#(which is also true for a-yao!)

[lgbtlunaverse]

I'm a little bit insane about how in novel canon the whole xiyao ending where Jin Guangyao wants to die with Xichen, who accepts, which then makes jgy change his mind and pushes him away at the last second isn't actually explicit. A lot of adaptations chose to make it so but in the novel this is all VERY up for interpretation.

Here's what actually happens in the text: Lan xichen stabs jgy, jgy moves away from lan xichen, xichen follows him, wwx realizes jgy is about to open the coffin and calls "watch out!" to lan xichen. Jgy unseals nmj, pushes xichen away, nmj kills jgy and they are both dragged into the coffin which is sealed again.

Here's what wei wuxian, our narrator, thinks is happening: Jin Guangyao wanted to lead lan xichen to his death out of revenge for stabbing him. Lan Xichen, unaware, simply followed Jin Guangyao to try and stop him from getting away. Wei wuxian's warning came too late, but Jin Guangyao- for an unknown reason- changed his mind at the last second and pushed lan xichen out of danger before lan xichen had any idea of what was going on.

Here's what most fans as well as the teams behind several adpatations think is happening: Jin Guangyao leads Xichen to nmj's coffin to die with him, Xichen accepts, because of this acceptance, proof xichen still cares for him, Jin Guangyao pushes him out of harm's way. Wei Wuxian just doesn't get that gay people who aren't him or Lan Wangji exist.

Here's what ALSO MIGHT BE HAPPENING: Jin guangyao wants to die in a different way than he is currently dying. Maybe he's afraid of what'll happen to his body after his death like he was scared for his mother's, maybe he wants to confront nmj one last time now that there's nothing more for him to lose, maybe - if he can't take her body with him- he'd at least like his final resting place to be where he buried his mother. Lan Xichen thinks he's trying to get away and follows but Jin Guangyao, who despite everything doesn't want him to die, pushes him away. Xichen doesn't know what happened until it's already happened. What he would've wanted if he had known remains up in the air.

Or, alternatively: Jin Guangyao's reasons are as above, but unbeknowst to Wei Wuxian, Xichen DOES know what jgy is about to do and either misinterprets this as an invitation to all die together, or inidividually decides he, too, is done, and wants to join his sworn brothers in the grave. To Jin Guangyao this has nothing to do with Lan Xichen, and he still doesn't want him to die, so he pushes him away against Lan Xichen's wishes.

Every single one of these interpretations is unhinged and they are all supported by the original text. It's like a choose your own adventure of tragic gay endings.

#mdzs #mdzs meta #meng yao #jin guangyao #lan xichen #nie mingjue #3zun #xiyao #rs: i wish it could've been you #honestly which is worse for xichen. Being denied his wish explicitly or only realizing he wanted it after it'd already been denied for him #OR genuinely not wanting to die but being forced to live with the fact that even after he essentially killed him jgy still saved his life #just another way he's in his debt #like no matter what he's not coming out of here okay #i switch between a bunch of these all the time but actually favor the last 2 because they're very underexplored in my opinion #I like it when 'i never even thought about hurting you' remains true to the bitter end. He never even considered it #also I just... have a lot of feelings about that being his mom's coffin #do you remember that in the novel the coffin was so heavy only sect leaders could bear the weight? #so for the burial a group of sect leaders had to be the pallbearers... the SYMBOLISM GUYS!! THE SYMBOLISM! #jgy dies in infamy but despite everything it's the highest of cultivation society who carry the coffin he's buried in #he's in the same coffin as a great sect leader!! As nmj!! After a whole life fighting an uphill battle finally in death they are equal #it's not justice and it's not fair but it's... something #wwx's interpretation is the one i favour the least. sorry bro you remain an unreliable narrator to me. #it feels rather uncharitable towards jgy which makes sense for wwx's pov but makes it not my favorite #there's an alternative version of that intepretation where jgy THINKS he's doing the coffin trio pact and thinks xichen accepts. #and has the same realization of oh no he still cares I don't want him to die and pushes lxc away #meanwhile lan xichen hasn't actually processed any of this because it all happened in about 0.4 seconds #i like that one slightly more but it's still not my favorite #there's tragedy in the misunderstanding but it's a bit convoluted.

[eleanorfenyxwrites]

War Manners

My housemate requested I write Meng Yao losing control for one (1) fucking second and kissing Nie Mingjue when they're not together, and the fallout from that/how Meng Yao would have to navigate knowing he'll never get Jin Guangshan's favor now. So this is (hopefully) that!

[Masterpost] [AO3]

-/-

Meng Yao has had very many Thoughts (the emphasis is more than appropriate) about Nie Mingjue. Nie-zongzhu. Chifeng-zun. These Thoughts can be reasonably and broadly categorized into two main sections — Professional and Unprofessional — and then further sorted into their appropriate little drawers in the mental cabinets Meng Yao has consigned these Thoughts to for his own sanity.

Within the Professional drawers there are mundane thoughts (no emphasis needed) such as troop deployments, war meetings with whom and when, missives and assignments to keep track of, and all the hundreds of little daily tidbits that go into successfully keeping an army out in the field. True, things like kitchen tents and bandage replacements and armor repairs and the like are all things that he happily delegates to the appropriate authority figures on such niche matters, but he still has to think about them. All of that sort of thinking is neatly and tidily sorted away and carefully labeled so that he can continue to be the competent and trusted vice-deputy Chifeng-zun needs him to be.

Within the Unprofessional Thoughts drawers there’s quite a bit more…variety. Those drawers are for rummaging through in the privacy of his extremely limited free time, mainly when he’s either falling asleep or just waking up to face the day. Let it never be said that Meng Yao allows himself to be distracted during important meetings by idly flicking through memory after memory of Nie Mingjue’s face from every imaginable angle and in every light. (Meng Yao’s favorites are from the times where it had only been the two of them alone together in the gentle candlelight of Nie Mingjue’s personal tent, the pair of them kept up long into the night poring over maps and reports and strategies together until Nie Mingjue is all fuzzy and sleepy around the edges. It happens a lot, which is wonderful for Meng Yao’s ever-growing catalog of such moments.)

These two categories of Meng Yao’s are not, under any circumstances, allowed to overlap. They exist in wholly different spheres. There is Chifeng-Zun, who requires one set of his very real services. Then there is Nie Mingjue, who is by now half-imaginary, and in the imagining he welcomes Meng Yao’s other services that have nothing to do with how well he can memorize the rosters of their commanding officers and the squadrons they represent. Two very very different things. Two different people. Meng Yao does not let their paths cross.

He’s sleep deprived and still riding the wave of his usual post-battle cocktail of emotions — something like fear and relief and triumph and exhaustion and world-weariness for the evil of men — when this is no longer true.

Nie Mingjue doesn’t actively participate in every battle, that would be absolutely impossible, but he fights in plenty of them, citing that if he isn’t willing to fight then why should any of their soldiers do so on his orders? So – he’d gone out today and he hadn’t returned with the rest of the soldiers when they’d stumbled back into camp, bloody and footsore but victorious. No one has been able to tell him where Nie Mingjue had ended up, as they’d been separated by enemy lines – though for some reason they’re all utterly confident that Nie Mingjue is fine. Meng Yao doesn’t doubt his General, but nor does he think leaving the man to fend for himself in the midst of a battle (or its aftermath) is the wisest decision when one wishes to keep said General both alive and well enough to lead the army, possibly as soon as tomorrow if necessary.

Which is how Meng Yao finds himself tromping through blood-churned wilderness until he finds a ring of dead bodies piled three-men deep with Nie Mingjue in the middle of the destruction, kneeling hunched over Baxia in either pain or exhaustion, nearly every inch of him splattered with mud and deep red gore.

“Mingjue!” Meng Yao exhales just loudly enough to be heard, the impropriety of such an intimate address his first (unnoticed, unheeded) warning of the dangerous slip he’s about to make. Nie Mingjue lifts his head to look at him, eyes weary and unfocused until the moment they meet his and relief seeps through, unmistakable. Soft around the edges. Meng Yao hurries forward, picking his way without thought over swords and splayed limbs and viscous puddles of indeterminate substances until he can crash right into Nie Mingjue, grab his blood-flecked face in both hands, and yank him into a too-hard kiss, the man still on his knees in the mud and therefore, for once, easily accessible.

Meng Yao has pictured kissing Nie Mingjue so many times now that at first he barely registers what he’s done. His extremely unprofessional admiration for the man frequently manifests as sexual desire, and Meng Yao sees no reason not to indulge in harmless fantasy to sweeten long sleepless nights alone. He kisses Nie Mingjue in one of the many ways he’s always wanted to, hard and yearning, teeth nipping sharp at his lip and a quick inhale to brace himself as he curls over him, Nie Mingjue’s head tipped back by the insistent press of his hands beneath his jaw.

“Meng Yao?!” It comes out startled, muffled against his mouth, and Meng Yao jerks back as if stung, eyes wide. 

He doesn’t lose control. He doesn’t. But he did, he has, and now Nie Mingjue is staring up at him equally shocked, no doubt by his completely inappropriate and downright presumptuous behavior. Meng Yao is politeness and manners personified, he is the sort of elegant gentleman his mother always hoped he’d be, and yet here he is, kissing his commander (and personal savior) as if they’re a young couple freshly in love, too anxious to hold themselves apart any longer than they have to.

“I’m sorry,” he chokes. Nie Mingjue has never once looked down on him for his origins, has never acted like Meng Yao is dirty simply for existing, but despite the very real mess covering Nie Mingjue from head to toe Meng Yao can’t help but feel, in that moment, that what he’s done is the filthiest thing of all. “Chifeng-zun, please forgive this humble one-“

Strong hands yank him up from his hasty bow and Meng Yao has less than a heartbeat to realize Nie Mingjue has gotten to his feet before it’s his turn to tip his head back at the bruising press of fingers under his jaw so Nie Mingjue can lean down and drag him into another almost-violent kiss. He gasps around the sharp nip of teeth and tastes iron on the tip of his tongue when Nie Mingjue’s brushes it, the tang of blood and the sharp rot of mud thick in his nose, the back of his throat. There’s no softness at all, nothing like those nights spent with their heads close together in Nie Mingjue’s tent, but Meng Yao has imagined it like this, too. Violent, desperate, adrenaline-fuelled, thoughtless need. There’s no art or finesse to it, just raw animal want, and that’s just as good. Better, even. It’s perfect.

-/-

The nice thing about the Nie - in theory if not exactly in practice - is that they don’t bother to worry about someone’s lineage and instead allow their talents to speak for themselves. It’s why Meng Yao had come to the Nie after his violent expulsion from Jinlintai, and it’s why Nie Mingjue had promoted him on the spot upon hearing a group of his disciples blatantly disobeying this first and most important sect rule – though of course he wouldn’t have if had Meng Yao not earned it first through hard work. Unfortunately, the reality (that Nie Mingjue does not seem to realize he lives in) is that those disciples had been the rule, not the exception.

In practice, then, Meng Yao is still looked down on by nearly everyone in the sect for who and what he is. It’s a fact of life that burns in his blood every single day and makes him yearn to claw his blood-soaked way back up all those stairs in Lanling if he has to just so he can stand in his rightful place at his father’s side. So he can prove to the world that his mother’s legacy gift to him was not “bad blood”, but instead her hardworking dedication and her ability to learn everything necessary to support herself and her son in a cruel world.

But maybe this is why, at first, Meng Yao doesn’t notice much is amiss.

A hiss of, “Filthy trash,” as he passes by a group of men huddled around the cookfire one overcast noon barely registers as more than the usual grievances he has to deal with for committing the crime of existing. He whisks his way past them straight into Nie Mingjue’s tent, where he absolutely Does Not kiss him again, but instead devotes himself to copying maps for the evening to send with each of their commanders leaving in the morning for the next leg of the campaign.

“Conniving whore, just like his mother,” is the next audible barb hurled at him just two days later, the vitriol spit at him from someone he can’t easily pick out of the group practicing with their sabers on the outskirts of the Nie camp, where stray blades can’t do as much damage. That one is…significantly harder to ignore, specific as it is. Still. None of it hurts as badly as that impromptu flight down the stone steps of Jinlintai, so he pushes it away with an effort to simmer in the back of his mind – not forgotten, of course, but set aside for the time being – and returns to his duties with only a single hitch in his step to betray that he’d heard.

Only this time, it doesn’t stop. Murmurs and derision are common, expected, normal, and they continue on as usual. But heaped on top of them, like so much shit in a wheelbarrow, are scathing remarks about not only his mother but his own behavior. Suddenly, where none had been before, there are so many remarks about him using his body to get to his position that within two weeks it’s not only an accepted fact amongst the Nie – but among the camps of the other Sects in the field. Apparently. 

“Excuse me – what did you say?” Meng Yao asks as politely as he can manage when he can’t shake the rage trembling in his hands or the terror twisting his gut into knots. “I must not have heard correctly-“

Unfortunately, he had heard the man just fine, he knows he had, but rather than taking the generous opportunity to backtrack, the Jin soldier sneering at him only doubles down harder. “I said that Jin-zongzhu was right not to let the bastard son of a scheming bitch so much as step foot in his home. Barely a year later and you’ve shown your true colors haven’t you? Fucking your way into Nie-zongzhu’s good graces so you can try to corrupt another righteous Sect since you couldn’t get at ours! Whores never produce anything but devils-“

Meng Yao stays perfectly still as the Jin soldiers around their cookfire jeer and hawk their wine-sharp spit at his feet, some of it hitting the hem of his silver Nie robes, impeccably clean save for the mud stains around his ankles that will likely never come out. When he feels he can move again through the nauseous bile climbing up his throat he turns on wooden legs to march back out of the orderly ranks of pale gold silk, through the empty ground demarcating their camp borders, and back into the stark deep gray corridors of the Nie encampment. It offers absolutely no relief, no sense of being welcomed home, but at least it holds the flimsy protection of his own personal tent. He can’t really stop anyone who tries to cross the threshold of it of course, but with Nie Mingjue’s own command tent a mere row away – within shouting distance for sure – no one has yet dared to try.

Meng Yao’s mind is utterly blank as his feet take him through the camp using nothing but muscle memory. He can feel eyes on him – as unwanted a presence as groping hands – burning with their judgment and their commitment to despising his very existence. Shadows are gathering in the hollows between the tents with the oncoming evening, heavy behind bloated clouds that threaten rain, and Meng Yao can’t help but feel like each gap between the tents hides another hateful glare, another set of eyes watching him and waiting to see him fail. 

Meng Yao thankfully only loses the battle with his rising bile once he reaches the confines of his own personal space. It feels as if it’s still not private enough to reveal so much weakness, but there’s nothing else for it. His shallow wash basin serves now as a convenient bucket to empty his stomach into, and there’s nothing he can do to keep from heaving up his rations for the day into the wooden bowl.

It’s all over, he already knows it. His hands clench around the urge to go find the soldiers who had sneered at him and split them from groin to throat – the Nie are still butchers in many ways, and Meng Yao has seen the absolutely savage way they fight one-on-one when their lives are at stake. He’s seen it done more than enough times to be fairly sure he can mimic it, might even be able to copy the particularly gruesome style of killing utilized by the most vocal of his critics to pin him with the blame but –

But if a common Jin foot soldier has already caught wind of his indiscretion, it’s only a matter of time before the flame is fanned in the direction of the man he still harbors dreams of impressing, if it hasn’t already reached his ears. There’s nothing Meng Yao can do to stop it – no boon or honor he could earn, no underhanded trick sly enough to win the spot he so desperately craves in spite of what Jin Guangshan has done to him. He’s laid at the bottom of the stairs of Jinlintai, Jin Guangshan standing at the top to lord it over his broken body one more time before he’d turned to head back in to see to his beloved son’s birthday celebration, but still Meng Yao has never felt further from his approval and acceptance than he does now. 

He judders through another dry-heave and clenches the edges of the basin until his nails bite into the wood and his knuckles turn white with the aching strain, and none of it changes the fact that he’s lost everything. One moment of weakness in a lifetime of denying himself everything selfish, and already he’s been forced to reap the consequences.

Even as he stands hunched over the basin Meng Yao’s mind begins working, flinging through plan after plan until his thoughts are littered with half-remembered scraps, all discarded. They all rely on him maintaining some degree of reputation, enough to carry him into the halls of any of the other Great Sects, or even some minor one. There are many that pledge allegiance to the Jin, and to work his way up to Jinlintai through one of them would be an even more arduous process than going through the Nie, but once upon a time they could have been his last-ditch emergency attempts to achieve his goals. Now, though, they mock him from where they lie scattered on the floor of his mind, all hope he might have had at gaining respect anywhere in the cultivation world lying discarded with them. He certainly feels filthy and miserable enough that he thinks not even Wen Ruohan, maddened tyrant playing at joining the immortal gods though he is, would deign to accept him now. What good is a conniving, scheming whore to anyone, after all, even the insane?

In the end, there’s really only one plan left that has any hope of succeeding. It’s truly his last-ditch attempt, and it leaves a sour taste in his mouth that has nothing to do with his rising bile. He will steal what he can carry, and he’ll run. It’s in direct opposition to what Meng Shi had wanted for him, it’s not what he wants for himself either, but if his life will consist of nothing but scorn and mocking at every turn then he can force himself to admit defeat, to run somewhere no one knows him. Start over. Earn respect all over again somewhere new through the hard work he’s never once shied away from.

Meng Yao gives himself two more deep breaths to accept the new direction of his life before he stands up straight and stirs himself into action, ignoring the roiling mass of emotions still tugging and stabbing in his gut in favor of beginning to stuff the mobile contents of his tent into his single qiankun pouch - a gift from Nie Mingjue. He doesn’t stop to appreciate the silver brocade or the cool weight of the silk against his skin, the slight tingle of the magic he doesn’t have enough qi to cast himself but can make use of, considering Nie Mingjue has so much qi to spare for such things. (It could sell for a fortune, but Meng Yao already knows that he’ll sell anything else, even his body, before he’ll part with such a treasure no matter how hungry he gets.)

It takes less than half an incense stick for Meng Yao to empty his wardrobe into the pouch. He turns next to his desk, intending to take anything at all even remotely worth saving (read: selling) – and immediately bounces off a solid wall of leather and muscle.

“What are you doing?” Nie Mingjue demands as he steadies him with a hard grip around both of his biceps, fingers digging just this side of too hard into the meat of his arms. Meng Yao swallows down a fresh bout of nausea and slowly raises his eyes to meet Nie Mingjue’s, unsure of what he’ll find.

“I..Did you…hear-” Meng Yao feels his throat tighten around the rest of the question but he can see anyway that Nie Mingjue already knows.

“Jin Zixun couldn’t even wait for the strategy meeting to start before he decided to let everyone know what he saw. So yes.”

Ah.

Meng Yao closes his eyes against the fact that this is somehow worse than he’d feared. Nie Mingjue’s hands tighten painfully around his arms but Meng Yao doesn’t bother protesting – at this rate he’ll be lucky if Nie Mingjue lets him leave camp alive for all that he’s done to drag not only Nie Mingjue but also the Nie Sect through the muck of the world alongside him. It doesn’t matter that there isn’t a friendly face in all of the Nie encampment, or that Meng Yao has done anything and everything they’ve asked of him since the moment he joined the Sect as a lowly servant to these same disciples.

None of it fucking matters.

“This humble one apologizes for such an insult,” Meng Yao manages to say around the knot in his throat threatening to stop him breathing altogether. “It was never my intention to bring shame upon the Nie, nor to - to-“ Meng Yao chokes again on the words hurled at him like daggers, his little remaining pride unwilling to bend into humiliation even for the sake of apologizing (and potentially saving his own neck in the process).

“To what?” Nie Mingjue’s voice is as hard and unyielding as Meng Yao could expect, but just because he’d been expecting it doesn’t make it any easier to hear. He can’t imagine that Nie Mingjue hasn’t heard what people are saying about him, the assumptions that he’s sleeping around to get where and what he wants. Nie Mingjue might be a stern man but he’s never been cruel – Meng Yao readjusts that opinion a hairsbreadth to the left, since the man seems determined to make him say such horrible things about himself instead of allowing him the easy out.

“To sully you with my…association.”

It burns on the way out, his throat thick and stinging with it even as he forces himself to say it. Nie Mingjue’s eyebrows – always so severe anyway – mash down into a straight line over his bright eyes, and even now Meng Yao adds this expression to his mental catalog of such things to be reexamined later, likely when he’s forced to survive somewhere far less than pleasant, and he’ll take any good memory at all. Because even now, even like this, being with Nie Mingjue is better than the quickly-approaching future in which he will not be anymore.

“Your association with the Nie began the moment you joined my Sect! What should we care what the Jin have to say about…what we..did.”

Meng Yao, against his better judgment, can’t quite stop the snort of hollow amusement for the way Nie Mingjue’s blustering abruptly drops into awkward hesitation at the mere hint of the kisses they’d shared that afternoon weeks ago. They haven’t mentioned it again, either of them, but Meng Yao’s hope that that would mean the lapse in judgment would just fade into awkward obscurity is now very clearly – detrimentally – in vain.

“How can you not care?!” Meng Yao tries to ask, but it comes out much closer to a demand, desperately feathered around the edges. “The things that they say matter, though perhaps they don’t affect you!”

“If Jin Zixun is the sort to slip through the woods so he can stay and watch a private moment only to then gossip about it during a war meeting says far more about him than it does us!”

“We -” Meng Yao gestures frantically between them with one hand - “are not an ‘us’ !!” He’s definitely desperate now, frantic to make Nie Mingjue understand that whatever part of this he thinks will blow over absolutely will not do that! “We are the most respected cultivator of the generation and the general of an army, and the bastard son of a prostitute who has defiled him to seemingly better his station in life! Tell me again what that does or does not say about me!”

“But it isn’t true!”

Meng Yao does not scream, nor does he rip his hair out at the roots in anxious handfuls, but by the gods are both options tempting. 

“I wish I could live in the world that you do. You have no earthly idea how much I wish I had the luxury of the truth mattering! They don’t care what the truth is, they only care that people like me remain in our place and don’t shatter all the fine illusions you gentry paint for and of yourselves! The truth is that Jin Guangshan is my father, and yet such a man who dotes on one son saw the other thrown down the foot of his throne. The truth-” he practically spits that hateful word as he finally vents the anguish that always seems to weigh him down - “Is that your own soldiers spit on me and steal any rewards I manage to scrape past their attempts to stop me from accomplishing anything in the first place! You have elevated me to the highest position in your Sect besides your own, but all that’s done for me is paint a bigger target on my back because you still – in your arrogant expectation that the world must operate exactly as you see – will not help me!”

Meng Yao is breathing as heavily as if he’d just run through their entire encampment corner to corner, his chest heaving and his shaking hands curled so tightly into fists at his sides that he can feel blood welling beneath his nails. He isn’t scared, though. Nie Mingjue could kill him outright for such horrendous disrespect and no one would bat an eye, but Meng Yao truthfully has nothing to lose now. He’d prefer not to die, he thinks, but if Nie Mingjue wants to kill him at least he could die feeling like it was justified. To be struck down by the man who had picked him up from the dirt in the first place, the man who is, as he’d said, the most feared and respected cultivator of their generation…it would not be a shameful death. Even in the circumstances they’ve found themselves, it wouldn’t be embarrassing to face his mother in the afterlife like this. He can tell her he tried. He will tell her he did everything in his power to win what she’d wanted, and he’ll pray for a few more lifetimes as her son to attempt to make up for his failures.

Meng Yao drops to his knees almost woodenly when Nie Mingjue’s hands release him as suddenly as if he’d been burned, and in his mind’s eye he can see the man reaching up for Baxia on his back. He’s lost count of how many times he’s watched Nie Mingjue practice with her, finding excuses to squeeze in a glimpse or two between all his other duties simply to admire the raw, untamed beauty of the way man and saber work together. She’s an extension of Nie Mingjue, as much of an appendage as an arm or a leg. The only way he can think of for Nie Mingjue to kill him more intimately would be to climb atop him and strangle him with his own hands, so he sees no problem in settling for Baxia’s cold touch rather than Nie Mingjue’s too-hot grip.

“You’re wrong,” Nie Mingjue rasps, and it sounds like it’s coming from a li away though the man hasn’t moved, Meng Yao kneeling close enough to his feet for the splayed skirt of his outermost robe to brush against Nie Mingjue’s boots. “There is one position left above yours that isn’t Sect Leader.”

Meng Yao opens his eyes reluctantly, stops imagining the whistle Baxia would make as she’d split the air between her razor-sharp edge and the soft give of his bared throat. He looks up, up, up at Nie Mingjue, towering over him like that first day they’d met, and he finds an eerie calm overlaying his usual temper, for once tightly reined in. Meng Yao would honestly prefer it if he were shouting like usual.

“What?” he manages to croak in response, his voice just as hoarse. “There’s not, you can’t –”

“I can.”

Meng Yao’s thoughts are more than a little scattered at the moment, but his mind is still as agile as ever. He meets Nie Mingjue’s gaze, lets the intensity of it burn him, pin him in place and force him to acknowledge what Nie Mingjue doesn’t seem willing to say directly.

There really is, in fact, one more rank between his current status as Nie Mingjue’s deputy and the man’s own status as Sect Leader. As things currently stand, the only person he actually answers to is Nie Mingjue, but that’s mostly because anyone who fools themselves into believing Chifeng-Zun has time to meet with the matchmakers is very swiftly and sternly disabused of such a ridiculous idea. Sometimes by him.

It wouldn’t be difficult at all to play the secret lovers card, if they were so inclined.

“No,” he protests to both Nie Mingjue and the traitorous direction his thoughts are happily careening towards. “Absolutely not! You cannot possibly believe that making me…Nie-furen would solve this?” 

Nie Mingjue glares down at him from under the harsh, unyielding furrow of his brows, looking as serious as he ever does. Meng Yao sort of wishes Nie Mingjue had just killed him instead of whatever the fuck this has turned into. Is it possible this is a stress-induced hallucination?

“It would help.”

“How?!”

Nie Mingjue huffs and finally moves, though sadly not to grab for Baxia in a sudden change of heart to just put him out of his misery and let him start everything over, a blank slate. Instead he begins pacing in tight circuits, back and forth across the center of Meng Yao’s tent, his leather shoulder pauldron brushing the center support pole with each abrupt pass.

“Jin Zixun has told everyone who will listen that he caught us kissing in the woods.” Meng Yao’s ears are suddenly far warmer than they have any right to be. “He’s only talked about the part where you kissed me. No one seems to know that I also kissed you.” Which he had most certainly done. Passionately. “It’ll be easy enough to turn the tide of gossip in our favor. You already wear inner family braids, you’ve been at my side since I promoted you, your word is my word in every way that matters. Or it should be, at least, and anyone who doesn’t treat it as such now will have no choice but to change their ways or leave once you become furen.”

“I haven’t actually agreed to that,” Meng Yao feels compelled to point out, still kneeling there on the beaten dirt floor of his own fucking tent, gobsmacked and a little dizzy with everything happening far too quickly.

“If you become furen then,” Nie Mingjue dismisses easily with a wave of one massive hand. He’s in full battle-planning mode now, Meng Yao recognizes the signs, and there’ll be no getting him out of his track until he’s walked this thought all the way to the end of it. Best to just walk alongside him and see where it takes them.

“And am I to believe that you will suddenly be so much more compelled to defend my honor after this? If spreading my legs for you were all it takes, then the men will wonder why you’ve suddenly elected to discipline them now for the behaviors they never bothered to stop even after you first promoted me. They will never believe that we’ve been hiding a relationship for so long that it’s produced an affectionate engagement, since you haven’t stirred yourself once to defend me yet.”

As far as accusations go, this is far too sharp and pointed to be anything but insubordination and disrespect of the worst sort (except maybe for grabbing Nie Mingjue and kissing him like he’d done. That ranks fairly high as well). But Nie Mingjue simply shoots him a look that is half apology and half irritation, nothing at all close to the murderous rage he likely deserves for such a display.

“If you would tell me these things then maybe that wouldn’t be the case!”

“Should I have to beg you over and over again for the protection you promised me when you brought me to your side?”

Nie Mingjue practically growls at that, clearly incensed, but apparently he still won’t be distracted from this new…tactical endeavor.

“What they say won’t matter so long as you’re furen, is the point I’m trying to make! You’ll be just as much the commander of Bujing Shi and the Nie as I am, your word will not be backed by me, it will be mine. It’s the best protection I can offer you, and it would cut these gossiping hens off at the knees. So they want to accuse you of sleeping your way to the top and refuse to believe differently? Fine. Then we’ll make sure you’re actually at the top! Any disrespect to you, then, will be no different than if they’d said it directly to me! I can respond to each insult with as much force as I want, then, and damn the consequences.”

Meng Yao’s breath catches in his throat and his fingers curl into fists again on his knees, the bites from his nails stinging slightly as he presses on them. As far as solutions go, it’s not precisely the best. Actually turning the rumors into truth will do very little to take the sting out of them, but it would mean power and – at least from Nie Mingjue – respect. Rather than retreating in disgrace, with his name a curse on everyone’s lips, there could be some small comfort. There could be Nie Mingjue.

When Meng Yao stays silent, Nie Mingjue suddenly stops and sighs gustily, eyes bright as he looks down at him still kneeling there waiting for death. He reaches into the fold of his robes at his chest and pulls out, of all things, one of their precious letters with a hard cover and the Nie seal. Most of their correspondences have long since been scrawled on whatever sorts of loose paper they can find, but whatever Nie Mingjue is holding has been written on their proper stationary, silver and deep grey flashing between his fingers as he holds the letter for a long moment before he passes it down to Meng Yao.

“I had intended to..give this to you, after the meeting. Before Jin Zixun decided to make a mess of everything.”

Meng Yao opens the letter warily, darting a questioning glance up at Nie Mingjue and his uncharacteristic hesitation. 

It is, he finds, a letter of recommendation, written carefully in Nie Mingjue’s neatest calligraphy.

“I know that you still wanted to be recognized by your father. You’ve made a good name for yourself here, good enough that you should have been able to find the same or a better position in any of the Great Sects – including the Jin.”

Meng Yao’s vision swims a little as he stares down at the letter, not actively reading it, just…marveling. The sting of rejection is waiting in the wings, he can feel it even as he sees how much Nie Mingjue appreciates him, how high he holds him in regard, in order to spell it all out so plainly for anyone else to see.

“If you want to, you can take that letter anywhere you wish to go and try again with someone else. I thought…if you stayed here, what I could offer you would never be what you truly wanted. I don’t want you to go, but I don’t want you to stay if it will only make you miserable. Obviously things are a bit different now, but my…feelings haven’t changed.”

Meng Yao can see it so easily. He could take the letter, he could walk away hurt by Nie Mingjue’s dismissal of him but eager to prove himself in Lanling anyway. He could leave the Nie for the Jin and attempt to earn his father’s attention again (he isn’t foolish enough even in his daydreaming to imagine he’ll ever earn Jin Guangshan’s love). 

If things were even slightly different, he would do it.

Meng Yao studies the letter for one more long moment, silent. With a deep breath he carefully folds it back between its covers to tuck such a precious thing into the front of his robes, safe and close to his heart.

“Any chances my father may have some day given me were ruined the moment Jin Zixun saw us. Even had we never kissed at all, he would have eventually found some way to ensure I would never find a place at my father’s side. It could never have gone differently, in the end,” Meng Yao says, calm and steady. Because he knows himself, and he knows that he would always find a way to love Nie Mingjue, so there would always be the possibility of him slipping up and damning them both. Now, or later, it doesn’t matter. Meng Yao tips his head back to look up at Nie Mingjue again and is unsurprised to find that his eyes are red-rimmed, though his cheeks are still dry for the moment.

Meng Yao inhales deeply again, sets aside the maelstrom of his feelings to tell him, “I want to stay. I want to be worth something to you. I want your respect and your power…and your affection. I want all of it. Don’t..don’t make me go somewhere else. Please.”

Meng Yao’s twisting heart begs silently for Meng Shi’s forgiveness as Nie Mingjue crosses the small distance between them to haul him up straight into his arms. Meng Yao hides in his chest and mourns for the loss of everything he’d dreamt of one day having - and Nie Mingjue holds him so tightly his tired body aches just right.

-/-

Nie Mingjue - in a move that would most likely shock every matchmaker in Qinghe - is a wonderful husband. Their engagement had essentially lasted only as long as the war, their wedding the first major (non-victory related) celebration of any kind amongst the Great Sects after its end. Meng Yao had thoroughly enjoyed rubbing the reality of their wealth even after a war in the faces of the rest of the Great Sects - particularly the Jin (perhaps..exclusively the Jin. He respects the Lan too much and cares about the Jiang too little to bother trying to make them jealous).

Still. It had been one thing to flaunt their power at a wedding in their own home, and now it’s another thing entirely to be attending their first cultivation event as the dual masters of the Unclean Realm – a group hunt. In Lanling.

Nie Mingjue, still his best source of unwavering support, stands at his side stern and silent at the bottom of the stairs that lead up to Jinlintai. Two lines of disciples stand behind them in neat rows, just as silent and imposing as their leader and – as they’d all been personally recruited by Nie Mingjue to replace some of those they’d lost in the war – wholly loyal to Meng Yao as much as they are to Nie Mingjue. With so many powerful people on his side, there’s no logical reason for him to fear ascending the steps in front of them. Mercifully, in spite of that fact there’s still no hint of impatience from any of the Nie while Meng Yao takes a deep breath in and looks up the mountain of stairs, the golden rooftop of the tower just barely visible over the steep slope of them from here.

Meng Yao takes another deep breath in when Nie Mingjue rests a hand subtly on the small of his back, a firm support that does nothing to attempt to propel him forward. He leans back into the press of it with a tiny smile up at his husband, who he finds is already looking down at him from the corner of his eye, brows furrowed into a concerned frown.

“Let’s go,” Meng Yao finally says. Nie Mingjue does him the courtesy of not asking him if he’s sure. Instead, they simply step forward as one and their disciples fall in smoothly behind them, their swords and the silver ornaments in their hair clinking softly as they ascend.

“Qinghe Nie Sect!” one of the guards at the top of the stairs announces when they reach it, and Nie Mingjue’s entirely proper hand on his back slips around to curl around his waist instead, his arm warm and sturdy around him as they approach. It’s inappropriate – practically bawdy by the standards of the Lan who have just gone into the banquet hall ahead of them – but Meng Yao manages to keep his head high and even smirk a little as they stop in the courtyard, ready to be greeted.

“Nie-zongzhu,” Jin Guangshan says with his usual (utterly fake) jovial smile and a bow that’s just this side of too shallow to be a proper greeting. The well-practiced smile on his lips sours into something ugly and pinched at the edges when Jin Guangshan turns to him and forces his spine to bend in an identical bow, his shoulders visibly tense to the point of faint trembling as he holds it and says, “Nie-furen.”

“Jin-zongzhu,” Nie Mingjue greets for both of them as they return the bow even more shallowly than they’d been offered; by now, with the both of them unequivocal heroes of the war and the Qinghe Nie not only rebuilding but flourishing already under their combined efforts, it’s no secret in the cultivation world that their reputations and wealth far outstrip the money Jin Guangshan has been throwing at everyone’s rebuilding efforts in an attempt to hide how little he did for the war effort when it mattered most. Their barely-polite greeting is no more nor less than anyone present would expect them to offer.

After all, everyone knows by now that even while embroiled in a war the Jin had somehow found the time to launch a smear campaign within the ranks of their own allies with the intent to drag their General’s beloved partner through the mud. They won’t be able to buy their way out of such shameful behavior until the Jin coffers are echoing empty, Meng Yao thinks with a savage sort of glee.

Despite the anxious roiling in his gut, Meng Yao sweeps past his father the moment it’s acceptable, head held high and the bright sunlight glinting off the silver guan threaded securely through his intricate loops of braids, the crown a match for Nie Mingjue’s. He spares Jin Zixun – standing just inside the door and aggressively flirting with one of the serving maids – enough of a passing glance to see his cousin’s eyes widen upon catching sight of him looking every inch a Sect Leader, and the nausea churning in his gut abates a little under another flash of pleasure.

Nie Mingjue, a man of his word through and through, has done precisely as he’d promised that day in his tent. Meng Yao answers to nobody – not even his husband who is his equal – and though he’s sure there must still be some in the cultivation world who will look at him and sneer, who will never believe that the son of a prostitute could be a valuable leader, the success of the Nie Sect speaks for itself already, and will continue to do so under their combined guidance.

And his husband is fully prepared to gut anyone who criticizes him in their hearing anyway.

“Married life suits you two quite well,” Lan Xichen tells them both with an amused little smile once the banquet is well underway, music and dancing and chattering filling the opulent hall. Meng Yao doesn’t duck his head, or blush shyly, or attempt to deflect. He simply smiles up at his and Nie Mingjue’s best friend (and most vocal supporter) and tries to look a little less smug. It clearly doesn’t work judging by the laugh Lan Xichen hides behind a genteel hand, but Meng Yao doesn’t mind one bit.

“We’re still willing to swear brotherhood with you, you know, even though we’re married,” Nie Mingjue says as he slings his arm around Meng Yao’s waist like he had earlier. The comment could be completely innocuous, a clumsy nonsequitur, but Meng Yao takes a delicate sip of the wine in his hand to hide the smirk that creeps across his lips when the offer lands precisely as it was meant. Lan Xichen coughs delicately and does an admirable job pretending that his ears aren’t glowing red at the tips.

“Three heroes of the Sunshot Campaign,” Meng Yao muses before Lan Xichen can get his metaphorical feet under him. “Three of the strongest leaders in the cultivation world bound together in an alliance between the Nie and the Lan, to stand across from the Jiang and Jin making their ties through marriage. It’s a good political move, and an even better personal one.”

Lan Xichen clears his throat and offers them a nod that, for him, is practically begging for relief from their teasing. “I have thought about it,” he confesses. Meng Yao wonders if it hurts for his ears to be blushing so fiercely. “And I accept.”

Nie Mingjue’s hand tightens on Meng Yao’s waist, possessive and excited in equal measure. Meng Yao sips at his wine again, pleased with the fact that soon he won’t have just one powerful man in the palm of his hand, but the two most powerful cultivators in the world. Sect Leaders, to boot.

It’s not anything close to what Meng Shi had in mind for him, he thinks, but it’s also so much more than she’d ever taught him to expect from his life that he also likes to think she doesn’t mind too much.

#the untamed fanfic #Nieyao #Nie Mingjue #Meng Yao #future 3zun hinted at #she also specifically requested that I give it a happy ending because and I quote #'you can slide into angst without warning' #which I would be offended about if it weren't painfully true lol #Also I'm doing my best with novel canon using exclusively what I've learned about it from fic so #as usual we're here for vibes not accuracy

[lesbian4lqg]

one thing i really appreciate about svsss is that with anyone else in shen yuans role?

the system's lbh mood ring points (satisfaction, heartbreak, etc) would be considered an invasion of privacy more than the whole transmigration thing already is or at least a source of valuable insight but instead

its shen yuan. if anything the mood ring reveals make him more confused

#(wiping away tears) hes so stupid #no but really the ways in which mxtx crafts her narration to share info with/withhold info from her audience is SO fascinating #*are #and to do it w/out breaking suspension of disbelief! shes so talented! #like theres so many examples! #the systems mood ring points making many of lbhs feelings/motivations obvious #(or at least comprehensive enough to be follow-able) #to the audience while still portraying sy's obliviousness as genuine and understandable #all of the hints as to hua chengs identity that make you think youve figured it out long before xie lian only to discover that #1. hes known for ages and just didnt mention it even tho HES LITERALLY THE NARRATOR? #2. we as the audience arent even told when he figured it out. we find out that he knows at the same time hua cheng does #(<- this also happens a bit w nan feng and fu yao. we Know but does xie lian know? yes he just doesnt care.) #its like the jkr 'it wasnt mentioned bc it wasnt relevant to harrys story' thing but CLEVER AND TRUE AND ON PURPOSE #i havent read mdzs yet but based on what ive seen & on cql a similar thing is done w wwx&lwj solving a murder mystery #theyre revealing what happened while wwx was dead to the cultivation world and the audience but also much of what happened when he was alive #(tho most of what happened when he was alive the first time is only revealed to the audience) #like i know mxtx is hardly the first author to do this but like. i just enjoy it so much? #anyway thats all i love her #shen yuan #shen qingqiu #svsss #tgcf #cql #mdzs #mxtx #✌️

[jrueships]

WHO RUN THE WORLD ?? (GIRLS 🗣‼️)

#GIRLS !!!!! #i feel like they had wore way cooler fits than the ones shown here but.. they also look like the offbrand avengers so we take the dub #wherever we can get it #them putting gup right behind green... mhm #i will react normally to this normal decision #THE THREE FRIENDS GREEN GUP N SCOOT !!!!! #fashionn friendssss 🥰🥰 #KUMINGA BABY !!!!!! #david <3 #a lovely team !!!! #gup playing clash of clans on his phone #yao shirt 😎😎 #so true !! #the stylist avengers.. #they will style you but will all argue which is what and where is when #then theyll get distracted and all play fortnite #leaving you with nothing but a bag to wear #king behaviors #green #gup #scoots

[leatherbookmark]

i swear to god, jgy being bitchy/prickly as a proof that he's finally opened up to someone is possibly my most disliked fandom treatment of him, because with obvious jgy haters at least I know we have exactly nothing to talk about! aaaaand block! but then people who claim to love him just make him into a total opposite of who he was in the novel and it's just like. sigh

#practically every time i bitch about it i bring up the fact that Yes the perspective of being able to be your worst self with no fear that #the person who sees that will hate you and book it is seductive and heady #but its never about that. or rather: when you read the novel you get the feel that jgy is wearing a smiling mask almost #constantly and it would be nice for him to not have to do that. but often fanworks lack that element and jgy is just a bitch #i mean yes sometimes you get a vague mention of difficult work! or some vague idea of a backstory that hints at jgy being a bitch #because he got hurt in the past and its his armor. and thats nice but its not jin guangyao. whose whole thing in canon was that he was #ALWAYS polite. i guess most fans picture a smile that you can See is fake and murderous but its not the case in the novel at all #and even if there really IS a setting where jgy can let himself be a bitch in front of his partner... it's just. so annoying #like jgy isn't a person but a little chihuahua throwing a little fit hihihi! how funny! have we mentioned he's so short? #I haven't found a fic where jgy genuinely can complain about his work/family/whatever troubles him and the other person reacts in a way #that would be a satisfying and appropriate emotional reaction for him (idk how to put it but for example when i need to vent i also need #the person im venting to to agree that yeah this is shitty/bullshit! which is why i dont really vent to people anymore lol) #it always has this comical undertone and it feels so wrong 4 me #on top of that this bitchy little a-yao is so popular that people dont even think twice about it. just like nmj who's so warm and loving #not to mention endlessly queer and supportive that people forget the original flavour (to borrow the sv term lol) #and again i do understand! one of my past otps was very Quirky and over the top (thats anime 4 u) and i soaked up the rare moments when #they were just people with complex feelings like a fucking sponge. then my fic was all about the complex feelings without any of the #quirkiness because i was tired of its abundance in canon. but in a way because of this they were a complete 180 from their canon selves #so like. i guess i understand. but what i dont understand is that this assumes thay jgy's smiles and kindness are ALL a front and that the #bitch (or gremlin! he and wwx are ~gremlin friends~ uh huh) is the True Self. and i mean. w h a t #people got So hooked up on short bitchy customer service employee forced to hide his oceans of snark behind a smile so fake its cracking at #the edges thay they forgot about the man who would do everything for people he loved + enjoyed making them happy and comfortable #and was kind to his subordinates. there's nothing of that dude in popular fics and im not even sure if authors know he existed #the closest we have is him trying to be the favourite uncle/satisfy his in-laws first/show off which just seems so shallow lmao #and its like Oh God #i know 'these are all fictional characters eli' but ashfhfkflsahfjsgod #shut up shrimp

[khattikeri]

drives me nuts when people treat jin guangyao or wei wuxian like they're socialist revolutionaries like no! they're not!! in fact their respective roles in society and complacency regarding its hierarchies is why ANY of the story even happens to begin with!!!

jin guangyao doesn't hold bitterness just because he was born lower class. he is bitter because others deride him and his prostitute mother in spite of both their intelligence, skills, and efforts to climb the ladder.

why do you think we were shown scenes of other prostitutes in the brothel deriding meng shi for being literate, for "trying" so hard? why do you think we were shown scenes of anxin taunting meng yao and throwing shit at him because he was trying to learn cultivation at his mother's behest?

why do you think jin guangyao arranged for the arson of that brothel, burned to the ground with everyone except sisi inside? that's not the behavior of someone who believes in true equality and the inherent worth of sex workers as human beings!

that's the behavior of someone who thinks he's better than them. the behavior of a man who already came up on top through political games and war crimes, backstabbing and spying for the sake of the "greater good".

i won't rehash his argument to nie mingjue that he didn't have a choice-- he had some choice, but no matter what he does his class will come up and people will always assume the worst and try to hurt him for it, which forces his hand to do whatever will protect him best (hence 'no choice').

jin guangyao did everything he could to secure his own safety and a place among those already higher up. and by that point, he'd won it.

the fact that the temple rebuilt on the brothel site is to guanyin, the goddess of mercy, is even more ironic! the fact that jin guangyao has the goddess's statue carved to look like his own mother is proof that he viewed both her and himself as higher than them. more worthy than them.

of course he cared about the general welfare of others (read: the watchtowers). but consider also that there is no watchtower near yi city, which ended up being one of xue yang's playgrounds. jin guangyao can and will turn a blind eye to certain sufferings if it is convenient to him.

sure, jin guangyao made undeniable contributions to cultivation society and accessibility, but he is not at any point trying to topple existing class structures. his adherence to them is in fact integral to his own downfall in the end.

it brings with it the inevitability of society conveniently ignoring his triumphs and genuine moments of humanity to deride him once more as an evil, disgusting son of a whore once his crimes come to light.

now for wei wuxian. he's the righteous protagonist of the story and he doesn't give a fuck what society thinks, yes, but he wasn't out there trying to cause an uprising so that all the poor servant classes and lower could become cultivators. he wasn't trying to redistribute wealth or insinuate that those who are lower deserve to be viewed as equal to the gentry.

the most critical and non-explicitly stated fact of mo dao zu shi is that wei wuxian has always been resigned to his position in the social hierarchy.

his unreliable narration, especially regarding his own past and thoughts, is so damn important. he doesn't EVER tell the reader directly that people treated him any which way at their leisure because of his parents' differing social classes.

no. instead we are shown how much prestige he is afforded as cangse-sanren's son-- reputation as a talented and charming young cultivator, made head disciple of Yunmeng Jiang-- and how little respect he is given in the same breath, as the son of servant wei changze.

the way he is treated by others is as fickle as the wind. if he obeys and does as told, there is no reward. of course he did that, that was the expectation to start with! if he does anything even slightly inconvenient, there is a punishment. of course he has no manners, what else would you expect from an ungrateful son of a servant?

wei wuxian's righteousness is not a matter of adhering to principles he was explicitly taught, the way nie mingjue values honor or the way jiang cheng always tries to prove himself. wei wuxian does the right thing regardless of what the consequences are to him because his good deeds are always downplayed and his bad deeds are always singled out, no matter who or how many people were doing it with him.

he has faced this double standard since childhood. there are points in the novel where it's clear that this sticks out to wei wuxian, but does he ever fight back against that view of himself? does he EVER, at any point in the story, explain his actions and choices to jianghu society and try to debate or appeal to their sense of reason?

no. because he knows, at his very core, that any explicit deviation from their interests whatsoever will be punished.

slaughtering thousands of people is fine when they want him to do it, and when the alternative is unjust torture, re-education camps, and encroachment upon other sects' lands.

slaughtering thousands of people who are trying to paint him as evil for not going along with their genocidal plans, however, is punished.

wei wuxian knows his acceptance among the higher classes is superficial and unsteady. from the age of 10, when jiang fengmian took him in, he knew subconsciously that he could be kicked out at any time.

he knows that cultivation society doesn't care about war crimes and concentration camps and mistreatment of the remaining wen survivors of the sunshot campaign. but the right thing to do now that they aren't at wartime is to help them, plus they'd punish him either way for it, so he will.

in this regard wei wuxian is more self-aware of his position than jin guangyao. he does care about common people and he does try his best to help them as an individual. even if that ends up with him disabled, arrested, targeted in sieges, or dead.

but is he revolutionary? in the full equality, fight the establishment, rewrite laws, change social structures and people's perceptions of class sense?

no. no. he isn't.

now my knowledge of chinese society and history is fairly limited to my hindu diaspora upbringing and our shared cultural similarities ... but speaking to what i absolutely know us true, adherence to one's social class is expected.

this is rigid. efforts and merits might bring you some level of mobility, but in the end, the circumstances of your birth will always be scrutinized first, and your behavior compared to the stereotypes of where and how you originate.

mdzs is not about revolution, and none of its characters are able to truly change its society. there is no grand "maybe cutsleeves aren't inherently bad" or "i'm sorry for persecuting you and believing hearsay, you were truly a good person all along!" at the finale.

people ignore history and repeat it again with the next batch of ugly gossip and rumors.

wei wuxian, lan wangji, and luo qingyang find peace only by distancing themselves from cultivation society and its opinions.

jin guangyao and wei wuxian both cannot ever escape from others' perception of their origins and actions. regardless of their personal beliefs, they are not revolutionaries.

#keri chats #mdzs #mo dao zu shi #long post #mdzs spoilers #wei wuxian #jin guangyao #mdzs meta #the untamed #cql #i know it's funny or fanon to call them commies but it's so deeply fucking important to me that ppl understand they CANONICALLY are NOT #AAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH #this is messy and unedited and rather surface level but again if you read this post i love you lmao #wwx did the right thing in the xuanwu cave by helping mianmian and fighting back against wen chao BUT he was punished for it #through wang lingjiao's visit insisting he be whipped for it + the fall of lotus pier #like if wwx'll be punished either way ofc he'll do the righteous thing. but he is undeniably resigned to the fact that they won't change #wwx doesnt TRY to change THEM. he just does what he wants & believes is right himself #big difference & while jgy is often easy to clear up i still see so many people say that wwx is different and im like. YES but also GOD NO

[chilinandeppresing]

Mk is a Yaoguai

I came across some interesting information while I was researching another theory. The concept of a being not quite demon, human or celestial demon in Chinese mythology called a Yaoguai. The number of similarities MK shares with them is uncanny.

First of all, how Mk being refered to as the Harbringer of Chaos connects to him being a Yao:Within Chinese mytholgy, Yāo have a tendency to be "blamed for sudden outbreaks of confused and erratic action, or transgressive behaviour" with there literally being a Chinese saying saying that goes"when affairs go awry, there must have been a yāo (acting)" ("事出反必有妖") Quite like how Mk seems to cause a lot of chaos around himself, without even meaning to and feeling a lot of guilt for it. ie- Lady Bone Demon, Demon Bull King, Spider Queen, Azule Lion, and maybe even Macaque gaining power due to his (direct or indirect) actions. As well as other unfortunate things that have happened around him, like Mei's Samadi Fire getting activated and Wukong getting trapped in the scroll.

Secondly, tying in the concept of him being a Yaoguai to his creation: Mk was born from a rock, a clay rock made by someone unknown to us but presumed to be the goddess Nuwa. And guess where most Yao originate from? From unsentient natural items- "yāo refers to natural objects (animals, plants, or rocks) which have acquired sentience (lit. spiritual awareness)," That spiritual awareness might’ve been gifted knowingly or unknowingly by Nuwa.

Yao also only appear in human or near-human forms, and that is after all MK's original form that we see him in the show with. But they also share an "essential nature with an animal or plant." and that is there actual true form. Which since MK was carved into a monkey by Nuwa, it natural that that is the the animal he would share an "essential nature" with and would explain why he has a monkey form.

Mk also tends to have very atypical powers, which also aligns with the concept of him being a Yao since they tend to be born with unsual powers and with the ability to cultivate immortality. This explains why he was able to be immortal when we first met him, how he got that "invincibility" in the first place is still up for debate. I also wonder if this goes the other way where Yao can be born with immortality and cultivate others' powers... because that would explain how Mk is very easily able to adapt to others' powers. I'm not sure, though, since I've only done surface level research on this.

If that cultivation of powers is not possible then he may be unknowingly utilizing another common power of the Yao, shapeshifting to very accurately "mimic"(I'm not sure if that's the right word for it) others powers. Such as Wukong's, Macaque's and possibly LBD's.

Just some other cool tidbits about Yaoguai:

Yaoguai (妖怪) are distinct creatures from ghosts (鬼, pinyin: gui) and demons (魔, pinyin: mo). Ghosts are the spirits of the deceased, whereas demons are often described as fallen immortals and gods.(Mk is neither of those I think)

Sun Wukong uses this term often to insult his (demonic) adversaries(Huh that'd be ironic wouldn't it. To seemingly hate Yaoguai in JTTW, and then end up with one as his succesor.)

In Taoist folklore, yaoguai come from "an imbalance in the Tao" and "any combination of [atypical] powers, including mind control, shapeshifting and the ability to create illusions.(well our boy sure does have an atypical set of powers but if you all want to add on to this I would love to know if you've noticed some instances of these powers happening because I can see how Mk could be using shapeshifting powers but mind control and illusions? I'm not sure if there is any instance of him using those.)

#lego monkie kid #monkie kid #lmk #lmk mk #lmk season 5 #lmk sun wukong #lmk macaque #lmk qi xiaotian #lmk theory #lmk season 5 theory #i think this might be revealed in season 5 #i need more info for this theory #ive connected the dots #you havent connected shit #IVE CONNECTED THE DOTS ISTG #im not crazy am i #i fear my theories are becoming more and more delusional as i wait for season 5

[winepresswrath]

hi! i always love your MDZS/CQL takes; can i ask what are the questions you think CQL is asking, as compared to MDZS?

I haven't actually revisited either canon in ages, which is making me nervous. what questions the novel is interested in can be pretty contentious all on its own! @mikkeneko has an excellent answer in the notes here which I reccomend to everyone. My own thoughts are honestly pretty scattered- I keep on deleting things and going hm, that's not quite right.

So, for the obvious-to-me example, people reasonably zero in on the creation of innocent doctors/radish farmers who Wen Ruohan is holding hostage. In CQL it's easy to infer that Wen Qing and Wen Ning are maybe the only cultivators and almost certainly the only combatants among the Wen remnants, and their status is much more ambiguous in the novel, which I personally think is asking, essentially, "and so what? were they wrong to run, when they had a chance? Do they deserve what Jin Guangshan will do to them if they go back? Aren't they just people, actually?" Whereas the question that CQL is asking is more to the effect of "What does Wen Qing owe these people, when she is their only defence? What is she entitled to do to save them, at other people's expense? If she fucks up that moral calculus, what then? Does it matter if she's personally fond of some of the outsiders who are going to get hurt? If one of them saved her brother? Later, this question will flip to what Wei Wuxian and Jiang Cheng, and the parallel to Jiang Cheng's situation in particular is, I think, genuinely pretty fun. You're giving up the Wen as soldiers who've laid down their arms in exchange for Wen Qing also grappling with leadership and the question of how many horrors she can stand to look the other way on to protect her own people. one reason I keep deleting so much is that a lot cql's changes were motivated at least in part by censorship, which I think we mostly share a general and justified distaste for! but I also think that within the bounds of that censorship the creative team put a lot of work into actually doing something interesting with those changes. Or, for another example- nieyao! There's a much greater emphasis on the nmj-jgy relationship, it's unambiguously very close and they are clearly extremely important to one another, and I think that's because the cql team has a lot to say about love, trust, power, and the ways those things interact, and that reflects back on all of the other relationships in play, including Wangxian. Almost every time, when CQL chooses change a relationship they make the characters in question closer- that's true for Jiang Cheng and Lan Wangji, for Wen Qing and the Yunmeng contingent, for Zixuan and Mianmian, and Huaisang and Meng Yao. It's even true for Lan Wangji and Wei Wuxian, who have a close and trusting relationship in first life! CQL puts a much greater emphasis on "all right, so you care, what next?" How do you choose someone and then choose to be good to them? What if there's a massive power disparity between you? What if you seriously disagree about your priorities and morals? How do you trust someone who's betrayed you? When is it a stupid choice to trust at all? How do you have faith that you know someone well enough for that trust to be meaningful?

for legal reasons i would like to specify that it's not that mdzs isn't interested in these problems. i do remember wangxian's literal trust fall. cql is asking these questions all the time about everyone. also for legal purposes i'm not suggesting that cql lwj and jc love each other. but! they establish a three month wartime partnership looking for wwx and then jc immediately drops him on wwx's say-so despite apparently having a positive enough opinion of him to tell wwx he thinks they should make up twice. lan wangji will later tell wwx he thinks he should loop jc in on the second flautist! these are people trying to navigate some kind of relationship/shared interest/community, as opposed to a hateful void. cql wants to say hey, how do you go about this? while I'm here and rambling cql also puts a lot of emphasis on wwx's connection to yunmeng and changes things up so instead of feeling alienated right before he leaves our last glimpse of him there is happily picking lotuses and playing with a kid! in both stories the narrative is asking who do you protect? who do you leave behind? can you ever get it back? but the angles are very different.

#why are there so many people who simultaneously argue that cql dumbs down mdzs and also that mdzs is the slow reveal of how wwx is a #perfect angel who has never done anything wrong in his life #being let down by everyone around him #surely you have to pick an option #but lan wangji and wei wuxian being close friends in the first life really does change everything #i have seen people (reasonably) be annoyed with this as an adaptation choice #but! i like this change a lot and i think they do interesting things with it #There's still a lot of emphasis on what makes them so particularly perfect for each other but imo moving Lan Wangji into the category of #people wwx loved in the first life #shifts the focus from #when will they get together #to #What it would take and what would they have to do for these people to have to do to have a successful partnership? #If loving someone is the first step what comes next? Who do I want to be to the people around me? #i love the focus on wwx's trust issues as trust issues! problems that he's had with lwj specifically before! #and the solution isn't just oh well lwj is perfectly trustworthy #though that's obviously part of it #wwx has to like. decide for himself to do some things differently this time around in order to reap the rewards of being really in it with #someone. and lwj does too! it's a journey they're on together #i have simply rambled in all directions i'm sorry anon

[dangermousie]

Watching Jin in The Last Immortal made me think of Xiao Yao and Cang Xuan in Lost You Forever. More specifically how they are all adult survivors of childhood abandonment for a cause and how it affects them permanently.

Xianxia is such a high fantasy setting and usually deals with such larger than life situations (either world-saving or romantic.) Characters always die for the world or get doomed for love or whatever. And it’s great fun to watch. A xianxia done right is a rare pleasure.

But I love that two very different dramas this year actually take a different tack of sorts - they go, it’s great you saved the world/died for love/averted calamity etc etc but what happens to those left behind especially when said person is a child?

If you think about it, Xiao Yao, Cang Xuan and Jin are all characters who were abandoned by all those who were supposed to love them as children and it wasn’t because their parents/caretakers were bad people. It’s because none of the adults in their lives ever put the children first - they put saving the country (XY’s mom), saving the world (Jin’s dad), or true love (CX’s mom and Jin’s mom) over the children and the dramas go - well that’s great but it fucks the kids up.

If you are devoted to a cause, whether it’s an idea or a person, it makes you a failure to those not encompassed by that cause.

It doesn’t even have to be a cause that doesn’t take the kid into consideration. Xiao Yao’s father abandoned her out of a desire to protect her. But the fact remains is, she was abandoned and as she puts it in one of the dialogues - all the adults in her life, all the ones who loved her, had reasons for abandoning her but it was still abandonment.

I mean, if you look at Xiao Yao, as a result of her abandonment, she really cannot be in a healthy relationship - she can allow Cang Xuan in because he’s family and she cared for him before her world imploded but even with him I think she doesn’t expect him to be around forever. And as to a romantic relationship - she doesn’t even want a codependent one, because codependency implies a degree of reciprocity. What she wants is someone to depend on her while she is not as involved. As she puts it, she wants a man who would put her first and only, over any cause, or any family or anything. If you think about it, she falls for a man who has been disassembled by torture to a completely basic level and rebuilds his desires and his entire identity around her and he ultimately still fails her test by the end of LYF1.

And there is Cang Xuan. Whose father was killed in battle which is traumatic but then whose mother kills herself over his father’s grave, leaving her small child an orphan in a den of wolves with only “when you are an adult, you will understand.” No surprise - no he does not, and grows as fucked up as XY or more. If XY is willing to open to love even if in a dysfunctional format (and eventually she heals enough that she actually does get a happy ending in terms of love though she loses a lot on the way; the ending is a mixed one in terms of sweetness), CX is not at all - he believes he’s unworthy of love and incapable of receiving it properly. The fact that the sole woman he loves is XY, his cousin, also the one person around him who he knew before his life went to hell, and even with her he doesn’t really try to pursue her for a long long time even as she falls in love with someone else or gets engaged to yet another man - is proof of his damage. By trying to live her grand doomed romance and screw anyone else even her own son, his mother ensured her son will never have a proper love of his own.

And how with The Last Immortal we see the same effects with Jin. TLI is a kinder narrative and the ending of the drama is supposed to be happy for him (unlike the novel apparently) and Jin himself is not as closed off as the cousins in LYF, but he is so very clearly damaged by abandonment - his refusal to seek responsibility or come into his power, his deliberate goal of making his life as meaningless as possible are all the results of his dad liking the world more than his family and his mom liking his dad more than anyone and anything else.

All three of these characters are adults and capable ones at that but the damage lingers and lingers. And I find it so fascinating in a high fantasy setting.

These are narratives of those left behind on a grand heroic quest and that is something you rarely see done.

#cdrama #the last immortal #lost you forever

[accio-victuuri]

cctv weibo update : director yao xiaofeng talks about actor wang yibo 🎤

YXF: WYB, When I chose him to act in this drama, I had not seen "Hidden Blade". When I saw him, he was very simple. He was also very polite and left a very deep and good impression on me the first time we met. During the filming process, we became more and more fond of each other. Then, first of all, we established trust. You give me whatever I want. What I accomplish is that he is extremely serious in fulfilling every request of yours, which is good and true. All his feelings and reactions are the most authentic. He gives you many, many feelings. Everything about his experience was integrated into this character, which surprised me from the beginning.

#wang yibo #wei ruolai #war of faith #accio victuuri translation #ACTOR WANG YIBO 🗣️🗣️🗣️

[lgbtlunaverse]

I have been thinking on the nature of mdzs as a deliberately vague text that leaves many things up to interpretation, and how i've slowly come to understand "up for interpretation" less as "there is One True version of this story i must find" and not even as " Everyone has a different One True Version of this story inside their head be based on their interpretations and the differences don't make one wrong and the other right" but as "There is no One True Version. Even in my own subjective interpretation of the text multiple things can be true at once" specifically, in regard to Jin Guangyao and the many things which are left up in the air as to whether he did them or not, most notably killing his son.

There's evidence for this, but it's non conclusuve (jgy saying he killed him while also saying he killed Qin Su, who very much killed herself. The speculations on how he'd have killed him being sect leader yao just saying shit. ) it is, esentially, just up in the air enough that if you decisively fall on one side of the debate is probably says more about you and your general opinion of jgy than it does about the "true" events of canon.

I have, as a proud apologist, always fallen on the "he didn't kill him but felt in some way responsible for his death." Side but recently have become more okay with the interpretation that maybe he DID kill him, and that at the very least, that when he tells Qin Su their son "needed to die" he is being genuine. Which, once you look at it beyond. "Is jgy a poor lil meow meow who it is Okay to Like or an irredeemable baby murderer" becomes both INCREDIBLY tragic and deeply interesting. Because here is a man condemned for who his parents were and who wants nothing more than to live, saying that it is possible to be so cursed by your heritage that you need to die. There is no existence for you. The exact same thing that has been said to him.

Of course being born out of wedlock to a sex worker and being a product of incest are different things, but that begs the question: where is the line? What crimes of the father can mean death for the son? How cursed can you be until your existence is so incompatible with society it is you who needs to give? And if there is... where is it? Qin su clearly thought she was past it. Was his son really past it? Is he?

#warning: canon typical incest and suicide #mdzs #mdzs meta #musings on the nature of unreliable narratives or whatever #meng yao #jin guangyao #jin rusong #i know this is a controversial take #i just think! that once you let go of the idea that killing rusong is some load-bearing sin where if jgy has done it you can't like him #that there is interesting stuff to look at here! #obviously. child murder bad. jiggy has done many had things but this one is. particularly bad. #so i get it if you feel uncomfortable with it being done character you view as symapthetic despite other bad things he's done #and again! multiple things are true at once! i STILL operate from 'he did not kill him it was a secret 3rd thing' modus 90% of the time #it's just that in this one instant i find the other option really interesting #i just. non-identity problem my beloved. if rusong's suffering cannot be erased without erasing his existence is he destined to do so? #if he'd been a teen when everything about jgy got uncovered and both his parents died is there... a place left for him to go? #i just. hhhhh this poor child. we know nothing about you beyond your shameful birth and your death. is that really all you were meant to be

[naehja]

I have had this idea but i'll not write it so i leave it there for people who could be interested =)

Feel free to take it!

Jin Zixuan survives but he is severely hurt. He spent months in bed after his wounds so he misses so much things. After that, he recovers badly, he's always so so weak so yes, he let his brother take over. Meng Yao is so nice and so caring. What he doesn't know is that his dear brother poison him to keep him weak, to keep him fragile, influenceable.

Everytime he tries/wants to speak against something that JYG decided, he's suddently so tired…and his brother is so right.

His brother does a good job as sect leader so Jin Zixuan is happy to be just a father for his son. And a uncle for JGY's son as long that this boy was alive. He was devasted by his death. And tried to be there for his brother. After all family is there for that, right?

Jin Ling is very protective of his father and doesn't understand why he's so weak. His father so so strong before and his wound recovered. So why he's so weak?

"It's because of WWX, he curses your father" people said and still say. Because of course WWX is blamed for Zixuan "sickness"

There are 2 drugs. One who affect Jin Zixuan's health and spiritual power. So he stays weak and with a fragile health. The other drug is something who make the one who drink it vulnerable to the person who make the it. It was a potion forcing people to say the truth at first but JGY modified it to make his brother vulnerable to "his" words (weak to manipulation) Those drugs are called "medications" of course. And Jin Zixuan never questionned it, even if he couldn't.

Jin Zixuan tries to be a good brother for Mo Xuanyu. Mo Xuanyu was happy to have a so nice big brother and was very concerned by his health. The real reason of Mo Xuanyu banishment was that he understood that JYG was poisoning their brother to keep him weak and under control. JYG got rid of him with rumors about the young man being gay (which was true) and was trying to do a move on him/had feelings for him (which was false).

Jin Zixuan tried to speak on his favor but he was so tired…maybe…he refused to believe what JGY said about their brother. It was a mistake. It could only be a mistake!

JGY saidyes he didn't believed it too but it was so the best, sending their brother away would be the best because of the rumors. "He could have been hurt if he stayed brother"

Mo Xuanyu told NHS about the drugs in a letter but he also wanted to save his brother, he wanted to get revange on his family. So he did the sacrifice. He didn't ask for JGY's death because he knew that even wwx couldn't do that in few hours. But he left a letter for him, explaining everything about Jin Zixuan situation. He said that he had no proofs but that he had SEEN it. "Please be careful wei wuxian, my brother is a snake who kills people who go on his way! don't speak about it to anyone until you have proofs!"

And the story go on but with Jin Zixuan alive but under JGY's control, "drugged" for 13 years to be unable to speak again his brother. NHS being our favorite chessmaster, he managed to "kidnapp" Jin Zixuan at a point, like two or four months before wwx's return, and to give him the antidote + wean him off the drugs.

Of course, JGY blames WWX for the kidnapping as soon WWX is revealed to be in Mo Xuanyu's body . Jin Ling starts to have big doubts about his uncle after this moment. Because the dates...his father has been kidnapped BEFORE wwx's return, right?

It's at this moment, while they go to save the juniors, that WWX shows Mo Xuanyu's letter to Lan Zhan. He also tell it to all the sect leaders after the fight. It happens after everyone learns about that JGY married his half-sister.

Durin the events at the temple, Jin Zuxian returns (Shortly before NMJ's death body arrival) and can finally think clearly and freely for the first time in 13 years. His brother's word don't seem so logical anymore, he sees the lies. And he's angry, so angry, his golden core so strong for the first time in so much years. but his body is still weak.

And JGY said "you should have stayed under the drugs, i didn't want to kill you brother but you forces me to do it now" Except that JGY will not kill anyone, not anymore. Because the heros will win, of course.

Jin Zixuan is free and is now Jin sect leader while recovering. Jin Ling has to accept everything JGY did. Jiang Cheng has to accept to not have realised it. LXC has to accept what JGY did too, and has also to accept to have been used by him (did he give him the drugs to manipule him too?). NHS has had his revenge (but has had to live with the fact that his brother will never rest or have the chance to reincarnate). WWX and LZ are happy together.

WWX and Jin Zixuan reconciliation too (Jin Zixuan never believed that WWX killed his wife and never blamed him for his wounds).

#mdzs #mdzs fic #mdzs idea #jin zixuan #jin ling #wei wuxian #nie huaisang #jin family #Mo Xuanyu #lan zhan #mo dao zu shi #jiang cheng

[ystrike1]

Hananoi-kun to Koi no Yamai - Morino Megumi (9.5/10)

Yes, this does have an English release. Yes, you should buy it. This series is pure catharsis. It's about growing up. It's about immature, possessive emotions. It's about how that kind of attitude can stunt you socially, and leave you lonely. There's also an excellent message about bullying, and forgiveness.

Hananoi and Hotaru are two very different people. Hananoi is handsome and popular. Hotaru has zero interest in dating and she's not very popular, because she's very petite and quiet. She doesn't secretly desire love. It's not on her radar.

Hananoi is not a playboy. He has dated alot of women. He lavishes lots of attention on the woman he chooses, and he's very devoted. The problem is his girlfriends keep breaking up with him. He's too intense. He wants to wear couple rings. He wants to meet the parents. He doesn't want to kiss until things get serious. He wants lots of love. Pure love, not an immature teenage relationship. The issue is that...um...Hananoi is a teenager. His girlfriends are creeped out for a reason. They want to fool around and have fun. Hananoi expects his girlfriend to be available all the time. He expects her to keep her distance from her male friends. He also uses GPS to track his girlfriend.

He's...not a fun guy to date.

Hotaru gives him an umbrella after a public break up. Hananoi tells her he likes her the next day. They don't start dating. Hananoi says he'll wait until she's ready, which is sweet. It takes a while for Hotaru to trust him.

Usually, girls confess to him.

This is the first time he has pursued a girl, and he's very awkward about it. He gives Hotaru space, and time, and she decides to give him a chance.

Hananoi is very popular because he's handsome. Other girls get jealous of Hotaru, so Hananoi protects her. He wants to protect her from everything.

Hotaru is creeped out by scenes like this. She starts loving Hananoi because of who he is around her. When he's around others he puts up a wall. He's icy, cold, unsociable and distant. Hotaru knows that isn't the real him, because he is so sincere to her. He also doesn't pressure her too much, and he cooks for her to express his love.

Hananoi keeps getting worse though. When Hotaru gets a job at a bookstore Hananoi follows her. Literally. He starts shopping there every day to see her...until she politely tells him it's weird. Then, a boy who knows Hotaru from elementary school becomes friends with her. Then, Hananoi becomes an employee...so he can protect Hotaru.

The issue is that guy isn't an enemy.

Yao is a lovely guy. A true friend that would never go for a girl that loves somebody else. Even when he develops a crush he doesn't act on it, because Hotaru and Hananoi are in a serious relationship.

Hananoi is being paranoid for no reason.

He's just plain bad at love, even though he's kind under that junk. His parents work overseas. He's a stressed, under-socialized, lonely, smart kid. That's a recipe for disaster. Hananoi tries to be honest about his past deeds, but they are so bad Hotaru says he has to stop. She's not ready to know everything about his awful past relationships. He's trying to change, for her, but his possessive habits are extreme.

Hananoi improves slowly. Hotaru has a sister that doesn't approve of him, because it's unfair to expect your partner to be your everything. Hotaru needs her friends, and Hananoi does too. Hananoi tries to open up, and he makes guy friends. This immediately makes him a better, less clingy boyfriend. Hotaru is no longer his only emotional outlet, so their dates become more fun...and it's great.

Here's the big problem. The big mistake. Hotaru was attacked by her best friend in grade school. It traumatized her. Non is a jealous girl who is obsessed with her appearance. She's not completely evil. She's just an unpleasant girl who cares way too much about romance. She loved Yao before. Yao had a crush on Hotaru that he didn’t act on. Non blamed Hotaru for that, and she trapped Hotaru in a classroom. Then, she hacked off Hotaru's long hair while she yelled and screamed about how everything was her fault.

That's crazy.

Non transfered schools soon after, so the incident stayed quiet.

Non returns to apologize, but it's for selfish reasons. She just wants to forget the horrible thing she did to her only real friend.

Hananoi corners her, and he threatens to hack her hair off, to teach her a lesson. He doesn’t actually do it. He just wants Non to feel the panic Hotaru went through.

Um.

Psychotic.

Hotaru temporarily breaks up with him due to this incident.

Non is not a good friend. She hasn't really matured. Hotaru should not forgive her. As soon as Non finds out that Yao is Hotaru's friend...immediate sexism. It's crazy. She instantly starts babbling about how Hotaru has always been popular with boys and its not fair. Non has an average face under her makeup. I know being average can suck, but Non is extra shitty and clearly not...friendship material.

Hotaru vents with Hananoi. She says she threatened to break up with him over the incident...because she's afraid. She says the right thing. She will never forgive Non for her abusive attack. She doesn't want to be friends again. Non and Hotaru cry about the past, but that's all. Then the truth comes out. If Hananoi is really willing to attack someone like that...she thinks she'll be a victim too someday.

Hananoi tells the entire truth to save his relationship.

He tells her he secretly met Non, and pretended to be friendly, because he knew what she was doing. He's met tons of toxic girls. He tried to manipulate her into leaving, because he didn't want Hotaru to meet her. He never, ever intended to cut her hair or hurt her. It was all elaborate manipulation...for his own sake. He was angry.

He didn't do it for her sake.

He did it because he was there that day.

That's right! Hananoi was her gloomy classmate back in elementary school. He loved her back then too. He wanted to be her friend, but when he ran to her he heard screaming. He hid in a corner, and listened to Non rant while she chopped off Hotaru's hair. It traumatized him too, in a different way. It's where his obsession with protection comes from. He felt weak. Useless. He didn't help her. Then, he stopped trying to be her friend and she forgot him.

When she gave him that umbrella he decided to take a chance. He stopped waiting for love to come with him. He chased after her and decided to change. He decided to do whatever it takes to be a good boyfriend and husband material. He messes up along the way, but Hotaru admits that she's not pure too. She hates Non. Fear is in there too, but despite her sweetness she can't forgive blatant abuse. She's glad that Non has to live with regret for what she did, and the true friendship she lost.

Hananoi becomes her boyfriend again, and they become a fairly normal couple. Hananoi will always be possessive. Hotaru was his first love, and he's obsessed with soul mates, but he learns how to express himself. He makes friends so he doesn't crush Hotaru and their relationship, and they get a happy ending.

#yandere #male yandere #yandere male #yandere boy #recommendations #recs #rec #recommended #manga review #Hananoi-kun to Koi no Yamai #shoujo #shojo

[lansplaining]

For the AU meme: MDZS gang working at a fast-food restaurant

oooh love this

CONTRARY TO POPULAR AND INACCURATE FANON Jiang Cheng works the register because he's very good at it! He can do math quickly in his head, but he's also efficient, good at managing the line, and polite without taking up too much time about it. Branches across the city are desperate to have Jiang Cheng on the register when there's some dumb special release that goes viral.

One time there was a hurricane warning and regional manager Wen Chao came by and wrote up everybody he caught checking their phones for, you know, information about the storm and whether they'd be able to get home safely after their definitely-not-closing-early shift.* *based on a true story

There is one persnickety deep fryer that only Nie Huaisang can operate. He insists he doesn't do anything differently, which means that everyone else concludes it must recognize him and know his touch, and thus it is hopeless for anyone else to try to make it work. Nie Huaisang is absolutely not resigned to his fate.

Meng Yao's spying takes the form of undergoing a special (paid) management training course while simultaneously secretly organizing a union vote.

#ask answered #au meme

[robininthelabyrinth]

Meng Yao somehow ends up training under Baoshan Sanren

ao3

Meng Yao had long ago learned that things that seemed too good to be true often were. He wasn't sure why arriving at Lanling City and seeing the grandeur of Jinlin Tower had temporarily wiped it from his mind. 

Did you really think that you'd be welcomed with open arms? he sneered at his stupid former self. Did you think that they'd give you a chance to prove yourself just because Mother said they would? Since when was Mother right about anything?

He'd gone straight to Jinlin Tower to present his pearl and waited to be recognized. The guards had told him that he was lucky: he'd arrived a day after the (legitimate) young master's birthday, where there'd been a great big celebration, managed from start to finish by the Sect Leader’s jealous wife - he would've been thrown out on his ear for sure if he'd arrived that day. Meng Yao, whose birthday it had also been and who had only arrived a day late because he'd stopped on the side of the road to celebrate it by himself, had smiled awkwardly and said nothing. 

He'd said nothing as they talked about how wonderful things would be once he got granted the promised audience with the Sect Leader, his father, and he said nothing, too, as they turned on him, biding him up and dragging him away under the indifferent eyes of that selfsame father.

"They say that the immortal mountain is fond of abandoned children on the verge of death," the Sect Leader of Lanling Jin had remarked. “Perhaps she will find it in her heart to answer our petitions if we accompany them with a gift.”

Meng Yao said nothing. Even if they hadn’t gagged him, there wouldn’t have been any point – he had a silver tongue and eyes capable of seeing what others wanted, a knack for making himself useful and no pride in doing so, but that still required him to have a chance.

His father had never had any intention of giving him a chance.

He was taken away.

While on the road, still tied up and even collared to the carriage to ensure he didn’t try to save his wretched life by jumping off and running away, he heard the speculation of the guards, which explained a few things. It seemed that Baoshan Sanren had had a female disciple come down the mountain some time ago, Cangse Sanren, and that she had piqued Jin Guangshan’s interest. One guard had believed that Jin Guangshan was in love with her, while another scoffed and pointed out that he had all the women he could ever want; a third, quietly, suggested that their sect leader’s interest had come, most of all, from the lady’s offhand comment that she had known Yanling Daoren personally despite the centuries separating their generations.

Meng Yao thought this last, if true, was the most likely. For the man who could buy anything, what else could he want but more time to enjoy his riches? Men throughout history had longed for immortality.

Men with power, anyway. Men like Meng Yao weren’t even qualified to long to live until tomorrow.

When they arrived on whatever lonely mountaintop the Jin sect had decided was the most likely to be near Baoshan Sanren’s mountain, the guards beat him until he was on the verge of death, just as his father had ordered – breaking bones, leaving bruises – and then left him chained to a tree and shivering, with a scroll clasped in his numb hands, as they trooped back down the mountain, their task completed.

He’d hoped, briefly, that they would go too far and put him out of his misery, but he’d never had any luck. It would be the slow death of dehydration and starvation for him, or maybe some passing vicious animal looking to try out its teeth.

“Grrrrrr!”

Meng Yao blinked. That was not a vicious animal.

“Hello, there,” he said to the child that had burst through the bushes with the smile that came to his lips as naturally as breathing. Where there were people, there was hope – maybe he could convince this child to go get an adult that would be able to help him. “What are you doing here, little master?”

The child growled at him, stamping his feet.

“Oh, I see! My mistake. What are you doing here, oh proud and vicious beast?”

The child blinked, then giggled, putting his hands on his round cheeks to hide his blush. “I’m playing,” he said cheerfully. “We’re still high enough here that it shouldn’t be a problem.”

“Xiao Xingchen!”

“Oops. That’s my shixiong.” Xiao Xingchen put his hands behind his back and looked guilty. “I’m not supposed to go out too far…”

Meng Yao felt a spark of amusement underneath all his pain. He’d always liked children, no matter how annoying they could sometimes be, and this was a particularly attractive child, with features that looked like they’d be beautiful one day. “It’s all right,” he said. “Beasts don’t recognize boundary lines. How were you supposed to know?”

Xiao Xingchen looked thoughtful.

“Ah, shidi, there you are!” A young man stepped through the brush. He was tall and striking in appearance, with features a little too strong to be described as classically handsome, and he was dressed all in black, with a sword at his waist that was just as black. “What are you doing this far down?”

A strange statement, to Meng Yao’s mind. He’d seen the path the guards had dragged him up – they were already virtually at the mountaintop, and this was the tallest mountain around. How much further ‘up’ could they go? A few steps, at most?

“I’m a beast!” Xiao Xingchen said excitedly, curling his fingers into claws and showing off his best growl.

“Beasts aren’t allowed to go down either,” the older man scolded, and Xiao Xingchen pouted.

“Beasts don’t recognize boundary lines,” he said righteously, then pointed at Meng Yao. “He said so!”

The young man turned to look at Meng Yao, seeming to see him for the first time.

“Did he,” he said neutrally, clearly observing Meng Yao’s poor condition and the chain and collar that connected his neck to a nearby tree like a slave. Meng Yao shrugged, or tried to. “Gongzi, what happened to you?”

“A misfortune,” Meng Yao said, and glanced down at the scroll he was still clutching at his hand like a moron. The only thing his father had given to him, and it was to be delivered through his death. Was that all a father was? “If you could see it within your heart to release me, I would be grateful.”

“Who put you here?” the young man persisted in asking. “And why?”

Meng Yao didn’t especially want to put words to it. Putting words to it would make his father’s betrayal real…but who was he deluding? The betrayal was real.

“I have a message for Baoshan Sanren, the immortal master,” he said, smiling mirthlessly and nodding at the scroll in his hand. “My father understood that she only emerges from her mountain to find abandoned children on the verge of death, and so he decided to produce one. He has enough bastards that he could afford to spare a few, you see.”

A few of the more uppity ones, his father had said. The ones that didn’t know their place.

“That’s awful!” someone said – neither Xiao Xingchen nor the young man, since that voice was that of a girl in her teens, who at some point had sidled out of the forest as well. The young man swallowed a groan as he turned to look at her, but it was too late: she was grabbing at his sleeve and looking up at him with big round eyes. “Shixiong, we can’t just let that happen! We have to tell shifu about it!”

“We can’t make that sort of decision…”

“Shixiong!” the girl and the child both chorused. “Uphold righteousness!”

The young man groaned.

“All right, all right,” he grumbled. “If he agrees, we can tell shizun, and she can decide what to do about it…maybe if we’re really lucky, she’ll take offense to the whole idea and go down herself to make things right; that’ll show whoever sent this a thing or two. But probably not. You all know that right?”

They continued to beam at him.

“Ugh, fine. First things first, though. Shimei, will you break his chain?”

“Of course!” The girl had a horsetail whip at her belt, and when she snapped it outwards it cut straight through the metal of the chain with a force far beyond any normal item. A cultivator’s tool, Meng Yao thought wistfully, but he was too old to be a proper cultivator now – the most he could do would be to try to endlessly catch up, but that assumed some cultivation sect would take him in, when even his father had so ruthlessly rejected him.

His father, who might but probably wouldn’t be apparently taught ‘a thing or two’ by this young man’s master. Pity. The idea was appealing.

“What’s your name?” Xiao Xingchen asked.

“Meng Yao. Thank you for your kindness.”

“It’s not kindness,” the young man said with a sigh. “Don’t mistake it for kindness. If you come up the mountain with us, you can only go down again once in your life, and not for very long. Do you want to come with us, or do you want to make your way down the mountain yourself?”

Meng Yao’s legs were broken. There were vicious beasts and human bandits on the way down, twists and turns and endless misfortunes, and anyway he’d already done everything his mother could possibly ask of him when he’d gone to Lanling City and been so cruelly rejected.

“I’ll come with you,” Meng Yao said, having nothing to lose. “Thank you…ah…?”

“You can call me Yanling Daoren,” the young man said, and the name was familiar – where had he heard it? If only his mind were not so fogged with pain, he’d be able to remember. “Shimei is Cangse Sanren, and the youngest is Xiao Xingchen. You’ll be our shidi, I suppose, even if it’s tricky…oh, never mind. Shizun will figure out the ages, she always does. All right, up you go.”

He scooped Meng Yao into his arms.

They were warm.

“Last chance to change your mind,” Yanling Daoren warned.

Meng Yao shook his head.

“All right, then.” He started walking. Up the mountain, as mentioned. “I suppose, in that case, all I can do is welcome you to our sect.”

Meng Yao was going to ask where they were going – there really wasn’t much more mountain to go – but then he noticed that there was, actually. There was a lot more mountain, and all sorts of buildings: residences and training grounds and libraries and the like, in a style of architecture he’d never seen before, gaudy and colorful as a feathered bird.

“Shizun will want to see you first, of course,” Yanling Daoren said. “She always wants to meet the children, even if you’re a bit older than her usual.”

“I know,” Meng Yao said softly. “Too old to cultivate, right?”

“Not at all,” Yanling Daoren said, and laughed at Meng Yao’s surprise. “Maybe with other sect’s cultivation styles you are. You’ll find that things are a bit different here, when it comes to matters of age…you’ll need to start from the beginning, like Xiao Xingchen, but that’s all right. Who doesn’t like to be young?”

#mdzs #meng yao #jin guangyao #cangse sanren #xiao xingchen #yanling daoren #my fic #my fics

[jiangwanyinscatmom]

Hi Orion! I was hoping you could clarify something for me and others!

Wei Wuxian’s name is from a poem right? Like I think I remember seeing something about that ages ago, that MXTX is a massive literature nerd and like 85% of MDZS is named after some sort of poem or another, which is part of what makes the ship name and song name of Wangxian fun as its yet another allusion there. I can’t find all of my sources anymore, and what with more stuff going around, I thought it would be good to get that back out in the wild.

I really loved the feeling of her paying homage to different works of art that she loves in MDZS, so I’m hoping this is still the case that what I saw ages ago is true. Cause Cloud Recesses is also like that too, right?

Hello dear Sangsang!

Wei Wuxian's name is an homage to Xu Ben! He was noted for his poetry and calligraphy arts. On a tangent his life was fairly interesting as he and his companions were of gentry and during his time it was integral to commingle with Buddhist institutions as they were the epicenter for literati. And Xu Ben was noted to be one of the literary greats for chinese poetry and their heavy emphasis of doaist confucian buddhism. He had also stepped away from deep politics for the life of a monk as did several of his other contemporaries.

But, on to the actual poem, which serves nicely on it's own for an inspiration piece for Wei Wuxian as a character. The verse his secondary name references is the final stanza:

《闲居》

明代 徐贲

谢事返丘壑，退耕理田园。

兹心获遂初，稍得酒中悁。

振策升崇褵，扬舲溯长川。

惊湍信汩汩，清溜自涓涓。

新兰艳迟日，密竹曳丛烟。

东馆朝燕坐，西林暮独还。

朋旧固云旷，山水聊夤缘。

居諠暂亦遣，习静久乃便。

已幸驻灵药，复能讽瑶编。

既无羡鱼志，外物非所迁。

Leisure

Ming Dynasty Xu Ben

(1) I have returned to this valley, to till the grain and fields.

My heart has settled, drunkenly with wine.

The spirit of the throne has been revitalized, and the boats drift down the Yangtzhe River.

Orchids are colored by the late sun, bamboo thickets dense as smoke.

I sit and watch the swallows from the eastern hall, (2) as I return with the dusk from the forest .

Old friends drift like clouds, (3) I'd like to chat about the scenery*.

It helps to live in noise, we learn to sit silently.

(4) For I've been blessed with an elixir, to compromise and turn.*

(5) l do not desire to envy the fish, for the unknown cannot be moved.

This does contain several idioms

1: Lit: return to the mountain gulch after giving up one's work, retire to the farm and tend the fields. A.K.A. I retired and really don't know, mind my own business

2: Lit. Return from the West Forest at dusk. The end of one's life

3: Lit. Scenery, water from the mountain. To ingratiate oneself to another by fawning

4: Lit. Restore the ability to satirize Yao and compile it. To forgive and forget, able to recover and make light of

5: Lit. have no ambition to be envious of fish, nothing outside is worthwhile. Wú xiàn yú zhì Do not envy and aspire to be the fish. Do not envy others or aspire just for monetary gain

Piece it together and it starts to sound a bit like the ending Wei Wuxian was able to achieve after a lot of hard work and trappings of the world.

#mdzs #mo dao zu shi #wei wuxain #hmggggg translation is hard for classic poetry and I am definitely not a poet