so this is probably kinda late, but i figured that loading up the archives with a new fandom, and one which isn't something a lot of people here have watched or read in some version or another, a guide of some kind to the basic premise/principles/characters/conflicts/etc. might be helpful??

(when i say in some version or another, like, there's books, there's comics, there's a cartoon, and there's a live-action tv show. it's... a lot) (note: i've only seen the live-action tv show, so this and all my fic is really about/based on that) (note ii: i have read a fair amount of fic, though, and other fic authors have read/watched other canons so stuff does get mixed up. what can you do??) 

anyway, i guess -

welcome to the jianghu!! 

[[ lil sidenote before we begin:: in fic/posts/etc about the untamed, i tend to use the pinyin romanisation of hanzi characters and to spell words and names in pinyin in the way most accepted in the fandom. so, this means that 蓝曦臣 is transliterated as Lan Xichen, without the pinyin accents/tone indicators. there is variation within the fandom and i don't honestly know which way is correct, but this is the way they're transliterated on the fandom wiki as well as in most fics and blog posts so i'm sticking to it  ]]

the untamed introduction

so the untamed is xianxia, which is a specific genre of chinese high fantasy stories all influenced by chinese mythology, martial arts, traditional medicine, taosim and buddhism, among other things. it's set on a fictional fantasy ancient chinese world, which is referred to in the story-world as the jianghu - though for all it's fantasy, the world it's set in is mapped onto china and actual, real geography. a lot of the places named in the untamed - yunmeng, gusu, qishan, lanling, etc. - are real places: yunmeng city is a very real place. (this makes research that bit easier lololol because if i want to find out what lan wangji would actually eat as a vegetarian born in suzhou (the modern name for gusu) i can literally google that ) 

time period: the untamed roughly maps to the northern and southern dynasties, which were from 420-589 AD. which is... just a while ago  

jianghu is an actual chinese word and concept beyond xianxia - but for the purposes of this blog, imma just talk about it in terms of referring to the world of the untamed. 

the jianghu is made up of cultivation sects - that is, sects or clans who are made up of people who cultivate. there are bigger, stronger, more powerful sects, and smaller sects. there are canonically five ""great"" sects: the lan sect, the wen sect, the jiang sect, the jin sect, and the nie sect. they all have different histories, different styles and focuses, and different ways of living. each sect is associated with a particular town/city/area of land, which they protect from spirits and monsters, using cultivation - for example, the lan sect are based near gusu (modern day suzhou) in jiangnan province. each sect has a sect leader (zongzhu), who runs the sect and is generally the person to represent the sect in discussions with the other sects. the strongest zongzhu is then xiandu, or the chief cultivator. simples?? 

the storyline of the untamed is split into two halves for ~spoiler reasons  imma not go into spoilers or plot details here, but the story in brief revolves around wei wuxian and lan wangji, along with jiang cheng and jiang yanli and others, trying to solve mysteries and defeat villains and protect the jianghu from turmoil and war and some pretty powerful artefacts from falling into bad hands. there are also a bunch of smaller, side-plot-type storylines which feed into the main storyline. 

cultivation itself can be translated a lot of ways, but it's an innate thing inside a person which can be developed and trained - literally, cultivated. ordinary people can't cultivate; cultivation sects take on disciples, including those from outside the main, sect-leading family, to teach them principles and their style of fighting and so on. cultivators all have a ""core"" (dantian - or 丹田) which is the place in the body where a person's qi (or, in the context of the untamed, spiritual energy) pools before flowing around the body in meridians (like veins but for qi). ""cores"" can be stronger or weaker - cultivators with weaker cores are weaker cultivators, though they doesn't mean they don't have/develop other skills or qualities. (the best cultivators are not just like,, good at fighting things with swords or playing magical musical instruments, they're also good artists, poets, calligraphers, diplomats, etc.) 

all of the cultivation sects meet four times a year at quarterly cultivation conferences - which are more like a smaller version of a UN meeting tbh  their children know each other and sometimes are invited to study together or be taught in the same place by a particular sect. relationships between sects vary based on the sect leaders' individual friendships and personalities, marriages and betrothals, etc. it's just politics as normal just with swords and hanfu  

i guess the tl;dr is that it's ancient chinese high fantasy set in not-quite-actual-ancient-china with lots of swordfighting and martial arts and pretty people in pretty clothes scheming and drinking tea and wine and slaying monsters and ghosts and, yk, sometimes other cultivators  

and if you made it this far, congratulations, have some bunnies!!