#just wangxian being wangxian

[bnnywngs]

lwj: wei ying needs a coat, so i bought one

wwx: lan zhan!! you shouldn't!! i'm ok with my coat!! there's just some holes but it's easy to fix!!

lwj: hm... wei ying complains about being cold constantly

wwx: that's just me being dramatic! look it still got the tag, you can get your money back! go, go

lwj:

lwj: *rips tag off*

wwx: *shocked pikachu face* LAN ZHAN

lwj, very serious: oops

wwx: you did that on purpose

lwj, smug: now wei ying has to wear it

[asha-mage]

MDZS AU where Jiang Cheng realizes that Lan Sizhui is the Wen orphan that Wei Wuxian took care off during the Burial Mounds arc, decides that's close enough to qualify him as Nephew, declares that no Nephew of His (much less a surrogate son of Wei Wuxian's) is going to be raised in the Cloud Recedes, and immediately launches into a custody battle with Lan Wangji.

But since neither Jiang Cheng or Lan Wangji can acknowledge that Sizuhi has any connection to Wei Wuxian, both begin steadfastly and stubbornly insisting that he is a Cultivator of peerless potential and skill and he belongs in their sect thank you very much, and would clearly be very unhappy in the other's. This confuses the hell out of the already mystified Cultivation world, who had barely adjusted yet to gossiping about Sizhui being Wangji's illegitimate child by mysterious love affair.

(Eventually the common consensus in the rumor mills is that both JC and LW where in love with Sizhui's mother and both believe themselves to be Sizhui's real father.)

(LW couldn't care less what gossips say, but JC has to bite his tongue till it bleeds to avoid telling anyone the truth in a fit of anger.)

(It was Nie Huaisang who put that rumor out in the first place, partly to troll JC, partly because, in a way, it's a little true.)

[ribose300]

confession

[yourancestorsarefrowning]

I love how so much of wangxian's relationship during the gusu study arc was wei wuxian going "look at me, look at me! look at me, lan zhan!" and lan wangji angrily pretending not to look, and then post-resurrection wei wuxian tries the same thing but this time lan wangji is like "I am Looking and I will not look away" and wei wuxian is so flustered that he accidentally gets dragged back to gusu anyway.

like, throughout the story people only interact with wei wuxian on a superficial level, with no one bothering to go deeper. he's just an arrogant jiang disciple. he's just a rebellious teen. he's just an admittedly terrifying demonic cultivator. he's just an evil person who needs to be stopped. and lan wangji sees all of this, (and in the beginning is almost fooled by it!) and then is the only one who cares enough to look long enough and see the true wei wuxian.

when wei wuxian is resurrected, he immediately relies on the fact that people only view him superficially to keep his real identity hidden. he slides right into mo xuanyu's cut-sleeve lunatic persona and probably could have gotten away with it except he runs right into the one person who has Seen him in the past and Sees him now.

[askew-d]

so….. are we ever gonna discuss the fact that wei wuxian most likely started letting his hair down because there was no more purpose in tying it up since he can’t fight with the sword no more and hair can’t trouble him again if he uses the flute instead? after all, isn’t letting his hair up just a reminder of something he’s unable to enjoy once more?

maybe it wasn’t style. maybe it wasn’t that he wanted to changed. perhaps it was just sorrow. so many things about him can be unraveled as such.

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Parallel Lines and Brothers.

[First] Prev <–-> Next

[ceru-draws]

[WangXian] Stargazers

[anfuaruuu]

having gusu!laozu thoughts lately

[tea-cat-arts]

I simply think this fandom doesn't give Wei Wuxian enough credit for the various ways in which he saved Lan Wangji

[trans-yllz]

perhaps my hottest take yet but there's this very interesting phenomenon within fanworks, especially modern aus, where people make lan wangji like. The Crazy Smart Bookish Nerd, when in canon his Thing, his character archetype, isn't even that he's smart or clever. that's wei wuxians thing. HE'S the genius. and lan wangji obviously isn't an idiot, wangxians whole dynamic is that they're equally matched, but the narrative puts weight on wei wuxians intelligence where it does not with lan wangjis. lan wangjis thing Is being noble, and it Is valuing tradition, and it Is being talented, and, in the beginning, it Is following the rules. he's a good student as a child and an incredibly skilled cultivator, but the role his character plays in terms of trope is not one that focuses on his intellect, even when the story makes it clear that hes very smart. and the thing is that him being a rule follower in the cloud recesses arc Does make him a good student, and the story successfully communicates that he Is smart, but the focus is on him being a competent cultivator who is "good at school", the point is the way that working within the systems rules leads to success, Not that he's smart

but wei wuxians role in a strictly narrative context Does hinge on him being incredibly clever and intelligent, it's a key part of his character archetype, and there is a point being made about the fact that, even when he's a troublemaker in class and labeled as a bad student, he's very intelligent. it's one of the many things that frustrates but draws lan wangji to him in the first place. but somehow more often than not fanon depicts wei wuxian as a fumbling idiot. and I just think it's very interesting that rule following and "good behavior" gets associated with intelligence, where rebellion and disregard for social expectations is associated with being foolish or ignorant, when the narrative of the source material is communicating almost the opposite idea

[rosesapphire2323]

Just had a horrible, terrible thought. Have you ever tried taking a child from their mother, like to hold them or whatnot? after a certain age kids understand that taking them from their mom isn't gonna be permanent and you're not gonna kill them, but before that they cry and cling. And so it occurred to me that lwj may once had been at such age, small enough to think that being taken from his mom is the end of the world and had at least once reacted accordingly.

Think about that. Actually envision that moment happening with a tiny baby a-zhan clinging with his life to his mom when they're trying to take him away.

Now your day is as ruined as mine.

[benevolenterrancy]

Senior Wei, please don't make them explain this to Hanguang-Jun...

[whetstonefires]

You know I'm realizing one reason you keep seeing mdzs modern AUs where the Jiang parents are alive mainly so they can dramatically fail and betray Wei Wuxian by cutting him off financially--defaulting on his college tuition or formally disowning him etc--isn't just that people want to translate the Burial Mounds II arc into modern terms while keeping Jiang Cheng clean of it.

(Despite the fact that the internal logic of Jiang Cheng's character is largely built around him being a person who would abandon someone he intensely cared about under these specific circumstances.)

It's because it's hard to set up a modern analogue for the way that Jiang Cheng is responsible for Wei Wuxian, as his Sect Leader.

We live in a highly individualistic society. People are trying to write Wei Wuxian Tragically Wronged, and because there's a normative expectation that people in the position of parents will provide you with resources, and certainly won't withdraw them without warning, but no such assumption that people in the position of siblings necessarily owe each other support, making this work in modern setting with Jiang Cheng in his canon role would require a lot of extra work, just to get a less readily resonant result.

But I keep thinking about it. Because something that's getting lost here is, not just the nuances of character and relationship, but like...it's sort of key to the story that cutting Wei Wuxian off was, in fact, Completely Socially Appropriate.

The level on which it was a betrayal is subtle, and deeply cutting. And intensely tied up in the very different opinions each of Jiang Cheng's parents had about what obligations existed in their family wrt Wei Wuxian, and what these meant.

The level on which it was the obvious, normal course of action is blatant. That is to a huge extent why it happens: because Jiang Cheng's instinct to conform is a survival instinct, reinforced by trauma, and Wei Wuxian's choices meant he had no coherently compelling reason not to obey it, and enormous peer pressure to do so.

The fact is that Jiang Cheng was making a reasonable choice, the actual thing 'anyone would do in that situation,' unlike Wei Wuxian and Jin Guangyao's respective wildly warped ideas about what that is.

Wei Wuxian wasn't betrayed by Jiang Sect like your foster parents cutting you off because you're disobedient. Wei Wuxian was betrayed by Jiang Sect like your brother refusing to drop fifty grand to bail you out of jail.

Of course Wei Wuxian tells him not to. And of course the fact that Jiang Cheng already chose in the moment not to pay a cent because Fuck You Wei Ying still stands there glaring, a precedent that can never be taken back.

And then later he's betrayed by Jiang Cheng like your brother cooperating with a police investigation into a manslaughter you really did commit, that's being handled like domestic terrorism. And then like your brother calling the cops on you. And then like your brother helping the cops find where you're hiding.

I'm personally fascinated by the way Jiang Cheng's lifelong resentment for the way Jiang Fengmian reliably bailed Wei Wuxian out of everything informed those decisions to do the normal thing, the way he's reacting against his dead father as well as against Wei Wuxian and the actual situation.

But even without that daddy issues angle, the fact that the person who made that choice was Jiang Cheng, and that it was simultaneously the reasonable appropriate normal upstanding citizen rational thing to do and so shitty Wei Wuxian would be entitled never to forgive it is sort of. The Point.

Of the scenario, and also to a considerable degree of the entire finely tuned narrative construct that is Jiang Cheng.

[l33n1s]

Bingqiu are the kind of freaks (affectionate) who would pretend not to know each other in public so that Binghe can "seduce" Shen Qingqiu

[purgatoryandme]

Liushen has finally unlocked the part of my brain that makes me realize the ship dynamic I'm most obsessed with is Passionate Nerd with Chaotic Disregard for Rules x Catastrophically Earnest and Dedicated Protector who Indulges them.

[sillygoofyqueer]

So instead of writing, I've got another MDZS AU idea because that's what everyone wants to see from me hahaha...haha...

ANYWAY, picture Wei Wuxian as a ferryman/grim reaper figure in modern times, having lurked around in the shadows through the centuries, always there to greet the newly dead souls and gently unknot the tether that linked them to their bodies. The mortals called him the Yiling Laozu, based on the folktale about the poor little orphan who died in Yiling but came back to protect them when the most powerful ones would not.

A few of the worst souls are held below him like minions, too controversial to be allowed into the realm of the afterlife - according to the gods that rule over the place, anyway.

Fortunately for a small percentage of these souls, while the rest of them are left to fade away into the overwhelming Darkness, Wei Wuxian's sense of justice far outweighed his sense of duty and - because he didn't agree with some of these choices - he took them on as...employees, of sorts.

Hey, if the powers that be decide that he doesn't need help with the frankly never-ending workload that came with dealing with people dying (two people per second!! That was one hundred and six a minute, and he was expected to deal with that alone???), he's going to take matters into his own hands and collect his own help.

Hong'er was a soul that fought when Wei Wuxian began untying the bright red tether. He was used to the pain and the blood that was spilled as he remained ever gentle with unknotting the ribbon from the heart. The screaming and the anger was usual for a soldier felled in battle; hearing the soul screaming with such anguish, with such love for a god, was not. Wei Wuxian heard this and he paused - this pause was enough to allow the soul to slip through his grasp.

He didn't go after the little soul.

However, when the souls of the restless dead fell from his clutches and left him broken in the Space Between, he was a lot less merciful of the little soul; if he could not make the god apologise for leaving Wei Wuxian to put himself back together (was it truly so strange? Why was he so upset about this? It happened often - he was just another weapon, another tool for these gods, and this time he could only keep his self control in check for so long), he would collect the soul that had escaped before.

When the Yiling Laozu came for the wandering soul Wu Ming, he snatched him back just before the hoardes of violent spirits could tear him to shreds (he would not wish that pain upon anyone, not after what had happened to him) and dragged said spirits into the darkness for what they had done to him. Let them calm down there for a few centuries.

But Wu Ming was barred from the afterlife, for how he fought and thrashed and hit and bit and kicked and ripped (Hua Cheng would apologise for it later, shamefaced and almost silent, and Wei Wuxian would forgive him but never forget the blood that was spilt), and Wei Wuxian could not just abandon him in the Darkness after trying so hard to keep him whole in the first place.

The Yiling Laozu took on his first employee.

In contrast, the next one he plucked up was far less violent, far less angry but just...so, so scared. Hurt. Another teenager, this time shoved into what mortals called “The Abyss”. Wei Wuxian had always thought that to be a little too dramatic, considering it was really no more than a shallow crack when compared to the deeper, darker places he called home.

Luo Binghe's soul had been only loosely tied to his body with a thin, pale red string, so washed out and weak that it had fallen apart when Wei Wuxian's hands tried to unknot it - he had had to keep the soul together in his own hands so it didn't crumble right then and there. Despite the obvious weakness of the soul, the gods would not accept this poor, sad teenager into the afterlife; they gave no reason for it, but they would not let him in.

Of course, Hua Cheng had been close to storming the afterlife himself (so filled with rage, despite all this time), but the Yiling Laozu just curled around the poor broken soul and offered it the warmth and protection it so desperately craved, gave it stability and affection until those cracks began to heal and Luo Binghe could hold himself together.

Yiling Laozu's second employee was far more sensitive than the first, brittle compared to the harsh walls, but he had just as much anger and frustration at his disposal if a particularly tricky soul had left Wei Wuxian broken and bleeding (he wasn't used to people picking him back up and fixing him, so accustomed to doing it himself that he had flinched the first hundred times it had happened).

Something something there will be other employees and this was entirely derailed but the whole point was supposed to be Lan Wangji having a near death experience and floating in the In Between but a soft, warm voice laughing sweetly and telling him that his tether was far too strong, far too bright, to be untied now. Gentle hands holding him by his very sense of self and offering soothing touches as the darkness disappeared and the blinding white light of the hospital replaced it.

N then he's like 'I must have been hallucinating or dreaming' but then he almost dies again and this time the voice is tutting and scolding but still laughing as it talks of how eager Lan Wangji must be to meet him, those warm warm hands caressing his soul and then pushing it back down into his body.

When he finds an old folktale about the Yiling Laozu in his research, it's safe to say that he is desperate to see the entity he had fallen in love with once again.

God hold me BACK, I cannot be stopped from yapping!!! Tell me if you're interested lmao, I haven't even talked about the other employees (apprentices??) and also Lan Wangji being madly in love with this deity of old (let my man be a possible monsterfucker /silly).