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call-me-maggie13 · 9 months

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Year One

JC was supposed to be home hours ago. Ava’s trying not to cry, she’s coated in flour and the cake is a rock hard, inedible brick. Diana crawls into the kitchen, babbling and blowing raspberries at Ava.

"Hi, hi! Hey, baby!" Ava wipes her hands on the dishrag and picks her up. "Are you having a good day?"

Diana babbles at her then sticks her tongue out and giggles, Ava smiles and sticks her tongue out in response.

The door opens, thumps loudly against the wall and JC stumbles into the house. He brings the smell of a sticky bar floor with him, rocking and stumbling like a drunken sailor during a hurricane.

"Oh, hey," JC slurs, offering Ava a peace sign and a nod. Ava sighs and walks away, lowering Diana into her playpen and handing her a shape sorting toy.

"You’re late." She wants to grab him by the shoulders and shake him, she settles for pushing past him. "Did you get a cake?"

"I had a shit day at work, thanks for asking, Ava." She can hear him rolling his eyes.

"Did you bring a cake or not, JC?"

"Fuck," he groans, leaning against the doorframe and running his hand through his hair. He looks exhausted, bags under his bloodshot eyes. Ava finds she doesn’t much care.

"It’s your daughter’s birthday and you didn’t get her a cake? Did you at least get her a present? Something to unwrap?"

He doesn’t answer, stuffs his hands deep into his pockets and cuts his eyes away. His jaw is clenched, the line hard and strong beneath the muscle, his throat bobs as he swallows.

"No?" She shakes her head and fights back the tears in her eyes. "No. Of course not, why would you?"

"I’m going to change." He turns and stalks down the hall, slamming the bedroom door behind him. It rattles the pictures on the wall and makes Diana flinch.

"Yeah. Great talk, JC." She calls after him, lifting a now screaming Diana from the playpen and trying to calm her. JC yells something back at her, but she can’t tell what he said over Diana’s cries. It doesn’t matter, she realizes, because she doesn’t care what excuses he has anymore.

They don’t talk the rest of the evening. JC brings her one of Diana’s stuffed animals wrapped in a plastic grocery sack — it’s not like she’ll remember, he had said and Ava had wanted to punch him — and they spend supper pretending they’re not angry.

JC plays a game on his phone in bed while Ava puts Diana to sleep, tinny electronic explosions and rapid gunfire echoing through the room until he groans and drops the phone on his chest.

"Happy birthday, Diana." Ava whispers when she puts her down, stroking her cheek and kissing her forehead. She sits on the edge of the bed and watches her sleep, wishing she’d been able to give her a better birthday.

"I can’t believe it’s been a year," she murmurs when she joins JC in bed, the man scoffing and rolling his eyes. "What? Say it, JC. Just fucking say it."

"Worst year of my life. Is that better? Did that make you feel better?" He raises his voice and Ava checks that Diana isn’t woken by it. JC sees and stands, stomps into the hall and motions for Ava to follow.

"You can’t fucking say that." Ava whisper-yells when they get to the living room. JC laughs, cold and hard and angry.

"I told you." He shakes his head and runs a hand through his hair before pointing an accusatory finger in Ava’s face, she flinches and steps back. He drops his hand with a sigh. "I told you I didn’t want to keep it."

"Keep it? It? Do you mean her, JC? She’s a year old. You’ve had a year."

"I didn’t want a baby." He’s quiet, his voice breathy and soft. "I told you when you found out."

"But you stayed!" Ava doesn’t mean to yell, holding her breath and waiting to see if she woke Diana.

"What was I supposed to do, Ava? Leave you pregnant and homeless? Abandon you with a newborn on the side of the street? I never wanted this. Don’t make me the bad guy."

"You don’t have to stay."

"I don’t want to!" She flinches at his booming voice. "Is that what you want to hear, Ava? I. Don’t. Want. To. Stay."

Diana cries, loud and howling and Ava wants to join her. She wants the ground to open up and swallow her.

"Then don’t." Saltwater races down her cheeks, drips from her chin to the floor and JC’s face falls. "I’ll find a job and an apartment. You don’t have to stay."

"Ava…" his fingers brush her elbow and she jerks away, dodges past him to get to Diana.

"No. It’s fine. You don’t want a baby. I’ll figure it out."

Neither says anything for a long time, they stare at each other in silence until JC sighs and shakes his head.

"I’ll sleep out here."

Ava nods and turns away, starting toward where Diana is wailing.

"Ava, wait." She stops and turns to him, eyebrows raised and breath held. He smiles sadly and nods at her, swallowing before continuing. "I just… thank you. I’m sorry."

Ava cries herself to sleep, apologizing for being a terrible mother to Diana who’s asleep on her chest. She’d ruined Diana’s first birthday, she’s going to grow up resenting Ava. What kind of mother ruins her baby’s first birthday?

JC helps Ava move that same weekend, leaving her with everything she could ever possibly need to raise a baby. He sends double what she asks for child support, but they don’t see each other again. She keeps up with him on social media, watches as he travels the world and chases girls and spends far too many weekends too drunk to remember his name.

He looks happy.

Year Two

"Is it supposed to look like that?" Lilith points at the lump on the breakfast bar. Beatrice frowns at her and wipes her hands down the front of her apron. She’s covered in flour and there are eggshells at her feet.

"Lilith, leave them alone," Camila grabs her by the elbow and drags her back to where they’re playing with Diana, who’s dressed in a yellow princess gown and tiara. Diana waves at Beatrice with a smile before returning to her tea party.

Beatrice waves back, even though Diana’s already looking away, before turning to Ava.

"I don’t think it looks that bad." Ava laughs at her, scrunching her nose up at the unforgiving lump that’s supposed to be Diana’s birthday cake. They’d tried, but maybe they weren’t meant to bake.

"It’s terrible, Bea." Ava tucks herself into Beatrice’s chest, arms winding around her waist and holding her in place. Beatrice drops her chin on the top of her head and squeezes her close.

"If we give her the dollhouse last, she might forget about the cake," Beatrice whispers with a chuckle, pulling away when Ava giggles and pushes her shoulder playfully.

"We could ask Shannon and Mary to pick one up?" The doorbell chimes and Ava groans. Another birthday without a cake. What kind of mother can’t bake a birthday cake?

Cheers of greetings drift down the hallway, bouncing and bubbling and bright. Diana abandons the tea party to sprint full speed into Shannon’s legs, nearly knocking them out from under her and sending her crumpling into the ground.

"What’s box?" Diana asks, reaching towards the box in Mary’s hands. Shannon and Mary share a grin before Mary drops to a knee next to Diana.

"It’s your cake, wanna see?"

"I told you we were making a cake, Shannon." Beatrice chides before Mary opens the box to reveal a unicorn shaped cake. Diana squeals and bounces on her toes, looking like she’s seriously debating throttling herself into the cake when Shannon scoops her up.

"I know, but you can’t bake and I guessed Ava wouldn’t be able to either, sorry." She isn’t. She’s laughing, but Beatrice doesn’t care because Diana has a cake now.

Ava catches her eye and Beatrice shakes her head minutely, glancing towards the kitchen. Ava nods and excuses herself to dump the cake into the trash. She barely manages to shut the lid before Mary joins her. Ava pretends to be wiping the counters off, like she didn’t just throw away her and Beatrice’s second pitiful attempt at a cake, and Mary laughs.

"Look, I’ve known Bea since she was fourteen. She can’t bake. It’s sad and it’s hilarious. But you?" Mary sets the cake on the counter and digs through a drawer for birthday candles. "I have to say, I did want to give you the benefit of the doubt. Shannon said you don’t have baking hands though, whatever that means."

"I did not!" Shannon bumps their shoulders before setting Diana down and watching her race back to her tea party. "What I said was that you don’t look like you know how to make a cake."

"That’s not true at all, she said you don’t have baking hands. I swear by it!"

"How does someone who knows how to make a cake look?" Beatrice asks, taking her sister by the shoulders and giving her a soft shake.

"Well, like me. Of course. And Camila and Lilith."

"Lilith can’t bake."

"Well, she looks like she can."

"Lilith started a kitchen fire. She was boiling water and started a fire. Lilith started a fire with water, Shannon." Ava giggles at Beatrice’s frustration, taking her hand and squeezing her fingers three times. Beatrice repeats the pattern.

"Beatrice! I was fifteen! Let it go!" Lilith calls from the kitchen table, earning a scolding remark from Diana about how princesses don’t yell. Lilith’s cheeks burn red and she apologizes, offering Diana a toy cookie as repentance. Diana accepts it and hugs her.

"Nannon, Mary come!" Diana asks, waving them over. Mary grins and drags Shannon out of the room by her hand, offering Diana a curtsy before taking the offered plastic tea cup and seat.

Ava leans onto the counter and watches them complimenting the tea and fake pastries, watches Diana glow with every word, her heart swelling until she fears it might burst. She has to take a deep breath to ease the pressure in her lungs.

"Are you alright?" Beatrice murmurs, pressing into the counter beside Ava. Their shoulders brush, burning and alight where their skin touches. Beatrice is watching her, grounding and pulling Ava from her head. Ava is quiet, watching. Waiting. Waiting for this to fall apart.

This can’t be real. Last year, Ava had cried herself to sleep on Diana’s birthday, after spending most of it alone — just the two of them. Last year, Ava had ruined Diana’s birthday and she’d failed her as a mother. Last year, Ava had thought she would never be able to give Diana a birthday she’d love.

She thought she had to do it all on her own.

But here she is. One year after the worst day of her life. Surrounded by the people who love her. Diana is bright and bubbly and loved. She is so deeply loved that it makes Ava’s eyes burn. It’s all Ava has ever wanted for her baby, people who love without conditions. Love that never gets taken away or asks for anything in return.

Diana has that now.

"Yeah, I’m just - " Ava shrugs, she doesn’t know how to put it into words. Beatrice doesn’t ask her to, she smiles and accepts when Ava curls into her chest, hearts beating in chorus. "Is this real? Are you real?"

"I believe so, yes." She buries her head in Ava’s neck and squeezes her tighter, her warm breath making Ava shiver.

"Ayo, lovebirds!" Something thumps off Ava’s shoulder and bounces to the floor. "Come get your kid, she’s trying to make me eat worm sandwiches!"

"You just threw a plastic croissant at Ava, I think you deserve a few worm sandwiches." Diana giggles at Beatrice’s response, bouncing in her seat.

"I was aiming for your head," Mary mutters, sticking her tongue out at Diana when she tries to put a toy sandwich on her plate.

"Hey! How about we do presents?" Shannon twists in her seat to talk to Beatrice, singsongy and grinning mischievously. "She’s going to love ours. And you are going to hate it."

Shannon lifts Diana from the seat, swooping her around the room making airplane noises. Diana squeals and flaps her arms all the way to the living room. Ava kisses Beatrice’s cheek softly before untangling and leading her out of the room.

Diana is sat in Lilith’s lap with a present wrapped in paper with cartoon animals, she’s pointing to them and naming them wrong. She points to a pig and tells Lilith it’s a dog, a rabbit she calls a cow, a horse she calls a bear. She’s giggling maniacally with each incorrect name.

It takes a little prompting to get her to abandon the game, but eventually they convince her to tear the paper open.

It’s a toy keyboard.

"Wow! That’s - " Ava’s voice is high and tight. "That’s just - wow!"

Diana smiles and pushes it off her lap, sliding to the ground and scampering to the big box in front of Mary. She rips the paper down and wraps the strip around her like a cape, spinning before abandoning it to tear another strip and repeating the action. Gradually, she tears her way through the wrapping and unveils a baby drum set.

"Oh my god, they’re in cahoots." Beatrice’s palm rests on Ava’s bouncing knee, stilling the movement.

"In cahoots? What are you seventy?" Ava curls her fingers over the top of Beatrice’s.

"It’s payback for all the times you stole my clothes." Shannon smirks and wiggles her eyebrows, already ripping through the tape to unpack it.

"Did you guys talk about what you were getting her? Did I miss a meeting? My gift is not within the theme." Camila offers Diana a small gift bag. Diana yanks the tissue paper out and throws it in the air, dancing under it as it falls. She does it again and again until she grows bored. She attempts to climb into the bag before Camila tells her there’s still something in it.

Ava hopes Camila didn’t get her a recorder or a tambourine because she’s not sure she’ll survive if she did.

It is a watercolor set. Oh, thank god.

"Is it?" Diana holds it out to Beatrice, climbing into her lap and listening while she explains it to her.

"Here, let me show you." She takes the cup of water from beside her and slides to the floor with Diana, flipping a paper over and dipping the brush in the water before swirling it in a blue and swiping it across the page. Diana gasps, eyes wide when she turns to Beatrice.

"Wanna try?" Beatrice offers the paintbrush to her and Diana nods, taking it from her like it’s the most precious thing she’s ever received. She jabs it into the paper and turns to Beatrice with a grin, Beatrice nods and Diana does it again, pausing and listening intently while Beatrice explains how to change colors.

Diana makes a picture for everyone, each a blob of colors swirling together until they’re almost a brownish grey. Beatrice asks Diana twice if she wants to open her present from Ava and her. Diana turns her down both times, completely focused on her painting.

Shannon and Mary spend the next hour and a half arguing over how to put the drum set together, Lilith sets up the keyboard and starts to plunk out a melody that earns a cursory glance from Diana before she returns to her art.

Slowly, their guests trickle out, leaving for their own homes with their paintings from Diana. Lilith elects to go with Camila in an attempt to get out of doing the dishes she’d promised to wash. Beatrice doesn’t quite mind.

It isn’t until Diana falls asleep on her paintbrush that Ava even mentions leaving, almost like it hadn’t occurred to her that she wasn’t home.

"Stay. She’s already asleep, you can take the guest room." Beatrice wipes the watercolor from Diana’s face with a damp cloth, careful not to wake her. "I’ll help you move everything to yours in the morning, yeah?"

Ava pretends she doesn’t immediately want to accept the offer, wiggling her shoulders in nonexistent silent debate. When she agrees, Beatrice lights up like a candle, eagerly leading Ava to the guest room where she tucks Diana in carefully. She kisses Diana’s forehead and whispers something Ava can’t make out but it warms her chest regardless.

Ava helps Beatrice clear away the mess of the party. Beatrice smiles at her over the breakfast bar, stacking dishes in the sink while Ava wipes the table. When Ava attempts to start washing the dirty dishes, Beatrice drags her out of the kitchen.

"Lilith can do them when she gets home or in the morning, you sit. Relax. This is a big day for you too." Beatrice takes her place at Ava’s side on the couch.

"Is that so?" Ava taunts, one eyebrow raised when Beatrice turns to her.

"Of course. You made an entire person, Ava. And you kept her alive for two years. That’s not a small thing. You literally created an entire human being two years ago. You made a person that didn’t exist before. Do you not think that’s awe-inspiring?" There’s a light in her words that burns deep beneath Ava’s skin, her voice soft and high while Ava watches her.

Ava wants to deny it. She’s not certain she’s deserving of the way Beatrice is looking at her right now. She’s never thought about it like that, never really considered anything about her pregnancy miraculous or awe-inspiring. It was always something that just was. It was neither good nor bad, it was something that happened to her more than it was anything else.

She loves Diana with everything she has and is, but there are moments that she wonders if her daughter will hate her for the things Ava can’t give her.

"Whether or not you believe me, Ava, you did something miraculous." Ava bites her lip to hide how it trembles, cuts her eyes away so Beatrice can’t see the tears gathering. Beatrice hooks a finger under Ava’s chin and turns her face back slowly, traces the line of her jaw with her thumb. "That deserves celebration too."

Ava doesn’t have the words to respond, she doubts she could formulate a coherent sentence right now even if she tried. Beatrice doesn’t try to force an explanation for the quiet tears that she gathers beneath the pads of her thumbs. She waits, gentle and quiet, while Ava takes a shuddering breath and nods at her.

"So?"

"So." Beatrice waits with the ghost of a smile, eyes sparkling.

"How are we to celebrate?" Ava tries to smile even though her voice trembles and cracks.

"How do you wish to celebrate?" Ava shrugs and Beatrice chuckles. "We can do anything you’d like. As long as it is within the apartment, I don’t think Arson would be a great babysitter."

Arson lifts his head at his name, blinks at her sleepily and flicks his tail. He stretches and bounces across the coffee table, carefully avoiding Diana’s drying artwork, and brushes against Ava. He purrs loudly and curls into her lap, nudging her hand until she scratches behind his ears.

"Can we just - can we be here?" When Ava extends her hand to Beatrice, she accepts it with a nod and presses a soft kiss on the back of it.

Neither talks for a while, Beatrice traces shapes into the inside of Ava’s wrist, little hearts and stars and swirls. She leaves goosebumps in her wake. Beatrice can feel Ava’s heart racing beneath her touch, notices the way she shivers when Beatrice lightly scratches her forearm.

There’s a moment, when Ava’s breath stutters and she glances at Beatrice’s lips and she thinks she might kiss her. Beatrice wants her to kiss her.

But she doesn’t.

Because Diana comes stumbling down the hall dragging her blanket with her thumb tucked between her teeth. She pushes Arson out of Ava’s lap and takes his place, pulling him back once she’s settled. She squeezes him against her chest and he makes a dissenting meow but he doesn’t fight back.

"Happy birthday," Diana whispers to no one in particular around her thumb, dropping her head against Ava’s shoulder. She’s so cute, smiling dopily at Beatrice who brushes her sleep tousled hair out of her face.

"Did you have a good birthday, patinho?" Diana nods and crawls from Ava’s lap to Beatrice’s, dragging poor Arson with her. "Why don’t we let the cat go? Yes?"

Diana pouts but she relinquishes him anyways. He darts out from her embrace only to return a moment later, kneading on Diana’s blanket across her legs. She pats his head and smiles when he nuzzles against her.

Maybe, in another lifetime, this wouldn’t be so difficult. This wouldn’t be so terrifying. Maybe this would be easy and natural and wouldn’t make Ava feel like she’s going to throw up. Maybe it would be as simple as breathing.

But it isn’t now. Because Ava would rather pretend they’re just friends than risk having to explain to Diana why Beatrice isn’t around anymore.

She’s already had one parent walk out on her, Ava doesn’t want to be the reason she loses another.

Find more here!

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admirableadmiranda · 8 months

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Hii, there is some thing I wanted to ask your opinion about

About that time Jiang Cheng sacrificed himself to save Wei Wuxian from Wen cultivators, I say it in the most non-bashing way possible but do you think there's a chance his sacrifice was pointless?

What happens is: JC distracted the Wens from unsuspecting WWX, causing them to chase and then capture him, which results in him getting whipped and more importantly him losing his golden core. When WWX can't find him where he left him he makes haste and finds him the same day, runs and gets help from Wen Ning. I hope I got all that correct.

Now, is it possible that if JC never saw anything and WWX was captured instead... he would scare Wen Chao again and be thrown in the Burial Mounds? Because sadly WWX does get captured by the Wens in the end anyway and it was after the core removal, which was a surgery he experienced awake for 2 days, and he was basically helpless and unable to protect himself and yet he tricked them into leaving him alive. Obviously, experiencing hell on earth for 3 months isn't the nicest but still, he survived.

So, if he got captured with a golden core could something similar happen? Even being thrown into BM would be better with a golden core and he could have escaped earlier.

At the same time, while he had his GC he could fight back and make things worse for himself but I don't know if after everything we've seen of him I believe in that. It's established he's a genius, a quick thinker and will manipulate his opponents if he has to so I believe he would survive.

Could it be possible or are there flaws in my reasoning? I'm very interested in your opinion, I think it's fun speculating about what ifs and such but if it's something you have no interest in don't worry about replying too! No pressure!

Hi! It was interesting to read your thoughts, I think I understand what you’re asking, but I think there’s a different way to phrase it, which is that if Jiang Cheng isn’t captured by the Wen, none of the novel shakes up the same way because none of the tangles of the plot can shake out the same way and I’d say you’d actually get a much worse ending for everyone involved.

Because Jiang Cheng gets captured, Wei Wuxian runs back to find him and runs into Wen Ning. What with the two of them attempting to avoid Wen detection, the odds of Wen Ning being able to find them, let alone talk to them long enough to re-earn Wei Wuxian’s trust drop to almost nothing. They are too wounded, reasonably distrustful and in some sort of shape to actually stop and listen at the time and it was only because Wei Wuxian truly had no more options that he slowed down even then.

If Jiang Cheng doesn’t get captured, then they don’t go to Yiling with Wen Ning, the odds there are either that they go to Meishan to find Jiang Yanli or one of the other great clans for some sort of aid since it’s just the two of them. Wen Chao therefore can’t run into Wei Wuxian, Wei Wuxian isn’t in worse enough shape to be captured and he never gets thrown in the burial mounds.

And in all honesty… they probably lose the war. Jiang Cheng wouldn’t degrade as far because he didn’t hit the full breaking point of having his core crushed in the end and that sort of debt with Wei Wuxian in his head never comes to exist and their relationship would be a little better, but the odds without Wei Wuxian’s guidao are very bad, what with the Lan having been attacked and not in as good shape and the Jiang having been all but wiped out, leaving only the Jin at full fighting strength since the Nie have been skirmishing them for a while. And given how Wei Wuxian was being the front line of the Jiang border for a while, without the power of him being a whole army by himself, at best it ends in a war where everyone’s pretty much lost in the end and none of the clans are in a state to do anything, or the Wen under Wen Ruohan win and everyone we’ve grown to love gets executed for fighting against them.

So in the end, as awful as it sounds, Jiang Cheng’s actions do lead to the war being won because without Wei Wuxian’s guidao, they weren’t going to win, but they do doom Wei Wuxian in the process. Which really just goes to show how well MXTX thought out the whole process that as harmful as JC’s sacrifice is, it is very, very hard to change things in such a way as to where it does not happen and they still win the war.

As for your question, I think in the unlikely odds that he does still end up in the burial mounds, it’s possible that Wei Wuxian could invent his guidao to get out and have the golden core to supplement, but the problem there is that having a golden core doesn’t change Wei Wuxian’s fate in the novel. People are scared of him for having the power that he has, even if Jiang Cheng doesn’t have the serious grudge of losing his core, his relationship with Wei Wuxian isn’t strong enough to withstand people poking at his sore spots, so I guess in a sense it’s pointless because there’s too many elements by the time lotus pier falls to change that.

I don’t know, mdzs is a very hard novel to change without losing the good elements and even small actions have seemingly wide spread consequences. Just look at how many things are impacted by Su She’s desire to be seen as cool and impressive both in past and present. It’s very difficult to determine which things are pointless or could be changed to improve things in the past because it’s just so tightly layered.

#mdzs #wei wuxian #canon jiang cheng #asks #anon #anon asks

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deepestbluesky · 1 year

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WIP WORD SEARCH GAME

tagged by @aiyexayen! who prompted the words:

tear | soft | red | under | hold

alright let’s see what i can dig up in my wips... my own arbitrary rules are that i can only do one word per fic and starting with most recently worked on wip first and then working my way back until i find something

tear showed up in “batfam lan au” (cql/mdzs au, and this is NOT recent lol apparently i don’t use tear at all haha)

"Hey, Jingyi! Come say hi!" A-Yuan calls, and then flinches when [lwj] gives him a look from the other end of the couch. Jingyi comes tearing in, though, skidding to a stop behind A-Yuan.

"Hi Wei-qianbei!" Jingyi says enthusiastically. "A-Yuan and I found a bird nest today! I think he took a picture, you should get him to show you."

Xian-gege is laughing. "Yes, I heard! This must be an extremely exciting bird's nest, for both of you to tell me about it so quickly. Jingyi, I hope you know it's your responsibility to make sure A-Yuan gets into trouble."

soft showed up in “jc+lwj political marriage” (cql au)

"Let your husband speak for himself," she sneers. "Or is he just another person that you'll have to take the blame for?"

It's not like Jiang Cheng expected this visit to go well, but Jiang Cheng had hoped that Wei Wuxian's absence would soften his mother's scorn. It didn't work.

Lan Wangji is as still as Jiang Cheng has ever seen him, back even straighter than usual and the only movement Jiang Cheng can detect is his hand, gripping Bichen so hard it almost seems like it will snap.

red showed up in “vex/zahra lovm” (legend of vox machina)

“Have you been worrying about me all this time?” Zahra sounds curious and a little indulgent.

Vex sits down. “No. I’d forgotten, except occasionally when I caught a glimpse of red horns or found myself eyeing up a pretty stranger across a bar.” Or… other times, but she isn’t going to admit that quite yet.

under showed up in “cass omegaverse au” (batfam, this was WEIRDLY hard to find?? lots of understands and undercovers and almost no actual unders)

“Neither are you,” Steph snaps back. “She’s an adult, she can make her own choices. Cass, I have something I need your help with. It’s, uh,” Steph lowers her gaze, tries to sound embarrassed. “A personal thing? I kind of need your help specifically.” It’s far from the first time that Steph has pulled this move, and it’s almost true this time. Cass still hasn’t dealt with her heat well, but Steph will be damned if she lets her punish herself for it under the guise of “training”. As if Cass, of all people, needs more training fighting.

hold showed up in “han ying genders” (tyk/shl mashup)

The thing was, Han Ying knew that he was nursing an embarrassing amount of feelings for Zhou Zishu. He knew that, he had known that for quite some time now.

As much as he hated to think about it, it was probably obvious to others. Almost certainly obvious to Zhou Zishu, who, as befitted his role, was uncannily good at sniffing out exactly the secrets no one wished him to know. It was a recurring debate among newer Tian Chuang members: whether it was cruel or kind of him to clearly hold on to such information but not reveal it unless it became relevant. Han Ying thought it was neither. It was a tool.

this was very fun!!! i’ll tag @minnarr and @fractured-ice if you would like to play (i would also tag antique-forvalaka and rainsfalling except tumblr won’t let me, which is fair if you have done that on purpose but does regularly confuse me lol), and also anybody else who sees this and wants to play! your words are (including variants):

moment | see | blue | friend | until

#tag games #my writing or whatever?#idk who neds tags #me. when i try to find this later. but alas.#more varied fandoms than i was expecting!!!!

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ase-trollplays · 1 year

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It Happened So Suddenly (Part one)

Part two

Part three

It’s one sweep ago, back when you were thirteen sweeps, and you’re live streaming an indie horror game based on the backrooms. You’re pretty sure your neighbors hate you a little bit more every time you scream. It’s not quite as scary as you’re acting, but your stream persona demands you to be Extra. Well, that and the game is legitimately scary. It’s surprisingly well-made!

Suddenly chat starts going ballistic.

JC: dUUde, behind yoUU!

DS: wtf is happening

LK: *h sh!t *h sh!t *h sh!t

SO: SOM3ON3 JUST CAM3 IN YOUR WINDOW!! LOOK B3HIND YOU!

UH: ur fukkin dead lol

FB: BEHIND YOU BEHIND YOU BEHIND YOU

You raise an eyebrow at the chat and laugh. This isn’t the first time they’ve spammed bullshit to scare you before.

“Haha, reeeal funny, troopers! ‘Let’s all freak Jupiter out because he’s playing a horror game!’ You need to stop playing with my heart like this! You wanna see me have a cardiac on stream!?” you joke just before you wind up screeching from a jumpscare and promptly die ingame.

You expect everyone to laugh at you for failing again, but they’re still panicking about something behind you. They’re really committing to the bit tonight. You shrug and reload your save.

“Alright, now you’re just spammi--”

You hear a noise behind you and freeze as your blood turns to ice in your veins. Your heart, which was already racing, is now pounding in your ears as you turn around and see a large cloaked figure standing in front of the window. The two of you are locked in eye contact for an uncomfortably long time. Well, you assume there’s eye contact; you can’t see their face with the hood on their cloak over their head.

You stand up from your chair trembling with one hand out in preparation to summon your pistol from your strife deck.

“I-I’m recording right now. You try to pull any shit, and over a million people will report your ass. So if you’re smart, you’ll go back out the window and stay out,” you tell them while trying to sound like you’re in control of the situation. You do feel like you have an upper hand here, and you step slightly to the side so more of them gets caught on camera.

“Turn off the camera. I won’t explain myself until it’s off,” the other troll, a woman judging by the sound of her voice, states with complete calmness. You actually find yourself much more worried by that.

"The camera stays on; if you try anything, I need witnesses that can report you. I'll mute my mic, but that's it." You’re trying to stay calm, but you’re seriously debating whether you should fight or run. You briefly turn your back to them to mute your microphone despite everyone in chat frantically begging you not to and calling you an idiot for doing it.

To your surprise, she pulls down her hood. She’s a few castes below you at olive, so if it does come down to a fight you can probably overpower her with highblood strength alone. .

“I got separated from my clan and need a place to hide from the drones. Your hive was the closest thing I could get into. I have no intention of doing anything else besides hiding here until my clan comes back,” she explains. You glance back at the chat. Most people are telling you to cull her, unsurprisingly. Anyone else in your shoes probably would have attacked by now.

You can hear your Great Dane Dad pawing at the door and whining to be let inside despite you generally not allowing him into your recording room. You can let your lusus in to attack her, but you don’t know what kind of weapons she might have. You turn back to her and relax slightly and release a breath you didn’t realize you were holding.

“Uh huh, yeah, and why should I believe you instead of opening the door and having my lusus chase you out?” you ask her and take a couple of steps toward the door. She simply stares at you still completely calm and sighs.

“I really have no home. I’m a nomad and would basically be homeless w/o my clan, which is absent at the moment, having been scattered by the drones.”

You pause when she mentions her clan being scattered by drones. You’re pretty sure it’s not drone season right now. God, you hope it’s not drone season. You don’t have any emergency quad hookups planned.

This is probably going to be the stupidest thing you’ve ever done. Even stupider than allocating a weapon you’ve never used to your primary strife specibus when you were a kid.

“Okay, you can stay, but only for a couple of night, and my lusus is going to be watching your every move.”

#things to read #Hyleem Merker #aka the story of how Hyleem and Yarrow became moirails #Stones And Stereos

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leatherbookmark · 2 years

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thoughts, 4/?, or: hogs, sumo moves, and japanese pheasants

1. jin guangyao, in the line about “the lanling jin sect being haughty and irrational slash overbearing”, is then described as “in addition to that, he’s acting arbitrarily”. acting arbitrarily or “based on one’s own decisions and impulses, perhaps even randomly, rather than reasonably consulting it with others”. then, “he never listens to other people’s opinions”

...is this about the fucking watchtowers. jin guangyao Bad! we told him we don’t want to pay money so that the peasants can feel safer, but he kept on insisting! HOW DARE HE

incredible.

2. nope! found something even more incredible! and that is: jin guangyao as the one who partakes in all sorts of indulgences and creates an oppressive atmosphere, misusing his authority! he was the one who started this! honest to god wwx doesn’t personally care for jgy that much, aside for his little “oh same hat” feeling, but if i heard this i would honestly be tempted to just leave

3. the exr translation sort of mixed it around, which isn’t bad per se, and the sentence looks like this: “He’s probably made up his mind to get rid of us all, now that he feels threatened by the expanding forces of the other sects. He’s scared that he’ll be overthrown like the Wen Sect, right?”

but in japanese, it’s

奴はここ数年で各家が勢力を広げ、ますます実力を伸ばしているのを見て、きっと危機感を覚え始めたんだ。

(Seeing all the sects increasing their influence and gaining strength must have reminded him what it’s like to feel threatened!)

かつての岐山温氏のように転覆させられるのを恐れて、毒を食らわば皿までと、いっそのこと我々を一網打尽にするつもりだったんだろう

(He must be scared that we’re going to overthrow him like we did with the old Qishan Wen sect! He’s not the one to half-ass shenanigans In for a penny, in for a pound, I bet he’s planning to get rid of us all in one sweep!)

now, the half-ass shenanigans in for a penny part, in chinese it’s 一不做二不休, or literally “The first option is don’t do it, second -- don’t stop”, or -- i didn’t know this one, i love it -- “to go the whole hog”, “in for a penny, in for a pound”.

HOWEVER, the japanese saying is my favourite, because 毒を食らわば皿まで literally means “if you’ve eaten poison, lick the plate”. ISN’T IT CHARMING.

(a-yao will lick the plate, yes. a-yao will try to eat the plate and fight you with the sharp pieces. fuck you.)

4. we’re at the part where jc says “oh well nevermind, please sit down everyone, i’ll bring them back at a later time”. well in japanese he says 後で私が彼らを呼び戻しに行ってまいります, in which jc says he will go + humbly come back (行って+まいります) to call them back home, 呼び戻し (yobimodoshi). the dictionary form of the verb is yobimodosu, but in this grammatical construction, it takes a “yobimodoshi” form. i didn’t know this word, so i looked it up, and being in a hurry i didn’t think and looked up “yobimodoshi” instead of “yobimodosu”, but then as the page loaded i figured ah, it’s probably just a noun form of the verb

well,

not quite, but i imagine jiang cheng wouldn’t mind doing that to them as well, while he’s at it.

5. ohh, it seems japanese has a term similar to the chinese 没错 (mei cuo) that sometimes gets translated as “that’s correct” or “that’s right” and it pisses me off. when someone gives an answer, “that’s right/correct” is a good translation, but in other situations, not so much (ie. wwx saying he hasn’t heard of xxc, and lwj saying “that’s correct” in the official english translation). well, in japanese it’s 正解, commonly used in the exact same way, ie. “the answer is b” “that’s right!”.

but when wwx finds some food stalls still open, he says あいつらと一緒に食べなくて正解だったな, which, despite having the word, doesn’t mean “it was correct of us not to eat with them”, but rather “it’s a good thing we didn’t!” (because this is a much cooler option)

(obligatory whine whine, when you translate, don’t just shove the word from one language to the other! make sure it makes sense and sounds like something a real person would saaaay)

6. ah i see the japanese edition wanted to preserve the dialogue line but also to put it in the narration for some reason, which resulted in

“now you don’t need to pay either”, lan wangji said.

“hahahahahahahahaha!”, wei wuxian laughed at his words

like. yes. i figured that’s what happened when you gave me all the hahahahahahas, thanks

7. aughhh and now i’m really sad. when wwx says “aw, you came too late, lan zhan! it was so lively and you weren’t here to see it” and i know lwj says “it’s not too late” and it’s this little line that cheers you up somehow, because lwj doesn’t care about bustling streets, he can enjoy himself in a desert as long as wwx is with him, but... wwx remembers it all! he really does! his memory is rather bad in terms of like, other cultivators who weren’t in his closest circle of friends or important in some other ways, but that was his childhood, he went there everyday for years, and now it’s just... gone. and yes, it was probably gone when he was alive, too, after the war -- but now he sees the lotus pier that’s been rebuilt so beautifully, one might hope the night food stalls will be there as well, with different people, but still... but they aren’t. even though the yunmeng jiang sect is thriving, the past can’t be changed, even in such a trivial aspect as food stalls.

8. huh, the “don’t speak while you eat” rule is 食うに語らず and the word used for eating, 食う (kuu), is one i normally associate with rough masculine speech. i looked it up a little, and it seems this kind of language is used in rules/sayings/Important Words, such as this blog post about confucius’ idea on how a gentleman should behave or this wiki page about the ‘he who does not work neither shall he eat’ aphorism. the more you know!

9. that being said, wangxian are really cute and just... good, right now. i don’t know why it moved me so much, but it did! wwx asks lwj why he doesn’t say anything, does that mean he doesn’t like the flatbread? but lwj quotes the lan rule, so wwx says oh okay, i won’t talk to you then! and explains his earlier thinking, saying he wanted to eat it for lwj if he didn’t like it. it’s just... so... normal? i don’t know how to say it, but in such a little moment you can see that wwx, despite being unaware of lwj’s affection for him, does care for him and wants him to be comfortable. and he shows it so simply, so plainly. ach, dreamy sigh.

10. this is interesting to no one but while the pheasants wwx used to catch in chinese are common pheasants 山鸡 shānjī, or 雉鸡 zhìjī (not the same tones, no), in japanese it’s a 雉 kiji, the green pheasant/japanese pheasant, the representative and the name-giver of the galliformes order in japanese, or 雉目. according to wiki, there are theories both about the green pheasant being an independant species and about it being a subspecies of the common pheasant. furthermore, the green pheasant outcompetes the common pheasant in a natural habitat, and so attempts to introduce the latter in japan have failed.

the green pheasant, though, is endemic to japan, so wwx hunting them is Interesting. “but why can’t wwx hunt common pheasants then?”, you ask. (you don’t, but ssh.) well, because their japanese name is literally “korean pheasant”, it doesn’t really fit, does it.

MOVING ON

11. kgfjgkjfhgkfsjg shijie in japanese is 師姉 shishi... c-cute

12. ”When he wrapped his arms around the trunk, warmth surged up in his eyes; as he looked down, his vision appeared blurry. Lan Wangji was standing right under the tree, his head raised to look at him” hey. hey, mxtx, who allowed you

#youarenotimmunetothetreeclimbingscene

12. i thought it’s a little weird but charming that when lwj catches wwx in exr translation, he “shoots forward just in time to catch wwx -- or, one might say, to be caught by wwx”. i was like, oh, so lwj catches wwx, but also wwx wraps his arms around lwj, so in a way he “catches” him too?

however

(lan wangji) すかさず一歩前に踏み出した彼の腕に、魏無羡はまっすぐに受け止められる。あるいは、彼の胸に飛び込んだとも言えよう。

i would like to commit a crime to illustrate what i mean, so from the top

without a moment’s delay + stepped one step forward + into his arms* + wei wuxian + directly + was caught.

or, one could say, fell into his arms.

* more or less; what’s happening in this sentence is closer to “into the arms of lwj who stepped one step forward” but the crime is heinous as it is, so

so, i think we can finish here. if you’re wondering what page are we on, uh, 32. yes, reading would take me incomparably less time if i didn’t look up pheasants or hogs every time i encounter one, but I WOULDN’T BE MYSELF THEN, OK.

you can see how it’s hard to translate to both keep it smooth and preserve the romantic imagery. “wei wuxian was caught by him, or rather, fell right into his arms” sounds bad, the passive form makes it awkward, but if you decide to make wwx active, it’s... “wwx fell into his arms, or rather, ✨fell into his arms✨“. you could also “immediately he stepped forward and caught wei wuxian, or rather: wei wuxian fell right into his arms” but does it get the thing across? i don’t know, my loves, it’s almost 4am.

#liveshrimping

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grewlikefancyflowers · 3 years

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‘Intrusion’ extra, what it says about Jiang Cheng’s role in MDZS, and how Wei Wuxian looks back on his past with the Jiangs

I said back in like June that I’d write meta on this and then put it off for a few months, oops! Here we are, finally!

First things first, both the ‘Intrusion’ and ‘Iron Hook’ extras are not just silly romps featuring married wangxian and fanservice, as some people seem to believe?? I’d say both of them clear up pretty neatly, for those that are still confused, points of contention in the fandom - such as Wei Wuxian’s heroism, and Jiang Cheng’s role as an antagonist. Specifically, if his actions were justified or sympathetic, and if he was punished unfairly by the narrative.

The first and most obvious statement made in ‘Intrusion’ is the parallel between the story of Young Master Qin (YMQ), and JC and WWX’s youths. I’ll summarise quickly the relationship between YMQ and the fierce corpse that has been bothering him.

They grew up together in YMQ’s grandmother’s house, since they were a similar age they played together

The fierce corpse (FC) was a servant in YMQ’s grandmother’s household

The grandmother took a liking to FC, and he was in some ways treated less like a servant, and more like a member of their clan, and was allowed to attend school with the other boys

YMQ specifically notes that his grandmother used to praise FC a lot

YMQ describes a story at the school in which someone answered a question, and FC incorrectly claimed he answered wrongly. When FC pushed the matter, the other students became annoyed and drove him out of the class

It is very heavily implied (to the point where ‘implied’ isn’t really the right word) that ‘someone’ was YMQ, that he had actually answered the question wrongly, and that he felt shown up by someone he felt should be below him proving so, and that he led the other boys in driving FC away

FC left the school and didn’t attend again

I probably don’t need to lay out where the similarities are…?

In response to YMQ’s story, Wei Wuxian (rhetorically) says this - ‘“Regarding the solution to that problem, in the end, who was right and who was wrong?”’

Aside from just exposing the kind of person YMQ is, in reference to a story wherein ‘FC’ is clearly a stand in for WWX, and YMQ for JC, MXTX’s decision to highlight specifically that it was FC that had the right solution to the problem is not insignificant. Nor how she specifies that he was the instigator of FC’s expulsion, while hiding behind the mob mentality of the other students.

Another interesting detail is that YMQ deliberately obscures the truth throughout the chapter, because despite his refusal to acknowledge it, possibly even to himself, he knows that between him and FC he is the one in the wrong. Similarly, JC obscures the truth about WWX, to the wider cultivation world during the period of WWX’s ‘downfall,’ (Ch.73) but also, more importantly, to JL after WWX’s death. JL believes that WWX ordered WN to kill both JZX and JYL (Ch.42). Of course, if JC did not have a guilty conscience, he would not feel it necessary to lie about these things. Or rather, convince himself that they are true, as he still blames WWX for the deaths of his parents’ and JYL and the end of the story (Ch.102).

YMQ’s attitude about servants is bad enough that it upsets Sizhui quite a lot, and shortly after their interaction with him, we have this exchange between LSZ and Wangxian.

‘Lan SiZhui thought about it, “I do not know either.” He responded with honesty, “He never did anything truly evil, but perhaps I find it difficult to deal with people of such character. I do not particularly like the tone with which he mentioned the word ‘servant’…”

He paused at this point. Wei WuXian was oblivious to it, “Typical, typical. Most of the people in this world looks down upon servants. Servants sometimes even look down upon themselves… Why are you two looking at me like that?”

Halfway through, he interrupted, not knowing whether to laugh or frown, “Stop—is there a misunderstanding here? How could I compare? Lotus Pier isn’t the usual household, after all. I’ve beaten Jiang Cheng up way more times than he’s ever beaten me!”

Lan WangJi didn’t say anything, but instead gave him a silent hug. Wei WuXian couldn’t help but smiled. He hugged back, stroking Lan WangJi’s back a couple of times. Lan SiZhui coughed. Seeing how confident Wei WuXian looked, not at all sensitive to the word ‘servant’, he was finally at ease.’

There’s a lot going on here...

Firstly, WWX definitely does not think badly of himself because his father was a servant, because WWX doesn’t think badly of servants. It is also true that Lotus Pier wasn’t so strict with hierarchy as other sects (Ch.51, Ch.71), and that WWX and JC sometimes playfully fought on equal terms in their youths. But WWX was also very clearly treated badly in the Jiang household due to his status, notably by YZY (Ch.51, Ch.56, Ch.57, Lotus Seed Pod extra), JC does also repeatedly enact real physical violence against WWX, that he simply brushes off (Ch.56, Ch.59). You could argue that the example from Ch.59 is under extenuating circumstances and therefore should not count, but the same excuse cannot apply to Ch.56.

Knowing this, Lan Wangji’s response to this, to hug WWX, does not feel casual at all. Instead it comes across as if he is offering comfort, which WWX accepts.

Finally, this exchange finishes with ‘Seeing how confident Wei WuXian looked, not at all sensitive to the word ‘servant’, he [LSZ] was finally at ease.’ To me, this seems to suggest that the entire purpose of this was not at all reader directed exposition about how good and equal the Jiang household was, but rather a WWX-typical veneer meant to appease LSZ’s concerns (taking a moment to quietly fangirl about how good MXTX is at ‘show, don’t tell’). Also suggests that WWX is aware on some level that he was treated badly, and LWJ is too - presumably, it is something that they have spoken about.

Continuing with the story of YMQ and FC…

YMQ returns to his home village as an adult wearing a jade pendant that belonged to his now deceased grandmother

FC asks to borrow it, YMQ allows it, thinking FC is missing his grandmother

FC returns telling him he has lost the pendant, YMQ thinks he has actually sold it, and has him beaten, it is very heavily implied that he breaks his leg

In the present, YMQ admits that he doesn’t actually think FC would have gone so far as to sell something of his grandmother’s

This is reflective of JC’s attitude towards WWX throughout his life, with regards to how he frequently comes to the worst conclusions about him, without having any real evidence, and lashes out at him for it. I spoke about this a bit before here. Most notable example is probably during their conversation in the demon-slaughtering cave wherein they discuss WWX’s defection, and JC decides that WWX is acting carelessly and playing the hero, though admits himself that WWX is following the Jiang Sect’s teachings, then declares WWX an enemy of the cultivation world behind his back.

The ambiguity of FC’s death, and YMQ’s role in it discussed in part 3 of the extra is referencing WWX’s own death, and JC’s role in it. In the end the conclusion is that whether or not YMQ was responsible, FC did not hold him to it.

In the end, FC is content to simply throw some fruit, and punch YMQ in the face in vengeance for his death, and even goes out of his way to avoid hurting LSZ when he is fighting him. He returns the jade pendant, that he really did lose and not steal, and goes back to resting peacefully.

WWX, LWJ, and LSZ’s views on YMQ’s fate are as follows

‘Lan WangJi gently tugged Lil’ Apple’s rein, his voice calm, “He was fortunate.”

Wei WuXian agreed, “Indeed. Young Master Qin has got quite the luck.”

After some time, Lan SiZhui finally couldn’t hold his words back any longer. Sincerely, he spoke, “But I still feel that only one punch might be a bit insufficient…”’

JC didn’t even get a punch to the face. I’d say he got off very lightly indeed.

#mdzs #mdzs meta #jiang cheng #jc wank #wei wuxian

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robininthelabyrinth · 3 years

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Prompt: what if jc was lxc's age (and jyl maybe 2 or 3 years older) and wwx was lwj's/nhs' age when he was brought to lotus pier? (Or anything that involves a much bigger age gap bw the jiang sibs and wwx - where wwx is babey)

Untamed

“You know what,” Jiang Cheng said to his sister, who looked at him. “I’ve changed my mind. I’m not marrying a woman.”

Jiang Yanli’s lips started twitching uncontrollably and she hid her smile behind her sleeve. “Oh?”

“Nope. I’m going to marry Chifeng-zun.”

“On the basis of…?”

“If you take two adult men in charge of two Great Sects,” Jiang Cheng said, doing his utmost best to keep a straight face, “with all the power we can generate between us, we might – maybe – have a chance at disciplining our baby brothers.”

Jiang Yanli burst out laughing.

“There, there. It’s all right,” he said, grinning, reaching out to pat her on the shoulder. “You can join us if you’d like. There’s enough room in Qinghe for two wives.”

“We are not both running away to Qinghe,” she said, giggling. “A-Cheng!”

“What? I think it’s a great idea. If our parents want us back, they can negotiate with Chifeng-zun for it – may they have more luck than they had with the whole medicinal herb debacle.”

“A-Cheng, I am officially tabling this idea,” Jiang Yanli said, still snorting. “Older sibling privilege.”

“I let you out of the womb first as a matter of courtesy,” Jiang Cheng sniffed. “And now you use it against me? A-Li, how could you?”

“Call me jiejie! It doesn’t matter how much older, a few shichen or a few years, older is still older.”

“You probably elbowed me with those sharp pointy things you have on your arms. Weapons of war.”

“Older is older!” she sang. “Now tell me, what did A-Xian do this time?”

“Would you like it in chronological order, or in order of severity? I can also group it by theme, if you prefer.”

“Oh no,” Jiang Yanli said, covering her eyes. “Oh no.”

“And the chief-most theme,” Jiang Cheng said, continuing anyway, “is still called Lan Wangji.”

“Oh no!”

“He has the worst crush,” Jiang Cheng said, shaking his head with endless amusement. “And he just – refuses to admit it. ‘Nooooo, shixiong, we’re just friends, he can’t even stand me most of the time, he’s always trying to get me in trouble, but sometimes he lets me sit next to him and spend time with him and he’s so handsome and I really just want to make him laugh –’”

“We have,” Jiang Yanli said thoughtfully, “raised an idiot.”

“He was fine when we got him,” Jiang Cheng disagreed. “We have spoiled an idiot.”

“This is true. Maybe we should go form a mutual complaining society with Chifeng-zun; isn’t his little brother also an idiot?”

“Oh, you have no idea,” Jiang Cheng said. “Worse: they’ve teamed up. Nie Huaisang buys Wei Wuxian porn now.”

“Oh no…”

“In return for help cheating on his tests!”

“Oh no!”

“So that’s why I’m going to marry Chifeng-zun,” Jiang Cheng concluded. “Our parents may be disappointed by my decision, but with our powers combined, we might be able to save the world from our respective younger idiots.”

“Maybe,” she said, and shook her head. “A-Cheng – about our parents…”

Jiang Cheng shook his head as well, echoing her action but more in denial. It wasn’t anyone’s fault that she took after their father and he took after their mother, that she was born a shichen prior to midnight and he a shichen after and their personalities completely different as a result; it was no one’s fault that their parents didn’t get along, with their mother disdaining what she perceived as Jiang Yanli’s passiveness and lack of passion and their father despising Jiang Cheng’ prickly temper and difficulty communicating his affection without scolding.

It certainly wasn’t Wei Wuxian’s fault for being younger and more brilliant, talented at everything he did and with just the sort of personality their father liked best – the combination of his former best friend and the girl he’d once thought of marrying – and that he’d always made that preference very clear to everyone, even to their mother who often worried that her husband would dispossess her children in favor of his foundling and who lashed out at everyone in response.

That had hurt – hurt a lot, even, and Jiang Cheng was soft and sensitive underneath all his defensive layers, but any time he got angry over it he would look at Wei Wuxian, their little A-Xian, baby Xianxian, who adored his older siblings more than anything and was adored in return, and he forced himself to get over it. He was old enough, by the time Wei Wuxian arrived, to know to whom the blame really belonged.

“I spoke with Nie Huaisang while I was at the Cloud Recesses,” Jiang Cheng said in an undertone, one reserved just for his sister. “He’s asked me to pass along a message to his brother, the next time I go night-hunting, about the whole debacle – he’s so terribly apologetic, you understand, he couldn’t wait for the post – if we get to Qinghe by tomorrow, Chifeng-zun will be able to get to Gusu in time to intervene before our father does something wretched like cancel your engagement and take A-Xian home early from his studies.”

“The engagement I wouldn’t mind,” she remarked. “If Jin Zixuan feels so strongly about it that he’d get into a fistfight with A-Xian, it’s better not to marry, no matter what our mother might think. But on no account is A-Xian to be sent home early! He needs his education!”

Unsaid was everything else he needed, things he could get better at the Cloud Recesses than anywhere else.

“Then we go?”

“We go,” she agreed. Between the two of them, Jiang Cheng had more talent at cultivation, but she was steadier, even in her overall mediocrity: when the two of them flew on a sword together, they could make it much further and faster than anyone expected.

Qinghe wasn’t really close enough for a quick jaunt – they flew all night without stopping – but Chifeng-zun was amendable to their scheme, jumping at once onto his saber and making his way straight to Gusu. A waste of spiritual energy all around, really, but far faster than their father would move, with his Sect Leader’s dignity and retinue, rushing to the Cloud Recesses to save his precious little Wei Wuxian from having any connections in life that weren’t to the Jiang sect, and the Jiang sect alone.

And never mind how much he needed those connections: needed to have friends his own age, needed to have more time with that crush of his, needed independence and freedom and everything the Jiang sect supposedly stood for - needed for them to support him and act as the foundation beneath his feet, rather than the chains tying him down to earth.

Chifeng-zun – who was only a few years older than they were – was really a very understanding person, getting the problem at once and immediately agreeing with their view on things. Perhaps there really was something to be said about the difference in generations…

“Let me show you to rooms where you can rest,” Chifeng-zun’s aide said, a slender young man with a polite smile on his face as he saluted. “I’ll arrange for refreshments as well.”

“We hate to trouble you, but in all honesty you are a lifesaver,” Jiang Yanli said to him warmly, and he unexpectedly flushed red at the cheeks. “A-Cheng, let’s follow this handsome young man and rest a while before we return to the Lotus Pier.”

The young man was blushing.

“What’s your name?” Jiang Cheng asked, and the blush faded away at once as the man paled a little: it would be one he expected them to recognize, then, and not in a good way.

“This one is Meng Yao,” he said, and saluted again even though he’d already saluted once before, and Jiang Yanli’s eyes flickered to Jiang Cheng’s very briefly before she caught his arms and raised him up.

“I’ve heard of you. Smart and talented enough to get Chifeng-zun’s attention, even so far as becoming his personal deputy - you must be brilliant. Truly, you deserve a better father,” she told him, and he stared up at her, dumbstruck.

“Don’t mind her,” Jiang Cheng said. “She’s trying out this new thing in which she says everything she feels without thinking first.”

She elbowed him. “And isn’t it your fault?” she asked snappishly. “You’re the one who needs to speak your mind more; I’m just modeling good behavior!”

If she’d been older than him – really older, rather than just a few shichen – maybe she would have held her tongue more and played the role of the peacekeeper, trying to protect him from his father’s indifference the way she had tried to when they were both younger, just as he had tried to distract his mother from her with his hard-fought accomplishments. It wasn’t until they had little Wei Wuxian to spoil and care for, a joint task that required both of their attention, that they realized that splitting their forces like that was pointless and self-defeating: it wasn’t actually helping that Jiang Yanli suppressed so much of her spirit until she felt like little more than a reflective mirror with no content, nor that Jiang Cheng nearly worked himself to death trying to prove that he was worthy of his father’s love and respect that he would never receive, and it never would.

So they stopped.

They were trying very hard to stop, anyway.

“You’re very kind,” Meng Yao murmured, and led them to their rooms.

The moment he closed the door behind him, Jiang Yanli turned to Jiang Cheng and said, “I’ve changed my mind about your plan – we can run away to Qinghe. You marry Chifeng-zun, and I’ll marry that charming boy out there.”

There was an audible thudding sound from the corridor outside, as if someone had accidentally walked into a wall, and they both grinned at each other.

“Mother would kill you,” he warned her in an undertone.

“And being married to someone who disdains me enough to fight over my worthlessness in public wouldn’t?” she retorted, smiling even though her expression was tinged with pain: if she had one ambition in life, it was to never become their mother. “The marriage agreement might have been forged by our mothers, but the text of it says ‘the Jin sect leader’s son to the Jiang sect leader’s daughter’. Why can’t I marry him?”

“He hasn’t been acknowledged.”

“Only technically. Everyone knows he’s the real deal, or else his father wouldn’t have made such a fuss about it.”

“But –”

“Anyway, he must be a good man, or Chifeng-zun wouldn’t have promoted him.”

“I don’t know about that,” Jiang Cheng said. “Chifeng-zun doesn’t have the sense of self-preservation the heavens bestowed on a lemming.”

There was a vaguely audible snort from outside their door. It seemed Meng Yao, at least, had the good sense not to leave guests in his house unattended, and no discrimination against the very useful business of listening at doors.

He also had a sense of humor, which was good given Jiang Yanli’s newfound ambitions in his regard.

“Yes, well, I wasn’t saying I’d elope with him tomorrow or anything,” she sniffed, eyes dancing. “Give him some time to prove himself to me.”

Jiang Cheng couldn’t help but smile back. “That’s true,” he said, raising his voice a little. “At Chifeng-zun’s side, he’ll be able to make a name for himself until the whispers all say that his father was an idiot for keeping him away.”

“And if even that doesn’t work, I’ll marry him in and make him help me run the Jiang sect,” she said cheerfully. “Who needs Lanling Jin?”

“Wait, since when are you inheriting the Jiang sect?”

“I’m older! And anyway, aren’t you marrying Chifeng-zun? That means you’ll be away helping run his sect, and that leaves an opening at home for me.”

“…huh. Good point.”

“Maybe you can just swap places with Meng Yao,” she said, starting to giggle again. “And we can all see how long it takes anyone to notice…”

“Our parents might not,” Jiang Cheng said dryly. “But Chifeng-zun would. If only because I have my sights set on his bed, and I don’t think Meng Yao does.”

“You don’t know that; everyone wants Chifeng-zun. Maybe you have competition.”

“Better to have competition than be oblivious. Do you want to hear the whole story about A-Xian and Lan Wangji’s tragic mutual pining disaster? Xichen-xiong told me all the details he’s been leaving out of his letters.”

“Tell me everything!”

#mdzs #jiang cheng #jiang yanli #meng yao #nie mingjue #my fic #my fics #jiang sect twins #crazycat27 #mingcheng #meng yao/jiang yanli

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vrishchikawrites · 3 years

Note

You know what would be interesting?

JC never lost his golden Core.

And Wei Wuxian did not lose his.

But he still gets dropped into the Burial Mounds. And like I dunno how, but he comes out of there having mastered the new form of cultivation.

Jiang Cheng acts like a dick that's par for cannon. And this Wei Wuxian who has survived the burial Mounds with his golden core intact has no time for his drama.

He definitely confesses to Lan Wangji o ce he is out of the burial mounds.

Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji in the Sunshot campain would be brilliant. Cultivating and * *wink wink nudge nudge* * dual cultivating.

JC is seething with jelousy. He has everything. The gentry name, the money and sect leadership but the whole world is only speaking about Wei Wuxian and his like awesome cultivation. Both the sword style and with his flute.

Wen Qing and Wen Ning- Wen Ning convinces his sister to join the war. Wen Ning wants to be on Wei Wuxian's side.

What would JC throw a tantrum over if he doesn't have anything to throw a tantrum over??

Like for example he blames Wei Wuxian for Lotus Pier burning. Obviously it's not his mistake. But one day he is yelling at Wei Wuxian about it and sect leader someone maybe XiChen, maybe Sect leader Nie. Whoever. Comes and like defends Wei Wuxian.

What would he do then faced with the facts? Cling all the more to his warped world view? Or apologize?

It will be interesting to see.

You don't have to take this prompt if it's too messy or whatever. I love you and your writing.

Also, thank you for choosing to write my previous prompt.

XOXO.

(this is a little similar to trapped and patient but also quite different. Hope you like it! The format is a bit different because this is a lot of time to cover in a short prompt)

When he stumbles out of the Burial Mounds, Wei Wuxian is stunned. He can't believe he made it, that he was able to survive it, without his sword.

Wei Wuxian walks forward shakily, one unsteady step at a time, putting distance between him and that wretched place.

He feels weak, drained, devastated in small ways.

But he is free.

---

Yiling offers shelter in unexpected ways. He's able to hide in a temple to recover. His condition is wretched enough that he's mistaken for a beggar. A few people take pity on him and offer fruits and buns.

It takes him a week.

That's all it takes for him to recover.

Wei Wuxian washes all traces of Burial Mounds off him, soaks in icy river water for hours on end until he feels purified and reforged.

Now, he's ready for revenge.

---

Wei Wuxian has only tried his cultivation method on the dead. He has used it to repel the fierce corpses, fierce ghosts, and spirits soaked in resentment.

When he tests the method on the Wens, it proves to be even more effective. They scramble like mindless beasts, driven by fear and confusion. The sounds of his Dizi pierce the air and induce madness.

He watches from a distance, indifferent as the Wens turn on each other, swinging their swords, shouting at phantoms, all sense and intellect gone.

He turns away.

---

Jiang Cheng's arms wrap around him and the fog around his mind starts to slowly recede. He stands stiffly, blinking a little before looking beyond his martial brother.

Lan Zhan is there, staring at him with wide eyes. There's so much open concern on his usually stoic face that Wei Wuxian wants to turn away.

"Wei Ying,"

It is only then, under the power of that golden gaze, that his fugue state dissipates. He sees Lan Zhan step forward, almost reaching out only to pull back at the last moment.

Jiang Cheng pushes him away and punches his shoulder, "Where have you been? How dare you abandon us and just frolic off somewhere?"

Wei Wuxian swalllows with difficulty and answers their questions with his habitual dismissive charm.

But that honest expression of open concern on Lan Zhan's beautiful face doesn't leave.

He meets those golden eyes and feels something shift within him.

Shaking his head, he dismisses the feeling. There's no time for sentimental reunions. He turns his attention towards Wen Chao, unsheathes his sword, and kills him in one clean strike.

There. Done.

---

The war is already in full swing by the time he joins it. His martial brother and Lan Zhan are quick to take him to Qinghe, not even letting him ride his own sword.

"Wei-gongzi, I'm happy to see you safe," Lan Xichen greets, running a discreet eye over him. The older Lan brother's concern is well hidden but Wei Wuxian senses it nevertheless.

The man looks like he's just about ready to banish him to the healing halls.

He opens his mouth to reassure Lan Xichen but Nie Mingjue intervenes, slapping his back solidly, "I hear you're responsible for the devastation at Yiling. Good work!"

Wei Wuxian smiles brightly, hoping to banish that increasingly familiar look from Lan Zhan's face. "Thank you, Nie-zongzhu." He smiles up at the man, "I can give you a full report of what happened if you wish it."

The Chifeng-zun's expression shifts into one of approval and he nods, "I do wish it."

"I would like to know as well, if you don't mind," Lan Xichen says and Nie Mingjue nods before he glances at Lan Zhan.

He chuckles, "Lan er-gonzi can join us as well."

---

Wei Wuxian doesn't realize he's been spending more time with the Lan brothers and Nie Mingjue until Jiang Cheng angrily points it out.

"You're too good for us, are you?" He demands, "Abandoning us in favor of your new friends! Even in the battlefield, you and Lan Wangji are inseparable! Have some shame! How dare you abandon your responsibilities and mess around with that man?"

"a-Cheng," Shijie reprimands gently but her voice is weak.

"Aiya, Jiang Cheng, who keeps track of such things amidst a war? They're all our allies. It's not like I have abandoned everyone." He still trains with the Jiang disciples and leads them in battle after all.

"Wei Wuxian!"

"Jiang Cheng," His voice makes his irritation clear, "Is this really the right time to worry about such trivial matters? Who cares about appearances during war? Are were not all one when on the battlefield?" He asks, narrowing his eyes on the furious Jiang, "We don't know whether we'll live or die when we ride out and you're concerned about who fights alongside me? Just who are you speaking of?"

"Who I am speaking of?" Jiang Cheng snaps in return, "Your obsession with that man is unseemly and reflects poorly on the sect! You know it and yet you carry on shamelessly-"

"My obsession?" He demands, "Just what are you trying to imply, Jiang Cheng? You're going to be a brat just because Lan Zhan happens to be the only one able to keep up with me?" It is no secret that his three month stint sharpened his cultivation in ways people find hard to fathom. He didn’t just develop a new cultivation method, he grew. Surviving the Burial Mounds is a feet beyond the skill and endurance of most cultivators.

Wei Wuxian has earned his already formidable reputation.

Jiang Cheng reels back at the reminder, his face twisting with rage.

Never let it be said that Wei Wuxian takes things lying down. He has spent a lifetime appeasing Jiang Cheng and dealing with his insecurities.

He no longer has the patience.

---

He reaches out instinctively, pulling Lan Zhan out of a blade's path, spinning around to block the strike with his bare arm.

His thick leather brace manages to minimize the damage and he doesn't lose his arm but it is a near thing.

With a hiss, he crowds against Lan Zhan and brings Suibian down in a sharp slash, cutting the Wen before him from left shoulder to right hip.

"Reckless." Lan Zhan says later as he carefully stitches the cut.

"I couldn't let you get hurt." Wei Wuxian says softly, peering down at the kneeling figure before him. He has seen Lan Zhan in various states of indignity, covered in blood, robes soaked in the disgusting sludge of a war-torn field.

Nothing diminishes his beauty.

Wei Wuxian's heart races, his head spinning as he smells the scent of sandalwood. He swallows as Lan Zhan shifts closer, carefully snipping the excess thread and studying his neat stitches.

This close, he feels overwhelmed and realization dawns.

"I love you," He breathes, stunned.

He loves Lan Zhan. The knowledge strikes him now, suddenly, without warning. "How did I not know?" Wei Wuxian feels strangely dazed. How could he not know? It is so obvious to him, his constant need for Lan Zhan's attention, "I hate it when you ignore me." The feeling of those snapping golden eyes on him when he finally manages to gain Lan Zhan's attention, "It's thrilling when you don't."

He has never met anyone more beautiful, "I find you better looking than any maiden." Lan Zhan's proximity now makes him feel-, "Breathless," He says, "When I'm close to you I feel- how did I miss-"

Lan Zhan grip is like vice around his wrist.

Wei Wuxian stops, going pale as he realizes how brazenly he had just confessed love to a man. If Jiang Cheng were here, he'd definitely gut him with Sandu, "Lan Zhan, I-"

Lan Zhan surges forward, eyes blazing and expression dark.

Warm lips slide over his and his mind goes silent.

He doesn't think a single thought that night.

---

War doesn't wait for anyone and Wei Wuxian doesn't say anything in protest when Lan Zhan pulls away from him. He watches with heavy eyes as Lan Zhan shrugs on his discarded outer robes and glances at him.

"Is your body alright?" He asks and Wei Wuxian feels a blush crawl up his neck.

“No! Of course it isn’t,“ He complains even though his body is buzzing with lingering pleasure. He pouts up at Lan Zhan, who studies him with careful golden eyes, “Really, going on and on, taking your pleasure without any care for my virgin body.“ Lan Zhan’s ears are delightfully red, “Who knew er-gege could be so bold?“

“Wei Ying,“ Lan Zhan’s expression is flat but his voice carries a hint of a waver. Wei Wuxian just grins in response, “Be serious.“

In all honesty, his body is already back to its regular state of being. His Golden Core is still spinning furiously and the lingering energy from Dual Cultivation has healed any aches and pains he might have.

“Fine,“ He says in a petulant tune, inwardly delighted that Lan Zhan is now his, “But er-gege must kiss me to make me feel better.”

Lan Zhan doesn’t hesitate, leaning over him and gently tipping his chin up for the demanded kiss.

Wei Wuxian sighs, sinking into it as a curtain of silken black hair forms a private cocoon around him.

---

The war ends but Wei Wuxian’s problems don’t end with it. Three issues stand before him; helping the Wen remnants, helping rebuild YunmengJiang, and figuring out how to marry Lan Zhan.

One obstacle stands in the way of two of these three goals. Jiang Cheng absolutely refuses to lift a finger to help the Wen remnants, even though Wen Qing’s assistance helped them win the war. Jin Guangyao may have killed Wen Ruohan but Wen Qing prevented thousands of casualties.

Wen Ning was also responsible for rescuing Jiang Cheng from the Wen capture before he lost his Golden Core. It was fortunate that Wen Zhuliu had been called to visit Wen Ruohan and Wen Chao had to wait to enact that punishment.

Wen Ning and Wei Wuxian managed to steal Jiang Cheng away just hours before Wen Zhuliu returned.

And yet, Jiang Cheng chooses to side with the Jins on the matter instead of listening to Lan Xichen or Nie Mingjue. Wei Wuxian knows it is partly because their sister is marrying into the Jin clan and they can’t afford to make things difficult for her, but still.

Jin Zixuan will obviously protect shijie. There’s no need to be so cautious, especially if three out of four sects oppose imposing any sort of punishment on innocent people.

On a personal front, Jiang Cheng’s disapproval of his relationship with Lan Zhan is blatant.

Jiang Cheng can’t really stop Wei Wuxian from marrying whoever he wishes. He doens’t need the sect leader’s permission as he’s not really the member of the family. But his shidi is making things difficult with his sneering disapproval and contemptuous comments in public.

He has already alienated Lan Xichen completely by calling Lan Zhan’s honor in question (boy did he earn the punch Wei Wuxian had leveled at him - sect leader or no). Nie Mingjue will never side with some upstart over Lan Xichen.

Lan Zhan himself doesn’t care. He has never liked Jiang Cheng and he never will. He only retaliates when Jiang Cheng tries to attack Wei Wuxian.

His protective er-gege as no tolerance for anyone trying to harm him.

Which is what, ultimately, breaks Wei Wuxian’s ties with YunmengJiang.

The confrontation is embarrassingly public. He doesn’t mind Lan Xichen or Nie Mingjue being present but feels upset about Jin Guangshan and Jin Guangyao being there as well.

“Twin Prides of Yungmeng, isn’t that what you promised me?“ Jiang Cheng demands, “Where will your pride be if you break all of your promises and get into...” He waves his hand at Lan Zhan in disgust, “Is this how you intend to repay us? My father raised you to be the Head Disciple of the Jiang Sect and you would rather be some sort of deviant?“

“Jiang Cheng-“

“And you would side with the Wen dogs too! Was this always your intention? Did you always want to bring down my sect and support its enemies?”

“The Wen remnants have helped us. They’re not our enemies.“

“They’re not our enemies now,“ Jin Guanyao interjects calmly, his voice soothing and patient, “But surely you see that it may not remain so? We cannot risk another war.”

“They’re barely a few hundred people and we have already taken most of their resources. They’ll live as poor peasants. How can they be a threat to us?“ Wei Wuxian asks.

“You’re indeed naïve, Wei-gongzi,“ Jin Guangshan says in a gentle, placating tone, “Perhaps your fondness for Wen-guniang is making you turn a blind eye. Beautiful women have a tendency to do that.“ He chuckles indulgently.

The sly implication in his tone isn’t lost on anyone. Lan Zhan’s expression turns frosty and Wei Wuxian feels a surge of fury strong enough to make his blood boil. There are so many things wrong with that statement that Wei Wuxian, for once, is rendered speechless.

“You question the honor of Wei Wuxian of all people?“ Nie Mingjue demands, taking a step forward, “I have stayed silent because Jiang Sect business isn’t my business but I will not have you slander and belittle a proven warrior in my presence!“

“Indeed,“ Lan Xichen says calmly but there’s no mistaking the sharp look in his eyes. Lan Xichen rarely reacts to provocations or interferes in sect matters that don’t concern him. But he’s not going to let anyone upset his younger brother carelessly, “The matter of the Wens is easy to resolve. Let us give them a small piece of land, let them set up a village, and forbid cultivation among them.“

“Er-ge,“ Jin Guangyao begins but Lan Zhan is out of patience.

He steps back and bows to all assembled before placing a hand on Wei Wuxian’s back, “Wei Ying will choose his own path. Wens will remain free. Wei Ying and I will marry.“ He meets Jiang Cheng’s furious gaze, “Jiang-zongzhu must decide whether his brother’s happiness matters to him.“

Wei Wuxian winces.

“My brother’s happiness?“ Jiang Cheng demands, “All everyone has ever cared about is his happiness! What about me? What about our Sect? A sect he nearly destroyed because of his loyalty towards you.“ Jiang Cheng looks at him, “Did you forget my mother? My father? How do you intend to repay the enormous debt you carry, Wei Wuxian?“

Wei Wuxian stares back at him, “What is my repayment, Jiang Cheng?” He asks softly, “What will it take for you to consider that debt repaid?” It has been over five years since the fall of Lotus Pier. Wei Wuxian has bled and slogged through war to restore that place to its former glory. He has kept Jiang Cheng safe, helped renegotiate shijie’s marriage, and used his name to draw skilled cultivators to YungmengJiang.

What more can he give?

“Loyalty.“ He stills, “You devote your life to YungmengJiang and nothing else.“

Lan Xichen makes a faint, alarmed noise while Nie Mingjue huffs in disapproval.

Wei Wuxian takes a deep breath, feeling Lan Zhan’s fingers flex on his back. He levels a flat look at Jiang Cheng and thinks on the matter of debts. He thinks about Madam Yu’s refusal to bend, of Jiang-zongzhu’s passivity and lack of planning. He thinks about the Wen’s unprovoked attack on Cloud Recesses and the inevitability of war.

He thinks of his Lan Zhan and shijie’s Jin Zixuan, without swords and facing an armed group of Wens under Wen Chao’s orders.

He thinks of love. Of what it means to be truly, unconditionally loved.

No sorrys and no thank yous. No debt owed for simply being a part of someone’s life.

He thinks of acceptance that comes with an older brother’s amused smile. He thinks of an uncle’s gruff admonishment to behave followed by a stiff reminder to eat, you’re skin and bones already.

He takes a deep breath and decides.

“No.“

#short prompts #Wei Wuxian #Lan Zhan #no golden core transfer #anti jiang cheng

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plan-d-to-i · 2 years

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Just saw a post that said “Nie Mingjue is what Jiang Cheng's stans like to pretend he is, gruff and rude on the outside, but utterly doting on his little brother.”

The post wasn’t mainly about this point, but the line caught my attention. Given your own thoughts about JC and his stans, I was curious to know your thoughts on this assertion.

I think not even the most fanon version of jc is good enough to compare to NMJ (and I by no means think NMJ was perfect). Also I don't know that NMJ is "rude" to NHS, except when the music is already affecting his mind and he burns his possessions. (Not in the way jiang cheng perpetually puts down WWX's actual talent). Neither is he doting. Usually he's just very gruff and strict. Because he cares about NHS and is concerned for his future safety. He's trying to shield him from the knowledge that he's getting sick, and prepare him for the eventuality that he may have to have to lead, so there's a purpose to his demands, that NHS is unaware of. Fanon jc just throws the same tantrums at WWX but everyone calls it a love language. Like it doesn't tangibly change anything about his actions or intentions just the way they're perceived.

One of NMJ's defining traits is that he tends to apply the same inflexible, impossibly high standards to himself that he does to others. That's pretty much the opposite of jc...who's like "WWX u owe my father me forever but also I'm not going to repay my debt to the Wens bc it's not sparking joy 4 me." Fanon jc is even more wimpy, needy, weak and yet somehow a victim of all the ppl he victimized.

NMJ was clashing with Jin Guangshan over the post of Chief Cultivator over Xue Yang... meanwhile jc was lapping up JGS's words about how WWX sucks and should be put in his place. While fanon jc was just so powerless! He had even less power than Mianmian according to his stans! 😆🤡 And WWX also was powerless! So powerless:

Nie MingJue frowned, “Isn’t Jiangling still in the hands of the Wen-dogs?”

Lan XiChen, “Not since a few days ago. Currently, it is in the hands of the YunmengJiang Sect.”

A sect leader spoke, “Sect Leader Nie, I don’t think you’ve heard yet. Yunmeng’s Sect Leader Jiang is quite powerful in the area.”

Another person added, “How can he not be? Wei WuXian alone can face millions, so who’d he be scared of? He can just sit there controlling his area, unlike how we’re always running for our lives. With such luck…”

So weak! jc treating his right hand man better deffs wouldn't have made others simply accept YunmengJiang was repaying a debt and there's no reason to jump in some boiling water again after everyone was already exhausted fighting the big ass war! jc had nO chOiCe!! lol Oh wait...

… Back then, the LanlingJin Sect, the QingheNie Sect, and the GusuLan Sect had already finished fighting over the biggest share. The rest could only get some small shrimps. You, on the other hand, had just rebuilt Lotus Pier and behind you was the YiLing Patriarch, Wei WuXian, the danger of whom was immeasurable. Do you think the other sects would like to see a young sect leader who was so advantaged? Luckily, you didn’t seem to be on good terms with your shixiong, and since everyone thought there was an opportunity, of course they’d add fuels to your fire if they could. No matter what, to weaken the YunmengJiang Sect was to strengthen themselves. Sect Leader Jiang, if only your attitude towards your shixiong was just a bit better, showing everyone that your bond was too strong to be broken for them to have a chance, or if you exhibited just a bit more tolerance after what happened, things wouldn’t have become what they were.

Yeah Idk hard call Ig. Leaving WWX with no other recourse but to defect and then declaring him the enemy of the cultivation world after visiting the BM thereby confirming everyone's worst fear was probably the more strategic solution jc devised to help.

Anyway back to NMJ. For all of NMJ's hot headedness and Wen Hate, I don't see him hiding that people saved his life, or ignoring a debt. Even when he wanted to kill JGY he was going to kill himself because JGY had saved him! And he wanted to kill JGY bc JGY had killed his men! In front of him! And trash talked his father! Wen Ning's disciples hadn't killed anyone in Lotus Pier. He just saved jiang cheng's life and returned the bodies of his parents...

#mdzs #Nie Mingjue #jiang cheng #canon jiang cheng

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morifinwes · 3 years

Text

wangxian fic rec list!

aka in which i read fics, write some recs down for aamna and share them!! they're all wangxian fics and uhh @yibobibo i hope you'll like them!!

modern

wolf devours playboy bunny by @greenteafiend (5K, werewolf!lwj, getting together, idk if anyone needs to know that but there's nudity just not uhh explicit)

Lan Zhan has wanted Wei Ying as long as he has known him, and the worst part is that he thinks Wei Ying could want him back.

Too bad he could never in good conscience let himself go there—Wei Ying has a debilitating fear of all things canine, and once a month, Lan Zhan is the exact, precise thing that Wei Ying’s nightmares are made of.

Aka, Lan Zhan is a werewolf.

between the lines by @jywait (19K gaming au!!!, i'm always down for a good gaming au, lwj is the best aksks he's such a good boy)

☆yilingpatriarch☆: pls...give me some face, help me fight these monsters...I'm gonna die

Bluetooth: no.

"You have died." The screen said, and Wei Wuxian threw his hands up in frustration.

resonant frequencies by chinxe (15K, college au, fake dating au, tw mention of cheating but it's brief and no one was cheated on i promise)

In which Wei Wuxian decides that the best way to deal with being in love with Lan Wangji is to pretend to date him for three weeks.

It goes about as well as can be expected.

drift compatible by windoworwhatever (5K, poetry, fluff, drunkji, getting together, college au)

"It was just a fact of life. The sky was blue, university stipends for graduate students working in TA positions barely covered rent, bisexuals cuffed their jeans, Lan Wangji had a massive crush on Wei Wuxian, and spent his time pining and writing research papers about gay subtexts in ancient poetry."

Lan Wangji is in love with Wei Wuxian, and everybody knows, except Wei Wuxian.

the bunny next door by detailsinthefabric (43K, this is mostly fluff and very light angst, and they were neighbors!!!, rabbits!!, aka wangxian's bunny children, this is... so cute i just have to rec it)

Lan Wangji did not know what he was doing. He did not know what he was going to say. He was frozen in place, puzzling over the situation. Maybe he had made the man uncomfortable, which is why he wanted to leave? But his tone had still been so friendly—maybe…

“Would…” he paused, swallowed, forced the last words to come out of his suddenly parched mouth, “would you let me pet him?”

-------------------------------------

Lan Wangji, who doesn't know how to socialize and whose icy demeanor scares everyone away, lets down all his defenses when he meets the bunny next door...oh, and also its owner, Wei Wuxian.

leading tone by silencemostofall (32K, everyone is a music student? or something like that akskk, curse fic, tw panic attacks, tw child abuse, small scene of drunkji, wwx has low self esteem, bro this was so painful to read)

The first time you touch someone you're fated to love, you leave a mark on their skin. If they will love you in return, they'll mark you where you touched them. The deeper the color, the deeper the connection.

Wei Ying has no marks at all.

public places, private thoughts by leahelisabeth (for the love of camelot) ( 8K, cherry magic au, getting together with like... immediate upgrade to fiance status, the author is wrong i crave good wangxian cherry magic aus even tho i haven't even watched cherry magic)

Wei Wuxian had heard the story of course. It had made its rounds through his high school and followed him into his college days. He didn’t think there was any possibility it was true. Virginity was a social construct, invented by creepy old men to exercise dominance over women. The idea that a simple lack of sexual activity before the age of thirty could give one magical powers was absolutely ludicrous.

Wei Wuxian believed this until the morning of his thirtieth birthday.

AKA the Wangxian Cherry Magic AU that absolutely nobody asked for.

i'd be all right (if i could see you) by @thirtysixsavefiles (16K, this was nice, i read this at 6am but it was cute, (while writing this post i must admit i don't remember anything but 6am-me said it's good))

The younger Lan brother is something of an enigma on campus; while Lan Xichen can sometimes be seen in the company of other graduate students or conducting a seminar, Lan Wangji appears to spend all his time in class or in the library. He doesn’t drink. He doesn’t smoke. He doesn’t attend social events. He doesn’t do anything for fun, as far as Wei Wuxian can tell, and it’s driving Wei Wuxian just a little bit up the wall.

Or, Wei Wuxian convinces Lan Wangji to come to a house party, and then they're assigned to the same group project. Wei Wuxian tries his best, but he is not in possession of all the facts.

axe on leg by itszero (4K, i still don't get why wwx did that but it was nice seeing him jealous for once, jealous!wwx, lwj i love you....)

Wei Wuxian pressed his face into his pillow and screamed. He paused to take a few deep breaths, partially hindered by the pillow, and listened to the sounds of Nie Huaisang slurping his iced coffee, from his seat on Wei Wuxian's desk chair.

Having caught his breath, he resumed his screaming and did not stop at the sound of his dorm room door opening.

"What's wrong with him?" He heard his brother, Jiang Cheng, ask.

The slurping stopped. "He's an idiot."

"He's always been an idiot. Why is he bothered about it now?"

"He forced Lan Wangji to go on a date," Nie Huaisang replied, shaking the ice cubes in his drink.

"Okay and…?"

"With someone else." The slurping resumed.

Wei Wuxian, in all his glorious dumbassery, convinces his boyfriend to go on a date with someone else.

these two most powerful by @stiltonbasket (4K, amnesia, wangxian with children!!!, aksksk this was adorable, dadji!!)

When Lan Wangji went to bed last night, he was alone in a tiny guest room with nothing but the howling of the wind in the mountains and his own lonely thoughts for company.

But when he opened his eyes in the morning, Wei Ying was asleep beside him.

(In which Lan Wangji loses twenty years' worth of memories after a night-hunt gone wrong, and his life as a doting father and husband continues without a hitch somehow.)

good things come to those who wait [but i ain't in a patient phase] by @cerlunas (4K, getting together, pining lwj)

Lan Wangji can't take it anymore.

“I love you”, he says, and god, it feels terrifying. “I’ve been in love with you for a long time.”

“Lan Zhan…” Wei Wuxian starts, but Lan Wangji doesn’t want to hear it.

He grabs his cup and drinks everything. He doesn’t know what face Wei Wuxian is making at him right now, and it’s okay.

“Lan Zhan!” Wei Wuxian repeats louder, but it’s too late. He is already falling asleep.

Or, even after 13 years, Lan Wangji is still in love with his best friend. Maybe it's time to open up.

wei ying, will you marry m- oh my god he swallowed the ring! by selene210 (2K, marriage proposals, crack, marriage proposals but.. they go wrong)

“A ring?”

And indeed it was. The ring Lan Wangji was going to propose to Wei Ying with. That the man had now choked on.

“You swallowed it.”

“It was in my soufflé! Why did you put a ring in my soufflé Lan Zhan- oh. oh”

of glittery valentine's cards by @soft-fics (3K, valentine's day, this was adorable aksk, a-yuan best boy!!)

Lan Zhan didn't want to know what his best friend had planned for Valentine's Day; his heart would simply not be able to handle it. When his son tells him that he made Wei Ying a Valentine's Day card, though, Lan Zhan decided to bring it over anyway.

of coffee and white tea by @soft-fics (9K, fluff, lwj doesn't like coffee, wwx buys him coffee, then they switch drinks, again and again and again, the staff ships it lmao, tbh jc shouldn't have done that like wtf)

For the fourth time this week a stranger orders him a cup of coffee. Lan Wangji wonders how exactly to tell this man to stop ordering him coffee he doesn't even like. Turns out, buying the other white tea and switching drinks is not the best way to go about it

canon setting

on the importance of restraint (or lack thereof) by nixthothou (4K, in which sizhui snaps, i love that boy, no like seriously he's the best boy)

Lan Sizhui does not usually find himself in the company of Sect Leader Jiang.

Suffice to say, Lan Sizhui's feelings toward him are conflicted.

lan wangji is wei wuxian's baby by lilycs (3K, i was craving fluff while reading this, lwj my beloved, drunk!lwj)

Lan Wangji gets drunk from barely a cup of alcohol, becoming a whiny baby and asking his husband for cuddles.

one of our own by glitteringmoonlight (8K, wei wuxian & lan sect, 5+1 things, in which they learn to love him, they're all part of the wwx protection squad lead by lwj, wangxian isn't the focus but !!! THIS)

Times change, but some people remain the same.

The Lans are nothing, if not aware of this.

For one of their own, they will stand against the world.

Or, 5 times the Lans defended Wei Wuxian, and the 1 time he was there to see it happen.

so why not crack your skull when the mind swells by @greenteafiend (13K, love curse, post cql canon, curses, getting together, fluff, so much fluff, lwj tries to talk about his emotions!, lwj pov)

Lan Wangji detects the curse trying to curl through his heart meridians like smoke. A love curse, then. It must have been cast remotely somehow to have found him in his bed in Cloud Recesses. No matter. Lan Wangji crushes it easily, enveloping it in his spiritual energy, and then squeezing. Curse averted, Lan Wangji closes his eyes and goes back to sleep. He thinks no more of it.

Two days later, Wei Wuxian arrives in Cloud Recesses.

Or, Wei Wuxian is cursed to feel terrible pain when he and Lan Wangji aren’t touching.

i started from the bottom / now i'm rich by x_los (57K, time travel, fix it, jealous lwj, crack treated serious, god this is so good tho, wwx/wrh & wwx/jgs but like as a joke and it doesn't really happen, but it has its purpose!!)

“First, you get the money. Then you get the power, respect - hos come last.”

Wen Qing traps Wei Wuxian in the Demon Slaughtering Cave, but Wei Wuxian isn’t interested in being the beneficiary of the Wen Remnants’ noble sacrifice. His efforts to free himself accidentally send him back to the beginning of the Sunshot Campaign. Coreless but armed with demonic cultivation, knowledge of the future and his wits, Wei Wuxian takes advantage of this opportunity to come out on top of both the war and its aftermath—before either has a chance to happen—by marrying and swiftly burying the cultivation world’s worst men.

Lan Wangji is confused, hurt, and uncomfortably aroused by Wei Wuxian’s improbably elaborate series of Sect-themed bridal negligees.

lead me on through by mrsronweasley (55K, they're in love your honor, arranged marriage but they don't know to whom, basically wwx & lwj want to practice kissing which then goes beyond kissing but not the whole way y'know, lxc the best wingman tho)

"Who do you think your betrothed is?" Wei Wuxian asks, sprawling out in front of Lan Zhan and enjoying the prim thinning of his lips at the question. He shouldn't be sprawling—they're in the library, for one, and Lan Zhan is studying, for another—but he can't help himself. Wei Wuxian is a sprawler.

"I do not believe this to be of importance," Lan Zhan responds, without turning his gaze away from his book.

"What!" Wei Wuxian sits up. "How can you say that? Of course it's important! This is the person you'll be with for the rest of your life, Lan Zhan."

523 notes · View notes

bloody-bee-tea · 3 years

Text

Lashing out

What better way to celebrate my 50th Mingcheng fic than with ace!JC and some misunderstandings regarding what non-sexual touches are okay in a relationship. Because JC's and NMJ's opinion on that couldn't be more different.

Jiang Cheng thought that telling Nie Mingjue that he is asexual and will never sleep with him would be the hard part and he wasn’t completely wrong about that.

It was hard, and he hated doing it, because the fear that Nie Mingjue would walk away from him, would call an end to this, was very real and something Jiang Cheng almost dreaded more than having to sleep with Nie Mingjue.

But Jiang Cheng did it, he told Nie Mingjue about it, and Nie Mingjue took it better than Jiang Cheng could have ever imagined. Nie Mingjue promised him that it wouldn’t be a problem, that this wasn’t the only reason he was with Jiang Cheng after all, and that they would make it work.

And Jiang Cheng believes him.

But what Jiang Cheng forgot about is that now he has to be careful. Careful about what he says, what he does, how he touches Nie Mingjue because otherwise Nie Mingjue will get a wrong impression and think that Jiang Cheng does actually want more.

Which he doesn’t. It’s just—it would be nice to cuddle up to Nie Mingjue, is all.

Jiang Cheng has never thought of himself as touch-starved; at least not until Nie Huaisang has mentioned it and then suddenly Jiang Cheng could think of nothing else.

And it is fine with his friends; there are no expectations there so he can cuddle up to his siblings or Nie Huaisang as much as he wants to but with his partners, it’s different.

Jiang Cheng already made that mistake once and he’s not about to make it again.

So he keeps to himself; he makes sure to never touch Nie Mingjue more than is necessary, and he tries to pretend that it doesn’t matter to him.

It even almost works.

~*~*~

When Jiang Cheng lets himself into Nie Mingjue’s apartment, he finds him sprawled out on the couch, hand dangling off the side and clearly fast asleep.

Jiang Cheng can’t help the fond smile that steals over his face at seeing Nie Mingjue this relaxed and adorable and he quickly whips out his phone to take at least one photo. He’s due for a new background pic anyway.

Once that is done, Jiang Cheng quietly steps closer and crouches down next to the couch. It’s not quite what he wants to do; his first instinct was to simply climb on top of Nie Mingjue and sprawl out on top of him, but Jiang Cheng is very aware that he shouldn’t do that.

It could make Nie Mingjue expect certain things when he wakes up to Jiang Cheng laid out on top of him and Jiang Cheng is not about to do that to either of them. So crouching down is the next best thing and Jiang Cheng takes his time to watch a peacefully sleeping Nie Mingjue for long moments.

It takes him almost ten minutes to remember that Nie Mingjue will be grumpy as hell when he can’t sleep that evening and since Jiang Cheng doesn’t know just how long Nie Mingjue has already been asleep for, he decides to wake him up.

Jiang Cheng ghosts a finger over the side of Nie Mingjue’s face and he chuckles when Nie Mingjue frowns slightly in his sleep.

“My soul,” Jiang Cheng whispers and tucks a strand of his hair behind his ear. “You have to wake up.”

Nie Mingjue makes an unintelligent noise and tries to move out of Jiang Cheng’s reach, which of course doesn’t work. Instead Jiang Cheng moves his finger over Nie Mingjue’s nose, clearly tickling him into a more coherent state.

“What?” Nie Mingjue grumbles and blinks sluggishly up at Jiang Cheng.

“Good morning, sleepy head,” Jiang Cheng teasingly says and he realizes the dangerous twinkling in Nie Mingjue’s eyes too late.

Jiang Cheng isn’t entirely sure just how Nie Mingjue does it, but one moment he’s still sleepily blinking and the next he has turned around on the couch and pulled Jiang Cheng on top of him.

“Uff,” Jiang Cheng says when he comes to rest on Nie Mingjue’s chest and he tenses when Nie Mingjue’s arms come up around him, pressing him closer to his body.

“Good morning,” Nie Mingjue mutters, laughter still in his voice and Jiang Cheng makes a conscious effort to relax himself. “Why did you wake me, I was having a nice dream.”

“Nicer than this?” Jiang Cheng gives back and then mentally chides himself because their situation could be suggestive and he doesn’t want to raise any expectations.

“Mh, no,” Nie Mingjue hums. “Good point, my heart,” Nie Mingjue gives back and then seems content to simply drift off again.

“You shouldn’t sleep in the middle of the day,” Jiang Cheng lowly says when Nie Mingjue’s breathing gets deeper by the second and Nie Mingjue startles.

“But it’s such a good time to sleep,” he grumbles and Jiang Cheng huffs.

“I’ll remind you of that in the evening then, when you’re bitching at me that you can’t sleep,” he tells him and Nie Mingjue heaves out a sigh.

“Ugh, why do you always have to be right?” he wants to know but he turns them around again, so they are laying on their sides.

Jiang Cheng is sure he would slide right off the couch, if Nie Mingjue wouldn’t keep such a tight grip on him.

“You love me for it, don’t even pretend,” Jiang Cheng gives back, and even though he knows Nie Mingjue does, even though Nie Mingjue tells him regularly, there’s still that split second of fear where he thinks this will be the time that Nie Mingjue doesn’t say it back.

“You’re right with that as well,” Nie Mingjue gives back immediately, peppering Jiang Cheng’s face with kisses. “But this is comfortable. We can stay like this for a while, right?” he then tries, his voice hopeful, but Jiang Cheng shakes his head as best as he can in this position.

He’s still pressed up to Nie Mingjue’s front, Nie Mingjue’s hand low on his back and Jiang Cheng fears where this will go if he lets this go on. And besides. Nie Mingjue is liable to drift off again the moment they stop talking.

“No,” Jiang Cheng decisively says and pushes away from Nie Mingjue, who fights him on this a moment longer, but in the end he lets go.

“Rude,” Nie Mingjue grumbles as he sits up on the couch and stares up at Jiang Cheng, his displeasure clear on his face. “Why do you have to be so rude. I was comfortable.”

“Yeah, well, I’m hungry,” Jiang Cheng gives back and averts his eyes.

Nie Mingjue might have been comfortable in that moment, but if Jiang Cheng indulges him with that too long, he’ll think Jiang Cheng is open for more, which he very much is not, and Jiang Cheng is not ready for a fight with Nie Mingjue.

All he ever did with his last partner was fight over things like that, always lashing out at the other, and he doesn’t want to do the same with Nie Mingjue.

“Alright, alright,” Nie Mingjue mutters and gets up from the couch, though he does take a moment to step close and steal a kiss from Jiang Cheng.

“Hi, my heart,” Nie Mingjue breathes out and Jiang Cheng can’t help the sappy smile on his face.

“Hi,” he gives back just as lowly and he thinks that this might be okay.

They can do this.

~*~*~

Nie Mingjue announces his arrival with a booming “I’m home!” before he comes into the living-room.

Jiang Cheng looks up from the couch, pausing the movie he was watching and he startles badly when Nie Mingjue simply flops himself down on the couch, resting his head in Jiang Cheng’s lap.

Jiang Cheng awkwardly hovers his hands over Nie Mingjue’s head for a few moments, before he rests one on the top of it and one on his shoulder and his heart beats just a little bit faster when Nie Mingjue slightly turns to smile up at him.

“Hey there,” he says and Jiang Cheng returns the smile.

“Comfortable, are you?” he wants to know and goes warm all over when Nie Mingjue laughs happily.

“So very much,” he replies and then turns around completely so he can hide his face in Jiang Cheng’s stomach.

It’s innocent enough, for now, but Jiang Cheng fears where this might lead, so he pushes Nie Mingjue away, even though he does want nothing more than to hug him tight to himself and never let him go again.

“Quit this,” Jiang Cheng grumbles and catches the slight frown on Nie Mingjue’s face before he makes an effort to smooth it back out.

“Are you okay?” Nie Mingjue asks and Jiang Cheng awkwardly shrugs.

“Sure. How was your day?” he tries to distract Nie Mingjue, who clearly seems to know what he’s up to, but who indulges him anyway.

“Stupid. What are we watching?” Nie Mingjue asks, sounding a little bit upset but he sits down next to Jiang Cheng, keeping a little bit of distance between them.

It does something to Jiang Cheng’s heart that hurts, but he reminds himself that he was the one to push Nie Mingjue away just now, so he should be grateful that he accepts his boundaries. Still, Jiang Cheng can’t help but to scoot a little bit closer, just enough to brush their shoulders together.

Nie Mingjue tenses briefly but then he leans more heavily against Jiang Cheng and Jiang Cheng nods to himself.

This is fine and all he really needs.

No matter that he wants to climb into Nie Mingjue’s lap, or wants to pull him back into his, wants to cuddle throughout the whole movie.

This will have to do. He can’t ask for more, especially not when he can’t even give Nie Mingjue more than this.

~*~*~

Jiang Cheng is in the kitchen, making dinner for them, when Nie Mingjue comes up behind him. He slings his arms around Jiang Cheng’s middle and presses a kiss to his temple before he rests his chin on his shoulder.

It’s nice, it’s comfortable and Jiang Cheng feels like his heart is going to flow over with love, but then Nie Mingjue moves slightly, which presses him much more firmly against Jiang Cheng’s back and Jiang Cheng tenses.

And Nie Mingjue steps away.

“Mingjue,” Jiang Cheng starts, unsure what just happened, but then Nie Mingjue is reaching past him, turning off the stove and moving pots away and Jiang Cheng’s heart sinks.

“I think we have to talk, Wanyin,” Nie Mingjue says and just like that Jiang Cheng sees it all shattered around him.

He thought they were good; he thought he managed to not make Nie Mingjue expect anything, not with his touches or otherwise, but of course he had fucked up somewhere.

Jiang Cheng reminds himself that they agreed upon this when he told Nie Mingjue that he’s asexual, that Nie Mingjue could always tell him when not having sex with Jiang Cheng would be too much, but he didn’t expect it to happen so late after their talk.

“Okay,” Jiang Cheng gives back, hating himself for how his voice shakes, but he follows Nie Mingjue when he walks into the living-room.

Maybe he did raise some expectations, Jiang Cheng thinks, remembering all the touches he allowed between them. Maybe he needs to be more careful in the future.

“What do you want to talk about?” Jiang Cheng asks unsurely, watching how Nie Mingjue paces in the living-room, and he just wants to get this over with.

“I’m a tactile person,” Nie Mingjue finally says when he comes to a stop. “You know that.”

“I do,” Jiang Cheng gives back, because it’s hard to miss how often Nie Mingjue reaches out for him, or how he behaves with Nie Huaisang.

“Okay,” Nie Mingjue says and nods to himself before he straightens up and looks Jiang Cheng in the eye. “If you can’t allow a simple touch, I can’t do this anymore,” he then says and Jiang Cheng’s heart stops in his chest.

“You said you are okay with it,” he breathes out, even though he knows it’s unfair, even though they agreed on something different, but he can’t help himself.

Nie Mingjue said he’s okay with the fact that Jiang Cheng is ace.

“I am fine with not having sex with you,” Nie Mingjue says. “That’s not a problem. But the fact that I can’t even touch you, can’t hug you close or cuddle you? That’s a problem. And if that is part of you being ace, then I’m sorry that it’s a problem to me, but I can’t be in a relationship where I have to think twice about reaching out for my partner.”

“What?” Jiang Cheng asks because it doesn’t make sense what Nie Mingjue just said. “It has nothing to do with me being ace.”

“Then what?” Nie Mingjue wants to know and Jiang Cheng is surprised to see how desperate he is. “Then why can’t you allow me to touch you? Why am I not allowed to cuddle you, or hug you, or fall asleep with you in my arms?”

Jiang Cheng has to blink back some tears, because he wants those same things, but he can’t allow this; he can’t raise expectations he can’t meet and he doesn’t understand sexual attraction enough to know when he crosses a line.

“I don’t want to get your hopes up,” is what he finally gets out, crossing his arms in front of his chest to hide how much his hands shake.

He yearns for Nie Mingjue’s arms, would do almost anything to have him hug Jiang Cheng as close as he just did in the kitchen, but he dreads what comes after.

“What hopes?” Nie Mingjue asks him and he seems honestly confused.

“I’m not going to sleep with you,” Jiang Cheng says, again, but it does nothing to clear the confusion from Nie Mingjue’s face.

“Yes, I know, we’ve been over that.”

“No, you don’t—listen, I—I don’t know when I cross a line, okay?” Jiang Cheng gets out, much louder than he wanted to, but Nie Mingjue doesn’t seem to understand and he’s going to walk away from Jiang Cheng, he just knows it and his heart is already cracking in his chest. “I don’t know, and I don’t want there to be misunderstandings or to give you false hope or anything like that. I learned my lesson,” Jiang Cheng bitterly finishes and sees how Nie Mingjue goes still.

“You learned your lesson,” he repeats and Jiang Cheng nods. “Did your—previous partner do something?”

“He didn’t—I just—we were cuddling and he clearly thought it would lead to more. I try not to do that anymore,” Jiang Cheng explains, not quite able to meet Nie Mingjue’s eyes. “I don’t want to disappoint you or have a fight about this.”

The irony of his words is not lost on Jiang Cheng, because they are having a fight about this anyway, but what he wasn’t prepared for is for Nie Mingjue to walk up to him and pull him into his arms.

Jiang Cheng wasn’t quick enough to untangle his arms, so now they are trapped between them, and his face is uncomfortable smashed into Nie Mingjue’s shoulder, but it’s still the best place to be in.

“You said no sex, ever,” Nie Mingjue whispers into his hair. “So until you tell me that you changed your mind or that you want to try something, it’s a no. No matter what you do. It will always be a no, and I know that. I respect that. Us cuddling or you sleeping on me, or my head in your lap is not going to change that. It will always be a no until you explicitly tell me otherwise.”

Jiang Cheng has to blink fast to keep the sudden tears at bay, but he can’t quite hide the fact that he’s shaking all over.

“It’s just—my heart, I’m tactile, and that is something I can’t do without. If you’re touch-averse then—” Nie Mingjue trails off but Jiang Cheng can tell what he wants to say anyway, and it’s enough to make him untangle his arms enough to sling them around Nie Mingjue’s middle.

“I’m not, I’m not,” he rushes to reassure Nie Mingjue. “Huaisang would say I’m quite the opposite, really,” he says with a weak laugh. “I want you to hug me and cuddle me and sleep with your head in my lap, I do,” he promises. “I just always thought I had to make sure that I don’t lead you on by allowing that.”

“You’re not leading me on,” Nie Mingjue says and pushes Jiang Cheng away from him. “You said no, it doesn’t get much clearer than that. And I would never assume anything until you verbally tell me, okay? So you can’t lead me on, because the only thing I’m really expecting when I cuddle you is that I get to cuddle you, if that makes sense,” Nie Mingjue awkwardly says and Jiang Cheng immediately nods.

“It does, it does make sense,” he says, his voice trembling with his tears and he hides back in Nie Mingjue’s arms. “And I want that, too.”

“Thank the gods,” Nie Mingjue breathes out and Jiang Cheng realizes with a start, that Nie Mingjue doesn’t want to walk away from this any more than Jiang Cheng wants that.

“I love you. And I want to be tactile with you, too, without having to second guess everything,” Jiang Cheng admits and Nie Mingjue almost crushes him, he’s hugging him so hard.

“You can, my heart, you can. I love you,” Nie Mingjue gives back and Jiang Cheng dares to believe him.

It’s hard to do anything else with how relieved and sincere Nie Mingjue sounds.

~*~*~

When Jiang Cheng comes across a sleeping Nie Mingjue on the couch again, he doesn’t hesitate. He simply climbs on the couch as well and lays down all over Nie Mingjue’s back, just like he wanted to do that very first time.

“You’re heavy,” Nie Mingjue grumbles into the couch, clearly unpleasantly woken up, but Jiang Cheng can’t find it in himself to care about that.

He gets to lay on Nie Mingjue without having to worry about a single thing, so Nie Mingjue can be grumpy all the wants.

“And you’re rude,” Jiang Cheng gives back, just a moment before Nie Mingjue moves under him.

Also much like the first time Jiang Cheng doesn’t quite understand how Nie Mingjue manages it, but when they come to a rest again, it’s Jiang Cheng who is being pressed into the couch by Nie Mingjue’s weight.

“You’re heavy,” Jiang Cheng gives back, mostly because he feels it’s only fair.

“Shut up,” Nie Mingjue mutters, hiding his face in Jiang Cheng’s neck, clearly content to fall asleep again right there.

“You shouldn’t sleep here, my soul,” Jiang Cheng mumbles as he cards his fingers through Nie Mingjue’s hair, lightly scratching at his scalp as he does it.

“Then you shouldn’t be this comfortable or do that,” is the slurred answer he gets and Jiang Cheng huffs out a laugh.

“Fine, you get half an hour,” he decides and goes boneless under Nie Mingjue.

He is quite heavy, but Jiang Cheng loves that weight on him, the reassurance and the steady presence and he wouldn’t trade it for anything in the world.

In hindsight it seems so incredibly stupid that he deprived both of them of this for so long, but Jiang Cheng decides that he’d rather enjoy the moment right now than dwell on the past.

And so he slings his free arm around Nie Mingjue’s middle, hugging him tighter, while the other keeps up with his ministrations.

It’s not long before he drifts off as well, Nie Mingjue already slightly snoring away on top off him, and it’s much more than half an hour before Nie Mingjue wakes him by peppering kisses all over his face.

It’s a very good way to wake up, Jiang Cheng decides.

Link to my ko-fi on the sidebar!

#bt writes #mingcheng #the untamed #mdzs #modern au #established relationship #ace!jc #touch-starved #misunderstandings #hurt/comfort #fluff #cuddling and snuggling

199 notes · View notes

canary3d-obsessed · 3 years

Text

Restless Rewatch: The Untamed, Episode 24 part two

(Masterpost) (Pinboard)

Warning: Spoilers for All 50 Episodes!

Arguing

After enjoying a tense afternoon with Lan Xichen, Wei Wuxian comes home to enjoy a tense evening with Jiang Cheng. He pauses in the doorway as he takes in Jiang Cheng’s mood and decides which metaphorical mask he will put on to interact with his shidi. As someone who grew up with explosive people, I find this routine very familiar.

Wei Wuxian is always carefully playing a role as he interacts with the people in his life. Clearly he has read the classic sociology text The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life and is using it as a how-to guide. We see him do this same calculation over and over, in which he reacts internally to a situation, comes to a decision about what persona to inhabit, and then dons that persona. It’s a typical abuse survival tactic and...it is exhausting.

This is why I think his leaving to be alone for a while in Episode 50 is a good thing. Being alone isn’t better than being with someone else, usually, but for Wei Wuxian, who is (by Episode 50) assured of love but not sure where he belongs in his own life, being by himself for a while is going to be the best thing for him. He can learn how to just be a person, instead of constantly trying to mold himself to fit everyone around him.

For the current tense situation, Jiang Cheng is polishing his sword, which, incidentally, is slang (in English, not necessarily in Chinese) for masturbating. Which makes their conversation about how frequently it needs doing kind of a hoot. “One time a month should do,” per Wei Wuxian.

Jiang Cheng yells at Wei Wuxian--fairly, really--for being drunk all the time and not working on clan tasks. Then he responds to a hug attempt by shoving Wei Wuxian and knocking him down. JC asks WW if he’s too drunk to manage his spiritual power. Now, we know that he doesn’t have any spiritual power to manage, and that’s the main point of this interaction. But it also shows us something else about their dynamic.

This was just a quick hit, and when it takes WWX out, JC asks why he isn’t responding with spiritual power. Which means that apparently *every* time Jiang Cheng gives Wei Wuxian a shove or a shoulder check, or strikes him--like he’s been doing constantly since Episode 3--he’s putting spiritual power behind it. That’s...really harsh.

Jiang Cheng wants Wei Wuxian to fight back, and Wei Wuxian can’t; this is a big part of why their relationship breaks down. Casual blows loaded with spiritual power are part of their vocabulary, and Wei Wuxian can’t speak that language any more, even for basic defense. He’s literally not safe having simple interactions with Jiang Cheng now, because he’s secretly disabled, and Jiang Cheng is casually injuring him whenever he gets too close.

(more after the cut!)

This time Wei Wuxian has had enough, and raises Chenqing to Jiang Cheng, who immediately backs off. Jiang Cheng has seen that thing in action, not just on the battlefield, but in a small room full of whatever remained of Wen Chao when they were done with him. He takes this as a serious threat, and backs off, disturbed and puzzled and hurt.

Jiang Cheng thinks the change in Wei Wuxian is coming from apathy, not from disability, and so he misunderstands it over and over. Think of a friend saying “whatever, I’m sick of arguing with you, do what you want.” Jiang Cheng is very ready to feel rejected, and not at all ready to look at Wei Wuxian’s behavior and try to actually understand it.

Crying Over You

Wei Wuxian bails and goes to see Jiang Yanli in the ancestral hall, where she is polishing a name plaque. I turned the gamma way up to see whose it is and...I dunno. This character might be 江 (Jiang), I guess?

Jiang Yanli is the only one of the trio who knows how to mourn properly, in that she is taking some time to sit and be sad. Mourning the dead--both ritually and just in the emotional sense--is as important a part of reclaiming Lotus Pier as the training of disciples and having good times on the lake.

She asks him about his fight with Jiang Cheng and he says he’s used to fighting with him. Jiang Yanli asks him if he’s tired of living there, and Wei Wuxian deflects and deflects, saying “it’s my home, where else would I go?” and that if Jiang Fengmian hadn’t adopted him he would still be begging in the streets. He says “no matter what happens, I won’t leave Lotus Pier,” which is not an answer to her question.

It’s also not true. Like so many of his promises, it’s an expression of his wishes, with no space for the surprises real life is made of. He promises her that he won’t be reckless again, and asks her not to be mad at him. She says she can’t be mad at him, and then they share a flashback about Jiang Fengmian finding him on the street. This is a story, not a memory; Wei Wuxian can’t remember but he remembers her telling him about it. Jiang Yanli wasn’t there, in the moment. So this is her telling the story as it was told to her, probably by Jiang Fengmian.

Flashback Time

In the flashback, picky salad-hating Wei Ying is out on the street, looking for food in a cartload of pretty okay scraps. I mean, yeah, skip the tomatoes, but most of the greens look fine.

He’s found and fed by Jiang Fengmian, who recognizes him and decides to take him in.

Within a couple of episodes, we will see Wei Wuxian paying this favor forward, saving someone he finds starving on the street. Just like Jiang Fengmian, he's going to upset and disrupt his family in order to help someone for whom he feels a deep connection.

During this flashback we get a look at Jiang Fengmian’s sword, and it is a beauty.

What is Love

As the flashback ends, Wei Wuxian is smiling, hearing Jiang Yanli tell this touching story of starvation and orphanhood. She tells him he was born with a smiling face, and that he never minds much about sorrowful things; no matter how bad the situation is, he is always happy. Way to reinforce that metaphorical mask he’s wearing over his deep, deep despair, sis!

They talk a bit about Jiang Cheng’s bad temper. Then Jiang Yanli says now that her parents are gone, they three are the closest in the world, and he responds by putting his head down on her knee and theatrically saying he’s hungry. But he’s crying for real, and so is she.

Then he decides to ask her why people fall in love, basically, and claims that he does not have anyone in his heart. He says there’s no need to like a person that much, that it’s like “haltering your own neck,” according to Netflix. Let’s have a look at that figurative language for a second, and what’s missing from the Neflix translation.

What he says is (as near as my qhanzi.com skills can make out) “這不就是自己給自己脖子上套犁拴韁吗” which Google tells me means "Isn't this just putting a plow on my neck with a rein?" The part of the image that’s missing from Netflix subs is the plow, and the hard labor and animal servitude involved in pulling a plow. This isn’t a pro-romance image.

He’s clearly thinking about Lan Wangji when he lies about having no-one in his heart, but right now the yoke that he wants to escape has nothing to do with Lan Wangji. The person he’s harnessed to in a team, the person who he labors with, the person he wants to escape, is Jiang Cheng. What’s chafing his neck is the promise he made, to stay and serve as one half of a pair, when he can no longer pull his weight.

Busted

Speaking of Jiang Cheng, he is hanging around outside the shrine, listening to the conversation. Wei Wuxian busts him, pointing out not that eavesdropping is bad, but that it’s bad for grownups. Jiang Cheng points out that he’s the master of Lotus Pier so he’s allowed to go anywhere he wants.

(I love how he looks framed by this giant lotus behind him)

We Wuxian has another of those moments where he assesses the best approach to Jiang Cheng before responding.

Then he picks a fake fight with him about soup. Yanli comes out and tells them both to grow up, saying that JC is losing his demeanor as clan leader. He jokingly fixes his already-perfect robe ad they all have a chuckle.

Then Jiang Cheng reminds Wei Wuxian of his promise for the millionth time, and Jiang Yanli goes to make soup for the millionth time. As soon as the boys see that she’s gone, the smiles drop right off of their faces. They’re both performing their typical relationship dynamic for Jiang Yanli.

Being Reasonable

The brothers repair to the main hall, and stand behind the lotus throne looking out of this complicated wall/doorway thingy, while they talk about Jiang Yanli and Jin Zixuan.

Jiang Cheng is being mature and sensible here, trying to give Jiang Yanli what she wants and also explaining very, very basic political stuff to Wei Wuxian, who is too caught up in his hate boner for JZX to want to think about the bigger picture. He also thinks that Jin Guangyao is a nicer person, but Jiang Cheng says that nice doesn’t matter.

Wei Wuxian is getting a full head of steam going about what a jerk JZX is, when Jiang Cheng makes him actually stop and think, by pointing out that it’s not for them to forgive or not forgive Jin Zixuan’s past behavior; it’s up to Yanli.

Wei Wuxian sees the reasoning in this, and starts to say he can’t understand why Yanli chose to like this person, but then he stops himself and goes through a rapid series of thoughtful, uncomfortable expressions.

Perhaps he’s realizing that he himself has chosen to like an infamously stuck-up, fancy cultivator, albeit one with no soup-related character deficits.

Library Time

The stuck-up cultivator in question is currently in the Cloud Recesses library, where he has snuck into the forbidden books room, against his uncle’s express command, for the purpose of helping Wei Wuxian. The forbidden books room is an entire basement floor of the library; it probably has more books than the not-forbidden part of the library, since the main floor needs space for the restrooms, circulation desk, and copy machines.

(Did OP photoshop the Wangxian-in-the-Library porn picture onto Lan Wangjis’ book? She did.)

A couple of other Lans come along and see the main door unlocked. The lock is a big fish that probably uses magic for locking; it definitely doesn’t use a key. One of them steps in the doorway, glances back and forth without walking through, and does not check the secret door to the forbidden vault. Gosh, how did Su She and/or Jin Guangyao ever manage to steal secrets from this highly secure location, wow.

Lan Wangji hears the Lan disciple on guard duty say “don’t tell Hanguang Jun about this!’ and has a series of microexpressions that might indicate some kind of feeling about simultaneously being a rule breaker and a rule enforcer.

Boat Time

We end with an idyllic scene on the lake in Lotus pier, where a new batch of disciples is harvesting lotuses and learning the opposite of boat safety.

Jiang Yanli and Wei Wuxian are having a good time, and seem utterly carefree; both of them are good at living in the moment, or faking it.

Wei Wuxian thinks, in voiceover, that it seems that it’s not so hard to go back to the old days. Uh...ok.

Except he’s hiding a massive secret and these replacement kids are not the same juniors he used to hang out with, and he can’t actually teach them cultivation, since he has no socially-acceptable magic power, and everything is about to go to shit in the next episode. But you gotta take your joy where you can, I guess.

Note: There are a lot of questionable effects in The Untamed, but there are also beautiful scenes like this one, which looks like a Maxfield Parrish painting. Compare with the BTS below and you can see what a good job the VFX team did in bringing this lake to life.

#the untamed #cql #wei wuxian #jiang cheng #the untamed gifs #restless rewatch the untamed #canary3d-original #my gifs

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agendratum · 3 years

Text

ok so

as usual after finishing an arc of mdzs my head is full, many thoughts. so let’s talk about the guanyin temple confrontation.

first thing that i kept paying attention to were actually the changes made in order to turn it into live-action. so in cql they had to make the gray-gray characters, the “there are no good or bad guys, just people and their circumstances” characters (unless you’re jgs, than yeah you’re a bad guy and everyone agrees on that actually) into slightly more black and white characters. by the end of cql we are lured into this fake sense of security, “haha, we know who the bad guy is!” (then a year passes and here you are, now a jgy apologist), by the end of mdzs, you just know that, well, decisions were made, unfortunate decisions, by many different people.

cql had to make wwx into a bit nicer version of himself. the good protagonist couldn’t lose control and accidentally kill a bunch of people, and then kill another bunch of people fully willingly, cause his sister just died and that was the last connection he had to the idea that something still matters in this world. no, out protagonist should be... like a little bit nicer than that. so they lifted some of that responsibility for atrocities off him, but they couldn’t just evaporate it, could they? they had to put it somewhere. they put it on jgy. after all he’s the big bad in the end of the story, well, the only surviving person from all people that could be considered big bads, he’s the one that “did every terrible deed imaginable”. he could take that responsibility, they had to make his grayness into a slightly darker shade anyway.

i am actually kinda surprised by how different my reaction to jgy was in mdzs. obviously, there is a year difference between me watching cql and me reading this part of mdzs, and over that year i changed my opinion on jgy 5 thousand times and joined the camp “actually meng yao deserves all the best things in the world”, but anyway. when i was watching cql i was like, oh my god, can someone just kill him already, before he does something bad again, before more bullcrap comes out of his mouth, and also stop yelling at this kid about all the “valid” reasons to why you killed his dad. in mdzs my reaction to jgy’s confessions was like, “huh. he has a point”.

now don’t get me wrong there, some shitty things were done, but the thing is, the things he did really made sense from his point of view, from this position and life experience he really had no other way to go. i especially was convinced by his reasoning to why he couldn’t cancel his engagement with qin su. not only he would suffer from this story, because he already went through so much to make this marriage possible, but also qin su’s parents and herself would most likely suffer, their public image would be destroyed, only jgs wouldn’t lose anything. and you could feel the hatred and bitterness he felt towards his father talking about this, and everyone in the temple could agree with that, because he “just forgot he made another child”, he didn’t even notice.

another interesting detail for me was lxc saying, “it’s not that i didn’t know that you did some of these things, it’s that i thought you had a good reason for doing them”. so yeah, a reminder, lxc isn’t blind and he isn’t an idiot. he trusted a person he thought he knew better than anyone else, and he believed in this person. the problem, i think, is that “a good reason” is different for lxc and for jgy. lxc would understand a righteous reason, doing something for the greater good. working for wen ruohan? that was explainable. they all were fighting in a war, fighting for the better, brighter future, and meng yao’s contribution to that future was immeasurable. what if he killed some people there? he had a good reason in lxc’s eyes. but meng yao had other good reasons in his life, some of these reasons lxc never had to deal with in his life. survival, for example, is one of them. meng yao’s early years were very different from lxc’s. not to say that lxc’s life was easy, but it was never truly unstable. meng yao had to learn how to survive in a world where no one wanted him. he lived with one dream, promised to him by his mother, a future where he wouldn’t have to suffer anymore, where he wouldn’t have to smile at people he hated, please every one of their desires so they wouldn’t harm him. and then he entered this life promised to him and he still had to survive, but now in a luxurious man-eats-man world of lanling jin.

meng yao’s life really was this unstoppable ball of snow rolling down the mountain, and every decision he made just made the ball bigger and it would just roll faster. there is even a moment where jgy accuses lxc of being naive. lxc isn’t really naive, of course, it was said in the heat of the moment, but it is a fact that lxc was never kicked down a staircase, never had to crawl back up, and the thing is, at the bottom of the staircase, there are other good reasons to do things.

and in a way lxc understood that jgy in his position really didn’t have any other choices, he just couldn’t find peace in this mindset. he kept repeated through that part, “and yet, and yet, you shouldn’t have done that, you should have...” and he never said what exactly jgy should have done. because lxc doesn’t know. jgy doesn’t know. no one knows. what choices were better? how could he fix all that and still survive? in a way, lxc saying that reminded me of wangxian farewell in the burial mounds. when lwj asks, “you really indent to keep going like this?” and wwx, who wished, who longed for another solution, for some way out, asked him, “what else can i do? what method can i choose to resolve this, not use this technique and still protect people i want to protect?” and lwj didn’t have an answer. lxc didn’t have an answer either.

another amazing thing about guanyin temple confrontation, is that it’s very heavily wwx’s pov. most on the novel is his pov of course, but there were a loot of his thoughts in this arc. and he was rather understanding towards jgy. not in a way “i agree with every reasoning behind every decision you made” but in a way “i understand that you had your reasons, but all of them will become irrelevant really soon, they already are, because the crowd will only remember you as a son of a whore who did every terrible deed imaginable, and all the good deeds will be forgotten”

now his thoughts on nhs, or who he suspected nhs to be, were way less nice. especially compared to live action, nhs didn’t make such an impression on me as he made through wwx’s thought process in the end of guanyin temple arc. of course, wwx is no sect leader yao, he is not the one to jump to conclusions, he just noticed that if you put some facts together, they actually start making a lot of sense, and formed a full picture. but he didn’t have any proof, so he kept it mostly to himself. yet he still thought for a moment about nhs as someone who didn’t care about collateral damage that much, who was ready to sacrifice lives of juniors, sect leaders, anyone, if it would add to jgy’s kill count and make his fall and destruction even more disastrous. not that those are not the things that happened in live action, but you know, when wwx put it all together like that in one paragraph, i really felt it. like, oof, dude it’s ROUGH. and not even jgy’s death was enough, as nhs basically admitted to stealing meng shi’s body and planning to repay jgy for what he did to nmj’s body. yikes

i mean i still support nhs in everything he does, but yikes

also side note, glad that the dead cats situation finally became clear for me. this whole year i was so confused about who left all these dead cats for juniors to find. i thought maybe xue yang did?? to lure wwx?? so apparently it was also nhs. good to know.

another detail, probably the last one my brain can generate for now, that pained me a great deal was my poor child jin ling. i already cried about some things related to him and this arc, but there was another little one in the very end here, after jgy died. jin ling realised, that there were now three people, wwx, wn and jgy, his little uncle, that were responsible for his parents’ death. people he had every right and reason to hate. all three of them. and yet he couldn’t hate any of them. he couldn’t avenge his parents, that died so long ago he couldn’t remember them, because all three people responsible for what happened, had something, some reasons, some circumstances, that made them really not the bad guys in jin ling’s life. and they all cared about him, protected him. how could he hate them? how could he not? and in this way this poor child repeats, unfortunately, his uncle’s curse. to have someone he wants to hate so much but just simply can’t. it warms my heart at least that jin ling has a much better support system than jc had when he had to live through that experience. so there is hope.

#not rereading this #ok that's a lit i'll for sure reread this later #lie*#yana reads mdzs #and writes long long long metas #meta #the untamed

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crossdressingdeath · 3 years

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"Boys will be boys" logic is interesting since WWX himself basically uses that exact excuse in the book when he tells LWJ not to take JC's homophobic rant/assault seriously in the ancestral hall bc that's just how JC is, as if WWX himself wasn't furious when JC targeted LWJ in that scene. A lot of WWX's famed unreliable narration is rationalizing the crazy shit JC does but sometimes people tend to take it at face value.

Yes, exactly! That is such a huge thing. WWX spends so much time telling himself (and through himself the audience) that oh, it can’t be helped when JC mistreats him, JC is just like that, it’s totally fine, he doesn’t mind, and we see how that viewpoint was encouraged and strengthened by the people around him, especially JYL (sorry Shijie but it’s true). Hell, you could argue that this particular aspect of his character was entirely her doing, given YZY just thinks he should be subordinate to JC in all things and JFM mostly ignores JC’s behaviour; it’s just JYL going for the “oh boys will be boys, you’re strong and always smiling, you can take it” angle.

...Actually, let’s go into that a bit more because it very much gets buried under the “best sister” shit; I am prepared to argue that JYL consistently taking JC’s side did serious damage to WWX. Like, she was the only Jiang who consistently showed him affection and support and he convinced himself that it was unconditional! But the “unconditional” aspect was an illusion entirely based on his ability to consistently and convincingly pretend that JC wasn’t hurting him. WWX isn’t stupid, I don’t doubt for a second that he knew JYL would take JC’s side if it came down to it. She always takes JC’s side from day one. Literally; she hears WWX say he’ll take the blame for JC chasing him out of Lotus Pier and getting WWX’s leg broken while all JC did was come out looking for WWX personally (instead of doing the smart and more helpful thing and getting adults to help) because he was scared he’d get in trouble and he got a little scrape because he was running through the woods like an idiot because, again, he was too scared of getting in trouble to GET ACTUAL HELP THAT WASN’T A CHILD and she’s like “Yeah, that sounds reasonable and fair and not like a really, really bad precedent to set with a kid whose safety relies on my family liking him”. ...There’s also an aspect of “Sure, it can’t hurt to let the kid my mother very clearly hates take responsibility for something that he could be punished for by someone with a motive to take everything possible as a wrongdoing on WWX’s part”, but to be fair at this point she doesn’t know YZY will whip WWX for literally anything she can even slightly suggest is any sort of wrongdoing on WWX’s part. And let’s not pretend WWX wasn’t punished for JC getting hurt; come on, it’s YZY, she punishes him for sunbathing.

This is a running thing going forward in their dynamic, too! JC does something horrible, JYL immediately starts in on the “Oh, boys will be boys, A-Cheng might get upset if you call him out on his shit” shtick if WWX shows the slightest trace of dissatisfaction with being treated like garbage, WWX smiles and forgives JC for whatever he did without question, there’s a period of calm, the cycle repeats. JYL very much teaches WWX that he cannot EVER show any unhappiness with JC’s threats and insults. If he ever shows so much as a shred of anger or sadness or generally being upset at the way JC mistreats him JYL takes JC’s side. At most she’ll tell JC that maybe he should back off a little while basically telling WWX to grin and bear it because JC might be slightly upset if anyone ever calls him out on being horrible to literally everyone. And don’t even get me started on the whole “Oh you’re always smiling” bullshit, talk about teaching a mistreated orphan that he has literally no right to look sad about anything ever. Like, let me put it this way: WWX doesn’t even feel he can go to JYL about JC TRYING TO KILL HIM. That’s a lot? It’s a lot? And it never really gets discussed in any way? WWX doesn’t feel like he can tell his supposed sister who supposedly loves him unconditionally that her brother tried to murder him like three times and when the third time comes up JYL takes JC’s side because JC’s arm got broken in the process of the staged fight where JC stabbed WWX in the gut and that’s fine and healthy apparently. Stan WQ, the actual best sister (god I love WQ).

Anyway, now that I’m done enraging the fandom with my tangent about how much JYL sucks as a sister to WWX... Yeah, WWX insists that JC’s attitude can’t be helped because JC’s just like that even when he very clearly doesn’t buy that? He’s obviously pissed when JC goes after LWJ to the point of genuinely going after JC for it... but when they get away from JC he goes into the “Oh, he can’t help it, don’t get mad at him”. And in this particular case part of it is him panicking because JC’s homophobic ranting (and LWJ’s clear anger at it) left him questioning his and LWJ’s feelings and the mutuality thereof, but it also... really does throw every other time he insists JC’s behaviour is fine into question. Like, we know he’s not buying his own line in this scene! He was furious at JC! He’s still furious and upset! But he feels the need to cover for JC. Even after he’s realized that JC’s behaviour wasn’t okay, he still feels like he has to protect him from anyone else getting angry at him. WWX knows JC’s behaviour isn’t okay and that it’s not fair that JC treats him the way he does and I’d argue (especially at this point in the story) that he deserves better than JC’s treatment... but he still insists that JC is just like that and it’s fine.

That throws every single time WWX smiles through JC’s mistreatment into question, I’d say; we know he’ll react this way even when he knows that JC’s behaviour isn’t okay, so who’s to say he ever isn’t aware that JC’s behaviour isn’t okay? In CQL XZ does an excellent job of showing that at least in that continuity he is extremely done with JC’s shit even from when they’re fifteen; the novel is as far as I remember a little less clear, but it’s still pretty obvious that he’s not enjoying the way JC treats him. He knows that the way JC treats him is hurtful and upsetting and sometimes even frightening (think of the times JC threatens him with dogs and he’s clearly scared, which is a whole other thing because either he’s so scared of dogs that even the threat terrifies him or he has zero doubt that JC for sure would set dogs on him, which is a big thing either way and also I’m still not over how CQL JYL laughs when JC threatens WWX with dogs even though WWX is clearly scared and she totally would’ve laughed if that happened in the novel too but showing it so blatantly and then never actually getting into how messed up it is is just unnecessary), but he feels like he has to smile through it and cover for JC, just like when they were nine.

Anyway yeah, for a fandom so obsessed with WWX being an unreliable narrator the MDZS/CQL fandom sure does miss a lot of times where WWX is actually being unreliable, huh.

#mdzs #grapehate #wei wuxian #lotus sister #...got a bit off-track there whoops #anyway the jiangs ALL suck and FUCK jyl for enabling jc's horrible behaviour #anon #asks

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ouyangzizhensdad · 3 years

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Do you think LWJ took the advantage of being a Young Master of a prominent clan to publicly display the people he hates? (We know who that is) I saw someone claim about it and It's haunting my head.

Hi anon,

I’ll start first by saying that I think the novel does, to a degree, understand that there are people who have, to use Bourdieu’s terms, forms of ‘capitals’ that others do not and integrate that into the narrative and character dynamics. LWJ has not only capital due to his position as a gongzi and the son of a Leader (then later, as heir-in-line) to one of the prominent clans, but also due to his stellar reputation and fighting abilities (and to a degree, the fact he is a man). All this allows him to have a wider range of actions that are considered ‘acceptable/legitimate’ versus another person with different or lesser forms of capital--think for instance of the reaction and consequences when LWJ challenges what powerful men are saying (making up) about WWX versus when daughter-of-a-servant MianMian does the same. However, I find it weird to frame that as LWJ “getting away” with something--with his character, it’s more like he is able to have an opinion or stand up against injustices with less chances of getting punished and ridiculed for it.

Now, if it is about Jiang Cheng, it is kind of a myopic argument to be saying that LWJ “gets away” with “publicly hating JC”. First because by that point JC is technically even higher in the social hierarchy, being a literal Sect Leader. But it’s also weird to phrase this as “publicly hating JC”: LWJ is not running around badmouthing JC or the Jiang sect--the pettiest we see him is when he doesn’t silence LJY when he engages in gossip about JC. Instead we see LWJ standing up against JC when the situation calls for it, which is not the same. Of course, as JC does, it can be considered as an inherent ‘insult’ since it makes JC ‘lose face’ but I think there is a difference. And it’s not like JC does not get away with being impolite towards LWJ and the Lan sect, something we see at Dafan Mountain.

We know with the MXY altercation that JC was ready to kill him on sight for using modao (”Do you have any last words?”/“Break his legs? Haven’t I told you? If you see this sort of evil and crooked practice, kill the cultivator and feed him to your dogs!”). After LWJ intercepts, we have this exchange showing JC being impolite to a degree that prompts LJY to call him out for it, only bringing more disrespect for the Lans from JC:

He raised one brow and spoke, “Hanguang-Jun, you sure live up to your reputation of ‘being wherever the chaos is’. So, you had time to come to this remote area today?” [..] Right now, Jiang Cheng really didn’t seem too polite as he said the words in such a tone. Even the juniors who came following Lan Wangji did not seem comfortable hearing it.

Lan Jingyi spoke straightforwardly, “Isn’t Jiang-zongzhu here as well?”

Jiang Cheng replied grimly, “Tsk, do you really think that you should butt in when your seniors are conversing? The GusuLan Sect has always been known for its respectful conduct. Is this really how it teaches its disciples?”

It is imo more true to say that, due to LWJ’s higher and respected position in society, JC is not able to use his usual means of responding to someone challenging his decisions and thus making him lose face.This is again something we see during this altercation.

LWJ silences JL after he dismisses his mistreatment of other cultivators with the deity-binding nets. LWJ destroys the entirety of the diety-binding nets JC and JL were using to give JL an advantage over the other cultivators competing, something they were only able to do because of the Jiang and Jin sects considerable power and wealth. Is it daring of LWJ? Sure. Would he be able to do so without consequences if he was someone else? Probably unlikely, especially when we’re talking about JC. But is that ‘getting away’ with something? It’s literally the opposite scenario: LWJ is using his own status and capital to make it so that JL (and JC) are not getting away with what they are doing (although there are, in actuality, no consequences for their behaviours; they are just forced to give up on JL’s unfair advantages. Hell, LWJ even offers to pay for the nets he destroys, which I guess can also be taken as a baller move). What’s more, the novel even takes the time to point out that, if LWJ were not such a strong cultivator, JC might have pushed aside the risks of offending LXC and physically confronted him (let’s appreciate how this also serves as well-integrated exposition for their weapons).

Jin Ling’s grim expression was exactly the same as his uncle’s, “What can I do? It was their own fault for stepping into the traps. I’ll solve everything after I finish capturing the prey.”

Lan Wangji frowned. Jin Ling was about to speak again, but he suddenly realized that, shockingly, he could neither open his mouth nor make any sounds.

[...]

The man spoke in a low voice, “Not long ago, a blue sword flew over and destroyed the deity-binding nets that you had set up.”

Jiang Cheng glanced at Lan Wangji harshly, his displease plastered all over his face, “How many were broken?”

[...]

Although four hundred deity-binding nets were a whopping price, it wasn’t too much for the YunmengJiang Sect. Nonetheless, losing the nets were a small matter, but losing face was not. With Lan Wangji’s actions, Jiang Cheng felt a whirlpool of anger at the bottom of his heart, rising higher by every second. He narrowed his eyes, his left hand casually stroking the ring on his right hand’s index finger.

[...]

However, after stroking it for a while, Jiang Cheng compelled himself to restrain his hostility.

Although he was displeased, as the leader of a sect, he needed to take more things into consideration, which meant that he couldn’t be as impulsive as Jin Ling. After the fall of the QingheNie Sect, among the Three Great Sects, the LanlingJin Sect and the GusuLan Sect were quite close due to the personal relationship between the two leaders. By leading the YunmengJiang Sect alone, he was already in an isolated situation among the three. Hanguang-Jun, or Lan Wangji, was quite a prestigious cultivator, while his elder brother Zewu-Jun, or Lan Xichen, was the leader of the GusuLan Sect. The two brothers had always been on good terms with each other. It was best to not openly dispute with Lan Wangji.

Also, Jiang Cheng’s sword, “Sandu (三毒, Sāndú),” had never made actual contact with Lan Wangji’s sword, “Bichen,” and it was not yet decidable whose hands would the deer die on. Although he owned the powerful ring, “Zidian (紫电 Zǐdiàn),” a family heirloom of his, Lan Wangji’s guqin, “Wangji”, was also known for its abilities. The thing that Jiang Cheng hated the most was to be disadvantageous during a fight. Without complete confidence in his success, he would not consider fighting with Lan Wangji.

Now if it is about Su She, again what does LWJ truly do?

He silences him in the Demon-slaughtering cave? Although we’d be hard-pressed to believe LWJ respects Su She after what he’s seen him do in the Xuanwu Cave, the guy is literally trying to get everyone there killed and being a smartass to WWX while at it. And if it had been extremely disrespectful of him, LQR could have lifted the spell--something once again that the novel points out. When it dissolves into a game of calling out between the MolingSu sect and the GusuLan sect, LWJ does not say anything, even if, as LJY points out, Su She was imitating him. It’s only when WWX starts going that LWJ takes part by acquiescing to the truths WWX lays out (which are, yes, damning for the Su She and the MolingSu sect). But again, there are layers to what WWX is doing: he’s not only trying to expose what is going on, but anger Su She into revealing he still has his spiritual powers as proof of what he has worked out. So while WWX and LWJ are being by some measures disrespectful, there is a point to how they are going at it.

Touching his chin, he grinned, “Well I was worried that you’d get mad if I asked him too many things in front of you, wasn’t I? But since you’ve told me to ask him already, I’ll go ahead and ask. Lan Zhan?”

Lan Wangji, “Mn.”

Wei Wuxian, “The MolingSu Sect was a sect that branched off from the GusuLan Sect, right?”

Lan Wangji, “Mn.”

Wei Wuxian, “Although it branched off, the MolingSu Sect’s techniques still used the GusuLan Sect’s techniques ‘as reference’, right?”

Lan Wangji, “Yes.”

Wei Wuxian, “One of the GusuLan Sect’s techniques, the Sound of Vanquish, has the effect of exorcising evil. Amongst them, the seven-stringed guqin was the most powerful, and so there is the greatest number of people who cultivate through the guqin. The MolingSu Sect did the same, and the guqin is the most common in their sect as well, is that correct?”

Lan Wangji, “That is correct.”

Wei Wuxian, “Although the MolingSu Sect’s leader left the GusuLan Sect with knowledge of its techniques when he founded his own sect, is own guqin skills weren’t anything special, and the disciples he taught often make many mistakes too, right?”

Lan Wangji answered with honesty, “Yes.”

Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji went on back and forth, speaking as though nobody was around. More and more people realized that they weren’t only mocking Su She, but rather taking something apart. Thus, they began to listen more carefully.

Next, Wei Wuxian slowed down, “… And that means, even when a section of the battle melodies that the MolingSu Sect played when killing corpses on Mass Grave Hill was wrong, the GusuLan Sect wouldn’t find it unusual, and only think that they made a mistake because of their inferior techniques and remembered the sheet music wrong, not taking the time to notice whether it was an accidental mistake or a mistake on purpose. Is this the case?”

Hearing the last question, Su She’s pupils shrunk. The hand he placed on the hilt of his sword was suddenly lined with veins. The blade of the sword was already half-an-inch unsheathed. On the other hand, Lan Wangji lifted his eyes at the same time. Both Wei Wuxian and he saw the sense of understanding in each other’s eyes.

He stated one word at a time, “This is the case.”

Su She unsheathed his sword with a clang. Wei Wuxian moved the blade of the sword to the side with two fingers and smiled, “What are you doing? Don’t forget. You’ve lost all your spiritual powers. Would threatening me like this do anything?”

Sword raised in his hand, Su She could neither attack nor put it down. He clenched his teeth, “Aiming at me for so long—just what are you trying to imply?”

As much as we love to talk about LWJ’s hidden sass and pettiness, he does not seem to ever be disrespectful without a reason, and it’s usually in the process of standing up for others. Reading his character as an illustration of a man in a position of privilege and power getting away with things is a little bit of a reach--particularly when JC is literally right there.

#mdzs meta #lwj #jc #mdzs

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