#also yes the lwj one is Evil I know

[tossawary]

For a while, I kept periodically thinking about F/M Wangxian (Male Wei Wuxian and Female Lan Wangji) without being able to figure out why I kept being distracted by F/M Wangxian. I mean, I think different genderbending AU situations are fun to think about in fanfiction, especially in worlds where gender roles are a problem. M/M, F/M, M/F, and F/F Wangxian all change the story slightly and I think it's neat to explore why and how.

And obviously, F!LWJ would be a total babe, that's nice to think about, but why still M!WWX and not F!WWX? F!WWX would also be a total babe, though of a different type, especially as the Yiling Patriarch. But my brain kept insisting that M!WWX was still crucial somehow and I couldn't figure out why that setup.

I mean, it is funny to think about how M!WWX's unchanged flirty behavior in their teenage years would suddenly set off every single alarm bell in the Cloud Recesses due to people being able to SEE IT thanks to heteronormativity goggles. WWX with a degree of societal permission to be romantically interested in Lan Wangji? Intolerable levels of annoying. Unbearable to witness. Singing love songs under her balcony type bullshit like he wants her to start another fight under the moonlight. He's writing her poetry (clever "joke" poems bordering on innuendo and actual romantic poems) and has the gall to be good at it. Lan Qiren is barely resisting the urge to beat WWX off with a broomstick. Lan Xichen doesn't know whether to be horrified or delighted (LWJ is bluuuuushing).

I do also like the idea of WWX coming back from the dead and finding out that the common people have decided in the past decade (thanks to the heteronormativity goggles) that the noble female cultivator LWJ had a Tragic Romance with the Evil Yiling Patriarch. Poor woman! WWX: "Who had a what now?" (I do also like the idea of Wangxian actually having a Tragic Romance during and after the war. And mutually stated romantic interest and affection still didn't fix anything for them. But it's funny to think about WWX getting completely blindsided by this EPIC LOVE STORY if there was no actual relationship.)

(Sizhui is still adopted here! Noble and pure-hearted LWJ adopted a war orphan because she longed to be a mother but swore never to love again after the Yiling Patriarch broke her heart, obviously! WWX, listening to this gossip: "She what? I mean, Lan Zhan would make an amazing mom, good for her, lucky kid, and no one is good enough for her if she doesn't want to get married, but seriously, I cannot stress this enough, what the fuck. She didn't like me back! Aiyah, I bet she's still so mad at me for ruining her reputation like this.")

Eventually, I realized that the key piece of this AU that I was missing was that I wanted to write F/M Wangxian that turned into F/F Wangxian. Because I think Transfem Wei Wuxian would display (and I mean this affectionately) the most ridiculous trans egg behavior imaginable, especially because it would lean more towards one of those "I was mostly fine living as a guy, but I'm so much happier as a girl" situations. Absurd amounts of queer foreshadowing.

So, Wei Wuxian gets resurrected into a female MXY's body or something and obliviously goes, "Oh! This is nice! I've always wanted to try being a woman! Yes, I can roll with this." And eventually Wei Wuxian has to actually examine the fact that she really likes being a woman and doesn't want to "go back" to being a man in any way, but not before putting Lan Wangji through an incredible amount of new "joke" flirtation. And people who knew WWX before are like... "Hmm. Some things are making sense now."

Things like: 1) As a teenager, WWX insisted that LWJ was such a strong woman that, if they got married, LWJ could be "the husband" and "he" would happily be "the wife". There were lots and lots of "I want to live as Jiejie's spoiled wife" jokes. Consequently, at the Cloud Recesses, at least one outrageously inappropriate joke was made by WWX about LWJ knocking "him" up, because WWX's breeding kink is still very much a thing. WWX didn't know about her breeding kink when she made that joke; both she and LWJ learned something about themselves that day.

2) Wei Wuxian would frequently pull crossdressing-related pranks saying: "Wow, this is crazy. I can't believe you guys are forcing me to put on a dress and all this makeup for this prank! You guys are wild!" And Jiang Cheng would reply: "No one is forcing you to do this. No one dared you. You suddenly volunteered to crossdress for a prank that does not require crossdressing AGAIN. Also, give me that brush, I'll do your makeup because you suck ass at it."

3) WWX would frequently go on rants about how women are so much more beautiful than men, which flew under the radar as a "normal behavior for a lustful young man", but there was always something a little off about it. Like, WWX might say that women are so beautiful and perfect that everyone would choose to be one if allowed to pick before being born just to admire the gorgeous view, and JC might say, "I don't think that's quite right...?" But WWX would just say something like (like an obnoxious teenage sibling), "That's because you know that you'd make an ugly woman!" or, "Are you saying that women aren't perfect? Also, are you saying Shijie isn't the best person in the world?" And JC would have to be like, "I didn't say that! And I'd make a beautiful woman, fuck you! Also, how is that relevant to your point?"

By the end of this AU, there is at least one public love confession that is horribly embarrassing for everyone else to witness, in which Wei Wuxian has finally realized that LWJ used to be in love with "him" and that she loves LWJ back, but tearfully apologizes because she can't be the handsome man that LWJ loved anymore. Even if she could be a man again, she still doesn't want to stop being a woman, even if she's not very good at it yet. She can't perform the required husbandly duties like provide a good home for LWJ! She can't father LWJ's children anymore!

(Jiang Cheng: "Do you have to do this now?! Stop being indecent! There are children here. Also, we're all being held hostage.")

But it's all cool! Because shortly after realizing WWX was back and determined to live as a woman, LWJ speedran a sexuality crisis, flipped a mental switch, and essentially went, "I'm a lesbian now." (Or maybe LWJ was really confused about being attracted to WWX when they first met, because LWJ had only been physically attracted to her fellow female disciples up until then, so WWX seemed like the "exception", until WWX comes back from the dead as a woman and then it's like, "Ah. Not an exception after all.")

#transfem wei wuxian au #tossawary mdzs #wei wuxian #lan wangji #wangxian #mdzs genderbending au #fic ideas

[3cosmicfrogs]

Jay what about an au where NMJ and JGY switch bodies right after Sunshot finishes. Say at the phoenix mountain hunt.

you come on this here website and call me by my government name? before marriage???

five headcanons for a Freaky Friday situation after the pmh....hmmmmm

~Gender Dysphoria~ let's get the easy one out of the way first. You know me, i cum the second someone says "blorbo transgender" so naturally anything even Body Horror Adjacent will have Gender Feelings. They needn't even be trans as long as some sort of gender yuri is happening.

everyone would find out immediately. There's no way nmj could spend five minutes in Jin company without making a decisively un-Guangyao-like sarcastic remark. There's no way jgy, who is Deflection Georg and makes 100000 vague statements per day, could tolerate being confrontational.

Ok maybe not everyone, but our Main Cast certainly find out very quickly. NHS figures it out within 3 minutes of the switch ('jgy' started scolding him immediately while 'nmj' just kept smiling, it's creepy-) and naturally this means that lxc gets recruited to help fix this. Somehow, as is tradition with AUs that involve dubious magic, wwx gets involved which naturally means lwj is present as well. jc is also there, though his main purpose seems to be yelling and being outraged at things because someone has to be responsible in this mess, and by god it's gonna be him.

Naturally the whole Switching Situation cannot be fixed overnight and they must Pretend To Be Each Other In Public. This leads to a lot of heartfelt confessions about social status and societal expectations on both ends (not only on jiggy's side. yes, we've done jiggy's pressures and circumstances to hell and back, don't worry, we'll cover them here again, but like. give me MORE. build this world with me. take my hand.) They both grow as people and learn to appreciate each other and be more empathetic and bla bla bla you get the gist.

i think it would be super fun if jiggy can hear baxia now (and maybe feel the effects of early onset hereditary qi deviation???). she would be absolutely delighted by this skinny scared-but-bitter-determined-vicious little Human who is inhabiting her master's body. He's just so fun to scare at night and isn't it hilarious to whisper evil things in his ear and why is your sabre always talking to you da-ge?!

*6. Bonus headcanon! because this is a 3zun Dubious Magic au naturally the absolutely only way to resolve this after all of the conversations are had and revelations are made is by sex. ah, the wonders of dual cultivation... the traditional way most Strange Magic gets solved in this genre of AU, apparently, and who are we without traditions? If it so happens to help with certain hereditary diseases...

#jay is not my government name i jest i jest #mdzs #3zun #mail from the beloved mutuals #of course there will be Magical Healing Sex it's the GENRE #(also i like it.) #thank you for your ask! mwah

[thepurplewombat]

For the violence ask game, can I request your answers to numbers 3, 10, 14, 21 and 22?

ooooh lovely choices here!

3: screenshot or description of the worst take you’ve seen on tumblr

Oh, god, there are so many. But I think the worst and most frustrating ones are related to Jin Guangyao and Mo Xuanyu. I've seen a number of people say things about the whole thing being a lie from JGY's end to discredit MXY, and I've even seen some that called JGY a groomer, and tbh, it makes me sick on multiple levels. Allow me to explain:

So first of all, denying that MXY really did what he was kicked out of JLT for completely ignores some of the only things that we know about him from his own words (filtered through WWX of course, but isn't everything?). On Page 19 of Volume 1, WWX is reading MXY's demented scribblings and comes across the part where he is talking about having been kicked out of JLT. It is never mentioned that he feels resentment for this, or that it was all a lie - and if there is anywhere that it would say outright that MXY was angry because he was falsely accused, wouldn't it be in the private ramblings hidden in his own room?

Second of all, if JGY had really fabricated rumors that MXY had harassed him in order to get him kicked out, he would have had his own wound on WWX's arm. Which, let me be clear, he does not. We're talking novel canon here, and in the novel, all the wounds close once the Mo family are dead.

Third of all, I find it sickening because it is part of a pattern of placing JGY at fault for sexual and other violence committed against him. He was harassed by his own brother to the point of forcing him to expel him from the clan, he ended up married to his own sister - neither of those were his fault, but people tend to look at these situations and have just the most absolutely dumpster-fire rancid takes, like JGY committing sexual assault against Qin Su (he didn't - once he knew about their relationship he never slept with her again, and while yes, he should have told her the truth about why, his reasoning is completely understandable), or being into incest etc.

Actually also a lot of takes wrt JGY and sex are pretty rancid, but I think the MXY thing is the worst, and it keeps coming up and make me want to set the whole tag on fucking fire.

10 - worst part of fanon

There are a lot of fanon takes that annoy me - WWX is good at diplomacy, NMJ is a fluffy cuddlebear, LXC is a himbo, but none of them quite make me want to Hulk Out as bad as fanon JGY, who is essentially just JGS in a funny hat.

You want an uncomplicatedly and unrepentantly evil villain to pin your hate on? JGS is right there.

You want a rapist who never shows an ounce of regret? JGS is right there.

You want a monster who ordered human experimentation with resentful energy to be done? JGS is right there.

You want the author of all of WWX's post-Sunshot misery? Jin Guangshan is RIGHT FUCKING THERE!

But no, we're gonna go ahead and pin all of JGY's father's crimes on him.

ugh.

14 -that one thing you see in fics all the time

oh god, if I could have a penny for every time I have seen surprise villainYao in a fic tagged with xiyao I would be so rich. It's especially frustrating when it's in a modern AU, when a lot of the pressures that caused JGY to do the shit he did just didn't exist. With a lot of modern AUs you can't even say 'cool motive, still murder' (a valid take on JGY tbh) because 90% of the time he doesn't even have a motive? He's just out there killing people for shits and giggles and I'm like, 'You're thinking of Xue Yang. This isn't JGY, this is Xue Yang in a funny goddamn hat.'

21 - part of canon you think is overhyped

I've been sitting here for ten minutes trying to think of a specific part of canon that's overhyped and not just annoying to me personally, and I can't really think of anything? Like, there's this perception in fandom that LWJ is a loving and caring brother who did a lot for LXC, and that pisses me off because he is the worst didi in a work full of bad didis - JGY killed his elder brother, and still managed to not be as terrible a little brother as Lan 'abandon my brother who's just killed his best friend of twenty years with his own two hands to go fuck Wei Wuxian under a bush' Wangji. But that's annoying because it's wrong, not because it's overhyped, so I'm just gonna go with a big old 🤷‍♀️here.

22 - your favorite part of canon that everyone else ignores

I mean, I don't think it's ignored necessarily, but I would love for more people to pay attention to the fact that WWX literally made Wen Chao eat his own flesh, and that was really gross and horrible but also very sexy of him.

Because like, a part of the appeal of WWX is that he is legitimately monstrous. He does absolutely monstrous things during the Sunshot campaign, and people are right to be afraid of this extremely powerful and unpredictable person who commands the goddamn dead. But WWX is like an example of how you can be a monster but also try to be a good person, and a lot of people strip a lot of the complexity out of him by making him a Manic Pixie Dream Necromancer who's like, a little quirky but ultimately cool, and no, fuck that noise.

Wei Wuxian was a monster. He became a monster in response to the pressures of the war and his massive pile of untreated PTSD, but he was so terrifying that for a moment while I was reading the rescue of the Wen, I wasn't sure that they were going to go with him. And I wouldn't have blamed them for a second because this is the man who nearly single-handedly destroyed their clan, slaughtered their friends and families, and then commanded their corpses to slaughter even more. That's fucked up and villain behaviour, and nobody would have blamed the Wen for preferring the ordinary human torture and death and murder over whatever Wei Wuxian might choose to do to them. At least once the guards killed you the torment was over.

But a monster isn't all he is. He tries to do the right thing, he tries to be good, and while it doesn't solve the situation, it does mean something. Wei Wuxian's story is the story of a man who covered himself in blood to save his own life and the lives of others, and then found out that sometimes you don't get to go home. Sometimes the blood doesn't wash off and you spend the rest of your days with the shadows of your past hanging over you.

But he still tried! He still tried, and in the very end of the story, he is free, and happy, and loved.

But removing his darkest moments takes so much away from the light at the end, renders it so much less meaningful without the contrast of his darkest times.

Thank you for playing, sorry that my answers are so damn long, but apparently I get wordy sometimes!

#Wombat answers asks #wishthefish #jin guangyao #wei wuxian #yep I chose violence today #LWJ is the worst didi fight me

[pharahsgf]

i:m sad lwj gets such a bad rep from jc fans and non wangxian fans in general. he's so good... i struggle to put into words why i like him but he's such a good character. he deserves to not be made ooc in fandom stuff :,|

g-d fr. anyway here's my incomplete list of things i like about lan wangji in no particular order

his resting bitch face and intimidating icy exterior hide a soft and romantic heart but also he is genuinely a bitch and intimidating and would stab someone for disrespecting his husband

the fact that he would stab someone for disrespecting his husband

very strong 'would get rained on to hold his umbrella over a tiny stray cat' energy

when jin zixun tries to peer pressure him into drinking only for lan wangji to 1. not care 2. make the gayest most openly homosexual expression humanly possible when wei wuxian swoops in to save him, no shame whatsoever

every time a social event occurs you see lan wangji sitting somewhere by himself just staring peacefully into the middle distance and thinking lwj thoughts and i always get the distinct impression that lan xichen went to him beforehand like "wangji i know you don't like to socialise but you should really try talking to some people today, it'll be good for you and you might make some new friends" and lan wangji was like hm and proceeded to not do any of that

it's such a stupid cute detail that lan wangji buried a'yuan in a pile of bunnies. like what the hell. i am on the verge of tears

conversation: *gets personal* lwj: *leaves*

his little smirk when he calls wwx boring in ep8 like you can almost see the photoshopped sunglasses and hear denzel curry's ultimate

he's considered an unequaled prodigy when it comes to guqin abilities and inquiry specifically like he can communicate with ghosts by playing music and they're not even physically able to lie to him how is that not the coolest shit ever

HE SAID BYE TO THE BUNNIESSSS

wwx doesn't even expect to be doted on and treated like a princess after coming back lan wangji did that entirely on his own volition. wei wuxian just exists in peace and lan wangji will start picking him up and throwing money at him and composing soaring love ballads dedicated to his beauty

the fact that despite all this he will hesitate for exactly zero seconds to make fun of wwx when he's acting stupid

very strong emotional inertia causing his character to be in a near-constant state of mourning as represented visually by his white clothing and the frost/snow motif that accompanies the respective apotheoses of said mourning. which, in addition to being genuinely heart-wrenching, FUCKS as an aesthetic

associated with rabbits and dragons, easily two of the coolest animals

episode 43 drives me insane. lan wangji with his hair down dressed down domestic as fuck bringing wwx emperor's smile and setting out tea and playing their song, laying no expectations on wwx but making it clear that he's welcome and wanted and offering his love and warmth for wwx when he's ready... augh romance, tenderness, throwing bouquets and roses

"you are not qualified to speak to me"

he's canonically good at math which isn't relevant to anything but i do feel like it adds a new dimension to his character

he wrote a gentle, soul-baring, beautiful song that silently confesses his love for a person who remembered the melody even decades after first hearing it and then made its title a portmanteau of their names

kneel.

*spends 3 years in seclusion to learn from & reflect on his grave sin of defending and siding with wwx the evil demonic cultivator* *returns to immediately add wwx the evil demonic cultivator's inventions to the core curriculum*

was a cute baby so you know he's blessed

he's one of the best if not Thee best cultivator of his generation yet refuses to indulge in the narcissistic posturing his peers engage in and instead uses his privilege and access to exclusive resources to serve lower class people completely for free.. yes lord

*grips sword handle to communicate emotional issues*

very polite and well spoken and clearly well-versed in all kinds of etiquette but if he hates you he has no qualms about being as rude and disrespectful as he reasonably can (pov you are jiang cheng)

he is very fundamentally misunderstood by almost everyone he's ever met and when wwx starts figuring him out and realising what makes him tick he's entirely resistant and hostile to his intrusions despite deeply craving that intimacy and acknowledgement.... mortifying ordeal of being known in its purest form truly. i want to study him in a lab

how he slowly goes from being distant and frosty and rejecting all of wwx's offers of friendship to being so warm and attentive towards him and you look at those gifsets of early lwj vs later lwj and it's like the first rays of sun after a long winter like he's radiant

ally to bi women (nice to mianmian)

when he was punished alongside wwx jc & nhs the first blow landed and he didn't even FLINCH, he sat there back straight and chin up with the dignity of a king and wwx was so impressed he caught himself mid-overreaction to follow lan wangji's example. absolutely iconic

188cm

the fact that he spends the entire gusu lectures arc in an ongoing emotional crisis bc wei wuxian is too attractive and he doesn't know how to deal w it

there have been zero small animals who didn't immediately trust lan wangji with their life so again. blessed

#replies #anonymous #long post #he's miserable. he's powerful. he's gay. he's under 3 years of house arrest. he's a wizard. he's an artist. AND he's my little meow meow

[ineffectualdemon]

About your Jiang Cheng post:

As a J.C. lover, having watched the series and read the book and agreeing that novel J.C. is totally aro

the show really doesn't do Jiang Cheng justice (the actor is fantastic though) but it doesn't do anything reprehensible with his character if that is any consolation.

the JC and WQ story felt out of place even before I read the novel but I think we have China's censorship to thank for it? like I think they had to give some type of forbidden love romance because while in the book its WWX and LWJ they couldn't really show it blatantly on the show. Also because of the whole story arc changing to include WQ and WN in the cloud recessess high school maybe the rewriters thought it would help us feel something idk.

Also it gave a chance for more female presence in the story itself so go women.

I'd say my bigger problem with the show is the entire yin iron gag. Instead of making Wen Ruhan just an evil man with power, they tried to turn it into greatest supervillian with demonic cultivation

That's good to know that they don't totally ruin my boy but making him like know Wen Qing does make his refusal to help them later much more callous and cruel which I just hate

But yeah making Wen Ruhan a supervillain with demonic cultivation is really bad because it really undercuts Wei Wuxian's character arc

I get they changed the name but the source material is titled "The Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation" I suppose the live action was like "we can't have the main character be morally grey or have done really fucked up things in his own!"

But that's one of the things I like about Wei Wuxian's character!

During the war he is driven by revenge and does things that are disturbing

He really freaks LWJ out! And yeah the people he's using this against are "bad" but does that justify what he does? Like that's a legitimate question the text poses

He's basically a weapon of mass destruction and by creating demonic cultivation he inadvertently leads to others doing horrific things too using his knowledge and tools that he left behind

And he has to deal with that guilt!

Why do all the adaptions make his worse actions not really his fault? Yes it's his fault let him be fucked up!

Also let Wen Ruhan be awful but normal human awful. You don't have add more. He sucks enough as is

#mdzs #the untamed #jiang cheng #wei wuxian

[ibijau]

fave 10 characters from any media and why u like them?

10. Ori from The Hobbit. He's a fun lil guy and he was my main blorbo in that fandom and I just liked him a lot for his pointless bravery and how very adorable he was

9. Tiffany Aching from the Discworld. Many reasons, but mostly it's a specific part of the first book that has stuck with me through the years. I don't have the exact quote, but something about her opponent calling her selfish like it's the worst thing she could be, and a part of her just owning it like. Yes, she's selfish. And she's still going to protect the people around her, because those are her people. And it just... I just love that moment.

8. Polgara from The Belgariad (and associated books). Role model lady!! But more seriously, I loved how complex she was, and how she was allowed to be clever and powerful and kind, but also bitchy and petty, and it wasn't... the narrative didn't judge or punish her for it? I don't enjoy David and Leigh Eddings books as much as I did as a teenager, but damn, the characters in it were really cool and Polgara most of all

7. Rapunzel from Tangled. To make it short, I got the dvd the year I went no-contact with my mom, and I watched it dozens of time, and it was very therapeutic.

6.Katniss Everdeen, but specifically from the book as I wasn't too impressed with the films. She's just a fascinating character, with so much rage and anger (all justified!!) and it's really cool to see her grow to understand that her world is even more fucked up than she thought, and trying to figure out how to deal with it when everyone is trying to manipulate her one way or another.

5. Lan Xichen. I love his mix of gentle politeness and determination. He is a good man whose kindness is treated as a fault to be taken advantage of by his best friend. Again and again he is confronted with difficult choices (leaving or staying when his sects burns, what to do with lwj when he sides with wwx, what to do with jgy when his guilt is revealed) and he very sincerely tries his best with the information he has. I love him. Fuck but I love him. He is so good. He is so very good, and he tries so damn hard to be fair, and I love him.

4. Granny Weatherwax from the Discworld. She is a BITCH and we LOVE HER. Just. Damn, but there's something so reassuring about her existing as a character? Like. Yeah, she's not very nice. But she tries her best to be good, even when it's not easy, even when it's not pleasant.

3. Nie Huaisang. Whaaaaaat, he is only number three? what fraud is this?? But yeah, I love him a lot, and I think he's just cool. I have no idea who he is in canon. We know who he was, and who he appears to be, but there's pretty much no clues as to the person he really is. How much of the image he presents is real, how much is fake, and does it even matter, does he even know himself what's real or not? I love a character open to interpretation!

2. Bertha Mason (from Jane Eyre). I think she's just a fascinating character, shrouded in mysteries. She is the greatest of evils, and she is the greatest of victims. She is a murdering foul bitch, and she is a woman whose life was controlled by the men around her. There are so, so many ways to read her character, so many possible interpretations! It makes it really fun to write fanfics about her, and to read about people's opinions of her. Which... is kind of a theme here, uh?

Link from any of the main games except Skyward Sword. Listen I know he's usually got the personality of a paperclip, but also he's cool and brave and funny, and I've spent countless hours of my youth (...and of my adult years too...) playing Zelda games, and I started writing and drawing out of love for the franchise, and I just think he's a neat character bc you can project whatever you want upon him

#jau rants #I like complicated and ambivalent characters I guess

[hei-shu]

I posted 1,275 times in 2022

That's 1,253 more posts than 2021!

39 posts created (3%)

1,236 posts reblogged (97%)

Blogs I reblogged the most:

@liziocit

@ladypfenix

@mondengel

@grewlikefancyflowers

@motivationisdead

I tagged 808 of my posts in 2022

Only 37% of my posts had no tags

#mdzs - 448 posts

#wei wuxian - 169 posts

#wangxian - 146 posts

#lan wangji - 83 posts

#mdzs fanart - 57 posts

#canon jiang cheng - 47 posts

#cql - 32 posts

#lmao - 28 posts

#cats - 27 posts

#asexuality - 15 posts

Longest Tag: 135 characters

#this concept of loving a person 'because' they're good and not 'despite' them being evil is so important to me in this mess of a fandom

My Top Posts in 2022:

#5

I was surfing through Twitter (not a good decision, I know) and saw some JC stan bullshit again.

You know how they like to say something along the lines of 'JC didn't really hate WWX actually, it's complicated' and then use the scene where JC yelled at WWX to apologise to his parents tablets at the inn as an example? They'll use that scene to say that JC doesn't actually want to kill WWX, and then conveniently not mention the fact that he used Fairy, a creature that he knows that WWX is terrified of, to purposefully threaten him. It's very clear, through his own words and the narrative, that JC doesn't just want WWX dead, he wants him to suffer first, just like all the other so-called 'demonic cultivators' that he captured. Just because he never got the chance to doesn't excuse that.

Also, I'm pretty sure that using someone's phobia against them is very not okay. But hey, apparently to JC stans torture threats (which are very likely to be followed through if JC got the chance) are fine as long as you did not kill that person :)

JC stans will also conveniently forget that when he suspected that MXY was possessed by WWX, his first instinct was to whip him with Zidian. It doesn't matter whether or not Zidian will destroy the soul or just force them out of a possessed body. The fact that he doesn't even hesitate to do so is very telling. He very much wants WWX gone, alright.

It doesn't matter whether JC actually loved WWX or not bc his actions towards WWX is extremely abusive. If you think that scaring a loved one with their phobia while relishing in their suffering is okay, then your standards must be concerningly low.

27 notes - Posted March 11, 2022

#4

In some MDZS fanfics;

JC to WWX: LWJ hates you.

Also JC, after wx got together: Took you long enough.

Me: ???

28 notes - Posted April 26, 2022

#3

Fanon JC is like — ah yes let me just adopt this feverish child whose family and protector was massacred by a siege led by me :)

(p.s. I also once suggested the protector to send this child and his family of the old and weak back to the cruel labor camps btw 🥰🥰)

30 notes - Posted September 5, 2022

#2

"the yunmeng trio are a family" lmao, let's see JC's perspective 👇

JC to WWX: YoU WeRE SuPpoSEd tO Be My SuBOrdiNatE-

If JC & WWX really are a family (which they are not), then it's very toxic. Every time JC opens his mouth it's about things like 'you owe a debt to my sect' and 'my father favours you' and 'you are the cause of my sect's destruction' and 'my mother was right about you'. This kind of power dynamic is better off not called a familial relationship.

In contrast, yiling trio won't kill each other and they also deeply respect one another, so it's a healthier relationship. There's no superior-inferior dynamic going on between them. They are more 'family' than yunmeng trio could ever be.

I guess JYL could be WWX's family, she isn't malicious, loves WWX enough to sacrifice her life for him, but not powerful enough to do much either. As for JC? I don't think he would be happy if WWX is considered as a part of his family, unless a servant is also considered family. After all, the only advantage JC has over WWX all his life is his gentry status, how could a classist like JC ever be willing to see WWX, the 'son of a servant', in the same social class as himself?

43 notes - Posted May 28, 2022

My #1 post of 2022

Everyday I think about the irony that while everyone praises the virtuous HGJ and regards him as the role model for the future generations, they curse the name of the wicked YLLZ and use him as the epitome of evil to warn the younger generation, all the while oblivious to the fact that this 'evil' YLLZ is actually someone HGJ treasures the most.

I remember a fanfic where LSZ wondered about someone HGJ admires and it really stuck with me bc it feels so ironic. Since HGJ is already so good and respected by many, then the person he looked up to must be very great too, right? Well, that's true, you see, the man HGJ admires and loves the most was so righteous that he was condemned and criminalised by the cultivation world and died for it and yet the cultivation world still curses his name and wants his soul destroyed. That man is the fucking YLLZ, and HGJ is very willing to cut off people's arms for him.

119 notes - Posted April 20, 2022

Get your Tumblr 2022 Year in Review →

#tumblr2022 #year in review #my 2022 tumblr year in review #your tumblr year in review

[zelkam]

— richard siken, snow and dirty rain

#cqledit #The Untamed #Wei Wuxian #Lan Wangji #[just gonna tag these two bc the rest is tiny here] #mdzs #myedit #don't @ me I told you there will be more Siken bc I still have a lot of quotes saved #but like yea just /I hope/ this makes the same sense as it does to me lmao #basically I rlly like the plot pacing with starting at the Nightless City #and then going back with showing how we got there #and it's a growing feeling of oh god oh no bc all the pieces fall together #but !! that's not actually the end !! #and the whole thing with all that being passed on as a story is so cool #(even tho the first few moments of watching are /what is happening/ lmao) #also yes the lwj one is Evil I know #also gdi I had to fix the 2nd gif

[i-cast-zone-of-truth]

Honestly i dont hate jiang cheng. I hate the suggestion that he did right by wwx and wen qing and wen ning and the rest of the wens, and i hate what madame yu did to him. I hope someday he can truly let things go, for everyone’s sake

#cql #like good on him for sacrificing himself for wwx that one time but #like we already knew he has a lot of affection for wwx and generally wants him to be ok #that doesn't mean he didn't abuse him. yes abuse #abusers are generally not evil u know #and turning his back on wen ning and wen qing.... #i just. i don't know how to describe how that was the worst thing he ever did #it's all tied together with his stuff with wwx so like i'm not saying how he treated wwx wasn't also bad #but like. he let them all die #he was fully informed he knew they were innocent-- he was one of so few #who were directly confronted with incontrovertible proof that there weren't even legal grounds for how they were treated #and he wasn't even agonizing over his decision to leave them to whatever fate #if i'm generous it might partly be because he thought wwx could handle anything #but at some point you have to grow up and realize your family is made of real human beings #if you're not convinced think about this-- he met wen yuan. he MET wen yuan. #and was still like yeah whatever you don't owe these people you owe ME #that shit is no good to say the least #and like lwj also did not help #i'm not saying it's wrong of jc and right of lwj. lwj also fucked up #but like. god at least he agonized over it and his fuckup was choosing the wrong 'right thing' #at least he started trying to help as soon as he figured out things were spiraling #it doesn't fix things but it means things about who he is #and jc didn't even have the moral conflict that lwj was having #jc doesn't give a shit about lawful vs chaotic good #his first priority is what he thinks he personally is owed

[annalacerda17]

One very important aspect of MDZS is that characters have agency even when they lack power.

I think this is important to remember because a key element that distinguishes the heroes from the villains in what they choose to do with the limited options they have. JGY and XY's backgrounds have some similarities with WWX's own background, and JC and LWJ also have similar backgrounds. Those similarities are there to emphasize the difference in how they react to those experiences.

Before JGY is accepted into the Jin sect, he is politically powerless, but he's not without agency. A lot of JGY stans go around saying he did the things he did because he had no choice, but from the very beginning, this isn't true. The key point here is that although he is politically powerless, he still had the ability to choose what he wanted to do with his life, and he chose to pursue political power and prestige, and his father's approval. The atrocities JGY commits aren't for the sake of survival, they are for the sake of acquiring power and prestige and pleasing his father, whom he knows is human garbage.

Once JGY is a part of the Jin sect, it's true that his position isn't as good as Jin Zixuan's, but as a war hero and the sworn brother of two sect leaders of major sects, he's not in any danger of being kicked out either. What's at stake isn't his life or his livelihood, but his ascension to power and prestige. Again, he may not be the most politically powerful, but at this point, he is neither completely powerless nor without agency. This also applies to his marriage to Qin Su.

After he kills JGS and becomes chief cultivator, JGY has a lot of political power and the resources to do as he pleases. And he does. The atrocities he continues to commit, from the rape and murder of the sex workers he used to kill his father to the extermination of the Tingshan He sect down to a 9 yr old child to the murder of his own son, those things are decided on, planned and acted on by JGY. His character remains consistent from the beginning to the end. His circumstances change, but his goal remains the same, as does his willingness to do anything and cross any line to achieve it. What JGY lacked wasn't power, it was morals.

XY, much like JGY, had no power in his childhood. He was hurt by others and had no power to stop the injustice that happened to him. However, that doesn't mean he had no agency. He could still choose what to do with himself in the aftermath. And he did: as soon as he had the ability, he chose to take revenge not only on the man who wronged him, but also on a whole lot of ppl who didn't.

He is the one who comes up with the idea of turning live humans into corpses. He is the one who decided that, in order to "taint" XXC, it was okay to poison and murder random villagers who had nothing to do with any of it. XY hurts ppl because it pleases him to do so.

XY didn't become evil because of his sad childhood, he only used his sob story as a justification to blame his victims for his actions.

We also have JC, who isn't actually powerless nor a victim of injustice in any way, but insists of portraying himself as such in order to avoid having to take responsibility to his own actions. JC is a grown ass man who likes acts like a toddler. He refuses to grow up or change himself in any way, so when things don't go well for him due to his own behavior, he blames everyone but himself, effectively portraying himself as a victim of life itself. He is always saying he has no choice, when in fact he does have a choice, but that choice requires effort or growth on his part and he refuses to put in the work. What he lacks isn't power or choice, it's basic human decency.

In contrast with the villains, we have WWX and LWJ, who choose to be good even when it's inconvenient.

As a small child, WWX lost his parents and spent a few years in the streets, even then, he remains kind. When he's taken to the Jiang sect, he's faced with extreme abuse by YZY, and yes, whipping a child with an electric whip for any reason is extreme, and YZY did it to vent her self inflicted frustration. JFM, who was supposed to be WWX's guardian was kind to him, but made no effort to prevent YZY's abuse.

WWX had to hear YZY slander his mother, accuse him of being JFM's bastard or call his the son of a servant depending on her mood.

JC's behavior was also toxic: he isolated WWX, was dismissive of WWX's ideas, his excellence and also his hurts. He was comfortable using WWX however he pleased even to WWX's detriment.

Any affection WWX received at the Jiang sect came attached with a sense of debt, that was deliberately reinforced by YZY and JC, and passively reinforced by JFM and JYL. His sense of debt ultimately leads him to give JC his golden core.

During the SSC, WWX was praised for his demonic cultivation, but after the war was over, the entire cultivation world decided to make him their collective scapegoat. As WWX himself says, he may not care too much about the opinions of others, but he's still human. Being isolated and universally hated does affect him, but he still doesn't let it change him.

Despite his difficult life, when WWX sees the Jin prison camps, he still chooses to save ppl despite the criticism aimed at him for this and lack of support. WWX consistently chooses compassion even when the circumstances don't allow it. He chooses to be morally upright despite all difficulty, even if he has to do it alone.

WWX's uses his agency to decide what his priorities are, and he decides doing the right thing is his absolute priority. The one thing WWX will absolutely not give up on is his morals.

LWJ also has a moments in his past when he was powerless: he was only allowed to see his mother once a month, barely ever saw his father and was clearly not told the entire truth about his parents, whater it may be. Later on, when WWX is being made the scapegoat of the cultivation world, LWJ can't offer much help, and finds himself not knowing what he should do. Before the SSC, his home burns, his brother goes missing and his father dies. LWJ regrets having pushed WWX away, and by the time he wants to change it's too late and WWX dies.

LWJ grieved, but doesn't let the pain he experienced in the past define him. Instead, during the 13 years WWX was dead, LWJ dedicated himself to good and put in the effort to overcome his shortcomings. When WWX comes back, LWJ makes sure not to push him away again. Even when handling his jealousy, LWJ doesn't dump responsibility for his feelings on WWX, and never tries to change him. Instead, he handles it himself in ways that don't hurt WWX or others.

Anyway, this is just me ranting about some parts of fandom that insist some characters' sad childhood means they had no choice but to turn to evil, when this is clearly not true.

One of MDZS's major themes is that a sad past isn't doesn't justify being unrighteous, because even when someone lacks power, they aren't without agency. Even when someone can't choose not to experience trauma, they can choose how they are going to react to it. And taking your shit out on innocent people is always wrong, no exceptions.

#mdzs #mo dao zu shi #wei wuxian #canon jiang cheng #jin guangyao #jiang cheng #lan wangji #grandmaster of demonic cultivation #jgy #lwj #wwx #xue yang #xy

[3cosmicfrogs]

AU where everyone gets turned into an animal for some reason (I just think NMJ should get to be a dog-) <- or something along those lines? Despite reblogging it I do not really understand how this ask game is supposed to work

you me [handshake emoji] trying to figure this ask game out

Ok animal AU five headcanons... but specifically the animals i've seen/encountered in the ass end of nowhere, northern Ural, rural russia.

yes nmj is a dog, but one of those really big mountain dogs that go bork and that youve never seen walk faster than a gentle trot but youre absolutely sure can kill a bear if it wanted to. Alternatively a tiger works really well too (i think nirejseki on AO3 has a were-tiger-situation AU??) or even a moose. Moose are terrifying. You don't have a moose in your backyard it has you in its backyard and it is only allowing you there out of sheer goodness of heart. this animal does not give a fuck. if it decides to charge you pray for a quick death. they are fucking megafauna. imagine if a horse was also a god.

nhs some sort of pomeranian or other teeny tiny lapdog that was imported and is in no way shape or form suited for this weather. Or a bird... a cuckoo maybe? alternatively i would also agree to some sort of mustelid, like a polecat (i think it's a ferret in english?). generally quite harmless tho very annoying if it decides it likes you. Easily underestimated because so very smol, and the next thing you know it's killed three chickens.

lxc... I've thought maybe crane? they're well known for their singing i suppose. also pretty

xy wolverine. vicious fucker who won't stay down and also would break into your auntie's shed and eat her meat preserves out of sheer spite (RIP auntie yelena's cured lamb, 2012). certified Evil.

lwj a lynx. beautiful and very good at killing but will leave you alone. will take active steps to be left alone. if it can smell you you've come too far and have now Disturbed It oh my god it will Be Gone by tomorrow. most autistic animal i (n)ever did see.

#mail from the beloved mutuals #mdzs #winter animals yay! #give it up for rural childhood memories i can never visit again (transgender)!

[jiangwanyinscatmom]

sorry if you’ve already been asked this before, but what’s your opinion on lxc saying that wwx was the only mistake lwj ever made? i’m pretty torn on this bc as an older sibling i can understand his wanting to stand up for his little brother, but at the same time i think this was a deeply offensive thing to say to wwx & just a straight up false statement. really curious to hear your thoughts on this bc ppl seem to either think that lxc was 100% justified in saying this or that he deserves to burn in hell for saying this and there’s like no in between lol

Hi there anon! I haven't fully addressed my thoughts about this, so thank you for asking!

To get my initial reaction to this current fandom uptick out of the way...

(Okay salt out of the way...)

I'll break your ask down in parts:

At the crux of Lan Xichen's outburst was because of his love for Lan Wangji, he did want the best for his brother after his misfortune there is no denial of that.

However, Lan Xichen was speaking from what was his own assumption and yes, was meant to be cruel due to his anger and worry of Lan Wangji. There was a truth to some of his words as Wei Wuxian realizes, how his lack of knowing what had happened in that cave to his current flirting intensified in the present could be seen as cruel to outsiders. He was working upon half information just as the involved two, Lan Wangji and Wei Wuxian where.

Was he in the right for saying it the way he did? No, obviously not because Lan Wangji would personally never think that of Wei Wuxian given his willingness to stand by Wei Wuxian in the present, not based on guilt, but to express his utter acceptance of Wei Wuxian. Where as Wei Wuxian thought the world of Lan Wangji as a person and respected him even in their youth and is terrified that he unwittingly hurt Lan Wangji.

Do not leave others in turmoil.

Lan Xichen also has the unfortunate habit of coddling Lan Wangji all while being slightly condescending about his choices, simply because he doesn't understand. This lack of reaching out to Lan Wangji in a needed way is also why he misconstrued exactly what was happening between the two. He confronts Wei Wuxian with a lack of awareness. This doesn't mean he's right, doesn't mean he's evil. But his assumptions are erroneous. He is just as mistaken as the other two and the actual truth comes forward in the heat of the moment. It's a very messy human confrontation that highlights Lan Xichen's flaws with his trust and lack of reviewing what was in front of him, and choosing one side of the truth as with Nie Mingjue and Jin Guangyao.

As for if he should ever say sorry, yeah I'm sure he did eventually given supplementary material has him friendly with Wei Wuxian. It's not overblown to personally as a reader find Lan Xichen questionable within that moment because he is presented as such.

#mdzs #mo dao zu shi #lan xichen #I call him make Yanli for a reason because they do respond the same to matters

[plan-d-to-i]

ok legitimate question where the FUCK did jiang cheng x lan xichen even come from because when i was first getting into the fandom i saw a ton of art before i really knew the characters and then i read the novel and was . . . very confused to say the least. they have two interactions??? maybe??? so i’m kind of curious if the ship is built on a hysterical mass delusion or an urge to give their unlovable fav (no matchmakers for jiang cheng! no matchmakers for jiang cheng for 1000 years!) a ship

Hahah both✨. It's built on ✨both✨. Mass delusion & desperation to pair jc up with someone. Anyone. And for a lot of the takes I saw, LXC is "better" than LWJ bc he's a Clan Leader, and he can, and totes wiLL punish eviL WangXian for being meanies to poor bby jc bc they didn't want to deal w his bs anymore. Yes LXC will also totally punish LWJ for disrespecting jc by cutting down those nets that were putting cultivators in deadly danger when jc was teaching Jin Ling to be a callous, classist, cheater >:0 !! Bc LXC of course will love jc so much more than the brother whom he adores. And jc will magically not be homophobic anymore! 🤡

Anyway my fav scene between them is when LWJ shoves jc back as he tries to strike out at WWX, and LXC is like : Clan Leader Jiang y don't u chill or your injury will worsen bc my little bro will kill u.

Wei WuXian couldn’t keep on listening any longer, interrupting him, “Enough.”

Jiang Cheng’s voice harshened, “What do you mean, enough? It’s enough as long as you say so? You know everything! You’re better than me at everything! Whether it be talent or cultivation or spirituality or personality, you guys knew everything while I was much lower—then what am I?!?!”

He suddenly reached out, as if to seize Wei WuXian’s collar. Lan WangJi grabbed Wei WuXian’s shoulder with one hand, letting Wei WuXian stand behind him, and with his other hand he forcefully pushed away Jiang Cheng’s hand. Rage could be seen hidden within his eyes. Although his push held no spiritual energy, it was quite powerful in terms of strength. The wound at Jiang Cheng’s chest ripped apart again. Blood surged.

Jin Ling cried, “Uncle, your wound! HanGuang-Jun, spare some mercy!”

However, Lan WangJi’s voice was cold, “Jiang WanYin, spare some virtue!”

Lan XiChen took off his outer robe and lay it over the shivering Nie HuaiSang, “Sect Leader Jiang, please do not be so agitated. The more you shout, the worse your condition will be.” (102)

🤗.

#mdzs #answers #Lan Xichen

[vrishchikawrites]

Are you still taking prompts?

Cause if so, I'd love to see a time travel fic where post-canon WWX and LWJ get yeeted back into their younger bodies, and land just before the GC transfer. And Post-Canon WWX - who's had some years of being a part of a loving, supportive family, in a non-toxic, non-abusive environment; and therefore no longer has any misconceptions about how much the Jiangs were not his family - takes one look at JC lying there on the table in the cave after WQ knocked him out (and is now in the middle of prepping for surgery); and just goes, "LOL, yeah; nope.😆 Been there, done that; 10/10, would not recommend.😝 Hey, WQ - change of plans!😎"

(Except, you know, not written like crack. 😉)

Not necessary to include, but a fun idea:

JC gets dragged along to the past as well because he has WWX's GC; so whatever sent them back mistook him for part of WWX and brought him along.

So when he wakes up from the anaesthesia, he freaks out about not having a GC anymore. And WWX has this whole story ready to tell young JC about how, "Oops, sorry; you can't have a new GC after all" - but this is Post-Canon JC; so he knows about the transfer, and knows that this means that WWX decided not to do it again.

Which means he ends up screaming at WWX about, "How dare you not give me your GC!"

So WWX feels exactly zero sympathy.

(Before that happened he was maybe feeling a little bit bad for young JC; because that JC hadn't done anything too bad yet - but he already knew how it would turn out if he went through with it. And he was not giving up his chance to cultivate to immortality with his hubby; just so that JC could Feel Like A Real Man, and go on to murder his way through life again.)

What would be really, really great about this, is if WWX had brought JC to Qinghe or Gusu; or somewhere the other cultivation sects involved in the SSC had gathered, before JC woke up. Planning to leave him there where he would be safe. So when JC wakes up and starts screaming, everybody hears him.

And they're all like, "...WUT."🤤

"You expected him to do what?!?"😲😨😱

So instead of all the sympathy and compassion, etc, that he would have gotten over what happened at LP (that he probably did get the first time), or for losing his GC; basically the entire allied cultivation world as a whole is collectively side-eyeing him.

IDK; I just think it would be really funny.

But mainly, I just want to see WWX a few years post-canon; having the chance to do it all again, and choosing not to go through with the GC transfer. LWJ going with him is because the thought of post-canon LWJ losing his WWX makes me sad; and I want them to stay together. 😋

Post-Canon JC going back and getting stuck with the coreless body he deserved is just for my own catharsis.

(The rest of that idea is simply for the lulz.) 😉

(I decided not to include JC traveling back in time. Hope this works and satisfies you!)

“No, I don’t.” Wei Wuxian sees Wen Qing blink and stare at him while Wen Ning stills in the process of making Jiang Cheng comfortable.

“What?” Wen Qing asks but rethinks it immediately, “No, no need to answer that.” She starts packing away her instruments immediately like she’s glad that Wei Wuxian has changed his mind. He looks at her and feels aching fondness rise in his chest. She must be frustrated that he made her go through all of that trouble and yet she still chooses to move before he can change his mind again.

“What… are we going to tell Jiang-gongzi?” Wen Ning asks tentatively but Wei Wuxian notes the faint look of relief in the boy’s eyes.

“We’ll tell him the treatment wasn't possible,” He says, glancing at his… former shidi. It isn’t an easy decision to make, because he knows Jiang Cheng would suffer for it. A part of him feels like he’s being unnecessarily cruel by denying Jiang Cheng his core.

But he has already paid his debt and it cost countless people their lives. Jiang Cheng’s actions didn’t just lead to the death of the Wens. Lan Zhan had told him about the numerous ‘demonic cultivators’ Jiang Cheng had pursued relentlessly. Even his love wasn’t certain how many people died or were tormented to insanity because of Jiang Cheng’s persistence.

While Wei Wuxian doesn’t intend to let the situation get so out of hand, it is apparent that Jiang Cheng can’t be trusted with power.

He is worried about how Jiang Cheng would react. Wei Wuxian had promised him a core, after all. But whatever happens, a powerless Jiang Cheng is safer for everyone.

“We’ll tell him that rebuilding the core is impossible because Wen Zhuliu destroyed his meridians as well.”

“He has,” Wen Qing points out, “I was about to repair them.”

Wei Wuxian frowns, “And can you repair them still? Without transferring the core?” That would certainly help Jiang Cheng heal faster and accept some spiritual energy transfusions. Wen Qing looks at Jiang Cheng with a frown and nods.

“Wei-gongzi… what changed your mind?” Wen Ning asks as Wen Qing goes to work immediately. Wei Wuxian knows that if he has to help the Wens, he needs to tell them the truth. While Wen Ning would trust him and accept his explanation without too many questions, Wen Qing wouldn’t be so easy.

Wei Wuxian takes a deep breath and closes his eyes, getting his thoughts in order. When he opens them again, both of the Wens are looking at him with frowns.

He grins wryly and spreads his hands, "I have a tale for you, my dear friends."

-

Jin Guangyao needed to have his last 'hurrah'. He just couldn't leave them be, even as he died. Whatever he did, whatever tool he used, it sent a shockwave of Resentful Energy that would've killed them all.

As always, Wei Wuxian stepped forward to protect people. As always, Lan Wangji stepped forward to protect him.

Wei Wuxian gritted his teeth and changed his plan at the last moment. At first, he wanted to absorb the energy and channel it somewhere else. But with so many people just lingering instead of running, he needed a different solution.

His mind flashed, he saw Jiang Cheng, and decided.

A forbidden array formed.

-

"I needed something that would use up all of the Resentful Energy and protect everyone, including Lan Zhan."

"So, at the last moment and on the verge of dying, you chose something as improbable as time travel." Wen Qing deadpans. Wen Ning is looking at him with wide eyes. Strangely enough, both look like they believe him. Well, he did mention a few things, personal incidents, that he had no way of knowing if the Wens hadn't told him.

Still.

"I'm not the one for regrets," He says softly as he looks at Jiang Cheng, "But I thought that array was the safest solution. It doesn't harm the current timeline so everyone is safe. Lan Zhan, I know, wouldn't mind following my lead in this." He did regret taking Zewu-jun's brother away from him after such a traumatic event but there really was no other option. Not with Jin Ling so close and so many innocent people in the vicinity.

Wei Wuxian is quite certain that the blast would've destroyed everything around them, including the innocent people around the Guanyin Temple complex.

The siblings exchange glances before Wen Qing returns to Jiang Cheng's side, preparing to work on his meridians, "You're going to change things." She observes, "Save people?"

"Save you and Wen Ning. Save Jiang Yanli. Save innocents, yes."

Wen Qing freezes.

---

Lan Wangji doesn't know what Wei Ying did but he trusts his beloved. When he finds himself in the past, just before the Sunshot Campaign begins and shortly after the fall of the Lotus Pier, he doesn't hesitate.

He knows that his brother is safe and his uncle is managing things at Cloud Recesses. But he also knows that somewhere out there, his beloved is preparing himself for a risky, painful procedure.

Wangji can't let that happen. He thinks back on everything Wen Ning shared with him about the incident, particularly the location of where it occurred. He's probably too late to stop the transfer but perhaps not late enough to stop the Wens from finding Wei Ying.

It takes him days to reach Yiling without the aid of Bichen but he manages and immediately heads towards the approximate location Wen Ning had mentioned.

"Wei Ying," He breathes softly when he spots his beloved shopping for some supplies. He hadn't anticipated finding him so soon but is grateful nonetheless.

Wei Ying is dressed like a peasant and blends in well with the people around him but Wangji can recognize him anywhere.

Dressed discreetly and without his forehead ribbon, Wangji too is inconspicuous. He moves swiftly towards Wei Ying and catches his elbow, eyeing the people in red and white uniform at the far end of the street warily.

"Come." He whispers.

Wei Ying doesn't say a word, just paying the vendor and following Wangji into a more discreet location.

Wangji looks at his beloved's face, drinking in his bright silver eyes and sharp features with acute relief.

"Wei Ying, you… you look well." Strangely so, for someone who has just given up his Golden Core.

Hope stirs in his chest and Wangji reaches for Wei Ying's wrist.

His love's lips quirk in amusement, but Wangji ignores him, focusing on sending his spiritual energy through Wei Ying's meridians.

A strong core pulses in response.

"Wei Ying," Something bright and triumphant burns in his chest and he resists the urge to pull his beloved into a crushing embrace.

He would've supported Wei Ying's decision to give up his core and cultivate with resentful energy again. He knew it wasn't evil or harmful now.

But Wei Ying chose himself. His beloved had finally chosen to save himself.

"Aiya, Lan Zhan!" Wei Ying laughs, "If you keep looking at me like that, I'll do something quite shameless and embarra-"

Wangji kisses him.

He cups that precious face, pulls him close, and slides his lips over soft flesh in a tender expression of love he can't contain.

Wei Ying chose himself.

---

Jiang Cheng returns from his trip to the mountain with a thunderous expression on his face.

He disregards Lan Zhan and grabs Wei Wuxian's arm in a tough grip, dragging him away from the crowded tea house. Lan Zhan follows without a word, his expression frosty and eyes on Jiang Cheng.

"Your Grandmaster," He spits, "Is just as useless and worthless as you. All she could do is repair my meridians! My body was too damaged for anything else, she said!"

Wei Wuxian knows Wen Qing wrote the note they left by Jiang Cheng's side but he hadn't known what she had written.

It must've been reasonably convincing for Jiang Cheng to be convinced.

"That's-" He searches his mind to find words that would be appropriately sympathetic. Saying 'that's too bad' would be just rubbing salt on an open wound.

He may dislike Jiang Cheng, but some of the childhood affection still lingers. He doesn't wish to hurt his former shidi.

"I didn't know," He says finally, his heart throbbing in sympathy at Jiang Cheng's devastated expression. He briefly reconsiders his decision but Lan Zhan shifts discreetly by his side and Wei Wuxian remembers why he made that decision in the first place.

Jiang Cheng had been unworthy of the gift he had been given.

His shidi snarls and turns to Lan Zhan, "What are you doing here, Lan er-gonzi," He snarls, "Coming to triumph in our misery?"

Lan Zhan looks at him flatly, "I came to assist Wei Ying."

"Came to assist Wei Ying," Jiang Cheng mocks, his expression tight and furious, "Well, you're welcome to take him away! There's nothing left for him to destroy. Everything is gone. He invited the wrath of the Wens on our heads to protect you and that led to the destruction of my sect. He couldn't even repay that debt. His Grandmaster failed."

Jiang Cheng turns hate-filled eyes towards him, "You are a curse. My father should have left you to rot on the streets!"

"Jiang Wanyin!" Lan Zhan warns but Wei Wuxian places a hand on the Second Jade's arm to halt him.

"I'm taking you to Meishan to be with shijie." Wei Wuxian says calmly, "And then I'll go join the war efforts."

Jiang Cheng sneers before turning his head away, silent.

Wei Wuxian does as he says. He leaves Jiang Cheng in Jiang Yanli's care and heads to Qinghe with Lan Zhan. The war goes differently than before. He manages to kill Wen Zhuliu and Wen Chao early, which gives them a big morale boost. But that's the only thing that goes their way for a long time.

"I'm going to use it," He tells Lan Zhan once, when the scales tip dangerously in the Wen's favor.

Lan Zhan studies him before nodding gracefully, "I will help."

There's no way to avoid using his cultivation method, not if he wants to keep people safe. He's more careful and restrained this time and he doesn't create the Yīn Hǔ Fú. But Mo Dao is Mo Dao. It attracts disapproval from people regardless.

Wei Wuxian doesn't care and Lan Zhan stays by his side without paying any heed to the grumblings of his clan. He goes to sleep every night with Lan Zhan's guqin notes in his ear and meditates every morning with the Cleansing purging the Resentful Energy from his body.

With a powerful and active Golden Core, Wei Wuxian can't use Mo Dao liberally without risking Qi Deviation. But he uses enough to help them win the war.

Wei Wuxian successfully retakes Lotus Pier and Yunmeng from the Wens. Jiang Cheng's hatred doesn't diminish and even Jiang Yanli grows distant after a while. Jiang Cheng's suffering and downfall hardens something in his soft shijie.

Wei Wuxian accepts that consequence quietly.

He hands Lotus Pier back to Jiang Cheng and stays on the front lines, leaving most of the freshly recruited disciples behind to protect his former martial siblings. When the war ends, argues to keep the Wen cultivators in better conditions. He makes sure everyone knows how much the Jiangs owe the Wen siblings, and saves the children and elderly.

With Jiang Cheng out of the Cultivation World and Wei Wuxian's reputation as a war hero, saving the Wen remnants is easier than it had been before.

---

Everyone is baffled when Jiang Wanyin names a new head disciple and Wei Wuxian never returns to Yunmeng. People gossip, sect leaders question, and new Jiang disciple flounder.

Neither Jiang Wanyin nor Wei Wuxian confirms it but it is clear to everyone that the Jiang Sect has, foolishly, kicked out its most powerful disciple. YunmengJiang remains wealthy but the Sect's influence diminishes significantly once Wei Wuxian leaves.

Other Sects, big and small, scramble to find Wei Wuxian, ready to offer him a place and get a powerful cultivator in their ranks. Letters pour in promising wealth and prestige.

Wei Wuxian ignores them all and settles in Cloud Recesses. He's content to teach a group of eye-wide Lan ducklings now to deal with resentful energy and limit the risk of Qi Deviation. He takes them on Nighthunts, teaches them real-life lessons, encourages creativity, and becomes a well-loved senior.

New YunmengJiang disciples aren't near as strong as their predecessors without someone to teach them properly.

People gossip and speculate as the years pass. They hint that he is wrong to leave his former sect behind but he doesn't care.

Wei Wuxian has Lan Zhan and Lan Sizhui. Wen Qing and Wen Ning live happily in a small farming village not far from Gusu. They intervene before Jin Guangyao kills Nie Mingjue. They save Lan Xichen from heartache. Jin Ling is born and has both of his parents.

That's all he needs to be happy.

YunmengJiang is no longer his responsibility.

#short prompts #time travel au #wei wuxian #lan wangji #no golden core transfer #anti jiang cheng

[whetstonefires]

[flashfic for the Venom au concept I sketched out in reaction to this post, only literally none of the content i discussed actually appears in this oneshot on account of wwx is not yet a level 10 friend who can unlock lwj's tragic backstory lmao]

“So why do you have three names?” Wei Wuxian asked in an undertone, edging carefully along the narrow steel rail. It was, he was pretty sure, intended to have lighting installed on it. It would probably hold his weight.

Custom, said the extraordinarily polite and bitchy voice in his head, in a tone that exemplified both traits. Also, none of them is real.

“What, we’re this close already and I don’t get to know your real name?”

It remains undecided.

“Oh, it’s like that then.” If his new best friend didn’t know yet, then obviously he couldn’t share. Maybe he’d get to contribute to the process!

Wei Wuxian reached the end of the railing and judged the next jump. It wasn’t happening. “You’re going to have to take this one.”

Are you sure.

“I’m sure I can’t clear a twenty-foot gap, yes. Please feel free to take control of my arms.”

Lan Zhan waited what Wei Wuxian was coming to think of as the customary second to see if he changed his mind, and then Wei Wuxian’s right arm flew up, went black, and seemed to stretch into a sort of inky cord that spanned the gap, wrapped itself around the far gantry, and tugged.

Because he’d only handed over his arms Wei Wuxian had to kick off from the railing himself, and curve his body into the swing as they swooped through the air, though he was pretty sure Lan Zhan would have reinforced his shoulders against wrenching if he’d just flopped on the line like a fish.

The Lan Zhan string shortened as they swung, so that by the time they got there it took only a simple extremely powerful tug with his possessed coal-black arms to send them flipping onto the top of the steel grating, where Wei Wuxian stuck the landing with proper smooth force absorption well enough that it neither killed his knees nor made a noise. Only the fact that they were, in fact, engaged in escaping from evil mad scientists together kept him from whooping.

“I could get used to this,” he said.

There was an unmistakable sense of recoiling inside him. Mark your words. It had the sound of a cold warning.

“I’m not going to get more possessed by getting a kick out of it, am I?” Wei Wuxian asked, rhetorically, as he went back to creeping forward toward those big outflow vents he’d seen on the way in. “And I can tell I don’t have to worry about you overstaying your welcome!” He didn’t think his body was that bad, he liked being inside it personally, but Lan Zhan probably had his own particular tastes, which was perfectly fair. This was a partnership of convenience, that was all.

“Ah, and obviously I’m not going to try to hold you prisoner like the guys I’m springing you from,” he added, feeling like an idiot. Just because right now Lan Zhan was the one in a position to take advantage of him, if he’d wanted, which he was clearly far too principled a goo monster to do, didn’t mean Lan Zhan wasn’t coming right off the experience of humans trying to exploit him for his abilities!

Of course he’d be uncomfortable with Wei Wuxian being too enthusiastic about him.

Which was why it would be in bad taste to ask if there even was a way for the host to take advantage in this situation, because his curiosity was purely academic but it wouldn’t sound that way! Could Lan Zhan see his thoughts in enough detail to know he was wondering? Hey, Lan Zhan! Can you hear me? Hey!

Do not shout. Yes, I can hear. But I was not listening until you called for me.

Oh. Thanks Lan Zhan.

…he probably could get used to that part of the brain roommate situation, too, but not quite as easily as the cool stunts part. Not that it mattered! Because this was just for now. Lan Zhan had been very clear when this rescue mission kicked off.

They made it to the big vents, which were more than large enough to escape though but had big fanblades installed in them, whirring away. “Hm,” said Wei Wuxian, squinting at them. “Do you want to keep trying to be subtle, or smash our way out and run for it?”

The more of a lead we have against pursuit, the better.

“Okay then, let me apply all my engineering knowhow to shutting those fans down.”

It wasn’t actually very hard—he tracked down the wiring of their power supply, and since he had no tools on him got Lan Zhan to form a black scalpel blade at the end of one fingertip, which he used to carve open the insulation around the cable. Unfortunately, when he asked it turned out Lan Zhan’s body was conductive, although not particularly sensitive to being electrocuted, so he had to get clever about uncoupling and destroying things rather than just dramatically slashing the wires apart.

“Okay, I am picturing the correct wrench-head very clearly,” he said a few minutes later, crouching at the corner of the vent cover and squinting at the bolts. “That’s it, good!” Lan Zhan would probably be offended to be called the world’s best multitool, but Wei Wuxian was considering saying it anyway.

He felt Lan Zhan stiffen in his head.

Ware!

“Found you!” called that terrifying security guy, sounding really delighted about it but also being very stupid, because even without Lan Zhan’s warning he might have given Wei Wuxian time to duck under the spikes of his taser.

Based on previous experience, in approximately one more second the guy would unleash the sound cannon and then follow it up with his handgun. They’d made it through the first encounter with Lan Zhan withdrawn from Wei Wuxian’s nervous system into a sort of puddle in his arms, so the noise wouldn’t incapacitate the both of them, but he couldn’t dodge multiple bullets, especially in the confines of this giant ventilation duct, nor could he parkour them out through the heavy vent cover and down the sheer mountain face outside.

LanZhantakethewheel! Wei Wuxian thought at his absolute maximum brain volume, both to avoid telling security guy what was happening—he was still climbing up through the access hatch but he’d have the sound thing out after he climbed another rung and had his pistol in hand already, and while Wei Wuxian could try to charge away from the exit point to tackle the giggling bastard and take his gun, which had slightly better than a snowball’s chance in hell of working and Lan Zhan could fix anything that didn’t actually kill him so getting shot in like a limb was acceptable, there was probably backup right down the ladder and they needed to get out—and because thought was faster than speech. YesImeanitnotimefordoublecheckGO!

The alien coiled inside him took the invitation by the hilt for the first time, and surged up and out and all around. Even as the black closed over Wei Wuxian’s face, just in time to absorb an incoming bullet, his right arm lashed out in a black cord again and struck Security Guy full across the face, just as he got his hand on the sound cannon strung across his back.

Wei Wuxian had no control over any part of his body, but he got the full haptic feedback of the asshole’s nose breaking as he was thrown backward down the vent, and that was all the time they needed to turn, and shatter the barrier over the ventilation outlet, and leap to freedom.

…did you make me taller? Wei Wuxian asked from deep inside his own brain, as they skittered on obsidian claws down the rockface. He was pretty sure the bar of the vent grille that had been even with their face as Lan Zhan broke it was higher up than the one he’d been level with when he’d stood there a minute ago.

Lan Zhan leapt away from the mountain still forty feet off the ground and snagged a hold on the thick limb of a spreading beech tree. “Extra reach is useful,” he said primly, with Wei Wuxian’s mouth, as though he didn’t have infinitely extensible string-fingers available whenever, as he proceeded to leap away from the creepy underground research bunker from tree to tree like an enormous squirrel forged from pure darkness.

Lan Zhan’s version of his voice was about two octaves deeper and appallingly posh. He wouldn’t have to display a molecule of black goo to get Wei Wuxian examined for possession, just speak to absolutely anyone he knew.

“I won’t, then,” Lan Zhan stated, in that placid decided way devoid of concern or any attempt at reassurance, which had so charmed Wei Wuxian when they first made contact. It sounded even funnier out loud.

And hey! Jailbreak success!

#made it a modern au for reasons like #the existence of vitamin supplements to allow for semi-vegetarian klyntar #and spock jokes #proceeded to include neither lol #xue yang got his nose broken #fanfic #my fic #mdzs #venom #symbiote lwj #that post hits different now that the movie dropped and we know #that the venom chickens scene was actually a shitty divorce sequence #in contrast to the cql incoherent marriage proposal #wwx is wrong he's absolutely lwj's type it's just #that triggers a lot of Issues! #instead of internalized homophobia and parent issues it's #internalized species-ism??? #and parent issues #klyntar qingheng-jun is Worse #but canonically the spawn of intense symbiote bonds inherit psych stuff from the host as well so lan zhan and lan xichen have #they got issues #like they're *literally* the embodiment of an abusive relationship #hoc est meum

[ouyangzizhensdad]

I don’t know if you’ve spoken about this yet, but if you haven’t, can you please address the way the fandom (but mostly JC apologists) blame WWX for JYL’s death? Because every single time I see a post of “well of course JC was still angry. WWX was the one directly responsible for JYL dying”, I want to pull my hair out. JYL chose to come see her brother. She chose to protect him. She died doing what she’s always done since she was a child. Protecting her brothers. Did she want to leave her child an orphan? Of course not! But did she want her brother to die thinking that she hated him for a loss she knew he must have been devastated and hating himself for? No she did not! And yet, certain parts of the fandom stay stripping JYL of her agency and the choices she made, just to protect JC, and I want to scream. And they don’t do it in a “JC is looking for an excuse to justify his anger at WWX, rather than self-reflect and admit to his very human flaws of anger and jealousy and resentment,” way, but a “JC has never done any wrong. WWX is the devil’s incarnate and a sister-murderer” way, and gods it’s so tiring.

Sorry for the long ask.

Hi anon,

I think there are ways to talk about jyl's death without denying the character her agency while acknowledging that the conditions for her death would not have happened without some of wwx's decisions (as well as those of other characters and the cultivation world more largely). In short, decisions don't happen in a vacuum, and I think the novel does highlight this, such as when wwx tells lwj that guidao is the only path for him under the circumstances to protect the wen remnants, regardless of all the risks it entails (and, as we know, how this brought him to his end). Of course, other people and their own decisions also have a lot to do with creating the context that brings jyl’s to her untimely death.

I don’t think it’s a bad thing at all, character-wise and narrative-wise, for jc to blame wwx for jyl’s death. The way people deal with grief is often illogical, and they can blame themselves and others for things that are outside of their control; like someone blaming themselves because another person got into a car accident driving to see them, for instance. But to treat that perception, that character-rooted interpretation of the events, as if it were the whole, objective truth of what took place is.... not it.

I think people also seem to fail to recognise that jyl was trying to de-escalate the situation, instead making her motivations only about wwx. We as readers already knew due to the soup incident and the phoenix mountain incident that jyl is someone who is able to calm wwx down when no one else can. I do think that while she did want to protect wwx, she also wanted to prevent others from being harmed as well. In that sense, jyl is trying to accomplish the same thing as lwj at Buyetian--protect wwx and protect others.

[...] right now, Wei Wuxian had already lost his judgement. He was already half-mad, half-unconscious. All evil was being augmented by him. He felt that everyone loathed him and he loathed everyone as well. He would not be scared no matter who came at him. It would not matter no matter who came at him. It was all the same anyway.

Suddenly, amid the battle noises, Wei Wuxian heard a faint voice.

“A-Xian!” the voice shouted.

Like a bucket of ice-cold water, the voice doused the vile flames raging within his heart.

[...]

“A-Xian,” she sighed, “you… you should stop, first. Don’t, don’t…”

“Yes, I’ll stop,” Wei Wuxian hurried.

He took up Chenqing, placed it by his lips, and began to play. He only managed to steady his mind with great effort. This time, the corpses finally stopped ignoring his commands. One after another, strange gurgles echoed in their throats as if they were complaining. Slowly, they bent down.

I don’t think it’s unfair however to point out that not only would jyl not have been there in the first place if wwx had not been, but that she gets hurt by a corpse wwx is no longer able to control and then dies choosing to take a hit that was meant for wwx in revenge for a man he had just killed. Calling wwx a sister-murderer is a very weird take under the circumstances, because it could not have been less his intent or wishes on top of him not actually harming jyl directly, but it is fair to say that if wwx had not lost control of his modao, it is likely that jyl would still be alive, same if he had not decided while filled with dark emotions and resentment to confront the sects the way he did. And we see how these events have changed him after his rebirth, for instance when he escapes from Jinlin Tai and makes a comment about how it was best not try to defend himself or confront them, but to flee, regroup, strategise and see what could be done. It’s hard not see how what happened at Buyetian has not informing this “lesson” he learned.

#wwx #jyl #mdzs meta