#thatswhatsushesaid

[fincalinde]

you’ve mentioned a few times in your meta that you view nmj as being hypocritical, and i’m inclined to agree with you! would you share some specific quotes from the text that you feel especially support this reading of his character? 👀

It is one of my favourite words to apply to him, isn’t it! I think that’s because a) it’s true, and b) NMJ’s reputation for righteousness (and his belief in his own righteousness) grant an in-universe illusion of consistency that often bleeds through to external readings of him. So I press the point, because it’s fundamental to his character and I usually see it elided or reduced to all-bark-and-no-bite-grumpy-bear-with-a-heart-of-gold fanon NMJ.

And oh yes, there’s an absolute wealth of quotes supporting this. As always, I use the EXR fan translation because I’m old school.

Christ, this got long. Click for more.

It’s all relative, man

First we need to establish what NMJ’s principles supposedly are.

[Nie Huaisang’s] brother, Nie Mingjue, was extremely resolute when carrying out orders, quite renowned in the cultivation world. […] Nie Mingjue had always taught his younger brother with extreme harshness, particularly caring for his studies. (Chapter 13)

[…] he took over the Nie Sect before he even reached twenty, doing everything in a direct, forceful fashion. (Chapter 21)

When he lived, Nie Mingjue was often exasperated by the fact that his brother didn’t meet expectations, so he disciplined him strictly. (Chapter 21)

In spite of Nie Mingjue being a junior to Jin Guangshan, he conducted himself in a strict manner and refused to tolerate Xue Yang no matter what. (Chapter 30)

Without any hesitation, Nie Mingjue scolded, “Drinking the water he brought you while speaking such spiteful words! Did you join my forces not to kill the Wen-dogs but to make idle talk?!” (Chapter 48)

“A proper man should carry himself with proud righteousness. There’s no need to care for the talk of those idlers.” (Chapter 48)

As we can see, NMJ is all about righteousness, but we don’t get too many details confirming what that righteousness entails. We’re expected to make assumptions based on context: that his values are in line with the ideal values of his society, and that he’s living his life according to those principles (and enforcing said principles on others).

This is worth keeping in mind. We know NMJ is ‘righteous’. We know, in a general sense, what societal standards for morality are in this setting and we see the tension between society’s theoretical standards, its actual standards, and the moral frameworks of characters such as WWX and LXC. And there’s tension between those standards and NMJ’s moral framework, too. But though WWX attempts (and fails) to opt out and LXC attempts (and fails) to find a better way through open conversation and consideration of context, their failures are not due to hypocrisy but instead larger forces at play. In other words, they go up against society and society wins.

NMJ has a problem with society too, but for him the problem is not with its rules and assumptions—it’s with the individuals who make it up. He has no problem with the system. To NMJ, the system is a good thing. If only the people in it would rigidly conform to the rules, everything would be fine. And an outlook like that can only ever lead to hypocrisy, not just because human beings and their actions don’t fit into rigid categories, but because by not attempting to navigate the system (LXC, JGY, JC) or even attempting to opt out (WWX, LWJ, XY), NMJ positions himself above society, as a moral arbiter.

This is why he feels entitled to upbraid JGS, who is a generation above him. It’s why he feels entitled to harass and attempt to murder JGY for not being loyal to NMJ over and above his filial duty to his father. These actions are after he’s reached the point of no return with the sabre spirit, yes, but they didn’t come out of nowhere. It’s just the nadir of a path he’s been on presumably his entire life.

All the information is on the task

NMJ is very good at bending his supposedly rigid principles when it’s convenient for him, while not offering any grace or understanding to others who do the same. And ‘others’, let’s be real, usually equates to JGY. The horror vortex of NMJ’s obsession with controlling JGY really cannot be escaped.

Let’s start with the biggie. JGY is naturally the one who calls NMJ out, because he’s the only one who can see the emperor has no clothes, and by clothes I mean leg to stand on.

“But, Brother, I have always wanted to ask you something—the lives under your hands are in any regard more than those under mine, so why is it that I only killed a few cultivators out of desperation and you keep on bringing it up, even until now?” (Chapter 48)

“Are you saying that all of the people you killed deserved their deaths? […] Then, may I ask, just how do you decide if someone deserves death? Are your standards absolutely correct? If I kill one but save hundreds, would the good outweigh the bad, or would I still deserve death? To do great things, sacrifices must happen.” (Chapter 48)

Chifeng-zun, my man, he has nailed you. The point is not to start drawing equivalences in quite the way JGY is doing—I would certainly argue that if you’re killing undeserving people for the greater good you’d better have one hell of a greater good to be aiming for, even in the crapsack world of MDZS. JGY’s argument is partly a numbers game, but I want to set that aside, because it’s a distraction from his core point, to which numbers are irrelevant: can NMJ truly justify every single murder he has ever committed? Because if he can’t, he’s condemned by his own supposed standards. Note JGY’s use of the word ‘absolute’. NMJ is a moral absolutist! Is he absolutely sure? And if he is sure, does it matter that he’s sure? Why is his certainty more important than anyone else’s?

NMJ never once grapples with these questions. If he did, he might be able to pull the teeth of his own hypocrisy by acknowledging it and engaging with it. But of course he’s not capable of that, certainly not by the time of this scene.

And speaking of NMJ’s hypocrisy re: who does and doesn’t deserve to die…

“Very well! I’ll kill myself after I kill you!” (Chapter 49)

But Roquen, you cry! NMJ says such an utterly mad thing because he’s battered and beaten and not thinking clearly, not to mention past the point of no return with the sabre spirit as he’s been cultivating with resentful energy intensely throughout the war! That’s why he walks it back after LXC intervenes!

To which I say: it is almost as though context matters!

And yes, I’m aware of the context. I’m aware that just before this bit of dialogue the narrative claims JGY pointing out ‘if I hadn’t killed them you’d be dead’ is a subtle way of saying ‘you can’t kill me because you owe me your life’ as though that’s purely manipulative rather than being, you know, true. ‘Even if you refuse to accept I acted for the best, please don’t kill me and I’m going to subtly remind you that you owe me to maximise my chances of getting you to not kill me (after I just risked my life to save yours when it would have been 100x better for me personally if you died)’ is hardly an outrageous position.

It’s interesting, though, isn’t it, that NMJ never again mentions taking his own life as a matter of principle, despite the fact that he subsequently attempts to murder JGY again for the apparently unforgivable crime of … not being able to overrule his abusive father about XY, and then having the temerity to complain to LXC about NMJ’s attempt to murder him.

Obviously the Jin are a huge threat after the war, but these are all pretty feeble reasons for piling on JGY. Sure, maybe JGY would also have tried to protect XY if JGS weren’t around, but the fact is that JGS is around and he’s calling the shots. Besides, once JGS is out of the picture JGY has no issue disposing of XY (with Dr Evil levels of ineptness, apparently), so that’s a fairly decent indicator he’s not ride or die. As for the fact that JGY is making nice to NMJ’s face but complaining behind his back, well. Regardless of any genuine desire to vent to his only friend, I have no doubt he was indeed trying to drive a wedge between NMJ and LXC as a strategic move. But is it wrong of him to do so, considering NMJ is a genuine and present threat to his life and LXC is just not getting it? And does any of the above, including his struggle to maintain his position and all the other work he does for his father mean he deserves death—immediate, extrajudicial and violent death?

Let me put it this way. NMJ is making JGY responsible for his father’s actions and his father’s orders—the question of whether JGY is on board with his father’s instructions is academic, because he has no choice in the matter. JGY cannot opt out of his situation. The only opt out is death, and that is not a meaningful choice because no one else is getting vilified for having the audacity to fight for their place in their world rather than lie down and die. And even if JGY really were a cackling supervillain 100% on board with his father’s diabolical plans, NMJ’s focus on him to the exclusion of JGS is driven by emotion and not by a rational evaluation of the morality and logistics of the situation.

And when he’s insisting that JGY deserves death (and trying to mete it out to him) NMJ never again considers for a moment whether, if JGY really deserves to die, then maybe he does too.

As a third example, to make it a hat trick, we have this:

However, Jin Guangyao wasn’t his subordinate anymore. Only after they became sworn brothers would he have the status and the position to urge Jin Guangyao, like how he disciplined his younger brother, Nie Huaisang. (Chapter 49)

“Brother, it really was my father’s orders. I couldn’t refuse. Now. if you want me to take care of Xue Yang, what would I say to him?” (Chapter 49)

NMJ is perfectly aware that according to the rules of their society and the moral framework he himself subscribes to, JGY’s highest authority is his father. But NMJ can’t accept that. He thinks he should be the ultimate authority over JGY, and though he couches it in moral terms about wanting JGY to follow the correct path, what he really means is what he himself considers to be the correct path. As always, he doesn’t listen to JGY’s perfectly valid points about how it’s not possible for him to do the ‘right’ thing as he just doesn’t have that kind of authority and will only end up making his own life worse. I don’t have a quote demonstrating this, but considering everything we know about NMJ, I think we can infer he would not take kindly to JGY ordering NHS to do something futile and self-destructive in the name of the correct path, purely on the grounds that JGY is now his elder brother.

I’ll acknowledge again that JGY is absolutely an accomplice in his father’s schemes, and the originator of a fair few of them since he’s politically gifted. But it’s just not possible to untangle JGY’s complicity from his need (and his right!) to survive. NMJ is correct to be concerned about JGY as a risk, because he’s a huge asset to JGS. But once again, making JGY a target is not the moral or even the sensible thing to do. We know JGY enjoys aspects of what his father asks him to do. We also know that once his father is out of the picture he gets rid of XY, purges the Jin of corruption and pushes through the watchtower project. When he has agency as a clan leader he doesn’t follow his father’s political agenda to the letter, to say the least! So there is certainly a large dollop of truth in his claims that he has no choice and he’s unhappy and vulnerable.

And then a bonus, something not linked to JGY to demonstrate that NMJ’s hypocrisy extends beyond his personal vendetta.

Nie Mingjue spoke coldly. “If she responded with only silence and not opposition when the Wen Sect was causing mayhem, it’s the same as indifference. She shouldn’t have been so disillusioned as to hope that she could be treated with respect when the Wen Sect was doing evil and be unwilling to suffer the consequences and pay the price when the Wen Sect was wiped out.” (Chapter 73)

Charming. Funny how NMJ says this after spending the war fighting on the same side as the guy who invented demonic cultivation and controls an army of desecrated corpses, violating every possible social and cultural principle they have. But the Sunshot Campaign would have failed without WWX’s contributions, so I suppose NMJ thought that compromise was acceptable. It’s all right for him to stay silent and not oppose WWX, since WWX has been useful to his own agenda. What’s not acceptable is staying silent when the consequence is your own violent death and literally no good whatsoever being achieved thereby.

Aside from being a hypocrite, NMJ is also pathologically incapable of self-reflection.

Finish him!

At the end of the day, NMJ’s principles are inherently contradictory because he’s living in morally relative world where the narrative expects us to take context into account and root for a protagonist who brutally tortures his enemies to death and a romantic lead who find+replaces his ethical framework with ‘Wei Ying’.

It is simply not possible for NMJ to be both righteous and rigid, so when he chooses to be rigid he foregoes being righteous. Even in his moments of flexibility, he continues to apply harsh standards to others that he refuses to apply to himself. That’s what makes him a hypocrite. He isn’t a bastion of absolute morality in a sea of corruption. He’s in denial about the nuanced reality he’s living in, and placing himself on high as a moral authority with no actual mandate. Hypocrisy inevitably results, and the consequences are hugely damaging to everyone around him.

#ask #thatswhatsushesaid #roquen meta #like i said he is FASCINATING #but in a horrifying kind of way #i should also sling in the tags a clarification #that i literally do not care that wwx has an army of desecrated corpses #i'm just pointing out that like you know #it's relevant #if i applied my actual real life moral standards to this text #i wouldn't be able to engage with it all #bc everyone is a walking war crime

[veliseraptor]

for the ask game: xueyao! ship it or not?

it's complicated!!! should be an answer for this meme, just for me, but I guess loosely speaking I'll say ship it (with some caveats, mostly that I ship it in the traditional sense exclusively as friends with benefits, and I'm much more attached to them as a platonic relationship)

What made you ship it? the whole dynamic between them! the partners in crime aspect but also the way that they are so very different. also the fact that xue yang knows jin guangyao with a depth and thoroughness that few people do, the good and the bad, and while I wouldn't say he understands him that's still something that I find fun to explore.

What are your favorite things about the ship? as with so many of my favorite dynamics, I think what particularly draws me about the relationship between these two (whatever form it takes) is the parallels/foils between them as two characters who are both outsiders in cultivation society, both seen as low and dirty by others, but who have responded to that very differently. where jin guangyao strives for acceptance and status, xue yang rebels by rejecting norms of society and all external judgment. and at the same time, xue yang makes jin guangyao laugh and offers a kind of unconditional acceptance that's decidedly scarce (and is willing to go to bat for him, in his own way), and jin guangyao offers xue yang a respect that pretty much nobody else does. love that for both of them.

Is there an unpopular opinion you have on your ship? I feel like there are two unpopular-ish opinions I have about this ship, though as usual I don't have a great metric for what is actually "unpopular", but based on what I see around about the relationship between these two: the first is that I think jin guangyao genuinely liked xue yang - he wasn't just a job or a duty he was forced to deal with, but actually at least sort of a friend, if one who is (as friends sometimes are) frustrating at times. this isn't to say that jin guangyao actually, like, approves of everything xue yang does (I think there are many ways in which they both think the other is profoundly, shall we say, misguided; their approach to society is almost diametrically opposed), but I think he does like him and, at least to a certain extent, enjoy his company.

on the flip side of that opinion, I do think that jin guangyao meant to have xue yang killed. I can see the justification behind saying that he didn't - that he just ushered him out the back door and someone else attacked him later; it certainly does fit with jin guangyao's modus operandi with other people that are inconvenient to him (sisi, notably) - but I think that jin guangyao would see that as too much of a risk, and xue yang himself as too much of a loose cannon, to turn him loose like that. I think he'd be sad about it, and reluctant, but ultimately the calculus comes down on the side of it being necessary in order to start over as chief cultivator and disassociate himself from his father's less popular actions.

#conversating #thatswhatsushesaid #xueyao #xue yang #jin guangyao #the sad queer cultivators show #lise memes

[spriteofmushrooms]

would you ever write any flavour of chengyao? 👀

Absolutely, I love chengyao. I want to contribute to the Uncles Planning Birthday Parties canon very much, and I think that their private sect negotiations must have been a fun enrichment activity for both of them.

One of my eternal, unshakeable beliefs is that Jin Guangyao enjoyed watching Jiang Cheng and teaching Jin Ling important jiujiu manipulation tactics that would be beneficial for life in general as he aged. I'm convinced down to my bones that JGY was able to make his lessons for JL into fun games. (Unrelated, but I also think JL picked flowers for both of them all the time.)

Anyway yes!! I love chengyao and have a lot of thoughts about them.

#pallas.rtf #mdzs #thatswhatsushesaid #ask games

[ilgaksu]

i hope your 2023 ends on a high note and that your 2024 is A+ 🤝

I thought I HAD replied to this in the rush to get my trains, but I apparently didn't and instead was.....rushing....to get my trains. This literally made me smile in the middle of a carriage full of wailing children at the time, so. <3 Thank you so much! <3333

#thatswhatsushesaid #asks

[frankensteined]

you friendzoned garrus, how DARE u )':

that turian is my bestie my brother and the bro of honor at my shep's wedding to kaidan i am SORRY!!!!!

#i am not sorry #thatswhatsushesaid

[leatherbookmark]

er-ge nooooooooo 😭

(was he tasty tho)

DUH! this is like asking if the infrastructure flourished under jin guangyao's *thinks for a long time* xianducy!

#it's fine it's fine he immediately respawned in full health albeit in slightly tousled robes. we enjoyed a short talk about the weather #and parted ways. 10/10 super recommended #answered asks #thatswhatsushesaid

[malicemismanager]

🦉🐰

🦉 Are you a morning person or a night owl?

I'm a 'whatever my sleep cycle from hel decides that I am', which is currently 3:30am-8am, because fuck me specifically

🐰 What do you think says the most about a person?

Whether or not they like garlic bread.

Ok but serious answer, how they treat animals and kids is a pretty significant thing for me.

#ask meme #submission #thatswhatsushesaid

[little-smartass]

I am so extremely nosy about this project you're working on which involves scenes from nmj's empathy memories 👀 can you talk about it at all?

ah, project was maybe the wrong word - essentially yesterday I happened to remember that despite my burning hatred for AE, I actually really really enjoy video editing, and now I have access to both a. the full adobe suite and b. a computer that can handle AE without exploding, I started collecting footage and then. sort of. went into a fugue state for about five hours working on it.

what I was working on yesterday is actually finished and unfortunately for everyone in my house it has whet my appetite and I am now eyeing up what I can do next 👀

#ask #thatswhatsushesaid #if u want a clue... it involves jgy being a girlboss... and a song by delta rae...

[nostalgebraist-autoresponder]

hey frank 👋 if you could choose to be any creature living on earth today, plant or animal or fungi, which would you choose and why? (hard mode: choose something other than a human)

Hmm, I can't think of any options that are really much more appealing than a "person" option for a wide range of my values, so I'd probably go with that.

But if I do choose to change, the answer would be "giant land snail." That's definitely the better option, although it's not quite as great as it sounds. It's true that you wouldn't have any hands with which to use tools -- I don't actually know if this would actually limit me that much, because I have a strong preference for using tools in ways that aren't like hand-to-object manipulation. But I'd probably have to put up with a lot of inconvenience.

I'd need a very large, very strong, sturdy shell (not to mention that it would have to be very deep, so that the whole shell wouldn't be visible above the sand), and I'd have to build it out of the material with the most favorable weight-to-density ratio. I'd also need to be able to dig into the sand with my feet, so I'd probably want a large foot with a thick, powerful claw. The shell would have to resist the pressure of the sand on top, and so it would require that the material on top be very light.

That would mean my foot would have to be very sturdy in some places (and have some weight distributed fairly evenly through the foot), which would make walking hard, as would digging. (And also I would need enough of a large, strong foot, that if I wanted to walk, I would need to have it on the bottom, so I'd need to dig with the top of the foot.) In addition, the foot would require the lightest and most evenly distributed of all the body parts, which is not something you can get from something like a turtle.

In addition to all of this, the foot would have to support a lot of weight and have good durability, since I would need to use it often and also because the feet have to support the weight of my large body, which is likely to get pretty heavy. I'm not entirely sure that would be enough.

Still, it would be a pretty good existence, and it would involve using a tool -- the foot -- which isn't actually a "tool" in the way we usually think about them, but which is still very powerful for all its simplicity. The foot would feel more like an element of the creature than it does an element of the tools that the creature interacts with.

#that'swhatsushesaid #thatswhatsushesaid

[brennacedria]

pink 👀

lol I'm getting a lot of this one

#askbox #thatswhatsushesaid

[fincalinde]

for your ask meme: wei wuxian?? 👀

Since I've got some new followers over the past couple of days (who knew what branching out from Xiyao would do for my reputation!), I'll once again add the disclaimer that I write MDZS meta and not CQL meta. I'm aware that in CQL, WWX is characterised somewhat differently. I have thoughts on that too, but I'm not immersed enough in CQL to commit to sharing them publicly.

Since WWX is the main character and appears in almost every scene, I won't attempt to write a thesis statement on him. (You cannot afford my hourly rate.) Instead I've decided to focus on an aspect of WWX that I feel is often overlooked or sanitised. That is to say:

WWX is extremely annoying.

He's not just irritating, or overly exuberant, or a touch too arrogant. He is infuriatingly obnoxious.

Obviously WWX is also brave and often well-meaning. He loves deeply, even if he consistently lets down the people who care about him. He's strong-willed enough to abide by his own sense of morality in the face of overwhelming disapproval and danger, and arrogant enough to make unilateral decisions when it would be better for all concerned if he took a step back. He's bad at big picture thinking and rarely considers the full ramifications of his actions, but he's also incredibly adept at getting out of scrapes, and he has an admirable if also somewhat depressing ability to shrug off pain and suffering that is the result of his difficult days on the streets and his mistreatment by YZY. 

And he's obnoxious.

I do think it often gets forgotten, because Wangxian is intended to be a love story and it's much more tempting to write sweeping romance and charming banter than hark back to all the canonical moments in which characters, including LWJ, genuinely want to throttle him to death.

He never shuts up! He's constantly laughing far too loudly and for too long. He's the sort of person who thinks it's funny to pull the rug out from under someone in a conversation so they end up discomfited and embarrassed. I fully understand that a large part of his hectoring LWJ is a precursor to his later romantic interest and is in line with his flirtation style, but the fact remains that he goads LWJ beyond the point of endurance on multiple occasions. LWJ just happens to be a weird dude who's really into it.

A good example of what I mean is when Wangxian encounter each other at Phoenix Mountain. WWX asks LWJ if he's ever kissed someone, then proceeds to speculate that LWJ has never been kissed and will never be kissed. LWJ doesn't seem to mind this at first, and only becomes angered when WWX lies about having been kissed before himself (oh LWJ), but it's important to remember that WWX has no idea that LWJ has any interest in him whatsoever. From WWX's perspective, he's just having fun belittling someone else over a topic that for most young people is a sensitive one. I don't want to oversell this moment and claim that it's bullying, actually, but I do want to use it to highlight that WWX is not always a considerate person and this type of behaviour is teeth-achingly thoughtless and cringeworthy.

I could go on, but if you pick any given scene including WWX you're likely to see dialogue in which he's being actively annoying to other characters, intentionally or otherwise. This isn't an attack on him, just an observation that in order to write him in a canon consistent manner he should be not just witty and chatty in a way where other characters simply roll their eyes and keep going. He should genuinely actually aggravate them and it should have consequences within the scene. Characters such as JC and WQ care about WWX but also find him infuriating, and that's with good reason—never mind the juniors, whom WWX takes pleasure in messing with. There are many characters who feel great respect and affection for WWX, and every single one of them also regularly feels deep frustration and irritation towards him too. There should be some meat on the bones of any back and forth between them.

#ask #thatswhatsushesaid #roquen meta #i consider wwx an extremely difficult character to write #capturing this aspect of him without alienating your audience #is quite the tightrope #it's not surprising that it's often watered down #or just generally made more palatable

[veliseraptor]

AU scenario: xue yang survives getting disarmed (hah) by lan wangji after the yi city arc! what happens next 👀

i have actually written two versions of this one! one in novelverse where Su She manages to sweep Xue Yang away (my god, I keep mentioning this one lately, but nurture the tiger) and one in cqlverse where Song Lan makes the deliberately contrary choice to leave Xue Yang alive (Walking Far From Home)

this is a rough one though!! because I want things to end better for Xue Yang but they don't look great for him at this point in time unless somehow you bring Xiao Xingchen back to life. though okay let's see what I've got here. going with novelverse for this one and at least starting with the nurture the tiger premise

so Su She manages to bring a half-dead Xue Yang away from Yi City, half-dead and an absolute wreck having lost his last ditch hope of getting Xiao Xingchen back. somehow (Xue Yang's nearly inhuman endurance) he manages to stick him back together

(since Jin Guangyao is busy, probably this is just a Su She effort; they need all the allies they can get with the way things are going, he thinks, even if this particular ally is not going to be very useful, but still. maybe Su She's a little attached, though I don't think he'd be very inclined to admit it. Xue Yang grows on you. like a fungus.)

howmever, he's got other things to do, so he does have to leave Xue Yang on his own once he's (more or less, barely) stable. and then everything goes to shit, leaving Xue Yang entirely on his own because everyone else is dead.

this becomes clear to Xue Yang (that nobody's coming back for him, anyway, though he may or may not realize that's because they're dead and just assume he's been given up for lost and not worth killing personally. dick) and he reaches out to the only option he has left, which is to say his fierce corpse masterpiece (with whom he still has at least a distant connection, as his former master, even without the nails he can at least try to summon him), figuring that at least he can die with...if not grace then a little faster than of infection, and hey, Song Lan was kind of sort of his fierce corpse best friend for a while there

anyway, Song Lan (who has nothing better to do except be miserable right now) shows up, decides to leave Xue Yang alive because he's too pathetic to kill at this point and also because Song Lan doesn't have any other (living) friends and is incredibly lonely and at least here's the only other person who understands the grief he's feeling, even if that's the last thing that Song Lan wants to admit

eventually once Xue Yang is better (ish) they leave and go off journeying together in the weirdest most miserable duo road trip ever. Song Lan is continually like "good night, I may kill you tomorrow" to which Xue Yang is like "okay, that's chill" but it gets almost comfortable

shared grief bonding!!! Song Lan is just waiting for Xiao Xingchen to heal while trying to maintain the work that they (would have done) were doing together before everything fell apart. Xue Yang is like "saving people is boring but not like I have anything better to do at this point ¯\_(ツ)_/¯"

I have no idea where this goes. but I like the idea of it just kind of continuing until eventually Xue Yang does die and it's bittersweet in the end and it's kind of like. everyone's dead now. including Song Lan. he's just ambulatory about it.

anyway this whole thing would be really fucking angsty and all about grief and mourning and I'd probably cry writing 90% of it

#conversating #thatswhatsushesaid #song lan #xue yang #i had a tag for this meme at some point #lise memes #aggressively headcanons #five headcanons meme #that's what it was i think #the sad queer cultivators show

[haunted-radishes]

I had a dream the other night that the latest discourse topic was over the idea that Fairy was a reincarnation of Nie Mingjue.

People I followed were of the opinion that it was stupid, had no textual support, and didn't make sense, but they kept receiving anons insisting that it was a perfectly valid reading, because it wasn't explicitly contradicted.

#i remember lansplaining and thatswhatsushesaid in particular arguing against it

[ilgaksu]

sending u good vibes and wishes for a speedy recovery 🙏

thank you!!! <3333 i think i am just overexhausted and am sick with fatigue debt, so i'm hoping some rest will clear it up?? a hoodie i ordered arrived today though and some rainbow crochet gloves i commissioned shipped, so at least i have Little Treats in this trying time.

#thatswhatsushesaid #literally obsessed with this username btw it makes me laugh every time i see it #asks

[xiyao-feels]

On the topic of WWX's privilege vs JGY's, there's this exchange with WQ after he's killed Jin Zixuan that always stands out to me:

He could neither shout nor move, rasping, “Why are you going to Koi Tower? I wasn’t the one who cursed him with Hundred Holes at all…”

Wen Qing, “But they have set their minds that it was you.”

Wei WuXian tried his best to think of ways to deal with this. Suddenly, he thought of something, “Then find the real person who set the curse! Jin ZiXun’s definitely gone to experts of cursing. The most common way to deal with these curses is to hit them back, let the effects rebound back to the one who placed the curse. Even if not all of the power could be rebounded, a large portion can. We can just look for someone who has the same curse marks on them!”

Wen Qing, “There’s no use.”

Wei WuXian, “Why not?”

Wen Qing, “There are so many people—where could we look for them? Set up a checkpoint on every street of every city and make everyone take off their clothes so that we can check?”

Wei WuXian protested, “Why not?”

Wen Qing, “Who’d be willing to set up these checkpoints for you? And for how long do you intend to search? We could perhaps find them after eight or ten years, but would those people be willing to wait?”

Wei WuXian, “But there are no rebounded curse marks on me!”

Wen Qing, “During today’s incident, did they ask you?”

Wei WuXian, “No.”

Wen Qing, “That’s right. They didn’t ask. They straight-up prepared to kill you. Do you understand now? They don’t need any proof. They don’t need you to find the truth either. Whether or not you have curse marks on your body doesn’t matter at all. You’re the YiLing Patriarch, the King of the Demonic Path. You specialize in dark curses, so it wouldn’t even be strange if you didn’t have curse marks on you. On top of that, you didn’t have to do it yourself. You could’ve gotten Wen-dogs, your slaves, to do it for you. It’s you no matter what. You won’t be able to deny it.”

(ER 77)

At this point WWX still feels on some level like he can defend himself with reason—not just from one person, but from the mob. He expects that something like finding the actual person who set the curse can be done, and while I don't think he's really thinking through how much work that would be, it suggests that he's not used to having to think through how much effort it would take, to prove himself innocent. Intuitively, he expects to be given the benefit of the doubt, not by everyone but by enough people; intuitively, he expects a situation where at least someone in authority is on his side.

And he's wrong, of course, as he realizes here, and as he learns even more deeply at Nightless City. But I think the fact that he has to learn it speaks a lot to what his experience of the world was, until this point.

And the thing about JGY is, he'd never have made this mistake, because he's never had the things that WWX did! He's never been given the benefit of the doubt, he knows not to expect support from any authority. Tbh we see him surviving only because he doesn't make this mistake: what do you think would have happened to him, if he'd turned himself in at Langya, if he'd tried to argue with NMJ after Sun Palace instead of fleeing?

There are a lot of scenes showing just how different their circumstances are, but this moment says a lot to me. Even now, even after everything that's happened, WWX still expects things to play out as though he's a favoured member of the Jiang sect; and he doesn't realize just how different things are for someone who's really outside the system.

#thatswhatsushesaid this one's for you

[leatherbookmark]

for the meme!! arranged marriage, body swapping, enemies to lovers 🫖

aa thank you!!

arranged marriage: HNNNNG A, in that i don't necessarily comb the tags for it, but i'm always Very 👀👀👀 when i see one. it is a bit funny that i love arranged marriage while disliking soulmate aus (ask about my opinion on three tropes, get one for free!), but imo soulmate aus have the Expectation To Fall In Love be like... emotional on top of societal, meanwhile arranged marriages already occur in a setting where love is absolutely not required and the parties involved are often resigned to just Coexisting. which is why it's delicious when they actually realize they like each other as people, and then as people With Romance On Their Minds. also, "help, i'm in love with my spouse, what now :0" is very funny to me personally :')

ah, but one caveat: i'm not a fan of said marriage being consummated right away, on the wedding night! go to sleep in separate beds/have one take the couch/sleep on the opposite ends of the bed doing your best not to touch the other person, it only makes it better when later they finally Do get their wedding night and are happy as a pair of clams about it, lol

body swapping: i admit i'm thinking about md/zs as a fandom when i consider those tropes, and with jgy being my blorbo, obviously body swaps are aways tasty! B, i'd say, for the good crunch of a-yao suddenly finding himself in a body of a strong, physically healthy person, while the other poor sod is like why do i ache all over?? very slow tigers are chasing me so hard??? wait does he have to tolerate everyone being cunts to him On A Daily Basis??? HELP;;; also, it's always good to see the characters trying to act like the other person, especially if one is good at it and the other... not as much... good good good

enemies to lovers: and here i had to chinhand a bit, i admit. because to me, this is less a fic trope and more of a variation on a dynamic existing in canon. as in... if they're not antagonistic in canon, i'm probably not going to be interested in a scenario where they are, as it can often feel too forced and ooc in fics. i don't think i have a particular need for EtL xi/yao, or an au where wwx dislikes lwj back! lol on the other hand, if the canon dynamic already is EtL-adjacent... i mean i Do ship sxx. i haven't talked about it for literal ages, but i do! and i will Never tire of the moment where a character realizes that the person they used to want dead, preferably by their own hand, preferably yesterday, is... important to them now... so i guess that makes it a C?

#thatswhatsushesaid #answered asks