#lan xichen is there too but like

[jin-zixun]

OK I need to just appreciate the boost in confidence my boy has post-timeskip like. The little smirk at the Lans while just straight up calling them out. Not even responding to WWX's inane shit talking here, just running interference like a very good boy.

Like I...

Just immediately spinning the situation against WWX, it's great. How much of this is planned? I don't know. He walks into frame like he's the hero of the day right after JGY's "et tu Er-Ge" moment on the stairs.

As he should! He is the hero of the day! And the hero of every day! If you're JGY I guess, from now on at least.

[imma-bunni]

After a long day's work as clan leader, Zewu Jun likes to go to the meadow to pet the bunnies and relax. (He deserves soft things ♡) This is an art trade with my incredible amazing ridiculously fantastic sister @bora-panda !! Look at what she drew for me!!! (ෆ˶˃♡˂˶ෆ)

[benevolenterrancy]

finally in the process of reading the Guanyin Temple scene and holy shit if WWX isn't the protagonist of all time. We're in the Big Final Confrontation and so far my man has done fuck all except cuddle in LWJ's lap while everyone else is losing their shit and when he DOES finally do something he summons an army of naked, writhing, moaning sex corpses that even his allies just desperately wish Were Not There. stupendous, no notes

[little-smartass]

it drives me nuts when people talk about LXC like he was just willfully ignoring all the evidence that JGY was a "bad guy" and he was just so blinded by manipulation and affection that he couldn't see the "truth"

LXC had nearly twenty years of evidence of JGY's character - personal, first-hand, consistent, compounded evidence of a man who was abused and treated like less than dirt by everyone around him for years, who nevertheless worked the hardest out of everyone and rose to a position of power, which he then used to elevate the common people and do good public works - not even mentioning that it was JGY's personal support that meant Cloud Recesses was even rebuilt - in the face of that, LXC is entirely logical to conclude that JGY is a good person.

"refusing to stop defending his man despite huge amounts of evidence of many horrifying atrocities he has committed"? you're thinking of the wrong brother. that's Lan Wangji's thing.

[khattikeri]

it's amazing to me that lan xichen isn't gay according to word of god, because what older brother (especially in homophobic xianxia universe china) instantly realizes his little brother is gay and in love just bc he's high strung and irritable lately thanks to a mischievous new boy in his class. it's one thing to tease or jokingly ask if there's a crush involved. it's another to Know.

and because what guy insists on a sworn brotherhood with two other men whose relationship with each other is publicly fraught, unless he really likes them both and is compromising because he knows he can't have them any other way? because a sworn siblinghood relationship is treated similarly (though not exactly) like a family via marriage?

lan xichen you are not slick no sir i know what you are

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Custody Battle: START

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[qiu-yan]

as a jc stan it's now time for my shot at the obligatory shipping poll

[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.

[boarloved-art]

british/gameshow au but its the wens and their token wei..!!! ft wwx's HMV Cashier era pre-chase

bonus lil sketch under cut!

[dearmyloveleys]

as much as I enjoy reading discourse on why this person and that person did that in mdzs, sometimes I feel like we think too much on them and it really is just… the characters are just… human… (referencing people in the main cast) They do things whatever they think is right and wrong, because of their own histories, upbringing and personalities. It’s inevitable that they clash with others, which escalates emotions and events. Their very superficial society doesn’t help at all. With everything coming together in a shitshow, this makes all their stories so damn painful and tragic.

This doesn’t mean that I excuse characters who inflict more harm on others. I acknowledge and don't want to take away whatever any character experienced. Being human doesn't excuse shitty behaviour. But still, I feel for them that they had to resort to/end up in their respective ways to make it through their loveless world. I want to focus on the greyness of humanity behind everything that happens in the story. One of the many thematic concerns that resonate with me is how much of us as humans are black and white (as such, we debate on the characters’ place on this spectrum, because of their actions). 不说黑白, Never black or white. Even if it nears the blackened end, it still never goes pitch black.

I say 人就是人，人就是这样 — People are people, people are simply like this. We all can be kind, we all curse out. We are all insecure about something. We laugh, we cry. We write love songs as much as easily as we write hateful messages. One day our loved ones and friends are around, and the next day, they aren’t anymore. There are times in our past that we can never return to and we can do nothing but move on with our own ways of coping, for what we think will be a better life for us. For better or worse.

Amidst all the viciousness and pettiness of the jianghu, mdzs touches on our tragedies and fallacies as people just trying to make sense of an unfeeling world, with unjust consequences and impartiality. Many of the mdzs characters try, and they fail. Isn’t this how our own reality is? How many of us have the privilege of a denouement to our own stories?

We can all have our personal opinions on the characters and their actions, but do not deny them their humanity or whatever shred of it is left.

[adhdo5]

It’s almost nice to be depended on like this; he needs you in a way sweeter than anybody else has needed you. No, you will never hurt him and he will never hurt you, not really (keep telling yourself that)

A MIRACLE HAS HAPPENED: the light of day has come and I don’t hate these colors. Now you gotta bear with me here I have a third one coming to finish my vampire Xiyao thesis and then I can finally rest. Will I ever make anything that isn’t in some capacity a response to a bad take I saw once? Debatable

[undercover-stories]

Love Jiang Cheng all you want, but don't fall for the false narrative that he was a good person cause he wasn't. He might have been arguably a good sect leader or a good uncle. But you can't claim to be a good person when you actively and directly push someone to choose to let innocent people die for your own selfish reasons.

You can tell by how Jiang Cheng and Lan Zhan both reacted to Wei Ying asking for help. Jiang Cheng responded by giving him an ultimatum, him or them. Lan Zhan just stayed silent. He also desperately wanted to protect and help Wei Ying but there was no answer he could give that wouldn't end up hurting the remnants. He was still unwilling to sacrifice certain things to offer the help wei ying needed but he didn't make his own flaw Wei Yings problem.

[pastelshroomsbasement]

the gym au i didnt know i needed but now want.

say thank you icky by kard

[acequinz]

Pretty sure Nie Mingjue would whimper and submit if Meng Yao was a little mean to him.

Not mean like disrespectful mean but mean like snarky and sarcastic.

That's a big man who would totally submit to a strong personality.... It's why Lan Xichen manages to pull him into the sworn brotherhood.

Just keep your voice steady and lay down the facts, do not portray fear, he feeds on fear but dislikes the taste and it only agitated him further.

Stand strong and show him you are the boss, he will calm and listen.

He's still not forgiving Meng Yao for that kill but now at least he's gonna be twice as horny about it which whole solves Nothing is way more funnier.

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

We could have had it all...

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