Rough Guide to The Untamed/The Founder of Diabolism/Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation/MDZS

Since it can get confusing. I've only really read the book, and don't know Chinese, so take everything with a grain of salt.

So!

魔道祖师/Mo Dao Zu Shi is a Chinese fantasy m/m webnovel that came out in 2016. The title is translated as either The Founder of Diabolism or Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation, and a lot of people in English-speaking fandom just call it MDZS.

It has a bunch of adaptations into comics/animation/audio, which generally use the same name. The very popular live action version is called The Untamed.

I personally like the book best, and thanks to censorship it's the only explicitly queer version available in English. But they're all good, and starting one of the visual media, at least for a while, often helps people get their heads around all the characters and sects. Here's a character guide.

That's the basics! But there's more...
( Read more... )

The Founder of Diabolism Q: Chibi MDZS

The Founder of Diabolism Q

It's a set of cute, happy shorts specifically designed to help fans of the "Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation" animation/donghua deal with all the angst, lol. Only the first episode is currently available for free.

In Episode 1, Lan Wangji deals with Wei Wuxian and Nie Huisang trying to cheat at an exam at the Cloud Recesses. It's very silly and short, but is cute, and would probably make as much sense to fans of the Untamed as any other version of canon. Like, it's been a while since I watched the donghua but I don't remember teen Wei Wuxian having TELEKINESIS.

This episode isn't super shippy, but the credits and trailers are.