#there's a distinct lack of lxc in this

[adhdo5]

I definitely agree that pre-crimes meng yao feels like a complete cop-out of a happy ending. LXC loved him crimes and all, though it was complicated. Personally I like to make them angst together postcanon until they find a compromise (and yes, LXC has some apologizing to do, and JGY imho has less apologizing to do than most people seem to expect him to). – @evilhasnever

Yeah this exactly!!!! I love to dream and I love to see a beautiful vision and to be so honest I think on theme math if they can make their relationship actually work that would in fact not only fix them but tbh be a net positive for the world. Tbh. I don't even think it's necessarily foremost about compromise between them personally – I think for both of them it's primarily about getting the scope and timescale to change some things they hold as fundamental beliefs about the way the world works, and not inasmuch abt finding a Middle Ground but both of them being able to understand in a way how they have both been, for lack of a better concise term, fucking played. Xiyao happy ending can only happen with hope for #society

Also re JGY apologizing this is kind of a tangent but yeah I am talking Specifically about a very ostensibly JGY-soft section of discourse (Xiyao postcanonism). More generally I think, honestly, that he has to do – both in terms of what "apologizing for" means (hint: we have spent a book being hit over the head with the fact that "Punished For His Crimes" is not a viable answer) and in terms of what he should apologize for – is extremely distinct from what people expect him to apologize for both in the universe of MDZS and in the response of ten million guys who appear to have understood fuck all; it is very important IMHO that the things JGY is #Cancelled for, the reasonable personal grievances that individual characters have against him, and the things that are actually objectively atrocities are distinct categories that at best overlap, y'know? And I think people honestly kind of sleep on what the worst of his actual crimes are in a lot of the common response. I am fully drifting from topic though

A thing that bothers me about postcanon Xiyaos is that they tend to want to be fixit Xiyaos and in the process not only make it weird but also erase a lot of the appeal of postcanon Xiyao in general. Like I understand why people want to write LXC as purely regretful and oh how I could have killed that guy he was all that mattered in the world but like. He wasn't?

Sorry to say this but as much as Xiyao-Wangxian parallels real and the world and universe a lot of the tragedy is in how Xiyao were never ever going to be able to prioritize like Wangxian were bc Xiyao cannot extricate what they want personally from what they want ideologically. And just saying that JGY's death undoes this in LXC is a) boring b) untrue to the character and c) honestly kind of cringe from a moral evaluation perspective? Yes the thing is in the narrative of MDZS the kind of priorities Xiyao have are futile, because MDZS is about the futility and arrogance of those priorities, and that's why Xiyao are never going to survive MDZS,– and I would certainly say they're misguided and mixed up with awful obligation nonsense, but they're not in fact bad priorities or stupid considerations to have on a grander scale and something focusing on resolving those issues has to expand from MDZS's themes and answer not "what if they simply went Wangxian 2 about it" but "given that they are not and can never be Wangxian and Wangxian happy ending doesn't work for them what kind of story DOES Xiyao happy ending happen in"

And first thing second: a lot of these answers tend to do the thing where their answer is "Xiyao at age 20 was Xiyao happy ending" which is again not only a boring answer but kind of a shitty one! First of all no the fuck it wasn't, otherwise they wouldn't have done all that; second of all Oh so you claim you want a-Yao happy ending and forgive him all his crimes but the only form you want him in is one that in some sense hasn't committed what you perceived as the worst of his crimes yet? The only form you want him in is Meng Yao who does your laundry and cries about needing your support and is only relieved, not angry, not resentful, who's powerless and Yet To Be Corrupted? You want him untainted and want a medal for having a different perception of what "tainted" means? That's what killed him the first time around! Nothing has changed! Xichen-ge, look out!

Fuck that shit!!! Reckon with his crimes! Reckon with the fact that LXC has genuine reason to distrust him and vice versa! They have genuine moral differences and circumstantial disparities and personal-moral grievances with each other no shallower than Nieyao do! Give Jin Guangyao his power and reckon with the things he did for and with it and figure out how they're going to live with that!! You wanna be a Jin Guangyao apologist? START APOLOGIZING

And fucking frankly Lan Xichen has some damn apologizing to do too!! A thing not enough of this talks about is how privilege-blind he is and how he never actually understands JGY's circumstances or the depth of his plight; MDZS if fucking anything asks us to sit with the fact that the world they live in is so cruel as to make those motives to do genuinely horrible inexcusable things legitimate by asking NMJ and LXC to sit with that and both NMJ and LXC fail to do so in turn bc they can't accept that about their society (and tragically even as he is proof positive of that neither can JGY!!!!!!)!!!!!

And the fixation on pre-Crimes Meng Yao is honestly just kind of fucked! It's such an unhinged idea that you should chase not just the lover but the shape of the love you had when you were literally barely out of your teens as life-defining! Not to overestimate LXC's ability to Get Over It, because I do believe that he kind of never does, but it's just so miserable both on the ~kinda fetishizing this dubiously extant Innocence (ew!!!) front but also on the front of like , and you're going to make this too into an obligation for a character defined and crushed by his obligations, and assume this obligation eclipses literally everything and everyone else he cares about??? Miserable! Amatonormative! Literal decades have passed and you're going to say all that character development for both of them didn't happen? For the sake of The One nonsense? I know we're writing fic for a novel where the main couple are Like That and again I'm writing this whole thing because frankly I like postcanon Xiyao I am attached and I am rooting for postcanon Xiyao to get together very easily!! But even Wangxian are absolutely changed by the 20 years and they are resolving ! The problems ! That prevented them from having a relationship before ! It's a whole thing whatever whatever

TL;DR: You are all so amatonormative + make Lan Xichen worse + free my man JGY he did all that shit but free him anyway + in MY postcanon TGCFlike they're divorced

[bloody-bee-tea]

Not dead, just forgotten

This is somewhat of a sequel to Worthy of a god. Please do not ask me about the plot/backstory here, cause I’m just the author. I don’t know.

Edit: It turns out I do in fact know, because you can find what happens before this in my BeeTober Day 3 fic.

Jiang Cheng wakes up with a hole in his chest. He feels empty—like something that is vital to him has been carved out—and he definitely didn’t feel that way when he went to bed.

But it’s still the middle of the night, and Jiang Cheng is not completely awake, so he puts it off as the remnant of a dream. 

It’s still harder than it should be to fall back asleep again.

~*~*~

A few nights later Jiang Cheng wakes up with tears streaming down his face. 

He doesn’t quite remember what he was dreaming of, only that there was a man, bathed in light, but whenever he tries to remember more, his memory fails him.

This time, he’s almost eager to go back to sleep, if simply so he can find out what this is all about.

~*~*~

It doesn’t get better.

The hole in his chest threatens to consume him whole some days and Jiang Cheng doesn’t even know what’s happening.

He just knows he’s missing something—someone—but he can’t put his finger on it.

“You look like shit,” Wei Wuxian tells him when he comes home one day and Jiang Cheng glares at him.

“You have nightmares like this every night and we’ll see how you look,” Jiang Cheng gives back, but he cringes at the word nightmare.

It’s not right. It’s not what this is.

“Nightmares? What do you dream about?” Wei Wuxian wants to know but Jiang Cheng shakes his head.

“I already have to dream about it, do you really think I want to talk about it, too?” Jiang Cheng tells him, but that isn’t true either.

It just—it doesn’t feel right, to tell Wei Wuxian about his dreams. 

They are his. They are not to share.

Wei Wuxian thankfully doesn’t mention the frown on Jiang Cheng’s face at his own strange thoughts.

~*~*~

Jiang Cheng doesn’t know why he suddenly knows this, but the person he’s dreaming about—he’s a god.

It doesn’t make sense, not at all, but he is, Jiang Cheng is sure about that.

He doesn’t know which god or why he’s dreaming about him, but Jiang Cheng is more than certain that he’s also the reason for this hollow feeling in his chest.

“What do you know about gods?” Jiang Cheng asks Wei Wuxian one evening when they are both more paying attention to their phones than what’s running on the TV and Wei Wuxian looks at him as if he lost his mind.

“You mean the old ones?” Wei Wuxian asks and then shrugs. “They are dead.”

“The old ones,” Jiang Cheng repeats slowly and then frowns. “Why are there no new ones?” he wants to know. “Did you ever wonder about that?” 

“What is there to wonder about? The old ones died and no one took their place. We don’t need any gods.”

It’s what Jiang Cheng learned in school too, it’s what they all learn in school; the old gods are dead, long live the freedom to believe what you want.

It doesn’t sit right with Jiang Cheng, not anymore.

~*~*~

Jiang Cheng still wakes up crying more nights than not. The dream doesn’t get any clearer; he can barely see the man in front of him. He’s still bathed in light, more radiant than anything Jiang Cheng has ever seen, but by now Jiang Cheng also knows that he’s lonely, so lonely.

Jiang Cheng doesn’t know if he’s crying after these dreams because the man is so sad, or because Jiang Cheng wants to soothe him him so bad it physically hurts him that he can’t.

He’s not sure he wants to find out.

~*~*~

By the time another month rolls around, Jiang Cheng dreams about the man every night. It’s exhausting and Jiang Cheng is sick of feeling sad. 

He wants to scream at the man to leave him alone, but he finds he can’t muster the necessary anger for that. In the end, all he really wants to do is hug him and tell him it will be alright.

It doesn’t make any sense.

So in order to have it make some sense, Jiang Cheng starts to research. There is not much to find about religion and gods in the local library, nor in the university's library, but Jiang Cheng takes every book home with him that talks about the gods, even if it’s just in passing.

He piles his room with them, and it isn’t long before they migrate to the living-room as well. 

Jiang Cheng is almost reading non-stop now. He needs answers.

But that also means that Wei Wuxian takes notice of his little project.

“What are you doing?” he asks, as he suspiciously eyes the nearest book. “Is this for a report?”

Jiang Cheng is tempted to lie to him—again—but in the end, he can’t bring himself to do it. He can’t lie about his god.

“No,” he admits. “I’m looking for someone.”

“Someone,” Wei Wuxian slowly repeats, his eyes still on the books. “And you’re reading these books because—?”

“I think that someone is a god,” Jiang Cheng says out loud, for the first time since the dreams started, and he’s surprised to find how right it feels.

“Do you have a fever?” Wei Wuxian asks and comes closer to put his hands to Jiang Cheng’s forehead. “Are you feeling okay?”

“Stop that,” Jiang Cheng grumbles and smacks his hand away. “I am. Do you remember the nightmares I told you about?”

“Are you still having them? Jiang Cheng, it’s been months since then.”

“And they are not nightmares,” Jiang Cheng says. “They are not even dreams, I think. But I need to find the man I’m dreaming about.”

“You’re dreaming about a man,” Wei Wuxian repeats and just by the tone of his voice Jiang Cheng can tell that he’s not going to like what’s coming next. “Did it ever occur to you that you might have a crush you’re dreaming about?”

“Shut up,” Jiang Cheng hisses but Wei Wuxian only laughs.

“I know it’s unlikely but it would certainly be more believable than you dreaming about a god. There are no gods, Jiang Cheng. They all died in the war.”

“But that’s just it,” Jiang Cheng starts and points at the books. “All these books, they talk about ‘the war’. None of them specify. None tell us what happened, who fought or why. A war leaves traces, bodies, ruins. And yet there is nothing.”

“It’s a war of the gods. Of course there would be no traces one earth.”

“And especially because of that there should be traces on earth. If the gods are as powerful as the world makes us believe then there should be traces all around. And even if not; who survived the war? There must have been a winner. Why did no one move to the heavens afterwards?”

“They probably got destroyed. Jiang Cheng, you’re talking non-sense. I don’t know what has gotten into you.”

Jiang Cheng opens his mouth to tell him exactly what has gotten into him, but he can’t find the words.

He doesn’t know how to describe the feeling he gets every time he dreams about the god. About the hole in his chest, about the feeling of missing someone so badly it leaves Jiang Cheng breathless and yearning and in pain from the simple absence of that someone.

Jiang Cheng doesn’t know how to make Wei Wuxian understand, so he doesn’t say anything.

“You should go back to concentrating on your studies,” Wei Wuxian advises him and Jiang Cheng simply nods.

If he agrees, Wei Wuxian will leave him alone and Jiang Cheng will have more time to further research the topic.

~*~*~

The books are no help. They are vague and generic in their descriptions, almost repetitive as if someone had copy/pasted the same paragraph into every book: there used to be gods. There was a war. The old gods are dead.

Jiang Cheng is losing his mind, the hole in his chest getting bigger almost every day, and he knows—he knows—it’s because he’s missing his god just as much as his god is missing him.

He needs more resources, that much is clear. Just as clear as it is that he won’t find them here.

Jiang Cheng already did some research, he knows there are other libraries out there he could consult, but none of them are willing to send their books halfway across the world, so his only option is to go to them.

And he will.

Jiang Cheng is just packing his back when Wei Wuxian comes into his room.

“What are you doing?” he asks, stuck in the doorway by his surprise and Jiang Cheng doesn’t even spare a glance for him.

“Packing,” he gives back, even though it should be more than obvious what he’s doing. 

“Where are you going?” Wei Wuxian asks next and Jiang Cheng knows he won’t understand, he didn’t understand the last times and he certainly won’t now, but he still tries to explain.

“I have to find other sources, other books. These,” he says and points at the disappointing stack on his desk, “are not enough. They don’t have the answers I need.”

There’s a beat of silence where Wei Wuxian simply stares at him as if he lost his marbles but then he finds his voice again.

“There are no answers, Jiang Cheng! The old gods are dead!” Wei Wuxian almost yells at him as if that will make him understand, and Jiang Cheng has had enough.

“They are forgotten!” he yells back, because of that he is sure by now. 

They cannot be dead, because if they are dead then Jiang Cheng is stuck with this feeling for forever and he’s not sure he can survive it. He can barely breathe with the simple thought of him being dead. It cannot be. It’s not true.

He needs to find his god.

“They are not dead, they can’t be,” Jiang Cheng repeats, much quieter this time, almost breathless with the pain in his chest. “I know it, right here,” he says and puts his hand over his heart.

“Jiang Cheng, this is insane,” Wei Wuxian tries again. “What are you going to do? You can’t just leave.”

“But I am,” Jiang Cheng gives back, because he is. 

Nothing else matters.

“What?” Wei Wuxian asks, clearly surprised by Jiang Cheng’s answer, but Jiang Cheng barely pays him attention, until Wei Wuxian wraps his hand around his wrist.

“Jiang Cheng, be serious. You can’t just sacrifice everything you worked for. The university is going to kick you out. What are your parents going to say?”

“I don’t care,” Jiang Cheng tells him, looking straight at him to let him know he means it. “It doesn’t matter. I don’t like business anyway, you know that,” he tries to make light of the situation, but Wei Wuxian doesn’t even react to that.

“You don’t know what it’s like,” Jiang Cheng tries next and then the words just tumble out of his mouth. “I miss him, I miss him so much, and I don’t even know him. He’s my god, he is, I know it, but I’m also his and I have to find him.”

“Jiang Cheng, he’s not real,” Wei Wuxian whispers, but Jiang Cheng furiously shakes his head, tears pricking at his eyes.

“He is. He is just forgotten. And I will remember him. I will,” he decidedly says, because someone has to.

“Jiang Cheng, you can’t do this,” Wei Wuxian says again, but Jiang Cheng doesn’t listen to him anymore.

The need to find his god is burning him, is urging him to move, and so Jiang Cheng does.

It isn’t until Jiang Cheng turns around, his bag on his back, that he sees Jiang Yanli in the door.

He throws a glare at Wei Wuxian, because of course he called her, but Wei Wuxian simply holds his gaze.

“Shijie, he’s going to leave. He’s going to sacrifice everything for something that isn’t even real.”

Jiang Cheng works his jaw, because his god is real, he knows it, and Jiang Yanli smiles at him.

“A-Cheng, what are you doing?” she asks, voice as reasonable as ever, and Jiang Cheng has to fight the urge to cry.

“I have to find him, A-jie. I’m his. I’m his and I need to get back to him, I need to remember him, I can’t live with this—this hollow feeling inside of me. It’s going to eat me alive.”

“Shijie,” Wei Wuxian starts again, but Jiang Yanli puts a hand on his arm.

“A-Xian, be quiet,” she orders him and then steps closer to Jiang Cheng. “A-Cheng, the old gods are dead,” she tells him and Jiang Cheng fears his desperation will drown him.

“They are forgotten,” he says past the lump in his throat and he furiously wipes away the tears that stream down his face but he lacks the energy to repeat everything he said to Wei Wuxian earlier.

“Please, A-jie,” Jiang Cheng begs instead and he feels like he can’t breathe until Jiang Yanli nods.

“Alright,” she says, just as Wei Wuxian makes a startled noise.

“Shijie, you can’t let him ruin his life like this!”

“A-Xian, we’re going to let him go. He needs to do this,” Jiang Yanli tells him and Jiang Cheng is so thankful for her, he wants to cry again.

“Thank you,” he whispers and Jiang Yanli turns back around to him.

“How long will you be gone?” she asks him and Jiang Cheng straightens up.

“As long as I need to find him,” he gives back, because he will not stop. 

Not before he knows his god.

“I pulled my money from my bank account, so I can survive for a while,” he says and they all know he means a very long while.

“Stay in contact with us. If you need anything else, you let us know,” Jiang Yanli decides and then pulls him into a hug.

“I hope you find him,” she mumbles and Jiang Cheng knows she doesn’t understand—how could she, without feeling like he does—so this is the best he can hope for.

He squeezes her tight, before he turns to Wei Wuxian.

“I still think you’re being stupid,” Wei Wuxian declares, but he pulls him into a hug too. “Be safe,” he asks of him and Jiang Cheng nods.

“I will be,” he gives back and then he leaves his old life behind.

~*~*~

Jiang Cheng travels the world. He starts with the bigger libraries, with those that already told him they have books on the matter, but he barely finds any new information. All of the book repeat what he already knows, so after a few weeks Jiang Cheng starts looks for obscure libraries and bookstores.

He runs out of money very soon, because especially the bookstores are expensive, but his siblings keep sending him money so he manages somehow.

He follows every lead he gets, every little hint he finds, and it brings him to the most remote places, but even after a year, there is nothing.

He learned nothing new. He still doesn’t have a name for his god; he still doesn’t have a clue what happened to him or where he could find him.

And yet Jiang Cheng dreams about his god every night and every night the hole in his chest gets bigger and bigger. 

His god is lonely and Jiang Cheng needs to find him. 

So he goes on and on, always alone, always plagued by the knowledge that he is failing his god, but he persists. 

Jiang Cheng’s newest lead brings him to another remote village—and by now they all look the same to him—but something about this feels differently.

There is a small library in this village, almost dusted over, and it takes Jiang Cheng the better part of a week to sift through everything. 

There are more books that mention the old gods than in any other library he has found so far, but they are still vague.

Vague enough to make Jiang Cheng almost tear them apart.

“Kid, what are you even looking for?” the librarian asks him on his fourth day and Jiang Cheng closes his eyes.

He can’t explain this again. Every time it does the urgency in him grows and it hurts—it hurts—to talk about his elusive god but then he straightens up.

“I’m looking for the old gods,” he finally tells the librarian.

“They are—”

“Dead, yes, I fucking know,” Jiang Cheng spits out, and the words turn to ash on his tongue, threaten to choke him.

They cannot be dead.

“You know, kid, there’s a temple somewhere on his mountain,” a frail voice suddenly says from the doorway and when Jiang Cheng whirls around he finds the oldest human being he has ever laid eyes on.

“Grandma, don’t feed those ridiculous tales to an impressionable young man,” the librarian chides her, but Jiang Cheng isn’t listening to him anymore.

“A temple?” he asks and he follows the grandma without hesitation when she leaves the library.

“No one has found it yet, and no one knows what the people in there would be doing.”

“But,” Jiang Cheng prompts her, because he senses that there is more.

“But every month this donkey comes out of its shed to be burdened with enough supplies to last for a month before it walks up the mountain by itself. And every month it comes back a day later, without the supplies.”

Jiang Cheng eyes the donkey in surprise.

“This donkey? It doesn’t look like much,” he mutters and the grandma gives him a toothless smile.

“It never comes out during any other time in the month. And yet here it is,” she says and Jiang Cheng freezes.

The donkey looks at him and Jiang Cheng suddenly knows that it’s here for him.

“Kid, don’t listen to her. She’s senile,” the librarian tries again, but Jiang Cheng is already bowing to the grandma.

“Thank you so much,” he chokes out, because he knows this is it.

He can feel it.

He’s going to find his god.

“I hope you find what you’re looking for,” the grandma tells him with a kind smile and then hobbles away.

“Don’t do this, kid. People die on this mountain all the time.”

“But not me,” Jiang Cheng says with conviction. “Someone is waiting for me, I can’t die,” he decides and then steps closer to the donkey.

The donkey looks at him for a long moment, but finally it starts to walk, and Jiang Cheng follows it without hesitation.

He’s so close already.

~*~*~

The donkey is a little bastard, Jiang Cheng decides as he bandages his still bleeding hand, but it also lead him right to the entrance of the temple, so really, Jiang Cheng can’t complain.

His feet are glued to the ground for the longest moment, because this is the best lead Jiang Cheng has gotten in the past year and something in his gut tells him that if this doesn’t pan out, he can go back home.

If this doesn’t pan out then there is nothing more for him to do.

Jiang Cheng takes one last deep breath before he enters the temple. 

There are people milling around, some just standing like they forgot how to move, and Jiang Cheng quickly moves past them, never looking too long at them, only making sure they are not who he is looking for.

It’s only when he turns around the second corner that he notices that all of them are pointing in the same direction.

Jiang Cheng blinks a few times, but then his feet start to carry him along faster and faster, until he is running through the temple, always following the pointed fingers down streets and alleyways, deeper and deeper into it.

He comes to a sudden stop in front of a corner but he knows—he feels—that this is it.

Jiang Cheng just has to round that last corner and he will find what he was looking for all this time.

A very small part of him calls him stupid for believing that, but he’s burning with certainty, he knows it deep in his bones, and it’s that what finally allows him to move again.

He turns around the corner and stops dead in his tracks when he sees a man—his god—walking down the street.

He’s wearing his familiar white mourning robes, adorned with blue, and his forehead ribbon is pristine as usual.

Jiang Cheng distantly wonders how he suddenly knows that, but then his god turns around and sees him, the flute he’s carrying dropping to the ground, and every thought flees Jiang Cheng’s mind.

“Jiang Cheng,” his god says and Jiang Cheng feels alive for the first time since the dreams started. “Jiang Cheng,” his god repeats and Jiang Cheng walks up to him, for once in his life calm and at ease.

His god doesn’t take his eyes off him, tracks every step he takes, and soon enough Jiang Cheng is stranding right in front of him.

“Jiang Cheng,” his god says again and Jiang Cheng is surprised to see that the hand he’s raising is trembling.

His god cups his cheek in his hand and Jiang Cheng leans into the contact like a starving man. He allows his god to guide their foreheads together and he feels it more than he hears it when his god mumbles “You’re here.”

And suddenly it all comes back to Jiang Cheng; how Lan Xichen chose him, how they spend years, decades, centuries together and Jiang Cheng loves him so much it takes his breath away.

“Lan Xichen,” he whispers when he finds his voice again. “I found you.”

And the old gods are no longer forgotten.

Last part

{Buy me a kofi}

[crossdressingdeath]

One thing I can see with people who write fics that turn XY and JGY "good" are they usually keep their distinct personalities aka XY lacks of morality compass and JGY being a manipulator of highest degree especially in politics, and instead give them a reason to help/be loyal to wwx. Which is honestly believable because XY and JGY both showed that they do have some loyalty to those who save/treat them right, or at least regret killing them, both of which JC completely lacks. And they did suffer in their childhood/youth, and while it does not in anyway excuse their behavior/cruelty later, it makes it slightly possible that if wwx/lwj/lxc/xxc saved/helped them back then, they might turn out not good, but being on the same side/helpful to wangxian/good folks with some beneficial incentives.

JC, on the other hand, has like zero possible outcome when he wouldn't be a dick. Like, he was born rich, has nice father and sister, has at least average cultivation potential/power, has a childhood friend who was loyal and self sacrificing for him at every turn, good looks, never wanting for anything in his life beside like 2-3years in sunshot campaign and even then he had wwx to shoulder the war responsibilities and brought ymj great loots/benefits with his war achievement. All the suffering he felt during the fall of lotus pier...well half of that was on his parents decisions, the other half, who of the then sect leaders (lxc, nmj, nhs, jgy) didn't come to power young, lost dear family members and during a shaking time for their sects? Like literally he had one of the best lives in mdzs and he still turned out a mess of his own making. It would require a big, earth shaking change to even hint at jc becoming a half decent person, or even at the very least, not harming the rare good people there.

Yes! JC had everything he could want handed to him on a silver platter and it wasn't enough because the people around him didn't worship him. It's easy to write fix-its where JGY and XY are less evil because you can look at their backstories and find points where changing events would change their outlook, but JC's awful on a whole other level. Like... this man had pretty much everything. His father was a bit distant and his mother was a bitch, but most of his peers' parents were either dead or JGS and they all turned out infinitely less murderous so really that's no excuse, and other than that... yeah, JC was living the high life from the day he was born. You can't say "Oh, if his life was better he would've been a better person", because it was pretty much impossible for his life to be better! And we know that hardship doesn't improve his personality because when he actually faces some hardship he becomes a mass murderer and a serial killer who tortures people to death knowing he'll never be punished for it because he's a sect leader. He grew up rich and secure in the knowledge that he would become one of the most powerful people in the world no matter what he did and learned that he could straight up commit murder without consequences and never looked back. Also: you know that if JC was born lower class like WWX and JGY the sects would've removed him the moment he started being a dick to his peers.

[miyu-hyperfixates]

Random post-canon/backstory MDZS headcanon #3

After spending so much time with LSZ, WWX got a lot of opportunity to learn more about his adoptive son. So he often asks LXC, LJY and LWJ stories about LSZ’s childhood. And so he learned about  the influences of the adults in LSZ’s life and how it affected his personality and behavior.

For example, while his gentle and diplomatic personality obviously came from the influence of his equally diplomatic uncle (no example needed to be mention, it was pretty obvious seeing as LWJ has all but appointed LSZ as his spokesman), one could sometimes still spot here and there the tiny bits of pure stubbornness that were all LWJ. 

During the period where LWJ had been bedridden due to his injuries, LSZ was only allowed to visit him once a month [in an utter bitterly mirror of what happened with Madam Lan]...  Except that LSZ despite not remembering his past had separation issues and was absolutely anxious at the idea of not seeing LWJ often... So in the beginning LQR would panic anytime he lost sight of LSZ who apparently was very good at disappearing on him, only to find him later in the Jingshi, snuggled beside a sleeping LWJ. 

After the tenth times basically LQR gave up on lecturing him and just let him live in the Jingshi. [By the way what LQR didn’t know was that LXC had been purposely helping LSZ sneaking away, because he’s still fucking bitter about their childhood and didn’t want his nephew to grow up like them]  

According to LJY, LSZ was also prone to bouts of mischievousness though it manifested in such a way that most of the time no one ever see it coming and even if they did, they never directly connect it with LSZ (even when LSZ pranked them right in their face). It used to drive LJY crazy when they were kids but now he just finds it hilarious, especially since he realized that LSZ seriously lacked self-awareness on that matter.

Because whenever LSZ planned to prank someone or break the rules, he’d copy the rules two times preemptively. And he thought that the teachers/people in charge were aware of it and so when he inevitably got caught for pranking someone/breaking the rules they won’t add any punishment because LSZ had already punish himself. That’s the argument LSZ gave to LJY whenever the latter mocked LSZ about never getting into trouble even when he wanted to. 

And so, to prove his point, one day when they were something like ten or eleven, LJY had thrown LSZ’s stash of self-punishment right in front of a senior and casually said “Sizhui was the one who gave a small stash extra-candies to the shidis. He disciplined himself accordingly, please verify his work.” And the senior’s reaction was to laugh and shake his head, “You really don’t need to find such excuses to copy rules, we all know Sizhui loves to copy rules on his free time! Sizhui is such a diligent disciple, don’t be ashamed of what you like to do.” LSZ: ...... LJY *laughing his ass off and vindictively pointing at his best friend*: See! It’d probably take befriended demonic cultivators or fierce corpses for anyone to notice you did something wrong and punish you! [Jingyi has super prophetic powers, fight me]

Of course when WWX learned about it he laughed his ass off, patting LSZ on the shoulder and telling him how proud he was. WWX: I was afraid that growing up with the Lans would have make you all mature and all... But I’m so glad there’s still some of that little shit who used to con Lan Zhan into buying him toys in you. LSZ *with a straight face* : Wei-qianbei, if you don’t stop laughing I’ll add a dozen cups of salt in your chili oil... WWX, narrowing his eyes: you’re bluffing. LSZ *smiling serenely*

About like two weeks later, the entire Gusu Lan sect saw WWX making a weird dying noise right after eating a bit of his spicy dish and then coughing and rushing to gulp down a whole barrel of water. All the while cursing, while LSZ just sweetly smiled in the background and LJY patted him on the back. LJY: See, Wei-qianbei, I told you, right in the face, and you still didn’t saw him coming.

What came as a surprise to WWX is that apparently, sometimes seemingly out of the blue [but not really, you just needed to notice the warning signs] LSZ would almost totally forego the “good and sweet diplomatic route” and immediately jump into the “still polite but with a cold and very sharp edge that will stab you one hundred times where it hurt most”.

LSZ has a very distinctive line when it concerns disparaging words or attacks towards his family and whoever he considers his friends and well.... As all of his acquaintances are pretty much badasses, he usually doesn’t really feel the need to intervene, they can pretty much fight their own battle themselves... But if he even feels the slightest hint that his friends/family are unsettled then he’d immediately plant himself like this huge mountain right between whatever threats and his friends/family and then - regardless of whom he’s talking to - he’ll cause a huge scene where he’ll demand a public apology.

LJY used to be bullied when he was a kid because he was too loud and brash and didn’t know how to act like a Lan at all [I hc that LJY’s parents are actually both Lan, coming from two different branches, which technically makes him the most Lan to ever Lan]. And whenever it happened LSZ would come to his rescue, standing right in front of him. Then he’d proceed to list all the rules that the other party had broken before ending with “Please apologize to Jingyi and then go to Hanguang-Jun for discipline.”

After hearing about those, WWX felt a strange pang in his heart without really knowing why... For some reasons, LSZ’s behavior just seemed very familiar.

It’s only when he himself witnessed one of those as LSZ defended JL that it clicked. It was JYL... LSZ was acting like WWX’s shijie.

So it turned out that LWJ had raised LSZ in a way that he thought WWX would have like his son to be raised. And whose values and behaviors better than WWX’s beloved shijie? But the thing is, LWJ didn’t really know much about JYL personally... The few things that he knew was what he heard from WWX: she was gentle, caring, made the best lotus root pork ribs soup ever, loved her brothers very much and that was about it. 

But  LWJ did witness the Phoenix Mountain scene.... and boy did it made a lasting impression in his mind. And that’s what he ended up teaching LSZ too. [ Small LSZ of course didn’t know that the person in LWJ’s story was JYL but he still thrived to emulate that amazing person]  

[threephasebird]

Hello friend, it's Nicole from TAD discord, so sorry for awkwardly & randomly sliding into your dms. I've noticed that you've been reblogging a lot of The Untamed recently and I have just finished The Untamed & literally cannot think about anything else. I'm obsessed. Anyway, I've also noticed from your blog that your favorite seems to be JGY and I find that *fascinating*. He's very much not my fav, but he's such a complex character that I would love to hear your thoughts & feelings & analysis?

And to be completely clear, I will never try to debate with you or say your opinions are wrong or immoral or anything. I'm not an anti, I've stanned plenty of villains in my time. I'm just genuinely curious. I think the fact that you have such different feelings about this character is part of the beauty of stories and a testament to how complex and smart this particular story is.

Hello friend! First of all, thank you for your ask -- I love talking about my fictional faves, so there’s no need to apologize at all! There are definitely people out there who have already posted much more cohesive and succinct character analysis for JGY, but I’ve sat down for a bit to find an answer to the question of why I, personally, like him so much. I ended up finding six possible ways to answer this question, which I’ll list below and then go into (a lot) more detail under the cut. Hope you enjoy!

1) I like him because his motivations as a villain are complex and understandable

2) I like him because there’s no easy solution to his conflicts

3) I like him because he interacts with the story in a unique way

4) I like him because when we see him on top of his game, it’s fun to watch

5) I like him because LXC likes him

6) JGY is very small and has dimples

So, onward! (2.7k)

1) I like him because his motivations as a villain are complex and understandable

One possible way of looking at JGY is that throughout the entire story, his end goal is to eliminate all of the Jin family and come out on top as sect leader, chief cultivator and most powerful person in the cultivation world. However, I personally find it more intriguing to think that his specific plans shifted throughout the story and that he didn’t follow a long con the way NHS did, but that the common ground in everything he does is that he’s motivated by wanting security. Then, everything that he does afterwards is a step-by-step escalation when no matter what he does and how far he comes, his goal is always dangled right in front of him, but ultimately impossible to reach.

When he joins the Nie clan, on a superficial level it seems that this place could offer him the security he wants and needs, especially with NMJ protecting him -- but on the flip side of the coin, no one apart from NMJ and NHS seem to respect him, and his security entirely depends on NMJ’s goodwill. It’s an exteremely fragile position that could probably only ever last for a limited amount of time. Even if JGY never killed the guard captain and wasn’t thrown out of the Unclean Realm, how would the future have looked like for him? NMJ’s life expectancy was low to begin with, and once he had died (of natural causes, in this hypothetical case), NHS wouldn’t have been able to hold the same protective hand over JGY as his brother, and JGY would have become the disrespected advisor to the disrespected clan leader. (On a side note, I personally don’t think JGY released XY to get the yin iron -- I think it makes more sense that he wanted to use XY as bargaining chips against WC, seeing how he goes to free him immediately after WC asks for NMJ to release XY, to save the Unclean Realm and, in extension, his own ass.)

After JGY is thrown out, he’s basically out of options -- it’s go big or go home, because which other clan would take him in now? So he sets his sight on being recognized by JGS once more, and in order to succeed, he derives the plan of becoming a spy under WRH and do something so “heroical” that after the war, JGS has no other choice but to accept him into his clan. And at first, it seems like he succeeds and that he finally gets everything he wished for -- his father recognizes him as a son and gives him a position, he’s part of the Jin clan, he has power, he’s secure! But then it turns out that he was wishing on the monkey’s paw. His father doesn’t truly recognize him, and even in the Jin clan he’s disrespected (by JGS, by Madam Jin, by Jin Zixun), he doesn’t truly hold power (he just has to do whatever JGS tells him to), and he’s not secure (JGS instrumentalizes him because he’s useful to him right now, but does that mean he’ll be useful forever? So there’s a constant threat there).

I think the only reason JGS officially adopts JGY is that it allows him to claim the victory over WRH for the Jin clan and to expand his own power. Instead of JGY being recognized, JGS instrumentalizes him from the very first second and to make it worse, he makes JGY his attack dog the same way WRH did. I think the things JGY does under both WRH and JGS are absolutely horrifying, but I can’t help but also feel horrified for him. Under WRH, I think he tells himself that whatever he does is the lesser evil because it’ll end the war quicker, and that it’ll all be worth it in the end, and as a result, he loses parts of his own humanity there. And then under JGS, it’s the same fucked up shit again, except that this time, he also wants so very badly for JGS to value him, and in addition, he’s also completely out of options now. Without wanting to excuse the things he does under JGS, the only alternative at this point is for him to leave the Jin clan and the cultivation world as a whole, and I do think there’s a definite possibility that JGS would have him killed if he did because he knew too much about JGS’s plans.

Without passing judgment on his involvement in JZX and JZX’s deaths, as well as him killing NMJ and JGS for now (the latter being the one thing that I’m personally most horrified of), I don’t see JGY as a villain who enjoys being the villain the way XY does. I think he’s constantly horrified at himself and compartmentalizes to a degree where he’s actually derailing his own plans. Him throwing out XY immediately after killing JGS reads to me as him wanting to close the chapter of everything they did under JGS -- I think he must have acted out of a visceral emotion there or else he wouldn’t have left XY to die at the side of a road so carelessly (and, in effect, allowed for someone to live on with detailed knowledge of his own deeds). After rising to power (and finally, seemingly, really getting the security he’s always wanted), he doesn’t use that power to become WRH 3.0, but instead to do genuinely good things (such as building the watch towers). That’s not supposed to mean that him not being a cruel despot makes up for everything he’s done, but I find it interesting to think about from the perspective of, what kind of person could he have been if this opportunity had been given to him freely -- if his own class and social standing didn’t prevent him from that? I think he’d have become an incredibly powerful cultivator and clan leader if he’d have the same privilege as JZX.

In a way, I see JZX, WC, and JGY as narrative foils. WC shows us who JZX might have become if JGS treated him the same way as WRH treats WC. But, JGS doesn’t -- he shields his own son from this part of the Jin clan, and basically allows him to live in a completely different reality as JGY! JZX’s whole character arc is one of personality development, and becoming a hero, and falling in love -- he doesn’t have a clue about his father wanting to get his hands on XY and the Stygian tiger amulet and arguably about at least part of the war crimes he commits against the Wen clan. It’s not part of his life. In a way, JGY is the sacrifice being made to allow him to live his life unaware because in him, JGS found someone else to do his dirty work.

2) I like him because there’s no easy solution to his conflicts

Sometimes, when you want to be a villain apologist, all you need to do is point at one or a few bits of the story and say, “well if they hadn’t done that...”. (See, for example, Anakin Skywalker -- you wanna write a RotS canon divergence fixit? Just have Obi-Wan come back approximately one hour earlier and you have it, because before Anakin kills the Jedi even the Younglings he’s basically completely redeemable.) With JGY, you don’t get to have that. There’s no single turning point where you could say, “if he had picked the other option, he could have had a happy ending”. And part of the reason for that, which makes him a tragic character in my eyes, is that he crucially lacks options at many turning points.

In order to write a canon divergence AU for JGY where he comes out unscathed and redeemable, you’d have to go pretty far back in the story, and even then, you’d have to work hard to find a solution to his story that doesn’t a) rely on someone saving him (such as: LXC brings him to Cloud Recesses, or: JGS has a change of heart, frees his mother, and sends them a comfortable monthly pension), b) having him be dependent on someone else’s goodwill (such as: staying in the Unclean Realm in a delicate position).

If we don’t want to go back right to the very beginning or change fundamental parts of the story, well... As I’ve mused about above, if we let him stay in the Unclean Realm, he’d have never reached his goal of security either. If he never became a spy during the Sunshot Campaign, he wouldn’t have been accepted into the Jin clan and would have been out of options. If he never committed the atrocities for JGS, JGS would probably have kicked him out or killed him. (I do think there’s a lot of truth in what JGY tells NMJ in the empathy flashback, on that instance.) If he didn’t kill NMJ, there is a distinct possibility that NMJ would have killed him -- we see him try three times on screen, after all. (I’m leaving out the parts about him being directly responsible for JZX’s and JZX’s death in the show, as well as for controlling the corpses at Nighless City and JYL’s death, because it’s not in the book and I think it takes away from WWX’s character. As for QS’s and their son’s deaths...I personally do not see strong motivation for him to kill them, but in the end, we just don’t know which is, on a side note, a thing I really like about The Untamed/MDZS! Sometimes we just don’t know because the only people who know for sure can’t tell us anymore.) One option could be for him to confide to JZX, bring him over to his own side, and non-violently overthrow JGS, which would be a good and satisfying ending both to his and JZX’s character arcs -- but I also think there’s a high possibility JZX would hold JGY responsible for what he and JGS did, and never trust him with power again.

(Again, one thing I really do not wish to excuse away is how he killed JGS, and I just. Desperately wished he didn’t.)

I’ve been going over and over the possibilites for fix-its and canon divergence AUs, but in the end, I’ve arrived at the conclusion that the only real choice JGY has throughout the story is whether to remove himself from the narrative or stay in it. He could make the choice to give up his mother’s dream, reject his father, and leave cultivation world (and, on a meta level, the story!) to become a “nobody”. (Small side note, though -- living on which skills?) If he doesn’t -- well, as soon as he enters the game, the cards are stacked against him.

To pick up on the meta level comment, I do find it fascinating that in a sense, JGY not only has to struggle for respect and recognition within the story, but that what he does also serves to keep his character part of the story. He could choose to give up and leave (and thus come out of the story redeemable), but then he wouldn’t be part of the story anymore.

3) I like him because he interacts with the story in a unique way

Continuing with the last point, JGY interacts with the story in two unique ways that distinguish him basically from all the other characters. He’s not actually supposed to be part of the story, but that he basically claws his way in. But that also means that his class and social status cannot be removed from any of the conflicts he encounters in universe -- they’re at the heart of all of them. In the empathy flashback, he says to NMJ, “You always scold me for indecent scheming. You always say that you are just and straight [...] A decent man shouldn’t resort to devious stratagems. [...] You’re of noble birth and have profound cultivation. What about me? How can I be the same? First, I don’t have the foundation of cultivation. No one has ever taught me that since I was a child! Second, I don’t have any background. Do you think that my position is very solid in the Jin clan of Lanling?” What I find so intriguing about this scene is that he’s right when he says he’s different from the others both in text and on a meta level because most of the other characters are never faced with the same decisions and have a natural place within the story (apart, to some degree, WWX and XY, where also interesting parallels can be drawn). And the other characters are, in a way, self-righteous to judge him when almost none of them come out of the story without blood on their hands -- WWX’s revenge, JC torturing demonic cultivators after WWX’s death, and so on...The entire cultivation world (even NMJ! even LXC!) were complicit in the war crimes against the Wen. But when the cultivation world turns against JGY, they are the most appalled by the things I as a viewer would be the most lenient towards (murdering JGS), and don’t care at all about the thing that horrifies me the most (murdering the sex workers).

There’s an interesting post by @pumpkinpaix​ analysing how class dynamics work in the story, which I highly recommend! I don’t want to repeat what has been said there already in much better ways than I can, but among other things, it makes some really interesting points about how much JGY’s class is tied with his motivations.

4) I like him because when we see him on top of his game, it’s fun to watch

Aside from any analysis, part of the reason why I like him so much is that when he’s acting as a villain, he’s just so much fun to watch. When WWX breaks into his vault in paperman form and JGY has approximately 5 minutes to get rid of the head, the torture bench (?) and anything suspicious, contact and inform Su She, run to a different building and come back, and nonetheless he manages to convince everyone but WWX and LWJ that he’s the victim in this situation, it’s just. Peak entertainment? For a short time, he’s on top of the game, and then he’s backed into a corner and becomes sloppy, and finally loses it all due to sentimentality (if he didn’t want to take his mother’s body with him and say goodbye to LXC, I’m sure he could have fled the country). I think Zhu Zanjin did an amazing job as an actor to portray how JGY is constantly assessing everything, how 23638 emotions flicker over his face in half a second, how his whole body language shows the constant anxiety and pressure and stress and fear he’s under, and how we actually get to see in his microexpressions when JGY chooses a path and commits to the acting and emotional manipulation to follow it through.

5) I like him because LXC likes him 

Here’s a secret: Actually, LXC is my favourite character. And LXC loves JGY a lot. So I’m kind of contractually obliged to at least love JGY a little bit as well?

On a more serious note, I’m very intrigued in their relationship because I do think what they had was genuine. I view it as two people being very open and honest and true with each other, while placing a lot of things outside the brackets and crossing them out. LXC even says that he was aware of some things JGY did (which ones? how? I need to know) but that he justified them to himself. I think they both realised that they could have had something very special, but under the given circumstances, LXC wouldn’t have been able to help JGY (see: point 2) even if he knew everything. Still, they were obviously very close and trusted each other as much as they could. I think in the end, when LXC seemed to have decided to stay and die with him, JGY pushed him away because he was the only genuinely good part of his life, and he felt like he couldn’t rightfully deprive the world of LXC. It’s all very tragic, and I’m very intrigued to explore what they could have been in a slightly softer world.

6) JGY is very small and has dimples

I can only speak for myself, but when I was watching, I was so prone at any point to believe in him no matter what was revealed. Look at him! Could this man do something wrong?

[paradife-loft]

1&2 for general, ships, characters & story

General

1. If you had to join a sect, which would you join?

Ahahaha oh, oh no, the difficult question!!! *covers face*

Tbh I would. join the Lan sect and then be like, the most problematic Lan ever to Lan XD (”But James, don’t you have a reflexive fight me!!! response to rules and authority....?” yes maybe so shush now that’s why I said problematic.)

Like the thing is. I DO like being a nerd, and I DO like the idea of cultivating with music certainly moreso than with swords look I do not enjoy physical exertion a lot of the time, and I semi-regularly become full of emotion and start wailing to whoever’s nearby about wanting to live in somewhere as beautiful as the Cloud Recesses??? It is SO lovely there. Also the only other option I was considering, the Jiang, tbh gives me the impression that I would die miserably of humidity in Yunmeng sooooo :/

But also for real I am... a lot more chill with following rules when I agree with them about their purpose being to better you ethically and also to form a cohesive community, and I’ve chosen to adhere to them by my own will? Uhh, demonstrably lmao. But yeah I’d definitely still be Arguing about things and eating hot peppers in Caiyi town and playing the “it’s not really drinking if you neutralise the alcohol” game ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

2. Your three favorite characters?

*lies dramatically on the ground* How am I supposed to pick just threeeeee???

But ok, so, Jin Guangyao, and then *spins the roulette wheel for today’s picks* probably Lan Xichen and Wei Wuxian, averaged out?? But I have a lot of feelings about Everyone ;u;

Ships

1. What’s your OTP?

*chinhands* Surely we all know this by now :P

2. What’s your NOTP? Or any other ship you hate?

Uhhhhh hhhhhhh hahaha ngl I usually feel guilty talking about notps in public??? Probably bc often as not it’s more about “90% of the content I see in the fandom is relatively fluffy and/or mundane and/or lacking in meaty conflict and therefore bores me to tears” oops.

But I will say tbh that I have a pretty visceral unhappy NOPE reaction to LXC/NHS in. Probably 95% of contexts ever. Unless I feel particularly into reading, like, sex-as-self-harm fic on any given day, lmao.

Characters

1. If you could date any character from MDZS, who would you pick?

Lol, none of them.

2. If you had to kill a character, who would you kill?

Save a sex worker or POW, toss JGS off a cliff :) (predictable answer but hey) (I mean, this is distinct from an answer to “who would I kill at a point in the story prior to their actual death,” but. I would be remiss at existing if I didn’t take the opportunity to say I would kill JGS given the slightest excuse.)

Story

1. If you could make one major story change, what change would you make? Why?

Ahhhh, hell. Actually, you know what? I would slightly revamp Qin Su’s character to have her be aware of her parentage since roughly the same time as JGY is, and have them both separately keeping that a secret from one another for roughly the same reasons. She’s disturbed by the letter from Bicao simply because of the implications around someone wanting to make this knowledge public. (On the other hand: she DOES still ask JGY about how Rusong died, and IS still angry and horrified by the attitude he takes to that question and the implication that he was the one who orchestrated that death, because wtf just because his parents were siblings doesn’t mean he should have been anything other than a happy, perfectly loved, alive child??? Get a fucking grip!)

...And then I think. if she does still end up dying* then it’s probably gonna be directly NHS’s fault, in this context? Because “oh okay I was not expecting her to be chill with that, that’s an unpleasant surprise; well I still gotta ruin JGY’s marriage somehow SHRUG”. But on the other hand I really really don’t love all the women dying, so maybe instead he just reveals her complicity publicly and destroys her reputation and turns her into a pariah? :/ Which is still unpleasant but at least isn’t. death.

Anyway the reason why is like. Partially just aesthetic preferences!! I like “morally questionable power couple” much better than I like “evil dude and morally pure innocent victim wife”. (I in fact very much dislike the latter. Looking @ u, late Numenor.) And also partially - I very much like the additional resonance of “JGY underestimates he sweet and kind people around him and doesn’t notice that they can also have sneaky ruthless streaks” that this would add re: Huaisang? While also for that matter foreshadowing the Huaisang reveal?

And, yeah, a lot of other changes I would “like” to make, honestly fall more into the genre of “things I would like as fix-it fics” rather than changes I want to make to the base story, because so many of the pieces I’ve gone “augh but what if that were different!” are just. structurally important to MDZS’s tragic and other thematic elements. Messing with this aspect to Qin Su’s story doesn’t have to make the base plot non-tragic, but does improve on a few issues I have with e.g. morally polarised female characters who all die anyway.

2. Which character would you bring back to life?

!!???!!? when are we talking, here! in what fashion?

....okay, so for the sake of not making my head explode with potential options, I’m going to limit this to cases of characters who are 100% confirmed dead, being brought back either as a fierce corpse or via sacrifice-summon, generally within the main timeline of the story (i.e. not several decades post-canon).

And of that set under those conditions, I’m gonna pick Jiang Yanli. Look. I LOVE the possibilities of fierce corpse!Jiang Yanli. As a scenario it’s both incredibly fucked up but also the possibilities for really emotional reconciliation between all three Yunmeng siblings in the present timeline??? Logistically I think this would have to take place in a bookverse-style “LWJ carries WWX off to the burial mounds post-Nightless City battle” situation... so like, in a fit of practically qi-deviating rage-grief, WWX reanimates JYL’s corpse right as she dies, a la Wen Ning? and then part of what he’s doing, half out of his mind, during the missing time in the Burial Mounds is working on bringing her spiritual consciousness to put back in there.

........there’s definitely more logistics to be worked out, most notably “where is she during the intervening decade?” but. I love the idea of Jiang Cheng’s anger being not only “you killed my sister” but also “YOU TURNED MY SISTER INTO A FUCKING ZOMBIE”. I love the idea of, eventually, her being ACTUALLY PRESENT to express some of her own opinions and feelings on how WWX & JC fighting over her death (& fierce corpse status) is rly fucked up. make them deal with her as an actual person who’s inconvenient in her wants and needs and willingness to always extend a hand to others, not just a place to hang all their messy emotions on! give her eventually a chance to bond with Jin Ling, and the awkwardness and grief about how much of his life she missed, interspersed with “!!!!! I get to have this back! feelings!”

Because also just in general, I’d really love to have her around to interact with all the characters in their fucked-up “one timeskip later” iterations, and her perma-dying really just robs us of that chance and it’s very rude!

Bonus: holy fuck what would it be like for all her talents and skills and weaknesses to suddenly be completely reversed? Extremely physically strong and capable now! But more likely to scare people than charm them. Can she still, like, taste food properly? Who knows. But wouldn’t THAT be a juicy situation to explore for her! :O

[ceescedasticity]

MDZSBURB

I've settled on Classpects and moons and Lands but I've still got two distinct possibilities for timeline. Here's one of them.

It starts sometime in the chaos that should be leading up to the Sunshot Campaign but won't, exactly, in this timeline. It starts slowly, subtly even -- maybe there are meteors and maybe there aren't, but there's no rain of them, and people are already disappearing for months at a time. They could easily just be dead. There's no Game structure to lure them into it -- it just takes them, with little warning, and they have to learn the rules afterwards.

Maybe it's Wen Ruohan triggering it somehow -- he certainly tries to take advantage of it once he understands what's happening (as much as it's possible to understand anyway). He's powerful and cunning and he gets himself and some of his into the Medium, to try to seize the power there, and they do impressively well. For a while. He doesn't really understand how to deal with an environment where he is defined as a superfluous obstacle. Skaia has chosen its protagonists and will not be swayed.

I'm not sure of the full order entry, or the exact circumstances under which they're all taken, but I know a lot of it.

Wen Ning is taken early. He's Page of Life, a Derse dreamer, of the Land of Chains and Flowers. He is probably the Hero Least Traumatizing To Consorts.

Wen Qing follows not long after, and she was one of the very few to actually anticipate it. She's Seer of Doom, after all. --And she even understood it would be wise and safest to take her close kin with her, as little sense as that seemed to make, so she has quite a lot of company in the Land of Silk and Needles. She's a Derse dreamer, too, and wakes up fast to look for her brother.

Nie Huaisang goes pretty early, too, completely unobserved, out of somewhere that was supposed to be safe. He's just missing, no clues. (NMJ is Very Unhappy About This.) In fact, of course, the Bard of Void is sound if not safe in the Land of Wind and Whispers. He's not very happy about it either, but at least the current situation enables more unconventional fighting. Derse, again.

Jiang Cheng is snatched out of the ruins of Lotus Pier (before he can get his core destroyed). It is the opposite of subtle. The good news is that a handful of not-yet-executed disciples were hauled along to the Land of Mist and Causeways, too, and attending Wens helpfully were not. The less good news is he ends up with his mother for a sprite. It's stressful. He's Knight of Rage, and yet another Derse dreamer.

Wei Wuxian has his core intact but still runs afoul of Wen Chao and flunkies and still gets thrown into the Burial Mounds. A rather regrettably large chunk of the Burial Mounds accompanies him to the Land of Chimes and Ashes, leading to his not actually realizing he's in another dimension for about a month until he manages to get out through the borders which are at least not warded. He's still developed demonic cultivation, although in the end he uses Chenqing less for controlling corpses and more for his new powers as Rogue of Time. --The corpses do come up some, though.

I think at this point we finally get a Prospit dreamer with Lan Wanji, Mage of Space. He's not completely alone like some of the others, but he was off roaming. He may end up bringing some random people along to the Land of Rabbits and Frogs, but no one terribly interesting.

I'm not sure if there's any feasible way for Jiang Yanli to figure out where the hell her brothers have disappeared to and how to trigger the thing that will take her after them, but she's Witch of Hope, so maybe. She rounds out the Derse dreamers from the Land of Earth and Sky. Don't have more details here yet.

Next up we have a spectacular exit from Jin Zixuan, accompanied by way too much of Koi Tower, way too many hangers-on, and both his parents. It's frankly a nightmare. He spends as much time as possible out exploring the Land of Twists and Feathers. He's Heir of Light, although he's not particularly good at it. --Both his parents will end up sprites eventually, but he's fortunate enough that his is his mother. Prospit.

Depending on what canon we're going with Mianmian may or may not be in fairly close proximity, but either way she's next. Maid of Breath, and I can't say more about her circumstances of entry but I can say she's the only candidate for a Breath player in this horrifically unfree and entangled group (with the possible exception of WWX but I need him for Time).

I'm not sure what order the next two are in. By this time they definitely know something bizarre and catastrophic is going on at least.

Lan Xichen is Sylph of Heart, Land of Leaves and Hindsight. He probably gets pulled out of the Cloud Recesses survivors' camp; he probably has a lot of company; his sprite is probably either his father or Lan Qiren and I'm honestly not sure which would be worse. Prospit.

Nie Mingjue is Prince of Blood and probably gets yanked off the battlefront somewhere. (He's one of the top candidates for Wen Ruohan to follow into the Medium.) Prospit. He is arriving late if not last and a lot of other people understand the rules here a lot better than he does and he does not enjoy it.

And, finally, Meng Yao. Thief of Mind (I wanted to give him Vriska's Classpect but I was running low on Aspects and I didn't think JZX could carry Mind). I have no idea when and where he is when he falls off the map and into the Land of Mirrors and Stains. Has he become a spy yet? Did he even get a chance to start working for NMJ? Did he meet LXC? Had he fallen down the stairs yet? Which Meng Yao is being asked to become a hero? This is obviously a very important question but I do not know the answer. --But regardless of the answer he ends up with JGS as a sprite, and then probably kills him.

So anyway there's quite a bit of carrying on and fighting and reunions and dealing with Wen Ruohan's doomed but troublesome power grab, and it all ends up… I don't know. Everyone's alive, anyway.

—The other possibility is similar in its mechanics but kicks off right about when WWX absconds with the Wen remnants — they end up in LOCAA instead of the Burial Mounds, or possibly the Burial Mounds immediately followed by LOCAA. And then there's increasing chaos and confusion that's all blamed on the completely unlocatable Yiling Patriach (despite demonic cultivation's lack of association with giant meteors) as everyone else gets grabbed up over the next… while. (Not too long a while, though, because I have limits and I am not throwing JYL into a Game with an infant, let alone pregnant.)

[weiwuxiian]

TAGGED BY :@lanwaangji ( thank u !!! )

NAME OF YOUR MUSE :  Wei Wu.xian

ONE PICTURE YOU LIKE BEST OF YOUR MUSE’S FC:

I can’t?? really choose??? I love so many of the icons I have. But Wu.xian looks so sweet here...

TWO HEADCANONS YOU HAVE FOR YOUR MUSE THAT YOU NEVER TOLD ANYONE :

WWX got his own rabbit obsession from LWJ ( whom got HIS rabbit obsession from WWX ). Since in the novels, especially at the beginning of the flashback, WWX said he roasts rabbits and eats them, but after his resurrection, he was surprised to find that LWJ was secretly raising a bunch of them and gradually begin to find them cute as well.

WWX does not feel remorse for what he did ( raising the dead, founding demonic cultivation ) since during his time as the Yiling Patriarch, WWX was aware he was doing bad things to bad people. Those people deserved to be tortured and die a gruesome death. What he regretted was going out of control and indirectly killed his brother-in-law, his sister, and many other things that followed his practice of demonic cultivation. But these two things are entirely different matters. He does not regret the first ( torturing Wen Chao, JiaoJiao, and etc ).

THREE THINGS THAT YOUR MUSE LIKES DOING IN THEIR FREE TIME :

Bothering people. WWX is essentially an attention seeker---he likes to be noticed and often bothered other people to get that sort of attention. This, however, is just part if his childishness and he means no harm or disrespect. WWX’s bottom lines and moral alignments are distinct, he knows where not to cross it.

Cuddling. He loved to cuddle rabbits and any sort of pets asjdhasd. He actually really likes rubbing his face into fur and he’s like yaSSss, so fluffy and soft. He also cuddles LWJ a few times throughout the novel, deliberately taking advantage of the situation when LWJ appears not to mind.

Exploring his curiosity. WWX is a curious person---the more he couldn’t understand something, the more he is interested in it. 

SEVEN PEOPLE THAT YOUR MUSE LOVES/LIKES  :

oh boy this is so difficult considering some of the relationship he has with other ppl.

Lan Wang.ji ( post-resurrection ) / Jian.g Chen.g ( before their sister’s death ) / Jian.g Yan.li 

Wen N.ing / Wen Q.ing

Jian.g Feng.mian / Yu Zi.yuan

Lan Si.zhui / Jin L.ing

Wei Cang.ze / Cang.e San.ren ( his parents )

Little Apple / The Rabbits

Lan Xi.chen

TWO THINGS YOUR MUSE REGRETS:

!!!!! WWX’s life is all about his mistakes and regrets. He regrets killing Zi.xuan, causing the death of Yan.li, both his adoptive parents, and never being able to mend his relationship with Jian.g Chen.g. Considering what he said to Jin L.ing in Chapter 24 ( image below ). It is clear there are a lot of things he regrets, he isn’t the type to linger on his past, but it does not mean he does not remember the things he did, caused, and wished to change. He does not talk about them, but they weigh heavily on his heart.

I don’t think WWX regret ONE thing. There are too many regrets in his first life when he dies, which is probably why his spirit was classed into the category of a ‘vengeful spirit’ even though he has no desire to take revenge. But it was mentioned a few times in the novels that WWX really wanted to go back in time and kill the past him as his memories returned and he witnesses all the things he caused.

Actually, one distinct thing I think he regrets was not paying attention to the people who truly loved him, and was focusing on his own goals ( especially directed to LWJ ). Since in Chapter 100, after LXC told WWX all the truth, WWX felt shame for the first time in his life. 

TWO PHOBIAS YOUR MUSE HAS :

Lack of control. Since his lack of control over his emotions at first was what caused a lot of tragedies and ultimately his death, WWX became a bit hesitant to use the Demonic Cultivation ever again, especially commanding corpses. His first death was something traumatic for his soul, even if he doesn’t appear to be, the violent nature of the death left him a bit broken. It was both a huge life lesson and strong reprimand to him cultivating the demonic arts.

Forgetting. WWX has terrible memories, but he is afraid of forgetting people that came and go in his life. Like Wen Q.ing who died in his stead, and Yan.li who died defending him. He does not linger on their deaths, but he is actually terrified of forgetting them one day.

TAG TEN PEOPLE TO DO THE SAME THING : @galdrgraced , @cavaliant , @herousanimarum , @godscale , @ardenssolis , @pupperofulster , @cxrsedsilence  and feel free to steal~!!! ( if you’ve done this no obligation to do it again !! )

[crossdressingdeath]

Two things guaranteed to make me click out of a fic immediately are definitely matchmaker JC and wedding planner JC. He’s way too jealous when someone else captures WWX’s attention to set him up with someone, especially LWJ who he irrationally hates, and he’s so against their relationship that even if he finally accepted it and learned homophobia is bad, like hell WWX would still allow JC to plan his wedding after all the insults he threw at LWJ. Invite? Maybe. Actually plan it? No way

Yeah, these fics never seem to explain why WWX would give JC any part in his wedding when JC has been nothing but cruel about his relationship from day one? Like, why would WWX go for that. Even more so, why would LWJ go for that? LWJ despises JC, and WWX wouldn’t force him to have someone he hates that much plan his wedding. Compromise is in fact an important thing in a relationship, and JC getting to plan Wangxian’s wedding shows a distinct lack of it. 

The closest thing I’ve ever seen to an explanation in any fic is WWX being like “Oh when we were little we agreed that JC would plan my wedding” as if LXC wouldn’t also want to plan LWJ’s wedding and WWX gets along far better with LXC than LWJ does with JC, and that’s not even mentioning that WWX is marrying into LWJ’s family and so it really should be LWJ’s family planning the wedding. And also the minor difficulty that is the fact that JC disowned WWX, so logically he doesn’t even really have the right to be invited as family, much less plan the thing. It always seems like... the author said “I want JC to plan the wedding” and didn’t consider that there is no logical reason for that to happen.