuanying. The common English translation for this stage is Nascent Soul. But its real meaning is nascent / origin child/baby/infant.

How does yuanying come about? Well, a cultivator at the end of Jindan stage will go through tribulation. If they pass through tribulation successfully, the jindan (golden core) in their belly will collapse and out comes a baby. This baby then takes over the task of the jindan, circulating the cultivator's chi and feeding off of it. The baby will grow alongside the cultivator's progress, eventually maturing and potentially becoming a separate person should the parent allows it.

(Game interface from a Chinese cultivation game)

This stage is very well documented in actual real-world ancient texts by Wu Liupai, dating back to the 16th century. It's not a modern concept made up for entertainment. It's part of actual real-world Daoist practices and beliefs.

...And xianxia is the brought up to eleventh fantasy version of real-world Daoism. Think about it.

So in truth, every single high-level Jindan stage cultivator in MDZS is just one stage and one successful tribulation away from getting preggo whether they want to or not. (Yes. Every single one of them. Not just Wei Ying or Lan Wangji, but also Jiang Cheng, Lan Qiren, Lan Xichen, Xiu Xingchen, Song Lan, Nie Mingjue... if he didn't die, etc... Not Jin Guangyao, though. He's too weak to get pregnant. Jin Zixuan, maybe)

You don't even have to be a cultivator or in a xianxia setting to get pregnant (whether you are male or female or whatever). Artificially induced pregnancy has been a thing in Chinese folklore since the Summer and Autumn period (BCE). Several different classics mention a fruit called 孕果 yunguo (Lit. Pregnant Fruit). This fruit bestows the ability to get pregnant to anyone who eats it, regardless of gender. Sexual activity with a man is still required, though. Can't make something out of nothing.

And the most famous and widely known in Chinese folklore: water from the River of Mother and Child 子母河. Anyone who drinks this water becomes pregnant, regardless of gender (or even species, actually). You know the most famous person who drank it? The monk Tan Sanzang... and his disciple Zhu Bajie (a male pig), and Sha Wujing (a male fish). It's been made into several TV series and movies. In one of those movie adaptations, Tang Sanzang even carried the pregnancy to term as he wasn't willing to terminate a life and saw this as an opportunity to experience the female side of life.

In the same story, Journey to the West, a rock was pregnant with Son Wukong and gave birth to him.

You have to remember this. Ancient Chinese didn't really think of pregnancy as a biological process requiring sperm and eggs like we do today. They thought of it as a concentration and condensation of qi (breath of the world) until the 'mother body' was saturated with fetal qi and gave birth.

Real-world folklore texts are chockful of such instances where things got pregnant with the breath of the world and gave birth. And that's just regular folklore, not the brought-up-to-eleven version that is xianxia.

Stars of Chaos 杀破狼 Vol 1, Notes 5

By Priest. Translated by 7 Seas.

Pages 249 - 281

Cultural and translation notes.

Yah. Gu Yun is being his usual, trying to be cute and naughty and a good dad all at the same time.

As for that word “catch” vs “trap/cheat”: there is no good connotation to the word 骗. 😝

More under the cut.

The first time I read 光棍 I thought it was some obscene joke. Then I saw that it’s just the casual, colloquial way to refer to single men. Hmmmm.

I love 妖 ♥️。

难看 sometimes means ugly, and other times it just means that the person doesn’t look as happy and healthy as usual. Gu Yun is never “unpleasant” to look at!

大师 Dashi is a title. Just a title. Liao Ran is nobody’s “master.”

Nothing about Chang Geng is nauseating! He’s just… a little clingy of late.

I got confused for a moment if “old” meant “in the old days” vs “old people.”

It means “old people” here.

Shen Yi is respectful to Gu Yun the way a best friend and work-partner is respectful — intimate and deep (and full of nagging advice)(and wary of getting punched in the nuts at any moment); not distanced and absolute in the way that Military Chain of Command usually requires.

Nearly everyone calls Gu Yun by his title, 大帅 dàshuài = commanding general, commander-in-chief, “Big General,” Highest Military Leader in the Land. But where everyone else means it sincerely, the Shen Yi in my head always says it half-sarcastically (unless they are in battle. Then it’s sincere). They’ve been best friends since they could read and write. There is no distance between Gu Yun and Shen Yi.

Stars of Chaos - All The Notes List

All The Seven Seas Books Masterlist

Gorgeous drawings, and an awesome AU story. ❤️❤️❤️

~ House of Gentians || Wangxian AU comic ~

~Synopsis~

An Alternate Universe set in canon MDZS world where Yiling Laozu Wei Wuxian admitted defeat and surrendered to the other sects of the cultivation world. However, hearing Lan Wangji’s confession, which he doesn’t care much for, he proposed to make a deal with Lan Wangji – he will return with him to Gusu just like the other always wanted to, and even marry him, all in order to have Lan Wangji’s word that the Wen remnants will stay out of harm.    

Wei Wuxian, being legally married to Lan Wangji, is now a member of Gusu Lan sect, and thus Lan Wangji can keep him out of harm. However Lan Wangji is bound to another contract as well: he promised to Lan Qiren and to the other sect leaders that the Yiling Laozu will stay confined in one place and never leave for the rest of his days. Thus, Wei Wuxian stays in the house that belonged to Lan Wangji’s mother, who shared almost the same fate as Wei Wuxian in the past.

Shattered, weak, defeated, golden-core-less and hopeless, Wei Wuxian takes what he believes to be his punishment, not believing that Lan Wangji actually wants to shelter him from harm, and not believing that he really loves him, thinking this all is some cruel joke.   Lan Wangji will have to deal with all that, earn Wei Wuxian’s trust and prove him his feelings are true.   

~Background of this project~

This comic started out completely randomly with just a quick sketch of Yiling Laozu (first drawing in the first arc). I imagined him confined in Lan Wangji’s mother’s house, married to him out of contract, and agreeing to do “wify-papapa” stuff with him with ambivalence, thinking it’s his part of the deal. The next few sketches are depiction of various scenes from that idea, but then slowly I started developing it into an organized continuous plot, and now I have ideas for the rest of it!  

People on twitter and beyond seemed to like it and it really motivates me to continue!   ~START READING HOUSE OF GENTIANS~ ARC 1 ARC 2