Creator / Nirejseki

nirejseki, also known as robininthelabyrinth, is a fanfic author. They primarily write for Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation: Mo Dao Zu Shi, with a smattering of other fandoms here and there. Their prolific output includes many shorter works, as well as some longer fics, a collection known as "MDZS Short Fics", and "Alternate Headcanons", which feature twists on the established MDZS universe.

Works by Nirejseki with their own pages:

• "A Matter Of Age"
• "Skin A Cat"
• "Tortoiseshell"

Tropes That Can Be Found In More Than One Work/Unsorted

• Adaptational Gender Identity: Cisgender characters are reinterpreted as transgender many times throughout their works. This includes Wei Changze, Jiang Cheng, Jin Zixuan, Jiang Yanli, Su She, Nie Huaisang, the previous sect leader Nie, and Nie Mingjue on the semi-regular. Jin Zixuan shows up as a trans woman at one point as well.
• Ain't Too Proud to Beg: Nie Mingjue in Without a Path begs Lan Qiren to help him manage the effects of an aphrodisiac drug.
• Asshole Victim: The Yao fox spirit in “Three Times (The Charm)” states that the men who had recently been murdered in her area “deserved it”. Though she quickly follows it up with the claim that she had nothing to do with it.
  • In one of the alternate head canons where Huaisang is misaligned and misgendered, one of the women who says those things about him ends up dead in the Xuanwu cave. No one feels particularly bad.
• Babies Ever After: In Baobei, the last vignette shows that Mingjue is pregnant for a second time. It's not made clear in-story who the other father is.
• Big Brother Instinct: Nie Mingjue across several fics is very protective of his younger brother. Huaisang is often equally protective of his da-ge.
• Black Comedy: Complications has shades of this, with in-universe jokes about sexual assault and domestic abuse. Given what Jiang Cheng has been subjected to, though, it’s a justified coping mechanism.
• The Chessmaster: In "Spoils of War", Nie Huaisang is this rather than his more "wing-it-and-hope" methods in canon, having organized an intricate plan of resistance against Wen Ruohan. He's also even more ruthless than in-canon, as he's willing to put Nie Mingjue at risk in order to get his revenge.
• Child by Rape: Baobei, Nie Mingjue’s daughter.
  • Jiang Cheng has a son, A-Lian, like this in Complications.
  • Baxia’s human form is also one of these in “Children of the Forge”.
• Dude Magnet: Nie Mingjue in “5+1 times Lan sect members tried to marry NMJ in front of LXC's salad”. While some of them aren’t serious, at least three are, and Lan Jingyi is old enough to know what he's doing.
  • He's also this in "Carousel", where he puts out a request for dual-cultivation partners and ends up with many, many willing participants. In "For Want of A Nap", he also manages to gain five lovers: the Twin Jades, the Twin Prides, and Meng Yao.
• Everyone Calls Him "Barkeep": Mingjue and Huaisang’s father is usually just called “Lao Nie”, aka “Old Nie”.
• Fainting: After Mingjue faints during saber practice in Baobei, it's revealed to be a pregnancy-caused faint when they visit a healer. Huaisang is freaked out when it actually happens, as he's afraid that it's a qi-deviation-related faint.
• Felony Misdemeanor: In Baobei, after Jin Guangshan gropes Mingjue, Huaisang, Guangyao and Xichen all get mad enough that the former two start plotting Jin Guangshan's murder. Slightly more justified by Huaisang's concern that this may escalate to something more serious.
• First Guy Wins: At the end of "5+1 times Lan sect members tried to marry NMJ in front of LXC's salad", Lan Xichen and Nie Mingjue end up together. Xichen had loved him from the start.
• Fix Fic: Lots and lots of them. The most common fix is that Nie Mingjue survives.
  • In Complications, the Jiang siblings make up and talk about the golden core transfer early.
  • "Darlings" includes the discovery of Jin Guangyao's deceptions early, as well as genuine intervention to help Mingjue's problems with his qi-deviations.
• "Freaky Friday" Flip: Between Jin Zixuan and Jin Guangyao in one of the short fics.
• Gender Flip: Mingjue is a cisgender woman in “Goddess of the Blade”. Amusingly, while Mingjue when trans sometimes ends up pregnant, female!Mingjue explicitly does not and will not.
• Half-Human Hybrid: In "Three Times (The Charm)", Nie Mingjue's mother is said to be a martial goddess, while Nie Huaisang's mother is clearly a fox spirit. These characterizations show up in a few other fics, too.
• Hooked Up Afterwards: A couple of fics have this as the case between Lan Xichen and Nie Huaisang hooking up after the events of Guanyin Temple.
• Like an Old Married Couple: Jiang Cheng and Nie Huaisang in Complications. Amusingly, they were engaged as young chilren, and a few characters wonder if they'll restart the engagement now that they've grown up.
• Mama's Baby, Papa's Maybe: Discussed in the headcanon where JC is successful with women. Before sleeping with conquests, Jiang Cheng asks them to have medical checkups to make sure that if they get pregnant, it’s actually his child.
  • A darker version occurs in Baobei. As Mingjue was assaulted by multiple people, including Wen Ruohan, he actually doesn’t know who Baobei's other father is.
• Marital Rape License: Very darkly used in the “Spoils of War” continuity, where Mingjue marries Wen Ruohan and is heavily implied to have been subjected to this, as when they’re celebrating the two’s wedding feast he is visibly pregnant and very dissociated.
• Mate or Die: Poor Nie Mingjue in Without a Path, who due to misalignment needs to sleep with someone or will qi-deviate after being drugged by Wen Ruohan. While still relatively lucid, he seeks out Lan Qiren, as he’s the only one in the area that he trusts.
• Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: Mingjue’s mother in most fics. While some state that she’s a martial goddess, even in-story people figure she could just be a very tall, beautiful rogue cultivator who is uninterested in motherhood. There’s no actual answer given.
• Mr. Seahorse: Several times, trans male characters end up pregnant in stories.
• Odd Friendship: Nie Huaisang and Lan Wangji are often friends in their works.
• Oh, Crap!: Both Nie brothers at around the same time in Baobei, Huaisang when he realizes that his brother's ambush by the Wens lines up perfectly with Baobei's conception, and Mingjue when he realizes Huaisang has come to this conclusion.
• One Dialogue, Two Conversations: In Complications, Wei Wuxian confronts Nie Mingjue over what he thinks is his brother having a qi deviation after having a new golden core. Nie Mingjue thinks Wei Wuxian is concerned about Jiang Cheng’s having a baby, which was apparently premature and therefore hard on him. It takes Nie Huaisang walking in and announcing that Wei Wuxian’s shizi is a boy for things to get sorted out.
• Peggy Sue: A premise of some of their works.
• The Power of Love: In “Darlings”, when Nie Huaisang starts having a panic attack after Mingjue starts qi-deviating, Mingjue's overwhelming worry for his brother lets him shake the qi-deviation off and run to comfort him.
• Precocious Crush: Lan Wangji and later Lan Sizhui on Mingjue in “5+1 times Lan sect members tried to marry NMJ in front of LXC's salad”.
• Related in the Adaptation: In “What We Deserve”, Lan Jingyi is the child of Su She and Jin Guangyao. Furthermore, Su She is the illegitimate child of Qingheng-Jun, relating everyone further.
  • The first alternate headcanon features Nie Huaisang and Wei Wuxian sharing a father. Sect Leader Nie had slept with Wei Wuxian’s parents and gotten pregnant afterwards.
• Sadistic Choice: Qiren in Without a Path faces a pretty awful one when Mingjue is drugged with an aphrodisiac: either sleep with someone who had been his student, who is significantly younger than he is and who is too drugged to consent, or let said student be assaulted by Wen Ruohan and Jin Guangshan. He chooses the former despite his own moral misgivings.
  • In Spoils of War, Wen Ruohan has offered him the option of serving as his chief general, commit many heinous acts that he doesn't particularly want to do; or marrying him. For most of his life, he'd gone with the former. With Huaisang's encouragement, he finally chooses the latter, as it's part of the plan to take the Wens down.
• Ship Tease: In Baobei, while nothing comes of it, Nie Mingjue apparently tells Jin Guangyao that if he wants there to be a Nie girl named after Meng Shi, he should "man up and sire her himself". Jin Guangyao is apparently quite affected by the offer.
• Stable Time Loop: In "Ancestor", Nie Mingjue names his baby brother Huaisang...because Huaisang's spirit from the future brought it up.
• Stepford Smiler: Horrifyingly, this is Mingjue’s fate in the “Spoils of War” continuity. While he’s smiling at his wedding to Wen Ruohan, Wei Wuxian notes that his gaze is blank and that he seems unaware of everything around him. An author’s note says that he’ll recover, however.
• Trans Tribulations: Not universally present in the fics, but basically any time trans!Mingjue shows up in a fic with Wen Ruohan, you can assume that he’ll be subjected to misgendering at best, straight-up assault at worst. Baobei stands out, as besides being gang-raped at the end of the Sunshot Campaign, he’s also groped by Jin Guangshan “once he figured out where Baobei came from”.
  • Jiang Cheng in “Complications” has a hard time of it: his parents chronically misgendered him as a child until Mingjue stepped in, and then he’s gang-raped during the fall of lotus pier.
• Who Names Their Kid "Dude"?: Mingjue and Huaisang can’t think of a name for Mingjue’s daughter, so they just call her “baobei”. Everyone around them is mildly exasperated, especially after it goes on so long that her given name ends up being “Nie Bao”.
  • Jin Guangyao has a similar exasperated reaction when he thinks that Mingjue named his daughter after Baxia in “Children of the Forge”…not realizing that it’s actually Baxia, having taken on a human form while in the womb.
• Younger Than They Look: Nie Mingjue is probably this in in Without a Path, to Qiren’s horror.
  • An alternate headcanon has Wen Ruohan as younger rather than older than he looks, aged by his use of the Yin Iron.

Tropes Specific to Alternate Headcanons

• Age Lift: In one alternate headcanon, the Nie brothers’ ages are reversed.
• Alternate Universe Fic: To some degree or other, each installation features a slight twist on canon: characters are related differently, their personalities are different, or the world itself is different.
• Adaptational Heroism: Wen Ruohan means to help people by use of the Yin Iron in one of them, not hurt them, and his “murder” of the former Nie sect leader was a cure attempt gone wrong.
• Adaptational Job Change: Lan Qiren in one, from talented teacher to assassin.
• Adaptational Sexuality: In one alternative headcanon where Zixuan is a trans woman, Jiang Yanli is just as attracted to her wife as she would be a husband.
• Adaptational Villainy: Qingheng-jun in one of the alternate headcanons is an axe-crazy overlord of the entire cultivation world whom everyone fears.
• Bad Liar: That Jin Guangyao is one is the concept behind one of the headcanons.
• Beware the Nice Ones: Yanli in one. Beneath her kind exterior, she's an assassin.
• Chick Magnet: Jiang Cheng in one, who has had many lovers.
• Dating Catwoman: Qiren and Wen Ruohan are lovers in one headcanon. They are currently also opposing one another. Mingjue doesn't really care about the former bit as long as Qiren stays on the right side in the Sunshot Campaign.
• Former Teen Rebel: Lan Qiren, who managed to sleep his way through most of the parents' generation while a young man, as well as got drunk at Wen Ruohan's wedding.
• Primal Scene: A young Nie Mingjue once walked in on his parents (well, his father and stepmother) like this. While they were having a threesome with Lan Qiren. Who apparently then had to explain what threesomes were.
• Really Gets Around: Lan Qiren in his youth in one of the headcanons. No, really. His body count includes his generation’s sect leaders Nie, Wen (whom he is still sleeping with), Jin, and Jiang, as well as all of their wives (second in the case of Sect Leader Nie’s wife), and Wei Wuxian’s parents. Basically the only one he’s confirmed not to have slept with was Nie Mingjue’s mother, and that's only because literally no one but Lao Nie has ever seen her.
• Tranquil Fury: In one, Nie Mingjue is very calm when he finds out that Jin Guangyao is trying to kill him with the Song of Turmoil, though he tells Jin Guangyao that he actually is furious.

Tropes Specific to Children of the Forge

• Accomplice by Inaction: Jin Guangyao feels he might be this, as he deliberately allowed Wen Ruohan to assault Nie Mingjue for the distraction’s sake.
• Death by Childbirth: The usual fate of a bearer of a child of the forge. Mingjue averts this.
• Goo-Goo-Godlike: After taking on human form, Baxia is this. At mere hours old, she has a lot of resentful energy coiling around her and summons Yao and the undead with her very presence.
• Grand Theft Me: A bit of an unusual variant, as Baxia’s spirit takes over the body of a then-unborn child. Not that Mingjue, who’s currently carrying the child in question, minds all that much.
• Heel Realization: Jin Guangyao, once confronted with both human!Baxia's existence and an offscreen dressing-down by Nie Huaisang, realizes that he should have tried to keep Nie Mingjue safe from Wen Ruohan.

  Jin Guangyao: I did enough, when I could have done more.

• Jerkass Realization: Downplayed with Lan Xichen, who didn't realize how traumatized Mingjue was by what happened in the Fire Palace and Jin Guangyao's hand in it until Wei Wuxian drops the bombshell that Human!Baxia's other father was surnamed Wen. He then realizes that he's been a bit of a jerk by taking Jin Guangyao's side so often since instead of Nie Mingjue's, and promises privately that he'll apologize properly the next time he sees Mingjue.
• Magic Enhancement: In Children of the Forge, once Baxia leaves saber form and properly takes possession of Mingjue’s unborn child, his cultivation level goes insane, to the point that he literally glows with it. It’s implied to be the reason Baxia does what she does, as an attempt to do something for her beloved wielder.
• Mythology Gag: Huaisang promises he’ll put Mingjue back together himself if he has to early on. He doesn’t there, but given he sews all of Mingjue's limbs back on in-canon...ouch.
• Power Glows: Mingjue’s golden core gets so strong while he’s carrying Baxia that his skin ends up glowing gold. His eyes also glow when it’s revealed he survived the events of the story.
• Screaming Birth: Only heard through the door, but it really freaks Huaisang out when he hears his brother screaming right before Baxia is born. Justified, given she's not an entirely human baby.