#mdzs reaction

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Conceal, don't feel, don't let it show.

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[bloodysparklez]

made a new header for my silly little mdzs sideblog

[withthewindinherfootsteps]

I love how the faux-politeness of MDZS' climax takes its themes to its logical conclusion. All throughout, we've seem how sects and cultivators prioritise their reputations, seeking glory and status even when real lives are at danger, keeping up their appearances. We see that in the unwritten rule that major sects won't intervene in problems unless the prey is dangerous; we see it in how Lan Wangji is unique in the way he prioritises helping others over seeking glory; we see that in how the Wen situation plays out, with Wei Wuxian confronting the Jins about a concentration camp while they're focused on having a banquet.

So of course in the Guanyin Temple, even when Jin Guangyao is directly threatening people's lives, the interactions are polite! We're seeing what has always been present – the absolute disconnect between the actions and world of the Jianghu, and the real harm that real people are suffering through (both intentionally and not) as a result.

[lgbtlunaverse]

So I've said multipe times now (here and here) that thinking nmj is just so blinded by privilege he doesn't undertand that acting out of line gets people killed is, in my opinion, a misunderstanding of his character that ignores the part where he's, you know, actively dying the whole time and thinks that's a good thing. But that doesn't mean I don't think privilege plays no role at all in how he views the world.

Specifically, his view that death (at least premature or violent death) means something.

Death isn't always a tragedy to NMJ, but it is always meaningful. If you kill an evil dangerous person for your righteous cause, that death had meaning. There was evil in the world and now there is less of it. Similarly, if you die in the pursuit of your righteous cause, that death has meaning, because the sheer dedication you gave to it that you were willing to die for it will further that cause, and your bretheren will be invigorated by your sacrifice to fight even harder.

If a death isn't meaningful, that's an injustice and it is up to the living to give it meaning. That's what cuts so deep about his father's murder. There were no consequences, no changes, no meaning. Wen Ruohan was just going to get away with it! He fights and wins an entire war to make it mean something, to make it so that the unjust murder of Nie Mingjue's father is part of Wen Ruohan's downfall.

But this is a view he can only hold because he's the kind of person who's death will be meaningful. Most ordinary people's deaths are meaningless. Not ontologically, not inherently, but they are made meaningless because no one cares. For death to be meaningful you either have to be so powerful that anything you risk your life for will be impacted in some way. (Like, say, if you sacrifice a long life for immense martial power in a faustian bargain with a blade) Or if people with that kind of power care enough about you to do so for you. For most people, this isn't true. A starving street kid has no power to change the unfair world that put them there, even if they risk their life trying, and no one will do it for them once they die.

Nie Mingjue knows this in abstract, and of course rightfully believes it's wrong. But all that does is make it yet another righteous cause people should be willing to die for. Everyone's deaths should mean something, we'll make it so or die trying!

This is what the conflict between nieyao is about at its core. Because Jin Guangyao, fundamentally, cannot conceive of his own death as meaningful. Nie Mingjue grew up around powerful men who could change the world but refuse to do so because god forbid they risk a single hair on their perfect heads. Meng Yao, on the other hand, grew up in an environment where no one of importance would blink twice if you died. He was surrounded by meaningless death. Indeed his entire early life is defined by that lack of care.

Meng Shi dies and no one cares. Meng Yao gets thrown off a flight off stairs and no one cares. He has to be the one to do the caring, and once he's gone no one else will do it for him.

So he has to live.

Jin Guangyao eventually gets far enough that he actually does aquire the power to change some things... as long as he's alive. If he changes too much, holds on too tightly to his ideals, he'll die and it'll all be for nothing. He can't sacrifice himself for his goals because doing so would immediately render those goals unobtainable. No one will care about what he tried to do. He won't be a heroic sacrifice, he'll just be trash that finally cleaned itself up.

And well... Nie Mingjue dies, and someone makes it mean something. Makes it mean so much that the entire story of mdzs would not exist without it. Jin Guangyao dies and it doesn't mean anything. Most people are glad to be rid of him, and the few that are not don't do anything to change that.

[sepia-mahogany]

Lan WangJi replied, "We will wait until we find them. After all, we do what we must." Wei Wuxian, "Just by using nets?" Lan XiChen, "That is right. Does the YunmengJiang Sect have other methods?" Wei Wuxian smiled but didn't respond. Of course, the YunmengJiang Sect used nets as well. But, because he was a good swimmer, he had always jumped into the river and dragged water ghouls out. However, this method was too dangerous; he definitely couldn't do it in front of the Lan Sect's people.

....I'm sorry, what

[melonnade]

joked about this a while back and finally decided to make an edit

[thekansta]

Oopsie

[wannabe-f-f-friends]

Xichen really said "A'Yao couldn't have been the one committing those crimes at night because he's been with me every night" 👀 and that 🤨 got past censorship 🧐 HOW

The only reason WWX didn't call him out is because then he'd have to evaluate his own nightly activities

[wifiwuxians]

xue yang: i prefer peanut m&ms

song lan love week is right around the corner and oh boy do i love song lan

[mvdsart]

“Isn’t there somebody you forgot to ask?” meme but it’s Jiang Cheng

[nevertheless-moving]

MDZS AU #7: Jiang Wanyin’s Dog

Jiang Cheng & Wei Ying time travel back to the Wen Indoctrination camp.

They didn't ask for this. Wei Wuxian's Happy Ending is gone. Jin Ling's Whole Life is Gone. But no time to unpack any of that, they fight the Xuanwu of Slaughter the day after tomorrow. They have to get on the same page. Their family is alive again. They have to get this right.

Last time around, Wei Ying created distance between his actions and Jiang Cheng’s orders.

(Partially in order to excuse his shidi from blame when he did something grotesque or anti-establishment or unsuccessful. Partially to obscure which orders he physically couldn't follow. Partially because his mental health was truly, exceptionally bad — he distanced himself from lots of things!)

It could be argued that this strategy didn’t pan out super well, in the end. Not a very fun conclusion.

And the reasons for that distance don't exist anymore considering 1) Jiang Sect is un-massacred and can properly throw their weight around to shield their terrifying unorthodox disciple from backlash when he does terrifying unorthodox things. 2) Wei Ying doesn’t have a golden core shaped secret to hide from Jiang Cheng. Wei Ying has less secrets from Jiang Cheng then he’s ever had.

(Mental health could be better, but it also could be a lot worse)

So they come up with a different plan, whispering furiously under Wen guard, bedrolls pressed close together, cheeks still holding a little babyfat.

Wei Wuxian will be the perfect servant in public, obeying his gongzi’s orders without question. In exchange Jiang Wanyin won’t order him to do anything he wouldn’t want to do anyway. Wei Wuxian will still get to do all his stupid heroics — he just has to wait for the go ahead, to provide the undeniable impression of perfect unity. Jiang Wanyin will give that go ahead, even if it has to be through gritted teeth.

Bear with me now: this leads to a gradual yungmeng bros reconciliation. Basically the emotional equivalent of tensing a muscles as hard as you can on purpose so that when you relax it, the background strain also releases a bit.

To start — Wei Wuxian is the new core melting hand, except even scarier.

Did you hear he summoned an ARMY of the damned to protect Lotus Pier?? And that the only one who he listens to is Jiang Wanyin? Apparently Jiang Wanyin confronted Wen Chao over using human sacrifices, and when Wen Chao threatened him, Jiang Wanyin gave the word and Wei Wuxian killed a hundred Wen AND the Xuanwu of Slaughter!!! Did you hear he ripped Wen Zhuliu heart out of his chest?? What a terrfying head disciple! How long has Jiang sect been hiding this??

The two really, really have to work together, very consistently, without hiccups, and as much practice as they have fighting this specific war together, they also have hella baggage and different priorities and Wei Ying is NOT keeping up the Super Serious Servant act in private.

(they can’t speed run, alright? Wen Chao's early death and the Jiang Sect surviving pretty fundamentally alter following events, rendering specific future knowledge less useful. Not to mention, it takes time for Wei Wuxian to figure out how to balance his golden core with massive amounts of resentful energy. He's got qi to deviate, and there's a good few months where they're fairly sure he's driving himself into an even faster grave than his first life. I mean he figures it out, he's a fucking genius. But early on there's a non zero amount of bleeding from the eyes and running into bushes to puke blood while Jiang Cheng pretends that he's only stressed about this for purely pragmatic reasons.)

So daily private meetings to debrief and strategize and yell at each other and maybe horse around a little. It's the only time they get to step back from the terrifying teenage war leaders thing and be a more raw, complex version of themselves. Getting back in sync after everything. Maybe getting in sync for the first time — how much of their childhood were they dancing around issues of worth and place? How many of their worst arguments stemmed from one giant secret?

Jiang Cheng making progress on his Wuxian shaped self-esteem issues largely by faking it-till-he-makes it.

“You think I feel embarrassed to be second best to my own disciple. What, are you fucking stupid?? How do you compare to him, huh? He’s going to ascend to be a death god or some shit like that. It’s a ridiculous comparison — I’d like to see how you would have done, growing up his shidi. Grow up and fuck off.”

Say stuff like that enough times and you might… actually start to believe it. Huh.

Both of them somewhat expecting cocky, mouthy Wei Wuxian to bristle more about the subservience thing, but honestly? It's cool.

For years, supporting Jiang Cheng was the only thing Wei Ying truly wanted. Yes, he wants other things now too, but Wei Ying still wants to follow Jiang Cheng.

Jiang Cheng is good at politics, at leadership. He rebuilt his sect back to greatness from the ground up. Wei Wuxian's 'leading a sect' experience culminated in being feared by the world and slowly starving to death on an all radish diet. (yes, obviously, there were extenuating circumstances, but regardless — I don't think leading anything larger than a night hunt is on Wei Ying's to do list).

Jiang Cheng expecting criticism in private and not getting it. Waiting all day to be torn apart for his fuckups by an unfiltered Wei Wuxian, only to instead be praised for his battlefield calls and handling of difficult negotiations.

He was a sect leader for two decades— his stupid shixiong's approval should not be able to affect him like this.

The thing is, Wei Wuxian's got effective free reign on his areas of interest — protecting people he wants to protect, inventing, and fighting people he wants to fight. Wei Wuxian has bountiful self esteem. It's annoying to not say whatever he wants whenever he wants, to bow that low, to mind his titles, to walk five steps behind, but it doesn't actually make him feel bad.

Once they’re eating A-Li’s soup … and it sinks in that their parents, their sect, their sister is alive… and they're drunk crying together... and they really really really did miss this, having someone who got their jokes, who could distinguish between their mock outrage and real fury…

Reconciliation starts completely in private but frankly enough time of Wei Wuxian Perfect Discipleing in public? Jiang Cheng is like… ok I thought I wanted this... but its actually not my kink. Please push back when the Jin start talking shit. I’m so, so tired. I've been tired longer than you've been alive. I don't want to reserve all my amusement for hidden moments any more.

Almost seamless public facing transition from ‘rabid dog on a short chain’ swinging to ‘my good right hand.’ Wei Wuxian gets to start being a little shit again in public, but he reigns it in quickly at Jiang Cheng's signal, and teasing A-Cheng stays private. Honestly — a boundary that might have helped them a lot in their first life!

As a result of gaslighting people that however they act that day is how they've always acted, most people are left with the general impression of Wei Wuxian as ‘trusted loyal hound,' who also happens to be absolutely fucking terrifying. Which. Isn’t exactly wrong so, fuck it, fine. Wei Ying honestly could not give less fucks about 99.9% of people’s opinions.

...Lan Zhan is living a dark romance novel, but that's a different post.

Part Two My MDZS AU Masterlist

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

I know those eyes.

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[whetstonefires]

Also the thing is, Jiang Cheng can't share how he threw himself out there as chum to cover Wei Wuxian, because it isn't a usefully reciprocal confession to the revelation about Wei Wuxian's core.

All it says is: there was a moment on the worst day of my life (up to that point) where I valued your life more than my own.

That's all. Arguably it says not even that, because Jiang Cheng is established as insecure enough that he very much cannot prove that this was an act driven primarily by affection and the will to protect, rather than guilt and shame and grief, and the desire to make a gesture that would prove his worth to himself, and let him opt out of the pain of having outlived the world he knew and almost everything he loved.

(after all, this self-sacrifice fairly directly followed an episode of 'strangling wei wuxian while blaming him for everything' and then being taken care of by wei wuxian like this hadn't even happened.

normally, jiang cheng is not someone who is physically violent. he is verbally violent all the time, but his physical violence is typically reserved for mortal enemies. that first time he came within throwing distance of murdering wei wuxian in a fit of grief-rage was almost certainly more traumatic for him than it was for wei wuxian, who is really good at compartmentalizing that kind of shit.

interesting element of mirroring there though, in that jiang cheng allowed wei wuxian to know about the murderous rage but not the self-destructive love, leading wei wuxian to misunderstand the exact shape of his place in jiang cheng's life and act on the basis of the rejection, in a way that encouraged relationship decay, just as wei wuxian's own secret-keeping would later lead jiang cheng to do in reply. vicious cycle!)

But the important thing is that this truth doesn't really explain anything.

Wei Wuxian's mute self-mutilation for Jiang Cheng's sake explained everything. All the withdrawal, the betrayal, what he thought was the rejection; the previously inexplicable decisions to abandon the teachings and home and allegiances that bound them in favor of death and the children of their enemies. Wen Ning's revelation explained it all, and recast it utterly.

It made the story different in a way that mattered a lot to the people in it.

What Jiang Cheng did...it shows he wasn't unworthy of that sacrifice in the way everything else about the narrative paints him. It's a grace note to his character.

It's not meaningless, exactly. It's just also not enough to actually change the weight of debt between them; it doesn't restructure the narrative.

It's not even, truly, new information.

Wei Wuxian knows Jiang Cheng loved him. Wanted to protect and keep him. He knows Jiang Cheng understood his abandonment as a betrayal, that Jiang Cheng felt he was owed better, and that this sense of being-entitled was a major impetus behind his increasing hostility.

Adding this little scrap of context for those reactions, for that rage--it's not enough. It gives Jiang Cheng a little more reason to have felt hard done by, validates a little of that wild resentment and makes it less of a spoiled young master reaction, lends it more dignity.

But your feelings being valid doesn't really go that far to justifying actions taken because of them. The hurt was already sympathetic; the choices aren't really changed by the context making it more so.

After all, he knew he'd lost his core protecting Wei Wuxian, but he also knew that Wei Wuxian risked his own life almost as foolishly extracting him again afterward, and 'knew' that Wei Wuxian freely gave away his only connection with his own dead mother and access to the help of an immortal for his sake; they were already square by rights in the world as he understood it, and he still acted the way he did.

And after all, Wei Wuxian's actions in his first life were always taking Jiang Cheng and Jiang Cheng's feelings into consideration, even when it didn't look like it; even when he fucked up, and Jiang Cheng paid for it. Right up until he lost his mind, and to an extent afterward.

'Consciously, on purpose choosing against someone out of spite' is something Wei Wuxian did not ever do to him, which he did do to Wei Wuxian. A lot. Escalating.

That doesn't become any less happened because at a prior time he did the opposite.

All the while not putting a lot of effort into worrying about Wei Wuxian's feelings, or how to spare them, because one of the norms of their relationship was that Jiang Cheng's feelings deserved to be privileged and handled gently, but Wei Wuxian was too tough to need that kind of consideration. Except about dogs.

That's a norm Jiang Cheng accepted and took for granted; it turned out to be the norm that broke their relationship, because Wei Wuxian treated 'protecting Jiang Cheng's delicate feelings' as such a mandatory task that he put it over things that logic would call much more important.

And so there's no way Jiang Cheng can talk about how he lost his core trying to die for Wei Wuxian without sounding like he's trying to justify himself, to wipe his deliberate-choice-to-harm off the record with a single act of goodness.

When Wei Wuxian has never once for a second tried to argue that his own goodness cancels out his crimes.

(He doesn't even argue that other people's crimes cancel out his crimes; the furthest he's gone is that since everyone involved did or abetted evil shit, it's inappropriate and bullshit to construct him as uniquely villainous and structure a concept of justice around that falsehood.)

So the only meaning that truth can carry now, after everything, coming from Jiang Cheng, is his saying: Please. I'm a better person than you think I am. I loved you more than you believe.

I was just as good as you, no matter what everyone always thought. I deserve for you to love me like you did before, in spite of everything, and I deserve not to have to say I'm sorry, and I deserve your respect, and and and--

And he is not gonna fucking say that.

[undistortedworld]

CHOMPS HIM BITES HIM ARUFGSHSH HHRFF HRNGGG GRRRR

[lgbtlunaverse]

"Nie Mingjue would still have died young even if Jin Guangyao hadn't killed him" Not as in "So it's fine to kill him because people who won't live for much longer have obviously already forfeit their lives" (what) But as in "If you don't get that Nie Mingjue has had an inevitable young and violent death hanging over him since he was a young teenager and has embraced it you can't fully understand his character"

[rayan12sworld]

💠💙Back to the Seasons of My Youth

By:desiccations, orphan_account, Potatoes_Radishes, Vrishchika

Summary:

Lan Wangji finds himself time- and dimension-traveling, but he really just wants to be back with his husband.

Chapter:1/1

Words:14,415

Status:completed

"What is my role here? In Cloud Recesses?"

"You are a beloved teacher. Shufu handed off many of his classes to you.”

"You lead the nighthunts with the juniors and you have your own place to experiment. You dabble in new forms of musical cultivation,"

"Your inventions used well over the cultivation world"

"Wei Ying is Gusu Lan's most valuable cultivator,"

"He is uncle's most valuable nephew in law, he appreciates your wisdom,"

"Brother loves having you around for tea, he delights in your company,"

You are Sizhui's father, he adores your presence, you loved to bury him in soil and claim it helps him grow taller and stronger." He smiles slightly, his face flushing as Wangji brings Wei Ying's ribbon to his lips maintaining eye contact, "And you are my beloved husband, my Wei Ying, forever.”

~

He raises a hand and brushes a warm cheek tenderly, running a thumb along the smooth skin, "You are free, Wei Ying. There are no debts or chains holding you here. You remain because you wish to, because you love and are loved in return. This is your home." He lifts the ribbon and caresses the cloud motif on it carefully, "A Lan in heart and spirit."

~~

"He is ours now because we were fortunate. Do not take that for granted. He will make enemies. He will sacrifice his entire being before he compromises on his honor or morality. He loves me beyond anything and even I cannot sway him away from the righteous path. If he must face the world to save a few innocent souls, he will do it. He has done it."

~~

"He is... lively." Wangji huffs in amusement, "Lively, bright, more beautiful than either of us can bear, certainly. But-" He hides a small smile behind his cup, "He yields beautifully to us." Lan Zhan's ears turn red, "He seems too free-spirited to... yield."