Tumgik
#you asked for it wwx
poorly-drawn-mdzs · 2 months
Text
Tumblr media
Good Morning, World.
[First] Prev <–-> Next
2K notes · View notes
starsxinxthexbluexsky · 10 months
Text
Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media
The Untamed | Episode 36 [Drunk Lan Wangji And His Chickens]
⤳WangXian’s Favorite Scenes [19/∞]⬿
700 notes · View notes
shanastoryteller · 3 months
Note
Happy happy holidays 🎁🎉🕎🎄❄☃️ As always, I’d love some more of thee MDZS Identity Porn (with the masks and LWJ getting jealous of all of his husband’s “husbands”) (Or JC traveling back in time?) Thanks!
a continuation of 1 2 3 4 5
Nie Huaisang has spent most of the banquet fluttering back and forth between his brother and Meng Yao, stroking and then soothing Nie Mingjue's anger by turns.
At this point, Lan Wangji can't help but find himself wholly unsympathetic to Nie Mingjue's plight. Meng Yao has his husband's trust and care and whatever friction he'd experienced in the Nie is lacking in the Burial Mounds.
The more formal portion of the night has faded and people are intermingling and drinking and spread throughout the Jin gardens and main hall.
Wen Qing spends the evening drinking and scowling and unsubtly putting as much distance between herself and Jiang Wanyin as possible.
Lan Wangji had gotten so caught up talking with his brother and other Lan, now that it's socially permissible to do so, that it takes him a while to notice that his husband is missing.
It takes him significantly less time to notice that Nie Huaisang is missing too.
His face drops into a scowl that he's afraid he's learned from Wen Qing. Xichen blinks then his eyebrows push together in concern. "Wangji?"
He forces his face to smooth out. "Apologies, brother. It's nothing."
Xichen raises an eyebrow then leads him away from the others with some murmured excuses that they pretend to believe. “Go on.”
“It’s fine,” he insists, then under his brother’s unwavering gaze swallows down his embarrassment to say, “The Yiling Patriarch and I have a political marriage.”
“Yes,” Xichen agrees in puzzlement before his faces darkens. “If he is behaving dishonorably-”
“He had a life before me, Xichen,” he says. “His personal and political interests are simply not aligned.”
Not completely. He had flustered Wei Wuxian before. He’s never seduced anyone before, but Wei Wuxian seems as if he’d be amenable, if only he can figure out how to do it.
Xichen looks at him carefully before his mouth tips up on the side. “This is displeasing to you. That the Patriarch’s interest in you is not personal.”
He flushes but gives a single nod.
There’s clear amusement in his tone now. “So he is handsome under the mask then?”
“Xichen,” he says, helpless and a warning at once. He’d spoken in generalities all evening, unwilling to reveal any of the particulars about the clan he’s married into, even to his brother. Meng Yao and Wen Qing are correct. Their clan will have to come more fully into the public soon but that’s Wei Wuxian’s decision, not his.
Well, realistically it’s Meng Yao’s, considering it seems as if Wei Wuxian would happily keep[ their clan in the shadows forever.
“Do you promise it’s not terrible?” Xichen continues, the teasing gone and just leaving gentle concern in its place. “You weren’t just saying that so the others wouldn’t worry? The burial mounds is such a horrible place. I hate thinking of you there.”
The burial mounds are beautiful.
It holds their village and their people and lush fields and thriving crops. There’s soft greys and blue skies and every horrible part of it is underneath his husband’s control and he would never, ever let that horror touch the people he’s sworn to protect.
“It’s not what it looks like on the outside,” he says finally. “The Patriarch isn’t either. You’ll understand when you see it.”
“I’m looking forward to it,” Xichen says.
381 notes · View notes
amzyspinkarch · 7 months
Text
After finishing MDZS, reading metas that explain characters, terminology, and things in the book that I went over my head, I started looking at the fanfics I read with a side eye.
Why does it take Jiang Yanli, someone else’s sibling, who possesses the same character traits and qualities as MXY and Qin Su, to become a sibling to JGY, in order to save him? That no longer makes sense to me.
Wei Wuxian apologising to Jiang Cheng. This always angered me or had me conflicted. Sometimes I thought I was wrong for being upset that WWX was apologising. I would not like to read another fanfic with this scenario again.
Tumblr media
Why is Jiang Cheng a renowned homophobe shipped with all the men? I get it, I get it, fan fiction. Still..
WWX sleeping around is not accurate.
WWX being an alcoholic is not either.
Why does reconciliation between Wei Wuxian and Jiang Cheng happen because WWX apologised? How about a fanfic where Jiang Cheng realised his faults and actively changes and he’s the one to apologise? If he can be gay, he can change his ways, and apologise. It’s fan fiction right? All things are possible.
207 notes · View notes
mamoonde · 16 days
Text
i really really really love the idea of wei wuxian revolutionizing modern cultivation over breakfast and conceptualizing these different theories simultaneously because the adhd brain has no brakes and the only reason it took him a decade to publish all these ideas was because he could not stick to a single train of thought long enough to finish (verbalizing) it, let alone put it down on paper coherently.
the only reason he even got to publishing them eventually (and enrolling to cultivation theory grad program to get on that track) was because one morning, his undergrad thesis advisor, lan qiren, finally got fed up and sat him down for an early morning progress check-in because it was midterm season and wei wuxian still hadn't decided on a topic.
wei wuxian, fueled by an unhealthy amount of redbull and three all-nighters, finally word vomits all his 'convoluted' ideas which he'd thought were uselessly obvious and redundant (because he's gone over these like a bajillion times, it's very plain-as-day to him, so he probably just hasn't read the articles that say these exact things).
lan qiren, teacup frozen halfway to his mouth: ...first of all, i only understood half of how you got to these conclusions, which only means they are indeed too convoluted and will need to be pared down; secondly: you have never mentioned any of these ideas before. why.
wei wuxian: oh. haven't i? oh well, i just thought, xyz, because, obviously, abcde. which is really what the 2 centuries old law on ghjkl was alluding to, right? and so, logically, xyz.
lan qiren: [mind blown, screaming, good gods this is the same child who's always tardy and spent freshman year pulling on the metaphorical pigtails of my straight-laced nephew?!?!??!??!?!] ..again, why...how have you never even spoken or submitted these ideas?
wei wuxian: because!!! they're so obvious!! surely, it's been published somewhere already? i can't be the only one to connect these dots, surely??
lan qiren: incredibly, you are. no one else has even thought to question tradition nor pursued more thoughts on the law of ghjkl, with half as much...sound arguments as you seem to have. in the past century, the focus of modern cultivation has tended towards practical uses and tools, some fine-tuning, perhaps. not entirely new theories.
wei wuxian: huh....
lan qiren, sighing, feeling a migraine: your problem with your thesis is not a lack of focus or ingenuity, but likely to be more a lack of recent, evidentiary sources. you will need to become very familiar with the university archives and dig deep for sources that will back up every argument you make.
he jots down notes on a paper. "you will also need to strictly adhere to the structure and methodology of these articles, especially given how radical your thesis will be. if you are diligent enough, you may just be able to submit your thesis without too much of a delay." he slides the list of materials to a gaping wei wuxian. "depending on your output then, we can discuss the possibility of submitting this for peer review."
"peer review." wei wuxian repeats. "as in, that thing where some uppity committee of old coots put their stamp of approval for it to become the reading materials of undergrads like me. you're joking."
lan qiren chooses to ignore the sentiment about peer review committees being uppity old coots, especially considering how he can't completely deny it on account of some of his colleagues, but also as a member said peer review committee, he isn't exactly pleased about being lumped in the same category.
wei wuxian backtracks at his unamused look. "right, you're not joking, of course you're not." he slowly inches the list towards himself. "right, yes, i guess i'll uh, get to it then. ok bye."
----
idk, just, waves hand at wei wuxian candidly explaining new modern cultivation theories over cheerios at 2 in the afternoon to lwj who's trying to help him structure his grad thesis, getting mind blow dick hard at how this messy genius who's talking with his mouth full of half eaten cereal is the object of his affection....
wwx: --oh, oops, your highlighter fell
lwj: mn
wwx: ...aren't you gonna get that?
lwj: it's fine; i'll pick it up later. finish your thought.
wwx: right... i'll pick it up for you!
lwj, fighting for his life, trying to think unsexy thoughts: NO! sit. finish your meal, and then your thought.
77 notes · View notes
loosingmoreletters · 9 months
Note
Oooo for a prompt: Jiang Cheng raises a-Yuan thinking he’s actually Wei Wuxian’s biological child
Anon, you really said “I will cater to Letter’s interests” with this ask.
When Jiang Cheng finds the boy, he’s still grieving. He hasn’t stopped grieving since they received the first terrible news of Jin Zixuan’s demise. He grieves, he rages, he cries and carries on. A circle reminiscent of the schedule followed by a boy burned out by loss.
He grieves when he pulls a-Yuan from the ash. The child is barely breathing, malnourished too, wrapped in an adult’s cloak.
Wei Wuxian, he thinks, and presses the boy close to his neck, hides his face when he hurries down a troubled path where his most trusted disciples wait. They do not question him, they ask nothing at all but how quickly they need to return home.
Fast, is his reply. He’s seventeen again, running across the countryside on bloody feet to get his brother home. He saved Wei Wuxian then, he saves a-Yuan now.
The healer asks him how old the child is and Jiang Cheng has no answer for her. He’s so very small, sleeping off his fever under her care. She thinks he is around two, perhaps a little younger, but they have no way of knowing. Everyone who would, is dead.
Like the rest of Jiang Cheng’s family, all of them, but Jin Ling. His nephew is a healthy baby, chubby fat and dressed in only the softest of silks. He’s loud too, crying out for parents he doesn’t have anymore, in everything but this, the exact opposite of a-Yuan.
Jiang Cheng hadn’t questioned a-Yuan’s presence in the Burial Mounds the first time round, too caught up in all his other anger. Maybe he should’ve stopped fighting with his brother to ask. Why would Wei Wuxian give everything up for the Wen if the Wen wasn’t his?
The following weeks agree with him. A-Yuan grows into Wei Wuxian’s smile, no longer asks for the dead as his memories disappear. Jiang Cheng wonders if his brows resemble Wen Chao, Wen Qing or her brother, any of them. Jiang Cheng has no clear memory of them he cared to keep, but he knows Wei Wuxian, hears him in the way a-Yuan phrases his question.
He knows his brother’s child.
Perhaps the other parent doesn’t matter, maybe the story there is as sad and terrible as every other.
His sister and her husband are dead, his brother is gone, his nephews are orphans both.
Jiang Cheng is tired of losing family.
The clan registry burned when the Wen attacked them. Jiang Yanli painstakingly wrote a new one when they rebuilt. He stares at her handwriting as he adds a-Yuan’s name to it. No one will ever look at this document, see that his sister put Wei Wuxian down as their brother, see that Jiang Cheng never struck him from the books, that he adds his son.
The Yiling Patriarch is dead, his legacy is cruel and terrible and it perished in the Burial Mounds.
A-Yuan is here.
The maids call him Jiang-gongzi, Xiao Yuan, Yuan-er, and a hundred different little endearments they’re quick to adapt for Jin Ling too when Jiang Cheng is allowed to take him to Lotus Pier.
A-Yuan loves his little cousin, and maybe if Jiang Cheng raises them together like this from the start just right, they’ll never break apart.
Only a handful of disciples know just where Jiang Cheng picked his nephew up, everyone else believes him a deceased cousin’s son.
It is for the best.
There’s no place in the world for Wei Wuxian’s son after all, none at all, unless he remains Jiang Cheng’s nephew first.
308 notes · View notes
whetstonefires · 25 days
Note
I think a part of the reason I feel so connected to JGY and XY is that I, too, think everyone is lying about what a good person they are. Sure, there may be a few genuinely good people, but those are in the minority and never claim the title.
I don't know about never; some people are pretty straightforward.
And in some ways the whole point of the concept of 'a good person' is that the feeling of losing the right to consider yourself one can impose instinctive recoil from doing wrong, in situations where you don't have the leisure of working your way through an ethics diagram and choosing the logically moral path before reacting to a situation. It has practical utility.
But that system can backfire pretty horribly too, in a lot of ways. It can be hijacked by definitions of 'good' that actually make you recoil from ethical acts because they're deviant. It can lead to disappearing up your own ass lmao.
And definitely the threshold for 'talking about how you're a good person' enough that it makes you suspect as either a) a liar or b) someone who values that self-image over objective reality and other people's wellbeing is. Not very high.
Jin Guangyao, ironically, is one of those people who's so performatively A Good Person in his public life that in retrospect it looks like a red flag. Which knowing this about himself in an ongoing fashion ofc just reinforces his own cynicism about everyone else lmao.
Even Lan Xichen, who I think he may see as a genuinely good person, he also sees as an easy mark who will reliably choose what is comfortable over what is 'right,' if you just structure the scenario to make that an easy choice that's easy for him to justify.
Xue Yang's bitterness is in many ways more exciting than Jin Guangyao's because he has a way more unusual relationship to reality, but it does share a lot of notes.
The role of deception in his psychology fascinates me because as far as I can tell he's as instinctively straightforward a person as Lan Wangji, albeit along quite different lines involving a total lack of impulse control, but has adopted 'deceit' as a weapon against the wicked world in the same way he has adopted 'murder.'
But when he feels someone is not merely lying but papering over bad behavior with principles they are not living up to he is livid.
People claiming to be better than him because they're 'good' when 'good' is a construct of privilege, is the underlying idea he's not equipped to articulate. Except he takes that and applies it to 'hitting me to interrupt my random murder of some guy who happened to be within arm's reach when I wanted to hurt someone.'
Which isn't like philosophically perfect, but the underlying problem he's actually reacting to is that he understands the social contract as a lie that has never protected him but seeks to control him, while protecting rich men it has no power to control.
Which it is fair to be mad about, but then his feeling is that since that's the nature of the world and all people, he is entitled to amass for himself the power to inflict hurt without consequences as much as he possibly can, and to use it against the vulnerable for fun, and no one is entitled to interfere.
Which brings him to a place where he is violently angry at anyone talking about trying to treat other people well as a value, because either they're a hypocrite and a liar or they threaten his entire system of rationalization for why he can be The Worst and still In The Right.
'Everyone is equally bad, actually' is like, an understandable take for anyone who's had cause to become embittered. Everyone is free to make whatever philosophical peace they can with the world and by and large there's no ethical weight to any such opinion, in itself.
But it's an ideological crutch people tend to wind up leaning on very heavily when they can't or don't want to take responsibility for their own behavior.
Which is an approach that Xue Yang, Jin Guangyao, and Su She all share, and which not only is shitty of them, it...traps them in a wheel of doubling down on their own worst impulses because rather than going 'that was bad and I shouldn't do it again' they've repeatedly invested all this energy into making what they did actually the correct thing, according to their interpretation of the context. Which means they're more likely to do it again.
(I think this is how Jin Guangyao became a serial killer, for example. He followed a doing-a-murder-impulse and then internally doubled down on how he had nothing to be ashamed of, so he was more likely to do it again, every time.
Wei Wuxian's strain of self-righteousness about his revenge was less...thorough than Jin Guangyao's, because he had the benefit of going after people on the opposite side of a war from him while Meng Yao's first known murder plot was against a shitty boss. But it probably didn't help him not try to solve army-shaped problems with mass murder, even after that stopped being allowed.)
If any of them had just like, zero moral sensibilities they would have created very different problems, and very possibly fewer of them. It's making a central goal of your operations 'self-vindication in your own internal narrative, created retroactively via reframing' rather than 'figuring out what I think I should do and trying to do that' that traps them in the self-reinforcing murder pissbaby vortex.
So if you look at it one way, these three villains are themselves perfect examples of how pursuit of the 'feeling of being good' (or at least 'not the bad guy') can make you worse.
Notably Wei Wuxian was also extremely sensitive to hypocrisy in his youth; it was the only part of Madam Yu's behavior he was ever shown objecting to. But he's sufficiently mellow and cynical from regret and burnout by the 'present' timespan after his resurrection to just get disgusted and alienated about it, rather than outraged.
He wasn't even all that mad at Xue Yang, though honestly that may be partly because he stopped entirely characterizing him as a person at some point during their interaction. Like, there's no point being angry at someone whose moral sensibilities operate exclusively on the plane of 'is this unfair to me' for manipulating and destroying people who were good to him, and then getting obsessed with his own self-pity about it. This is not a person who understands how not to be, metaphorically speaking, a cannibal.
And Wei Wuxian did know better and still got roughly the same result, so what business does he have getting angry?
Anyway yeah those two villains are both delightfully relatable if you sit down and put their perspectives together; they are clearly operating with the same basic suite of human needs and emotions as everybody else, without that being in itself particularly exculpatory, which is honestly refreshing. They've just got the most fantastically toxic interpersonal habits that knowing them counts as some level of Suffering A Curse.
Jin Guangyao and Xue Yang do both stand as scathing rebukes of the society that created them. But within the narrative, wherein they're people, the fact is that each of them had agency and one of the things they chose to do with it was develop rationales for why they were the most special little guy and everything was someone else's fault.
And their moral nihilisms, while also grounded in serious trauma, ping me as emotional masturbation of this variety.
52 notes · View notes
vinelark · 4 months
Text
on the subject of stomach-drop angst pangs, please drop your fav pangy fics! tim fics especially, but i love all the bats and supers too. i’m padding my fic to-read list before my trip 🤲❤️🙏
88 notes · View notes
runespoor7 · 3 months
Text
WN not being able to get it up without talismans is excellent Ningcheng flavour
WN: Wei-gongzi, I would like more of the talismans you drew for me last time.
WWX: hm?... oh! Wen Ning! Yes, yes of course! See, I knew it would come in handy! :D :DDD sooooo... who's the lucky person? woman? man? someone I know?
LWJ: Wei Ying.
WWX: oh, it's fine, Lan Zhan, I'm not embarrassing him! :DDD *leaning toward WN* is it more than one?? Wen Ning, you sly dog!
WN:
WWX: *waggling eyebrows and being generally obnoxious*
WN: *very deliberately not saying, 'your shidi'* *it's just a one-off anyhow* *he just really really needs to wreck JC another time, and then for sure he'll have it out of his system*
*
WWX: huh, it's funny how you need talismans every time we run by Yunmeng!
WN: ...yes... funny...
WWX:
WN: *holding WWX's gaze*
WWX: but then I also gave you some at the conference in Lanling, and after we ran across the night-hunt party in Qinghe... a lover in every sect, eh? hahahaha, here's the talismans!
*
a YMJ disciple: Sect Leader, are you alright? did the yao get you?
JC: I'm fine
YMJ disciple: but you keep rubbing your back, if you're wounded--
JC: it'll pass with a good night's sleep. But I'll be sure to visit the healer along with the rest of you disciples when we get back to Lotus Pier.
YMJ disciple: ......yes sect leader!
WWX: phew that was such an awkward night-hunt, every time we run across YMJ it's like that, remember that time we were night-hunting in Qinghe, and--
WWX:
WWX:
WWX:
WN: *averting his gaze*
WWX: 😱😱😱
78 notes · View notes
fincalinde · 5 months
Note
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.
110 notes · View notes
lecinea · 1 year
Text
“Plenty of other people in MDZS (namely WWX) go through way worse shit than JC and none of them turn into murderous nutjobs.”
Babes, Jiang Yanli died and Wei Wuxian literally committed a massacre, maybe it wasn’t the thousands that they later claimed, but it probably was still a lot. As a response to the Lotus Pier massacre and getting dropped in the burial mounds he tortured Wen Chao, Wen Zhuliu and Wang Lingjiao in such an extreme way that they started cannibalizing themselves and each other for it to stop. Wen Chao had his genitals bitten off. Like, this is not me saying they didn’t deserve it, but Wei Wuxian canonically very much turned into a murderous nutjob himself before he died.
276 notes · View notes
sandushengshou · 2 years
Photo
Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media
Wei Wuxian & Lan Wangji | Episode 36
1K notes · View notes
mxtxfanatic · 8 months
Note
So i was reading a wangxian fic last night, and it started out great: wwx ran away from yunmengjiang and ended up in the cloud recesses and met lwj and they became friends. I got super excited cuz it was very promising, but then a couple chapters in jc appears and then they do the whole “oh no wwx and jc love each other, they are best bros, wwx left because he didn’t want to cause his siblings pain by them having to be associated with him, jc begs his beloved brother to come back because he will always have a home in lotus pier, etc” and I immediately wanted to throw the whole fic away, but i guess im a masochist (and honestly it’s so freaking hard to find a good wx fic that doesn’t somehow involve the homophobic grape) and kept reading.
That was a mistake, long story short the whole thing ended with both wwx and lwj being best of friends with jc, lsz loving his grape uncle who’s the best and just so amazing and them all living happily ever after. Im so disappointed in myself for reading that crap 😩
Wish I could find that post someone wrote about how in mdzs fics, when Jiang Cheng shows up, the plot and all characters warp to accommodate him. No matter how in-character everything and everyone is, once Jiang Cheng enters the scene, it becomes the most ridiculous fanon mess that breaks even the logic of the story that the fic writer, themself, set up. Op was so real for that.
73 notes · View notes
add1ctedt0you · 3 months
Text
Novel quotes: wei wuxian having feelings/thoughts about jiang cheng
Under the cut because it's long
However, Jiang Cheng was gone. Holding steamed buns, flatbreads, and fruits in his hands, Wei WuXian felt his heart skip a beat. He forced himself to calm down. Even after he searched through the neighboring streets, he still didn’t see Jiang Cheng. He finally began to panic. Grabbing a cobbler on the side, he asked, “Mister, there was a young master about the same age as me sitting here. Did you see where he went?” The cobbler licked the thick end of a thread, “The one that was with you?” Wei WuXian, “Yeah!”
The cobbler, “I was in the middle of doing something so I didn’t really see. But he kept on spacing out, staring at the people on the street. And then when I looked up at where he was again, he suddenly disappeared. Maybe he left.”
Wei WuXian murmured, “... He left... He left...”
He probably left for Lotus Pier to steal the bodies!
As though he had gone mad, Wei WuXian sprinted immediately toward the direction that they had come from.
[...]
He gave himself a harsh scolding in silence—he was stupid, useless, ridiculous, it was bizarre, unimaginable. Yet, he was alone, without a sword or any tools, and on the other side of the wall there were thousands of Wen Sect’s cultivators, perhaps Wen ZhuLie as well.
He wasn’t scared of death. He was only scared that after he died, he wouldn’t be able to save Jiang Cheng and betray the trust that Jiang FengMian and Madam Yu left him. In such circumstances, the only one he could place his hope on was a person of the Wen Sect whom he had met only three times in total!
[...]
Wei WuXian’s gaze turned from Wen Ning toward Jiang Cheng, whose body was covered in blood and eyes were tightly shut. His fingers couldn’t help but clenched into fists.
Chapter 59 Poisons—Part Four
Jiang Cheng’s expression was rather strange. It was calm, almost too calm. He stared at the ceiling, as though he wasn’t at all interested in the situation that he was in, as though he didn’t care about where he was either. Wei WuXian didn’t expect him to react in such a way. Sadness, happiness, anger, shock—he had none of these. His heart skipped a beat, “Jiang Cheng, can you see me? Can you hear me? Do you know who I am?” Jiang Cheng glanced at him. He didn’t say anything. Wei WuXian asked him a few more questions. Arm supporting himself, he finally sat upright. He looked down at the mark of the discipline whip on his chest before laughing bitterly. If the discipline whip struck, it’d be impossible to wipe away the mark of shame. Wei WuXian comforted him despite this, “Stop looking at it. There has to be a way to get it off.” Jiang Cheng slapped him. His strike was so weak, so powerless that Wei WuXian didn’t even flinch, “Hit me. As long as you’ll feel better.”
[...]
If Wei WuXian were the one injured or if somebody else had saved them, he’d immediately say farewell and leave at once, full of determination. However, right now, Jiang Cheng was the one who had been injured. Not only was he injured, he had lost his core as well. He wasn’t in his right mind. No matter what, Wei WuXian couldn’t find any determination.
Chapter 60 Poisons—Part five
Out of the blue, Jiang Cheng spoke up, “Not to do what?” Wei WuXian paused in surprise, turning to him along with Lan WangJi. Jiang Cheng covered his wound with one hand, his voice chilly, “Wei WuXian, you’re such a great, selfless person. You did the best things possible, and you swallowed all the suffering and didn’t let anyone know. What a touching story. I should kneel down and cry in gratitude, shouldn’t I?” Hearing the mocking tone that lacked any courtesy, Lan WangJi’s face grew cold. Jin Ling saw the displeased expression and immediately stood in front of Jiang Cheng, scared that Lan WangJi would kill him with one strike, “Uncle!” Wei WuXian’s expression worsened as well. He never expected Jiang Cheng to make up with him after he found out the truth, but he didn’t think his tone would be as unkind as ever, either. With a moment of silence, he replied, voice muffled, “I never asked you to thank me.”
[...]
In the beginning, it was precisely because he didn’t want to see such a Jiang Cheng that he decided not to tell him.
He remembered every single thing he promised Jiang FengMian and Madam Yu—to help and take care of Jiang Cheng. If someone as unhealthily competitive as him found out about this, he’d be dispirited his whole life, too tortured to face himself. There’d always be something he could never overcome, reminding him that he could only reach where he was because of another’s sacrifice. It wasn’t at all his cultivation and his achievement. No matter if he won or lost, he’d long since lost the right to compete.
Afterwards, it was because Jin ZiXuan and Jiang YanLi died for him that he had no face to let others know. To tell Jiang Cheng after what happened then would be like shirking responsibility, hurrying to demonstrate that he’d contributed as well. It’d be like telling Jiang Cheng, don’t hate me, look I’ve contributed to the YunmengJiang Sect too.
Chapter 102- Hatred - Part Five
At this point, somebody on the side suddenly called, “Wei WuXian!”
Wei WuXian answered immediately, “What?”
Only after he answered did he realize that the one who called him was Jiang Cheng. Wei WuXian felt somewhat surprised. Jiang Cheng didn’t respond directly. Instead, he took something out from his sleeve and tossed. Wei WuXian caught it by instinct and looked, only to find a black, gleaming flute along with a crimson tassel.
It was the ghoul flute, Chen Qing!
As he felt the flute that he was more than familiar with, Wei WuXian didn’t even have the spare time to feel surprised.
Chapter 108: Concealment - Part Two
After a pause, he asked again, “How have Sect Leader Jiang and Jin Ling been?”
Lan JingYi pouted, “They seem pretty fine. Sect Leader Jiang is the same as before, always lashing out at people with his whip. Young Mistress’s temper has been getting better. In the past he could talk back thrice to his uncle after he scolds him once. Now he can do ten times.”
[...]
Hearing Lan JingYi say so, Wei WuXian relaxed slightly. In truth, he knew that these weren’t what he really wanted to ask. But as it sounded like Jiang Cheng and Jin Ling had been doing quite well, there was nothing left to say.
Chapter 116: Extra—Banquet - Part Three
35 notes · View notes
menimimimeni · 1 month
Text
Modern AU in which Wen Ning becoming a Fierce Corpse is represented as him becoming emo.
23 notes · View notes
whetstonefires · 5 months
Note
I hope you're having an excellent day 😊😊😊 What about Wei Wuxian as Naruto?
Thanks! It was pretty good. I organized my embroidery floss and took advantage of being alone in the building to dance around like a maniac for about 20 minutes. My cat hated it. My knees aren't sure they approve either.
Wei Wuxian as Naruto has a lot going for it right out the gate. Orphaned sunshine boy protagonist types, now we're cooking with propane. They're even both fox coded!
However, at the risk of stating the obvious, if Wei Wuxian were Naruto he wouldn't be Naruto anymore. That is. Fundamental to Wei Wuxian is that he is brilliant and talented and he damn well knows it. He would excel without effort in ninja school--not as much as he did in Jiang Sect unless he unlike Naruto was still getting personal mentoring in honor of his late father, but still.
Difference is, when this Wei Wuxian slacks off in class and the teacher tries to embarrass him, if he reels off the correct answer and then reinvents senjutsu from first principles in a creepy-sounding way for a lark just to show off, the teacher is not going to think that he's just like his annoying late mother. (Though he'll still have one. Kushina and Cangse Sanren are fairly similar Dead Mom archetypes too.)
The teacher is going to think things like, no real child would say that shit and I'm expected to teach the monster fox that killed my family basic ninjutsu I hate this I hate this we're all gonna die.
So basically this Wei Wuxian gets his Yiling Laozu reputation mod as part of the starter pack. I don't think he'd handle it super gracefully! But not the worst, either.
Not even as badly as he did in the actual version, probably, on account of he doesn't know his own dark secret. So he can't self-isolate to protect it. Though him pulling away from people once he does learn would be cool.
He'd probably have forged slightly stronger social ties rather sooner than Naruto did, even if he was just as neglected and radioactive; Wei Wuxian doesn't care what people think of him nearly as much as Naruto does, but in some ways he's a more genuinely social person, and he's got much better social intuition, so it's easier for him to figure out what people want and either do that or not do that on purpose.
He'd have at least a bunch of casual friends. Mostly civilians, and other kids from ninja school whose parents told them not to play with him but they did anyway.
Wei Wuxian cannot do therapy no jutsu. He does not have that ability to confront and exist with emotional discomfort or that intensity of interest in what is going on with other people.
He does however have some level of Friendship Beam Attack (the plot to some extent hinges utterly on how effectively it hit Wen Ning) and it would presumably be more effective, in a shounen context.
But that's the thing, Wei Wuxian isn't really built to confront shounen manga style problems. Or, well, he is, but he's overbuilt for them; they're his bread and butter. One of Naruto's key motifs, early on at least before we got into the heavy power creep, is not being a genius.
Wei Wuxian, by definition, is a genius. He is the kind of guy who walks up to shounen manga sorts of problems scaled to what ought to be his level, handles them, and goes 'what, like it's hard?'
Wei Wuxian is designed to be destroyed not by external threats but by his own loyalties, politics, and lies. (Which was a point of confluence with Itachi I didn't really touch on because the flow was so different lmao.)
He's also, otoh, designed to be destroyed. Naruto is designed to start off artificially low and climb steadily up toward heaven. (Ymmv on how this worked out but he sure did escalate.)
You have to pick which schema to apply when performing the fusion--I mean, it's not either-or, the whole deal with Wei Wuxian is he goes through the entire arc of a tragedy and then comes back to life and stars in a romcom. These things can superimpose and stack. But there are structural decisions that have to be made early.
So anyway, Wei Wuxian as Naruto is not going to enter the Genin Team phase of life with the same priorities, even if he has largely conducted himself about the same way hitherto. 'Proving himself' so 'people will accept him' is not a motive that works for this character--you basically have to give him actual precious people earlier just to get him to care about attaining ninja rank at all.
Otherwise he would probably much rather loaf his way through his teens stealing jutsu and making trouble. Which is the well-adjusted reaction to the idea of becoming a child soldier, like. He likes recognition but 'showing off' is a reason he does dumb fun things, not difficult high-commitment ones. He's like if Shikamaru had ADHD and no parents.
Being twelve is going to make him dumber, but I can't see it making him not the kind of person who stops caring about his marks in school if the teacher is hostile.
If Wei Wuxian here isn't acting out of appreciation for the Hokage raising him, or something like that, you have to give him a practical motive to enter military service like 'Konoha stops supporting orphans out of the public purse at thirteen so he's got to get some kind of job and ninja is the least boring option' which. Is significantly less like either Naruto or Wei Wuxian in terms of reasons to do anything, and starts getting into solidly OC territory.
The whole fact that Konoha's worldbuilding centers around an attempt to move away from decentralized clannish social organization and promote the idea of shared, communal social institutions and (in theory) civil society, and the ways this does and does not work out for people especially considering it is still a relatively small military dictatorship, honestly interfaces super interestingly with how, in Mo Dao Zu Shi, one of the underlying challenges backstopping all character choice is that there is no feasible alternative to the clan system, and you have to pick a family-faction to depend upon and submit yourself to, or face the world with no safety net.
Like. Huh.
.....Kishimoto is honestly unusually-for-shounen well-grounded in the genres he's riffing on tbh, for all my bitching there were some very good reasons his work found such success; I would have liked to see what kind of story he produced without the insane pressures of the Weekly part of Weekly Shounen Jump. I wonder if he'll ever publish again. For all I know he already is lmao.
So anyway, however we manage it we get Wei Wuxian on his genin team with like. Lan Wangji and Mianmian or whoever. Actually that's hilarious. Yeah, make it lwj and lqy, both of them so done with his shit.
Setting up some wild role-reversal here--Lan Wangji being the one to go Away and Wei Wuxian asking him to stay? Or Naruto-person leaving into the dark, and Sasuke-person remaining and calling for him to come back? Either way. Getting some inversion. Tasty.
Where does this leave Jiang Cheng, though? Because in a lot of ways Uchiha 'Deuteragonist by Editorial Mandate' Sasuke is straddling both roles.
In many ways Wangxian is much more like if Naruto had an endgame romance with Neji. Which is a great ship tbh, I saw very little of it back in the day?? In a series with a smaller cast or with less Sasuke Creep (not sasuke being a creep, it's like power creep) it would probably have done numbers.
...Naruto going away for that timeskip really limited his opportunity to make connections in the village huh.
I guess it depends on the kind of narrative you're trying to put together. On one hand, you can do Jiang Fengmian as the rather-more-involved Third Hokage, with Jiang Cheng as an aged-up Konohamaru kind of figure. And then Jiang Yanli is standing in as both Iruka and. I know I know the ramen guy's name. Ichiraku. Soup! XD Emotionally significant soup!
But with a different backstory than either lmao. Kurama very possibly killed Yu Ziyuan in this universe, though I can't visualize her as a midwife.
[[[Why do I have so much Naruto lore on tap, there is no life value in knowing Sarutobi Hiruzen's wife was at ground zero of the Kyuubi attack because she was the expert overseeing Uzumaki Kushina's childbirth a;kdj;lafdks. I do not remember the things I was actually studying in high school nearly this well.]]]
(Actually Jin Ling is Konohamaru and Jiang Cheng is aged-down Asuma. But whatever.)
And in this case Wei Wuxian's genin team is Lan Wangji and Mianmian under idk who. Lan Qiren, possibly, although he seems more the Ebisu type. Lan Xichen? (It's not like he can serve as a plausible Itachi. Can you imagine.) Actual Kakashi, possibly; we can't replace everyone with mdzs characters; the cast sizes don't square.
Kakashi training Wei Wuxian is very funny to think about. He deserves this.
Or on the other hand for a different pacing and focus, the genin team is him, Jiang Cheng, and Jiang Yanli under Jiang Fengmian, who dies sometime after or probably during the climax of the chuunin exams. And Sarutobi stays Hokage, and probably doesn't die during the chuunin exams. And we aim for a Naruto/Neji kind of romance storyline lol.
What is the Lan Wangji equivalent of Neji exposing his caged bird seal in front of god and everybody and ranting (it is very unclear at what effective volume though you'd think the proctors would have shut him up if he could be heard from the stadium seating that shit was sedition) about his traumatic backstory and the deep injustices in his family's system of hierarchy? I'm gonna say Not That.
Wei Wuxian versus Lan Wangji important ideological-conflict bonding duel in the Chuunin exam finals sounds excellent though.
Either way Wei Wuxian is going to get much more thoroughly involved in the ugly ninja politics than Naruto ever did, and he's going to hate it so so bad and at least temporarily lose so so so hard. A likely story element is he becomes troublesome enough he winds up having to flee the village ahead of a scheme by Danzou to (fatally) rip the Kyuubi out of him and implant it in some thoroughly conditioned ROOT kid.
Maybe Wen Ning?? Idk. I'm mostly saying this because Wen Ning 1) canonically gets Victimized and Transformed and 2) shares some notes with Sai. And this means he's leaving, in part, for Wen Ning, which ties into some plot and character stuff from their original narrative. You could make it work.
Also him taking the replacement human sacrifice with him when he books it would be hysterical.
Anyway he's branded a missing nin and it is, canonically, illegal for him to tell anyone who doesn't already know about the kyuubi thing, so both Jiang Cheng and Lan Wangji are appropriately what the fucking fuck and receive no adequate answer. This is a workable plot element.
Either the Jiangs or the Lans are the Uchiha, here, which has its own story value, lots of fun to be had. Gotta engineer a way he's protecting Jiang Cheng--does Danzou want to make him the jinchuuriki? Is Orochimaru or his replacement making a play for Jiang Cheng's bloodline limit, whatever it is, fun if it's eyeballs, and Wei Wuxian bargains to give him a jinchuuriki instead? Hmmm.
You want an inside and an outside threat, the obvious viper and the political spider, so you can silo information and make sure nobody entirely knows what's going on.
If it's Jiang Cheng who's assigned the role of bloodline limit macguffin, I have the very wicked urge to cast Yu Ziyuan as some combination of Itachi and Obito. Very Vader kind of effect.
Jin Guangyao as Kabuto, excellent, I need that innocent smile and those torture skills. This may require making Jin Guangshan much smarter than he really is just to fill out the ranks, or again you can keep Danzou as himself.
Tsunade is amusingly enough occupying an overlapping Baoshan Sanren and Wen Qing position; given one of them impersonated the other that time you'd have to do something with that. She's also got some Yu Ziyuan vibe up ofc. Tsunade just contains an entire franchise's supply of girlboss tbh.
Who could possibly stand in for Jiraiya, nobody, but at the same time. Wei Wuxian (with internal sapient asshole nuke) apprenticing under Jiraiya of the Sannin sounds like enough problem-creating goofy jackass genius clown energy in one place to open a singularity. That's too much. No narrative could survive.
Anyway someone please feel free to write this, I am intrigued but also will 100percent never ever put in the time it would take to realize any version of this concept.
45 notes · View notes