#how wwx only ever wanted to do the right thing and that having been so much of his downfall | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

robininthelabyrinth · 1 year

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Could you do Accidental sworn brothers NHS, JC, WWX?

ao3

“So,” Jiang Cheng said.

It was a very ominous sort of ‘so’.

“Hi, Jiang-xiong,” Nie Huaisang said. “Have you eaten? I trust you been well. I’ve been all right, myself. Things are pretty quiet. The weather’s been pretty nice, though I don’t think it’s ever as nice in Qinghe as it is in Yunmeng. Has it been raining much?”

Jiang Cheng was giving him a death glare.

“…lots of rain, huh?”

“I don’t care about the vast majority of what you did to get revenge on Jin Guangyao,” Jiang Cheng said flatly. “But you put Jin Ling in danger.”

“Not…much danger.” At Jiang Cheng’s incredulous look, Nie Huaisang shrugged. “He kept him alive this long, didn’t he? I figured Jin Ling was pretty safe, as these things went. It was only at the very last moment that he actually threatened him directly – and Jin Ling wasn’t even supposed to be there.”

Judging from Jiang Cheng’s expression, he wasn’t buying Nie Huaisang’s argument.

“All right, fine,” Nie Huaisang said. “Still, you came to visit me, which means that you’re not just here to yell and tell me that our friendship is over, you could do that by letter. You want something from me?”

Jiang Cheng struggled for a moment, then grimaced. “Yeah, I want something.”

He was so predictable sometimes.

“Tell me what you need me to do to get your friendship back, and I’ll do it.” Nie Huaisang thought about it for a moment. “Within reason.”

“I want you to help me fix my relationship with Wei Wuxian.”

“…I said within reason, Jiang-xiong,” Nie Huaisang said, horrified. “Do you want me to bring the moon down and give it to you while I’m at it?”

“It’s not that bad!” Jiang Cheng protested, except, no, really, it was exactly that bad. Years and years of deception and betrayal and bad feelings on both sides, an incredibly knotty tangle of emotions with no one completely right and no one completely wrong and debts and anger and – it was bad, okay? “Anyway, you managed to fix Jin Guangyao, didn’t you, even though he was Chief Cultivator and you had basically no evidence? Fix this, too.”

“It’s in no way comparable!”

“Listen, you said you wanted to know what you needed to do to get us to be all right with each other again, right? This is it. Do it.”

Nie Huaisang opened his mouth in protest.

“I won’t accept anything else,” Jiang Cheng said, and crossed his arms in a way that suggested finality. “You’re the mastermind, aren’t you? So mastermind!”

Nie Huaisang really didn’t want to lose Jiang Cheng’s friendship, now that he knew there was a possibility of keeping it, but he also had no idea how to even start going about fixing the unfixable. He flattered himself to think that he knew Jiang Cheng pretty well after all these years, but based on everything that had happened, he didn’t understand Wei Wuxian well enough to know where to start.

Clearly, he needed help. No, more than help – he needed expertise.

Currently, Nie Huaisang was sitting in one of the rooms in the Cloud Recesses the Lan sect used to host guests waiting to see the sect leader on business. Of course, with Lan Xichen in seclusion at the moment, the actual person taking petitions was the person Nie Huaisang come to see: Lan Wangji.

He didn’t expect to be seen to quickly, the way he might have when he’d been on familiar terms with Lan Xichen – he was a Great Sect leader, yes, and an allied one, and so ought to be accorded first priority, but Lan Wangji was also a petty little brat sometimes. Lan Qiren had come by in an unofficial capacity, looking long-suffering, and they’d had an unexpectedly enjoyable conversation on the subject of the rules relating to filial piety and revenge, which Nie Huaisang interpreted as possibly the first time Lan Qiren had ever voluntarily given him a good grade on anything.

(He was weirdly moved by it, but mostly still traumatized. He’d hated school.)

After the old teacher left, Nie Huaisang sat around waiting and drinking tea, amusing himself by thinking of all the ways this forthcoming conversation could go wrong, and just when he’d gotten to the end of the fourth scenario, Wei Wuxian himself came strolling in.

“Oh, hi, Wei-xiong!” Nie Huaisang said brightly, not allowing considerations like shame to apply. “How’ve you been?”

“I’m good, I’m good,” Wei Wuxian said. “And you?”

“Well, I’m –”

“It works out quite well that you’re here, actually,” Wei Wuxian said, barreling onwards without waiting for the answer. “There was something I was hoping you might help me with.”

Nie Huaisang hid his face behind a fan. “Who, me…? I mean, I’m always glad to help, if it’s within my power – and, I mean, I’m glad you asked! And here I was worried that Wei-xiong didn’t like me anymore.”

Wei Wuxian waved a dismissive hand and sat down.

“I’m sure it’s something you can help with,” he said, smiling in a way Nie Huaisang didn’t like. “After all, you led the entire cultivation world around by the nose to catch Jin Guangyao, didn’t you?”

“I wouldn’t say that…”

“Well, I would. This should be no problem in comparison!”

Which meant, of course, that it was going to be a problem, because anything was easy in comparison.

“Oh, Wei-xiong, I really don’t know…”

“Don’t give me that! At least listen to it, okay?”

Nie Huaisang was always willing to listen. He nodded.

“I need you to use your mastermind skills to help me fix my relationship with Jiang Cheng.”

Nie Huaisang blinked once, long and slow. “With…Jiang Cheng?”

“That’s right!”

“But…why me…”

“Everything is just a complete mess between us,” Wei Wuxian said plainly. “It’s probably mostly my fault, and I’ve probably wronged him in ways I don’t even remember, but – I’d like to fix it. I’ve tried to fix it. I even tried leaving it alone to see if that would help, and it definitely didn’t. Everything I’ve done only makes it worse! So I need someone else to manage it.”

“And you picked…me?”

“Don’t put yourself down, Nie-xiong. You’ll manage!”

“I haven’t even agreed yet!”

“You need something from Lan Zhan, don’t you?” Wei Wuxian said, grinning at him. “You’ll agree.”

“Of course I’ll agree,” Nie Huaisang said with a huff, tossing his head. “You’re a dear friend, Wei-xiong! Why wouldn’t I agree?”

Anyway, he had to do the work for Jiang Cheng anyway. Might as well score some points flattering Wei Wuxian while he was at it.

“You’re so kind,” Wei Wuxian said, rolling his eyes at him. “Thanks, Nie-xiong. I look forward to hearing what our next move is. Have fun having tea with Lan Zhan!”

“You did this to yourself,” Lan Wangji said solemnly.

“I know,” Nie Huaisang said. He was lying on the floor, arms and legs splayed to the sides as he stared up at the roof in an effort to express the depths of his desolation. “I’m well aware.”

“Mm.”

“I’m having a crisis over it, even.”

“Mm. Could you have the crisis elsewhere?”

“Don’t be mean, Lan Zhan. Of course not. I need your help!”

“Denied,” Lan Wangji said, as if Nie Huaisang really were just one of the random petitioners he had to deal with these days.

“If you don’t help me, I’ll fix up their relationship so good that you’ll have to deal with Jiang Cheng all the time,” Nie Huaisang said threateningly, and noted with amusement the way Lan Wangji’s brow twitched at the thought of having to share either space, time, or Wei Wuxian with Jiang Cheng. “Listen, no matter what the others think, I’m not really a schemer or a mastermind! I just ran with the course of events and tried to change them when they looked like they weren’t going my way, that’s all.”

“I wish you luck,” Lan Wangji said, immoveable as an iceberg.

“If I try to solve this, I’m only going to make it worse,” Nie Huaisang said. “That’s not even a threat. It’s just a fact.”

“I look forward to seeing the end results,” Lan Wangji said.

Cruel, indifferent man.

“I don’t even have a good model on how to solve this,” Nie Huaisang complained. “I mean, I don’t think I know of any relationships that splintered and then were actually repaired? The only thing that comes even close is what er-ge was up to with da-ge and san-ge all that time ago, when he was trying to get them to like each other again – of course, san-ge ruined that by committing murder, but I think we can probably avoid that here! I mean, I think we can. And it’s not workable, anyway, because…”

He frowned. Nothing was coming to mind.

Nothing at all.

Well then.

“Actually…”

Lan Wangji actually put down his brush. He looked mildly alarmed. “Nie Huaisang,” he said. “What are you thinking of doing?”

“Nothing, nothing…nothing at all…”

“How did this happen?” Jiang Cheng wondered.

“No idea,” Wei Wuxian said. “But at least we’re friends again, right?”

“Not just friends,” Jiang Cheng said. “Isn’t that right, da-ge?”

Wei Wuxian puffed himself up like a peacock. “You bet, er-di!”

“The sacrifices I make for my friends amaze even me,” Nie Huaisang said to a stunned-looking Lan Wangji. “I’m really all heart, aren’t I?”

“Nie Huaisang,” Lan Wangji said solemnly. “I am going to kill you.”

Nie Huaisang cackled. “No, you’re not,” he said cheerfully. “Or else my da-ge and er-ge might have something to say about how you’re treating their san-di…and I, at least, promise not to kill either of them!”

#mdzs #jiang cheng #nie huaisang #wei wuxian #lan wangji #my fic #my fics #I'm finally going to start posting again #even though I'm mortally terrified I'm going to repost an old one #which is at least 65% of why I have been so quiet #but I will do it anyway #anyway showing up WAY late with your prompt fill sorry #my nhs&lwj childhood friends agenda strikes again #also my 'what is the funniest way this could happen' agenda

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memory-lane-and-back-again · 8 days

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A Thought About Wei Wuxian's Death

Spoilers for... I don't remember which book it is (Book 3 I think)

When WWX is captured by the Wens and tossed into the burial mounds he is so full of rage and anger that it is a terrifying possibility that he will come back as a fierce corpse full of resentful energy. (Arguable he does, but that's a point to make for after exams when I can actually have fun and analyse the heck out of these)

I find it an interesting parallel that when he actually does die he is an incredibly 'well behaved ghost.' as in, he's well... if not moved on, at least not inclined to try and act and in some state of peace: not happy but at least tolerating how things have ended. WWX's character is permeated by a deep, inextricable sadness and I think, though it is not ever blatantly acknowledge, this is foregrounded right at the beginning with the story: he doesn't know why he's been brought back, does not understand and is incredibly fixed on the fact that it was not his choice. To infer... he didn't really want to come back.

I found his present mellowness, that contrasts so brutally with his fury and anger and ability to feel such intensity before he died, to be a bit strange---not unbelievable but strange. That kind of anger burns incredibly brightly and is incredibly hard to tamper down and yes, he grows and matures but it feels a bit strange to me that this comes on from spending ten years without a body. I think it is more an extension of his grief and guilt: after Wen Qing and Wen Ning go to die on his behalf is when he gets truly angry... his anger gets out of control and Jiang Yanli is hurt and then dies for him. Jiang Cheng takes his anger out on him. As far as WWX can remember even LWJ is disgusted by him... is it so hard to believe that he too is disgusted with himself. Present day, he cringes at his past arrogance---the illusion of omnipotence and control he thought he had.

I am of the opinion he's the sort of person with the mindset that if he can make the world a better place, fix one problem, even if it is at the expense of his own, he'd do it. He is raised to protect JC, doesn't even bat an eye at losing his core because if it can help JC it is good; he doesn't fear dying if he can come back as a fierce corpse to still help destroy the Wens; he doesn't care to humiliate himself to try and give Wen Ning a chance at archery; his public image does not matter if he is helping people. This carries forward where he is willing to sacrifice discovery to protect Jin Ling; he turns himself into a spirit attraction flag for people who hate him; the moment LWJ freaks out about sleeping with him, WWX first priority is to take all the blame for everything and then leave and go do the stupid mission all by himself because he doesn't want to force LWJ to put up with him, even though it leaves WWX himself incredibly wrought. And then of course, he doesn't even bat an eye at luring Nie Minguie away by himself.

My point is he's a willing martyr, happy to get himself into trouble and deep water for pretty much anyone (mianmian, LWJ, JC, the Wens) so it must feel like hell when his efforts only succeed in getting everyone killed, when he's kind of forced to confront that he is loved and had people willing to stand by him that he did not consider when he made his plans and that they are dead because of to an extent his actions. I truly believe him trying to destroy the Yin Tiger Tally is his last attempt to try and rectify things and he is a bit like Xiao Xingchen in that regard, trying so hard to follow his principles and failing abysmally. At that point his jiejie is dead, who is like the very symbol of innocence and unconditional love in his life at that point and he knows they are coming to kill him. His big character difference I think has a lot to do with the three months after the nightless city and before his death because he feels the world is better off with him dead.

A lot of people compare Xue Yang and WWX and whilst I think that is valid, I think a lot of people forget his inherent connection to XXC through his mother. I think it is important to acknowledge that they share a very similar mindset: naively wanting to change the world with their beliefs alone as if people will see altruism and kindness as the best path whilst most people are out searching very selfishly for their own greatness and success---something neither WWX adn XXC need to think about because A) the are already powerful and successful and B) they were never raised to think themselves as needing to be supremely powerful to be successful and Good.

Anyways, it does make me wonder how much of WWX's characterisation present day is put on. He slaps himself in the face when no one is around to see it after he finds out who Jin Ling is, he lets Jin Ling stab him and feels he deserves it---that by proxy is when he's most open with LWJ: 'you don't need to come with me, your reputation will be ruined.' It so, so clearly speaks of self-loathing that he is so so good at hiding.

I think actually when LWJ and WWX first sleep together the physical undressing is also a metaphor for an emotional undressing on WWX's part because he strips himself of his insincerity and arrogance and allows himself to be vulnerable. The only other times we see his vulnerability is when he's passed out unconscious and when he realises to stop hurting LWJ he needs to kind of bare his soul to him in book 5 after LXC reveals the truth about nightless city.

Gosh, I love these characters so much.

#mdzs #wei wuxian #wei ying #lan wangji #xiao xingchen #xue yang #tw death #tw self loathing

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jiangwanyinscatmom · 10 months

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🔥 when you said, "Neither Wei Wuxian or Jiang Cheng respected the other as another human in equal standing." you meant like WWX didn't see JC as equal in power and talent and that JC didn't see WWX as qual in social status? Could you elaborate on that? I saw someone saying how WWX didn't respect JC but there wasn't a side of why JC didn't respect WWX. Love your account xoxo

Hello, anon.

No, I don't believe Wei Wuxian ever had an issue with talent or power being a factor for respecting anyone. I say they did not respect one another due to their core ideals and morality being so different. Wei Wuxian emphasizes kindness and happiness being something to strive towards to feel content with life and with yourself. You cannot be content in your choices and your own life without simple kindness from others or showing that to others. To not envy others or deny the kindnesses you are granted. Or, to deny another that simply based on who or what they are. To accept what you are given and try to equally grant such kindness's back because of respect.

Wei Wuxian’s own pride when he was seventeen or eighteen had been, in fact, on par with Jiang Cheng’s. He had also been someone with strong spiritual power and exceptional talent. Even when he’d fooled around all day catching fish and shooting birds, and climbing walls and playing pranks at night, he had still been leagues ahead of his fellow disciples who actually studied hard.

But whenever he found himself tossing and turning in the dead of night, unable to sleep and plagued by thoughts of how he’d never again follow the orthodox path to the mountain’s peak, never again display the astounding swordplay that made people’s jaws drop…he would turn his thoughts around with a simple fact. If it had not been for Jiang Fengmian bringing him to Lotus Pier, Wei Wuxian might never have crossed paths with the cultivation world. He would never have been conscious of such a mystical and magnificent realm. He’d merely have been the leader of some homeless street urchins who roamed the streets and fled at the sight of dogs—or perhaps herded cattle and stole vegetables in the countryside, playing his flute and living one day at a time. He’d have had no way of cultivating, let alone a chance to form a golden core.

And at that thought, he’d feel a lot better.

Wei Wuxian, knowing that “for once” was directed at his memory, couldn’t help but smile. “Stop being so peeved about that. I was wrong, okay? Besides, it’s my mom’s fault that I have a bad memory.”

“How so?” Lan Wangji asked.

Wei Wuxian rested his arms on Little Apple’s head and spun Chenqing in one hand.

"My mom once said, ‘You have to remember the good things people have done for you, instead of remembering the bad. A person’s heart shouldn’t be burdened with so many memories. That’s how you live freely.’”

It is Jiang Cheng who does see power and talent as the only way to be happy. To be competitive, to win to be the best, to always be right. He does not exhibit kindness but wants to be given what kindness entails from others and without reciprocity. He views relationships transactionally, to help only if it is based within a debt he deems important enough to honor.

This is a creed that Madam Yu shows as well,

There is not a single day that Wei Ying will rest until he stirs up some kind of trouble! If I had known better, I would’ve forbidden him from leaving and made him stay in Lotus Pier. Would Wen Chao really have dared do anything to the two young masters of the Lan Clan of Gusu and the Jin Clan of Lanling? Even if he had, it would’ve been their own bad luck. Who are you to play the hero?”

Jiang Cheng covered his wound with his hand as he bit out a sarcastic reply. “Wei Wuxian, you’re so selfless. So noble. Despite all the humiliation you’ve suffered, you’ve done every good deed in the world and kept them secret from everyone. How touching! Should I be down on my knees, weeping and thanking you?”

After a moment of silence, Wei Wuxian grumbled, “I’m not asking you to thank me.”

Jiang Cheng snorted a laugh. “Right. Asking nothing in return for doing a good deed—you’re in a league of your own. Unlike me, of course. No wonder my father always used to say you were the one who really understood the Jiang Clan’s motto, when he was alive. That you were the one who acted as a Jiang should.”

Wei Wuxian interrupted him, unable to listen any longer. “That’s enough.”

“What’s enough?” Jiang Cheng snapped. “It’s enough just because you say so? Yeah, you know best! You’re better than me in every way, whether it be talent or cultivation, intelligence or temperament! You people know it all. I can’t compare. What does that make me, then?!”

Essentially, Wei Wuxian does not allow the tragedy that has befallen him to be what defines him, or allows it to be what he is. It is Kindness that makes life worth it. Jiang Cheng does not understand extending such kindnesses as it is a burden to help and genuinely care for others without vitriol. It is not worth it for him to sacrifice literally or figuratively for someone that is loved by him. All give and no take is what he views the world as and if he gives, it is to be repaid in ten fold. No one can be his equal as no one is worth that aside from his own self.

Jiang Cheng does not even begin to understand his own sect motto until the revelation of the core and how he met kindness (in many ways) with nothing but vitriol and cruelty because he has been to caught up in his own selfishness and viewing kindness as something to earn and take away at will without repercussions to his own life.

#mdzs #mo dao zu shi #wei wuxian #canon jiang cheng #wei wuxian vs jiang cheng

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layzeal · 9 months

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hey do you ever think about how MAD Lan Wangji must have been post-Siege. like people talk about the Grieving, because of course he was grieving, but I don’t see as many people talk about how furious he must have been. like there’s him being shown first hand the rank hypocrisy of the cultivation world and how they killed Wei Wuxian and the Wen (and jeez, the fear he must have felt wondering what would happen if people were to find out Shizui was a Wen–) and then how they turned around and said that was Justice. how enraging would it be to hear them disparage Wei Wuxian and then without blinking use his inventions; just using Wei Wuxian while condemning him even after death. truly hanguang-jun is stronger than me, because I think I would go crazy.

ksdjfhjsdkfh in all fairness, i think the reason people don't really talk about lan wangji's rage after wwx's death is because we never actually see it. we watch him drink and harm himself with the wen brand in hopeless despair. we see his sadness, his grief, we see him drag his broken body to yiling and search for days for a single trace of wwx, the only thing forcing him to come back being the sickly little boy he found hiding in a tree... but we don't see him angry, resentful, or vengeful.

other than maybe towards jc, lwj doesnt outwardly show any resentment or disdain, and doesnt treat anybody differently. he isn't violent, and even at the immediate threat of losing wwx (ie the 33 elders) he only attacks them so they cannot impede him from escaping with wwx, it was a rational choice made with a clear goal in mind, he didn't snap. in the present, we watch how he simply removes himself from the situation altogether and chooses to help the common people with his own hands, rather than waste time with clan politics.

we KNOW he must be angry at that senseless injustice, but he simply has a different way of showing it. it's all inner brewing, which he answers by changing his actions, not by snapping with violence.

and thaaaat's exactly why wwx is OBSESSED with making lwj angry. because he sees all that self-restraint and emotion boiling behind that impassive face, and he wants to see it explode!! he wants lwj to never have to hold back with him. he knows lwj feels everything SO much but only allows his own actions to be calculated, so if he can tease him just in the right way to let those feelings explode in a positive manner that makes them both happy? well, call that therapy babyyy

#i WILL say that we DO see lwj snap with anger Once: the ancestral hall scene #and he was valid for that tbh #that's the closest we see to lwj's anger towards injustice and grief. and it was sexy as hell #u know how teenxian saw teenji's stuffy face and was like. i need to see him break #he was so correct #but yeah thats basically why i think there's a lack of ''what about lwj's rage'' in fics #we simply are not shown it. that's just not how he reacted to those events #it's how he FELT for sure. but not how he expressed it #that and theres a whole nuance to what he likely already expected to happen as soon as he left wwx at the foot of the mountain #modao #lace speaks

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symphonyofsilence · 1 month

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Do you mind if I ask your top 10 favorite characters (can be male or female) from all of the media that you loved (can be anime/manga, books, movies or tv series)? And why do you love them? Sorry if you've answered this question before.....Thanks...

Oooh such a difficult question! I have like about...50 top 10 favorite characters somehow and they're ever increasing lmao! (like the 10 is in the Real numbers axis not natural numbers.lol.) So, after lots of thought, I decided to consider the factor of how well-written they are. The ones who had the most ups and downs and the author managed to hit every emotional chord every step of the way.

So, in no particular order:

Maedhros (Tolkien's legendarium)

(Art by @elfinfen )

I have waxed poetic about Maedhros on many occasions. Namely here. But to be brief: he just has one of the best fallen hero tragedies ever! And one of the most beautiful, rich, tragic, and enticing journeys! One of the best parts of the Silmarillion is following his journey from the son who fought with the rest of his family over the Teleri ships and then disagreed with Fëanor over the burning of the ships, and paid the most dearly for that mistake, and then healed because "the fire of life was hot within him" and fought with everything he had to protect the Middle-earth and unite all the houses and all the races, to the Maedhros after The Nirnaeth, who led three Kingslayings and came to actually involuntarily help the Malkor whom he fought so hard against for so long and was tortured with his own deeds so much that he ended his life with fire, right after he won the one thing he was fighting for from the beginning of his story. Only to have lost everything else.

2. Fëanor (Tolkien's legendarium)

He's the fire. He's the forest. And he's a witness watching it. Has a man ever destroyed so much even as he kept creating? Has a man ever dreamed so big his dreams crushed his reality beneath their feet? Has a man ever ruined everything and everyone he loved from the moment he was born down to the moment he last closed his eyes on the sight of the sons that followed him to their demise? Because he was burning so hot that everything close to him burnt with him? Has a man lost all he stood for in the way of fighting for what he stood for?

He brought his own end and there's something really appealing, really humane, really real about self-made tragedies.

(Also he's absolutely unhinged and his lines are all bangers & I love him for that!)

3. Jin Guangyao (Mo Dao Zu Shi/The Untamed)

Just the place JGY occupies in the narrative, as WWX's parallel and the story's antagonist who is basically also kinda the protagonist in this very story if you look at it from another angle is fascinating! You can write essays about him!

He just wanted to honor his mother, he just wanted his father's approval, he wanted the world. He wanted the world just to have some safety he never had. He never got any safety even when had the world. He did many evils to get the world. He wanted the world just to do some good in it. He was the best Xiao Shushu. He took his nephew hostage. and even then he didn't lose his nephew'slove. He played a game designed against him and won. He lost in his own game to the man he didn't even know was playing. And he truly loved and cared for that man. He was so kind, he took personal risks with no benefit for himself to save people. He couldn't afford to be a good, righteous person who would always be kind. He kinda taught this to WWX the hard way. He plays the role of a villain in WWX's story. His endgame was to just run away and WWX interrupted him. They barely knew each other. They respected each other. He died by his love's hand and his last deed in life was to push his love out of danger.

He never had a chance. At no point could he have been happy, or saved. He was doomed from the beginning. And yet he went as far as went. And there's a certain appeal to this kind of soft power, resilience, determination, hard work, cleverness, brilliance, and competence. To not just give in to fate and if there is no chance to take, then create some. To just forcefully carve a place yourself in the world of the world has decided that you have no place in it.

And everything he does he does with STYLE! AND HE'S SO POLITE EVEN WHEN TALKING TO THE PEOPLE HE'S TAKEN HOSTAGE! HE'S SO COOL AND SO ELEGANT AND SECRETLY SASSY AND SO COMPETENT I CAN'T HELP BUT STAN!

4. Jiang Cheng (Mo Dao Zu Shi/The Untamed)

Ah, the grumpy but kindhearted characters. They always have my whole heart.

Nobody can convince me Jiang Cheng is not my actual little brother!

I love this tsundere wet cat so much! He's a loser, he's won at everything he's ever started, he's a mess, he's a badass, he's a wet cat, he's a war hero and a competent sect leader and an excellent Jiujiu, he's broken and betrayed, he's so full of love that he gives freely and unconditionally.

And isn't it kinda the point? To go on and continue even while crying and screaming? To break down and grieve, but get up again and keep going? To love, despite many things that stand against it?

Jiang Cheng's character is introduced in a way that at every turn, you're waiting for the moment when he turns against Wei Wuxian and kills his brother. And it never comes. Instead, he loves him. At every turn, when you'd think that anyone else would have given up, Jiang Cheng keeps loving more and more fiercely. Even in his last scene, as he leaves the story, he leaves you astonished by all the love he has given and still has to give.

(And he's a sassy queen which is a very important factor.)

5. Mu Qing (Heaven's official blessing)

Mu Qing is another character that was introduced to us in the most unfavorable way possible and as we go on, we learn that all his actions had been misinterpreted and this lil grumpy, sassy, bitter cat is actually very, very kind. And loyal, and insecure. and he does all his kind deeds without expecting anything, even acknowledgment in return even though he knows his actions will probably be misinterpreted again. and even though he has seen nothing but ungratefulness before when he helped others! he just never ceases being kind and going out of his way to help! because that's who he is! HIS NAME MEANS "YEARNING FOR AFFECTION"! I LOVE HIM SO MUCH!

6. Geto Suguru (Jujutsu Kaisen)

This one was truly "dead from the beginning". And you don't even know what a gentle, sweet, lovely soul you've lost until you learn this right at the same time when you learn you've never had him to begin with.

Geto Suguru, with his voice so soft, with his smiles so sweet, with his eyes so kind, with his manners so soothing, so full of consideration, with his heart so gentle that it will bring his downfall, so concerned with the thought of ALWAYS saving everyone that he forgot to save himself. So, so loved that he'll haunt the narrative till everyone who knows him is dead.

The doomed child, the broken man. Gentle, and so very loved and loving to his last breath. And even beyond (to the point that he comes back to life to save Gojo!)

Has anyone ever fallen so tenderly, so gently, As he holds the hands of the two little girls he's saved after the one little girl he couldn't?

His fall came so understandably, so naturally, you feel like you walked the path with him and nobody not even in-universe can blame him.

As almost anyone who knew him in-universe would agree, loving Geto Suguru comes very easy.

7. Wanda Maximoff (MCU)

What can I say about Wanda Maximoff? The girl who kept trying to grasp at the only things left for her, be it her brother, her husband, or her children only to lose and lose and lose again. The girl who kept choosing to save people again and again. The girl who was afraid of her power because it could kill people but still chose to use it to help others, who then came to the point that she took an entire town hostage? The girl who had to kill the love of her life thrice only for it to mean nothing? The girl who looked relieved as she turned into ashes when the blink happened? The girl who just wanted a little domestic life in their little house with her husband but had to save the world but her efforts were never enough? The girl who nearly killed Thanos singlehandedly? The girl who ran across universes to kill her other self to be a mother to her children?

And as Steve said, "she's just a kid."

What can I say about Wanda, the Victim, the te****ist, the scarlet which, the mother, the kid?

I love her so much!

8. Zuko (Avatar the Last airbender)

What can I say about Zuko that hasn't already been said numerous times and way better than I could? The best redemption arc I've ever seen. And one of the most adorable social disasters ever.

9. Azula (Avatar the Last airbender)

Azula's breakdown will always haunt me.

She was so cool, so calm and in control, so confident, and so competent you forgot she was only 14. Until it hit you hard in the face when she imagined her mother telling her that she loved her in the mirror. And you see her break down and scream, defeated on the ground, when she sees her brother with his friend. Victorious, because he had people who helped him.

But Azula was alone and let down by every adult around her. When she told her father "You're treating me like I'm Zuko!" you understand how all her life, she's been afraid that if she was "almost" perfect she'd be put aside like Zuko. and how being the perfect child for her father would mean being a monster to her mother. and she chose the parent who gave her praise instead of judgment, and even that parent's love wasn't unconditional. He was a narcissist and took advantage of her. when Ursa in the comics told her "I'm sorry I didn't love you enough." and Azula burst into tears IT BROKE ME!

10. V (V for Vendetta)

Originally I was really pondering whether I should give this place to Jamie Lannister or Xue Yang, Shen Jiu, The Corinthian, or Sansa Stark. Until I suddenly remembered the one character that I always fall in love with all over again EVERY TIME I watch the movie. How does one make a character(AND AN OBJECTIVELY TERRIBLE MAN THAT IMPRISONS AND TORTURES A POOR ALONE GIRL!) so charming, so charismatic, so lovable that literally everybody who watches the movie falls in love with him? (DID HE GIVE US ALL STOCKHOLM SYNDROME?!)

Also, every word out of his mouth is golden and iconic and delivered with such a unique personality. He's so interesting! He's simultaneously so nerdy and so cool! His actions are so cool and so is his style! And he's the personification of "freedom". In most countries, most of the time, people, each to their own degree, are fighting for their rights and freedom. V represents a universal wish, hope, and fantasy. V is the power of people. The courage, capability, strength, determination, vengefulness, the yearning for justice of tortured but unbent, unbowed, and unbroken people. and So that's a huge part of his appeal.

Also HUGO WEAVING'S RICH VELVETY VOICE!!! GOD!!

Here are the other characters that definitely deserve a place among the top tens but I just don't know who to replace them with because they all also deserve their places:

Xue Yang(Mo Dao Xu Shi/The Untamed): the sassy little adorable delinquent who thought he was at the top of the world doing whatever he liked because he could. and this time he had the power to take his revenge from the world that had him powerless, only to find warmth and peace in the name of taking revenge in the place he least thought, with his enemy and the kid who hated him. Only to find that peace and warmth were what he most wanted. Only to ruin it all irrevocably with his own hands. Only to die in the way of hopelessly trying to get back the one person who showed him genuine kindness and warmth. (also he's a sassy lil shit <3)

Shen Jiu (Scum Villain's self-saving system): The child-abuser scum who was introduced to us as the ultimate villain of the story. Until we learned about his story and how he died cruelly and unforgiven, with his name tainted while he only did some of that™️. While still a bitter man, and a child abuser, his heart wasn't so tainted. But by the time we learn that, he's already dead. With his story unfinished and his heart heavy because he never learned why the only person he deeply cared about left him behind. And nobody even noticed his passing to mourn him. AND EVERYTHING WAS BETTER FOR HIS DEATH!

Jamie Lannister (A Song of Ice and Fire/ Game Of Thrones): How can an author make you stan a character who pushed a little kid, and A POV LITTLE KID AT THAT! down a window because the kid saw he and his sister fuck in the first few chapters?! GRRM SOMEHOW DID THAT! Even if I'm still not very fond of the end of his story in the show, both in the show and in the books, he had one of the best redemption arcs and developments ever. (Though I started to like him when Catelyn told him "You pushed my son out of the window. You wanted him to die!", and Jamie answered: "Nah sometimes I shove kids out of the windows because it's good for their growth." Lmfao. What a little shit!)

The Corinthian (The Sandman): the being hated by his creator because he was so good at what he was created for he transcended the barriers his creator had set for him. so good at his assigned purpose that what he did was beyond his purpose. AND HE WAS SO HEARTBROKEN BY WHAT DREAM SAID TO HIM! And after he was recreated he startet being a babysitter to gain Dream's approval again. it was so sweet!

Sansa Stark (ASOIAF/GOT): from the girl who wanted to get out of Winterfell to follow her dreams to the girl whose dream became to go back to Winterfell, from the delusional little girl who lived in her dreams, waiting for her knight, who learned the cruelty of the world the hard way, to the deliverer of some of the most iconic lines of the show/book like "I'm Sansa Stark of Winterfell. This is my home, and you don't frighten me."/ "My skin has turned to porcelain, to ivory, to steel." She went a long way and had one of the best character developments. In the book, you can already see her bringing her ladylike behavior and political game that she learned from the best in action to manipulate Hardyng and Robbie. Like Cersei's white mirror. But she still has the kind heart of the girl who once after being attacked by the commoners said that if it was some bread they wanted, she would have given it to them if she had some with her.

Honourable mentions:

Qi Rong (tgcf): my favorite little shit! The best dad! And what @jin-zixun told about his story in the tags of this post really made me emotional!

He Xuan (tgcf): he had so much potential and instead all his life he and his family suffered on someone else's behalf while that someone else stole all his fortune. Then during his revenge plan, he met that person and he learned that maybe had things been different, he would willingly suffered all of the misfortunes of that person's life (the ones that didn't include his family) but as it stood, in this life, they had no chance. And even after his revenge he didn't find any peace and happiness.

Klaus Hargreeves (Umbrella Academy): A sunshine who always lights up every gathering, and is always ready to help others and always sees the good in others!

Five Hargreeves(Umbrella Academy): A murderous, sassy, tiny, bitter grandpa in the body of a teenager who'll do everything for his family! what's not to love!

Nakahara Chuuya (Bungo stray dogs): *Wonder Woman's voice* A BABY! The grumpy characters with golden hearts who always go out of their way to help others and will follow their friends to the end of the world with many, many complaints and screams always have my whole heart!

Dowager Countess of Grantham (Downton Abbey): EVERY LINE SHE SAYS MUST BE WRITTEN IN GOLD! the perfect combination of sass and class! goals!

Fleabag (Fleabag), Thomas Barrow (Downton Abbey): I love cringe-fail hot messes who had no control over many shitty things that happened in their lives and what they could control, they fucked up and now have to deal with their consequences. but still, they push through and try to make the most of it.

Pam Beesley(The Office): the story of this seemingly unremarkable, shy, quiet girl who learns to pursue her dreams, and make opportunities for herself, and speak up for herself was one of the best plotlines of The Office.

Toph Beifong (ATLA), Ranpo Edogawa (BSD): the tiny little extraordinary, extra- competent, reliable, confident, super blunt, lovable cuties always have my whole heart!

Flynn Rider (Tangled) & Nick (Zootopia): still two of my all-time crushes! It's the charm and wit and golden heart while being an outlaw, and supportiveness probably.

Death of The Endless(The Sandman): she's so kind and gentle! Her presence is soothing! And to think that she's death coming so kind, soothing and merciful and as a relief to accompany people on their one last lonely journey is really beautiful!

Delirium of the Endless(The Sandman): she's so broken and mysterious and so desperate for her family to be together! And she sometimes bestows wisdom to others through insanity!

Desire of the Endless(The Sandman): such a mysterious and complex character! They're by nature very cruel. But they're also so loving towards their family. They're there for their family when needed (be it Delirium, Despair, or Dream. Even when Dream didn't want to accept their help they turned into a cat and helped them anonymously). And even in their love they're cruel, and in cruelty, loving.

Nebula(MCU): I loved watching her escape from Thanos's abusive influence and become friends and sisters with Gamora! And her stoic but awkward personality is so lovely!

Cersei Lannister(ASOIAF/GOT): one of the best-written villains ever. She never ceases to be a villain but you really feel pity for her. From the moments she talks about her loveless marriage with Robert to when you learn that she's a pawn for Tywin's plans to the walk of shame to the loss of her children. And her lines are so iconic!

Frodo Baggins (Lord of The Rings): he's so kind-hearted! So sweet! He tried and resisted so hard even though it wasn't his war! He's so underrated!

Mo Ran (Husky and his white cat Shizun): one of the best-written protagonists with a complex, tragic backstory and a lovable personality with a beautiful redemption arc. I loved him both as Taxian-Jun and as Mo Ran.

Chu Wanning(Husky and his white cat Shizun): a multi-layered and lovable character. especially as Xia sini!

Crowley and Aziraphale (Good Omens): my favorite sweet, pure, kind-hearted loser lover boys who keep saving the world by being so incompetent they accidentally get the desired outcome by a series of incompetence that cancel out each other!

Moon Knight specifically Steven Grant (Moon Knight, MCU): I've only watched the MCU miniseries and his story was so heartbreaking! And Steven was so sweet! And seeing Marc and Steven find peace and love together was very beautiful!

Prof.McGonagall (Harry Potter): so sassy, so caring, so steadfastly dependable! From Aunt Hetty and Marilla Cuthbert to Professor McGonagall, I've always loved these types of characters!

Dervish Grady (Demonata), Nanami Kento(Jujutsu Kaisen): it's the caring, dependable mentors that always show up to fix everything and you form a deep bond with them for me.

Sirius Black (Harry Potter): his fiercely loyal, extreme both in love and hate, and unstable personality, his being stuck in more than a decade ago, occupying an uncertain place as a father- figure to Harry and a brother figure to James Potter-...'s son, and devotion to his loved ones, and how he wanted to always be there for Harry in the little time he got with him for all the years he couldn't be have captivated me.

Griffith(Berserk): I'm afraid I'm also experiencing the same obsession with this tragically fallen bitch of a man as Guts continues to feel. He's so well-written and so charismatic, (so obviously in love with Guts) he keeps haunting you. Like I keep being like: "I CANNOT BELIEVE HE WAS THIS MUCH OF A BITCH! HOW COULD HE! FFS! EVERYONE IN THAT BAND WOULD HAVE READILY DIED FOR HIM! THEY WORSHIPED HIM! THEY ENDANGERED THEMSELVES FOR HIM! EVEN AT THAT VERY MOMENT, THEY WERE ALL THERE FOR HIM! HOW COULD HE DO THAT TO CASCA ESPECIALLY!". And then I remember how pitiful his state was before that. He couldn't even kill himself. He couldn't even ask someone to kill him since he couldn't talk or write. And he went from being the next potential king to that state. He was a liability to everyone who looked up to him as a savior. And everything he did, while a horrible shock, was still so in character! He wasn't inherently evil. but he was inherently ambitious, self-centered, pragmatic, and detached... it all just came in service of his dark side after his fall. And he got everything he wanted only to yearn for what he used to have. *sigh* this bitch.

Sorry, it got so long and a lot more than 10! I shouldn't be allowed to talk about my favorite characters actually lmao!

Thank you for the very thought- provoking question!

#asks #mdzs #cql #the untamed #tolkien #lotr #the silmarillion #mcu #atla #jjk #the sandman #hp #asoiaf #got #good omens #I gotta stop myself before I write all of MXTX characters lol #Seth and Isis from volume1 of Ennead could have easily been on this list had Mohito not fucked up the manhua in the worst way possible!#they were such amazing characters with such a complex bond. Idc about Horus and his relationship with Seth is gross.#I was reading the Manhua for Seth and Isis and Anubis

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lazulisong · 1 year

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aight

@hystericblue wanted wei wuxian and @inkstainedarm wanted mdzs in general so :D

this is actually kind of about Nie Huisang too but cut for spoilers

its fascinating to look at wei wuxian's characterization and realize one of the major themes is how he, as one of the, if not THE smartest person in the room, looks at cultivation society and their beliefs and basically goes "yeah nah i'm out" -- not giving up his powers or his family, but simply refusing to play a game he's well aware that he has no chance of winning. (Lan Wangji figured this out well before him, which is why he spent thirteen years steadily refusing to do anything but what his conscience told him. in Wei Wuxian's defense, he spent most of that time dead.) so he refuses to be a hero or a villain any more, refuses to be the scapegoat that he's been molded to be since he came to the Jiangs.

(as an aside im actually real curious about what word they actually use when people call WWX 'the son of a servant', because China has a long history of slavery and bondservanthood, so is it just like, a class thing? or was his dad an actual slave or bondsman? was he a freedman? so many questions.

i believe that, like in most slave-holding cultures, you could be born with the status of a slave and i have a vague idea that if one parent was free or a freedsman the child could inherit freedom from them, but it's very possible i'm mixing up my cultures. the romans, man. [i have the vague impression that in imperial rome, a child born to an enslaved woman is also born enslaved, but a child born to a free woman inherits her free status because, uh, slaves couldn't legally hold property without permission. and women and children were. very much. property.] [depending on the era because roman history, by the narrowest definition, tends to be um. a bit of a sprawl] either way, its definitely a class issue and WWX does appear to be freeborn. anyway!)

but its still impossible for him to ignore suffering, or what he considers wrongdoing. WWX has an instinct to help people that somehow survived everything that happened to him.

and whats interesting about that particular bit of WWX's character -- the willingness to walk away, learned at such a high price, but also the willingness to seek justice -- is what Nie Huisang is betting his entire plan on. NHS bets that WWX would refuse to take power, or revenge, but that his inherent decency would make him see this puzzle through. that once again, WWX would follow his instinct to help, and also that even when WWX figures things out, he's going to understand what NHS had to do. im not saying that WWX approves of it, by any means or stretch of the imagination, but he understands it.

and he's right! he bases his entire delicate Jenga tower of a plot on his knowledge of WWX and he wins the whole god damn game. and im willing to bet that he and WWX are the only two that know it.

tl;dr wei wuxian and lan wangji are my babies but nie huisang is the one i would never, ever cross lmao

#meg what is your problem #fanfic #mdzs #u give me ko-fi i give u nonsense #for eight dollars i will Stop

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ultfreakme · 10 months

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Look I’m not going to say Jiang Cheng is not an absolute ass for deciding to lead the siege to Burial Mounds where he KNOWS only like a bunch of old people are there. BUT. They won’t have been fighting Wei Wuxian plus like 50 people. They’d be fighting Wei Wuxian’s corpse army which, btw, KILLED HUNDREDS IF NOT THOUSANDS OF PEOPLE.

and also:

Jiang Cheng thought Wei Wuxian had complete control of the corpses and had no reason until Nightless City to consider otherwise(this information that he learned while his sister was bleeding in his arms)

He has no clue when Wei Wuxian had control, and when he lost it, so for all he knows, Wei Wuxian was in perfect control when Jin Zixuan died and the whole Qiongqi path thing happened. That entire event is now personal for Jiang Cheng. His brother-in-law, his sister’s husband-- just died.

Then, in the middle of the confusing and messy fight in Nightless City, Jiang Yanli got hurt, in Jiang Cheng’s view BEACUSE of Wei Wuxian like he’s screaming at Wei Wuxian “I thought you could control this” and when he finally manages to gain some control, Jiang Yanli dies anyways.

Throughout his attempt at controlling the corpses, both Jiang Cheng and Wei Wuxian are scared for JYL, panicking, neither of them are in the right state of mind and WWX is trying to make things better, make this work, and he’s realizing he’s lost control but he can’t say that. This is his thing to fix so he says “I don’t know” and tries. But it isn’t enough.

So Jiang Cheng still doesn’t know the extent of Wei Wuxian’s control.

By the time the Burial Mound siege happens, Jiang Cheng is grieving, angry, most definitely being influenced by people like Jin Guangshan and Nie Mingjue’s discussions, and also has his personal grudges against Wei Wuxian because in his eyes, Wei Wuxian is why his sister and his brother-in-law are dead, and why is his nephew is an orphan. He also knows the kind of damage Wei Wuxian’s demonic cultivation can do.

So yeah, we the reader know that Burial Mound Wen remnants won’t cause any harm. We know they stand no chance and are innocent and they are being unfairly targeted when by all accounts the sects should’ve only aimed for Wei Wuxian by their dumbass logic that Wei Wuxian purposefully killed Jin Zixun and his lackeys with personal motives(once again, Jiang Cheng doesn’t know that event was a set-up for Wei Wuxian to be framed).

But after Nightless City, Burial Mounds + Wei Wuxian is seen as too powerful. All of the people leading the siege had different motivations. Jin Guangshan just wanted to get rid of the Wens and Wei Wuxian and Nie Mingjue has a personal grudges against the Wens for what happened to his family.

Jiang Cheng’s has little to do with the Wens and is almost entirely about Wei Wuxian. After Wei Wuxian’s death we know he has this obsession with demonic cultivators and specifically thinking Wei Wuxian is still alive. Burial Mound was all about his grief and mourning.

Was it right that he doesn’t give a shit about the Wens? Nope.

But he wasn’t marching in because he was gung-ho about torturing and destroying Wen remnant lives, like we have canon evidence where Jiang Cheng’s the type to kill and keep going. Wei Wuxian’s the ‘make the death linger and torture’ type. I doubt he gives a shit about them.

By this point even if Jiang Cheng thinks Wei Wuxian was losing control, he’s already labeled demonic cultivation as the absolute worst thing ever because it’s the reason why his remaining family got killed. This entire siege was about Wei Wuxian for Jiang Cheng.

And we know Jiang Cheng didn’t kill Wei Wuxian. The events surrounding the Burial Mound siege are so fragmented.

(side note: Jiang Cheng was there in nNghtless city when JGS was declaring they’re going to do the siege and people say ‘oh how dare Jiang cheng do nothing and condone this, how awful’. Lan Xichen was there, he was cool with it. So was Nie Mingjue. The first time this ‘let’s kill the Wens and wwx’ happened, it wasn’t solely a JC effort. It was a JGS thing. It only became a Yunmeng-Jin led siege when Jiang Yanli died, which of course it did a Jin heir and a hugely important Jiang died.)

I’m not saying Jiang Cheng was justified like you’ve gotta be an ass to go into the siege ready to kill innocents and what happened was a tragedy. He was also wrong in not trying to defend their lives in a moral sense. But the siege wasn’t just him hating wei wuxian for unjustified reasons, it was a tragic falling out built up throughout the book.

#jiang cheng meta #yes he was directly responsible but like if you're holding Jiang Cheng responsible for the siege- NO ONE ELSE WAS STOPPING IT EITHER #if you're hating on jiang cheng saying he's a monster because he approved of it #consider everyone else who approved- like lxc and nmj to the same standards too

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astronicht · 8 months

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whumptober day 3: “like crying out in empty rooms, no one there except the moon” | (implied) solitary confinement

tbh only meets the prompt if u squint but!! fic amnesty just post bb

Modao Zushi | WWX & JC gen, background wangxian | 1.1k

“He doesn’t understand it,” Wei Wuxian says. “That you have to sweat out the heat.”

“Please do not talk to me about Hanguang-jun,” Sect Leader Jiang says.

The cicadas sing in the wide hot dark beyond this room, where it is humid and close and lit by two little oil lamps on either side of the table. The oil lamps are clay and shaped like leaping fish the size of a child’s cupped hand. On them is a glaze called Yunmeng blue; the alchemical recipe for it was one of the things Wei Wuxian might have found in the Lotus Pier treasure rooms, had he been looking for that in particular.

Jiang Cheng has not met Wei Wuxian’s eyes this entire conversation at this little table with its yours and mine oil lamps, arranged like a banquet. Wei Wuxian is eating a meal: sliced steamed fish cakes in oil, Hongshan caitai fried with chili and garlic, plain congee rather than what was first offered, which had been rich with the white meat of Yunmeng fish. Wei Wuxian knows how to delicately reintroduce this body to food.

Jiang Cheng is not eating, because the dark night outside is nearly false dawn. Outside this little room, Sect Leader Jiang’s cooks are hanging out fresh noodles to dry in the coming sun, whispering to each other in the dark as their hands do a job they have done a thousand times.

“Will you tell him about this,” Jiang Cheng says.

“I thought we weren’t talking about Hanguang-jun,” Wei Wuxian says. Then adds, “I don’t keep secrets from him,” to see if Jiang Cheng will have him thrown out of this room. He keeps eating, very slowly. The fish cakes and the vegetables are very spicy, Yunmeng spicy. It is burning his cracked lips.

Jiang Cheng does not say anything or move, so Wei Wuxian says, “What I was saying is that there are only a few things that Lan Zhan doesn’t get. He doesn’t know how to survive the heat, you know, not really. I always liked eating spicy food in the heat, right? To sweat it out. He likes bitter melon and mung beans.”

“You are supposed to eat those in summer.”

Wei Wuxian shrugs. “After three days in your dungeon I would’ve eaten mung beans till I couldn’t stand up,” he says agreeably, even though in fact he has spent three days alone in the dark and is calmly eating a single fish cake one tiny bite at a time. His hands only shake a little with the effort of not shoveling in food.

Jiang Cheng’s knuckles crack as his fists clench on the table. Wei Wuxian looks at him from under the lashes of a dead boy. “Well, I would,” he says mildly. “And it was all a misunderstanding, so I hope you have not disciplined the responsible parties. Of course your new disciples would not recognize little old me. Congratulations, of course, on the new disciples.” He means this very genuinely, though Jiang Cheng will take it as a cold joke. Wei Wuxian doesn’t know how to fix that. Maybe it won’t ever be fixed. Maybe this humid little room where once decades ago the walls were painted red with purple lattice designs, the murals flaking from the plaster in an old unburnt part of Lotus Pier, will be the closest they come.

Wei Wuxian takes another careful bite of food he finds easy to digest. Below this little room off the kitchens he can hear water moving among the stilts. The kitchens are built partly over water here, to reduce the constant threat of fire. Similarly, to get into the Lotus Pier treasure rooms you must swim under buildings whose bottom is flush with the water level, holding your breath. The currents are strange among the stilts; there are underwater barriers and pylons and it is very dark even in the daytime. Every movement stirs up muck from the bottom.

Wei Wuxian had wanted to see a treasure. So he had come to Yunmeng alone, while Lan Zhan was visiting with Head Cultivator Zewu-jun, doing brotherly things, probably having meals not so unlike this one with so many horrible things unsaid. Though honestly, Wei Wuxian cannot believe this current luck: that he got into the treasure room at all, that he was only imprisoned in the dark for three days before Sect Leader Jiang returned from a night hunt to find a trespasser held in a cellars built up on the hill. It was hard to think of Jiang Cheng who once kept puppies and now keeps men in holes in the hill, a line of them that they have always called the dungeons, where perhaps people who learned some of what the Yiling Laozu taught died in the belly of the dirt of Yunmeng.

Jiang Cheng, who once spent months with Lan Wangji, trying to claw Wei Wuxian out of the soil and horror of Yiling.

It had felt very different four days ago when he dived beneath the surface of the lake again, silent and small as a black cormorant. The water closed above him, warm and for a moment almost clear before the rich silt stirred. He had held his breath and swum the old path.

Wei Wuxian looks at the little oil lamps, deep blue glazed. “Yunmeng blue,” he says, tapping one with a fingernail. The ceramic sings. The little flame wavers in its broth of oil.

Jiang Cheng’s gaze sharpens. “That’s not what you were after,” he says, and then looks like he meant to say something else, a stronger accusation. The Lans would love to know the secret of Yunmeng blue. It happens in the hills, the alchemy of it, in the potters’ kilns that stretch two li from hilltop to valley like snaking dragons with bellies of fire. There, among the azaleas, mostly unbothered by the night hunts, the people of Yunmeng cook a blue deeper than the sky.

“That’s not what I was after,” Wei Wuxian agrees. “I was looking for the rubbing of the old Han Dynasty star map and I didn’t find it anyway. Your disciples are very thorough in responding to their alarm talismans. Very diligent. I’m sure I am very lucky Sect Leader Jiang returned tonight.”

“And you took nothing,” Jiang Cheng says.

“I took nothing.”

“Well,” Jiang Cheng says, and clears his throat. Wei Wuxian’s brother, once. “It was only three days this time.”

Wei Wuxian looks at him, long and black-eyed and birdlike in a stolen body. “Yes,” he agrees. “Only three days. I’ll sweat it out in no time.”

—

idk man idk! important to state that i love jiang cheng, this is just as much about jiang cheng. anyway. i cant shut up about the development of chemical blue dye/pigment. also i couldn’t get Wei Ying to admit even to the narrative that he touched the dead husk of a silk worm stored inexplicably in the treasure rooms of lotus pier and knew it was there for their sister, whose work and life is all unrecorded in the treasure rooms of Yunmeng. etc.

#my fic #whumptober ‘23

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sasukimimochi · 1 year

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i wanna ramble about my view on JC but i'm so bad at words

so like, i see posts where people talk about these things JC does or WWX holds back from, i don't wanna go searching but also want to leave these details out cuz i don't want to accidentally call people out cuz that is not my intention (not that i have the audience to do something like that) so i'm just gonna go from my memory and kinda summarize what i think abt him...

gonna add a read more line bc this gets long!

Uh, btw please no hostility i'm not trying to start arguments, these are just my thoughts i really wanted to get out there. i'm definitely no therapist or psychologist so take this with a grain of salt, this is the view of just an average reader who retains a lot of info [tho still manages to miss details at times]. Anyway if you have info you think i should have addressed, reply and i'll make additions if i agree/want to expand on the info presented to me!

So, WWX and JC have a weird thing going on, it's not exactly brothers but they definitely wanted that, the reason why i say they aren't solidly brothers is because i'm pretty sure Madam Yu has influenced JC from the start of his arrival which is why he doesn't call wwx a-xian or Wei Ying or A-Ying- Why he doesn't allow himself to let loose properly around anyone even in private, why he constantly scolds wwx, etc. i believe firmly he's been quite influenced by his parents due to him being the next sect heir and the pressure that comes from it, as well as what he feels like madam yu is correct on- wwx is uncle jiang's favorite.

Madam Yu still chides Yanli for doing domestic acts for WWX but not on the same level as JC, who is constantly under pressure by her to be the perfect heir to the sect. She wants him to be better than WWX, which of course affects all of the family but Yanli gets left out of the fire a bit, which i think is what gives her such a strength to do these supportive acts for the brothers [and why she's also both the brother's favorite. She's basically the mom they wish for. Supportive, understanding, and helps mediate them]. Though this is a burden she has to bear, it's not that big of a burden to her because she loves the two so much.

Jiang Fengmian... i might be spelling his name wrong, so i'll call him Uncle Jiang cuz it will be faster for me to type with no mistakes haha. Anyway, I have complicated feelings about him.

At first i thought he was great and did no wrong, but that was on my first pass and when i had just watched the donghua only. My opinion of him since i read the novel isn't bad, but it's not super good. He's in a complicated position! There's only so much he can do about his wife, they argue super often and while its not usually crazy loud, it's pretty intense. [also, i'm not sure if separation is really a thing that happened back then, i think that's really a modern thing.] I feel like we're likely seeing Uncle Jiang's will to fight dimmed down by the wear of time.

Consider: you have a family member who won't ever listen to what you say, regardless how sound your argument is- you can be completely in the right and have all the facts, but no matter how long you press on, the result never changes. Do you put in the same amount of effort for the rest of your life? No! You understand that no matter how much you argue that their answer will remain the same. I personally have a family member like this, and while i defend myself regularly, it does not go anywhere. That is the nature of some people, no matter what they may not treat your view with the respect it deserves.

anyway back to the main line here, i dont think wwx is wrong about what he said regarding JF to JC. "he's just hard on you cuz you're going to be sect leader" or whatever it was along those lines- WWX does not seem like the type to lie to make someone feel better and i think this is why JC appreciates that conversation so much (besides the heartfelt twin prides which is obviously something that stuck to him for a long time). And i agree, JF is definitely trying to prepare Jiang Cheng for his position as sect leader one day.

do i think Uncle Jiang is completely guilt free of favoritism? No absolutely not, he canonically holds wwx more as a child, which i think is hard to argue against- but i do think the context of that is missed in part by most. WWX may have been a bright kid with sun shining out his ass but he was also a scared kid that just got rescued off the streets after his parents never came home. A kid that was fighting for food from dogs and likely starving and scared because he was on the street for like 5 years [if i remember it was from age 4 to 9 in the novel]. Of course he got held a bit more- i can't imagine he would be completely unphased immediately upon arrival, at least with his Uncle Jiang who was totally willing to provide him comfort- which wwx probably desperately missed from his now dead parents. We know canonically that the memory of those parents, however small, is unreplaceable and dear to wwx- but having JF treat him dearly is truly a balm to what has happened to him.

I'm not gonna say JC didn't go through things that made him cry and want to be held, in fact if WWX came into the house and suddenly got a lot of attention, it's going to feel pretty shitty for JC! Of course this combined with abruptly losing his privacy and puppies was what initially had him pushing the other away, but as you could see, after WY breaks his leg after running off and they make up, they get really close and despite this looming responsibility and family troubles, the two are very bonded. imo making them look like 6 year olds in the donghua is an injustice to their relationship, because 9 year olds tend tend to have more emotional intelligence (?) at that age. I'm not sure how to phrase that, but basically making them look younger and act like giggling children took away from the scene a bit for me lol. Jc is old enough to realize he doesn't dislike wwx! This isn't a child quickly getting over his anger, he's young here yes, but he's decided in this moment that he cares about this new member of the family, despite being called the son of a servant. [which yes madam yu is once again influencing his view of this segregation but i think he is much better at ignoring this particular in his youth]

I am rambling more than i thought i would lmao- i have a lot of feelings about their relationship and i think it's skipped over so much

um, i'm not sure which direction i was going in before i went onto the parents. Let's skip forward.

lotus pier fell and not only did JC see wwx get humiliated and whipped and nearly disfigured, his mother who he was about to lose blamed wwx for so much. When you lose a family member you have an attachment to, whether it bad or good, this influences your thoughts about them and with no way to resolve said thoughts. i find this hard to explain, so i'm just going to hope you understand what i'm referring to here. Especially in ancient china though, i believe it's a big thing to hold such a high regard for your parents, but especially if they have passed? i can't say this is fact but i believe that is the case i just am sticking to my memory here. So these things in combination with Trauma, i believe starts this heavy, negative emotion in JC that is hard to unstick.

JC and WWX may get into a one-sided scuffle but soon after they cry together like children. They just experienced hundreds of lives lost- people they grew up with and trained with and cared for as well as the people who provided and cared for them- their family was unstable, but still was a family and support system- now they had only two people and one of them was far away, the one that was typically their pillar. I feel like a lot of people hold JC to an impossible standard in his situation- having a bad day and taking it out on someone is one thing, going through a traumatic massacre i think allows someone to get a bit unreasonable [though of course nearly choking him was quite far, remember, he's extremely unstable emotionally at this point].

"WWX didn't do that though!" of course not. WWX is a different person with a different personality, is older (though i don't know by how much), and is extremely resilient, but he does process his trauma just differently. As you see over and over in the novel, wwx goes through many things others wouldn't dream of, but he starts acting differently even before the golden core removal, not only after. He's going through the same things, but i'm pretty sure no one reacts to trauma the same way to the T. JC's just happens to be misplaced anger, which is probably way too simple a way to put it, but anyway...wwx also gets angry. very angry. The two both have the correct target of anger in the end, despite Jc's breakdown. He still harbors his mother's words, but at this point they're still in the background of his mind.

Now again we go forward- JC willingly sacrifices himself for WWX. Look, if he doesn't like wwx at all i think this is extremely contradictory. even if he was s*icidal, he could have chose other ways to get to that end if that was the case. and a gentle reminder that JC perks back up and is ready to fight once he believes WWX knows how to fix his core! i don't think he was truly wanting to die or anything like that until he thought he had lost everything except wwx and jyl. He believes in wwx's strength despite his constant fear of inferiority, so if he was gone, what would it matter if wwx was there to continue to protect yanli?

Essentially he was like 'well what are we going to do if i can't lead the sect? We would be in a homeless situation and there is a war.' aka there's not a lot of hope all around, i don't think he was only upset about the core, but it was definitely the main force because if he didn't have a core, how would he survive what was happening anyway? he's like 'if i'm gonna die let it be on my terms' yk? He also doesn't feel like he's strong enough before he lost his core to protect anyone. Without it? fat chance.

whew... this is a lot already, so maybe i'll post this and do a part two later addressing YLLZ arc, then the "present" one. i just have a lot of feelings about their relationship and i'm sad to see so much negativity around him...JC is quite flawed, but a lot of the characters are flawed! that doesn't make them bad characters, it makes them interesting and human.

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robininthelabyrinth · 2 years

Note

WWX and Lan Qiren bonding, please! LQR sees WWX teaching and alongside LWJ at conferences and when he realizes, he sees WWX as part of the main family now. And so does the other Lan elders. Give WWX a found family one more time!

Etude No. 289 in A Minor - ao3

(series: Variations on WWX & LQR in Assorted Keys)

When the change with Lan Qiren had happened, Wei Wuxian wasn’t sure.

Lan Qiren had spent a lot of time avoiding him since he’d come to the Cloud Recesses, and the few times he wasn’t able to avoid him, he looked as if seeing Wei Wuxian standing there put a bad taste in his mouth, or maybe that he was having a heart attack just at the sight of him. He’d even forbidden the juniors from approaching him with threats of making them copy the entire set of rules.

Wei Wuxian didn’t mind. He’d never paid attention to the old man before and he wasn’t going to start now, no matter how much Lan Wangji respected him – he didn’t have nostalgia or whatever it was that made Lan Wangji continue to go pay respects at least twice a week, and he did have Lan Wangji with him, sharing every day with him from morning to night. So what did he care about what Lan Qiren thought of him?

Which is what, Wei Wuxian supposed, made it all the more shocking to find the man defending him.

There very well might have been smaller signs of an improvement earlier on, more subtle ones, but Wei Wuxian had never been the most observant when it came to people – it wasn’t until it came up and smacked him right in the face that he even noticed there’d been a change.

Some doddering old antiquity in the Lan sect that had wanted Lan Wangji to do something for him and been refused had loudly remarked some sneering comment about Wei Wuxian sucking up attention the way a desert plant did water. He’d said it just as Wei Wuxian had passed by, clearly intending for him to hear it. Yet before Wei Wuxian could respond – he had at least three retorts in mind and was just picking between them – he heard Lan Qiren bark: “Be careful with your words!”

Instinctively, Wei Wuxian opened his mouth to protest that his scathing rebuke had in fact been very carefully chosen, only then he realized he hadn’t actually gotten the words out at all. Which meant that the target of Lan Qiren’s words had been…

The elder?

The elder had looked equally taken aback, glancing over at where Lan Qiren was coming down the path, hands perfectly placed in the correct position as always and the usual dark look on his face. “I did not –”

“Talking behind the backs of others is forbidden,” Lan Qiren intoned, and he sounded just the same way he did when he was scolding Wei Wuxian – because he was scolding, actually, only he was scolding his own sect elder. “If you have any grievances with Wei Wuxian, you must take it up with him directly.”

The old elder puffed up in anger. “What grievance? If he feels badly about taking up so much of Wangji’s time away from more beneficial pursuits, that is his own conscience speaking.”

Lan Qiren met the elder’s anger with his own glare.

“Honored elder,” he said grimly, managing somehow to make the respectful term sound like an admonition. “The rules are clear: If others win over you, do not envy them.”

The elder’s jaw dropped, and Wei Wuxian’s, too.

Lan Qiren ignored them both and swept on along his way – he was doing a patrol, actually, Wei Wuxian recognized the path he was taking – and left the elder having a fit of near apoplexy and Wei Wuxian on the verge of a fit of giggles. He was very well aware of how to use the Lan sect rules to shove someone’s words back down their throat, but he hadn’t been aware that Lan Qiren was similarly aware, or that, even if he knew, that he would ever do such a thing.

Much less on Wei Wuxian’s behalf!

How strange.

Driven by curiosity, Wei Wuxian decided to crash one of Lan Qiren’s lectures, since that was one place the old man could reliably be counted on being. It was the off season, so there weren’t any guests from other sects, just Lan disciples, so Wei Wuxian stuck out like a sore thumb, especially shuffling in as he did a few incense sticks into the start of class.

Lan Qiren glanced over, eyes narrowing in disapproval, but when Wei Wuxian seated himself down at the back of class he turned away and continued lecturing. The subject of today’s lecture appeared to be Do not give up on learning, and Wei Wuxian had no idea how Lan Qiren planned to stretch out the discussion of a rule as straightforward as that for the entire class period.

In fact, it occurred to him that he hadn’t attended any of Lan Qiren’s classes since the first few sessions way back when, after which he’d promptly been ejected and sent to study in the Library Pavilion with Lan Wangji all day. Sad, really, that they couldn’t arrange for that to happen again…at any rate, when he finally finished all that copying, Lan Qiren had been away on sect business for a little while, and then Wei Wuxian had managed to get into that fight with Jin Zixuan right when he’d been due to start back up again – in short, one could only barely claim that he’d been the man’s student, although it was inarguable that he’d eventually learned something through all that copying.

He settled in and anticipated being horribly bored.

Much to his surprise, he wasn’t.

It seemed like the later classes were a lot more complex than the early ones – still a monotonous lecture, but far less than a simple recitation of the rule. Lan Qiren explained how the rule was developed, why, and in what circumstances, as well as the ensuing debates that apparently sprung up in the generations following about what the rule meant, all before going into examples of how it might be relevant to the lives of his students.

He even occasionally stopped to ask if there were questions.

There was a little bit of shifting around, but eventually one student asked, “Teacher, are there situations in which continuing to learn is not a good decision?”

Lan Qiren frowned and stroked his beard. “None that I know of. Do you have a situation in mind?”

The student hesitated, and then their eyes drifted over to where Wei Wuxian was sitting.

Wei Wuxian leaned back, put his hands behind his head and smirked.

Lan Qiren glanced over as well, his frown deepening. Still, he didn’t scold Wei Wuxian, but rather said to the student, “Say what you mean.”

“Well, for example, demonic cultivation,” the student said. “If you get into that, you should stop learning, right? You see what I mean?”

“I see only that you have failed to absorb the initial lesson that precedes this one,” Lan Qiren said flatly. “‘Learning’ does not refer merely to book learning or research, but to all forms of learning. Demonic cultivation is an abomination because it is ethically unsound – it desecrates graves and upsets ancestral spirits, increasing resentment and causing the deterioration of the user’s temperament; it is antithetical to good conduct and allows evil to spread. Now tell me: how do we know all this?”

The student opened his mouth, then paused, confused.

“It is no different than encountering a new creature while on a night-hunt. In order for the creature to be defeated, it is critical to learn about it – what it is, what it does, and how to defeat it. Your obligation is to continue learning, no matter the circumstance; that you are also obligated to act virtuously and avoid the crooked path does not lessen that obligation.”

Lan Qiren paced slowly back and forth at the front of the room.

“The virtue of upholding learning is one of the few that appear multiple times in our family rules,” he said. “In addition to Don’t give up on learning, there is Learning comes first. Based on the principle of no unnecessary repetition, we can infer that these two rules, however similar, represent different commands: the first in the persistence of the requirement, while the second in the ordering thereof. ‘Learning comes first’. The rules also say: Diligence is the root, morality is the priority, harmony is the value. Think about what these four rules together mean.”

He turned to face the students.

“To live a good life is like climbing a mountain. Morality is the priority – it lies above us, our summit and our goal, for which we must always strive. Diligence is the root – it is the ground beneath our feet, and through our diligence in good conduct we support ourselves in our quest for morality. Harmony is the value – it is the pathway beneath our feet, stabilizing and supporting us as we diligently strive towards morality. Learning comes first – because without learning, we do not know even how to begin to climb.”

Suddenly, Lan Qiren raised a hand and pointed to Wei Wuxian, who abruptly straightened out of his slouch in surprise.

“The Compass of Evil and the Spirit Summoning Flags that each of you use in night-hunting were designed by Wei Wuxian after he established demonic cultivation, and using the principles thereof,” the old teacher said. “How many lives have been saved by these inventions in the past years, and will be saved in the future? Can you count them?”

The students shuffled in their seats.

“The pursuit of knowledge is an unending path. No matter the pits and deviations you may encounter, it must be walked. Maintain your own discipline, mind your conduct, live a virtuous life; remember these things, and you can walk that path with your head held high. Do not give up on learning is the rule.To refuse it is to be condemned, for only the stagnant dead lack ability to change.”

Lan Qiren put his hands behind his back once more and looked around the now silent room.

“Each of you, write me an essay explaining how this rule is applicable to your own lives, using an example from the past year,” he said. “Deliver them to me by the start of class tomorrow.”

The students filtered out, talking to each other in a low hum of noise.

Wei Wuxian got up and out of their way, then approached Lan Qiren who had seated himself with a flick of his sleeves.

“Do you actually think that?” Wei Wuxian asked.

Lan Qiren eyed him warily. “Naturally. Do not tell lies is a rule. But the condemnation is as true as the compliment.”

Wei Wuxian had figured that. That part wasn’t a surprise – the existence of any complimentary thoughts in his direction at all, however, were.

“Awww, Teacher Lan! You like me!” he joked, grinning at Lan Qiren.

“I do not,” Lan Qiren said crisply. “In your pride and arrogance, you introduced demonic cultivation into the world, causing boundless harm.You murdered thousands, and you hurt my nephews, and for those reasons I do not like you. But the rules say Do not hold grudges. You are part of the Lan sect now, and if you have once greatly hurt Wangji, you have also now brought him great joy. I would defend you with not only my words but my sword and my life if need be.”

Wei Wuxian instinctively opened his mouth to say something – something smart, something snappy, something that would lighten the mood and take it away from Lan Qiren’s ponderous recitations.

Instead, he found himself flapping his mouth aimlessly, unable to really speak.

“…but you hate me,” he pointed out, feeling a little helpless. That didn’t sound like ‘dislike’ to him! “You – you glare every time you see me!”

“The sight of you remains somewhat distasteful to me, as it reminds me of all that has happened in the past,” Lan Qiren agreed. “I can only do my best. Be strict on yourself, be easy on others, maintain your own discipline…I can only put in effort, and hope to see results. In another year, we might be able to share a meal without flinching; in five, we may be able to treat each other as family.”

Wei Wuxian would have thought a thousand years wouldn’t be enough.

It was – different, somehow, knowing that an effort was being made, though he couldn’t say why.

“You told the juniors not to approach me,” he said instead. “If any of them do, they need to copy down all the rules.”

“Mm. It was the most equitable way to approach it.”

Wei Wuxian sat down next to him. “Equitable?” he asked, curious. “How ‘equitable’?”

Lan Qiren looked at him sidelong, clearly wondering if the question was genuine or an excuse to engage in mockery, as it might have been even the day before. Wei Wuxian tried to keep his expression earnest as he was surveyed and seemed to pass the test – whatever it was that Lan Qiren saw in his face, it seemed to satisfy him.

“The sect decided long ago that we would use rules, not standards,” Lan Qiren said, stroking his beard. “The virtue of rules is that they are straightforward, they are easily applied, they can be applied even-handedly to all alike. Their primary disadvantage is in their lack of flexibility – you have either broken a rule, or not, and if you have broken it, you must pay the penalty, even if the circumstances seem to call for an exception.”

Wei Wuxian nodded, a little bemused as to how this related to his question, or for that matter to why Lan Qiren instructed juniors not to approach him. Still, you couldn’t really expect a teacher not to immediately lapse into teaching – presumably it became a habit after a while.

“As one grows older, it becomes easier to identify situations in which the rules do not apply, or which they do not fit," Lan Qiren continued. “In childhood, it is much more difficult. Take the rule ‘Avoid imparting knowledge to the wrong individuals’ – that is an advanced rule, and calls for the application of judgment. It is easy to get wrong, and difficult to apply.”

Jin Guangyao’s name was not mentioned, but lingered in the air between them regardless.

“In short: to obtain the fullest benefit of a rule, therefore, it must be simple, and it must be clear.”

Wei Wuxian tilted his head to the side.

“I think I get it,” he said, a little surprised by what he’d deduced. “The rule is ‘Do not approach Wei Wuxian’ – but the meaning is ‘Don’t pick up bad habits from Wei Wuxian’. Is that it?”

“Precisely. That is why the penalty is set at making a copy of the rules, which is only dire enough to frighten children. The older juniors will decide for themselves whether it’s worth approaching you or not, and if they do choose to do it, they will try to conceal what they are doing from the view of others. This in turn protects the younger children, who lack the judgment to determine which of your habits they ought to adopt and which they should not; they will see the apparent compliance of their elders and simply avoid you altogether.”

It made a certain amount of sense. If you thought of Wei Wuxian as a bad influence, and Wei Wuxian could certainly understand why Lan Qiren did, it actually made perfect sense to want to keep the most impressionable members of the sect away from him until they’d had a chance to get old enough to start thinking things through for themselves.

“Adults, naturally, may do as they please,” Lan Qiren added, though he looked long-suffering. “Maintain your own discipline, after all. I’m not going to tell Xichen to copy the rules every time he has dinner with you.”

Lan Xichen spent a lot of time copying rules anyway. Wei Wuxian suspected he felt the need to redeem himself in some way, and also that the mindless busy-work was soothing to him.

Wei Wuxian put his hand on his chin. “Will the prohibition ever get lifted?”

“As soon as you can be trusted to be an adequate role model.”

“…so, never,” Wei Wuxian smirked.

Lan Qiren frowned at him. “The rule is Earn trust. If you want it, it is well within your ability.”

Wei Wuxian felt himself go speechless again.

Lan Qiren made it sound so simple. As if it really was just a case of ‘you’re one of us now, so I’ll try to better myself until we get along; if you want to be trusted, all you have to do is try, and you can have it’. As if Lan Qiren genuinely believed that Wei Wuxian could be trusted to be a role model for the juniors, if only he wanted to be.

It was never that simple.

Was it?

Wei Wuxian had spent a lot of time complaining about Lan Qiren – overly rigid, pedantic, monotonous, boring, too harsh, too quick to anger…all sorts of things. But he’d certainly never accused the man of hypocrisy, he’d never had any basis for it. Lan Qiren lived and breathed the Lan sect rules, and he tried, in his serious and overly solemn way, to follow them in all aspects of his life.

If he interpreted his rules the way he said he did, then – then he meant it.

Wei Wuxian felt a smile start to appear on his face. A big one, one that would stay on his face for a good long while and make his cheeks hurt, one that would catch Lan Wangji’s attention and draw him in like a moth to a flame – no, better to say like a butterfly to a flower.

Lan Qiren was still frowning at him, probably thinking Do not smile foolishly or something like that, so Wei Wuxian did his best to swallow down at least some portion of that smile, since he couldn’t suppress it all.

“Everything is within my ability, if I put my mind to it,” he boasted, and couldn’t help thinking Arrogance is forbidden. “I’ll see what I can do, Teacher Lan.”

“I’m sure you will,” Lan Qiren said, and looked like he wanted to sigh. Then, begrudgingly, he added, “If you wish to make progress in the rehabilitation your reputation among the sect, you may as well start by coming to spend more time with me. People seem to think that surviving an afternoon in my company is sufficient evidence of a moral compass – utterly ridiculous, naturally…”

Wei Wuxian’s efforts to minimize his smile failed completely.

“I’d be happy to,” he said, and thought he might mean it, even if it did end up being a boring rehash of rules or something. He’d never actually given any thought to what Lan Qiren might like to chat about…

“Bring your flute,” Lan Qiren instructed, looking pained by the thought of spending more time together – which was fine, everyone looked that way at first before he endeared himself to them. Jiang Cheng had had a great version of the ‘ugh not this again’ expression when he’d been a kid, surpassed only by Wen Qing’s, and they both softened towards him quickly enough; winning over Lan Qiren, Wei Wuxian thought cheerfully, was only a matter of time. “At least we can spend some of the time without speech.”

Wei Wuxian snickered. “Will your reputation survive a duet with Chenqing?” he teased. “But what if I fit some demonic cultivation in there?”

Lan Qiren didn’t so much as blink an eye. “And do what with it? Raise the corpses of students that disobeyed me, which I have hidden in my garden?”

Wei Wuxian choked, and then cackled.

It had somehow never occurred to him that Lan Wangji’s extremely well-hidden sense of humor must have come from somewhere – or that the person who raised him was far more likely to be the source of it than either of his biological parents.

“There are other uses for demonic cultivation,” he said with a grin. “Do not give up on learning, right? Like you just said! If Teacher Lan wants to live up to his values, I’d be more than happy to give you a primer…”

“Have you written any of it down?”

Wei Wuxian choked again.

“Wait,” he said, recovering a moment later and staring. “Are you serious? You want to learn demonic cultivation?”

“You heard the lesson,” Lan Qiren pointed out. “I wish to learn about it, so that I can extract any good aspects and learn how to best guard against the bad. Did you think the books in the forbidden section of the library appeared there by themselves?”

That was…a very good point. Jin Guangyao wasn’t a creative genius, just exceptionally clever and creative at applying what he knew – if he hadn’t found the Collection of Turmoil, he would have killed Nie Mingjue another way, of that Wei Wuxian was certain, but the fact remained that he had found it.

Avoid imparting knowledge to the wrong individuals indeed.

“Well, then,” Wei Wuxian said, feeling a little bemused and somehow even warmer and happier than he’d been before. Lan Qiren’s begrudging willingness to make an effort to accept him somehow felt more real than Lan Wangji’s quiet and unending devotion, which still sometimes made Wei Wuxian have to pinch himself to see if he were dreaming or not; such a tetchy response was perfectly in character for the grumpy old teacher.

Even if he did end up winning him over, Wei Wuxian suspected he would just be put into the same category as Lan Jingyi – a beloved member of the family that Lan Qiren nevertheless wanted to strangle on a regular basis.

In five years we’ll be family, he thought, and smiled.

“Heeey, I just thought of something,” he said, turning the smile into a grin. “If you’d be talking about demonic cultivation with me, then what do you and Lan Zhan talk about in your afternoons together? Does he ever mention me?”

Lan Qiren looked at him as if looking at an idiot. “He does, at times.”

Wei Wuxian leaned in conspiratorially. “What’s the stupidest thing he’s ever said about me?”

Lan Qiren wanted to hit him, he knew. But he wouldn’t – and Wei Wuxian knew that too.

“…he inquired as to the variety of methods of counting days,” Lan Qiren finally said, looking mildly pained, and at Wei Wuxian’s slightly confused look, looked even more pained and clarified, “If one were inclined to seek alternate definitions for the term ‘every day’ –”

Wei Wuxian burst out laughing.

#mdzs #wei wuxian #lan qiren #my fic #my fics #variations #LQR post canon is bitter and tired and not really here for any of this #but he's still himself #for better or for worse #also please ignore the handwaved lan sect teachings #also I am just having fun with the title on account of writing so many of these

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ninjakk · 1 year

Note

This is more of fanon question but what do you think of stright boy wwx, who everyone knows he’s gay but him, doesn’t know his feelings even though he’s having sex with lwj.

And lwj still does shave sex with him even though he does think wwx is stright and won’t have feelings for him.

Hi Anon,

Wow, is this really a thing!? 🤔

I think they're reading a different book 🤣

Well my honest opinion would be that whoever thinks this really does not have much of an understanding of the characters in MDZS, or the plot for that matter. Whether this is something that some truly see in the novel or something they put in fanfic, it's just bizarre.

Firstly, only a few people made assumptions with regards to WWX's feelings towards LWJ. Really it was only the juniors who noticed something between them. JC was in denial the whole time (across both WWXs lives) until he couldn't deny it any longer - and even then he tried! Personally I think WQ noticed WWX acted differently around LWJ and at some point WN picked up on something between them as well. But bar that, most people wrongly thought the pair hated each other! So that's just wrong right from the start!

WWX is extremely emotionally intelligent, he understands people very well and that includes himself as well. Yes, he lies to himself and pushes his true feelings down at times - but this is a coping mechanism. He feels so deeply, his only way to cope about certain emotions that might bring him pain, is to play them down or convince himself they are different to what they are.

WWX is just trying to protect his heart. He lies to himself about his feelings for LWJ because to him, the latter wasn't interested. Yet WWX was still drawn towards him every time they met, because LWJ is the only one he's ever truly wanted. By the time WWX and LWJ have sex, WWX is more than sure of his feelings for LWJ! In fact just before all of this, WWX is so sure of his feelings he's absolutely terrified LWJ might not feel the same way.

So I think any idea of a fanon or fanfic WWX that is as emotionally dense as 'straight boy' WWX is, is just so far from the actual character, I don't see the point in them reading the novel, being a fan or writing fic using WWXs name if this is their take on him, as it's clearly not the character MXTX created.

As for LWJ having sex with this warped version of WWX, he simply wouldn't. As much as LWJ loves WWX, he would not have meaningless sex with him just because the latter 'doesn't mind'. Just looking at the end of chapter 95 and chapter 96, where WWX thinks LWJ has only just sobered up and is upset that they had sex. This scene should be enough to show anyone that this is not in LWJs character. WWX desperately tries to salvage their relationship because he loves LWJ so much he wants to be with him anyway he can. So he makes it out it was just something friends do! LWJ is so distraught at the possibility WWX didn't have romantic feelings for him, yet shared an extremely intimate moment with him anyway. How can anyone think he would just have sex with WWX if he thought WWX wasn't interested in him. It just wouldn't happen.

So again, I think that this fanon idea or whatever it is, is just so far from the truth it's just strange! Anyone who wants this to be canon should just go find another novel to read quite frankly!

It can take time to understand your sexuality and shaming a character who actually realised it pretty fast considering the circumstances, is just shallow and ironically makes them the "oblivious" ones they so often like to accuse WWX of being. It's obvious WWX would have realised his sexuality a lot sooner if LWJ had given him a little hint back when they were teens. Which isn't LWJ's fault of course, because people seem to forget he was coming to terms with his own feelings at the time as well! But if he'd given WWX a sign, he'd have been spurred on and pursued LWJ until they were a couple.

In WWX's own words:

"...If he doesn’t want me, I’ll bother him to the point that he does.”

Chapter 125 - Lotus Seed Pod extra, ExR

Although he wasn't fully prepared to accept what context the above proclamation was in, he still meant it! 🥰

I'm guessing you feel the same way about this obnoxious interpretation as well Anon, since you used the term fanon 😉 so that's a relief! Have a lovely day and enjoy the canon version of WWX and LWJ in all their true glory ��️

#mdzs #mo dao zu shi #wangxian #wei wuxian #lan wangji #mdzs novel #anon ask #answered ask

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