#with a special helping for jgy and jgs and also nmj

[mxtxfanatic]

Mxtx, creating a beautiful and well-rounded female character that appears only briefly: Hey, isn’t it fucked up that this character who is so important in the world of this story and to the people that knew her can only be known to you, reader, through flashback memories because the people in power were willing and able to sacrifice her in their never-ending quest for ultimate dominance? Do you feel the constant grief over what could have been had her potential not been killed in its infancy? Do you understand that you as a reader are mourning in the same way that her loved ones she’s left behind are, knowing that the world has been changed for the worse by her premature death? Doesn’t it suck?

(English-speaking) Mdzs fandom the bane of her existence (probably): Killing women in stories can have no other meaning than that you hate women, so this was a misogynistic choice, actually.

[mostlikelytofangirl]

Basically what's in my head

Jins and Nies as earthbenders; Jins as Ba Sing Se and Nies as Omashu

Lans as airbenders

Jiangs as waterbenders

Wens as firebenders

And avatar JGY

The avatar is known to be born into the Jins, but they don't know which one, and when JGS kicks JGy down the stairs, it's too late to check

JGY learned waterbending from Meng Shi; he learns earthbending from NMJ and then NHS (I picture NHS as a very weak bender that knows earthbending the same way Toph does, as an extension of himself rather than a weapon. He also bends metal). He learns the basics of airbending from LXC and teaches himself the rest, and then firebending from WRH (the most powerful firebender ever). He is also a bloodbender

JGY in this, I think, woukd be more resentful than in canon because as the avatar he's supposed ro bring peace and harmony to a world that's done nothing but chew him up and spit him out. Resentful enough to actually stay by WRH's side

When WRH captures everyone (like he did NMJ in canon), they stand no chance because JGY forces them all to theirs knees via bloodbending

It would be neat if all his chakras are blocked to such a degree that the previous avatars can't even reach him

The earth chakra is blocked by his fear of death

The water chakra is blocked by his guilt about never making it into the Jin (guilt about forgoing MS's dream)

The fire chakra blocked by the shame of not feeling truly guilty about his actions anymore

The air chakra that has been blocked since MS's death; a blockage that only got worse as he mourned his expulsion from the Nies and then his betrayal to LXC

The sound chakra that is blocked by the fact he is a spy, and then, by hiding his treason from LXC until they are captured

The light chakra blocked by the illusion of happiness that being WRH's son/lover/both brings (he can't be truly happy. Because LXC and NHS are jailed in the dungeons, and though they aren't at true risk because JGY as WRH to spare them, they are suffering)

The thought chakra blocked by JGY's attatchment to MS and to the people that are good to him

AAAAHHHHH you have some sort of dark Avatar going on here!!

It's fascinating how you manage to make it all fit, and how it would be to have an Avatar, the one supposed to bring balance and peace, siding with the "bad guys" and helping them in getting their nation on top of the others.

It makes sense in the context of this AU tho, JGY has been mistreated almost all his life despite his Avatar nature, so why should he help the ppl that dismissed him? Just bc it's the right thing to do wouldn't really do it for him. Maybe a bit more of what he is meant to do, but I can totally see how the prospect of being finally respected and treated well would be too big a temptation. He IS the Avatar, he IS special! He has seen how his past lives were treated with reverance and respect, why isn't he???

I can see WRH forcing everyone to show the Avatar the proper deference, he's a smart man that would figure that having the Avatar on his side would be better than trying to get rid of him. And of course, that would work wonders on the boy's poor traumatized hea :'D

I can also see how JGY could eventually unblock his chakras if he really wanted to bc he is made of determination tho... but why should he want it XD.

But there's a big chance for a sort of redemption for him! He had the best of intentions at first and he tried! But it's also interesting to explore how much of a different person he would be if he is in a similar position as canon, yet also being the most powerful being. Still, that wasn't enough to get him treated right by most ppl around him, it's very interesting tbh

Also the fact that technically JGY is stronger that WRH, so there's also that change in dynamics going on there since they are on more equal grounds, so to speak.

Fascinating indeed :D

[thatswhatsushesaid]

exploring various different "what if...?" scenarios for jgy in mdzs remains, as always, both my favourite and least favourite activity in this fandom, because a few things invariably end up happening:

I learn new things both about jgy and about other characters, which is always my favourite part of being part of any fandom, this is an unambiguously good thing, no complaints; but,

jgy also ends up skewered again in the unending game of mdzs disc horse because "see, if he'd just done this one thing differently, everything would've been fine!!" even though the textual support for "everything" being "fine" is pretty shaky at best. like the extent of narrative reverse-engineering we'd have to engage in to actually prove that is grounds for another close reading of the whole novel (and my inner huaisang is just like ugh, bestie that is so much work), and/or,

the disc horse eventually circles back to the proposals just not jiving with the reality of what jgy is given to work with in the canon.

ftr I am obviously fine with taking canon and adjusting it just a bit to make engaging with it in fic/RP more fun and enjoyable for me as someone who loves playing in the canon-divergent mdzs trash can of our hearts. but that's a separate matter from taking some of the scenarios I see proposed in these discussions and applying them as potential solutions to the real problems encountered by jgy, or wwx, or jc, or nmj in the novel. because to make some of these 'what if' scenarios in canon work:

either the fundamental building blocks of the mdzs cultivation world have to shift dramatically (e.g., jgy is able to marry lxc, or nhs, or jc, without anyone addressing the issue of marital unions where there is no possibility of producing heirs in a society so fixated on dynasties built on family hierarchies and bloodlines; or, jgy doesn't go along with jgs's demands and faces zero consequences for his filial impiety/secular disloyalty), and/or,

the core priorities/values of individual characters would have to change and result in different actions and outcomes than what we see presented in the text or on screen (e.g., nmj decides to trust jgy enough to intercede in his fucked up engagement to qin su specifically to help jgy, which means jgy has to trust nmj enough to reveal this information to him in the first place; or, jin zixuan and/or jiang yanli decide to take enough of an interest in jgy's situation to step in between him and jin guangshan and madam jin and provide him with material or emotional support during his first year and a half as a legitimized member of the lanling jin sect, which presumes that either of these characters would pursue a deeper emotional attachment to jgy than exists in the source material)

and ultimately I feel most of the fandom-proposed solutions to jgy's legion of canon problems fall into at least one of those two categories. which sucks for jgy, obviously! our special little guy is as doomed by the narrative as you can get! /sad violin music goes here

at the same time I also think it's useful to subject all of these proposed solutions to the test of "does this break the world? does this break the character?" because for every "yes, it breaks the world/character" answer we encounter, we're forced as as readers to confront how limited jgy's options are in canon.

[thatswhatsushesaid]

assuming that jgy didn't face some grim consequences from jgs for not killing nmj for him (which I think is unlikely, but let's assume for now), I agree 100% that nmj's obsessive resentment towards jgy was so intense and all-consuming at the point of his death that he would likely have still become a fierce corpse. and I think he would probably still have burst out of his crypt to try to kill jgy. I think his not ending up experiencing the same miserable fate that he does in canon would be contingent at least in part upon the circumstances of nmj's fierce corpse making its reappearance in the narrative, and not keeping the details hidden from nhs. does it happen in a very public place where there are a bunch of witnesses? or does it happen privately where jgy can save some face, but also has to make a decision about how to deal with nmj's fierce corpse, whether to ask for help or to deal with it on his own, etc.

my initial thought, just based on when we have seen jgy ask for help in the novel and the established trust between him and lxc, is that I think he would go to lxc for support, even if this happened privately. in this scenario where jgy does not have nmj's blood on his hands and does not have to worry about whether lxc will be able to tell that nmj's death was accelerated (whether he actually can or not), I think the risk to his life and what he has worked so hard to accomplish outweighs any fears he might have about being blamed for nmj's death--and I think it's clear that lxc would not blame him anyway. in this situation they could work together, potentially with the support of other gusu lan cultivators who specialize in musical cultivation, to pacify nmj's spirit.

I'll mull it over some more, but yeah, those are my thoughts.

What-if speculation for the day:

If JGY hadn’t accelerated NMJ’s deterioration, and NMJ had died of a qi deviation a little bit later, after his condition had progressed the way it was naturally going to, would he still have become a fierce corpse targeting JGY?

I think yes, because he died not KNOWING that JGY had been music-poisoning him, so his resulting Angry Zombie Rampage was based on prior resentments, not the circumstances of his death. in such a situation, how would jgy have reacted? If he’d been genuinely innocent of wrongdoing (in this specific situation I mean) would he still have freaked out and dismembered NMJ’s body and scattered it? Or might he have let someone (probably LXC) forcibly pacify his spirit, confident that he couldn’t be blamed? Because uh… I don’t think he’s a person who can EVER feel confident that he won’t be blamed for things, even when he genuinely didn’t do them.

and if he’d cut up and hidden NMJ’s body, I kind of think NHS would want him destroyed, even if he hadn’t actually done anything to hurt him while he was alive. That’s still a pretty awful thing to do! So I… I’m trying to think of a way that things could have ultimately turned out differently, if JGY hadn’t ever done any poison music at all? But I think, honestly, if that was the only difference? it might have ended up in the same place.

[lhaewiel]

So for this one I am going to thank @the-nonchalance-blogs for the inspiration and for the amazing WZC photos she has been sending me.

Welcome to my brainrot.

Canon divergent AU where the Yunmeng Trio (WWX, JC and JYL) are found whilst on the run by the Wens before they can even get to safety.

Wen Chao orders Wen Zhuliu to melt their cores and because WC is that extra, he decides to toss all three of them in the Burial Mounds.

So there is a Situation: all three of them are very weak, very exposed and ofc the resentful spirits are all over the place asking them, pushing them to join their legion of resentfulness and take bloody sweet revenge on all the people who wronged them regardless.

And well.

WWX and JC are immediately okay with revenge murder, in different shapes, like, WWX is like:

JC is like:

And sweet poor Yanli just. Yeah, she caves in bc her sweet brothers have turned like that and it's the world's fault and also she is not going to leave them to themselves. She is still their sister and they have promised to stick together no matter what.

And so the three of them survive in the Burial Mounds and invent demonic cultivation.

The piece of Yin Iron gets eqully split between the three and ofc WWX forges the flute.

Yanli forges a lute.

And JC... Well, he still has Zidian, it was thrown with him bc 1) it cannot work without a core and 2) Zidian refused to acknowledge anyone but JC as master.

And JC uses his piece of Yin Iron to modify Zidian - and he will activate it by SINGING. Cos in my headcanon JC has the voice of an angel and considering that in canon WWX summoned the resentful spirits by whistling I would consider that they can also be summoned by singing.

And then the three siblings manage to come out alive and with the demonic cultivation upgrade from the Burial Mounds.

They of course start their revenge.

JC saves WQ and WN, he spares them on the account of them being the Best Wens - he will have no qualms then in accepting the Wen remnants, when WWX proposes it.

WWX goes after WC and WZL and it ends up pretty much like canon, LWJ finds him, they "argue", you know.

JYL goes back to Lotus Pier to scare the hell out of whatever Wen is present and possibly poison them. Bc in this AU JYL embraced fully her mother's blood and became also a poisons master.

Needless to say the Sunshot campaign is very short and very successful.

The Yunmeng Trio returns to Lotus Pier with the collaterals that they acquired and establish themselves as the Sect specialized in Demonic cultivation.

With a more stable home and help from the Best Wens, they manage to control their temper and demonic powers better.

JGS of course is not happy about that, so he tries to push for a marriage between JZX and JYL to get his hands over the Yin Iron, but the plan backfires. This because JZX has become a little more politically sensible and has granted JGY's loyalty to him.

JZX appears quite chill on the fact that JYL uses demonic cultivation, but only because he understands that this was the only choice available.

Yes, the fact that WZL melted their cores was pretty big news, it came out as a necessity to explain why the Jiangs have established themselves as demonic cultivators.

WWX and LWJ eventually make peace and get together, just like in canon.

WQ and WN and the Wen remnants establish themselves in the Yiling, that has become a sort of protectorate of Yunmeng.

JYL and JZX get married and when JGS tries to get his hands over JYL's lute, he gets killed. JGY helps cover the tracks.

In this AU NMJ lives.

So.

This is how far I have thought. Comments and suggestions are more than welcome.

I will add stuff as it comes to my mind.

[theuntamedaus]

So, in the meantime it is time to proceed with the Pokèmon AU! And this time I am going to talk about the Jin clan :D

They are the easiest to assign, but also there is a real horde of them, so.

Under cut for more.

The Jin clan is specialized in Electric/Flying Pokèmon. They are also loaded with money and they like to show off, so you may see a lot of gold around - overcompensating for skills, surely, although there are the exceptions, most notably Jin Zixuan, Jin Ling and Jin Guangyao.

Eventually JGS "retires", as a way to try and direct everything from behind the scenes, but unluckily for him JGY's loyalty is with JZX and his wife JYL.

Jin Guangshan too, but he is the usual womanizer and would rather spend his energies definitely NOT running the gym.

He also does ask JGY to make sure NMJ catches Pokèmonitis, to take out the only true obstacle to power.

Also, unluckily for JGS, in the moment that JZX, with the help of JGY and Madam Yu and JYL, is seizing the power over the Jin gym all of the illegitimate children come forward.

Mo Xuanyu comes forth and JZX is like "A-YU, CALL ME GEGE LIKE A-YAO DOES" and MXY gladly accepts. Granted, Madam Yu is not thrilled, but it is a fuck you to JGS, so she deals.

Same when Qin Su comes forward, that is the drop that makes the vase spill.

And so the gym becomes officially JZX's.

To battle him you first have to battle JZXun and JGY. JGY does have some exceptions to the Electric/Flying types, because of where he's come from.

MXY does not fight but he has an Oricorio (Sensu style) as companion, which is Flying (because he is a Jin) and Ghost (because he is a big WWX fan).

Equally QS does not fight, but she is best friends with JYL and has a Pachirisu as companion.

Jin Ling in this AU is a baby, but he has a puppy Yamper called Fairy constantly trotting after him.

The teams are as follows, then.

Jin Zixuan

Zapdos (his father's formerly, Zapdos decided that JZX was a better master)

Jolteon

Raichu

Togepi (JYL's gift, evolving then into Togekiss)

Ampharos

Pidgeot

Jin Guangyao

Emolga (first catch with the Jin)

Leafeon (evolved from his mother's Eevee, the Most Spoiled And Cared For Pokèmon ever)

Pikachu (JZX's gift)

Aron (from when he was with the Nie)

Cyndaquil (from when he was with the Wen)

Hypno (the one he caught to make NMJ catch Pokèmonitis)

Jin Zixun

Voltorb

Electabuzz

Magnemite

Electrike

Spearow

Hoothoot

Sometimes Luo Qingyang (MianMian), JZX's best friend, drops by and she might defy you. Her team is:

Vileplume

Ursaluna

Dewgong

Mareep

Jigglypuff (evolving in Wigglytuff)

Diancie

[xiyao-feels]

the anti-NMJ mustache anon here!

I do love the xiyao dynamic a lot. As a person who first read 3zun fics, I ended up liking xiyao a lot more and went out of my way looking for fics centering around them. I can’t pinpoint exactly what I like so much about them, but it’s absolutely fascinating.

And yeah, the donghua versions have no right to look that fine. Literally every character looks perfect?! Even WRH and JGS?? I feel so betrayed. And don’t get me started on the chibi characters. I think that’s what essentially got me into the fandom in the first place.

Sadly, most people post stuff from the drama, so it makes me sad.

Ahahahaha, fair cop, anon!

It might interest you to know that hot WRH and JGS have some canon support XD

WRH:

A voice laughed madly, “Let it be!”

It was a youthful voice. Wei WuXian wasn’t the least surprised. Wen RuoHan’s level of cultivation was extremely high, so of course his corporal body was also perfectly maintained in its prime.

(ER trans, ch. 49)

JGS:

Suddenly, a row of cultivators wearing white, gold-lined robes rushed out, dressed in light armor and riding on broad stallions. The frontmost person had handsome features, protected by the same armor. It was the sect leader, Jin GuangShan.

(ER trans, ch. 69—and thanks to mercyandmagic's excellent thread of common novel misconceptions on twitter, I couldn't remember where the source for this was)

Not at all saying this is what you like about xiyao, but taking the opportunity to ramble some because I really do love them—

They're so good!!!! They click really immediately and they come together—not necessarily as lovers, but definitely as partners, also pretty immediately. That's really one thing I love about them: they work together, and for the same goals, whether that's saving LXC, or spying on the Wen during Sunshot, or the watchtowers and JGY's grand project. Which they're working on before JGY becomes xiandu!!! I always get emotional at that bit at the stairs, that they're working on the watchtower projects. Their values are different but in a lot of ways more similar to each other's then like anyone else's. A friend of mine from twitter said that they were very similar in many ways, and then also different in compatible ways, which I think is very good. JGY has more—ambition, initiative, vision?—than LXC does, and something I think people miss is that that's something LXC really admires about him!!!! They both admire the other so so much; they just think each other is really cool.

God, they're always spending time together, and considering their schedule!!! You can see that they /like/ each other, they just enjoy being together. They support each other. Obviously JGY does more, and I don't mean to minimize that, but LXC absolutely does stuff too—even aside from repeatedly saving JGY's life, I mean, there's the teaching him the SoC, there's the watchtowers, there's his support at Hejian with the other cultivators, and then telling him about the opportunity at Langya and volunteering to speak to NMJ about it if needed, there's his giving him a handkerchief when Zixun throws wine on him, helping him expand the grounds at the Phoenix Mountain Hunt automatically, without even being asked, he must have supported his bid for xiandu and of course the watchtowers after too, and—it /is/ support, that's the thing, like—he doesn't prioritize his own distress at seeing JGY mistreated, or his anger at people mistreating JGY, over actually helping JGY and helping him achieve his goals. It's—they're friends and partners and allies!!! Really and truly!!!!!

And then both of them are also just profoundly special to each other. I think sometimes people try and make LXC the /only/ person JGY cares about, which is definitely not so—he cares about QS, he cares about JL, he cares about NHS, etc—but LXC is absolutely nevertheless unique, a tier on his very own. I think JGY would kill most people if he had to to survive, but never ever LXC. And meanwhile LXC is—he has a personal connection with very few people, I think, and the two people he cares about the most are LWJ and JGY. He—well, he really is a romantic Lan about him. His preference for JGY's company is really really marked. Actually I don't think I've posted here about how the last scene LXC appears in in the novel—in terms of chapter order not chronology, it's set pre-Sunshot—also has a lot of JGY in it /even though at this point in MDZS they haven't met yet/, but—it does.

And in both MDZS and CQL of course he breaks when JGY dies.

I just. This isn't a grand essay about everything I love about xiyao but I just. They're so good!!! They love each other and support each other and admire each other and just like each other, so much???? They enjoy spending time together???? They work together on common projects????? They understand each other a lot better than most people do, they can just be human with each other, they were friends and partners for almost twenty years!!!!!! Like!!!!!!! They had a really solid and really good relationship!!!! I love them so much and their ending kills me every time.

And they're both kind!!!! And skillfully so!!!! And extraordinarily skilled and competent!!!! And the projects they do undertake—the watchtower program is /huge/ (twelve! hundred! watchtowers! rumours of a planned expansion to three thousand!), it's the kind of thing that will save thousands of lives. Like—/what/ they work on—this maybe isn't flashy but it's going to save so so many people. And it's an ongoing project! It's not one-and-done, JGY is still working at it at the time of the WWX's return and LXC must be working with him on it!!!! I LOVE THEM SO MUCH, OKAY, GOD.

...returning to your actual ask—unfortunately I don't know any blogs that mostly post manhua/donghua visuals, but I do wish you good luck!!!

[pumpkinpaix]

GOD IM SO MAD i keep thinking about this and how this might plausibly play out in a fic i’m NOT WRITING except. HHHH

ANYWAYS CONSIDER:

i think this would be Funniest as a gen fic focused on the juniors who are all like, apprentices/volunteers/assistants at some kind of?? weird charity theatrical production that’s the horrible brainchild of jin guangshan who’s like “i am going to Direct” and everyone is like please stop it was better when you were just funding theatres to look cultured pls don’t actually get involved

anyways it’s 100% going to be a disaster unless SOMETHING gets done so jin guangyao is essentially both SMing and ALSO trying to event plan and coordinate and smooth feathers and Run The Whole Thing

the jades are a world-famous lights+projection team. lxc is notoriously the ONLY projection designer that lwj doesn’t disdain on principle bc projections are, in his words are “tacky” and “overwrought” (but NOT XIONGZHANG’S. bc xiongzhang has Taste)

lxc is also very adept at lights and prefers them tbh, but he knows that his brother hates projections deeply, so that’s why he specialized there :’)

anyways! the only reason the jades are even WORKING on this godawful doomed to fail project is because of jgy who got lxc to agree as a favor, because you know there’s not a chance in Hell that lwj would agree to work for jgs on such a stupid project without lxc’s cajoling

lxc is the one who finds them their sets people by calling up nmj, who GRUDGINGLY agrees bc it’s lxc even though he hates both jgs and jgy. huaisang thinks that this is all going to end in flames and is personally very interested in watching so he tags along, volunteering his painting and artistic skills for access to a front row seat (his actual career is in trad arts and he and nmj clashed a lot over that when they were younger)

IN THE MEANTIME, jc does NOT want to be here but agreed because jgs has an in to A LOT of high end theatres due to being an investor and if he does a good job, he’ll get an in on THOSE jobs so he’s like fuck ok i guess!! he’ll design some fucking costumes!!

wwx, in the meantime, has just reentered the world of theatre in a whirlwind after he left several years ago at the beginning of a very promising career in technical costuming work as jc’s partner, but then disappeared to become ??? a small-time dj?? something?? no one really knows, but he’s BACK baby and he’s a full-fledged sound designer with wen ning in tow as his engineer/errand boy lmfao! he has no right to be this good what the hell!!

wen qing gets dragged in as an onsite doctor/PT specialist who is deeply long-suffering but she owes wwx a debt so she’s like Fine I Guess.

wwx and jc’s relationship is strained as hell due to, you know, the aforementioned mysterious falling out that no one is planning on addressing but they’re both TRYING to make this work, so wwx comes along trying to help jc bc like. well okay, the only way this ends in a win for any of us is if the production is good, which it ISN’T but it’ll be better if i’m in it

jc: fuck off you arrogant prick are you going to help me or not

MEANWHILE, the juniors are all amateurs/students who?? were uhhh, picked?? in a scholarship?? something something *handwaves* lan wangji INSISTS that lsz and ljy be his board ops (yes he needs 2) and will NOT be having it any other way. jin ling is assisting sound, oyzz is with costumes and idk there are other students around too. a’qing is doing Something i’m not sure what yet i’ll figure it out.

anyways, lwj and wwx are. well SOMETHING sure is going on there, but no one can really figure out if it’s antagonistic or not. everyone REMEMBERS when they were in school together and it was INSUFFERABLE for everyone involved when lwj and wwx were working on a show together, but now??? it seems like???? hm????? What Is Happening.

ljy and oyzz think this is all very romantic and have a Plan to get them together. lsz is Nervous about this whole prospect bc he’s aware of their history (vaguely), and jin ling wants NOTHING to do with it GROSS (but he also doesn’t want to be left out so you know he’s in on the shenanigans)

in the meantime, jgs insists on hiring xue yang, who’s well known as that practical effects guy who’s brilliant but ALSO has just the WORST track record imaginable and no one wants to work with him due to all the accidents. the.... “accidents”. jgs has bailed him out before on a Lot of stuff and the rumors are Bad, but for SOME reason he’s insisting, so xue yang is here! horrible!!! everyone hates this! jgy is nominally friends with xue yang for like. shady reasons idk and is basically his handler. (are the daozhangs from the union alskjdfls)

anyways, this is all primed for just the absolute worst POSSIBLE kind of meltdown in classic theatre drama bullshit, but oh!! it Gets Worse Better?? bc the play jgs wants to do is adapted from a book written by this astonishingly popular online author who goes by...... Airplane :) :) :)

THE BOOK IS AWFUL. TO BE CLEAR, IT IS VERY VERY BAD. (yes, it’s PIDW) “Airplane” is Very Aware of this and is honestly really nervous and uncomfortable about this whole situation bc ahahahhashAHAHAHAH?? WHY?? but jgs said he’d pay a lot of money sooooooo? here we are. IN A PUBLICITY STUNT, jgs hires Shen Yuan, PIDW’s Greatest Critic and Known theatre aficionado to help adapt it into a play and then also, when he sees him goes “actually you’re also the lead villain now thanks, also hey airplane i think you should act in this lots of authors do that now”

shen yuan is Not Pleased

Airplane is Not Pleased either

anyways, it’s the story of PIDW being rewritten into scum villain somehow (vaguely) while mdzs characters in technical theatre are having an absolute crisis and Feelings are being revealed idk wangxian make out in a dressing room

in the meantime, the tgcf cast is managing the financials/marketing/etc. and that’s all going about as well as you’d expect bc hua cheng mostly just has an absurd amount of money and doesn’t really pay attention to how it’s being spent so long as xie lian is happy, and xie lian is..... historically not so great at marketing. also completely not helped by fengqing being disastrous bitches, quan yizhen making a public scandal of himself every three days, and meanwhile xie lian’s old boss maybe is trying to murder them who knows.

something something happy end

٩( ᐛ )و

(subway anon) um?????? lighting and electrics???????? heLLO!?!?!?!? I haven't worked tech in a year or two, but that's my background!!! On that note, though, since you'll GET it -- is it just me or does Wei Wuxian have lighting designer vibes? I feel like you've kind of got to be a bit of a mad scientist type to do light or sound design in theater. (Oh man... Lighting Designer WWX who keeps! changing! the cues! stop it! / Sound Designer LWJ who just wants the show to run SMOOTHLY for ONCE)

oh no oh NO I’ve definitely had the CQL technical theater AU conversation before, and I refuse, REFUSE to write this. I did the ballet AU for this fandom already, I did my time!

anyway (whispers) lighting and projections designers Twin Jades, because c’mon, you gotta, his name is LITERALLY Hanguang-jun and Lan Wangji absolutely has the pettiness and superior air of a projections designer and I will hear no criticism

meanwhile, Wei Wuxian must be the sound designer in order to maximize potential conflict with lights (TRUST ME when I say that your wires cannot run with our wires!!! Go the long way round!!!)

Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji jockeying for the best position in the grid for their speaker/projector, a battle that Wei Wuxian inevitably loses

sound engineer Wen Ning watching the blow-up happen from the corner of the room with electrics crew Lan juniors with a placid smile on his face

Lan Jingyi: You aren’t going to go over and stop them?

Wen Ning, peacefully: nope. 

[heavymetalchemist]

I think it also matters how much they find out, too. It's unclear in the novel just how NHS starts suspecting JGY, but Fatal Journey went ahead and said cursed music/NMJ dies. And that seems most likely, since NHS might be doing research trying to figure out how his brother could have qi deviated so badly when after all his sworn brother was playing music for him!

But the thing is murdering NMJ is not his only crime, right?

Is JGS still alive? Are all those sex workers still alive? Are Sisi and Bacao not imprisoned? What about Jin Rusong? What about that whole sect he murdered by giving them to Xue Yang for experiments and tongue tea? Is he married to Qin Su at this point?

Like, from NHS's perspective I think all that is icing on the cake, and I personally find a special kind of horror in slowly, deliberately poisoning someone to death under the guise of helping them, especially when that causes them to hurt people they care about along the way which is probably their greatest fear. But there's a reason that NHS gathered all the evidence to completely ruin JGY's reputation, right?

I want to say that the betrayal of the sworn brotherhood and slow, deliberate murder of his longtime friend would be enough, but I think it's clear from the "had his reasons" line that LXC has looked the other way on some things already. How much wrongdoing does there have to be for him to get to "we need to execute my remaining sworn brother"?

I think any scenario after NMJ's death that doesn't involve at least lifelong imprisonment doesn't work for NHS, because NHS is never going to sleep well if JGY is free. But I think there's a window where he might accept that lifelong imprisonment, before the crimes get too high, as long as everyone knew the horrible things that JGY had done. But my concern would be that LXC probably wouldn't want that reputation shredding, and I think that's where NHS decides to take him down, too.

EDIT: Wait that extra with Xue Yang and the tongue tea happens when NMJ is still alive so the TingshanHe sect is already all murdered, oops!

Do you think there was a point of no return with LXC & NHS, a point before Guanyin, or even WWX’s revival that if LXC had figured it out, had listened to NHS or gone to him with his own doubts that NHS would have refused to forgive him entirely?

Do you think there was a point where if LXC had only sought NHS out, NHS would have accepted LXC’s ideal solution of not killing JGY and just,,, telling him off very hard? Because at least LXC was coming to him?

[notdexterousatall]

So, what happens after that? Well, it's not great...

- So most everyone dies. LXC, NMJ, and JC are all permanently harmed. LWJ is less permanently harmed but still fucked up. What do they do next? Well, they go home, because what else are they gonna do?

- There's way too many dead people for the survivors to bring home with them, so they grab the bodies of the important people and leave everyone else there to come back for later. For the Jin sect, this means that their like five or ten survivors grab JGS, JGY, and JZxun's corpses and head back to Koi tower where basically the only people remaining are the few cultivators low enough on the totem pole that they didn't get to come to Nightless City (which was meant to be a show of the Jin and Jiang Sect's strength, and also a martialing of forces, so very few cultivators got left behind... pretty much only the old and weak ones.) Then they realize - the only main clan Jins still alive are Mdm Jin, JYL, and Jin Ling. Also, no one can find JYL.

- No one can find JYL because she didn't tell anyone where she was going lol. JC and his, like, dozen remaining Jiang sect cultivators grab her unconscious body and bring her back to Lotus Pier instead of letting the remaining Jin sect cultivators know about her. (Don't worry, this won't be a problem later...)

- So the sects go home, count how many of them there are left, and realize that they're going to need some help if they're going to get all those corpses back to wherever they're supposed to be buried. The only cultivation groups left untouched by this doomsday event are they ones that were too small for anyone to care about - temple schools like Baixue Temple mostly. So the tiny little schools and sects head back to Nightless City (like one - two months later) only to find that it's super duper cursed now. Like, they're sorting rotting corpses onto carts and every other one is waking up and trying to take a bite out of them, despite any soul calming rituals they might have underwent. The cultivators who volunteered for this keep finding new and horrible curse marks on themselves. Rapidly, people start to give up cleaning up the place and simply quarantine the Nightless City - which seems to be becoming Burial Mounds 2.0. The empty city is quarantined, the gates closed, and special magic statues are erected around it to try to contain the evil inside.

What does everyone do after this? Lick their wounds, mostly. There are a few exciting events before we have a timeskip:

- Internal relations at Koi Tower fall to pieces. Mdm Jin nominally takes over as Sect Leader of the Jin sect, but the few cultivators remaining start infighting over who gets what. Servants start stealing from the sect to sell things as the economy of the city of Lanling shifts because of the sudden lack of cultivators bringing in money. It becomes apparent that Mdm Jin is unable to hold the sect together, as all the remaining cultivators and servants take what they can get their hands on and flow out of the city. Meanwhile, Mdm Jin demands that (the still unconscious) JYL be returned to her, since she is her DIL. JC refuses, and demands that JL be given over to him to be with his mother. Mdm Jin refuses to do so. Eventually, it becomes clear that without enough manpower Koi Tower will fall to mundane people who want the property, and she has her natal sect (not having lost as many people as some others) pack up and move into the much larger compound of Koi Tower. Mdm Jin's father takes over as sect leader of what was Lanling Jin - now Lanling 'Mdm Jin's family's name.' Mdm Jin & JC continue to feud over where JL & JYL should be - Mdm Jin has enough brothers that JL is essentially removed from the line of succession, but she still technically has legal rights to him & JYL. However, JC has physical possession of (coma'd) JYL. A terrible custody battle ensues, which essentially results in JL never leaving Koi Tower for fear of being kidnapped by Jiang cultivators, and JL also never seeing his mother.

- JC starts the process of rebuilding the Jiang sect yet again, but this time with the dozen or so cultivators who remain after Nightless City. Also, all of them are somewhere between permanently disabled and chronically ill when it comes to cultivation, so it's way way harder now. They start bringing in young recruits, but the power & prestige of the Jiang sect is way less than it was even after the sunshot campaign, because now they're basically a sect of mediocre adult cultivators and a bunch of children. JC's also basically always in a terrible mood, so that doesn't help recruitment efforts either. JC is keeping JYL in her old rooms w/ a few doctors on call at all times, but the situation there is that she's in a coma and not coming out of it anytime soon.

- For the Nie Sect, NMJ is still sect leader, but his qi deviation damaged his temper along with his cultivation, and rendered him chronically ill, so NHS has to pick up the slack. So NMJ & NHS functionally are co-leaders of the sect. They lost a lot of clan members at the Nightless City, and even more non-clan sect members, and so have pretty much pulled their people in & are keeping inside the borders of Qinghe. NMJ cutting off LXC's arm (yes i've decided that's what happened) in the middle of his qi deviation also damaged relations between the Nie & Lan sects obv (although their personal relationship is okayish. But we'll get to that.) With their lacking numbers, NMJ eventually gets married so he can have some kids. Overall sect size has been cut down to like a quarter of what it once was.

- The Lan sect: for the next few years, LWJ is confined in seclusion in the Gentian house, because WWX's death + his qi deviation damaged his mental health enough that he's not really fit to be around people. LXC is missing his left arm and also seriously fucked up mentally, because, if we list off what has happened to him: got his arm ripped off, the person who did that was his dear friend & sworn brother, it was unintentional but still sucks, watched his other sworn brother (JGY) die suddenly & unexpectedly (& probably horribly), a bunch of his family members and sect disciples all got killed on his watch all at once & there was nothing he could do about it, and also his qi deviation set back his cultivation (the thing he's spent most of his life working towards and something he takes pride in) significantly, and it'll take years of hard work to regain it, if he even does. He's not having a great time. (He's severely depressed.) He's not in seclusion, but unsurprisingly LQR is doing the bulk of the work of leading the sect. The Lan clan has been reduced down to LQR, LXC, LWJ, some really old elders who are reaching the end of their extended cultivator lifetime, LJY, and LJY's mom, who was married to LJY's dad (who was a cousin of LQR.) Everyone else died at Nightless city, or can no longer cultivate (and is probably also sick from the resentful energy/qi deviation). All other sect members were non-clan outer & inner disciples. Overall sect population has been reduced by 2/3rds. However, their library still exists & with the devastation of so many other clans, they now probably have the best repository of cultivation info on the planet.

- Meanwhile, there's massive displacement & movement of cultivators. Many clans were reduced down to only their child disciples, and so those kids are branching off joining other sects that still have, like, adults, or forming roaming child gangs of cultivators. Many adult cultivators became rogue cultivators overnight when all their other sect members died, and they're also rapidly grouping up and dispersing while they search for a place to settle down. Furthermore, since Wen Mao's time, it's been expected that all the strong sects are made up of a leading clan or family who owns the sect, and those outer non-family disciples - but that's quickly becoming no longer the case. The cultivation organizations that came out of this best were the small temple schools who always operated on the old way of leadership being passed down from master -> student, and many survivors of demolished sects are joining up with them & bringing what cultivation techniques & manuals they've saved with them. These cultivation schools are growing rapidly to fill in the power vacuum left behind by the major clans. Additionally, other displaced cultivators are forming their own non-familial sects made up of whichever random cultivators they happen to group up with.

- In addition to non-familial cultivation schools and sects filling in the gaps in the political power vacuum, there's also quite a bit of finger pointing going around about whose fault doomsday is. Like, everyone agrees that WWX is the devil or whatever, but without the Jins controlling the political landscape, those quieter voices start talking about how "WWX really did ask to be left alone, this is all the result of those politicking major clans picking a fight they couldn't win and ruining everyone else alongside them." It becomes a lot easier for all those cultivators who had problems with the highhandedness of the major clans to start badmouthing them and laying some of the blame at their feet, now that most of the clans are greatly reduced or wiped out. Many in the non-familial temple schools and new sects that don't have a main clan leading them make a point of talking about how this is proof that Wen Mao's system doesn't work, and there is a cultural shift among both cultivators and common people that truly moral/spiritual/whatev cultivators come from non-familial sects, where they don't suffer corruption or whatever.

- Presumably, MDZS takes place in a sort of warring-states type period of fantasy china, where the sects also have bit of ruling power over the common people w/in their borders/domain. So I imagine that all those cultivation sects being wiped out leads to a lot of unrest for the common people as well, with new mundane local warlords rising up to also fill in the power vacuum left behind. The picture in my head is of, in the first half decade after doomsday, a growing separation between the common people & cultivators, with common people being ruled over by whatever local warlord pops up to take over their area, and cultivation clans simply not having the time or energy to deal with that, on top of everything else doomsday dropped on them.

MDZS AU idea that i've been entertaining myself with: WWX (accidently lol) kills basically everyone at Nightless City, but the apocalypse doesn't stop there...

- At Nightless City, when the sects have their pledge conference and WWX shows up and the fighting starts, somehow WWX is separated from Chenqing. Either someone manages to break the flute, or it gets flung off far into the distance, but either way, WWX is (seemingly) weaponless.

- The fight rapidly goes south for WWX. He's quickly surrounded and it becomes clear that he's going to lose. Probably, they're going to burn him alive like they did to WQ if they get their hands on him. So WWX does what seems sensible when he's backed into a corner and knows he's going to die: he pulls out the stygian tiger seal and destroys it. He warns everyone what he's going to do, and to get back - and either they don't listen, thinks he's bluffing, or simply don't hear.

- This kills... almost everyone. Unlike in canon when it happened in the burial mounds, and the seal animated all the corpses around into extremely strong fierce corpses that ripped WWX to shreds, there aren't enough corpses for the seal to direct it's energy into at Nightless City. (Like, there are still a bunch, but nowhere near burial mounds levels.) So instead, it floods all the cultivators surrounding WWX with resentful energy, overwhelming them enough that they die, or setting off a qi deviation which kills them. WWX is ground zero of this resentful energy bomb: he explodes or dissolves into dust - he's very dead. JGS and JGY are at the forefront of the mob and basically right next to WWX - they die. So do all of the Jin cultivators who followed them to the pledge conference, because they're also super close to the seal when it goes off. Half of the Jiang cultivators are in the mob around WWX and die as well. A good third to a half of the Lan and Nie cultivators there die as well. Those 33 Lan elders and a bunch of Lan main-clan cultivators? All dead. Entire minor sects who were in that mob are wiped out in a moment.

- So, if we do a roll call of what happened to our named characters when WWX destroyed the seal:

JGS, JGY, and JZxun all die, along with almost the entirety of the Jin sect.

JYL, who followed WWX there, is not close enough to be completely overwhelmed, and only falls into a coma, lacking a strong enough core to fight off the resentful energy.

JC, who was running towards WWX when this happened (to kill him? probably. he's an angry boy), suffers a massive qi deviation, which dangerously destabilizes his (donated) core. He doesn't die, but his cultivation is reduced drastically, and permanently inhibited. The Jiang sect, still building itself up again, finds itself once again reduced to a bare few cultivators.

LXC is far enough back to only suffer a qi deviation and not die. NMJ is with him, and also suffers a qi deviation - exacerbated by his cultivation method already leaving him prone to them. LXC finds himself fighting off a crazed NMJ while having his own qi deviation, and is badly hurt (does he lose an arm? idk but maybe). Neither of them die but its close. NMJ's core is basically destroyed by this deviation. He can no longer cultivate afterwards.

LWJ is close to LXC and also suffers a massive qi deviation, exacerbated by watching the man he's in love with basically commit mass-murder-suicide. He's not permanently damaged by it, he can still cultivate, but his cultivation is harmed enough that afterwards he'll be in seclusion for years to heal and rebuild what was lost from his golden core.

Su She is still in with the Lan disciples. Lmao he fuckin dies.

On the other hand, LQR is a scholar, not a fighter or politician, so he's back in Gusu for this.

The entirety of the Yao and Ouyang sect who are there die. This leaves the remnants of these sects as basically the women, children, elderly, and servants who were left behind at home. So rest assured that baby Zizhen is safe at home with his nurse for this.

The same holds true for a bunch of other small sects who were (mostly) pledged to the Jin and Jiang. They lose, at minimum, half of their cultivators in this event. A few are wiped out completely.

Of course, the Nightless City pledge conference was kind of a big deal, politically, for the cultivation world, so even those larger minor clans who aren't pledged specifically to a major clan, like the Chang and Meishan Yu clans, also lose a good number of their people to death or qi deviation at this conference.

Of those who were at the Nightless City and survive, pretty much all of them suffer some kind of qi deviation with long-term effects. By and large, everyone who lived got majorly nerfed.

- Basically, what I'm saying, is that this is a doomsday scenario for the cultivation world. Entire sects are lost in a moment, including almost all of the Jin sect, and certainly all of the Jin clan's main family, and of those who survive, their cultivation is almost certainly damaged in some way. Ancient China suddenly finds that there are almost no strong cultivators remaining. Sects find that anything they didn't write down is suddenly lost knowledge. The population of cultivators in the world, which had already taken a big hit during the sunshot campaign, finds itself halved yet again, and the overall power of those remaining cultivators is greatly reduced.