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So I know everyone likes Shen jiu coming back at some point post canon and everyone has a lot of thoughts about how he would react/care about/be furious his life and body were stolen from him.

Allow me to open your eyes to a new possibility!

What if the system/gods offered him a way to fix his cultivation, to finally be rewarded for all his hard work. He would have to start life over again from a child but could remember his experiences and life.

Only catch is that he would be vulnerable around people he doesn’t trust. If the other peak lords knew about this they would want to coddle him and taunt him and hold this over him forever (since they will all ascend together, they really would have forever to hold this over him for)

So he asks the gods if there could be a decoy in place so none of them realize he’s gone. He can (have a healthy childhood and work through some things) grow up off the mountain and then just reappear on mountain and reclaim his position when he’s ready!

Shen Jiu is the reason Shen Yuan had the opportunity to get so close to the protagonist, and the world rewards him for it.

What I’m saying is, what if a freshly adult Shen Jiu shows up at the sect having fixed his cultivation and is at the level he was before the qi deviation that changed his life. His mental health is miles better than it was due to being the darling only son of parents who loved him. He realizes what he feels for yqy isn’t just familial because he doesn’t feel that way towards his parents from this incarnation.

So Shen Jiu shows up and explains super casually that he got a boon from the gods to be able to fix his cultivation and he doesn’t know how the stand in has been doing but he’s back for his job.

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So, I was just checking my news and found some meme reference with Nie HuaiSang and just thought ‘bout making full meme and now I have tHIS YoU’RE WELcoME

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angy grape Johnson :3

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Everyone go read tgcf rn

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The way that QiJiu’s love for each other turns out so selfless in the end…it makes me want to eat my sofa.

Look at Yue Qingyuan at the end of Scum Villain, how he sends Shen Qingqiu off without holding him back, while still offering him a home to return to:

ALT

Then look at Shen Jiu in one of the last scenes of his extra, after he’s driven YQY away with harsh uncaring words:

ALT

They both believe that they are unloved by the other one. They are trapped by misunderstandings and the weight of their own self-loathing — and yet, their love endures.

In spite of their fractured relationship, in two separate timelines, we see that the other’s happiness and safety is their final wish.

Even as they watch them walk away.

Even knowing they can’t follow.

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Don't fuck with the new leader of Qinghe Nie

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Western Danmei Fandom Archetypes

2ha mains - ‘READ THE BOOK READ OUR BOOK NOW sobs about HYX something about hole READ THE BOOK NOW shout out to the absolute unit’ - your book is a terrifying masterpiece and CWN is the kind of character Shakespeare could only dream of crafting and all you do is scream and make terrible jokes, excellent work

mdzs mains - they’re hard to hear over the sound of their own ongoing wars tbh - ‘the author is DEAD unless she says something that proves me right - everyday means everyday!!!! BUT ONLY WITH LUBE! WWX desecrated my mom’s corpse but it wasn’t HIS FAULT, Alexa play wangxian.mp3’ you have all the best and all the worst things about being a massive fandom and if you are not Chinese you need to be throwing flowers at the feet of the Chinese members of this fandom (and every Chinese culture fandom tbh, translations, cultural explainers and endless patience, folks are generous as hell) cus y’all are ANNOYING. Anyway, special shout out for the yi city youts, living in their own darkest timeline cus CQL mains won’t let you have dark and disturbing things

TGCF mains - the simpiest gong and the most smiley shou so quite often y’all miss the heart of darkness in your own story! TGCF is a jamboree of pain, stop selling it as sweet autumnal walks! The delusion that is Beefleaf is a collective trauma response to a deeply harrowing side plot that involved arguably MXTX’s most loveable side character! Jun Wu gives 2ha villains a run for their money in terms of corpse heavy architectural structures! That being said, canonical Self insert porn, and you have a ferret in a cute hat, which is fresh and exciting, not a dog or a fox or cat or a dragon like every fucker else, well done

SVSSS mains - I have to keep it real y’all are a bunch of edgelords, and smug as hell but I’m finna allow it because your (reluctant) gong is the sweetest (sqq if you topped him he might not cry! Just a thought. Ok he might cry less) and you’re right, witty meta with one (1) harrowing scene of like borderline consensual non con (if your focus is sqq) or just plain non con (if your focus is lbh? But the perpetrator is the system? a sword? Their partner trying to save their life?) ent for everyone and people misunderstand your chaotic ass text a lot, because they don’t want to ask difficult questions about ‘what consent even means’ and ‘the intricacies of a meta take on a genre that is from a culture they did not grow up in and found out about on tumblr’ So you know. Frighten people out of your fandom with your in jokes, it’s ok. Also a cumplane is a horrific image when you don’t know what that means, exemplary work.

WOH mains - my beloved Shanrens, y’all and your beloved cast deserved so much better than 813 and you have my whole heart. You are a bit unhinged, cus you only eat ice. Y’all are horny as hell, which makes sense cus your leads were stunning and push hard at the F of RPF, let’s keep it real. All these danmei characters are pretty dark, but yours don’t have a war to hide behind, they’re just like that, (I’m over simplifying, sometimes you have to eat your daddy to survive and that’s ok 😭😭) so you are the most feral of them all. Congratulations. I’m happy for people who’s focus is Yexie, but there are about 6,368 lesbians who found love in hopeless place just waiting for you to write about them, please, I don’t ask for much but write some strap on content I BEG. Speaking of which, shouts to the Nya-Xu girls, you’ve got everyone doing pet play on main and THAT? That is what fandom is about.

Guardian mains - you staggered, limped, dragged yourself across the floor so everyone else could shimmy forwards. You got a good theme tune, well done on your musical taste. Everyone needs to put respect on your name but they don’t, because your show ran out of money half way through 😭 and what little they had was spent almost exclusively on getting two gorgeous leading men and giving them NOTHING to work with (and the snake ladies wardrobe) 😭😭😭

Advance Bravely mains - you’re right, it’s a Dadaist masterpiece, but this shouldn’t be your main, beloved, please watch word of honour, gong jun is in it and everything.

Winter Begonia mains - the thing is, you want people to sit with you! Your show is beautiful in every way, and you advocate for it so softly, with such love. But you look like high art and it’s scaring the sluts away. Make some memes!

Sleuth mains - this fandom seems to divide cleanly into 30 somethings that are tired and might wake up in the middle of the night to strangle you at the slightest provocation and gender fuckers that want to be topped by Jin San and honestly? Mood. Y’all are kinkier than you’d think, much like the source material, but mostly you are just here to eat and sigh wistfully at Fu Meng Paul thirst traps while you write service top porn. If you read that as a RongZhi main and couldn’t see yourself you need to read it again.

Qi Ye mains - we get it, you can read, and yes, ZZS is darker than we ever knew and JBY is more of a mess and we need to be more scared of Wu Xi than we are, and Helian Yi is not prince Jin. Counter point: Prince Jin is a simp and it’s FUNNY, it’s nice having Xiyuan as like, ethereal couple goals and ZZS kills a toddler in SHL and then dumps WKX just for REMINDING HIM, we know what he is, even if he is pretending he does not see. It’s a real good and funny book though, you’re right.

Thousand autumn mains - one guy in your animation looks pretty hot and slutty with his shirt all open and the non jiang purple but you never really sell it, come on! Do some evangelism, we’re never getting HYX so I may as well read something.

BONUS nirvana in fire (it’s not a danmei but if you don’t watch it they take your non problematic consumer card away, and do you know what? That’s fair) - y’all are sophisticated. Smart. Aesthetes. You’re here for POETIC CINEMA, and will accept nothing less. But no one needs your meta, the show is clever enough on its own, stand down. Make some memes instead. We need more porn in this here fandom.

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Love them

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Untamed/Fallout au where Huaisang is an Institute synth. He’s an infiltration unit which was supposed to kill and replace the Mayor of Qinghe Nie Mingjue, but he came out wrong in appearance and it couldn’t be fixed, so halfway through programming his personality the scientists gave up and scrapped him. Or at least, they tried, but he survived either by luck or a sympathetic scientist sneaking him out, and he was left alone in the Wasteland with no idea who he is now or what to do. So he decides to go to the one place he knows, the one place he’s even vaguely connected to; Qinghe and Nie Mingjue.

Nie Mingjue is of course horrified and furious when this random synth shows up and straight up admits he’s a synth who was meant to kill and replace Mingjue, and it’s only Zonghui who talks him down from killing Huaisang (who named himself on the road after seeing some mulberry leaves whispering in the breeze) on the spot and convinces him to let Huaisang stay, even if just to keep an eye on him.

Initially Mingjue is cold and mean to Huaisang, especially as Huaisang goes through an identity crisis and slowly starts to discover that he loves silly things like painting and singing and birdwatching instead of things that could actually be of use in defending the town. But as time passes, he and Huaisang start to grow closer, find common ground, balance out each other’s worst tendencies, and Mingjue finds himself softening towards him. Huaisang comes to admire Mingjue deeply and yearn for his approval, coming to see him as a big brother and wanting to help him and keep him safe and happy, even if (as he believes) Mingjue dislikes him for being a synth. At the same time, Mingjue has to come to terms with the fact that he may have been wrong about all synths being emotionless inhuman monsters, because Huaisang was strange and air-headed and almost frighteningly calculating sometimes, but he certainly wasn’t a monster. In fact, he may be the only thing pulling him back from a moral precipice he hadn’t even known he was approaching. Without realizing it, Huaisang had become important to him, precious even, a spot of light and warmth in a cold harsh wasteland, an anchor where Mingjue could stop and catch his breath.

The first time Huaisang accidentally calls him Da-ge, something clicks into place in Mingjue’s head as he realizes yes, Huaisang has become like a little brother to him, and synth or no, Mingjue can no longer imagine a life without him. Huaisang is panicking, thinking he’s ruined everything, until Mingjue lays a hand on his shoulder and gives him a genuine smile, murmuring a quiet yet heartfelt “Didi”, and only then does Huaisang feel like a person.

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One of the key things about Wei Wuxian's dynamic with Madam Yu is that even after everything he deeply deeply respects her. And in fandom I very often see people change that into something a lot more negative because they think his feelings need to be "corrected" into something more "appropiate" for the woman who abused him

And I do get it. It can be deeply cathartic to finally let yourself think badly of your abuser, especially if you were made to feel like you owed them something. So of course people are going to explore such a thing in fanfiction. But I do think that you lose something very interesting if you decide that he didn't care about her.

Wangxian's first two marriage bows are in front of her spirit tablet and Wei Wuxian openly says she should consider one of them the bow to the father and mother, essentially claiming her and Jiang Fengmian both as his family. He's so shocked and offended by the idea of attacking Jiang Cheng in front of them that it pushed him over the edge of exhaustion and he fainted.

Mind you all of this is after the scene with the tree where he let Lan Wangji catch him, a moment meant to symbolize Wei Wuxian accepting himself as worthy of protection and help. Even after that realization, he still respects her. And Lan Wangji sits with him. Lan Wangji, who certainly has no qualms about hating people who've mistreated Wei Wuxian, nonetheless lights incense and bows to her and Jiang Fengmian's tablets with him, because if nothing else he accepts the respect Wei Wuxian has for her.

Look, all I'm saying is that of the two people who heard Yu Ziyuan's last request before her death only one of them listened to her and it wasn't Jiang cheng!

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What's your reverse unpopular opinion for jiang fengmian

Oh wow, you caught me in your trap, anon!! Okay, I can do this.

While Jiang Fengmian was, like, grown in a laboratory in a big vat marked "guys specifically designed to make least-carpet hate them," I do think he's 1) really interesting, 2) very realistic, and 3) perfectly designed to produce the trio of Jiang Yanli, Jiang Cheng, and Wei Wuxian, who I adore.

I'm always referring back to this interview where MXTX talks about her process, but here's the relevant part:

I think the environment a person grows up in is a very important factor. The parent generation’s joy and sorrow will create an increasingly greater impact on their children... [The parents'] designs are based on the main cast, to contrast or to complete... For example, first, I think of what kind of person Wei Wuxian is. Then, I think of what kind of parents could have such a child. I base his parent’s characters on his character...Looking at it from within the story, it’s that parents will inevitably influence their children. But from a structural writing standpoint, it’s the children that influence the parents.

So Jiang Fengmian exists to produce and explain my faves. Thanks, Jiang Fengmian!

I think MXTX is really observant and specific about familial dynamics, and Jiang Fengmian is extremely recognizable as a specific type of conflict-avoidant dad whose combination of Unprocessed Life Stuff (re: growing up and being unhappy about adulthood—which for him is being a sect leader) and resentment of his wife make him distant with his more challenging child, who to him resembles his wife. I think in some ways that's why people respond strongly to him and to Madame Yu, because they're so recognizable.

Finally, I also think there are a lot of interesting gaps to think about if you want to flesh him out—what actually was going on with Cangse Sanren and Wei Changze? Was his and Madame Yu's marriage always that bad, or did it deteriorate over time, and how? Did he just never want to parent? (There's a brilliant genderswap fic called "you will never need another lover," where he's a woman and Yu Ziyuan is a man, and I find him so much more likeable as a woman who sincerely never wanted to be a parent but couldn't get out of it. Also, male Yu Ziyuan is a total asshole but also a way better husband than male Jiang Fengmian, and so their marriage changes in really interesting ways over the course of the story.) There's a lot of room to develop him in various ways.

Phew, I did it.

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Restrain your grief.

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Jin Ling: "Oh yeah? You're lucky Sizhui is restraining me, or your face would be in the dirt right now."

Lan Jingyi: "Oh yeah? Think I can't beat you while I'm sitting down? I don't even need my hands!"

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doomed by the narrative and by each other but not by ME

[ID: a small illustration of meng yao and nie huaisang in front of a large entrance leading to a courtyard. meng yao is carrying scrolls in his arms. he is looking back bashfully at nie huaisang, who has come up behind him and wrapped his arms around him. both are smiling, and nie huaisang's eyes are closed. the sky is orange and the lighting is warm and cozily dimmed. leaves flutter around and the sky sports a few golden clouds. /end ID]

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#SangChengWeek24 DAY 5, sleep, allnighters.

Sssshhh… They were really busy last night and couldn’t sleep, but don’t ask them why because they won’t answer.

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