Tumgik
#mu nihuang
circumference-pie · 4 months
Text
Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media
NiF + "One Art" [x]
300 notes · View notes
green-ajah · 5 months
Text
Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media
《 琅琊榜 》Nirvana in Fire (2015)     ⤷ Liu Tao as Mu NiHuang
280 notes · View notes
jiaoliqiao · 8 months
Text
Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media
↳ Our wife Mu Nihuang for @orchisailsa
515 notes · View notes
palehorsemen · 4 months
Text
Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media
160 notes · View notes
bitterflames · 4 months
Text
Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media
xiao-shu, no
65 notes · View notes
hubristicassholefight · 7 months
Text
Swordswoman Showdown Round 1 Part 2
Alanna of Trebond (The Song of the Lioness) vs Mu Nihuang (Nirvana in Fire/Langya Bang)
Tumblr media Tumblr media
(Better here in a "preferred character" sense, not "who would win in a fight")
Propaganda below cut
Alanna of Trebond
Literal lady knight, has never lost a duel as King's Champion
Disguised herself as a boy to train as a knight and learn the sword. Practices with a giant sword to increase inductance. Finds (is found by?) a special magic sword. One of the best swords people in her country.
She was the first lady knight in Tortall in centuries and paved the way for other lady knights like Kel. She's also a shortstack hero who regularly kicks butt. Won several sword fighting tournaments against her male peers while disguised as a man.
Can't stand the idea of getting sent to a convent, so she switches places with her twin brother and disguises her gender to go off and become Tortall's first lady knight. Engages in much sword-wielding badassery, not just through inherent talent but through working twice as hard as the boys who skate by on their size and comparitive strength. In later Tamora Pierce books she shows up again as a mother, but even having kids doesn't stop her from going off and doing more heroic sword-swinging. H*ck yeah.
She’s her realm’s first Lady Knight in centuries and a genuine hero. She disguised herself as a man to earn her shield. She was the King’s Champion for decades; One of the first major women heros in YA fantasy, from the 1980! According to the author, if Alanna had the words for it, she would be gender fluid
disguised herself as a boy entirely to learn swords and become a knight, becomes the first lady knight in her country in centuries; Alanna is so iconic that decades of queer fans have seen themselves in her and any author signing is accompanied by a mob of sobbing millennials over how much finally meeting and thanking the author for writing Alanna meant to them
Mu Nihuang
She's introduced to the narrative riding to the gates of the capital at the head of a caravan. She sees two characters we've just spent a couple of scenes getting to know, grins with delight, draws her sword, jumps off her horse and engages them in a two-versus-one duel, handily defeating them after a short exchange of blows and promptly complimenting them that they've obviously been practicing, because she would have won much faster last time. She's the most eligible bachelorette at the Imperial Court due to her control of a personal army of several hundred loyal soldiers. She's a respected general, whose favoured tactic is to personally lead a cavalry unit to outflank the enemy on a daring raid to kill their general, at which point the superior discipline of her troops will win the day; I'd love to say more about the quiet tragedy of her deep love for Lin Shu and the way she circles around Mei Changsu for most of the story, full of love and respect and pain from past loss, but if I get into it I'll have to do the fandom's traditional ritual: lie down on the floor, try not to cry, and cry a lot.
She arrives on screen to duel two competent swordsmen to a standstill (while her former (current? unclear) fiancé pines piningly from a distance). She's highly ranked on the in-universe BuzzFeed listicle of Swordspeople Who Will Kick Your Ass. When she's manouvered into being the prize in a martial arts contest for her hand, she stipulates that the winner has to defeat her to truly win, which is generally recognised as Not Going To Happen; She's also extremely proficient with a polearm on horseback, being the Gandalf-at-Helm's-Deep to everyone else's Everyone-Else-at-Helm's-Deep in a climactice battle. Also, she is just. So very ready to overthrow the emperor. (He deserves it.)
73 notes · View notes
orchisailsa · 10 months
Text
Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media
I'm sorry. (I'm not.) .
145 notes · View notes
Text
Nirvana in Fire Historical Parallels: The Warrior Princess
Tumblr media
Hua Mulan/花木兰 is unquestionably the most famous woman warrior of ancient China. But how much of her legend actually happened is of debate, while there were many historical women generals who were more similar to Mu Nihuang in NiF. Here are a few of the most notable, in chronological order:
Fu Hao/妇好 (Hao is her family name; before the Qin Dynasty, family names for women were at the end, reversed from the current name order; Fu means married woman now, but could have referred to priestess then), the earliest woman military leader on record, lived during the Shang Dynasty and died in 1200 BCE. Because her time period predated paper, what we know about her came from oracle bone script and the hundreds of weapons in her tomb, which is a burial rite afforded only to generals. As consort to King Wu Ding/武丁, she led an army of 13,000 to many successful military campaigns against the Shang’s enemies. She was not only a general and high priestess, two of the most important roles in that time era, but also owned her own land, which was extremely unusual for feudal women. After her death, the king made many sacrifices at her tomb in hopes of receiving her spiritual guidance to defeat invading enemies.
Mother Lü/吕母 (name unknown, so she is referred to as a mother of the Lü family) lived during the Western Han Dynasty in Langya Commandery and was the first woman rebel leader in Chinese history. After her son was executed for not punishing peasants who could not pay their taxes, she aided peasants under hard times by giving away her considerable family wealth while plotting revenge on the government. During this time, a consort kin to the Emperor had seized the throne and started his own Xin Dynasty/新朝 (literally New Dynasty), enacting many radical socialist reforms such as land redistribution and abolishing the slave trade. A series of natural disasters and poor implementation of the new policies led to great unrest and suffering among the peasant class. Commoners united around Mother Lü, and three years later, in 17 CE, she amassed thousands of loyal followers and declared herself the leader of the rebellion. They took the city, and she beheaded the county magistrate who had killed her son, sacrificing his head on her son’s tomb. As news of her successful rebellion spread, thousands more joined her even as the government attempted to quash her forces. Though she died from illness a year later, many in her army joined the Chimei Army/赤眉军 (literally red brows), a key force in the eventual downfall of the Xin Dynasty.
The most similar to Nihuang is probably Lady Xian/冼夫人, who lived in the 500s CE and served the Liang (the Liang of NiF is very loosely based on this dynasty), Chen, and Sui Dynasties. She was the daughter of a chieftain of a clan of the Li/俚 people and demonstrated great leadership and political acumen from a young age (women in her family could inherit command). She favored diplomatic solutions over fighting as much as possible and was always loyal to the reign, putting down local rebellions and eliminating corruption. Nihuang’s title of commandery princess/郡主 was also one of her titles, and as thanks for her bringing many minority peoples under unified rule, the Sui emperor gave much of modern-day Hainan to her command, much like Nihuang. She lived to around 90 and was given a posthumous name by the emperor as a sign of great respect. Hundreds of temples in the south were built in her honor, where she was deified and remains worshipped today as the Saintly Mother of Lingnan/岭南圣母.
Tumblr media
One of many statues of Lady Xian.
Princess Pingyang/平阳公主 (personal name unknown) was the third daughter of the founding emperor of the Tang Dynasty. Her father was an aristocrat who decided to seize the opportunity during the chaos of the failing Sui Dynasty to raise an army in 617 CE, and she decided to help her father ascend to power. With remarkable leadership and recruitment power, she quickly recruited several Jianghu volunteer armies under her wing. More and more people joined as her reputation spread, such that she had seventy thousand under her command by the end in what was known as the Woman’s Army/娘子军. Her forces registered several victories before rendezvousing with her father’s forces to take Chang’an, which would become the capital of the new dynasty. She was given the title of Princess Pingyang and higher honors than her sisters as a sign of her father’s gratitude for her help in starting his new dynasty.
After the coup of Chang’an, there was nothing in recorded history about her until her funeral. A rite officer had objected to burying her with military honors instead of a princess’s rites, but her father and emperor said she always fought at the vanguard of her army, so there was nothing wrong with full military honors. She is the only woman in recorded Chinese feudal history to be interred by soldiers.
Qin Liangyu/秦良玉 (1574-1648) was born to a civil bureaucrat in the late Ming Dynasty who believed in educating women, and she became skilled at riding, archery, and poetry. She looked up to Lady Xian and Princess Pingyang from a young age, and told her father that she would equal their accomplishments if she had military command (倘使女儿得掌兵柄,应不输平阳公主和冼夫人). She was married to a local county commissioner who often led armies to quash invasions from the neighboring Manchu Jin Dynasty, and he gave her command of part of his army. When he died in prison being falsely accused of wrongdoing, she assumed his role, as their son was still young. She defeated numerous Jin invasions across the country, and the Emperor gave her the title of Marquis in recognition of her actions in defending the homeland. She’s famous for being the only female general recorded alongside men in the official histories of her dynasty.
Tumblr media
A portrait of Qin Liangyu.
So, what made these women leaders of armies while most women throughout Chinese history couldn’t even dream of such a thing? Fu Hao lived a very long time ago, well before the later Confucian system where wives are supposed to obey their husbands and serve at home. For the others, there are some common factors: growing up in a well-to-do family that educated daughters, demonstrated interest and skill in fighting and leadership, being around military power (true of a vast majority of male generals as well, of course), and some kind of unusual circumstance that gave them power, whether a husband or father allowing them to do so or an environment of unrest that gave them an opportunity.
The warrior princess trope exists for a reason: it’s the highborn daughters and wives of generals who are most likely to get the opportunity to command an army. And their stories are more well-known than, say, women like Chen Shuozhen/陈硕真, who came from destitute upbringings and called herself the emperor while leading a peasant rebellion that eventually failed. All history is biased, and contemporary Chinese history seems to favor those who quashed rebellions and promoted national unity.
Given these historical examples, it’s not so outlandish to imagine that Nihuang was educated by her father in the military arts from a young age, showed great fighting and leadership ability, and was then able to take command when he died during a crisis and while her brother Mu Qing was still too young. She is an exception in a field of men, as these historical women were. And like these women, she was very much still subjected to the expectations and boundaries of feudal women.
In some sense, show Nihuang is an ideal female Confucian role model. She is the perfect daughter and older sister who assumed the family mantle when there are no capable men, doing her duty under a corrupt regime for twelve years, with the implication that she will give up at least some of her responsibilities to Mu Qing when he’s ready. She is the perfect widow who never strayed from her arranged marriage pact. And she is the perfect potential wife who shed all of her commanding aura whenever she interacted with post-identity reveal Mei Changsu—she may question him but she will always listen to him, in the end. Her first scene is of a warrior princess soundly defeating men, and her last big scene is her telling Feiliu she wants to obey her Lin Shu-gege.
Tumblr media
This is a far cry from book Nihuang, who moved on in those twelve years and found someone else to love. To be clear, there is nothing intrinsically wrong with characters displaying period-typical attitudes, and other female characters in canon, like Consort Jing, are compelling without being hidebound by tradition. Within the microcosm of NiF the show, the change to Nihuang’s character may only be due to the creators wanting to increase her screen time in a male-heavy show and add a tragic romance element that they felt the book lacked. But media doesn’t exist in a vacuum, and after some prominent examples of one-sided adaptation changes in recent years—The Rise of Phoenixes taking a book starring a strong female character and dramatically increasing the male character’s screen time for the actor to get top billing, Serenade of Peaceful Joy adapting a book centered around a princess’s futile rebellion against feudal expectations for women into a show about her loving daddy emperor trying to do the best for his daughter by keeping her in line, even Reset giving some of the main female character’s heroic moments in the book to the main male character in the show, to name a few—was Nihuang’s change from book to show a harbinger of the male-dominated Chinese television industry increasingly reshaping strong female characters into what they think women should be like?
This issue of media depictions affects historical women generals, as well. For various reasons, they haven’t gotten their big breaks in modern mainstream media, and the most famous Chinese female warriors remain Mulan and a few other very fictionalized characters who have had popular shows and movies made about their lives. A Qin Liangyu drama was supposed to be filmed a few years ago but never aired, and as typical of this era of Chinese media censorship, no one seems to know what happened to it.
With the lack of extant details for most of these military leaders, one can depict them as either true believers of Confucian values or as women who questioned and struggled against societal conventions. It isn’t hard to guess what’s more likely to be made today, with a slapped-on love story and plenty of screen time for the men to boot. If we can’t give a warrior princess a sword without always making her a dutiful daughter, wife, and patriot, perhaps we shouldn’t be telling her story to begin with.
342 notes · View notes
thecrenellations · 1 year
Text
Tumblr media
“sorry for clutching your hand while that lady I’ve definitely never met before was calling me the name of your dead betrothed”
“don’t worry about it! Let’s go for a walk.”
(Nirvana in Fire, ep. 2)
141 notes · View notes
sugarbabywenkexing · 2 years
Text
Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media
434 notes · View notes
junemermaid · 3 months
Text
[fic] flowers in dreamland weather
read chapter 1 on ao3.
Nirvana in Fire | Mei Changsu x Mu Nihuang x Xiao Jingyan | Chapter 1/4 | 6,300 words | Explicit
Summary:
Mei Changsu is going to war, and Mu Nihuang finds she has something to say about it. To him, and to Xiao Jingyan. A love story, over fourteen years and a night. (Set during the series finale.)
Excerpt:
Long ago, the girl she'd been imagined riding into battle with her betrothed, the radiant young marshal of the house of Lin. Nothing between the four seas could have thwarted the two—no, the three of them. Lin Shu would've become Xiao Jingyan's most trusted general, after all. Nihuang had dreamed of glorious triumphs and deeds of daring: a far cry from the blood-stained toil of actual war that hammered the girl into a woman. The woman—the princess, the general, the grieving widow she'd never truly been—still held that same man in her heart. The intervening years had spared neither of them. But he told her, after the spring hunt and the siege at Mount Jiu'an: Ten years. I have ten years. And she said: That's enough. More than enough.
*flings some pining and heartbreak and ot3 at new fandom and ducks away*
13 notes · View notes
decrescendo · 2 years
Photo
Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media
琅琊榜 X 轉眼 有沒有人在某個地方 Is there anybody out there 等我重回當初的模樣? waiting for me to return to how I looked before? 雙頰曾光滑 夜色曾沁涼 When my cheeks were smooth and the nights were cool? 世界曾瘋狂 愛情曾綻放 When the world was going crazy and love was blooming?
170 notes · View notes
cosmoglaut · 1 year
Text
Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media
I know I'm in this fandom for merely a year and half, but I'd've thought I would come across this before. Ok, firstly, awww! Secondly, you were there when Hu Ge was full on playing up the CP and joking about Wang Kai coming to his room at midnight to check Mei Changsu's mole!!
43 notes · View notes
24cardpickup · 1 year
Text
Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media
To you this is a tragic political drama to me it’s the greatest workplace comedy ever made
92 notes · View notes
bronanlynch · 3 months
Text
my fic for the 2023 Nirvana in Fire exchange Xia Dong/Mu Nihuang rated t | 1.9k words friends with benefits, established information, pre-canon
in which Xia Dong and Mu Nihuang discuss the marriage tournament
OR, “I don’t suppose you have a favorite candidate?” she asked, because she felt she ought to.
“Not yet,” said Nihuang, instead of saying what they both knew: that the only man Nihuang wanted to marry was twelve years dead and gone. “But I suppose I’ll see if any of them can impress me.”
6 notes · View notes
chinesedramaoutfit · 1 year
Text
Mu Nihuang
Tumblr media
27 notes · View notes