The MCs summed up:
Wei WuXian: 🤡🤣😏
Lan WangJi: 🗿
MDZS is the kind of story that will take you on a rollercoaster of emotions. One moment you'll be laughing out loud at the MC's shameless actions, the next you'll find yourself crying because he, the person who acts like a clown most of the time, is also the same one who carries so much pain and regret in his heart.
This is a long novel, but trust me you'll breeze through it. There's a reason why this novel is considered by many as a BL classic.
The main character, Wei WuXian, is the great patriarch, the man, the myth, the legend, and above all, the world's ✨most shameless troll✨. He gets a second chance in life and decides to appear as brainless and shameless as possible so people won't figure out his real identity. It works.
As the story progresses, we get to know his character on a deeper level. He's loyal to a fault, tries his best to uphold justice, sacrifices so much of himself for the people he loves, and yet the world still labels him as a demon. He's not an entirely good person, true, but he does regret his mistakes and ultimately paid for them.
Lan WangJi, on the other hand, is the complete opposite of him. As a wise man once said, "If LWJ had no manners, then manners wouldn't exist in this world." He's perfect from head to toe, excels in everything but es out after one glass of alcohol, owns a rabbit farm, and is so completely and utterly in love with WWX that I teared up a little bit whenever he would show his love through actions, instead of words.
They may be polar opposites, but they found home in each other. It took a while for them to finally get there, but the wait was worth it. Good things take time, after all.
That scene in ch. 101 where WWX gets scared because of a dog, hugs LWJ and says, "Lan Zhan!"
LWJ: "I'm here!"
WWX: "Hug me!"
LWJ: "I am hugging you!"
WWX: "Hug me tight!"
LWJ: "I am hugging you tight!"
Istg these two are so perfect for each other I- 😔🤚
The novel switches between past and present quite a lot, which is good to explain each character's back stories, why certain things happened, etc. My only complaint is that sometimes when the plot starts to thicken, the author's like bam! here's an info dump about this and that. All the excitement I'd felt just went down the drain after that.
Aside from that, I have no other major issue with this novel. All the characters are wonderfully fleshed out and the different plotlines are tied together at the end. I had a blast reading this and I'd like to thank the Exiled Rebel Translations team from the bottom of my heart for translating MDZS into English.
If you're reading other people's reviews right now and contemplating whether to read this story or not: Do it. You won't regret it. Be prepared to lose sleep over it.
If you still can't get enough of the characters even after you've finished the novel, do yourself a favor and go read the fanfictions at AO3 (Archive Of Our Own). Click this link. Thank me later.
The MDZS fandom is positively thriving and there are more than 30k fics. What a time to be alive.
**
Quick rant about Xiao XingChen:
That man was a national treasure yet he ended up being used by a fucking psychopath. His death absolutely broke my heart. He didn't deserve that crap. I thought the author would write more about him in the epilogue, but nope. I just hope that one day his soul finally returns and he gets a happy ending with his best buddy because he deserves all the good things the world has to offer.
