#Im Ye-jin

[avocado62524]

to a-ling, from xiao shushu

[ghoulspaw]

Pick your head up king, your crown is falling 👑

[ryuubff]

shuake and january weather and clinginess

[roxiusagi]

Sangcheng week Day 5 - Collaboration

sorry all that i can offer for today is a silly doodle because i ran out of time lol the collaboration is JL JC and NHS commitment to the bit.

(i dont know if its readable so im putting transcription under cut)

wwx: you know a-ling, we should find your jiujiu a nice madame…maybe that’ll finally help his temper (lol) (shame that he is blacklisted everywhere haha)

jl: what are you talking about. jiujiu and Nie-zongzhu have been together for years

wwx: (a-ling are you /srs or /j)

jl: [acting casual but cackling inside] [gave sangcheng his blessing with the condition that he’ll get to break it to wwx]

----------

wwx: -and you didnt tell me?!??

jc: says the one who secretly eloped?

wwx: but! but! Nie Huaisang?? did you not listen to what i told you?

jc: yeah i did. So we talked it out like adults. we disagreed on things but its ok now.

----------

the “talking out”: 

jc: -ARE YOU INSANE???!-

nhs: lower your voice wanyin.

[starzgaze]

CONCEPT: folk legend!sjw/biologist!reader

tw: missing people, stalking, implications of cult, really really itty bittt twinge of yandere if you squint really hard. also mostly word vomit i just wanted this concept out of my head oh god

Imagine you're a biologist who decided to go back to your little town that's located nearby an eerie mountain thats surrounded with equally eerie forests. You heard from your parents that there was a sudden shift in the wildlife and the animals seems to decreasing in population which concerns the wildlife protection department of your town.

So this piques your interest and you decided to visit your hometown. You were warmly greeted by the locals and you caught up with your old childhood friends by drinking in the local bar where you swung your first drink. After all that you shifted back your focus on the main reason why you went back, the wildlife is acting strange.

You decided to daytime observation first, quietly watching the remaining animals and see what could possibly be behind the sudden disappearances of the animals. This didn't work much to your dismay so that means you had to conduct night time observations. Your parents was worried but you reminded that you're a licensed researcher and you know what you're doing. Reluctantly, your parents let you go out into the forest.

But of course before you leave, one of the town's elders grabbed you the side and gave you a warning. A warning that you should probably back out and continue with your daytime observations and not continue this one... You of course don't listen, you're an adult! Why will you sway to the words of an old lady or a stupid legend that was made for children to keep them in check? You're an adult, a person of science and logic. Folk tales are neat but isn't exactly your thing.

Though.. honestly you wished you heeded the elder's warning. When you entered the forest you saw things that wasn't there in the morning. Strange tied up sticks that was shaped like dolls hanged in the trees or twine wrapped around the trunks that had pieces of paper stuck on to it. You were pretty sure this is not the doing of an animal but what sick person would do this? It all looked so... ritualistic. You crouched down on to the leafy floor and picked up a 'doll' that fell off from the tree, it had a poorly sewed clothes on it and black coarse animal hair glued on to its head, resembling a pretty shaggy haircut. It looked like an old friend. You looked at it, noting the little details of the doll. This suddenly reminds you of a time when you were younger that there was a series of missing people cases in this town.

One of those victims was your friend, Jinwoo, and he was the last person to go missing during that time. You remember you were adamant on searching the forest yourself to find him but your parents stopped you and locked you in your room just in case you tried to sneaked out into the forest. You honestly missed him but you shook your head, dwelling on the past will hinder your research. Stepping away from the ritualistic scene, you continued hiking into the forest trying to find a suitable place to observe the wildlife in the night.

After a while of wandering around, you found a good place to set up your gear. You unzipped your bags and prepared your things when suddenly you felt a shift in the air, a shiver went down your spine when you moved your head to see if there was anything there. You were told the locals rarely walk outside anymore especially past 7pm, a result of the cases back then. So no one should be out at this hour in the forest, you should be alone.

You decided to ignore it first and focus on finishing your set up. When you finished gearing up and prepping your things you got another shot of eerieness that made your body tingle. Just what the hell is happening? You felt you were being watched from every angle but when you look around you don't see anything. Were you being preyed upon an animal?

You readied your pepper spray that was stored in your pocket, animals typically stays away from you if you're deemed as the biggee threat. So, as long you know how to appear bigger and scarier you should be fine. You've been doing this for years now but something tells you there's something not right, it feels... like it's not an animal preying on you but you can't exactly explain it. Your mind goes back to the moment where you stumbled upon a weird place in the forest that had a bunch of ritualistic things and you touched a weird doll that looked an old friend, it might be related to that.

Before you could continue deducing in your head you hear a loud crunch in the dark. This is starting to creep you out. You started to try to calm yourself and rationalize your thoughts. You're a person of science you shouldn't be this scared just think of something that makes sense it might be just a wolf or a bear.. hopefully. As you tried to steady your mind the light from your gear suddenly shuts off and you were enshrouded in darkness.

This is where the sounds of footsteps and howling started to intensify, Your heart was racing as you didn't move from your spot. You were shaking as you held your pathetic little pepper spray and tried to block out the noises. How the hell are you supposed to rationalize this?! You were panicking hard as you finally dropped to your feet and covered your ears, still holding the spray in your other hand.

Then all the noise stopped but you can feel SOMETHING behind you. It doesn't feel human or something you could comprehend and your mind is running back to the little warning the old sweet elder tried warninfg you of. Is this the end? They said it was monstrous from the rare sightings. I think you remember the elder saying it started appearing shortly after the end of the series of disappearances. Your mind is fogging up from panick.

You felt it's hand on your shoulder, it's cold breath right beside your neck. It spoke and... you recognize the voice. You finally turned your head and you were greeted with a pair of deep purple eyes staring right back at you, it felt like you were starung back to the abyss. You called out it's name

"Jinwoo?"

[khattikeri]

drives me nuts when people treat jin guangyao or wei wuxian like they're socialist revolutionaries like no! they're not!! in fact their respective roles in society and complacency regarding its hierarchies is why ANY of the story even happens to begin with!!!

jin guangyao doesn't hold bitterness just because he was born lower class. he is bitter because others deride him and his prostitute mother in spite of both their intelligence, skills, and efforts to climb the ladder.

why do you think we were shown scenes of other prostitutes in the brothel deriding meng shi for being literate, for "trying" so hard? why do you think we were shown scenes of anxin taunting meng yao and throwing shit at him because he was trying to learn cultivation at his mother's behest?

why do you think jin guangyao arranged for the arson of that brothel, burned to the ground with everyone except sisi inside? that's not the behavior of someone who believes in true equality and the inherent worth of sex workers as human beings!

that's the behavior of someone who thinks he's better than them. the behavior of a man who already came up on top through political games and war crimes, backstabbing and spying for the sake of the "greater good".

i won't rehash his argument to nie mingjue that he didn't have a choice-- he had some choice, but no matter what he does his class will come up and people will always assume the worst and try to hurt him for it, which forces his hand to do whatever will protect him best (hence 'no choice').

jin guangyao did everything he could to secure his own safety and a place among those already higher up. and by that point, he'd won it.

the fact that the temple rebuilt on the brothel site is to guanyin, the goddess of mercy, is even more ironic! the fact that jin guangyao has the goddess's statue carved to look like his own mother is proof that he viewed both her and himself as higher than them. more worthy than them.

of course he cared about the general welfare of others (read: the watchtowers). but consider also that there is no watchtower near yi city, which ended up being one of xue yang's playgrounds. jin guangyao can and will turn a blind eye to certain sufferings if it is convenient to him.

sure, jin guangyao made undeniable contributions to cultivation society and accessibility, but he is not at any point trying to topple existing class structures. his adherence to them is in fact integral to his own downfall in the end.

it brings with it the inevitability of society conveniently ignoring his triumphs and genuine moments of humanity to deride him once more as an evil, disgusting son of a whore once his crimes come to light.

now for wei wuxian. he's the righteous protagonist of the story and he doesn't give a fuck what society thinks, yes, but he wasn't out there trying to cause an uprising so that all the poor servant classes and lower could become cultivators. he wasn't trying to redistribute wealth or insinuate that those who are lower deserve to be viewed as equal to the gentry.

the most critical and non-explicitly stated fact of mo dao zu shi is that wei wuxian has always been resigned to his position in the social hierarchy.

his unreliable narration, especially regarding his own past and thoughts, is so damn important. he doesn't EVER tell the reader directly that people treated him any which way at their leisure because of his parents' differing social classes.

no. instead we are shown how much prestige he is afforded as cangse-sanren's son-- reputation as a talented and charming young cultivator, made head disciple of Yunmeng Jiang-- and how little respect he is given in the same breath, as the son of servant wei changze.

the way he is treated by others is as fickle as the wind. if he obeys and does as told, there is no reward. of course he did that, that was the expectation to start with! if he does anything even slightly inconvenient, there is a punishment. of course he has no manners, what else would you expect from an ungrateful son of a servant?

wei wuxian's righteousness is not a matter of adhering to principles he was explicitly taught, the way nie mingjue values honor or the way jiang cheng always tries to prove himself. wei wuxian does the right thing regardless of what the consequences are to him because his good deeds are always downplayed and his bad deeds are always singled out, no matter who or how many people were doing it with him.

he has faced this double standard since childhood. there are points in the novel where it's clear that this sticks out to wei wuxian, but does he ever fight back against that view of himself? does he EVER, at any point in the story, explain his actions and choices to jianghu society and try to debate or appeal to their sense of reason?

no. because he knows, at his very core, that any explicit deviation from their interests whatsoever will be punished.

slaughtering thousands of people is fine when they want him to do it, and when the alternative is unjust torture, re-education camps, and encroachment upon other sects' lands.

slaughtering thousands of people who are trying to paint him as evil for not going along with their genocidal plans, however, is punished.

wei wuxian knows his acceptance among the higher classes is superficial and unsteady. from the age of 10, when jiang fengmian took him in, he knew subconsciously that he could be kicked out at any time.

he knows that cultivation society doesn't care about war crimes and concentration camps and mistreatment of the remaining wen survivors of the sunshot campaign. but the right thing to do now that they aren't at wartime is to help them, plus they'd punish him either way for it, so he will.

in this regard wei wuxian is more self-aware of his position than jin guangyao. he does care about common people and he does try his best to help them as an individual. even if that ends up with him disabled, arrested, targeted in sieges, or dead.

but is he revolutionary? in the full equality, fight the establishment, rewrite laws, change social structures and people's perceptions of class sense?

no. no. he isn't.

now my knowledge of chinese society and history is fairly limited to my hindu diaspora upbringing and our shared cultural similarities ... but speaking to what i absolutely know us true, adherence to one's social class is expected.

this is rigid. efforts and merits might bring you some level of mobility, but in the end, the circumstances of your birth will always be scrutinized first, and your behavior compared to the stereotypes of where and how you originate.

mdzs is not about revolution, and none of its characters are able to truly change its society. there is no grand "maybe cutsleeves aren't inherently bad" or "i'm sorry for persecuting you and believing hearsay, you were truly a good person all along!" at the finale.

people ignore history and repeat it again with the next batch of ugly gossip and rumors.

wei wuxian, lan wangji, and luo qingyang find peace only by distancing themselves from cultivation society and its opinions.

jin guangyao and wei wuxian both cannot ever escape from others' perception of their origins and actions. regardless of their personal beliefs, they are not revolutionaries.

[magurosnacks]

ウッホウッホッホウッホッホ

[storge]

I wanted to kill you. I really wanted to. So why… why did I not? I wonder. Rather than wanting to kill you, why was I more worried that you would never wake up? That's because… I do not consider life that valuable yet. No. That was not why. I wanted to ask you… what I should do now? I cannot even kill you anymore. How am I supposed to live now? You are the only one who tells me to survive. You told me to live dreaming of the day I would kill you. My enemy, who risked his life to protect me, might know how to go about it.

Moon in the Day (2023) 1.07

[bluuskkye77]

Thoughts?

[stranded-in-the-gobi-desert]

due to A set of circumstances, we’ve created a very normal and wonderful photo of xiyao :)

[blackkatmagic]

Once again screaming wailing gnashing my teeth over the lost and ignored themes of distrust, worthlessness, ambition, and loyalty in Son Jin Woo.

Like!! This is a man who explicitly says he learned to never trust other people because they always turn on him and betray him eventually, and raises soldiers from the dead with the explicit feeling that they're desperately reaching out to him, specifically, to save them from death. He surrounds himself with an army of fanatically loyal undead, and it's mentioned a few times that he's just as fanatically loyal to them in return, that he mourns every single one, and it's purely his own willpower that lets him reanimate them, that how much he wants them to be his is what gives him the power to raise them.

He's quiet and ruthless and set up to be a remorseless killer who doesn't give a damn about anyone but those he decides to love, who follows and surveils his loved ones at all times so he knows they're safe, who uses people without pause and doesn't care what people think about him. He loves fighting and gets a thrill from every time he gains power, says explicitly that as he levels up he feels more and more divorced from humanity, and only relies on his shadow army! He's a villain-coded figure in the role of hero and it's!! so cool!!!

And yet the narrative takes all these interesting bits and just. never addresses them. There's no consequence of Jin Woo feeling any of this. The whole series devolves into bland power fantasy/Gary Stu ridiculousness where the whole world can be divided into Good Guys Who Love the Protagonist and Bad Guys Who Hate/Are Jealous of the Protagonist. What a waste. We could have had it aaaaaall.

[gio-cosmo]

Discovering the Strega content from Tartarus Theater Wild is one of the best things to ever happen to me I’m not even joking.

[jinstronaut]

get to know me : bts edition

2 / 7 solo tracks → epiphany

[siromany]

You really devoted your life's goal on someone you've never even spoken to.

-please don't tag as ship-

I've been spending like a month or so working on a wholeass AU of a season 2 rewrite and it's been a wild ride.

[xviistrings]

is it such a sin to fall in love

[demonicfarmer69]

woah jzx how come u get to have TWO baddies?