The Untamed / Mo Dao Zu Shi (MDZS) fandom starter kit

Useful links, where to watch, some meta commentary, and other things that will hopefully get you started in this fandom.

written by Caroline aka avawtsn in 2021, last reviewed and ported into website format 24.12.08

Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation, the original MDZS novel

• wayback machine archive of complete fan translation by eXiledRebels Scanlations (unofficial)
• 5 volumes of officially licensed translation

The book itself deserves lots of content warnings for dubcon and BL tropes/dynamics that the web series, because of censorship issues, adapted around and avoided. It’s interesting how the censorship may have actually improved the story in parts, but just be aware of that if what you experienced first was the web series before diving into the book, especially if you’re not well versed in yaoi, BL, etc. tropes.

As for other content warnings, silviareadsbooks has a list under “The warnings” on her blog, which is also pretty complete and I would recommend as a guide to the fandom/adaptations as well.

Over half a million words and, as is common with translations in any event, it definitely feels clunky in English at certain parts. Neither of those are my caveat for this though, as it’s clearly a labor of love, the source material is challenging to translate, and the breadth of the project is huge, for sure. No, my problem with this translation is some of the translator’s fandom politics in the translator notes.

Spoilers for why this is; select/highlight the following to see what it is that I object to:

At one point while the translation was still a WIP, she had it out with another fan translator and wanted the other person to quit translating the novel because she deemed the person to be not good enough at Chinese/translation to do it, and their work out there in the world would dilute her own efforts at translating the story. Direct quote from the ExiledRebels translator: “They knew that I was already translating, yet they still continued. The problem here is not because they didn’t know the underlying “rules” of the translation world, it is that they think it is okay for two versions to exist, and I think otherwise”.

This is very much against my own fandom ethos, or translating ethos for that matter, never mind fandom. Unfortunately, this is literally the only whole work available of the novel that I know of and the only one I can link people to at the moment. If you can find this in ebook format without those particular translator notes, I would recommend that, or just read on the ExR website and skip the **LONG RANT** at the end of chapter 19. If your politics are like mine, it will only offend and infuriate you. All the other translator notes, as far as I can remember, are fine.

There are, of course, other fan translation projects and the officially licensed Seven Seas translation, and every translation will have...issues. I'm listing some here more for variety, if you'd like to see what people have done. I find it interesting. Many thanks to iseeyoursmileinmydreams for many of these links.

• boat-full-of-lotus-pods, chapters 79-110 (final version of the novel)
• qinghe-nie, chapters 19-92 (old version of the novel)
• bigbadredpanda, chapters 114-116, 126 - Yunmeng Date
• froliczxc, chapters 95, 100, 111 nsfw and sfw
• himura-chiaki, chapters 79-117

Gay rating

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