#I think it's kind of (???) the yunmeng sibs arc

[add1ctedt0you]

Jiang YanLi, “I’m… I’m here to tell you…”

To tell him what?

That it’s fine?

That I don’t hate you?

That everything is fine?

That I don’t blame you for have killed Jin ZiXuan?

It was impossible.

But she couldn’t say anything that was the opposite either.

[...]

Suddenly Jiang Yanli's eyes opened wide. Her hands conjured up an explosive current of strength from nowhere and pushed Wei Wuxian hard!

Wei Wuxian was pushed onto the ground again by force. The next time he looked up, he saw the gleaming blade of a sword pierce through her throat.

The Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation, Chapter 78

"With his left hand, he [Jin Guangyao] whipped out another string and attacked Wei Wuxian! Jiang Cheng's pupils shrank to become just a point. With a flip of his wrist, he turned Zidian's direction to defend against the guqing strings."

The Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation, Chapter 101

"You did all the best things, and yet every time you do the worst ones, it's involuntary! Forced! With some unspeakable grievances! Grievances?! You told me nothing, you played me for a fool!! [...] Can I not hate you?! Why is it that now it's like I am supposed to have wronged you?!"

The Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation, Chapter 102

[llycaons]

ep16 (part 2):

oh cinematically tragic lost handhold....

I've seen so many gifsets of wwx in this scene and that's because as terrible as everything is he has genuinely never looked better. very handsome. sorry about the tragedies

aw man there's jyl OH SHE HAS PEARLS SEWN INTO HER ROBE I wonder if the jiangs trade with sects that live along the ocean. do they have ocean access? I can't remember. maybe they're freshwater pearls

when jyl asks what happened and all wwx can do is stand there crying. and jc is also crying. oof

why did she tell wwx to do this...did she think jc couldn't?

a triangle of misery...

there's a really long meta post about the cinematography for this and I don't remember all of it but it's like. jyl and jc are in the foreground so their grief is being paid attention to, but wwx is in the back and you can't even see his face. his grief is ignored, even though he's the central figure. he's also taking on the task of a servant and neither jyl nor jc stop him

this is def a most extreme case (jc and jyl are SUPER traumatized and I'm not even blaming them for this), and it's not representative of all their interactions with wwx, but it gets me thinking. wwx talks about lwj being his equal bc he's good at things in the way that wwx is, but you can also view it like, with lwj wwx is completely free of the tangle of debts and obligations he has with the jiangs, and they look after each other , purely because they care about each other rather, than that onus always being on wwx. jyl does take care of him, and jc does too sometimes, but wwx must do the same for the other two and cannot truly fight back in a meaningful way if he's being mistreated.

obviously this setup above would never happen with lwj bc lwj doesn't see wwx as a servant or someone bound to him at all. he may see other people as servants, but he's always insistent that wwx is taken care of and he wouldn't accept wwx acting this way to him. which is really good! like I feel that ppl who are ride-or-die for yunmeng sibs and ignore lwj don't appreciate how freeing being with lwj is for wwx and how happy he is to have a relationship that's his own and on his own terms. ah, I miss him

jyl getting ill so easily, I think she has an autoimmune disorder. I've seen her hced as having celiac's and having chronic joint pain, and I think either an autoimmune disease or chronic fatigue makes mot sense. and for some conditions, both of those symptoms are seen so it's not a stretch. fibromyalgia, for one

uh oh. last look before the end.

LIFE-ALTERING MOMENT. this scene is so well done. the dread I feel every single time. it's incredible.

literally who is that

flashforward to the scene in 18(?) where jc makes the same promise to jyl about wwx. I feel ill

something really messed up is how often one of the kids will be like 'we'll go together, right"? this past few episodes. they really are clinging to each other like buoys in a storm

this happened when wwx was running out of BM after waking up from wen qing's needle. he runs and falls over :(

oh jeez I bet they're all dead by the end of this huh

MEAN TO WEN NING. he lied kind of awkwardly but it WAS effective. a nice thing about being known for being weak and socially awkward is that nobody suspects you when you're being suspicious

I wonder what happened to those women too. I assume they're wens, unless they were hired by wens. the clan is fucking huge idk

HE KNEW. and he knew it could have been lethal, I assume, unless he detected the exact poison used. and he somehow knew it was for the bodies of the jiang parents, huh

next episode will also be pretty rough but sunshot/postsunshot are among my favorite arcs so I am HYPED

also we'll finally see lwj again next ep. I think. I miss him. I wonder how many eps jc is missing from. surely several in a row, esp postres. yi city for sure. he's been in every one so far. now I'm curious

[winepresswrath]

Opinions on why, to my observations, people are more likely to give yzy slack on fics, but do not give jfm any slack at all, even if it’s from wwx’s POV? Idk I get that she’s a natural sexy badass, but sometimes I just feel like if one of them gets the slack then the other one also should get the slack, seeing as they both contributed to the [gestures wildly at Yunmeng sibs]

I think there are a few reasons, maybe one of which is really about fairness. The most obvious ones are that Madame Yu is hot, has a cool spiritual weapon, and gets to do stuff like slap down Jiaojiao and take out the Wen soldiers who accompanied her like they’re nothing. None of these things are redeeming features in the moral sense. Her Jiaojiao takedown is literally just classist slut shaming! But it’s fun to watch and I think that makes people invested enough in the character to be interested in her interiority. Sexy characters are always more deserving of redemption arcs, it’s a rule.

Beyond that, I personally am sympathetic to how trapped she is, even if I think the way she takes it out on the children in her care is inexcusable and speaks to her being a pretty terrible person. She’s not the clan leader and she exists in a fairly patriarchal society, so when her husband shows up with a kid he’s unilaterally decided to bring into their family and proceeds to publicly humiliate her while being a real dick to her children in a way that could undermine their future security and inheritance she doesn’t actually have many options. What’s she going to do, leave him? Putting aside the fact that she’d have to give up her home and career, he functionally owns their children. She is in a position of power and authority relative to the kids and she chose to use that power and authority to abuse them. That is the worst possibly choice she could have made, and that is on her, but she doesn’t actually have any good choices to make.  

Meanwhile, Jiang Fengmian, the person who has most of the actual the power in their relationship (patriarchy aside, he’s the sect leader and she married in) exercises that power just enough to create this shitty situation and then does nothing to make it less terrible for anyone. He could have asked his wife if she was up for fostering Wei Wuxian before he brought him home, and found him another family in the sect if she said no. If he couldn’t stomach that, he could have put effort into reassuring her that he’s invested in Jiang Cheng and Yanli and not interested in replacing them with his rumoured love child. He could have acted like an actual parent and intervened when his wife abused their children, instead of letting it be Jiang Cheng’s job to throw himself in between his mother and the rest of the family and Yanli’s job to do all the actual parenting. How is Wei Wuxian the one chasing after Jiang Cheng and try to convince him his dad doesn’t hate him? Why is Jiang Cheng the one trying to deflect his mother’s verbal attacks on his father, while Jiang Fengmian just sits there when she turns her rage on his kid? What would it have cost him to double back after that one particularly brutal fight and offer them both some reassurance that she’s not actually correct in her assessment and he loves them both?

Madame Yu is an abusive dick because she thinks her children are being threatened and she wants to both attack the threat and make sure they’re strong enough to withstand it. Jiang Fengmian can’t be bothered to refrain from obviously playing favourites and take thirty seconds to reassure his kids he does actually love them because feelings are hard, his personal life is kind of a mess and he doesn’t really know where to get started fixing it.

Anyway, if Madame Yu could have brought herself to be neutral about Wei Wuxian and refrained from trying to abuse Jiang Cheng and Yanli into the people she wanted them to be I would have been very supportive of her murdering her husband and setting herself up as the regent to Jiang Cheng’s child-king. Instead she took out her anger on the people least able to fight back against it and fucked all her kids up so badly 2/3 of them died about it.

[least-carpet]

#I never see this kind of thing explore in fics but #I think it's kind of (???) the yunmeng sibs arc #'we love you but you hurt us in irreparable ways. You didn't do it intentionally but you did anyway. What should we do with our love?' #That's imo what jc's speech is about #*The yunmeng sibs bleeding from a stab wound they took for wwx*: what should we do with our love after all you did to us? #Like. They throw themselves between wwx and the danger. And they think/say these things... Because the love is true but the hurt is true to (OP's tags)

Jiang YanLi, “I’m… I’m here to tell you…”

To tell him what?

That it’s fine?

That I don’t hate you?

That everything is fine?

That I don’t blame you for have killed Jin ZiXuan?

It was impossible.

But she couldn’t say anything that was the opposite either.

[...]

Suddenly Jiang Yanli's eyes opened wide. Her hands conjured up an explosive current of strength from nowhere and pushed Wei Wuxian hard!

Wei Wuxian was pushed onto the ground again by force. The next time he looked up, he saw the gleaming blade of a sword pierce through her throat.

The Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation, Chapter 78

"With his left hand, he [Jin Guangyao] whipped out another string and attacked Wei Wuxian! Jiang Cheng's pupils shrank to become just a point. With a flip of his wrist, he turned Zidian's direction to defend against the guqing strings."

The Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation, Chapter 101

"You did all the best things, and yet every time you do the worst ones, it's involuntary! Forced! With some unspeakable grievances! Grievances?! You told me nothing, you played me for a fool!! [...] Can I not hate you?! Why is it that now it's like I am supposed to have wronged you?!"

The Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation, Chapter 102