#oh haha... i guess i was nervous... and lwj being like oh youre so brave though and wwx is like im not always

[neverdoingmuch]

i have a lot of feelings about the way people handle the wangxian dynamic and confession in aus. fandom tends to interpret the wangxian relationship as lwj waiting for wwx to say something, and then (usually) shaming wwx for not saying something. the blow is sometimes softened by lwj saying something about how wwx seems so confident/determined/brave and wwx saying something about how he isn’t, not always, or whatever,, but at the end of the day the burden of being the one to initiate, to confess first, to pursue, is nearly always put on wwx. if you look at the guanyin temple confession with no other context this seems like a fair enough assumption but the fact of the matter is that unless you’re following canon very closely their dynamic doesn’t work, and let’s not even get into the whole ‘lwj silently loving and wwx obliviously pining until he decides fuck it’ trope.

pre-death lwj certainly wouldn’t say anything because he’s not in the right spot to be pursuing a relationship with wwx, be it because of his own personal development not having occurred yet or wwx and lwj’s fundamental inability to understand each other, but post-resurrection lwj is held back by some inherently canon events. unless your fic manages to cover the fact that lwj confessed his love to wwx only for wwx to reject him, followed by the complicated issue of wwx’s ability to consent post-death when he was relying on lwj’s protection and felt as if he owed lwj, that dynamic isn’t going to work!! lwj is not some shrinking violet who can’t pursue his own desires, he’s a complicated person who was held back by his inability/unwillingness to pursue the relationship and then by a dynamic in which he didn’t feel comfortable pursuing wwx. 

and wwx isn’t some oblivious idiot who can’t piece together his own feelings. as a teenager he may have been a little oblivious, yes, but the thing that always held wwx back wasn’t a lack of understanding of himself or his own desires, rather the lack of space to be able to explore his feelings. from the very start of the sunshot campaign to the very end of his first life wwx had different priorities. (and that’s not even considering the fact that not only did lwj act as if he hated wwx but everyone around wwx reinforced this idea.) after he comes back from the dead wwx isn’t awarded peace, what with how he has to solve nmj’s death, but he is given space, and we see how he manages to work through his feelings. it’s not clean or easy, and wwx does take a while to do so, but he isn’t oblivious to them: he knows they’re there and he tries to figure them out and he does come to understand them.

the wangxian dynamic is one of complicated and difficult relationships full of missed chances and blocked paths, and personal growth and getting and taking chances that didn’t exist before. removing the characters from their unique situations and trying to follow that same dynamic isn’t going to work. shrinking violet lwj and alarmingly self-ignorant wwx isn’t who the characters are, and tbh, i don’t like those characters at all.

[neverdoingmuch]

#that's not to say that wwx shouldn't confess first or whatever #i just hate that specific dynamic and im sick of seeing that one conversation where lwj is like why didnt you say something and wwx is like #oh haha... i guess i was nervous... and lwj being like oh youre so brave though and wwx is like im not always #and then they just carry on like wwx was obliged to confess first and theres no mention of lwj actually saying his feelings #like at all.... there's always this tone of 'ofc wwx is going to confess first i mean look at him and look a lwj' and it feels like such a #disservice to both of them #like you can't recreate the confession scene or the impact of the confession scene if you dont have any of the context or history that made #it so good and made it work #it feels like a surface-level read of the characters was made and people just latched onto that #*i* latched onto it in my early days in the fandom and i stuck with it for a very long time but now it feels overdone and inaccurate

i have a lot of feelings about the way people handle the wangxian dynamic and confession in aus. fandom tends to interpret the wangxian relationship as lwj waiting for wwx to say something, and then (usually) shaming wwx for not saying something. the blow is sometimes softened by lwj saying something about how wwx seems so confident/determined/brave and wwx saying something about how he isn’t, not always, or whatever,, but at the end of the day the burden of being the one to initiate, to confess first, to pursue, is nearly always put on wwx. if you look at the guanyin temple confession with no other context this seems like a fair enough assumption but the fact of the matter is that unless you’re following canon very closely their dynamic doesn’t work, and let’s not even get into the whole ‘lwj silently loving and wwx obliviously pining until he decides fuck it’ trope.

pre-death lwj certainly wouldn’t say anything because he’s not in the right spot to be pursuing a relationship with wwx, be it because of his own personal development not having occurred yet or wwx and lwj’s fundamental inability to understand each other, but post-resurrection lwj is held back by some inherently canon events. unless your fic manages to cover the fact that lwj confessed his love to wwx only for wwx to reject him, followed by the complicated issue of wwx’s ability to consent post-death when he was relying on lwj’s protection and felt as if he owed lwj, that dynamic isn’t going to work!! lwj is not some shrinking violet who can’t pursue his own desires, he’s a complicated person who was held back by his inability/unwillingness to pursue the relationship and then by a dynamic in which he didn’t feel comfortable pursuing wwx. 

and wwx isn’t some oblivious idiot who can’t piece together his own feelings. as a teenager he may have been a little oblivious, yes, but the thing that always held wwx back wasn’t a lack of understanding of himself or his own desires, rather the lack of space to be able to explore his feelings. from the very start of the sunshot campaign to the very end of his first life wwx had different priorities. (and that’s not even considering the fact that not only did lwj act as if he hated wwx but everyone around wwx reinforced this idea.) after he comes back from the dead wwx isn’t awarded peace, what with how he has to solve nmj’s death, but he is given space, and we see how he manages to work through his feelings. it’s not clean or easy, and wwx does take a while to do so, but he isn’t oblivious to them: he knows they’re there and he tries to figure them out and he does come to understand them.

the wangxian dynamic is one of complicated and difficult relationships full of missed chances and blocked paths, and personal growth and getting and taking chances that didn’t exist before. removing the characters from their unique situations and trying to follow that same dynamic isn’t going to work. shrinking violet lwj and alarmingly self-ignorant wwx isn’t who the characters are, and tbh, i don’t like those characters at all.