#also Dafan mountain doesn’t seem to be in Gusu given the fact that JC tacked up 400 spirit nets

[admirableadmiranda]

Can you explain LWJ kidnapping WWX? It left a bitter taste.

Anon, do you think Wei Wuxian, Modaozushi, scourge of the cultivation world, most intelligent man in the cultivation world, would be actually kidnapped with no options to get away if he wanted to?

He can call Wen Ning with a whistle, he has a clunky flute that can do whatever he needs it to do even if it sounds terrible, he’s not even tied to his donkey. Yes, Lan Wangji says drag him in and that he will take him back to the Cloud Recesses, but he does nothing to actually force Wei Wuxian along until he’s throwing tantrums outside the Cloud Recesses to be an ass.

While Wei Wuxian is certainly crying a lot about going into Gusu, his motivation isn’t to escape. If that were the case, he could have gotten away at any time before the events in the Yashi. Lan Wangji leaves him unattended several times and what does Wei Wuxian do? Wander around and confirm that the Cloud Recesses hasn’t changed at all from his childhood memories when he used to sneak out to Caiyi all the time, confirming that he knows all the ways out, annoy the juniors and go digging around the Cold Springs. Later after Lan Wangji has gone to sleep, instead of leaving then, he instead crawls into bed with Lan Wangji to annoy him. The next morning Lan Wangji leaves him alone again to deal with the arm, another time when Wei Wuxian could just leave if he actually wanted to, and instead Wei Wuxian intervenes and helps.

It’s another way that the beginning of the book is incredibly misleading before you really get to know these characters. Wei Wuxian isn’t being kidnapped because he’s going along willingly because his actual goal isn’t to get away from Lan Wangji, it’s to find out just how he’s changed in the last thirteen years and how far he can push him until he reacts.

It is not a story of a kidnapper and his victim in those first few chapters, it is a story of a man directly lying to the reader about his motivations because what he actually wants has to be sourced out through his actions, not the nonsense he cheerfully admits he spouts regularly.

Wei Wuxian and Shen Qingqiu both have a habit of having their fans take them rather too literally at their words rather than paying attention to what their actions show is the lie in those words. Wei Wuxian does not feel threatened or upset in those early days; what he is doing is the same thing we see him doing twenty years earlier the first time he and Lan Wangji met, pulling on his pigtails until Lan Wangji reacts.