#good meng yao

[oh-dameron]

AU where Meng Shi was just a bit more cynical and spent her hard-earned on buying Meng Yao study materials for the Imperial Examination instead of dodgy cultivation manuals. Cultivation is for his father to teach him, after all.

Meng Yao fucking blitzes the exam, because of course he does, and the first time he arrives at Koi Tower it's with an imperial mandate to audit the shit out of them for tax purposes.

[disgracefulthings]

Lan Wangji: Why can't I have a morally questionable boyfriend when you do?

Lan Xichen: A-Yao isn't morally questionable!!

Lan Wangji: He's literally dragging his sworn brother's corpse right now

Lan Xichen, noticing Jin Guangyao: A-Yao, did you kill da-ge?

Jin Guangyao, dragging Nie Mingjue's corpse: Of course not er-ge, he's just sleeping

Lan Xichen: See Wangji, he's just sleeping

Lan Wangji: ( ,,⩌'︿'⩌,,)

[thatswhatsushesaid]

time for another meng yao moment i observed while rewatching cql episode 4 for the purposes of snagging some screenshots: it looks like meng yao is giving wei wuxian the stink-eye because he's worried he's going to rat out nie huaisang for bringing his little canary friend into the lecture hall.

so here's the moment when the bird starts chirping (also i find the caption here exquisitely painful for other reasons, but i'll save that for another post)

poor, poor huaisang. buddy u did not think this through. this is the stuff uhoh.jpeg web comics are made of honestly

then right afterwards we have this exquisite shot of so many of the story's key players all together in one moment as teenagers: there's jiang yanli trying her damnedest to pretend none of this is happening (side note: does her actor also have a background in dance? her ballet-style first position here is really good); jiang cheng looking like he's ready to pitch a shit fit; nie huaisang is EXCEPTIONALLY BAD at hiding how guilty he is; wei wuxian is just the 👀 emoji if someone granted it human form; and then there's meng yao, who is just--

"wei-gongzi you hear nothing. wei-gongzi don't u fuckin say a fuckin word. snitches get stitches wei-gongzi."

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Gaslight, Gatekeep, Girl found dead in a hidden room.

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[lgbtlunaverse]

Jgy is a class traitor this, jgy is the only person who cares about the common people that. Jgy is the type of guy who would scab during a strike, bring in a union-buster to earn favours from upper management, slowly work his way up to CEO and then give everyone the extra vacation days and payraises they were asking for anyway. Which is an extremely funny type of guy to be. Like, can we all take a break from arguing to agree how fucking hilarious that is?

[aggressivelybicaptainamerica]

Endlessly gutted by the fact that in a world only *slightly* different than the one he got, Meng Yao could have been one of the most righteous and good characters in all of MDZS instead of one of it's worst villains.

If *one* person had helped his mother, if *one* person had been more vocal about his inherent worth as a person instead of what he can do, if *one person* actually articulated and expressed their trust and love.

And it's *torture*, especially in a reread, to see how close he was to getting that and the consequences when he didn't.

[ronnykins-needshelp]

* Shen Jiu and Meng Yao talking shit about people, one hiding a scowl behind a fan and the other with a smile *

Yue Qingyuan and Lan Xichen: He is innocent on every account your honor.

[dustyy-f]

Their ship dynamic is so similar its crazy

I made a video but change it a bit to have two versions

One without the shadow under cut!

[restingdomface]

Meng Yao Gets To Stay For The Lectures

Lan Qiren: -and so the answer would be-?

Meng Yao: *raises hand*

Lan Qiren: As much as I approve of my students getting the correct conclusion, you have answered most other answers today.

Meng Yao: *pouts and lowers hand while NHS giggles*

Wei Wuxian: *raises hand*

Lan Qiren: *temple throbbing* Anyone else? No? Moving on, I guess.

Wei Wuxian: *also pouts*

[witsserviceablesubstitute]

Nie Huaisang is my favorite Untamed character because he's the heir to the biggest baddest warrior sect of them all but his best weapons are his mind, his theatrics, and his sense of dramatic irony.

[benevolenterrancy]

@little-meowyao a naive and temporary sense of belonging u.u

[lilapplesheadcannons]

Meng Yao(fuming): Absolutely not! I forbid you to step a foot out of the Unclean Realms!

Nie HuaiSang: Buuuuuut San-geeeeee....

Meng Yao: Not a single toe! Not to mention the pressure of getting a new Heir in case you end up dying, what will your Da-Ge say if he returns from the Cloud Recess early and finds you gone?

Nie HuaiSang: He won't find out. I'll be back before that. I promise. Come on, Wei Wuxian wrote there's a fair going on in Yiling. It will be so much fun!

Meng Yao: No! And you will not sneak out in the middle of the night.

Nie HuaiSang, all pretences gone: Or what? Will you tell Da-Ge about what I did?

Meng Yao: No, I'll tell you what I do to your Da-Ge! No amount of cleansing will clear that memory!

[gloriousmonsters]

trying to work up to writing on wrapped in stories in the next few days and found a fragment i'd forgot i'd written of SMS's pov set during the already posted chapters. think I was toying with the idea of writing a SMS-pov fic after the main storyline was done, which means that if I do use it it'll be a whiiiile yet. anyway i don't want to wait that long to wave it around so here it is

Xue Yang, in the other room, is clearly telling a story. A cup clinks. Meng Shi hums through a mouthful of liquid, coughs a little. Su Minshan can't recall the last time he's seen Meng Yao prepare her medicine, or sit with her while she takes it. He's attentive to her in many other ways, but Xue Yang guards the duties he's chosen with jealous zeal, as if it's a privilege to measure out bitter herbs and boiling water. Perhaps it is. Su Minshan is well acquainted with the fulfillment of service. It's just nothing he'd ever imagined Xue Yang taking pleasure in. Xue Yang had always been impatient with wounds, disgusted by weakness, in himself and others. This is utterly unlike him, Su Minshan thinks, and then unbidden an image blooms in his mind; a memory from a vanished time. A young, hollow-eyed man hunched over a Spirit-Trapping Pouch. Daozhang, he croons to it, unaware of Su Minshan's presence, his tender tone a stark contrast to the mocking way he'd spoken of its contents only earlier that day. I'm sorry, look, I can say that, so why can't you forgive me? Everything's still waiting for you—I'm taking care of your body, it's as good as new, and the house is clean for once, even though A-Qing won't do shit to help… Just forget about that shitty day, okay? And Su Minshan, taking back his step forward to bring him out of Xue Yang's line of sight, had thought a few things one after the other. That Xue Yang has gone mad; that in doing so he seems to have finally aged, a man—however young—instead of the cute little brat with no human feeling; that it seems he'd been in love. How, he didn't hazard to guess, or whether Xue Yang would ever use such words. But Su Minshan had understood, finally, how Xue Yang had fallen off the edge of the world for a while. How he'd been content in a ramshackle house with the blinded half-helpless immortal who'd fallen so hard to earth. So, perhaps this life is merely coaxing a cracked and half-frozen bud into full bloom. In Xue Yang's laughing, cruel affection there had existed a faint impulse to care, and in this life where he'd been sheltered and fed and treated as human the impulse had grown to a cornerstone of his character, mostly without Su Minshan's notice. He's vexed at himself for not observing it sooner; Xue Yang seems to have fallen in love with Jiang Yanli half because the girl is ill and politely, nobly suffers about it. If Su Minshan had understood in time, he could have searched the beggars' camps for some pretty youth with a missing leg and a less dangerous pedigree to throw in Xue Yang's path.

[thatswhatsushesaid]

quick, we need to inject some unapologetic positivity into the jgy side of the mdzs fandom. i'll go first:

1) no one in this book is as devoted to their mother as jin guangyao is to meng shi, and i love that about him.

2) can you imagine being newly orphaned and rejected by your only known living relative, penniless and without prospects, only to meet the injured heir to a ravaged sect and choosing to spend what slim resources you have protecting him and keeping him safe? because that's what meng yao did for lan xichen, and i think that's insane (affectionate)

3) what a cultivation prodigy jin guangyao actually was! no formal training, no support from a sect, no guidance from a dedicated teacher or mentor, and he still possesses such a natural gift for the qin that his talent with this instrument is recognized and admired widely across the jianghu. the only cultivators with more raw talent for it than him are members of the gusu lan. iconic.

4) those watchtowers saved hundreds of thousands of commoners' lives, which is, again, something precious few members of the gentry had any interest in investing their time or resources into doing.

5) the reason that post-canon wangxian can fuck nasty on every single exposed surface of the cloud recesses is because jin guangyao spent his slim political capital after the war pressuring jgs into sparing the funds to help rebuild it. say thank you, xiandu.

for once, sect leader yao is right and he should say it.

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

He was just being a silly little guy!

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[lgbtlunaverse]

I think it's fascinating how Meng Yao is one of the most cynical characters in mdzs and yet, at the same time, I'd argue, one of the most idealistic.

There are goals jgy has not just for himself but for the world at large and he is very determined to accomplish them. I guess in that way idealism isn't all that far from ambition, and he certainly has ambition in spades. We often view "idealist" characters as those unwilling to compromise morally, and jgy will compromise a lot. But if you look closer, it becomes clear that that is because that underlying goal is so important he is willing to compromise anything but that.

Which makes him a very very interesting character, especially as a major foil to much more classically idealist characters like Nie Mingjue and Wei Wuxian.