The Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation
Aug. 29th, 2018 02:54 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alias_sqbrGrandmaster of Demonic Cultivation/The Founder of Diabolism is a Chinese supernatural m/m wuxia novel (with animated and comic adaptions) The translation is about halfway through and I loved it and waiting for the remaining SIXTY CHAPTERS is going to KILL ME.
It's a VERY slow burn romance between Lan Wangji, a serious mindedjedi cultivator/magician, and Wei Wuxian, his frenemy who got kicked out of magic training and accidentally invented being a sith necromancer(*).
Wei Wuxian is completely oblivious to his own attraction to Lan Wangji as well as Lan Wangji's repressed pining and inner monologue of "but why him". The plot is complex and exciting, with lots of fights and plots and supernatural shenanigans, and afaict the adaptations turned the romance into Very Shippy Friendship leading to dudes recommending them with "Ok yes it's originally gay but IT'S REALLY COOL TRUST ME".
It's in the yaoi/slash tradition with a number of the typical character tropes, and the only character who identifies as queer (by ancient Chinese standards) dies tragically before the story starts. There's some sympathetic but tragically dead disabled characters too. The few female characters are mostly treated ok. It manages to barely squeak past my zombie squicks but there's a lot of blood and reanimated corpses.
On the upside the uke is a universally feared necromancer which shakes up the dynamic a little :D Here's his (CORPSE FILLED) introduction.
I am not familiar enough with wuxia to say how it compares to other stuff in that genre but I found it more accessible than others I've tried, possibly because it's a semi-original setting so the politics is simpler than real Chinese history and more is explained.
I'm going to go into a bit more detail because I got entirely the wrong impression from other people's summaries. For a start it's a lot funnier than I was expecting.
The setting is an AU of Ancient China with clans of magic-using "cultivators". Thanks to a sequence of choices that seemed like a good idea at the time, the protagonist Wui Wuxian ended up a universally despised and feared leader of a necromancer cult, and died (at like 20?) during a war against the joint army of all the cultivator clans. This army included Lan Wangji, who had always been a vocal critic of the whole necromancy thing (even though it was super convenient)
13 years later:
Wei Wuxian: Huh, I'm possessing a body, looks like this guy did the ritual to bind an evil spirit to perform violent vengeance. But I'm a nice ghost.
Dead dude's relatives: *are homophobic and ableist bullies to what they think is their gay mentally ill relative*
Wei Wuxian: Welp, time to commit a bunch of murder with necromancy I guess :D
The narrative is moderately sympathetic to the dead mentally ill gay guy who summoned Wei Wuxian, and I don't think it counts as a massive spoiler to say that things do not end well for his relatives, but it's still what it is. Wei Wuxian thinks the bullying was bad but also finds pretending to be mentally ill and gay a very convenient way to keep people too off balance around him to notice that he's (a) not who he says he is (b) doing a bunch of super powerful necromancy.
He gets bored of the mentally ill thing early on, but for TOTALLY LOGICAL REASONS keeps upping the gay around (an older and even more serious minded) Lan Wangji to the point where everyone thinks they're dating. Especially since Lan Wangji, who is passively implacable in the face of Wei Wuxian's flirting, insists on taking what to all appearances is some random flirtatious 20-something gay dude into his protective custody after Wei Wuxian stumbles into a necromancy related mess.
Cue Lan Wangji and Wei Wuxian going on a supernatural mystery solving roadtrip! With flashbacks to their youth and what's been going on for the last 13 years that are adding up to a really interesting and complex story that makes me really want Lan Wangji and Wei Wuxian to kiss. (NO THAT ONE TIME DOESN'T COUNT)
The flashbacks and Wei Wuxian's internal narration have been stepping around showing exactly what Wei Wuxian did to make himself so feared but recent chapters have started showing the path that led him there and it gets quite dark! Also I watched the first episode of the animated show and it was interesting how much creepier Wei Wuxian is when you're not as immersed in his cheery good natured internal monologue.
My understanding is that this sort of thing often ends tragically, and the fact that Wei Wuxian starts out having tragically died due to his own hubris isn't very auspicious, but we'll see.
Oh also if you're like me and terrible with names: there is a Yunmeng Jiang sect whose members tend to have the family name Jiang, and a Lanling Jin sect whose members tend to have the family name Jin. THESE ARE NOT THE SAME. But! The heads of these two sects (Jiang Cheng and Jin Guangyao respectively) are both uncles to the same teenage boy, Jin Ling, since Jiang Cheng's sister married Jin Guangyao's brother.
Signed, someone who spent a long time thinking like 5 different characters with J names were a single set of two brothers. But I have been following along the main thread of the plot without too much trouble regardless, it's a very light and readable story and a good translation.
And yes I do seem to be into pretty men with long hair and flowing robes and swords lately. It probably helps that Lan Wangji is basically Saito from Hakuoki lol.
EDIT: I have now watched all 8 currently translated episodes of the animated version and it's quite good, pretty and visually spectacular and peppered with amusingly odd and slashy in-character ads for Cornetto (there's even an attempt at product placement which I imagine caused the art department some "how do we put a blue icrecream cone in Ancient China" angst) There's less explicit m/m content but they are obviously trying their best to work around the censors, eg instead of being straightforwardly gay the guy who summoned Wei Wuxian is "a lunatic who is attracted to plants, men, animals, everything!". There's also what could be read as a budding m/f romance between Wei Wuxian and his foster sister in the teenage flashbacks except we know from the non-flashback parts that it doesn't go anywhere and I am reading it as just a more fleshed out version of the cute sibling-esque bond from the books.
(*)Sorry, I know the Jedi are a blatant over simplification of Actual Chinese Philosophy but this gets across the dynamic efficiently.
It's a VERY slow burn romance between Lan Wangji, a serious minded
Wei Wuxian is completely oblivious to his own attraction to Lan Wangji as well as Lan Wangji's repressed pining and inner monologue of "but why him". The plot is complex and exciting, with lots of fights and plots and supernatural shenanigans, and afaict the adaptations turned the romance into Very Shippy Friendship leading to dudes recommending them with "Ok yes it's originally gay but IT'S REALLY COOL TRUST ME".
It's in the yaoi/slash tradition with a number of the typical character tropes, and the only character who identifies as queer (by ancient Chinese standards) dies tragically before the story starts. There's some sympathetic but tragically dead disabled characters too. The few female characters are mostly treated ok. It manages to barely squeak past my zombie squicks but there's a lot of blood and reanimated corpses.
On the upside the uke is a universally feared necromancer which shakes up the dynamic a little :D Here's his (CORPSE FILLED) introduction.
I am not familiar enough with wuxia to say how it compares to other stuff in that genre but I found it more accessible than others I've tried, possibly because it's a semi-original setting so the politics is simpler than real Chinese history and more is explained.
I'm going to go into a bit more detail because I got entirely the wrong impression from other people's summaries. For a start it's a lot funnier than I was expecting.
The setting is an AU of Ancient China with clans of magic-using "cultivators". Thanks to a sequence of choices that seemed like a good idea at the time, the protagonist Wui Wuxian ended up a universally despised and feared leader of a necromancer cult, and died (at like 20?) during a war against the joint army of all the cultivator clans. This army included Lan Wangji, who had always been a vocal critic of the whole necromancy thing (even though it was super convenient)
13 years later:
Wei Wuxian: Huh, I'm possessing a body, looks like this guy did the ritual to bind an evil spirit to perform violent vengeance. But I'm a nice ghost.
Dead dude's relatives: *are homophobic and ableist bullies to what they think is their gay mentally ill relative*
Wei Wuxian: Welp, time to commit a bunch of murder with necromancy I guess :D
The narrative is moderately sympathetic to the dead mentally ill gay guy who summoned Wei Wuxian, and I don't think it counts as a massive spoiler to say that things do not end well for his relatives, but it's still what it is. Wei Wuxian thinks the bullying was bad but also finds pretending to be mentally ill and gay a very convenient way to keep people too off balance around him to notice that he's (a) not who he says he is (b) doing a bunch of super powerful necromancy.
He gets bored of the mentally ill thing early on, but for TOTALLY LOGICAL REASONS keeps upping the gay around (an older and even more serious minded) Lan Wangji to the point where everyone thinks they're dating. Especially since Lan Wangji, who is passively implacable in the face of Wei Wuxian's flirting, insists on taking what to all appearances is some random flirtatious 20-something gay dude into his protective custody after Wei Wuxian stumbles into a necromancy related mess.
Cue Lan Wangji and Wei Wuxian going on a supernatural mystery solving roadtrip! With flashbacks to their youth and what's been going on for the last 13 years that are adding up to a really interesting and complex story that makes me really want Lan Wangji and Wei Wuxian to kiss. (NO THAT ONE TIME DOESN'T COUNT)
The flashbacks and Wei Wuxian's internal narration have been stepping around showing exactly what Wei Wuxian did to make himself so feared but recent chapters have started showing the path that led him there and it gets quite dark! Also I watched the first episode of the animated show and it was interesting how much creepier Wei Wuxian is when you're not as immersed in his cheery good natured internal monologue.
My understanding is that this sort of thing often ends tragically, and the fact that Wei Wuxian starts out having tragically died due to his own hubris isn't very auspicious, but we'll see.
Oh also if you're like me and terrible with names: there is a Yunmeng Jiang sect whose members tend to have the family name Jiang, and a Lanling Jin sect whose members tend to have the family name Jin. THESE ARE NOT THE SAME. But! The heads of these two sects (Jiang Cheng and Jin Guangyao respectively) are both uncles to the same teenage boy, Jin Ling, since Jiang Cheng's sister married Jin Guangyao's brother.
Signed, someone who spent a long time thinking like 5 different characters with J names were a single set of two brothers. But I have been following along the main thread of the plot without too much trouble regardless, it's a very light and readable story and a good translation.
And yes I do seem to be into pretty men with long hair and flowing robes and swords lately. It probably helps that Lan Wangji is basically Saito from Hakuoki lol.
EDIT: I have now watched all 8 currently translated episodes of the animated version and it's quite good, pretty and visually spectacular and peppered with amusingly odd and slashy in-character ads for Cornetto (there's even an attempt at product placement which I imagine caused the art department some "how do we put a blue icrecream cone in Ancient China" angst) There's less explicit m/m content but they are obviously trying their best to work around the censors, eg instead of being straightforwardly gay the guy who summoned Wei Wuxian is "a lunatic who is attracted to plants, men, animals, everything!". There's also what could be read as a budding m/f romance between Wei Wuxian and his foster sister in the teenage flashbacks except we know from the non-flashback parts that it doesn't go anywhere and I am reading it as just a more fleshed out version of the cute sibling-esque bond from the books.
(*)Sorry, I know the Jedi are a blatant over simplification of Actual Chinese Philosophy but this gets across the dynamic efficiently.
no subject
Date: 2018-08-29 09:58 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-08-29 10:20 am (UTC)He does, but to his extreme frustration he has to play deliberately badly when pretending to be the two bit magician whose body he was summoned into, and when people are like "It can't be Wei Wuxian did you hear how badly he played" he grits his teeth :D
no subject
Date: 2018-08-30 12:55 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-08-30 12:57 pm (UTC):D :D
no subject
Date: 2020-07-22 11:56 pm (UTC)Haha yeah this is a lot of the appeal for me, the sweet and sunny terrifying necromancer.
The novel sounds fun, thank you for the summary!
no subject
Date: 2020-07-24 08:20 am (UTC)It is fun! Wei Wuxian becomes QUITE terrifying :D