#that's why Lan wangji loves him

[illuminchim]

Getting back to drawing things like this with one of my fav part of the book ✨

[qourmet]

this isn't the first time @cerbykerby had an idea that i've impulsively drawn... rest of the comic under the cut!

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Not beating the allegations.

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[boarloved-art]

Wei Wuxian should be able to get drunk for once. I think he'd either be singing bawdy drinking songs on the roof of the Jingshi or he'd be getting irrevocably lost no matter where he is. He's found in the bushes behind the mountains like a cryptid, and then he's like "I can't believe you all got lost" (extremely slurred) as if he didn't get embarrassed by something Lan Wangji had said and just somehow disappeared when everyone looked back at him

oh ABSOLUTELY im walking with u and nodding and agreeing, i can see him becoming an absolute menace to keep track of at his drunkest.

anyway heres wonderwall The Gang (Wangxian & their fave group of ducklings) in a city known for its STRONG wine and wuxian being like well. ur all grown now, youre technically not juniors anymore. we have to see whos lasting the longest against this stuff!, smash cut to a suspiciously wei ying-less group of the worlds drunkest cultivators being wrangled through the woods by designated driver hanguang-jun, with at least 2 of them clinging to his robes at all times.

[hualianschild]

falling for all the loser in love characters in a show/book that try to come off as cool and indifferent is so fun cuz their future partner be doing weird shit and embarrassing themselves and you'll be silently screaming and hiding your face cuz of the second hand embarrassment but then you realize this fool with heart eyes is definitely squealing like they got a high school crush and hypothetically kicking their legs and punching the air over that and that helps you calm down

[touchlikethesun]

sometimes, ngl, i do find myself wondering what it was that made lan wangji fall so desperately in love with wei wuxian - they really are so different and wei wuxian does represent in many ways the antithesis of everything lan wangji lives his life embodying, even if the audience knows how great and amazing wei wuxian is (we also read mainly from his pov and he is basically handcrafted to appeal to modern fandoms), we the audience are not lan wangji, lan wangji isn’t privy to all the same information we are. and then a scene will come along, where wei wuxian will be so earnestly and painfully good, to someone else or to lan wangji himself, and it all makes sense again. like, of course lan wangji was going to fall in love with him how could he not fall in love with him??? really he’s completely powerless when it comes to wei wuxian how could he not be

[factsilike]

My first impression of LWJ: "Oh god, not another one of those broody, cold asshole CEO-type of Male Leads, is it??

Me after reading the novel several times: "I'M SO NORMAL ABOUT THIS GUY. HE'S SO SO GOOOD!!!! GHFGGFHDSETYGFDGG BEST PARTNER, BROTHER, FATHER, BEST EVERYTHING-"

Seriously, the way he struggles with his perception of wrong and right and what he's been told all his life is the right thing versus what he's been shown the right thing is, the way he loves and yearns so deeply but is just as determined to not trouble his love interest with his desires, lest he feels obligated to reciprocate out of (God forbid) gratitude or a sense of debt, the way he grows and learns from his mistakes and becomes a better man in a way that few characters in the novel, or in general fiction, do and is so, so righteous. (Growing up is not easy! And he had a lot of that to do before he could become a partner to WWX, because he didn't exactly treat him as an equal. But he does, and I love that so much!)

[fandom-flight]

I keep seeing Wei Wuxian slander (libel?) And I won't stand for it. Wei Wuxian is not a bad cook. He just happens to cook food that is very spicy because that's how he likes it. Other people who like spicy food would probably also like it, and people who are not used to spicy food will not. This does not make him a bad cook, this just makes his food toxic to people like Lan Wangji (and me)

[dontheckinswear]

i feel in my heart of hearts that lwj would be a milk drinker except not actually bc he would almost definitely be lactose intolerant and while wwx would indulge in cheesy foods anyways and just suffer the consequences, (this is a modern au if it wasn’t clear) lwj has too much self respect to do that to himself. also he’s vegan. so basically what i’m saying is. almond milk drinker lwj.

[twistedappletree]

Big headcanon that Lan Xichen adored baby A-Yuan when Lan Wangji brought him to the Cloud Recesses.

Big headcanon that he adored him so much, LWJ actually had to stop his brother from spoiling him because he wanted A-Yuan to be equal and have the same experience as the other Lan juniors so there wasn’t any favoritism/jealousy or bullying against him.

Big headcanon that Lan Xichen found more practical ways to spoil him because he saw how smart and fast-learning little A-Yuan was and always made sure he had the tools and resources to excel in his studies and cultivation.

[winepresswrath]

hi! i always love your MDZS/CQL takes; can i ask what are the questions you think CQL is asking, as compared to MDZS?

I haven't actually revisited either canon in ages, which is making me nervous. what questions the novel is interested in can be pretty contentious all on its own! @mikkeneko has an excellent answer in the notes here which I reccomend to everyone. My own thoughts are honestly pretty scattered- I keep on deleting things and going hm, that's not quite right.

So, for the obvious-to-me example, people reasonably zero in on the creation of innocent doctors/radish farmers who Wen Ruohan is holding hostage. In CQL it's easy to infer that Wen Qing and Wen Ning are maybe the only cultivators and almost certainly the only combatants among the Wen remnants, and their status is much more ambiguous in the novel, which I personally think is asking, essentially, "and so what? were they wrong to run, when they had a chance? Do they deserve what Jin Guangshan will do to them if they go back? Aren't they just people, actually?" Whereas the question that CQL is asking is more to the effect of "What does Wen Qing owe these people, when she is their only defence? What is she entitled to do to save them, at other people's expense? If she fucks up that moral calculus, what then? Does it matter if she's personally fond of some of the outsiders who are going to get hurt? If one of them saved her brother? Later, this question will flip to what Wei Wuxian and Jiang Cheng, and the parallel to Jiang Cheng's situation in particular is, I think, genuinely pretty fun. You're giving up the Wen as soldiers who've laid down their arms in exchange for Wen Qing also grappling with leadership and the question of how many horrors she can stand to look the other way on to protect her own people. one reason I keep deleting so much is that a lot cql's changes were motivated at least in part by censorship, which I think we mostly share a general and justified distaste for! but I also think that within the bounds of that censorship the creative team put a lot of work into actually doing something interesting with those changes. Or, for another example- nieyao! There's a much greater emphasis on the nmj-jgy relationship, it's unambiguously very close and they are clearly extremely important to one another, and I think that's because the cql team has a lot to say about love, trust, power, and the ways those things interact, and that reflects back on all of the other relationships in play, including Wangxian. Almost every time, when CQL chooses change a relationship they make the characters in question closer- that's true for Jiang Cheng and Lan Wangji, for Wen Qing and the Yunmeng contingent, for Zixuan and Mianmian, and Huaisang and Meng Yao. It's even true for Lan Wangji and Wei Wuxian, who have a close and trusting relationship in first life! CQL puts a much greater emphasis on "all right, so you care, what next?" How do you choose someone and then choose to be good to them? What if there's a massive power disparity between you? What if you seriously disagree about your priorities and morals? How do you trust someone who's betrayed you? When is it a stupid choice to trust at all? How do you have faith that you know someone well enough for that trust to be meaningful?

for legal reasons i would like to specify that it's not that mdzs isn't interested in these problems. i do remember wangxian's literal trust fall. cql is asking these questions all the time about everyone. also for legal purposes i'm not suggesting that cql lwj and jc love each other. but! they establish a three month wartime partnership looking for wwx and then jc immediately drops him on wwx's say-so despite apparently having a positive enough opinion of him to tell wwx he thinks they should make up twice. lan wangji will later tell wwx he thinks he should loop jc in on the second flautist! these are people trying to navigate some kind of relationship/shared interest/community, as opposed to a hateful void. cql wants to say hey, how do you go about this? while I'm here and rambling cql also puts a lot of emphasis on wwx's connection to yunmeng and changes things up so instead of feeling alienated right before he leaves our last glimpse of him there is happily picking lotuses and playing with a kid! in both stories the narrative is asking who do you protect? who do you leave behind? can you ever get it back? but the angles are very different.

[illuminchim]

Character sheet of Lan “You Are Not Qualified to Talk To Me” Zhan 🐰

[candidateofloyalty]

[image id: heavily edited meme with shen qingqiu on one side and wei wuxian on the other. text in the center reads "mxtx made us in different series because she knew lan zhan couldn't handle me playing resentment of chunshan at him. end id]

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Hello Madam. Sorry Madam.

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[sunbunnyyy]

lan xichen is not a perfect human being. he is an older brother who is Going Through Some Shit by the end of the novel. did he always make good choices?? no!! have you????

[acequinz]

Hey do you think pre-sunshot LXC was so supportive of LWJ getting along with WWX, so he would have at least one friend who isn't outright intimidated by him because he didn't want LWJ to be as lonely as he was?

Because while LWJ was also an heir, it was very much fixed that LXC would be the next sect leader, so obviously they beat down on him harsher than they would LWJ.

Every time we see LXC pre-sunshot is either him with LQR or on a night hunt or preparing for some sect related things and unlike LWJ who is comfortable by himself he clearly does not exactly love it.

Of course he's still gonna do it because of responsibility but that doesn't mean LWJ has to suffer the same loneliness he does.

So what I am thinking it pre-sunshot LXC doing the typical eldest sibling stuck in a strict family not wanting his younger sibling to have to put up with the same frustrations and giving him a way out.

Like yes, go on befriend that little chaotic boy who is actually very talented and adept and can hold his ground in front of you. You know you finally met someone who is your match so don't be afraid to get close, you have the option so don't waste it.

And then do you think LXC felt like he met his own match when he met Meng Yao on the run? Not just because he saved him but because they could understand each other's defense mechanisms where they both politely smile even when they want to stab people.