#Wwx being a fucked up little guy with trauma that makes him Weird About Corpses is deeply important to me

[morethanwonderful]

Out of all of Wei Wuxian's traits, one of the ones that fascinates me the most is how incredibly casual and chummy he is with corpses. All the other cultivators are a bit desensitized to the dead by nature of their profession, yes, but Wei Wuxian in particular treats the dead very much the same as he treats living people, and I think it's simultaneously one of his best and most concerning attributes.

On the good side, the way Wei Wuxian treats the dead is absolutely an extension of his overall goodness and empathy. He stands on the side of those that are looked down on, and nobody faces more discrimination that the dead. He treats the dead like people because they are people, and they deserve to have their voices heard. That's what Empathy's for, and that's why he revives Wen Ning to stand as witness to his own murder. Wen Ning is not a thing! And even when Wei Wuxian is raising armies of dead Wens to fight on his behalf, we get illustrations of him giving a helping hand to a weak old corpse that can't stand on its own.

Wei Wuxian is painted in very deliberate contrast to Xue Yang, who treats the dead as tools and deprives them of agency. His closeness with them is a symbol of his kindness.

However, beyond treating the dead decently and like people, there is a point where his chumminess with them starts to get unsettling, and that's the point where it becomes a reflection of his loneliness and trauma. In particular, I'm thinking of his cuddliness with the ghosts he uses to torture Wen Chao and the corpse girls he's hanging out with when he invites Lan Zhan to drink with him. Because treating the dead with respect is a very different thing from having a corpse lay in your lap as you stroke its hair. And fierce corpses by definition do not have personalities (with Wen Ning as the exception that proves the rule), so treating them as companions to socialize with is rather concerning behavior.

So why is he like this? Isolation and trauma!

It's easy to understate the trauma of Wei Wuxian's three months in the Burial Mound, especially given that we don't see them play out but do get details about so many other horrible moments. But those three months? They Fucked Him Up. In particular, beyond the trauma of the near death experience (or presumably many many near death experiences in a row), he spent the better part of three months without seeing a single other living human. People are not meant to do that.

So what is a person gonna do when he spends three months in Worse Solitary Confinement? And when that solitude is spent on Fierce Corpse Mountain? He's gonna get really weird about corpses. He's gonna turn into the kind of man that would let a murderous ghost he's controlling lay in his lap as he strokes her hair, because for an extended period of time, that is the closest thing to human contact he's had access to.

And later, post-sunshot-campaign, Wei Wuxian does regain access to living humans and society, but he's still incredibly isolated. Just about everyone besides his siblings and Lan Zhan hates and/or is scared of him by the time we hit the scene of him and the fierce corpse girls throwing flowers, so it's no wonder he's hanging out with dead people. He already picked up the habit of replacing company with corpses once, so of course he doesn't see anything wrong with it. Maybe they're there as bodyguards, maybe he's just extremely lonely and doesn't have any human companions to drink with him, or maybe (probably) it's a mix of both. But in any case, it's a pretty clear expression of a horrifying degree of both past and present isolation.

That's why, though he doesn't lose his respect for the dead or his desensitization to touching corpses, we never see him just Hanging Out With Mindless Ghosts in his second life. It's a substitute for real companionship, not a healthy behavior, but lack of company is no longer an issue he has after being resurrected.

He doesn't need an entourage of corpse girls, because this time, when he wants company, he's always got Lan Zhan.

#see also: xy spending years with sl's fierce corpse as his only companion #his fierce corpse that he was controlling completely #respect for the dead is good #but Hanging Out With Corpses You're Controlling is pretty deeply unhealthy #and it's a good habit for wwx to have broken #mdzs #mo dao zu shi #mdzsposting #the grandmaster of demonic cultivation #oh and this is why I'm so mad that the donghua cut out that creepy-ass scene of the Wen Chao torture #Wwx being a fucked up little guy with trauma that makes him Weird About Corpses is deeply important to me #and important to his character #and the donghua really nerfed his fucked up little guy levels #(and I'm guessing cql did as well. but I haven't actually watched it) #wei wuxian #wei wuxian my beloved #english major hours #long post

[jiangwanyinscatmom]

I saw your post about "feel free to vent" and god, I don’t even think that I love that pathetic guyfailure in your way, but I follow you and read your posts, because they bring me joy (although I don’t always agree with everything you say) and you’re one of the few people who’s willing to talk about how unhinged, pathetic and entirely deranged jiang zongzhu is. I’m so fucking tired of jc fandom, the way they turned him into something entirely unrecognisable from his canon self, turned him into weepy little bitch with gaping hole for every single "gege" on the block to fuck.

They make me genuinely hate him. I see that oc!jc committing identity fraud and I hate him. I hate him so much. My only content in this fandom is the novel, it’s the only thing that provides me with content. How fucking delightful he is there? I don’t fucking get. Jc stans say you’re a fucking jc anti or whatever the fuck, but no one actually hates jc more than his fucking stans do. the fucking torture of watching your fave being flandarised. their fucking omegaverse rotten brains yelling and crying about his tiny waist and childbearing thighs. Have you seen the art of him? What kind of caricature they turn him into? Fucking twink that will be blown away by the wind and his "geges" that will catch him midair and fuck everliving fuck out of him because uwu he did nothing wrong, he’s innocent, he’s little precious baby boy meowmeow tsundere. They yell so hard about how misunderstood he is, but they’re the ones misunderstanding his character most. They have no respect for canon material. Most of them haven’t read the fucking novel because they HaTe wAnGxIAn sO mUcH, they pick up disgusting fanon bullshit and run with it claiming it somehow to be canon.

Canon!jc would fucking rip that oc!jc in tiny little shreds, torture him violently and vomit on his corpse.

what have they turned his relationship with jin ling into? what are they fucking doing to that precious golden brat? why no one fucking enjoys their canon relationship that don’t lack complexity and depth. Why do they turn him into weird kid obsessed with his uncle? who has no life outside his uncle, who fights "jiujiu stealers" like it’s his full time job??? Jin ling is his own character, he’s going through so much, his fucking family is insane, he’s dealing with bullying, he’s working his ass off to impress his uncle who put high expectations on him.

what they turn "geges" into? they come and yell how lwj has no personality, that he’s just a "top" but then they do exactly the same shit with other characters? they’re genuinely making me hate lxc. I despise xicheng with burning fucking passion. I’m in a ooc competition, and xicheng stans are my opponents *insert squidward here*

chengxian makes my fucking blood boil because THATS ONE WAY TO ENTIRELY MISUNDERSTAND BOTH OF THEIR CHARACTERS AND TURN COMPELLING "BROTHER" CONFLICT INTO THE MOST BORING FUCKING SHIT THAT THE EARTH HAS WITNESSED. they way they just go OMG WWX LOVED JC SOOOOOO MUCH LWJ HATES JC BECAUSE HE KNOWS WWX LOVES HIM MORE THAN ANYTHING, HIS SACRIFICE IS AN ACT OF LOVE, HE LOVED HIM, HE DID IT OUT OF LOVE. why would they entirely erase wwx’s character development like that? wwx’s entire fucking arc is about learning to see his self worth, learning that the life he had at lotus pier wasn’t it, FUCKING HELL yllz literally was comforting himself with thoughts of never meeting the jiangs. My guy literally was lying there unable to sleep and was thinking about how running away from dogs and being a beggar is infinitely better than the jiangs. It’s literally in the fucking book. I don’t fucking GET IT.

I remember one time mentioning that of fucking COURSE, the manhua would erase the "golden core reveal" as in how jc lost it, because ultimately wangxian is the most important part of the story and jc is some guy wwx finally gets rid of in order to digest his traumas in a safer space and find happiness elsewhere because clearly he wasn’t happy at lotus pier. and they fucking??? came up with an AU???? as a response to me????? where wwx comes back to lotus pier because HE LOVES JC MORE THAN ANYTHING WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO very good argument, very nice talk.

I’m so fucking sick and tired, I muted jc’s name and tag on twitter and here even though I genuinely like the guy. It pains me. It causes me fucking brain damage. I want to enjoy my fandom experience, I want to be able to talk about this dudenobody and have fun. I so hate being here, I want to be free.

I’m so sorry to vent like that. 😭

I will use this as a general jump start of fandom griping regarding this entire debacle since this, this right here, should not be a normal thing that fandom has to send anonymously due to being scared of the vitriolic backlash received.

I have been nice, I have been sarcastic, I have been a troll, and despite my initial kindness and patience when I first started interacting with this fandom, I was met with consistent death threats and homophobia about a fictional male character and why I am less then patient now for Jiang Cheng stans. Other people should not HAVE to apologize for not enjoying a completely made up fandom persona and getting bit at for this. By all means go ahead and enjoy a fanon persona, by all means ask for supporting evidence when someone is arguing they do not like a character.

I interact with other Jiang Cheng fans just fine outside of this, they are not the ones I speak of in this. The ones I am addressing are the vitriolic ones that are angry about anything close to being taken as "anti" regarding an in story antagonist that does exhibit antagonistic behavior time and again with leading text and citations. It doesn't matter if he is someone that is enjoyed, somehow it's "wrong".

And hey. I DO disagree on several different interpretations in this fandom, but NONE of them have ever garnered the hate I have gotten in my 3 years in this fandom the way I chose to discuss Jiang Cheng. When told to use another tag, it was done, but again it was done incorrectly, when I stopped using anti at the behest of other fans, I did because hey, it was able to reach a wider audience, that did enjoy the character himself and wanted deeper understanding outside of fanon only that pervaded the tag meant for "Jiang Cheng".

I certainly do not deny his instances of kindness, but how dare I ascertain that all if this in context is not a reflection of positivity for him within the plot he is meant for, no matter time and again saying he has an opening for himself to do better in the future for others that have yet to be hurt by him, or are willing to salvage what they still have.

I should not have to be told I just want to fuck a dude as a "joke" and a comeback because of how I go and point out what he's like in the work. That is casual homophobia and shockingly sexual harassment. Or be told to think of it as a sibling who uses drugs and it's therefore alright to demean said character, or deny the blatant abuse this character exhibits or uses because he also had been abused by an adult.

I do not need to be tolerant of a side of fandom due to all the above treatment and others deal with.

#mdzs #mo dao zu shi #lol fandom #oh fandom

[paradife-loft]

the-mirador

replied to your post

“more mdzs novel bloggin. - explicit exposition that Jin Guangshan had...”

i think the discussion in the second paragraph is why i preferred the frame job in the show, because i didn't sense any sort of shift in /how/ he was controlling Wen Ning at any point, such that /he/ would believe that he lost control? (like tbh the way the scene was shot made it seem weird to me that he didn't immediately assume something fishy was going on). so it's disappointing to me that given what you've described, there's not a significant difference in terms of what he's actually doing that would make "losing control" more credible. i will say that i tentatively prefer the "framed" version, because i don't feel like i have a good enough sense of how the magic system works to understand why he fumbled, such that it would feel to me like more of a consequence of the general system of magic being used rather than the specific technique/intent, if that makes sense? and while i would like a more morally gray WWX, i'd prefer that to be about him committing /intentional/ acts of violence than taking on something he couldn't quite control. but that's just my preference.

woooo, awake/not at work/generally capable of replying to this now! I definitely feel what you’re saying here, and I think this plus some other discussion I’ve seen today about adaptational differences is all going to inform the, sort of free-association ramble below. so:

the point about the magic system! it occupies a weird space for me because in either medium, the magic is really only sketched out briefly, through implications a lot of the time, and in drips and pieces throughout the whole story - but also I’m the sort of person who compulsively and in many instances subconsciously tries to assemble the pieces of magic in a story into a comprehensive whole, filling in gaps in much more detail than an original canon gives us? so while I absolutely can be (and had been) automatically tossing up all manner of hypotheses that made sense to me for how WWX could have lost control of his powers, I find it frustrating for the text itself not to provide an account of what specifically happened in Wen Ning’s case, when the setup of that scene in particular makes me want a more detailed explanation of what went wrong to go from “WN fighting a hundred ranged combatants” to “WN now in melee, punching through a dude’s chest”. did he finish off the 100 archers and come down to help WWX, picking any target at random? did Jin Zixuan showing up emit a “delicious high-cultivation life energy, come and get it!” signal to any fierce corpses around that would prompt him to ditch the lowbie archers for a more interesting target? had WWX been keeping a part of his mind focused on an order to WN to control who he was attacking, and the destruction of his gift for Jin Ling fucked up his emotional control and focus such that his argument with JZX got mixed into the “orders for who Wen Ning should murder” channel? there’s implications that this latter is how we’re supposed to read it, but because throughout the scene there’s not... actually any narration of orders being given to Wen Ning in any format at all, it’s still very much a “who knows?!” situation.

and for that matter - the combination of logistics and lackluster explanatory narration that kills that scene, feels even more striking when compared to the very next instance of WWX losing control, in the battle at Nightless City. first, we have a context that makes what’s going on a lot more obvious and plausible, in addition to imo some stronger narration of what is actually happening for Wei Wuxian’s internal perspective. like: he’s pretty clearly unleashing a whole bunch of corpses, directing them to kill anyone on this battlefield except the Jiang sect disciples. he’s explicitly said to be in a volatile emotional state, furious and then terrified once Jiang Yanli shows up; and his panic is destroying the control he’s able to exert over the corpses. JYL is one of many potential targets to a large number of corpses in the exact same area (not a single corpse up until now on a different part of the battlefield). WWX specifically issues an order to the corpse coming after JYL, which is ignored; and later, when he exerts great effort to steady his mind, he’s able to make them obey him again and stop killing.

I think a part of the trouble I have with using “Wei Wuxian loses control of his cultivation abilities and kills people he didn’t want to” as a part of his moral greyness, is that perhaps ironically, I haven’t really gotten the impression in the novel that him losing control of those abilities was something likely that he should have weighed more heavily in his decisions to continually use demonic cultivation in the first place. and this might be a failure on the part of my memory, but - I felt like I got the sense that his control over himself and the spirits he commanded was much more volatile and likely to blow up in his face during the drama, not the novel. and since the ethical value of a loss of control is about whether it’s something foreseeable and possible to take precautions against, rather than whether it happens at all - the two versions feel almost mismatched to me.

(if you want “morally grey due to intentional acts of violence committed,” though, what seems like a real shame to me is actually the difference in the scene a bit after Qiongqi Path, where WWX finds the bunch of low-level cultivators being assholes about the Wens and goes to town on them. the drama version of this scene is kind of ambiguous about what’s actually happening to these people, but in the novel, WWX actually does a lot of curb-stomp \-battle grievous bodily harm to this batch of nobodies - breaks some legs, kicks out a guy’s teeth, etc. - just as a directionless expression of his rage. it’s good.)

....I think ultimately where I’m settling, as far as what my “bits of multiple versions mashed together personal canon” comes out to, is having the Qiongqi Path incident be a framing, but the Nightless City scene not be? keeping both incidents as pure loss of control on WWX’s part feels a bit like it blunts the impact of what’s going on with his mental state once he thinks WQ & WN have been killed - is the recapitulation of his major trauma more or less equivalent to the (admittedly shitty) way he’s treated when ambushed by JZX? and besides that, the specific outcome of the Nightless City incident, Yanli getting hurt, just seems more likely to happen as a result of a loss of control compared to the specific dead-Jin-Zixuan outcome of Qiongqi Path. (since there are also plenty of other ways in which Qiongqi Path is a setup, adding in yet another layer of that doesn’t feel quite so... exonerating, as making the additional deaths at Nightless City not WWX’s fault does? at least that’s my opinion.) so doing a little bit of each version I think ultimately... preserves the level of competence WWX is always shown as having with his abilities - a competence that only breaks down under a truly extraordinary circumstance - while also not wiping him morally spotless in the department of being too reckless and uncaring, and thus getting innocents/his loved ones hurt in the process.

#the mirador #conversating #no good things for the poor sad cultivators #rambling #I don't know how well any of this fits together exactly? but there's a lot of stuff I'm chewing on lately re: different adaptations' themes #Wei Wuxian #meta #(lol... ish)