The Beginning... (Week 0)

Welcome to our project page! We're Zara and Hannah from The Untamed Project!

We're two A-level students from the UK who are huge fans of the work "Mo Dao Zu Shi" (MDZS) or "The Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation".

Unlike other fans who perhaps write fanfiction or create FMVs/AMVs or rather create just your plain ol' fanart, we've decided to build a whole gingerbread village/world and we wanted to share it with you!

A bit about us (and MDZS)

I won't rewrite what's already on the About Us page but I'll give a tiny bit more detail about MDZS and our connection with it.

"As the grandmaster who founded the Demonic Sect, Wei WuXian roamed the world in his wanton ways, hated by millions for the chaos he created. In the end, he was backstabbed by his dearest shidi and killed by powerful clans that combined to overpower him. He incarnates into the body of a lunatic who was abandoned by his clan and is later, unwillingly, taken away by a famous cultivator among the clans—Lan WangJi, his archenemy. This marks the start of a thrilling yet hilarious journey of attacking monsters, solving mysteries, and raising children. From the mutual flirtation along the way, Wei WuXian slowly realises that Lan WangJi, a seemingly haughty and indifferent poker-face, holds more feelings for Wei WuXian than he is letting on." Summary of MDZS taken from Exiled Rebels Scanlations

MDZS is a fantasy BL novel where the romance isn't at the forefront (until much much later) and is the reason why it's enjoyed by so many international fans from a range of demographics. Its intricate plot line and attention to character detail tell a story of morality, anguish, righteousness and longing. The writer effectively makes us empathise with each character (well most at least *cough* JGS what are you doing? *cough*) and when it was brought to life in the TV drama, its popularity soared and tears were shed (by many fans including us).

The TV drama "The Untamed" is based off MDZS. With censorship laws, the show portrays the romantic relationship instead as a brotherhood. What makes this special is that although there are no explicit affections shown, the actors and director are able to weave a romantic undertone without disrupting or overshadowing the main plot line. It's a great show if you haven't already seen it!

The donghua and manhua both take as much from the novel as they can without breaking laws but both still add fantastic visuals to the story!

Zara and I obsessed over all the characters and wished they could all live a happy life... Therefore, we decided to reincarnate them all as gingerbread!

Getting started

"...who cares about the crowded, broad road? I'll walk the single plank bridge into the night..." - Wei Wuxian, Mo Dao Zu Shi

This idea initially came to us at around August time as we were making a bubble tea cake (which if you're interested, can be found here) and rewatching together the first few episodes of "The Untamed".

Initially, it was more of a fun Christmas project that we looked forward to do after submitting our respective university applications. Then, around the end of August, as Zara was thinking more about her Physics coursework, I thought that since she needed a project anyway, it could be beneficial to both us if we turned this into a big science project full of background research, initial proposals etc. Seemed convenient at the time but since this was too big of a project and that I was helping too she couldn't go through with it. Regardless, we went through with the idea anyway.

Although we have other individual commitments (namely university preparations and our own respective courseworks), we believe that we could actually go through with this project fully (as there is no strict deadline other than we start baking around Christmas time). Hence, we are able to fit super-curricular science research and reading outside of our lessons (albeit for fandom purposes)! This was a win-win for both extending our knowledge and also developing our research skills~

Planning

Of course, we couldn't go into this without a solid plan. As mentioned previously, we are already very busy with applying to universities on top of studying four A-levels therefore we spent time during our break to create a Gantt chart.

Our milestones represent deadlines for when we need to have some things set up (for example, this website and also our other social media pages: Reddit and Instagram) otherwise, we've given ourselves realistic timeframes to finish certain tasks allocated. For organisation, we've set up a OneNote to collate our ideas, designs and notes.

Though, our organisation may change over the course of this (though very unlikely as we're both people who like to keep things neat and in order and OneNote very easily does just that).

The project going forward

We plan to blog and share with you every step of the way including all the tidbits and findings that we stumble across regarding the gingerbread or MDZS research process. Thus, we will be posting every two weeks with updates with what's happened so far, what we've done and any changes to the plan (for example, if there was a tragic baking mishap).

As such, these blog posts will be written by me (Hannah) and Zara alternately so the writing style may change between posts (you could say it spices it up slightly haha because gingerbread... get used to this~).

We hope to be able to post the final paper and pictures of the final artefact at the end!

Current work...

In terms of work to be done, I'm in charge of researching the chemical and physical properties of icing: what makes it sticky? what are the roles of different components/ingredients to make icing good for building and for decorating? how will being left in the open air affect its consistency and will it still hold?

On the other hand, Zara will be researching the structural properties of gingerbread and why it's a good material to build mini houses/buildings out of (because really, why is it a tradition that we make gingerbread houses?).

We hope that you will join us on our journey and learn a little thing or two about science, gingerbread or MDZS!