#but regardless attached as i am to lwj

[whetstonefires]

Yeah like! Absolutely Wei Wuxian needed to do that, and the fact that he needed to create that boundary for himself after everything would be enough cause.

But also literally Jiang Cheng cannot ever recover if Wei Wuxian tries to lead a reconciliation between them.

Like. Seriously Jiang Cheng is very fucked up. He's legitimately traumatized, like nobody should say Jiang Cheng did not go through the traumas, and he spent the entire time Wei Wuxian was dead keeping his own wounds open and festering and basically going through a 'how to make sure every traumatic experience you have ever had causes you individual PTSD symptoms' checklist.

He had no support system other than his own desperate need to not have been in the wrong and his knowledge that he sure wasn't the hero of his own story.

(And a baby. Who he didn't even have any legal claim to, really, because this is a strong patriarchy.)

And a certain amount of what's wrong with Jiang Cheng can be legitimately categorized as Wei Wuxian's fault, for repeatedly cutting into Jiang Cheng's personal agency in the name of caring for him!

Which is exactly why Wei Wuxian trying to carry a rapprochement, in addition to the obvious ways it's very unfair to him, would actually demonstrate his not having learned anything from the genuine mistakes he made that contributed to the implosion of their relationship, and accepting it would harm Jiang Cheng.

I think they do have to work out something eventually because. Their society literally is not large enough for them to avoid one another forever. Which means it can't be a clean break, really, unless Wei Wuxian actually does peace on the cultivation world for good or something.

Which means they can't actually leave it hanging forever without it starting to rot again, especially on Jiang Cheng's end.

But if they're going to get anywhere meaningful Jiang Cheng definitely has to initiate it. And he has to have managed to grow and unstick and do some recovery and processing first.

The thing I always get frustrated about with these takes, besides yeah fans forcing it in ways that would seriously derail the healing process, is when I see this treated as a binary scenario.

Where the legitimacy of Wei Wuxian saying he is done putting anything into this relationship depends on the relationship always having been worthless.

On Jiang Cheng never having deserved any of the devotion he ultimately squandered by thinking he'd already lost it, on the relationship having been fundamentally poisoned and confining and unfulfilling and doomed and not good enough, and something that should have been repudiated sooner, and so forth.

And like. I don't think that's an interesting or useful reading of the tragic backstory here? Wwx, jc, and jyl all ultimately made things worse with the ways they loved so hard they were willing to die of it, and the ways loving each other didn't help them communicate usefully in the least, but I think the whole narrative becomes vastly more boring if you conclude that any love that winds up hurting terribly or being betrayed wasn't real, wasn't worth anything, or didn't matter.

(You could actually argue that's the thesis Jiang Cheng spent thirteen extremely psychologically damaging years trying to sell himself on.)

Like. Wangxian are cute as hell but I hope none of us are pretending they aren't kinda fucked up. The thesis 'relationships need to not be fucked up to be important' does not belong here. We are taking the warts. Narratively they are a feature.

And yet the idea that the only alternative is that if the love mattered, once, they have to put it back? And it should be easy if they can just forgive each other?

As though they haven't torn enormous bleeding scars in one another's psyches? As though Wei Wuxian's recovery process hasn't required letting go of his dependency on Jiang Cheng and Jiang Cheng's isn't going to require centering a lot less of his identity on Wei Wuxian?

Also bad! Terrible!

Wei Wuxian was well within his right to cut off Jiang Cheng at the end of the novel and I will forever think it was the healthiest and best option for both of them

[wetheformidables]

🤡 WIP FOLDER 🤡

Post the names of all the files in your WIP folder regardless of how non-descriptive or ridiculous. Let people send you an ask with the title that most intrigues them and then post a little snippet of it or tell them something about it! And then tag as many people as you have wips. I’m also counting art wips or whatever else you have, anything goes basically!!

Thank you for thinking of me @creepyspice, @cutestkilla, @mostlymaudlin, @nightimedreamersworld, and @palimpsessed

I always use the tag “99 problems and my wips are all of them”, Y’ALL I AM NOT LYING WHEN I SAY 99, WHICH IS COINCIDENTALLY THE NUMBER OF YEARS IT WILL TAKE ME TO WRITE THEM. Ever since I started taking improv classes, my power to ✨ yes and ✨ my way into story concepts has only grown, and when I tell you it is a blessing and a curse.

So here is a glimpse into my Google drive and my active WIPs plus a graveyard to pay my respects - in order of most to least likely to be resurrected, because I am trying to be good and finish what I start but I have been bad! But you can ask me about any of them, I love talking about my (our) torment 😌♥️

FIC(TION)

SNOWBAZ

half the time

never before has a boy wanted more

still my heart beats so slow

Beaver Nugget Gang

Vivaldi Four Seasons type beat

AND SURPRISE

Penny and Shep parent trap au

🪦

Satan Clause | he's plotting in this gay club i followed him to | old wounds | baz keeps writing smutty rpf what could go wrong | the real wraiths were the friends we made along the way | Wayward Son but make it about the adults they're also falling apart | my uhhhh boyfriend | Philippa Stainton finds her voice | i have an English degree and i am going to make you read about my favorite books by making Simon and Baz talk about them | You Could Do Better | body shots what could go wrong | mind reading what could go wrong | profanation of our joys

There are more but GOD that's enough

WANGXIAN

my spirit moans with a sacred pain

Five Times Hanguang-jun Wept While He Came (And One Time He Didn't)

🪦

I already have graveyard because I can’t let myself think of too many WIPs it is making me animal and none of these have real titles you can't name something or else you get attached

it's a meditation of grief and there is lots of blood | alexa play heatwaves | the most elegantly filthy dirty talk fic | drunk letter writing, drunk letter sending | magical swan realism | fisherman wwx and water deity lwj | what happens when two bisexuals have an arranged marriage | my chengqing arranged marriage agenda | tender pining arranged marriage | angry horny unarranged marriage | oh no we have to consummate our arranged marriage | fake greencard marriage au | college but they're still cultivators au | modern immortals au | thirty days of distraction in the library pavilion

SO MUCH OF THESE ARE MARRIAGE FICS ASKLDAJDKSLJD

Alright, there is no way I can tag as many people as I have WIPs so I will just say hello no pressure even though I always love to know what you're working on 🙂 hi cutiepies @unseelieseelie, @stillmadaboutpetra, @captain-aralias @krisrix, @artsyunderstudy, @tea-brigade, @nick-eyre, @starwarned, @seducing-a-vampire, @bloodiedpixie, @trenchcoat-moth, and anyone else who wants to play along!

[withbroombefore]

Character ask : Wen Ning

How I feel about this character

Good socially anxious turnip-selling archer boy. Best boy. Does nothing wrong, ever, in his life or undeath. Possibly the most mistreated character by canon because of the harm he is forced to do; it’s legitimately outside his control in a way that isn’t true for anyone else, even Wei Wuxian, and he still feels the guilt of it and is blamed by others. Loses the one person who really put him first and never gets that back. Still manages to remain a good person regardless. Uses his power to help others even when that power doesn’t seem to be much (in fact, uses that apparent uselessness to his advantage). More intelligent than anyone gives him credit for. Cares for his family, chosen and otherwise, so so so much and demonstrates it in endless small meaningful ways (bringing a-Yuan the soup! oh my heart).

All the people I ship romantically with this character

Honestly, not really anyone from canon. I am rather charmed by certain interpretations of WWX/WN, either before WWX/LWJ or as a sometime addition to their relationship, but I’m not really attached to either, and it has to be done incredibly carefully to avoid an unhealthy hero-worship dynamic. I can read Wen Ning as happily aroace or as just needing to find his place in the world before having the right kind of energy for a relationship, which doesn’t happen before canon ends.

My non-romantic OTP for this character

Wei Wuxian, after he’s learned to treat Wen Ning as a whole person and Wen Ning has taken him off the pedestal a bit. They’ve been there through the worst parts of each other’s lives/undeaths, so they understand each other in ways that pretty much nobody else does. I have a lot of feelings about how they interact when they return to the Burial Mounds in second life. They also each give the other something to hold onto: if nothing else, they saved this one; they did something good that hasn’t gone permanently wrong or been destroyed.

My unpopular opinion about this character

I don’t know what is popular or unpopular for Wen Ning, so here’s one I haven’t seen discussed much: He’s the reason the story doesn’t end at Lotus Pier. I truly don’t think that Wei Wuxian, alone and in the state he’s in physically and mentally, could have gotten Jiang Cheng out; I do think that he would have died trying rather than give up. If Wen Ning hadn’t gone to Lotus Pier to try to help, run into Wei Wuxian at the right time, and taken over the rescue (which he did entirely on his own, because he is in fact incredibly competent), Wei Wuxian and Jiang Cheng would both have died then and not come back.

One thing I wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon.

I hate that Jiang Cheng never really acknowledges that Wen Ning saved his life (I think he does suggest that the Wen siblings helped the Jiangs once, but that’s not the same thing). It’s possible that he doesn’t know, not having been conscious for the rescue, but Wen Ning specifically put himself in enormous danger and is never even thanked for it, let alone supported when he and his people need help.