#i guess you COULD also assume that from the way wwx is acting but you can also just see it as this universe's wwx

[connectjump]

more of this au for ya'll!!! 🎉

lwj is very much in the "oh the misery of loving wwx so much that i will do anything to keep him happy, and safe and for his path to not become altered in anyway" even if it means that he hides his feelings for wwx all over again because this wwx isn't the same wwx as his.

lwj just telling himself to be happy because wwx smiles, laughs, and wants to be around him just like before is enough.

that being able to reach out and touch the ends of wwx's red ribbon or a brief touch of his hand is enough.

it's all good enough just to see wwx happy.

so when lwj puts space between him and wwx because lwj is blurring the wwx he knew from the past and the wwx he knows now are wwx, but different wwx's. he avoids wwx, and ignores wwx's happy calls of his name. ignoring how wwx seems to pout, how he attempts to get into trouble, and how he seems happy when lwj looks at him.

those butterflies in his stomach, his sweating palms, and lwj's want to just keep wwx close is at an all-time high while wwx is in a mischievous mood. only seeming content when lwj is focused solely on him, almost like a cat who is happy and content when their person is giving them attention.

i love you, i love you, i love you. is the silent mantra in lwj's mind whenever wwx is just around him and alive.

so when wwx slowly starts to move into lwj's space it's wonderful, confusing, nerve-wracking and warm.

so, so warm.

the cold distance lwj is working to keep in place to restrain himself and his love for wwx slowly starts to thaw.

from wwx drawing him pictures, to gifting him the same set of rabbits, to letters that lwj finds outside with wwx's scribbled handwriting and little paper men who come to life with a whisper of wwx's name and go silent once lwj is settled in bed.

the paperman tucked against the folds of lwj's robe over his heart.

so when wwx sneaks back into the CR's smelling faintly of liquor, sitting atop of the roof where they had first met, cheeks flushed, a goofy smile on his lips, and a question dancing on his tongue.

"lan zhan... do you believe in soulmates?" wwx's question makes lwj freeze, his composure almost slips, but he breaths in and out to a degree he views as normal.

"mn soulmates. a possibility to have someone who's just for you, a half that makes you whole, a reason to keep moving forward no matter what lies ahead." lwj bites his tongue to stop himself from saying what his heart wants to tell wwx more than anything.

"if lan zhan thinks it's a possibility then... wouldn't it be nice if we're each others half?"

wwx's response echoes his heart's own want, his desire to have and to hold wwx for as long as the other man would allow him. to hold him, to keep wwx himself, but not bind him or let him feel indebted to him.

a half that he wants so desperately, but he can't allow it. he cannot allow himself to want wwx or to have wwx. not until he is sure that wwx's future can be changed.

"do not say things you do not mean."

"how do you know that i do not mean it lan zhan?"

"you are intoxicated."

"i feel pleasant, i am not drunk. i only feel a bit more courage to say what i want."

what he wants.

lwj's heart beats wildly in his chest as he dips forward fingers touching wwx's chin (the smile that forms on wwx's lips is addicting) lips so close that theirbl breath dances against each other's lips. wwx looks to be at peace, eyes closed and waiting.

"ask once more when you are not intoxicated." lwj releases wwx's chin fighting back the rush of fondness at how wwx looks stunned, before he starts laughing.

"er-gege so polite and kind to this intoxicated one. i swear to ask for what i want when liquor hasn't touched my tongue." wwx swears while holding up three fingers.

and like that the distance lwj tried to keep between them dissolved, slowly but surely lwj and wwx both allowing the other I'm just a bit more.

thinking about wangxian where lwj is unable to handle his injury after the BM and wakes up in the past. he makes it his goal to become wwx's friend, to make sure that he has a happy and full life.

to keep him safe, to keep him whole and himself until the very end. so lwj learns more about wwx, allows wwx into his space & just tries to hold onto wwx's warmth whenever he can. lwj shows a bit more of himself, a small smile or a joke here or there, anything that will make wwx smile, or laugh.

fast forward to just a moment where lwj gets to hold this worlds wwx close. to feel his warmth, to hear his breathing, see that boyish smile up close on those full lips (he could kiss him, lwj WANTS to kiss him so badly, but this time wwx will know it's him) and lwj freezes.

he's trying to save wwx, but this wwx isn't his wwx.

the wwx in his world wasn't even his.

he has no right to see this worlds wwx as his.

lwj tries to shove down the memory of the peony he has pressed in his last life, how he held wwx's hand trying to heal him, eyes burning while he admits his feelings.

self-restraint. lwj removes himself from wwx's space, missing wwx's warmth like the hopelessly in love fool he is and walks away.

lwj doesn't notice the look of absolute confusion, doubt and sadness that takes hold over wwx. nor does he hear the smack wwx settles across his cheek and the warbled tone of "he doesn't like you... nobody would like me."

[robininthelabyrinth]

Prompt: Wei Wuxian has achieved time travel! He's gonna fix so many broken things. Unfortunately, WWX has miscalculated a teensy tiny variable and instead of arriving in his original 15yo body in Lotus Pier, he's crash landed in MXY's tiny 7~8yo body at Mo Manor. But no problem, he can fix this if he can just find his real body. (Meanwhile, Yunmeng Jiang's head disciple is acting the wrong kind of childish, aka, Mo Xuanyu is having the weirdest day of his young life.)

Switcheroo - ao3

Mo Xuanyu thought that this Wei Wuxian person whose body he’d stolen must have been a really interesting person, mostly because he’d been here for three days so far and nobody’d noticed the switch yet.

Possibly it had to do with the fact that Mo Xuanyu still wasn’t exactly sure how he’d stolen the body – he’d just gone to sleep in the shed, same as always, and then he’d woken up in the softest bed he’d ever encountered in his life…no, softer than even his dreams! He’d thought it over and concluded that he must have died from cold out in the shed, turned into a fierce ghost out of resentment, grown powerful (somehow), then stolen some rich young master’s body when they weren’t paying close enough attention and, once he’d possessed the body, promptly lost all his memory of being a ghost.

It seemed like the only logical course of events.

He was very sorry about it, though. Wei Wuxian seemed like a nice, if very unusual person.

The first day, Mo Xuanyu had barely even noticed the body-switch, being quite so enamored of the soft bed he was in – he’d refused to get out of bed at all, declaring that he was going to lie in and sleep for a century or more, and the people who’d come to the door to get him didn’t beat him or anything over it, but rather just laughed or rolled their eyes and then left him to it. Luckily, at the time, he’d just assumed he was dead or something and proceeded to ignore everything in favor of napping.

He only acknowledged that he was alive later in the afternoon, when his stomach started growling – it seemed like a very unlikely thing for a dead man’s stomach to do.

Mo Xuanyu had by that point figured out that he wasn’t himself anymore, which was fine since he didn’t much like himself; he’d also figured out, through looking himself over, that he was old now. At least fifteen or sixteen, which was twice the age he last remembered himself being. That was fine, too, though: being older meant that he was stronger and faster and would be better able to handle it when people wanted to beat him or something. Most importantly, though, it meant he was old enough to enter the kitchen on his own!

Mo Xuanyu already knew that he wasn’t allowed to eat at the main table, being only the bastard son of the younger daughter, and the cook back at home was a fierce woman who didn’t allow anyone under the age of ten into her kitchen; as a result, he had to wait for his mother to bring him back some food, and it was always cold and not quite enough. Now, though, since he was older, he figured he might as well try to go to the kitchen and fill his belly that way.

Luckily, while his current body’s house was much bigger than the Mo house, all houses were generally built along the same lines, so it wasn’t hard to find the kitchen. Everyone there laughed when he showed up, even though he’d tried to be very quiet and sneak in and then screwed it up by tripping over his own feet – it seemed like everyone thought he was doing it on purpose to be funny – and then the cooks gave him a meal of his own that was hot and fresh and wonderful.

He'd wolfed it down.

“Honestly, Wei Wuxian, you eat like a hungry ghost, you’d think the Jiang clan starves you,” one of them scolded him, but with a smile, and from that Mo Xuanyu learned that the rich young master was called Wei Wuxian and that he lived with the Jiang clan. The different surnames confused him a little, but he didn’t dare ask any questions about it, so he just stuffed his mouth and pretended that was the reason he couldn’t answer.

No one questioned it.

No one questioned it when he went wandering all around instead of doing whatever chores or duties he’d been assigned, either. Someone had actually seen him hovering by a door and asked him to bring back a pheasant when he returned, so out of lack of better options he’d headed outside to try to go find one.

He had a pretty good time walking around the forest, then remembered what he’d been asked and chased the pheasants for a while, without success . Fortunately, he then got lucky and stumbled over an old snare that had three pheasants caught inside, so he’d picked up the whole box and carted it back home.

“Three,” one of the boys in purple-blue marveled as he saw Mo Xuanyu walking towards the kitchen. “You know, people say that the birds around the Lotus Pier have gotten too smart to be caught easily, but look at our da-shixiong; he makes it look easy!”

From this, Mo Xuanyu could figure out that Wei Wuxian was (apparently!) part of a cultivator clan, apparently located at a place called the Lotus Pier, and that he was the oldest or at least head disciple, to boot. He knew all about cultivator clans from his mother, since apparently his father had been a sect leader, and that meant he knew enough to call the other boy ‘shidi’ as he passed, making the other boy beam happily.

It also meant that when he chanced a guess and called the young woman in a pretty pink dress who waved at him ‘shijie’, she smiled and nodded, which meant to him that he’d done the right thing.

“I heard you slept even more of the morning away than usual,” she told him, but didn’t seem too upset about it. “I bet that means you’ll be skipping dinner and staying up all night, hmm?”

Mo Xuanyu had no intention of skipping dinner if it was anything like what the kitchens had given him earlier, actually, but while he was still trying to figure out a way to say that, she said, leaning in close to whisper, “It’s probably a good idea, anyway – Mother and Father are fighting again. Just go to the kitchens to grab something…I promise I’ll make it up to you with some soup tomorrow, pork ribs and lotus roots, your favorite. All right?”

“Shijie, you’re the best,” Mo Xuanyu said effusively, willing to die for her at once, and she laughed and tousled his hair.

“I am,” she said, looking happy. “And if my little A-Xian stays good and obedient, I may even feed him.”

She did, too, the next day when he finally tore himself out of the beautiful wonderful soft bed and went to go find her. She’d made him soup, just as he’d promised, and laughed and laughed for some reason: apparently, she interpreted him being quiet and not talking too much as his efforts to be ‘good and obedient’, which was apparently so out of the ordinary as to be a deliberate joke.

From this, Mo Xuanyu concluded that the young master he’d possessed, Wei Wuxian, was a jackass.

Well, perhaps that was a bit harsh. Arrogant and self-centered, talented and brave and probably brilliant, definitely charming and maybe even kind, but also spoiled and inclined to step on other people to get where he wanted to go, if Mo Xuanyu had to guess – why else would everyone constantly react as if him not being obnoxious was the world’s biggest stunt?

No one seemed to expect anything of him at all: he didn’t do any chores, and no one batted an eyelid; he didn’t go where he was told, and everyone just sighed…at one point the sect leader himself came and patted him on the head, scolding him in a joking tone that he hadn’t seen him leading any of the training the way he was supposed to – but when Mo Xuanyu quailed, he’d burst out laughing, telling ‘Wei Wuxian’ to stop pretending to be a scared little rabbit, that it was fine if he’d gotten distracted by some clever new invention or whatever, that someone else would handle it, that he should take as long as he needed.

Mo Xuanyu had pasted a great big smile on his face through force of effort and agreed cheerfully.

The sect leader had accepted it.

Probably a jackass, but clearly a beloved one, Mo Xuanyu thought to himself as he packed up clothing and a few small treasures that no one would miss, a little wistful. The scare of the whole encounter had put things in perspective – he wasn’t going to be able to keep up this sort of façade for long. In fact, he was shocked he’d managed it so long already; surely, no matter how many pranks this Wei Wuxian played, no matter how childishly he behaved, surely someone should’ve noticed that he was actually an eight-year-old masquerading as a sixteen-year-old?

Mo Xuanyu couldn’t decide whether it was sad that no one paid too much attention or something that this Wei Wuxian fellow had brought down on his own head by being so consistently annoying.

Either way, there was nothing for it – he was going to have to leave.

Now that part was really sad: he’d never in his life had such good food, or such a soft bed, or even so many people that just seemed plain old happy to see him as since he’d arrived in this place. But he wasn’t the one all those things were for; he was just a sad ghost possessing a person, and if he stayed, the cultivators would eventually figure out something was wrong and exorcise him.

Probably violently.

Mo Xuanyu probably deserved it, too, but despite that he wasn’t willing.

So he packed up what he could and headed out.

He got all the way to the gate before a new purple-clad disciple – about his age, if he had to guess, and holding a pack like he’d just come back from a trip, with a scowl on his face – called out for Wei Wuxian.

Mo Xuanyu waved a little, hoping that that would be enough.

For the first time, it wasn’t.

The boy’s face settled into an even deeper scowl.

“Hey, what’s wrong with you?” he demanded. “Wei Wuxian! You’re acting all weird – hey! Where are you going?”

Mo Xuanyu was running away, obviously. He wasn’t about to get tied up and exorcised, no thank you.

He didn’t think he’d make it, but it was still worth trying.

Sure enough, the purple-clad boy who was probably called Jiang Cheng, based on what everyone was calling out as they ran by, got tired of running and jumped on his sword, and there was no way Mo Xuanyu would be able to outrun a sword, not even if he tried as fast as he –

Someone picked him up.

It wasn’t Jiang Cheng.

Mo Xuanyu turned his head and stared.

It must be some sort of yao, he thought. Humans were definitely not that pretty.

“Lan Wangji!” Jiang Cheng howled. “What are you even doing in the Lotus Pier?! Put my shixiong down!”

The rescuer, Lan Wangji, frowned a little at Mo Xuanyu.

Mo Xuanyu didn’t know exactly what expression he ought to be making in return, and was a bit too dazed to even dare to guess. He’d just noticed that they were flying – flying! on a sword! – and he was clutching onto this Lan Wangji’s shoulders for dear life.

“You are not Wei Ying,” Lan Wangji said. His voice sounded very definitive.

“Uh,” Mo Xuanyu said. “Sorry? Please don’t drop me.”

“I will not. What is your name?”

“Mo Xuanyu,” Mo Xuanyu admitted, and Lan Wangji’s eyes widened as if that meant something to him – except it couldn’t, of course, because Mo Xuanyu was sure he’d never met anyone even remotely like this Lan Wangji fellow in his life. “I don’t remember taking his body. I’m sorry. Can you not exorcise me? I don’t want to die.”

Lan Wangji was silent for a long moment.

He was still flying very fast, and Jiang Cheng was still following, shouting out curses and demands that he stop, not that Lan Wangji was listening.

“There will be no exorcism,” he finally said, and Mo Xuanyu exhaled in relief. “We will, however, fix this.”

“…we?”

“Wei Ying and myself.”

Mo Xuanyu nodded. That sounded more likely than anyone relying on his participation.

“Where are we going?” he asked. Jiang Cheng was falling further and further behind.

“Mo Village.”

Mo Xuanyu tensed up at once.

“You will not be left there,” Lan Wangji clarified, and – how did he know that Mo Xuanyu didn’t want to be left there? “But we must collect Wei Ying, who I suspect is currently in your body.”

“In my…I’m still alive?”

Lan Wangji was quiet again, and then said, “Yes. And you will remain so.”

That was reassuring, mostly.

“Okay,” Mo Xuanyu said, and found that he mostly felt relieved. He’d be very happy to have his normal body back again, if possible, especially if he didn’t have to stay in Mo Village…“Wait, if I don’t have to stay there, where will I go? I don’t have anywhere else to go, unless my father comes back for me. He's a sect leader –”

“He will not, and even if he did, you should not go with him. Once Wei Ying returns to his body, you will be able to stay at the Lotus Pier. If you do not wish to stay there, I will bring you back to the Cloud Recesses – that is my home – instead.”

“Oh,” Mo Xuanyu said, feeling bewildered. That was an awfully nice offer, even if Lan Wangji was feeling guilty about Wei Wuxian stealing his body by accident – which seemed like what had happened here rather than Mo Xuanyu being the one who did the stealing. Maybe he should go with Lan Wangji instead, he seemed much more responsible than Wei Wuxian was, rushing over to rescue him and explain things instead of throwing him into a body and leaving him all alone in a strange place. But on the other hand… “Is the Cloud Recesses…I mean…no offense, but…does it have…”

“Yes?”

“Does it have soft beds, too? And – and hot food?”

Mo Xuanyu didn’t need much, not really. He looked eagerly at Lan Wangji, who had an odd expression on his face briefly before wiping it back to neutral and nodding in confirmation.

“Okay,” Mo Xuanyu said, and curled up in Lan Wangji’s arms. “Then I’ll stay with you. You can take care of me.”

“I will,” Lan Wangji said, sounding strangely serious. “In return for the gift you last gave me – I will.”

[ouyangzizhensdad]

Perhaps you'd like a an ask that's not discourse related? If so, then I wanted to ask you if you know what jin zixuan thought of jin guangyao?

Hi anon,

I appreciate your non-discourse-related ask 😉. Your question made me realise that the novel seems to explicitly avoid giving us any real sense of what Jin Zixuan thought of Jin Guangyao, or how he reacted to the ways other people treated JGY. It seems that JZX remained unaware at the time that Meng Yao came on his birthday--and literally got kicked out. At Phoenix Mountain, JZX stops being mentioned after JGY appears and while his mother mistreats him--he’s only brought back into the narration at the very end to scream at JYL. JZX is also absent the night that WWX goes to Jinlintai to confront the Jins about Qiongqi path and in the direct aftermath. But let’s dig for crumbs and make sense of gaps, and let’s see what we can infer from them.

We know that, originally, Jin Zixuan was the epitome of the proud Jin: “The ways of the Jin Sect were proud, and Jin Zixuan inherited every single drop of this. With his high standards, he had been unsatisfied with this engagement since a long time ago.“ We could wonder if the circumstances of JGY’s birth would have been something JZX would have judged him for. We know that he took offense to WWX’s persona, although it is not spelled out exactly what offended him specifically: “Because of this engagement, Jin Zixuan had no positive impressions of the YunmengJiang Sect, and had frowned upon Wei Wuxian’s behavior since some time ago.“ However, it’s unclear whether the circumstances of WWX’s birth influenced how he perceived his behaviour. All we know for sure is that two other Jin family members--his father and Jin Zixun--never forgot about it and brought it up. We also know that in the past, JZX felt comfortable ignoring people’s good will towards him if he felt he was motivated in his view of them, as he did with JYL in the past:

Jin-furen had brought him to Lotus Pier a couple of times. Neither Wei Wuxian nor Jiang Cheng liked to play with him; only Jiang Yanli wanted to feed him the food that she made. Jin Zixuan, however, didn’t really like to pay her any attention.

At the same time, we do know that JZX had a sense of righteousness, what with him standing up against Wen Chao at Dusk-Creek Mountain. Likewise, we see with the soup incident that at least when it comes to a low-level cultivator who is a servant, a good deed done towards him without trying to gain his gratitude is enough to earn his respect, and for JZX to take action to raise the standing of that person:

Cleverly, the woman never acknowledged anything, but instead denied it ambiguously, her cheeks flushed, making it sound as though she was the one who did it, but didn’t want Jin Zixuan to know how much trouble she went through. And thus, Jin Zixuan didn’t force her to admit it any longer. However, in action, he had began to respect the cultivator. He began to pay attention to her, even raising her from a servant to a guest cultivator.

JZX even tells JYL: “Don’t think that just because you come from a powerful sect that you can steal and trample other people’s feelings. Some people, even if they come from poor backgrounds, their character are much better than the former’s. Please watch your conduct.” This underlines that, regardless of his upbringing, and perhaps even views that he might have held at some point in his life, at this point JZX seemed to want to judge others based on their character rather than their background. Of course, we can wonder if that reserve of good will would have extended to his half-brother, especially one that could try to take his place as the heir. However, considering the circumstances, from JGY’s birth to JGS’s decision to give him a name that did not align him with the same generation as JZX, we can wonder if anyone ever perceived then JGY as someone who could potentially become the next sect leader, as seen in this exchange between WWX and JC:

Jiang Cheng smirked, “Don’t carry your sword, then. It doesn’t matter. But don’t provoke Jin Zixuan from now on. He’s Jin Guangshan’s only son, after all. The future leader of the LanlingJin Sect will be him. If you beat him up, what should I, the sect leader, do? Beat him up with you? Or punish you?”

Wei Wuxian, “Isn’t Jin Guangyao here now? Jin Guangyao seems so much better than him.”

Jiang Cheng finished wiping his sword. After he scrutinized it for a while, he finally put Sandu back into its sheath, “So what, if he’s better? No matter how much better he is, no matter how clever, he could only be a servant who greets the guests. That’s all there is to his life. He can’t compare with Jin Zixuan.”

At Phoenix Mountain, while we do not see JZX say anything out of line to JGY, he is present while his mother and Jin Zixun disrespect him: and we get no reaction written for him while that takes place--he’s mostly licking his wounded pride. We also know that this disrespect by his family towards JGY was the norm, so we have to assume that JZX would have been a witness to it in other situations. In the context of that specific scene, it’s difficult to to infer something concrete from that silence: is it agreement? complicity? a certain indifference to JGY’s situation? an unwillingness of rock the boat or to seem to publicly challenge his mother? or simply him just being too self-absorbed by his romantic woes?

The next scene that would have made for an interesting case study is the night WWX comes to confront the Jins about the camp at Qiongqi Path. However, JZX is absent that night. Conveniently, or as a means to maintain a sense of ambiguity between him and WWX, we thereby do not know how JZX feels about what happened. He is also absent during the aftermath:  “At midnight, in the Golden Pavilion on JinlinTai sat over fifty sect leaders from sects of all sizes. Jin Guangshan sat in the foremost seat. Jin Zixuan was away [...].” (interesting that CQL added JZX to that scene). Which means he is not there to react to the mistreatment of JGY by others or to react to the way JGY is clearly lying for the purposes of manipulating the general opinion on WWX and save the Jin’s reputation.

We also do not get to witness the conversation that leads JZX to come to Qiongqi Path to try to stop Jin Zixun. All we get is a sentence of dialogue from JZX explaining that he thought JGY looked strange which prompted JZX tp questioned him questions (we of course know that JGY was purposefully acting that way to get JZX to go to Qionqqi Path, so it’s hard to take that as a sign of clear familiarity between them that would have allowed JZX to read hidden emotions from him). Did JZX ask out of specific concern for or suspicions of JGY? We don’t know! It is interesting to note though that, in this scene, Jin Zixun refers to JGY as “A-Yao”, which the narration contextualises by telling us that Jin Zixun started calling him in a more intimate manner despite the original contemps he had held for him. However, when JZX mentions JGY to Jin Zixun, he calls him “Jin Guangyao” (for reference, Jin Zixun calls JZX “Zixuan”).

All in all, we get very little from looking at JZX. However, there is something to be said in the absence of any specific grievances expressed by JGY towards him in terms of framing how JZX may have acted towards him when they were both at Jinlintai. Indeed, when Jin Ling asks JGY why he arranged for his father to go to Qiongqi path, meeting his death, JGY mentions the unfairness of the situation of both sons, but never brings up anything JZX did specifically to him. And we know that JGY has a great memory which allows him to hold grudges.

Suddenly, Jin Ling screamed, “Why?!” He stood up from beside Jiang Cheng. Eyes red, he rushed toward Jin Guangyao as he shouted, “Why did you have to do this?!”

Nie Huaisang hurried to pull back Jin Ling, who seemed as though he wanted to fight with Jin Guangyao. Jin Guangyao returned the question, “Why?” He turned to Jin Ling, “A-Ling, then could you tell me why? Why is it that even if I face everyone with a smile, I might not even receive the lowest form of respect, while even though your father was extremely arrogant, people flocked to him? Could you tell me why we were born from the same person but your father could relax at home with the love of his life playing with his child, while I never even dared be alone for long with my wife, shivering out of fright at first glance of my son? And I was ordered to do such a thing by my father as if it was natural—to kill an extremely dangerous figure who could flip out and conjure up a bloody massacre with his corpses anytime!

“Why is it that even though we were born on the same day, Jin Guangshan could host a grand banquet for one son, and watch with his own eyes how his subordinate kicked his other son down Jinlintai, from the first stair to the last!”

He finally revealed the hatred hidden deep within him. It wasn’t directed at neither Jin Zixuan nor Wei Wuxian, but rather his own father.

As a result, we might infer that, at the very least, JZX never directly acted towards JGY in a way that reflected how JGS or Jin Zixun (at some point) treated him. At the same time, it’s difficult to suggest that he stood up for him when other people disrespected him, and we know that JZX’s mother disrespected JGY in lieu of directing her anger toward the real culprit, her awful husband. Little seems to suggest that they grew intimate after JGY came to Jinlintai. It’s really hard to divine, as a result, what JZX might have thought of JGY.

The most interesting thing to take away from this is that it seems absolutely deliberate on MXTX’s part to show us as little as possible in terms of interactions between JZX and JGY. We can speculate as to why that is: to separate JZX from the machinations of this sect? to avoid giving us more ammunition to guess that JGY was behind JZX’s death? to ensure that WWX remains ambiguous towards JZX? or just as a means to avoid having to figure out how to work this dynamic into already complicated scenes and character relationships? etc.

[crossdressingdeath]

Would you call WWX's behaviour towards LWJ (in CR arc) bullying? Cause I wouldn't, unless you mean it like a joke (so a playful bullying). Otherwise I get kinda annoyed when I see people calling it a bullying cause: a) It wasn't malicious and b)LWJ is ranks ahead of WWX.If he really, really didn't want that,he could have just make sure WWX leaves him alone, beside WWX can read the atmosphere(like in Xuanwu Cave).And LXC for sure wouldn't enable WWX if he thought it harming his brother in any way

I mean, WWX is definitely not being great. It's okay in this specific context because we the readers know that LWJ does not in fact hate it and is just being Very Gay And Mad About It about the whole thing, but I can see why people would call it bullying. In this specific context I wouldn't call it serious bullying because again, we know that LWJ doesn't see it that way, but as an abstract thing... yeah, it's the sort of behaviour I would have concerns over!

It's like... you can't "playfully bully" someone you aren't friends with. Even if you mean it playfully, if you don't know they're on board with it it's just bullying. It doesn't matter that WWX doesn't mean it maliciously if LWJ thinks it's malicious! Speaking as someone who is definitely much more like LWJ than WWX, if someone (even someone I had a massive crush on) was doing things like sneaking porn into my books and deliberately trying to get me in trouble (yes, WWX's intention was to avoid trouble entirely because he assumed that LWJ would just keep his mouth shut rather than get in trouble himself and did try to take the full blame when it became clear that LWJ would take punishment for something that wasn't his fault, but LWJ doesn't know that at the time), I'd be pretty upset! And yes, LWJ could have just pulled rank to try to keep WWX away from him but a) WWX clearly intended to keep bothering him no matter what despite how as far as WWX can tell LWJ didn't enjoy it and b) WWX is constantly breaking rules; good luck keeping him from doing something he wanted to without outright locking him up or getting him sent home, neither of which LWJ wanted to do.

Also, that covers your point about WWX being able to read the atmosphere; as far as he can tell LWJ doesn't enjoy what he's doing, and he keeps doing it anyway. He is very much the little kid yanking on his crush's pigtails in the Cloud Recesses! Now, he grows out of that behaviour because he's a good boy who doesn't want to hurt anyone, but at this point he is doing this as far as he can tell against LWJ's wishes. I suspect what's happening is the start of the miscommunication that plagues their relationship in WWX's first life, because WWX is trying to connect and bond with LWJ in the way he connects and bonds with people, not realizing that not everyone works that way. And he grows out of that! It's good! The two of them compromise and find ways of interacting that work for both of them! But at this point he's just doing whatever without taking LWJ's preferences into account at all.

As for LXC... you're assuming he knows. You think LWJ is going to tell his brother about how WWX stuck porn in one of his books? Hell, I don't think it's ever confirmed that LXC knew LWJ had a crush on WWX before he rescued WWX from the sects! Remember, LXC eventually decides that WWX is a serious problem who will only cause his brother pain; yes, most of that is due to the whole demonic cultivation thing, but I wouldn't be surprised if part of it was WWX's behaviour in the Cloud Recesses. Honestly while I don't think LXC is against their relationship once everything's been made clear I don't understand why people act like he's super supportive; he nudges WWX in LWJ's direction once, and as far as I remember never does it again. Clearly he later regrets encouraging their friendship! I think it's a bit of a jump to say he was fine with WWX's behaviour in the Cloud Recesses when we don't know how much of it he knew about.

So basically I guess my point is that in this context because we later learn LWJ's feelings on the whole thing I'm fine with it, but I can definitely understand why people think of it as bullying.

[vrishchikawrites]

What do you personally think happened in the three months between Nightless City and the First Siege? Iirc, WY made cenotaphs for WN and WQ (Chapter 111) but other than that, what do you think is going on in his head and in the Wen Remnants' as well? And how do you think the Siege went? The conclusion of it is the destruction of the Seal. When do you think the Wens died? Before or after WY did? I feel like WY would defend the Wens until his very last breath but I also think that WY would choose to destroy the Seal because there is no one left to protect and he doesn't want it to fall into the wrong hands. And who do you think put A-Yuan in the hollow tree stump? Many fans headcanon that it's WY as a tearjerking scene but how about you? Wouldn't WY want to come back for A-Yuan if it was him? Cos he knew that the destruction of the Seal would cause huge backlash and kill him. If he knew that A-Yuan is still alive, wouldn't he find a way to survive that backlash? And the Burial Mounds is WY's home turf. Is the reason why he lost against the sects is because of his mental/emotional state at the time? Since JZX, WN, WQ, and JYL recently died. Do you think he was caught off guard as well?

I'm sorry for the bombardment of questions. I know they're supposed to be missing scenes but sometimes, my brain can't help but want to fill in the blanks. I just want to hear someone else's thoughts I guess. Anyway, WY and the Wens truly deserved better.

(sorry, this got left in my drafts)

So I went back and read through the connected scenes just to get the feel of the story. I feel like WWX wasn't in any state of mind to plan things. He was just hanging in a limbo. That's really too much trauma, even for someone like WWX. You can sense his thoughts grow darker and grimmer with every sentence. (imho wq and wn giving themselves up was a mistake and the final nail in the coffin. There was no recovery from that point for any of the wens or for wwx for that matter.)

I feel like all of the Wens would've been in a limbo too. They were probably aware that it was only a matter of time before they had to face retaliation for the Nightless City.

Uncle Four for incharge when WQ and WN left so he probably continued to remain incharge as WWX recovered. I'm assuming they discussed what would come next. WWX is forward thinking. By this point, BM is essentially a prison. I think just as WQ and WN accepted their fates, the remaining Wens did too. WWX would've fought to the very end, but I don't know about the others.

He probably knew JC would be furious enough to want him dead. And since JC has visited, WWX knows they'd be able to get in.

I think he anticipated JC leading the others to BM. This is a man who knows JC best, after all.

If WWX has regained some clarity, despite his grief and loss, he also knows there's no other place that's face for them, not after Nightless City. His only option is to think of ways to destroy the seal.

As for a-Yuan, I think WWX would've actually kept the child away from him, especially during the first few days or weeks. He'd probably recognize that a-Yuan doesn't need to see him in such a state.

I also think it wasn't WWX who tucked him away in a tree stump. It could have been granny or uncle four doing that as WWX prepared to confront the incoming siege. WWX doesn't remember what happened to him but there's not even a hint of him thinking a-Yuan would've survived. He probably didn't know one of the Wens had hidden the child away.

Also, what luck! That was such a close thing! If LWJ hadn't gone, a-Yuan would've definitely died. It was so close.

I'm torn about who dies first.

Sometimes I get the impression that WWX died before most of the Wens. He would've definitely been the first line of defence and the first one to act. And then sects apparently had time to collect the bodies and toss them in the blood pool. I'm assuming WWX wouldn't have let that happen. He could've seen a few die and decided that destroying the seal would've been the only way to salvage the situation. I'm assuming a-Yuan would have probably crossed his mind. Like the longer he takes to neutralize the situation, the more time people have to find him.

It could be that the Wens die first and WWX attempts to destroy the seal to keep it out of people's hands.

I believe WWX died furious. His last action was to keep a powerful tool away from the sects. I think he was very angry. It could have been a combination of grief, anger, and a sense of helplessness that made him focus on destroying the seal. Everyone was gonna die anyways, especially if he did nothing. The blashlash would perhaps deter people enough for a few Wens to escape.

I think the situation was just pure chaos and it would've been impossible for WWX to think everything through, especially not with the Jiang contingent leading the siege. You bet JC would've taken advantage of every weakness and tell to defeat WWX. Probably by targeting the Wens right before his eyes.

Idk, I have many thoughts about the siege.

[xiyao-feels]

Part One: Claims about the Song of Clarity/the Song of Turmoil and the Nie Clan

Intro - Pt 1 - Pt 2 - Pt 3 - Pt 4

SoC/SoT

1) The SoC is expected to heal NMJ completely

This one is fairly straightforward: one of the Nie cultivators literally says that he didn't expect the Song of Clarity /not/ to heal NMJ completely, around 12:30 in: "Master's illness is getting worse. I didn't expect that cleaning music can't completely cure him." While this could just be one person's incorrect idea, the cultivator he makes this observation to does not correct him, and in general, FJ does not at any point suggest that he is wrong.

As far as I can tell, the claim that the SoC is expected to completely heal NMJ is not made anywhere in MDZS or CQL; nor is there any suggestion the music had been used to treat the sabre curse for past Nie cultivators, so, indeed, how would they know what to expect? Moreover, in neither MDZS or CQL does anyone seem surprised that it failed to heal NMJ entirely, including LXC who would know if anyone would; rather LXC seems to consider his turmoil-induced progression entirely plausible despite (he thinks) JGY's consistent playing of Clarity.

2) A few brief passages from the SoC, even when played by someone with weak cultivation, can very quickly bring a halt to NMJ's violence

On multiple occasions we are shown the gold SoC very quickly visually affect NMJ, returning him to normal from sabre-curse-red. Twice, it halts him partway through significant violence—JGY preventing his attack on NHS in the beginning, and NHS temporarily preventing his attack on NZH. This is so even though NHS and JGY canonically have weak cultivation (ch 14 and 21 for NHS, a whole lot of chapters for JGY but see also this next paragraph).

Consider by contrast this passage from ch. 64:

Wei WuXian, “Jin GuangYao’s spiritual energy isn’t high. He wouldn’t have been able to take someone’s life with just seven notes. And killing him this way would’ve been too obvious. He definitely wouldn’t have chosen a song so powerful. But, if he could use the reason of playing the Song of Clarity for ChiFeng-Zun to calm his temper and continued to play it for three months, would the song be able to act as a slow poison and catalyse ChiFeng-Zun’s outburst?”

It's clear that JGY's ability to affect things via musical cultivation is limited, precisely because he does not have high cultivation.

As a side note: WWX's speculated timeline here is sometimes given as evidence that JGY was playing the corrupted SoC for NMJ /before/ the stairs incident. However, I'll observe that he is, indeed, speculating, and moreover that he is contradicted by his own experience in the Empathy flashback, especially as he also says—see the next point—that JGY would have used very little spiritual power in the unaltered SoC (ch 49):

Since then, Jin GuangYao would travel from Lanling to Qinghe every few days, playing Sound of Lucidity to help quell Nie MingJue rage. He tried his hardest, without speaking even a single word of complaint. Sound of Lucidity was indeed effective. Wei WuXian could clearly feel that the hostile energy within Nie MingJue was being suppressed.

And then, talking to LWJ and LXC following shortly on the three months quote above:

Thus, Jin GuangYao didn’t dare straight up play to him the dark song and instead took trouble to combine two songs of different styles with opposite uses. And he combined them so well. They sound as though there were the same. His musical talent is indeed excellent. I’m guessing that he used little spiritual power in the Cleansing sections and only exerted power in the section of The Collection of Turmoil.

I don't think this is particularly mysterious—WWX has gone through quite a bit since experiencing these moments in the Empathy flashback, including the rest of the Empathy flashback where, since he feels NMJ's anger, he would have been experiencing a great deal of anger at JGY.

In CQL though WWX doesn't specifically give JGY's low cultivation as a reason for him to choose the SoT instead of the instantly deadly song, JGY does still have low cultivation.

In terms of FJ, I'd like also to note that in MDZS, there's a similar scene in ch 49 where NMJ is upset at NHS for not knowing where his sabre is, and tells NHS to burn the fans he's playing with; in FJ NMJ /actually/ breaks NHS' brush, and doesn't indulge in burning or threats thereof, but it's a clear parallel to the MDZS scene). However, there are a few significant differences. First, this happens before JGY starts playing for NMJ without LXC present; that is to say, regardless of when you think JGY started playing turmoil for NMJ, he could not possibly have started yet. Second, JGY defends NHS to NMJ's face, and in front of NHS:

In a hurry, Nie HuaiSang dropped a few fans on the ground. Jin GuangYao picked them up for him and put them into his arms, “HuaiSang’s hobbies are quite elegant. He’s dedicated to art and calligraphy, and has no propensity for mischief. How can you say that they’re useless?”

Third, although NMJ is angry, and expresses his anger through violence to nearby objects ("Nie MingJue slammed his palm onto a table, causing it to crack"), he does not actually directly attack NHS, or indeed actually harm NHS' fans—although NHS nevertheless falls to his knees in his terror at NMJ's initial approach.

And fourth, and most relevantly to this point, although JGY does save NHS from NMJ's anger here, he /explicitly textually does it by being a more appealing target/:

Jin GuangYao walked in from outside the hall. Nie HuaiSang looked as though he saw a knight in shining armor, beaming, “Brother, you’re here!”

In reality, it wasn’t that Jin GuangYao could calm Nie MingJue’s anger, but that since Jin GuangYao came, all of Nie MingJue’s anger would be directed at him alone, having no time to scold others. Thus, there was nothing wrong with saying that he was Nie HuaiSang’s knight in shining armor.

CQL is missing many of these scenes, but there is not as far as I remember any evidence that JGY could quickly stop NMJ's violence via music.

3) The SoT is so powerful that its brief corrupted passage will totally overwhelm all positive effects from the unaltered SoC, even if the player is using equal cultivation power throughout.

This isn't explicitly stated, but it's the only mechanism by which the plan of 'have NHS play the corrupted SoC' makes any sense at all. Otherwise, as far as I can tell, NHS would actually be helping NMJ, just more slowly than if he had the full SoC, since he would have no reason to use less power in the unaltered section. Indeed, we see the gold flow of the regular SoC affecting NMJ when NHS plays it, which suggests he's using regular amounts of power there. Consider by contrast what WWX says to LXC and LWJ in ch 64, as above:

Thus, Jin GuangYao didn’t dare straight up play to him the dark song and instead took trouble to combine two songs of different styles with opposite uses. And he combined them so well. They sound as though there were the same. His musical talent is indeed excellent. I’m guessing that he used little spiritual power in the Cleansing sections and only exerted power in the section of The Collection of Turmoil.

I am, I want to note, not an expert in the theory of musical cultivation, or in the xianxia genre. Nevertheless, the obvious inference from what WWX says there is if JGY had been using full power in the Cleansing sections, Turmoil wouldn't have worked.

And of course as I mentioned above, WWX gives a timeline of three months and calls it a slow poison. CQL pretty much matches here, giving the he didn't use much spiritual power in cleansing, the slow poison part, and indeed the three-month timeline.

The Nie Clan

1) When the curse is coming on them too strongly, they remove themselves to the tombs to die there.

This is explicitly stated by NMJ when he and NHS have fallen into the tombs.

As far as I can tell, there's no evidence for this in either MDZS or CQL. Indeed, in neither does NMJ seem to be doing anything to deal with the fact of his increasing anger—that is, he accepts the treatment of the SoC, but he doesn't do anything about the fact that his increasing anger and hence increasing use of violence are dangerous to the people around him. If anything, he seems rather in denial. This is probably more justifiable in CQL, where he dies at the stairs and thus doesn't have the chance to reevaluate post-stairs or post-burning NHS' things,* but nevertheless there's no sign of it.

*That is, we don't see him burn NHS' things in CQL, and in MDZS it happens after the stairs, so it seems reasonable to assume it didn't happen in CQL; that said CQL does not as far as I know actively tell us he did not burn NHS' things.

Previous | Next

[drwcn]

I was reading your post about consent for surgery and I had a question. Aren't there cases where if the patient is not of sound mind or unable to make an informed decision, then family can decide for them? That's not to say that WWX was entirely of sound mind at that point (he'd also been through insane trauma & was trying desperately to hold onto the family he had left). But JC was in a much worse state and retrospectively I agree JC would never have agreed to taking anyone else's core, but 1/2

I know I said i wasn’t going to answer asks until I’m done my exams but this one just came in and it’s a topic close and dear to my heart, so I’m going to take a couple of minutes to answer it. Thank you for the ask, but I think this brings up a lot of misconceptions of what is medical consent, capacity, competency, and substitute decision making. This is a very complicated and legally heavy topic. So it will be a long post. I apologize for that. 

There are several misconceptions in the ask, and I will be addressing them in this order: 

That Jiang Cheng is “not of sound mine” and cannot “make an informed decision”. 

The role of family and substitute decision making 

“force a life saving measure on a family member”. 

Issue 1 : Jiang Cheng is not competent and has no capacity to consent. 

There is no doubt that Jiang Cheng has gone through significant trauma, and that he is emotionally fragile, but this does not medically equate him to having no capacity to make surgical decisions and this certainly does not make him legally incompetent. If I may, I will define “informed decision”, “capacity” and “competency”.  

The criteria of obtaining informed consent is described below. 

Decision maker must: 

Be aware of his/her right to withdraw consent at any time

Be free of undue influence, duress or coercion in making the consent decision (aka no one is paying them or holding a gun to their head)

Receive a proper explanation that includes but is not limited to:

diagnosis reached

advised interventions and treatments;

exact nature and anticipated benefits of the proposed examination, assessment, treatment or procedure;

common risks and significant risks; 

reasonable alternative treatments available, and the associated common risks and significant risks; and

natural history of the condition and the consequences of forgoing treatment;

All of this must be explained to the patient before a procedure can be undertaken. And the patient must be able to understand what is told, and to appreciate the gravity of their choice. This brings us to the idea of “capacity”. 

Capacity is not how emotionally distressed you are, or how traumatized you are. If my partner (the love of my life) and I both got into a horrible car accident, but I sustained minor injuries while he requires significant surgery, you can reasonably assume that I am in deep emotional distress. However, if I were his POA (power of attorney), I would still have the capacity to decide and consent for his surgery on his behalf if he is no longer capable (e.g.: he is unconscious).  

Capacity refers to a person’s ability to make a decision that is “task specific”. As in, can he make a decision about this particular thing we’re asking him. It requires the person (Jiang Cheng) to:

Reason and deliberate - can Jiang Cheng make logical sense of the procedure and its consequences.  

Hold appropriate values and goals - Jiang Cheng would want to protect his family, avenge his parents and defeat Wen Ruohan. 

Appreciate one's circumstances - does Jiang Cheng know that without his surgery he will never get core back? Does he know the risks of the surgery to himself, to his brother, and its chances of success? 

Understand information one is given - are Jiang Cheng’s cognitive functions intact to for him to understand and appreciate the information given? 

And communicate a choice.

Can Jiang Cheng do all of that? The conclusion of the assessment for capacity ultimately lies with the attending physician. Medical capacity is a result of a physician’s assessment. Capacity wasn’t even a consideration for Jiang Cheng. Wen Qing agreed because Wei Wuxian begged, and probably because she also felt guilty. And that’s not how she should’ve done it. 

From what I have seen on the show, Jiang Cheng is capable. I can say with 99% confidence that what happened to him is a gross violation of his bodily autonomy and his rights. No physician would agree to do a surgery the way Wen Qing did. In a way, she was compromised, and she should’ve seen that there was a conflict of interest between herself, Wei Wuxian, and her patient Jiang Cheng. If I were her, I would be mortified that I had done something like this. 

On the other hand, competency is a legal status. It doesn’t change with activity and task. A judge needs to decide this and once you’re deemed incompetent, there’s usually no going back. This doesn’t really apply in CQL because...well they don’t have a judicial system. I can explain competency fully in another ask if you’re still interested. One thing I will say is that even “incompetent” individuals can have “capacity” for certain decisions. E.g: my grandmother with dementia while she cannot decide whether she undergoes a knee replacement or not, she can decide that she doesn’t want apple sauce with her morning meal. Again, competency is a global assessment leading to a legal status change, whereas capacity is task specific. 

Issue 2: the role of family and substitute decision maker 

Substitute decision makers (SDM) are brought in when the patient is deemed lacking capacity to make a certain decision, and as I have explained above, Jiang Cheng does not qualify as lacking capacity. In modern law, the role of SDM is different from country to country, even provinces/states to provinces/states. 

For a lot places, pediatric patients are not able to consent for themselves and their parents are usually their SDM. This is not the case where I live. Children, as long as they are assessed by their physician to be capable of making specific decisions, will be able to make decisions in their medical treatment. This assessment is on-going throughout medical care. In many other places, parents are the SDMs. However: please note that good medical practice will still include the children in the discussion of their care as much as is appropriate for their age and ability, and that while they cannot consent, clinicians must try their best to obtain children’s ‘assent’ (aka their agreement and cooperation).  

For seniors with dementia, their SDMs are their spouse or in lack that, their children. Without a specific POA - power of attorney, that is the one person the patient has written down as their legal SDM - all SDMs on the same level must come to an agreement before a procedure can be carried out. What do I mean by that? SDMs come in levels. Where I live, at the top level is the spouse. Without a specific designated POA, spouse is always SDM, their decision trumps everyone else’s. Without a spouse, the next on the list is usually children. If there are multiple children, they must all agree on what to do for mom or dad before the doctor can act. If they can’t agree, there’s usually a due process where physicians can petition the court to have a designated third-party SDM appointed.  In all cases with SDMs, they should not be acting according to their own values but the values and wishes of the patient to be best of their understanding. If doctors suspect that SDMs are not following the values of their patient, there is also a process where they can petition the court to have the SDMs’ rights removed. It’s a very lengthy process and this doesn’t happen often. 

For Jiang Cheng, if for example he never gained consciousness (so he is completely incompetent) and we consider Jiang Yanli and Wei Wuxian to be at the same SDM level (JC’s siblings), then they should’ve had a discussion with Jiang Cheng’s values and beliefs in mind and come to a conclusion together. Only that decision should be implemented. Of course, this didn’t happen because WWX and his martyr complex made an unilateral decision for himself based on what he thinks is right.

Issue 3: Forcing people to live against their will.  

Does this happen? Tragically yes. It does. Should it happen? No. Absolutely no. 

The grey areas are when a senior never wrote in legal documentation explicitly that they don’t want life sustaining measure, but that maybe in passing they’ve mentioned to their nurse or physician. When they become incompetent (coma, dementia, delirium, stroke, rapid decline in cognitive function), the children want everything to be done for dad or mom, and refuse to switch to palliative care or to end life support. 

In those cases, unfortunately, many institutions will go with the families’ wishes because hospitals don’t want to be sued, and families do sue, even when all the medical team has done is respect the patient’s wishes. 

There are many pediatric cases as well where parents cannot cope with their loss and can’t let go. The child could be brain-dead or in persistent vegetative state, and so even though nurses and doctors feel a lot of moral distress at continuously giving aggressive measure that they know it won’t help, they can’t stop. Because if they do, they can get sued. And sometimes it’s not even just a matter of lawsuits. These things can get crazy, media can twist the truth and people can get death threats. Feel free to google these cases. 

So yeah, it happens. But it shouldn’t. Just because it happens, doesn’t mean it’s right. 

And this doesn’t apply to Jiang Cheng. Because he isn’t brain dead, he isn’t in a coma, he doesn’t have frontal cortex damage, he doesn’t dementia. He is in complete control of all his faculties. So what happened to him was a crime. And if there are other examples where patients were forced into/lied to about medical procedures by their family, those are crimes too. 

And yes CQL is a tv show set in fantasy china, so does it all really matter? I guess, if you don’t care that much about the drama, then no, it doesn’t matter. But keep in mind this wasn’t a historical drama, we’re not analyzing a historical figures’s actions with modern ethics. That would be misplaced. This was a fantasy drama, written by a modern girl, living in modern society. And its audiences are people living in the global community, so it should matter how it impacts the viewers who watch it. 

From a modern western medical perspective, Jiang Cheng does not owe Wei Wuxian, Wen Qing, and Wen Ning anything. I liked Wen Ning up until he threw the core surgery reveal in Jiang Cheng’s face so cruelly. People cheered him on, but I was very upset. 

Jiang Cheng owes these three nothing. Not a damn thing. 

[inessencedevided]

The Untamed, episode 49 - watching notes

*takes deep breath* ONLY TWO EPISODES LEFT!!! 😭😭😭

Btw, this is how I spent my day. Baking a subtly shippy pie for my family, who thought I had mixed up the date easter falls on 😅

Therapy-baking to cope with the end of a show aside, I'm still not ready for this show to end 🥺

I still find it hilarious how little patience wwx has for jgy's villain act 😅

Like bitch, you wanna talk tragic villain backstory? You got nothing on me 🤨

Yeah, I thought the "my friend" part was a bit rich, too :/

I get that jgy, like all good villains (If he really is the villainof this story is debatable, but for tha sake of this argument I'llrun with it) doesn't think of himself as such, but he's got to realise the magnitude of his betrayal towards lan Xichen

Wait what?

What did jgy do at the burial mounds specifically that has lxc renounce their friendship ALREADY? 😳

Ah! or was that off-screen during the previous episodes when lxc got trigged into this situation?

What do they say about the anger of a gentle man?

Oooh, so the fact that jgy acted now was due to the letter! I feel a bit dumb that I hadn't realised that 😅

"Do you really not believe in me at all?" ARE YOU KIDDING ME??? HE DID!

He believed in you when no one else would!!!

I just noticed that that's another parallel to wangxian. Only ... 😬

That shot gives me goosebumps...

Those red robes are beautiful :'(

Poor Quin Su ...

Jgy saying to lxc that his naivety shocks him ... well that's the point, right? That's why he could fool lxc like this. I'm not sure if naivety is entirely the word I'd use, but I can't find a better one right now 🤔

But it's definitely the right word for the way he saw jgy. Maybe it's the fact that lxc naturally assumed that because HE didn't see jgy social standing, jgy wouldn't either. But jgy could never shake off his parentage because both his environment and his own ambitions never let him

So of course jgy thought he "had no choice". The choice was between doing the right thing and giving up his status he had fought so hard for or doing the wrong thing and keeping it. To him it wasn't a choice

And he's right, that's a position none of the cultivators present, not even wwx would have ever had to face

Still

FUCK JIN GUANGSHAN!!!!! 🤬🤬🤬

I can emphasize with almost everyone in this story at least somewhat

But that guy can go fuck himself

Fuck, did he just slap him? 😳

Lan Xichen is honestly way beyond his limit

Didn't we already establish that Jin Guangyao arranged for the confrontation that lead to Jin Zixuan's death?

Okay, no I just gathered that from context when we learned that Su She had played the second flute 😅

Oh Jin Ling 😥

Yes, life isn't fair. The world isn't fair. Frankly, there is no one in the cultivation world who isnt at least guilty of some crimes by virtue of doing nothing

BUT THAT'S NO REASON TO DECIDE TO BEST THEM AT THEIR OWN GANE BY BECOMING ARGUABLY EVEN WORSE THAN THEM!!!

Argh!

What an awesome shot!!! 😳😳😳

Sometimes this show's cinematography is just *chef's kiss*

"Women are trouble, especially those who have read a few books."

*takes a deep breath* *screams into pillow*

I'm good

I know patricite is frowned upon but ... that's the one thing i can't be angry at jgy for 🤷‍♀️

Not saying it's right, just that I'm not particularly angry about it 😅

Nooo! You won't dare to hurt the ONLY FUVKING PERSON WHO HAS ABSOLUTELY NO FAULT IN YOUR MISERY!

🤬

"He hid it inside his body"

He did what now? o__O

Ugh

Jiang Cheng offering himself up for Jin ling 😢

For a second there I thought the banging on the door was a gunshot and was REALLY confused 😅

Sometimes I forget Huaisang is even there and then they'll show his shocked and I'm like ohhhh you're still here 😅

Who?

Lan Sizhui! How is it that everyone in this town???

I swear to got if Lan Sizhui dies now I'm going feral 🤬

Mingjue! 😳

First of all I GOT ONE PREDICTION RIGHT! 🥳

But ... wasn't he in that coffin BEHIND them???

Hä?

Ah okay, it's wen Ning not Nie Mingjue

Explains why he was with Sizhui

I have a new kink. It's wwx controlling spirits by whistling 😳

Ohhh shit

Is this how jgy dies?

Holy shit that's a lot of blood

Awww, jiang Cheng called out for wwx with the same concern he called for Jin ling *sniff* :')

Ugh

Ugh

Another lost arm

Was it baxia or lwj? 😳

IT WAS LAN WANGJI! 😱

What? Why?

Why is it attacking Jin Ling???

Omg Wen Ning is still there 😭😭😭

Oh Wen Ning

So much stronger than anyone gives him credit for

I'm crying you guys 🥺

Oh my god

Guys ...

That little moment right here!!!!

Of Wei Wuxian using demonic cultivation and obviously Lan Xichen is worried, but Lan Wangji tells him, with just a glance that it's okay and then with an other glance to wwx that he trusts him. And there's a nod and a little smile from both of them. No words needed. And I don't even know if lan Wangji knows what wwx is planning exactly, but it doesn't matter because he trusts him without question and wwx knows it and accepts it and ... guys

It's such a little moment but it's EVERYTHING

A little nod and a smile

"I know you. I trust you"

This is it guys

This is endgame and I'm so so glad I started this show :')

I wish you guys could see how wide my smile is right now 💙🖤

JIANG CHENG KEPT CHENQING!!! 😭

How?

How am I even supposed to begin to describe what that expression makes me feel? 🥺

Now we have the perspective of the stygian tiger amulet? 😳

Ooh, dies he want to reunite the sword and Mingjue?

Shit

Why DID su she want to kill Huaisang??

Well that went differently than expected

Guess he's dead 😬

I don't quite understand where baxia came from btw

I know it was missing but I dont remember where we last saw it 🙈

Sure it's a great idea to bury the amulet? Wouldn't destroying it be safer? It's not like no one ever desecrates graves in this world 😬

Favourite wangxian specific trope: lwj will always be there to catch :') wwx apart from that one time but we don't talk about that

"I'm dying!" Gotta love Nie Huaisang 😂

Even now, Lan Xichen show jgy kindness

I'm in awe of that man

Ohhhh!

The paper butterfly!

Does Sizhui remember?

Um

What did Huaisang just do there?

Was that ... a lightbulb?

The fuck????

The fuck?????

Tbe fuck?????

Sjoiiiiiiittyvgybsnnhk

Chkckvh

Huaisang...

What?

He wasn't there

WHST????

WHAT?

Did Huaisang just ... purposefully get Xichen to stab jgy????

Or was that camera angle a misdirection?

WHAT'S HAPPENING?

Also Lan Xichen JUST STAPED JGY ON ACCIDENT!

He probably just killed him on accident!!!

What t f happened to my ship!?!? 😭

@sweetlittlevampire @fandom-glazed @elenirlachlagos @allhailthedramallama @luckymoony @kyrrahbird @i-love-him-on-purpose

No time for pleasantries!!! I'm off to the next episode 😳😬

[trensu]

Episode 24: The One where LWJ Starts to Question Everything (except his sexuality)

The episode starts like a bad PSA about peer pressure and consent, courtesy of JGS being an utter douchebag

But since this is a wangxian guide, we’re not gonna get into that!!

I will say, tho, that the yunmeng sibs tag-teamed this scene excellently bc hell yeah, DON’T MESS WITH YUNMENG JIANG, BRO

Blah blah boring banquet blah blah

Jgy invites everyone for a sleepover at Carp Tower later with fun party games here.

This is Important for future WangXiantics

Plot plot, jgs and jgy being sneaky power hungry assholes, plot plot

STFU NOBODY LIKES YOU

Lotus Pier Time!!

Stuff happens here

The only fun part was JC using his Zidian (FOREVER THE COOLEST OF ALL THE SPIRITUAL WEAPONS) to smash down the wen crest over their home

I want a zidian. someone Give me a snakey electric whip of my own plz

Oooh, here we get a little morsel of WangXiantics courtesy of the lan bros

Lwj is playing Magic Music in his room at the cloud recesses

He’s practicing! He’s very focused!

Lxc interrupts him

Lxc: rumor has it that you went to the library and checked out ALL the Magic Music books and have been practicing like an obsessive crazy person

Lxc: yeah, so just dropping by to see if that’s true…*pointedly looks at the two stacks of Magic Music books lwj has*

Lwj, in typical little brother behavior, does not acknowledge the questioning

Lwj: I want to enter the forbidden chamber in the library.

Lxc: what for?!?

Lwj: ...to study Magic Music

HE WANTS TO STUDY FORBIDDEN MAGIC MUSIC

BC THE NOT-FORBIDDEN MAGIC MUSIC ISN’T HELPING WWX!!

HE WANTS TO HELP WWX BC HE LOVES HIM AND THEY’RE SOULMATES!!

Okay so that happened and suddenly some Lan person interrupts them to let them know that their uncle wants to see them dun, Dun, DUUUUNNNNNN!!

Lan fam time!!

They’re mostly talking plot here, SO BORING

But we do get a tidbit of almost-wangxiantics

Lqr looks at lwj while talking Plot and says to him, “I’ve heard about wwx.” (re: wicked tricks, i’m assuming, if his expression is anything to go by)

And lwj’s face says “oh shit.”

But, like, in a subtle way bc this is lwj we’re talking about here

Blah blah more plot blah

Here’s a painful wangxian-adjacent scene bc this show exists to HURT US

Lqr: lxc, you go cleanse the battlefields with Magic Music. Lwj, you’ll stay here with me to copy the lan clan rule books bc they were damaged or smth 

Lqr: totally not a punishment

Lqr: completely not doing this to keep you away from wwx

Lqr: copying the books is SUPER important for Reasons

And lwj is a good boy so he accepts the BIGGEST FREAKING RULE BOOK I’VE EVER SEEN that lqr hands him

Just as lqr is walking away, lwj just DROPS TO HIS KNEES with no preamble

LITERALLY FALLS TO HIS KNEES, EYES LOWERED IN RESPECT

Lwj: grandmaster, i want to enter the forbidden chamber

HE’S PRACTICALLY GROVELING

Lqr: oh, have you finished all the books in the Not Forbidden Library?

WHAT A DOUCHE

Lwj: i want to enter the forbidden chamber

He’s still on his knees! Still respectfully lowering his gaze. STILL HOLDING THAT HUGE HEAVY BOOK THAT LQR GAVE HIM IN OUTSTRETCHED ARMS

(Take a moment here to admire the incredible arm strength required to hold out your arms while carrying something that heavy)

Lqr: if you haven’t, then there’s no need for you to be there

And then lqr just walks past lwj? Who’s still kneeling and practically frozen at the rejection?? Like, you can see him shut down emotionally

HOW COULD YOU DO THAT, LQR. HOW COULD YOU DO THAT TO YOUR NEPHEW WHO NEVER ASKS FOR ANYTHING AND ALWAYS DOES HIS DUTY??

Lwj doesn’t move until his brother pats him on the shoulder and EVEN THEN it takes him a minute to react

Lwj and lxc turn to leavE

Lqr: lwj…

Lwj turns around, his face going soft with hope for a split second!! BC MAYBE HIS UNCLE CHANGED HIS MIND AND IS GIVING HIM PERMISSION???

Lqr: do you understand why I’m not letting you go with lxc?

And then lqr doesn’t elaborate??? HE JUST DISMISSES THEM??

WHAT WAS THE POINT OF THAT??

GETTING LWJ’S HOPES UP FOR NOTHING!?!?!

Lwj wants to get Forbidden Magic Music bc his soulmate needs help

WHY WON’T YOU LET HIM HELP HIS SOULMATE, YOU BASTARD

We cut to Lotus Pier briefly to see JC do sect leader-y things and his sibs are super proud of him

Then we’re back with LWJ who’s on a patio sadly reading the GINORMOUS lan clan rule book

He’s in deep thought

“Eradicate evil, set up laws, and then Goodness is everlasting.”

Ah, yeah, this isn’t foreboding AT ALL, it’s not implying anything about the future of our ship AHAHA

Plot plot lotus pier time plot plot sad wwx & jc time plot plot

Oh, and now we’re in a wine house in yunmeng and wwx just invited lxc for a drink!

Wwx: *watches lxc knock back two shots like a boss*

Wwx: wow. You hold your liquor much better than lan zhan. Are you secretly drinking at the cloud recesses like i did~?

Lxc: *gives him a Look*

Wwx: ahaha, jk jk

Lxc: actually, i get rid of the alcohol using my golden core so it doesn’t count as drinking

(Uhh, pretty sure that’s not how it works, lxc. But whatever helps you sleep at night, i guess)

Wwx: so you’re cleansing things, huh? Lwj does that sort of thing too. Why isn’t he with you here in yunmeng, near my home, where i would be able watch him longingly from afar

Lxc: he was ordered to stay home to copy the lan clan rule book(s)

Wwx: !!!

Wwx: but there’s so many rules!! It’s unbearable!! HE’S PRACTICALLY IMPRISONED

Wwx: BUT HEY, i don’t have much going on, i’ll go with you to gusu! That way i can supervise lwj while he copies stuff like he did with me back in the day! It’ll be much more fun this way *cheeky grin*

Lxc: well….if you’re coming over, why don’t you listen to lwj play some Magic Music he learned? 

Lxc: you wouldn’t happen to know why he’s suddenly learning all the Magic Music do you?

And here wwx immediately goes on the defensive

It’s super frustrating

Wwx: your clan sure likes sticking their noses in other ppl’s business, huh?

RUDE

THAT WAS REALLY RUDE, WWX

ESPECIALLY WHEN YOU INVITED YOURSELF OVER TO BEGIN WITH

Lxc is too polite to rise to the bait

Lxc: lwj is my brother, i know him better than anyone. Even if you don’t want to listen, i have something to say to you

LXC LOVES HIS LITTLE BROTHER SO MUCH. HE’S SO CONCERNED FOR HIM

Lxc: if you were the only person in the world, you could do whatever you want without consequence. But you’re not the only person in the world. The people you care about are affected by your actions.

Aka YOU’RE MAKING MY LITTLE BROTHER SAD 

Lxc: if you trust me and lwj, please come to gusu so we can help you pick up the sword again

Aka PLEASE COME VISIT MY LITTLE BROTHER SO HE’S NOT SAD ANYMORE

Obvs wwx shuts that down real quick (and is cocky about it in a not-adorable way)

It was a good try, lxc. Better luck next time.

Yunmeng Bro Drama Happens

We’re ignoring this bc it makes me Sad and also has no wangxian stuff

Blah blah blah Stuff Happens more

Now we’re in the ancestral hall with jyl!! She and wwx have a super adorable moment

Well, okay, it’s kind of emotional at first where jyl is all do you not wanna live with us anymore?? And wwx is like NO, this is my HOME, we’ll be together FOREVER

*HYSTERICAL SOBBING* IT’S A LIEEEEE

And we’re gonna take a moment here to admire wwx’s hands. He’s got nice hands. Almost nice enough to distract from the future heartbreak!

Anyway

Wwx acts SUPER CUTE HERE, OMG

He rests his chin on jyl’s knee and whines about being a hungry toddler WITH A LITTLE POUT AND THEN A GIGGLY SMILE

HOW ARE YOU SO CUTE WWX

Oh, oh, here’s the wangxian bit THAT WE LOVE

Wwx: i have a question i want to ask you, jyl

Wwx: why would a person like another person? I mean, to like them so much? Asking for a friend

Jyl: why are you asking this suddenly? Do you have someone in your heart~? (jyl knows whats up, she’s our captain)

Wwx: NO, NO I’M NOT AT ALL CRUSHING ON ANYONE

He says, you know, LikE a LIaR

Wwx: there’s no need to like a person that much. Isn’t that like haltering your neck?

Idk why he’s even bothering with this

IT’S TOO LATE, WWX, YOU’RE ALREADY IN LOVE WITH LWJ

THERE’S NO GOING BACK

Now all three yunmeng sibs have a moment

Nothing super important happening

BUT THEN we cut to LWJ at the cloud recesses

We see that HE’S BROKEN INTO THE FORBIDDEN CHAMBER

He’s reading FORBIDDEN BOOKS IN THE FORBIDDEN CHAMBER

This, my friends, is the first time we see LWJ deliberately break the rules for wwx, the first time he questions an order and decides to go against it

AND IT WILL NOT BE THE LAST‼️

And that’s all the WangXiantics for this episode

They were all second-hand WangXiantics, tho

People talking around the subject rather than addressing it directly and our boys didn’t share screen time at all.

I’m giving it 6/10. Mostly bc wwx was adorable asking jyl that question and lwj takes his first foray into delinquency!

Return to Masterpost

[bottomlwjrights]

MO DAO ZU SHI REREAD:Thoughts™️....and Stuff

Chapter 43

Oh im trying so hard to stay calm as im about to read this but im so excited i love these chapters

Im really trying but even wwx making the effort to analyze lwj’s face is driving me nuts

Id just like to point out these chapters are titled “Allure”

Oh no this is like what he did when they were writing in the library

“Both his features and the hand at his forehead were impeccably fair in color. He looked as if he was a piece of fine jade”

Wwx was describing how lwj smells and how the sandalwood scent was warmed up by the wine and then said “the scent could almost be described as intoxicating” im gonna scream

“Now that Wei WuXian was near enough, the scent intertwined with his breaths. He couldn’t help but bent down further so that he was even closer to Lan WangJi. Vaguely, he thought to himself, Strange… Why is it starting to feel a bit hot in here?” Ohohoho

“Wei WuXian finally noticed that his heart was beating a bit too fast.” Shut uuuuuup

Okay im gonna lose my mind, i love wen ning

Also he left a man shaped dent in the ground when he fell

“Won’t you be a good boy?” Wwx calling lwj a good boy is canon so suck it i guess

Wwx brushing his fingers along lwj’s eyelashes is tender

Wwx, @ wn knealing in front of him: what the fuck are you doing? Stand up

Wwx obviously believes wn to be an equal to him, kneeling when he kneels, kowtowing when he kowtows until wn finally decides to stand in front of him

Wow anyways loved that ningxian moment

God....i feel so bad for wn...

Jin Ling....please...

This scene hurts me

Goddamn is wn someone who takes the blame for everything

Do NoT kiCk My BoY

Just a note, wwx does come to wn’s defense here, pulling lwj back and telling him to calm down

Wwx really doesnt like it when wn kneels to him

“Lan WangJi scrunched his brows and covered his ears. He then turned around with his back toward Wen Ning. Facing Wei WuXian, he used his own body to block their eye contact.” Lwj acts like such a little kid when he’s drunk oh my gosh

“Just as he was about to leave, Wei WuXian stopped him, ‘Wen Ning, why don’t you… find somewhere to hide first?’ Wen Ning paused for a second. Wei WuXian added, ‘One can say that you’ve died twice already. Go get some good rest.’” I dont care what anyone else says this is sweet “go get some good rest” 🤧

Lwj really took off his forehead ribbon for wwx without skipping a beat wow....

Oh and how wrong wwx is about it not holding any significance, he just doesnt know it yet

Trying to stay calm, trying not to scream about lwj taking off his forehead ribbon for wwx and then tying his wrists together with it

Knfnckc lwj reaching to take off wwx clothes again slnfckfk

“You said that you’ll listen to me, didn’t you? Be a good boy and take it off.” Twice in one chapter? Im being fed 

“Lan WangJi stared into the distance as he tugged at the ends of the forehead ribbon, contently swinging them around.” 🥺🥺🥺🥺 thats so cute

Ooooh lwj decided to show people when wwx said it would look bad on lwj if someone else saw them because he doesnt care if it makes him look bad hes gonna publicly claim wwx as his

Only ljy would hurl himself across a table to cover up a bottle of wine lmao

Lan WangJi is So shameless, holds up wwx’s hands tied with his forehead ribbon in front of his son and the other Lan disciples who know exactly what that means

Chapter 44

Chicken wing chicken wing

God im never gonna get over lsz shoving the chicken wing back into ljy’s mouth

Oh pls....lwj shoving wwx on the bed...

Oh!!! I forgot that after wwx said ow, lwj checked his head... he really didnt wanna hurt him

I really vibe with lwj being so concerned and gentle

“Sitting on the bed, Lan WangJi hugged his knees and clutched the hand that Wei WuXian had just licked to his chest, not moving at all.” I 🥺🥺🥺🥺

My god lwj was scared that he was gonna wipe it off 😭😭😭

Okay this is so so so cute, i dont care what anyone else thinks

“Hiding behind the screen, he showed only half of his fair-skinned face, peeking silently at the direction of Wei WuXian.” This tears me up

“You caught me”

“he enunciated each word with heavy emphasis and sounded anxiously eager” jakfncjfof gOD

Aw :( you’re not gonna lick me??? :(

Anyways lwj likes to be licked my wwx 👀

“Again clutching the hand that had been licked, he faced the wall silently.” Goddamnit this is so fucking cute 🥺🥺🥺🥺

Listen they should play chase or hide-and-seek post canon, like itd be so cute and sweet, somebody should hop on that 

“As he spoke, he held up one of Lan WangJi’s hands, bent down, and kissed between two of his slender fingers.” Listen im trying to not freak out but this is incredibly tender

“Wei WuXian’s lips pressed onto his distinct knuckles. Softer than the touch of feather, his breaths wandered to the back of his hand, and he kissed again.” This entire scene is too much

Hand and wrists kisses are so tender good god im gonna scream

“Over the clothing, he kissed where his heart was” jajfnkc so sweet!

“Suddenly, however, as Wei WuXian stared at those soft, pale-red lips, he didn’t know what had taken over him, but he suddenly went and kissed them.After the kiss, he even licked them, as though a kiss wasn’t enough.” AHHHHHHHH

I know that lwj wanted to deescalate the affection, but did he have to do it by knocking himself out???

“Even though he was drunk, even though he wouldn’t remember anything when he sobers up, I still shouldn’t have done something so outrageous… It’s too disrespectful to him.” This is important

God i love when characters touch their own lips after a kiss it’s such a good trope 

“In the future, it was best to not make Lan Zhan drink anymore” this is also important

Okay this was one of my favorite chapters to read so far

Chapter 45

I physically cannot handle lwj gently picking wwx up off the ground and putting him into bed right now

“... Wei WuXian could see Lan WangJi’s still-indifferent face. He immediately felt more awake...” i cannot

This entire scene is too tender for me, lwj rubbing ointments on wwx’s wrists...

Thinking about how wwx and lwj shared both their firsts kiss and how they’ve never kissed anybody except eachother

It makes sense that people including wwx would assume that lwj is straight bc thats what people do even in modern times (bc homophobia and heteronormativity) but also how tf does anyone think lwj is anything except gay

“It’s possible that he’s never even had such thoughts before…” “But judging from Lan Zhan’s habit of self-restraint, he’s probably really careful about not crossing any lines.” false.

Lwj just letting the juniors socialize, because hes good

Wwx once again taking any chance he can to bestow knowledge and wisdom upon the juniors, this time jl

“After the mention of Lan WangJi, Jin Ling looked to Wei WuXian in a strange way. He wanted to say something, but held it back, ‘You and HanGuang-Jun… Nevermind.It’s your own business. Anyways, I don’t care about you guys at all. Have fun being cut-sleeve. The disease is incurable.’”JIN LING 

“I already know the meaning behind the GusuLan Sect’s forehead ribbon. Now that it’s already like this, then stay by HanGuang-Jun’s side properly. Even if you’re a cut-sleeve, you should be a modest one. Don’t go about messing with other men, especially people from our sect! Or else, don’t blame the results on me.” Kandkckdkdn i can NOT

The scene kills me wow

As my reading buddy asked, why does wwx not mention wn when talking about how jc and lwj know who he is? Like does he not think thats pretty significant? especially bc thats one of the things that tipped jc off

LWJ IS SO SASSY 😨

Also pls stop picking on him about his memory

Ahhh the damsel of annual blossoms...

God i love wwx.....

Did lwj write the book that lsz read this from......

“Although still expressionless, an unusual glint hid beneath his eyes. He looked as though he was laughing at him.”

GOD “Wei WuXian’s heart skipped a beat and then thumped faster and faster.”

Lsz is the one to tell wwx about the meaning of the forehead ribbon

The lan juniors blushing thinking about what wwx means to lwj

Once again, wwx describing lwjs appearance in depth, talking about how dashing he is

“Along with that overly-pretty face of Lan WangJi’s, now that they met again, Wei WuXian’s eyes had momentarily been blinded by his looks, failing to immediately recognize him.”

“Softer than even the touch of catkin blossoms carried by the wind, the object made Wei WuXian’s cheek itch....The ends of his forehead ribbon danced in the breeze, gently brushing against Wei WuXian’s face.” Wow....i love this imagery with all my heart

The way that somethings are worded in this novel is just so beautiful

Lxc and the others lan sect disciples reactions....

Yanno the lan disciple who whispered “a man” definitely wasnt making things better, considering lwj definitely had a crush on wwx at this point

“He seems a bit too excited. It seems like he really loves HanGuang-Jun a lot. Look at how happy he is…” WHICH LAN SAID THIS

Wwx is so mortified by this entire situation because he kept violating something sacred to lwj, doing something so intimate like touching his forehead ribbon without his consent and he didn’t even really know that he was doing it 

[fatalism-and-villainy]

Untamed/MDZS salt? :D 1. What OTPs in your fandom(s) do you just not get? 11. Is there an unpopular character you like that the fandom doesn’t? Why? 17. Instead of XYZ happening, I would have made ABC happen ...

1. What OTPs in your fandom(s) do you just not get? 

Oh, so many...

N/ielan is one of the big ones - I guess I just don’t pick up on any passion or chemistry between them that would lead me to ship them? I get that the childhood friends schtick might appeal to some people (although I’m not actually sure if that’s canon or just fanon?) but when people insist there’s scorching homoeroticism between them... yeah I don’t see it. (Like, I saw someone say something like “the amount of homoeroticism LXC has in his scenes with JGY and NMJ is incredible” and uhhh. HOW are those two relationships comparable in how they’re acted lmao.)

I think S/angcheng is the other big one for me - so often it seems to get treated like a “default” relationship alongside wangxian, when it feels very “pair the spares” to me. And I don’t get why this ship is so popular particularly in CQL fandom, where WWX/NHS has much more canon backing. (I mean, I guess in that case people don’t want to split up the main pairing, because many people take “shipping” to mean “who you want the character to end up with/be a couple with”? But that’s pretty alien to how I approach shipping.)

11. Is there an unpopular character you like that the fandom doesn’t? Why?

(also asked by @winepresswrath)

Not really, actually? I think the closest is Su She, because I very strongly reject the way we are supposed to side with the Lans who are sneering at him and hate how his perspective isn’t given more sympathy. And I will say I don’t get why people in fandom seem to have such a visceral gross-out reaction to him (like that appreciation for the villains in MDZS post that was basically “and none for Su She, bye”). That said, I don’t think I’m quite passionate enough about him or think about him enough to count him as one of my faves. And a lot of the Su She apologism community seems to ship him with JGY, which I’m not very interested in XD

The other contender would be Wang Lingjiao, because she was so much fun to watch onscreen and I think she also gets a disproportionate amount of vitriol from the fandom (she’s just a fun campy villain trying to make her way in life!), and I wish she’d had a better character arc. But again, not one of my absolute favourites. 

There are some characters I adore who are pretty vehemently hated by certain contingents (thinking mainly of JGY and Jiang Cheng), but they both have pretty large and devoted fanbases, so I don’t think they could be classed as “unpopular,” just “controversial.” 

17. Instead of XYZ happening, I would have made ABC happen ...

I assume this means in canon? I think the biggest one for me right now is “actually engage more with Mo Xuanyu’s legacy.” We know next to nothing about him! Wei Wuxian is never curious about him, except when it relates to the plot (i.e. figuring out why he got kicked out of Koi Tower), there’s no engagement with the question of what it’s like to inhabit someone else’s body (I tend to ignore this part of the novel because I find it kind of squicky, but if it’s there it should be engaged with), and there’s no coming to terms with the fact that someone sacrificed their life and soul for him.

Like, what feels especially egregious for me is that Wei Wuxian being reincarnated into the body of a gay social outcast obviously has symbolic/thematic relevance. And yet aside from the (extremely funny) moment where he wonders if he’s having gay thoughts because he’s in Mo Xuanyu’s body, Wei Wuxian doesn’t really seem to identify with Mo Xuanyu very much. You’d think that realizing he’s queer in particular would cause him to reflect on Mo Xuanyu’s status, or at least feel bad about the way he played up Mo Xuanyu’s Gay and Crazy schtick for fun and profit. And yet there’s no mention of him doing that reflection, even though near the end of the book he does feel a brief moment of sympathy for Jin Guangyao upon realizing that JGY has taken up his own former status as a scapegoat. So yeah, it’s frustrating.  

[robininthelabyrinth]

Thank you "Worthwhile Trade". The idea of Baxia turning into an guai is so interesting. I liked imagining the part where she hit NMJ for his idiocy. My brain is projecting "married couple" vibes, omg. I admit despite how weird WWX spoke about the events, the time travel part flew over my head until the tags spelled it out for me. (TBC)

(Cont'd) Also... did NMJ mean it in THAT dual-thing way when talking WRH's prefs? And the last part, where WWX used resentful energy to sub NMJ's qi. I assume he can still cultivate since his core's still there, if emptied? But I wonder what'll happen to his energy once restored Can't help but think his renewed qi will inevitably be affected by the traces of the previous energy that once circulated. He's not going to become a walking stygian tiger or something, is he? Off the wall guess, sorry!

----

sequel to Worthwhile Trade (ao3), also on tumblr

Wei Wuxian didn’t understand Nie Mingjue.

He didn’t understand the way he thought, the way he acted – the way he smiled when he woke up, the way he opened his arms when Nie Huaisang threw himself into them with a wail and said, “It was worth it for you, didi; it always is if it’s for you. Don’t you know that?” the way Wei Wuxian had always shamefully thought of saying, as if something like that could just be said like that, out in the open.

The way Nie Mingjue shrugged when the doctors said his cultivation would likely never recover, that he should have died, that they didn’t understand why he hadn’t; the way he said, seeming even satisfied, that it was a worthwhile trade.

It’s not a trade, Wei Wuxian wanted to scream at him. It’s a sacrifice! It hurts and you’re sad, no, worse, you’re resentful about it and you shouldn’t be because it was your choice, your decision, but you see someone else with everything that you worked so hard for and you’re angry when you shouldn’t be angry and you feel bad and you turn away; it hurts them when you do and you’re glad, you miserable thing, you’re happy that they’re hurt because why should you be the only one whose hurt –

Perhaps the problem wasn’t that he didn’t understand Nie Mingjue.

Perhaps it was only that he saw in Nie Mingjue his own faults, his own deficiencies, the ones he’d tried so hard to hide in the sea of his poor memory.

“You’ll die if you don’t find a way to cultivate,” he said instead, hovering by the door. He’d say that he didn’t mean to ruin the mood, but he kind of did, and Baxia’s eyes on him were cold as if she knew.

As if she knew everything.

How he’d gone back to the past, how he’d changed things, how it was his fault that Nie Mingjue – who’d never done a single thing to hurt him, who’d been upright and righteous and good and whose brother loved him enough to –

Wei Wuxian had made a point of avoiding Baxia.

Not that she was that easy to avoid. She was tall for a woman – not as tall as Nie Mingjue, but proportionate to him in the sense that she was as much taller than the average woman as he was taller than the average man – and she walked as though people should flee before her, a tread that only felt heavy because of the almost visceral rage that surrounded her like a cloud.

Nie Huaisang had found robes for her, somehow, and they were the least feminine robes Wei Wuxian had ever seen a woman wear, though he supposed he still hadn’t seen that given that Baxia wasn’t exactly a woman.  Cut in a martial style, a dark shimmering grey that seemed in some lights to be almost red – she had been born as a human in a mantle of blood and she would not let anyone forget it.

“I should have died already,” Nie Mingjue said, as if the world’s scariest guai didn’t have her hand on his shoulder right next to his vulnerable neck. “You came up with a solution, Wei-gongzi, and for that I thank you. Even if we are not able to solve the next stage, being able to see my loved ones is worthwhile.”

Wei Wuxian could learn to hate that word.

“I have a solution, of a sort,” he said, irritated and not entirely because his reveal had been preempted. He’d hoped to sort of ease into it, somehow. “You lack the capacity for regular cultivation, but that doesn’t mean you can’t use demonic cultivation.”

“What? No, we can’t do that,” Nie Huaisang said, biting his fingers anxiously. “Anyway, doesn’t demonic cultivation harm the temperament?”

“You mean my temperament can get worse?” Nie Mingjue teased, and Nie Huaisang smacked him so lightly that it didn’t even displace his clothing. “I don’t know any means of demonic cultivation, Wei-gongzi –”

“Call me Wei Wuxian,” Wei Wuxian said. “Please.”

“Wei Wuxian, then,” Nie Mingjue said. “All the methods I’ve ever heard of were forbidden for very good reasons – but perhaps those conditions are not the same in the method you know.”

Wei Wuxian tensed. “How do you know that I know one?”

“You saved me, didn’t you?” Nie Mingjue said practically, and well, yes, Wei Wuxian supposed he had a point – “And anyway, Baxia can tell.”

Wei Wuxian shivered. “I don’t use it,” he argued. “How can she tell?”

At Nie Huaisang’s instigation, Baxia had recently started experimenting with smiles. She put one on her face now.

It was terrifying.

“Tell me about it,” Nie Mingjue requested. “The powers and the price, all of it.”

“You’re actually considering this?” Nie Huaisang exclaimed. “But da-ge…!”

“Wei Wuxian was not wrong when he said that I would die if I didn’t find a way to cultivate despite having given up what I have,” Nie Mingjue said. “If I die, what will you do?”

Oh, not much, just become a mastermind capable of puppeting the entire cultivation world to enact revenge for your death. Nothing big.

“But – da-ge has always put such a priority on remaining on the righteous path…”

“That’s why I asked about the costs,” Nie Mingjue said patiently. “I will not abandon righteousness simply because I adopt a new method of cultivating.”

“Everyone will revile you even if you are righteous,” Wei Wuxian warned him.

Nie Mingjue shrugged. “Who is everyone? What do I care for them? You do the right thing because it is right, not for the sake of fame.”

Wei Wuxian had once thought the same.

“If everyone in the cultivation world thinks you are evil, they will paint you as evil no matter what you do,” he insisted. “No matter how righteous your motives –”

“Let them think he’s evil, then!” Nie Huaisang exclaimed. “He could be the most black-hearted cultivator in the land, but he’s still my da-ge; my Nie sect and I will protect him!”

“Huaisang! No! That is not how righteousness works – if I ever truly become evil, you are to cut me off at once, kill me if necessary –”

“No way!”

“Huaisang – Baxia, tell him; evil cannot be endured –”

Baxia was looking at her fingernails. She’d picked that gesture up from Sect Leader Ouyang, when he was trying to be pointed about ignoring someone; it was extremely irritating to absolutely everyone who wanted to know who she was and what she was doing here and Nie Huaisang and Wei Wuxian had teamed up to convince her to keep doing it.

Possibly a mistake, in retrospect.

“Baxia. I know you agree with me on this. Evil is evil, and must be eradicated no matter who it may be.”

She gave him an unimpressed look.

“I know I’m not evil yet,” Nie Mingjue argued, apparently understanding her without any difficulty whatsoever. He’d just woken up from a month-long coma and he could already speak fluent human-saber, it was really unfair. And this man had succumbed to Jin Guangyao’s wiles? Lan Xichen had more to answer for than he knew. “But if I ever become evil – what? No, we will not burn that bridge when we come to it, that’s not even the right idiom, who is teaching you these things –”

Nie Huaisang coughed and hid his face behind a fan.

Wei Wuxian was not going to laugh.

Nie Mingjue growled at them all and turned back to Wei Wuxian. “Explain,” he demanded. “The rest of you, out.”

“But –”

“Out. One of us has to cultivate the righteous path, and if it can’t be me, it has to be you. Baxia?”

She picked Nie Huaisang up by his collar, for all the world like a mother dog picking up her pup by the scruff of its neck, and walked out.

Nie Mingjue picked up demonic cultivation faster than anyone else Wei Wuxian had ever met or even heard of. He wasn’t sure if that demonstrated an unnerving aptitude or if it was simply that Nie Mingjue was surpassingly talented – Wei Wuxian had never met anyone like himself before, someone for whom all things came easy, and it was an unexpected delight to meet a kindred soul somewhere where he’d long ago given up hope. He’d never planned to unveil demonic cultivation in this life unless he truly needed it – he didn’t want to hurt his Lan Zhan the way he had in his first life, and anyway Jiang Cheng and Uncle Jiang and Madame Yu were all alive, with hundreds of Jiang sect members to boot, there was no need for his sacrifice – but the part of him that was more researcher and inventor than cultivator luxuriated in their discussions.

Nie Mingjue was a lot more concerned than Wei Wuxian had ever been with consequences, and how to mitigate them, but he supposed that made sense: losing his cultivation hadn’t impacted that Nie temper one bit, and demonic cultivation was likely to make things worse. Moreover, Nie Mingjue was simply who he was, stiff and unbending, as much steel in his spine as in Baxia’s; he could almost be described as being rigid in his thinking except for the fact that he was in fact seriously considering becoming a demonic cultivator.

“We’re saber cultivators,” Nie Mingjue said when Wei Wuxian tentatively brought it up. “Like a saber, our nature is to be firm and unyielding, not flexible like the sword, but we cannot allow ourselves to become too rigid – a too-rigid saber will break upon encountering an obstacle. It’s a difficult balance to keep, and one made more difficult by our cultivation style.”

“The demonic cultivation aspects, you mean? Using yao to refine your saber spirit?”

“One day, though not today, I’m going to ask you how you know about that,” Nie Mingjue remarked, and although his tone was causal Wei Wuxian’s back went cold. “And I’ll expect you to tell me the truth when I do. But not today. Anyway, yes, that’s what I mean. Do you know what they mean when they say that demonic cultivation harms the temperament?”

Wei Wuxian hesitated. “I assume you’re going to tell me something other than ‘it drives you crazy and makes you kill people’?”

Nie Mingjue snorted. “Sometimes I wonder how someone as smart as you got sent home before you finished your lessons at the Cloud Recesses, but other times it’s fairly obvious.”

Wei Wuxian shrugged, embarrassed.

“Do you really not know?”

“No one taught this to me,” Wei Wuxian said, stung. “I came up with it on my own. How would I know?”

“All demonic cultivation has the same root,” Nie Mingjue said. “Obsession.”

“With killing, yeah, I know, I’ve heard it a million times –”

“Shut up and listen, you impertinent brat. The killing comes later. It starts with obsession. Obsession with righteousness, obsession with love, obsession with the pleasures of this world, with power – a human becomes a demon when they cannot overcome the obsessions within their heart, and the obsession consumes them. In time, a demonic cultivator who is obsessed with power will do whatever it takes to obtain that power, and not mind the blood shed to do it; a demonic cultivator who is obsessed with love will kill everyone who they perceive stands between them and their love, a demonic cultivator who is obsessed with righteousness will turn to murder when in their judgment something that ought to be condemned goes unpunished…”

“What about one who only wants what’s best for his family?” Wei Wuxian said, and he did not know if the challenge in his voice was about Nie Mingjue’s future or his own past.

Nie Mingjue shrugged. “Two roads that I can see: first, their family turns away from them for what they have become and they become vicious with the abandonment, becoming quick to lash out against the world and eventually doing something that causes the world to turn against them.  Second, their family stands by them, and eventually the world causes some harm to them – and the demonic cultivator turns to madness in revenge.”

“Not exactly an optimistic outlook.”

“Not especially, no.”

“You don’t seem as concerned by that as I would have thought.”

Nie Mingjue’s lips twitched. “I have a solution.”

“Would you like to share?”

“Using resentful energy to cultivate our sabers makes them prone to obsession, driving them ceaselessly to fight evil, destroy it, without discrimination. It makes them stronger, but also more dangerous – and that is why they must be carefully controlled.”

Wei Wuxian frowned. “So, what? You’re going to be the saber now? Under whose control?”

“Huaisang’s, of course,” Nie Mingjue said, as if it were obvious. “For better or for worse, he is sect leader now. Who else would it be?”

“But – what if you disagree? What if he wants to do things one way, and you another –”

“Then I argue and probably yell a lot, and if in the end he still insists on doing things his way, I listen,” Nie Mingjue said dryly. “That’s how hierarchy works. Isn’t it the same for you? When your shidi, Jiang Cheng, becomes sect leader, you’ll need to listen to him – or leave the sect. There’s no middle ground.”

Wei Wuxian scowled.

“A sect leader that can’t control his disciples is worse than a demonic cultivator,” Nie Mingjue said. “He’s weak. A target, ripe to be ripped apart and devoured by other sects – resources raided, disciples poached, responsibilities taken away...It’s not a fate I would wish on anyone. If you can’t commit to obeying, commit to leaving so that you don’t end up promising more than you can give.”

Ouch.

Just – ouch.

Great advice, fantastic advice, world-class advice, and totally useless because Jiang Cheng had travelled back in time with him and was therefore convinced that Wei Wuxian was just looking for the first way out of the Jiang sect he could find, no matter what Wei Wuxian said or did about it.

(Even Madame Yu was concerned by the new coldness in their relationship and had tried to talk to him about it, which – Wei Wuxian didn’t know what to do with that. It didn’t match any of what he had thought he’d understood.)

He decided to focus back in on the demonic cultivation lessons, shifting from theoretical discussions to the practical, and that, unfortunately, was when they encountered an issue.

“What do you mean you can’t play an instrument?” Wei Wuxian demanded, appalled. “It’s one of the Six Arts! Everyone can play some sort of instrument – even Nie Huaisang plays an instrument!”

“Everyone agreed it was better that I stop learning,” Nie Mingjue said defensively. “It’s all just plucking on strings or blowing air in pipes, and yet no matter that I did exactly what the teacher said to do, it never worked, that’s all.”

“Didn’t Zewu-jun offer to teach you…?”

“He did. And then he said it would be better if we stopped, too.”

The reason, Wei Wuxian soon learned, was that Nie Mingjue was almost completely tone deaf, and the only reason it was almost was that he was still capable of differentiating speech.

“I agree with the majority,” he said after an extremely frustrating day. “Stop. Never pick up an instrument ever again. And don’t let anyone but Zewu-jun play something especially for you, either, okay? Even if they’re highly recommended.”

“An interesting request,” Nie Mingjue said, eyebrows arched skeptically. “May I ask why?”

“Because you’ll have no idea if they’ve changed the music on you,” Wei Wuxian said bluntly. A great deal about the man’s murder in a different life made sense now, and Jin Guangyao’s brilliance in hiding the score of Turmoil inside of Clarity was a little less impressive when played to a man who thought all music, without exception, was just plucking strings or blowing air. “Musical cultivation is deadly in the right hands, especially if you lower your defenses against it. Just consider it a precaution.”

Nie Mingjue’s eyebrows remained arched, but he hummed in agreement.

“I guess we’ll have to think of a new way for you to cultivate demonic cultivation,” Wei Wuxian said, rubbing his face. He had not been planning on having to invent demonic cultivation at all in this life, and now he needed to not only ‘invent’ the original but actually come up with something new. Why was his life so hard? “How did you previously manipulate external energy?”

“With Baxia.”

“Well, that’s not helpful, is it? You can’t wield a human being. Perhaps another saber…?”

That didn’t work, primarily because it turned out that Baxia had strong feelings about Nie Mingjue even thinking about using another saber and well, as far as Wei Wuxian was concerned, whatever Baxia wanted, Baxia got.

(Nie Huaisang had had to go to Heijan once, with Wei Wuxian and Baxia accompanying him since Nie Mingjue wasn’t ready yet, and some unlucky Wen captain had tried to ambush them. That captain, and his squad, were not granted the courtesy of an intact corpse, and Baxia hadn’t even gotten a speck of blood on her nice new robes – no, Wei Wuxian would not be crossing Baxia any time soon.)

“There’s got to be something,” Wei Wuxian said, and Nie Mingjue agreed, and in the end they found something.

Nie Mingjue had been absent-mindedly playing around with one of Nie Huaisang’s fans when one of the fierce corpses Wei Wuxian had raised as practice targets had gotten loose; instinct had taken over and Nie Mingjue had lashed out with the weapon at hand as if it were a saber, and the resentful energy had surged in response –

Baxia was apparently not threatened by the notion of her master using a fan as a weapon, not even one inlaid with steel and heavy cloth with enough layers to catch a sword in.

(If Wei Wuxian needed to go have some time to himself at the sight of Nie Huaisang, dressed as a sect leader with his saber always at his side, standing next to Nie Mingjue holding a fan – well, that was his problem, and also one he intended to show to Jiang Cheng at the next possible opportunity. Someone else deserved to have their mind wrecked by the incongruity as much as he had.)

Even without the weirdness of Nie Mingjue, it was more than a little odd to see Nie Huaisang in the robes of a sect leader without him acting like the Head-shaker. The shock of having to become sect leader had fallen heavily on him: he had become a little more serious, a little more earnest (though still a bit frivolous); he was more inclined to listen and think things over, less inclined to run away.

“If da-ge is going to become a demonic cultivator, someone needs to stand behind him,” Nie Huaisang said simply when Wei Wuxian had tried probing. “He’s always held the world up for me – it’s the least I can do for him. I may not be able to do much, I might be terrible at it, but I owe it to him to at least try.”

Wei Wuxian wondered, sometimes, if Jiang Cheng would have stood up for him if only he had trusted in him, believed in him, the way Nie Mingjue believed in his notoriously useless little brother.

Maybe he’d ask, when he went back to the Jiang sect.

Maybe he’d –

“What the fuck is wrong with you,” Jiang Cheng said as a greeting, and for once Uncle Jiang didn’t disagree. “All those letters and you never once mentioned the terrors?”

“The what,” Wei Wuxian said, and that was how he learned that while he was on his way back to Yunmeng neither Baxia nor Nie Mingjue had wasted any time utilizing their newfound skills out on the battlefield.

Nie Huaisang was never going to be a particularly respected sect leader, especially by those that had met him beforehand, but evidently that wasn’t really important given that he was constantly flanked by what was being called the two terrors of Qinghe.

Nie Mingjue preferred darker colors now that he was no longer sect leader, the same dark grey shading towards black that Baxia had selected for herself, and the selection somehow made him seem even taller, verging on inhuman, and Baxia standing beside him, her human features patterned roughly after his, made the two of them appear a matched set. Nie Mingjue wielded the fan that Wei Wuxian had helped him design, which he had forged with his own hands out of the metal from the Xuanwu’s cave that Wei Wuxian had foolishly figured someone ought to get some use out of, painted over with a cinnabar array in Nie Huaisang’s careful brushstrokes, and in his hands it was both weapon and conduit for the raising of armies of corpses. Baxia, for her part, held nothing but required nothing, a sweeping gesture of her hand more devastating than a dozen blows with the saber.

They were terrifying, a nightmare writ large and unmistakably dangerous, undeniably demonic cultivators in a way that was entirely different from Wei Wuxian’s own dramatics, and it unnerved the rest of the cultivation world the way Wei Wuxian had feared it would.

“It won’t be a problem,” Jiang Cheng said impatiently. “The Nie sect are ascending in strength, and this only adds to their mystique – who would challenge them?”

“Uh, Jin Guangshan,” Wei Wuxian said. “Like last time?”

Jiang Cheng huffed. “At this rate, I don’t even think Jin Guangyao will bother defecting to the Jin sect,” he said. “Not if he knows how to play his cards right. The Nie sect’s strength in the original version was never about Chifeng-zun’s skill with the blade alone. It was the whole sect’s strength, with Chifeng-zun’s ability to wield them as skillfully as he did his saber; he’s an outstanding general. And now they have him as a general, him as a demonic cultivator, and whatever the fuck is going on with Lady Baxia –”

“I already told you. She’s a guai.”

“Like I already told you, it doesn’t matter how many times you say that, I will immediately expel the knowledge from my mind and you should too. ‘Immortal cultivator cousin that my brother named his saber after’, like what Nie Huaisang has been putting about, is a perfectly acceptable cover story.”

“And the fact that his saber disappeared at the same time?”

“Coincidence,” Jiang Cheng said firmly. “And we’re sticking with that. Anyway, the point is that if you’re an ambitious man, the Nie sect is the place to be right now and probably will continue to be in the future. This is going to be evident to both Jin Guangshan and the future Jin Guangyao, and we’ll need to deal with that.”

“I’ll keep an eye out,” Wei Wuxian promised. “After rescuing Chifeng-zun and helping with the demonic cultivation, I’ve gotten pretty close to them.”

“Mm. And how about your other mission?”

Wei Wuxian scowled at the smirk on Jiang Cheng’s face. “You know perfectly well that I haven’t had any time to seduce Lan Wangji, what with how busy I’ve been. I don’t even know for sure if he likes me yet -!”

“You’re an idiot, he does, and you’re not allowed to keep us all in suspense for two decades this time. Figure it out.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means that I’m sticking you with the job of being an information courier and you leave for the Lan sect front line tomorrow.”

“You are the best shidi ever,” Wei Wuxian said, and meant it.

Jiang Cheng huffed. “Yeah, well,” he said as if his cheeks weren’t red. “Remember that in the future. In this life we’re the Twin Heroes, you hear me? No take-backs.”

Nie Mingjue was right: Wei Wuxian would need to either learn to obey or tell Jiang Cheng early on that he was leaving, and walking a path in the middle would only cause heartbreak all over again.

“Okay,” he said, deciding to ask Lan Wangji for advice on obedience. Surely that was something that could be learned? “Deal. You do know that that means Lan Wangji’s going to have to marry in, right?”

“Oh no,” Jiang Cheng said, voice entirely flat. “How terrible. I’ll find a way to manage dealing with that ice block somehow…listen, I don’t care if you end up calling him Wei Sizhui in this life, but don’t ruin his character. He was perfectly nice.”

“I don’t know if he’s even been born yet,” Wei Wuxian said glumly. “I’ve been looking, but…”

“I’ve asked some of Mother’s spies to keep track of Wen Ning and Wen Qing,” Jiang Cheng said. “Collecting evidence we’ll need for their inevitable post-war trial, assuming we want them to live better lives than just refugees. Give it time, we’ll find him.”

“Now I just need to see if Lan Wangji will want to raise children with me…”

“Wei Wuxian. I don’t care. Go.”

[crossdressingdeath]

I can't say that there's much about CQL that I care too much for, but 1 thing that I really like is (it's been a while since I watched it so my memory might be foggy) the scene where LWJ is kneeling in the snow holding the cane after his visit to Yiling. It implies that LWJ did say something in WWX and the remnants favor and was punished for it. Either as a warning in a "this is what will happen if you stray again" or they were actively deciding whether to physically punish him as he knelt outside. It would also make some sort of sense on why he didn't seek WWX out anytime after the Yiling visit if he was on a tighter leash. I like using this in my fics when dealing with the time between his visit and the 1 month celebration.

This blank space in LWJs story is both fun and frustrating. Fun cause a fic writer can do so much here writing from his pov. Frustrating cause like bro... What were you doing whilst the love of your life was raising a child on Haunted Corpse Mountain? He specifically sought out WWX 3 times after the SSC and eventually committed treason for him, even if the last one was more impulsive IMO this scenario seems in line with what LWJ would do and start him on the path of questioning things he had taken for granted as true

I guess? But also I’m... not sure I actually like it. See, it kind of gives this sense that LWJ is being punished for associating with WWX. Like, that is pushed so hard in CQL, “Do not associate with evil” and all that. But that’s not the vibe I got from the novel. LWJ was punished for his actions in relation to WWX, yes, and LXC and LQR both blame WWX for “corrupting” LWJ, but I never got the sense that LWJ was being punished for caring about WWX. He was punished for attacking his elders, not because he attacked them for WWX. And that feels important to me? Like, LWJ’s family doesn’t approve of his relationship with WWX but they accept it and don’t punish him for it. I don’t know, maybe I’m just being queer, but a gay man in a society that is explicitly homophobic never getting punished for his love for and later relationship with another man even when he’s punished for the (genuinely and understandably Very Much Not Allowed) things he does because of those feelings feels important. LWJ gets punished, but not because he’s in love with WWX; it’s because his love for WWX leads him to commit treason. WWX is blamed for that, but he’s not actually the reason LWJ is being punished. Meanwhile in CQL... yeah, LWJ is very much being punished for his association with WWX, especially if you’re right and in the scene with the cane he’s being punished for arguing in WWX’s defence. I got the sense that the reason why any attempt LWJ made to argue for WWX and the Wens never comes up is because the Lans kept it quiet because LWJ would be in deep shit if it came out that he’d tried to protect the Yiling Patriarch. No one knows that LWJ was whipped for fighting his own elders to protect WWX (or even that he was whipped at all, as far as I remember) because again, the Lans protected him. There were consequences, but the Lan sect very much did close ranks around him and defend him from what would happen if the sects found out that he was in love with and had tried to help the Yiling Patriarch. Again, maybe this is me being queer, but the idea of a group punishing a member of that group for their actual wrongdoings but also not letting them be punished by an unfair and bigoted world for something they did out of love and that didn’t do any serious or lasting harm (sect leader’s brother or no, if LWJ had done serious and/or permanent damage to the elders he would’ve been in even deeper shit than he was) feels really really important. So CQL changing that and making it clear that LWJ is being punished for his feelings for WWX with the repeated “Do not associate with evil” line and if I remember right removing the fight with the elders from the story... in a version of the story that censors the gay relationship and makes it just Straight With Subtext... well, I do not like that. To make it a little more blatant, I’m pretty sure the “Do not associate with evil” rule only appears in CQL. It may exist in MDZS, but it never comes up.

The blank space in LWJ’s timeline between visits to the Burial Mounds is interesting, and there’s a lot you can do with it, but... making it so that the Lan sect, the sect that defended him from the consequences the other sects would make him face for being in love with WWX and helped raise WWX and LWJ’s kinda-sorta son and sheltered WWX when LWJ brought him back to the Cloud Recesses (even if most of them didn’t know about those two things) and accepted LWJ’s marriage even though they really didn’t like WWX, kept him from helping the Wens and punished him for trying to defend the man he loved isn’t exactly how I’d do it. Especially since there isn’t actually anything suggesting that LWJ was punished for going to Yiling in the book, mostly because... well, why would he be, there’s no rule against it and no mention of him being ordered to stay away from Yiling or WWX, and there’s no word about a rule against trying to defend someone from accusations (except the rule against lying, which the Lans know him well enough to know he wouldn’t do; at worst they’ll assume that he’s letting WWX lie to him and letting himself be convinced that the Evil Yiling Patriarch isn’t actually evil). At this point LWJ has done nothing worthy of punishment. LWJ doesn’t have to be punished for being in love with WWX to start questioning what he was raised to believe, he starts questioning what he was raised to believe because WWX dies! LWJ loves him and believes in his moral compass and he dies anyway! Righteousness alone isn’t enough, because WWX was one of the most righteous people LWJ knew and the sects killed him! So actually, making it so that he reconsiders what he’s learned when it negatively affects him instead of because he tried every rule-abiding method he could think of to help WWX and it did nothing actually weakens his character a bit. By the time he’s committing treason for WWX he’s started to change; he’s given up on following the rules and is willing to do whatever it takes to save the person he loves, and even then it’s not enough. That’s what changes him, not his punishment. It’s the realisation that the sects are not righteous, at least not when acting as a collective with mob mentality in full swing. Every individual Lan we meet is righteous! But only as individuals. As a group they’re just as bad as everyone else.

...This is getting away from me a bit. I guess what I’m trying to say is that while I see your point I think the scene where LWJ is punished with having to hold that cane up is just another aspect of CQL shifting from LWJ being punished for going against his sect’s rules to LWJ getting punished for his feelings for WWX, which wouldn’t be a good look even without the censoring of any aspect that was explicitly gay, so I find it hard to look at it in any sort of positive way. 

Also, it’s not as fun as handstands.

[eyeslikefoxglove]

Episode 21 - The PTSD is strong with this one & we need more braincells

Hello hello! Welcome to the commentary. How’s everyone? I’m frozen solid because it’s mid-June in Spain and yet we had 11°C yesterday. Fucking awesome!

I AM NOT WEARING MASCARA SO I CAN CRY ALL I WANT. I DONT KNOW IF THATS GOOD OR BAD THO.

Can I just take a second to appreciate how much this big strong powerful men emote? I mean, I know this isn’t western media where the tough guy can’t show emotions, and I don’t know that eastern media has the same hangups about men emoting but just... it’s so refreshing.

Huaisang bb you’re so sweet.

Oh, oh the PTSD is strong with this one.

Also, bless both JC and NHS, they absolutely noticed WWX flinch and, in their own ways, went and steamrolled over it so WWX wouldn’t feel scrutinised.

WE INTERRUPT THIS BROADCAST TO INFORM YALL THAT I GOT A KITTEN ON MY LAP. (She’s kneading my boob, which, ow, but...)

*BICHEN GRIIIIIIIP*

How do y’all think the guards go deliver bad news to WRH? Like do they paper-rock-scissor it? Draw straws?

NMJ did you have to?

And once again I wonder what would’ve happened if JFM had let sect leader Yao kick it.

Ughvhfnevus it’s this clown. Same as with Su She, if you see a bunch of screaming it’s just me not wanting to listen to Jin ZiXun.

The Nies: let’s throw a banquet to honour WWX’s return

Every asshole there: *gossips about WWX while in the room with him*

Once again I wish I could transmigrate (and speak mandarin lol) and just start delivering tongue lashings.

Listen, I have no idea how to play Guqin, but I did play the guitar for years and even from here I can see how much YiBo’s hands don’t match the melody. Nothing against him but why does this always happen? I know they got classes, so was the music not written by that time or something? Because one thing is not hitting the correct notes, another is plucking slow notes when the tempo is much faster.

JC: Since yours and LWJ’s unhappy separation...

My dumbass: do you mean breakup? *eyebrow waggle*

You will pry my “JC knows his brother is pinning after LWJ, he probably doesn’t want to know anything else” hc out of my cold dead hands thankyouverymuch.

WWX: *spouts a bunch of misdirection to avoid giving JC a straight answer*

JC: Bull-fucking-shit.

Should I count how many times WWX PTSDs all over the place or would you like me to leave your hearts intact? That’s two so far.

Ok ok, I feel that, if someone with a bit less trauma and a bit of insight (NHS maybe?) had seen the bit where ChenQing fucking hurts Shijie thing would’ve gone differently. I mean, yes, LWJ keeps warning WWX that this shit is gonna fuck him up, but as I said in my previous commentary LWJ also has the communication skills of a hermit crab so that wouldn’t work, and JC would be too wound up and WWX too busy trying to conceal his lack of golden core for that conversation to go anywhere. But if someone who WWX knows is a good egg (I’m not gonna say trusts bc paranoia) had sat him down and told him “your new instrument that you use for your new form of cultivation just hurt the person you love most please be careful when you use it.” I think it would’ve worked wonders towards his health overall.

I know Shijie says it’s like Zidian, but she’s not working with the fact that this thing is made for and by the Dark Side of the Force and I’m sorry but I can’t help but see ChenQing as a bit of a horrocrux almost. Or like, if you like me think the Burial Mounds is an Entity, something that’s a bit more sentient that it lets on.

Speaking of reputations and NHS being a good egg, I have oh-so-many ideas (I won’t say plot bunnies because I can’t write for shit) in which NHS for Reasons (time-travel? Letter from the future? His massive brain?) realises just how much damage WWX is doing to his public image. And he might be a sheltered dandy, but he saw what being the son of a sex worker did to Meng Yao despite how hard he worked (I’m assuming he doesn’t know about the whole betrayal business). This is way fucking worse, like hell is he going to let one of his best friends paint a target on his back. So he pulls back his sleeves, engages his slytherin brain and proceeds to lay down a plan to throughly destroy WWX’s reputation as a powerful genius.

I’m guessing LWJ and JC protest, and maybe WWX, and NHS just hits them with “do you want him respected or alive?” And they shut tf up. He glues himself to WWX, and brings up as many instances in which their behaviour can be compared as he can (we got drunk and punished at cloud recesses, we slept in class, we skipped to go fishing, I don’t carry my sword either). And, because assholes be assholes, people like Sect Leader Yao or Clown Cousin are quick to start spouting their own derogatory bullshit and thus WWX the untamed powerful prodigy dies a fiery death. Now he’s just a mouthy kid with a quick mind that “does tricks instead of battle” (I’ll never get bored of using that Thor quote). I also like to think that people who personally know WWX and are not pieces of shit go give NHS a tongue lashing for messing with what they thought was his friend, NHS takes that as a test of good eggness and bring them into the plan. Soon the whole Cloud Recesses class is swearing up, down, left, right and centre that all the shit WWX has ever successfully pulled is just an insane amount of luck and quick thinking.

I don’t know how would they work him into the battlefield (disguise? Mask?) to unleash his demonic cultivation but that’s Plot and I don’t do that.

Also, because I’m a terrible human being I want to say that people assume LWJ is on “pretty but useless” WWX like white on rice because *insert derogatory comment about being good in bed and sexual favours*. Because y’all know the assholes here are Like That. And WWX is horrified because holy fucking shit he’s gonna drag LWJ’s reputation down, he can’t have people thinking HGJ is ok with having him as a concubine pretty much. But before he can act LWJ politely all but confirms that yeah, he’s tapping that, y’all wish you were but he doesn’t share and none of y’all are good enough for his Wei Ying anyway. CUE FAKE/PRETEND RELATIONSHIP BECAUSE I AM INDEED TRASH FOR THAT TROPE.

Muahahahaha y’all thought I was gonna devolve into my personal hcs and not include my fave trope? Shouldn’t y’all know me better by now?

(Btw I like this bit ^ so I might polish it a little and post it separately as well, just a warning if you find yourself reading an eerily similar post by me)

WuJi is playing and LWJ is pining so much. Also, if LWJ did not just realise that, just like Yu the Great, WWX had no other option but tame resentful energy I’ll eat my blanket.

I refuse to believe Jiang Yanli didn’t become the unofficial war camp therapist/sounding board/only sane person/everyone’s mum/I just need a hug and a corner to cry in peace. There are not enough fics about Shijie being her gentle BAMF self while in the camp and it’s a pity. My crops are dying y’all!

Also, I will fight anyone who scoffs at Shijie being the epitome of the “gentle woman who cooks and waits for the men to come back from war”. Look at her mum, do you think it is easy for a kid (she was a kid in the flashback when WWX ran away) to see that day in and day out, to have that as a “role model” and decide that she was not going to be like her mum? That she didn’t like what she saw in her so she was going to be kind and gentle? And do you think it is easy for a person barely in their twenties to deal with years of verbal and psychological abuse for again, being gentle and kind, and not grow a hard shell of bitterness to protect themselves? And to keep being gentle and kind while at war, with your parents dead and your siblings unraveling before your very eyes? Shijie is so fucking strong and I love her.

Hey look, the White Walkers!

“Resentful energy is just energy” ok, valid. But my dude, you’ve got black ghost smoke coming out of you and can hear people screaming in your head. I’m not saying it is evil, like someone’s uptight set in his ways arrogant uncle; but it sure as shit ain’t healthy.

AAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHH (that’s a Clown Cousin scream btw)

Ok ok, just one little thing: IF SOMEONE ELSE CALLS WWX WEI YING AS A SHOW OF DISRESPECT IMMA SCALP THEM.

...are those crows eating that man alive? Yikes on bikes.

(Assume my comment about YiBo’s Guqin playing also goes for Xiao Zhan and his flute. I can’t play the flute but the tempo doesn’t match his fingers)

I’m just gonna say it, I think 3zun (well, 2zun as of now) suspect shit went down badly for WWX, that’s two questions by both of them in a very soft conciliatory tone. They are genuinely interested/worried about the topic, and don’t seem to come off as chiding or judgemental. I mean WWX is a weirdo irreverent kid and they’re sect leaders, they outrank him so much it’s ridiculous. I’m also counting the fact that both their baby brothers like him towards them being so kind. But I also think WWX just triggers all their big brother instincts the second he walks in.

Oh there’s a thought, Shijie, Wen Qing, NMJ and LXC take a look at everyone’s shitty parents and just decide to adopt everyone.

What happened at Yiling was a traumatised teenager (is WWX even 20?) PTSDing all over the place with the Dark Side of the Force whispering in his ear and an all powerful trinket at his disposal. Not saying I approve of all the torture and murder but he clearly isn’t revelling in them.

That is some outstanding bit of big-brothering on LXC’s side and I love it. Also, my dumbass just realised LWJ probably wasn’t quoting WWX when he was being punished (what is white what is black?) I think he was quoting his big brother. Which is magnitudes deep too, but in a different direction and I might love that scene even more.

Ok fuck it, I’m gonna tangent. So I had a terrible boyfriend when I was 15-18. He alienated me from my friends, sunk my self-esteem to the molten core of the earth, tried to convince me my parents were abusive and encouraged (aka threatened manipulated and cajoled) the slow tanking of my high school marks. I have A Problem when I see media where someone latches onto their significant other and everything they are shifts towards that person. Now, love, true genuine love, is powerful, and I believe it can be the catalyst for shifting your world-view for the better. I don’t have a problem with that. I don’t have a problem with people sticking with their romantic partner if it is clear their previous “family” is so much shit. I don’t have a problem with LWJ coming out of his shell and defying corrupt precepts because his love for WWX made them see they were wrong, or getting sassy and unrepentant during his punishment (I have a problem with the punishment bc that’s abuse but...). But I do side-eye WangXian being the only thing in their orbit. People need people, and WangXian have other good people around them. So I kind of love that yes, WWX showed him the system was corrupt, but it is the words of his brother he is sticking by to the defy said system.

Let’s go back to our scheduled slew of held pinning glances shall we?

LXC after That awkward run-in: WangJi I wasn’t gone that long, what the fuck did you two oblivious pining idiots do?

(LXC has “bitching” tea sessions with Shijie and you can’t convince me otherwise)

LWJ: *is being dramatic and not knocking on WWX’s door*

Me: oh my god you fucking idiot

Shijie: *walks in*

Me: oh thank god someone with a braincell.

Ah yes, there we go triggering WWX’s paranoia again. Why would he get a break.

OH MY GOD YOU PAIR OF FUCKING IDIOTS. THATS IT, FUCK THIS SHIT IM OUT.

@ LWJ: bitch wtf was that? I know you’re shit at talking but have you thought about writing it down? Letters anyone? It worked for mr. Darcy.

(Yes LWJ is mr darcy and now I want an au where LWJ writes WWX letters and just pours everything in them, WWX finds them, any everything is sunshine and rainbows)

While this bullshit fight/misunderstanding is all on LWJ’s shoulders, I’m also going to scream at WWX. Because yes, he is in PTSD hell, but he trusted LWJ before, and yet he can’t get past his perceived notion of LWJ’s character (and his own inadequacies) to trust him again and ask for help. Plus, you know, he thinks he doesn’t deserve he’ll bc *waves hand at WWX’s trauma conga line*

These episodes can’t be good for my BP.

Thanks for reading!

[hamliet]

do you think jin guanyao had even a little bit of love for his son even though he killed him?

Well… I guess it depends on how you define love. I’ve spoken about this a bit before, here. 

In my opinion, yes, he did. It just seems consistent with his character that he would–that said, he does describe himself as being frightened to look at his son thanks to Rusong, you know, being the biological child of two siblings who had no idea they were related. Which is horrible, and Sect Leader Yao’s claim that the child was likely mentally impaired is actually not scientifically accurate. But even if he was, it doesn’t matter. Rusong was an innocent kid who deserved to live and I’m sad over his fate. 

In the post I linked, I spoke about how I think whatever happened to A-Song–which MXTX left deliberately vague–is likely in the middle. It probably wasn’t Jin Guangyao maliciously waiting and plotting for how to murder his own kid while framing an enemy sect leader, but neither was it likely “sect leader poisons his kid and Jin Guangyao was taken by surprise.” The person in the final version of the novel who conjectures that it was solely A-Yao’s nefarious plan is Sect Leader Yao, and he is about as unreliable of a narrator as you can get within this novel. 

Jin Guangyao is also a highly unreliable narrator (still more reliable than SLY though), but from the few incidents we do know the truth of, the truth is likely in the middle. He always acts surreptitiously rather than upfront confrontation, he tends to hurt the people he loves most (I mean, look at his list in the end chapters), and he only acts when he feels like he has to–but he does not have to respond how he does, which tends to be a deadly overreaction. Yay tragedy? -___-

Mo Xuanyu

Mo Xuanyu was kicked out of Koi Tower because of “his own doing” according to Wei Wuxian. At that point in time, WWX had all the reason in the world to blame one more crime on Jin Guangyao, so whatever he read in those letters MXY left behind (with no reason to lie) must have convinced him. I know there are debates, but I think to read MXY as completely innocent borders on misreading based on what we have in the text. 

Plus, Jin Guangyao had nothing to gain from banishing Mo Xuanyu–his level of cultivation was abysmally low, he was a cut-sleeve and timid–and we’ve never seen Jin Guangyao act out of sadism. He genuinely committed his crimes out of a belief that he had no choice (but he did have a choice, and that’s the tragic flaw of Jin Guangyao). 

That said, given what we know of the context–that Jin Guangyao had accidentally married his birth sister–it seems pretty in-character for Jin Guangyao to overreact and pretty out of character for Mo Xuanyu to do something extreme (but in-character to develop inappropriate feelings to the one person who’s been nice to him), and send his little brother to a terrible fate. 

Qin Su

He did not marry Qin Su out of a type of perversion, but to preserve himself and to preserve her. Her reputation would have gone the way of his mother’s, after all, if it came out they were pregnant with Rusong before they married. 

It was a bad situation. I still hold that Jin Guangyao’s decision to marry her but not touch her wasn’t the wrong thing to do inherently, but his sin was rather that he deceived her instead of telling her the truth. He claimed to truly care about her, and while we’ll never know, it’s also said that Qin Su is the one who insisted that she would marry him and who fell in love first, so it doesn’t seem far-fetched that this might be the case. 

Nie Mingjue

Nie Mingjue tried to kill him days before Jin Guangyao killed him. It’s not a coincidence they both wind up trapped in a coffin for 100 years: neither of them are morally better than the other (sorry Da-Ge, but righteousness without empathy isn’t righteousness). I mean, literally, if Lan Xichen hadn’t intervened Nie Mingjue would have killed Jin Guangyao, and because he would have done it in public doesn’t make it any more moral than Jin Guangyao poisoning him surreptitiously. But, we know that Jin Guangyao kept trying to improve their relationship until the moment Da-Ge called him the son of a whore, and then it was over. 

We also know he truly cared about Nie Mingjue at first. One of my forever-gripes about The Untamed is that it changed the ending of the Sunshot Campaign, because in the novel Jin Guangyao killed Wen Rouhan to spare Nie Mingjue, not Wei Wuxian. He would have had much to gain from killing Nie Mingjue in that moment, but he did not. He knew Nie Mingjue might well try to kill him in rage after saving him (which he did) but he saved him anyways. Plus, for all NMJ’s conjecture about how Meng Yao manipulated him, it was NMJ who took the time to notice him when Jin Guangyao didn’t notice he was watching, so much like Jin Guangyao, Nie Mingjue kinda sucks at personal responsibility. 

All that to say, Jin Guangyao probably did love A-Song in his narrow view of love that refused to utilize empathize as much as Nie Mingjue did. He empathized, learning where people were coming from but without understanding the point of empathy (i.e. “do unto others” or their lives are equal to his own). It’s this lack of understanding about the point of empathy that led to him killing A-Song: again, I expanded on this in the previous answer I linked to, but A-Song had a lot in common with his father in terms of their birth situation, and Jin Guangyao had always wanted to live regardless of how he was valued, so he should have extended the same desire to his son. 

The tragic irony of Jin Guangyao’s situation is that the man only ever wanted a family–to love and be loved–which most other characters were born into. (I know it’s a common argument that JGY wanted esteem, but he only ever directed said esteem towards trying to make his family love him.) However, in his quest to love and be loved, he misunderstood that he didn’t have to be perfect. He wasn’t unloved because he was the son of a prostitute. He was unloved because his father was a terrible person who was bound by his own privilege, and so Jin Guangyao assumed he needed to get that privilege to earn love when he absolutely did not. He had it through three characters who foil each other: Lan Xichen, Qin Su, and Mo Xuanyu. He could have had it through other characters as well (if he hadn’t kept trying to cater to society Nie Mingjue would have come around–it’s not like NMJ gave him no chances). He just refused to consider that love and privilege did not go hand-in-hand, and ironically often oppose each other. It’s no coincidence that Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji only find love when they’re against society, after all. 

Sigh. 

[theyilinglaozus]

You guessed correctly, Tanz der Vampire is about *drumroll* vampires!😂 it's basically a satire/comedy about a weird old vampire hunter professor and his awkward assistant in Transylvania, the first act plays mostly in an inn there where the assistant falls in love with the innkeeper's daughter, who is then seduced by the vampire count, so in the second act they're in the vampire castle trying to free her and it's all very funny, plus the music is basically Meat Loaf with altered texts -✨

The second one I kind of enjoy is Elisabeth which is basically a darker take on Empress Elisabeth of Austria, death plays a big role and it actually a character in it so that kind of draws me to it haha Also!!! Seeing Lord of the Rings in concert is one of my dreams to be honest, because Tolkien is my #1 fandom and true love and has been for around 8 years now. What was it like? In all honesty, I would probably cry because I love the music too much! -✨

I actually saw a photoset with "It's Quiet Uptown" from Hamilton applied to JYL, JZX and JL and just... it broke me. Which brings me to talking about JZX because I honestly love him a lot, what's your opinion on him? Like, yeah, I love him being annoyed by WWX but also!! he's doing his best!! and he actually has some character development that's not rooted on trauma (yes I am paraphrasing a post I just saw) My day today was better, thankfully. Did you find the show on Netflix? How was it?😊 -✨

Oh wow! Those musicals both sound so cool. Can’t go wrong with Meat Loaf-esque music either 😍  I know you mentioned that the Broadway version of Tanz der Vampire is something to ignore, but when I did a little search on it I saw there was like a 60′s movie? Have you seen it, and if you did did you enjoy it? 

Oh, no, I haven’t got to see the Lord of the Rings in concert. I think I probably worded that wrong in my last response, so that’s my bad. I wish I had though! It’s one of the bigger movies I’d love to see and I just know that they do that sort of thing for from what I’ve seen online! One of my favourite authors posted on her Instagram years ago that she was watching Return of the King, and I was like 😲 😲 😲 I’d be like you though if I ever did find a performance of it, I’d probably cry the entire time through it! I can’t imagine how magical it must be to watch the entire movie with an orchestra just there while you’re watching - I thought it was special enough seeing clips from tv episodes to orchestra music when I saw the Game of Thrones and Doctor Who ones. 

Oof, that photoset sounds like it would be painful in the best of ways 💔 I actually really like Jin Zixuan. Yeah he can be a bit of an asshole at times but a lot of it is just because he’s awkward so - can relate to the awkwardness! 😂 Plus when he actually gets over his fears and actually approaches Yanli, it’s really sweet. Him and Wei Wuxian’s interactions I just find hilarious, because it really is just two brothers-in-law constantly at war with one another.  He’s also the best out of his family really, given how his father really was and with everything Jin Guangyao does. It’s really heartbreaking that him and Yanli didn’t get much time with Jin Ling either, they would have been such good parents to him! 😭

Are there any other characters in MDZS that you like or dislike more than you first thought you would? These characters do have a way of weaving their way into our hearts, after all!

I did find the show! There’s only two episodes released at the moment, so I’m assuming they’re posting more up until Christmas. It was really interesting though. The first episode was all about how the movie Elf came into existence, and how it started with a lot of new people in the industry working on it that just wanted to make a classic Christmas that could be enjoyed throughout the years 🥺 The second was about the Nightmare Before Christmas, which I just found fascinating to learn more about! I always love hearing how those sorts of movies work with the use of stop-motion and physical props, since it’s something I’d never have that much patience for. It did make me want to go and rewatch the movie again afterwards though, which is never a bad thing.