#The point is. Every action jc takes. Is in the name of his loves ones' safety. And surprise. wwx is one of the people jc really cares about | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

plan-d-to-i · 3 years

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(google translate again, yeah)

(I forgot to thank you for the last answer, I really didn't know that the drama used the music of my compatriot, it was a pleasant surprise for me)

I don't know if anyone has asked you this before, but do you think JC was good with WWX as a kid?

I mean not just their childhood, but the time of their training in Gusu.

I really love JC, and I understand perfectly well that he is the most dick in character, but I love him precisely during my studies at Gusu, I can not give any arguments that then JC was directly GOOD to WWX, but he is clearly cared a little about him and even ... worried? at least that moment after the punishment where JC helped WWX get to the room...

Yay - I'm so happy to hear about Stravinsky :)

Hahah loving jc as the dick that he is is the way to do it! go for it. :) also, sorry this was so delayed I wanted to reread the Cloud Recesses arc so it would be fresh in my mind before answering.

In terms of jc the Cloud Recesses arc is perhaps the most 'mellow' we see him aside from the Lotus Pod Extra but for me it's still impossible to find him a worthwhile person. I can already see the faults in his character that I know will only get worse as he grows older. Canonically I don't see how he would have any friends studying in the Cloud Recesses if he didn't come as a package deal w Wei Wuxian. I mean I doubt jiang cheng would have any friends without WWX period. In fact jiang cheng doesn't make any friends over the course of 13 years. He's also unable to find a wife bc of his temperament and behavior...

What we can glean about their relationship in the Cloud Recesses arc (and even the Lotus Pod Extra) is that any time WWX gets a kind word or understanding from someone, jiang cheng scoffs at it. Any time someone shits on WWX, jc is there to agree, to relish the idea of WWX being punished, and shit on him some more. He would be an immensely exhausting person to be around. He doesnt believe in WWX's ideas and ingenuity, (as NHS does for example), he doesn't believe WWX is hurt, he always assumes the worst of him, he doesn't believe LWJ might like WWX. The only thing he ever seems to believe is that WWX will dishonor YunmengJiang and that WWX should be punished. So for a kid who supposedly wants his father's approval so badly he instead constantly acts like his mother's mouthpiece/minion. He reprimands WWX like he's trying to become Madam Yu 2.0. I see jc stans all the time being like oh he had to keep WWX in check bc WWX was such a lOOooose canon, for the good of the Clan!! lol listen JFM didn't give a f...about WWX's behavior (in his letter to LQR) why are you so concerned? JFM would have preferred for jc to try & save his peers in the Xuanwu cave or at least to understand why that was the correct course of action rather than for him to just sit in front of the class in the Cloud Recesses and tell WWX off for giving LQR as good as he got, while actually still breaking the rules himself but eschewing punishment.

salt up here, quotes below :

Even when Nie Huaisang picks up on the fact that WWX is being treated unfairly by LQR, jc dismisses it and piles on WWX instead.

Nie Huaisang said, “Old Man Lan really seems like he’s coming down especially harshly on you. Every time he reprimands someone, it’s always you.” Jiang Cheng grunted. “He deserves it. What kind of answer was that? He can get away with saying that sort of nonsense at home, but he had the nerve to say it to Lan Qiren’s face. He was practically asking for the old man to kill him!”

But does WWX get away with ANYTHING in Lotus Pier? When we know he is punished constantly for EVERYTHING? This is jiang cheng fully being his mother's mouth piece. It's not something WWX would get away with, it's something jc knows JFM wouldn't mind. Which is why he's so pissed off. Which begs the question if JFM would not be upset with WWX's behavior why does jc need to criticize him? Again :

A dark expression shadowed Jiang Cheng’s face, and his voice was filled with anger. “Why are you so proud of yourself? What is there to be proud of?! Is being told to get out some amazing accomplishment? You’re making our entire clan lose face!”

and his glee at the idea that WWX will be punished leaves a bad taste in one's mouth considering how WWX was perpetually punished in Lotus Pier by jiang cheng's mother for... existing.

Jiang Cheng smiled grimly. “Now that you’ve thoroughly offended both Lan Wangji and Lan Qiren, you’re basically dead tomorrow. No one’s going to clean up your corpse either.”

and again

Without the old one, only the young one remained. This would be easy to deal with! Wei Wuxian rolled off the bed and laughed while putting on his boots. “Heaven’s charmed clouds are blessing me with shade.” Jiang Cheng was beside him polishing his sword with loving care when he decided to spill cold water over Wei Wuxian’s head. “Just wait until he gets back. You can’t escape punishment.”

Where others like NHS see value in WWX's thoughts

Nie Huaisang thought for a while. “Actually, I thought what you said was very interesting,” he said, not entirely able to hide his envy and yearning.

jc is always dismissive of WWX's ideas. These are inventions that WWX realizes. Demonic cultivation in the first conversation and The Spirit-Attraction Flag and The Compass of Evil in the second:

“Enough,” Jiang Cheng warned. “Whatever nonsense you spout, you better not head down that sort of dark road.”

Changing the topic, Wei Wuxian said, “If only there was something like fishing bait that could draw the water ghosts in. Or, something that could point in the direction they’re hiding, like a compass, that sort of thing.”

“Lower your head and watch the water,” Jiang Cheng said. “You’re letting your fantasies run wild again. Concentrate on looking for water ghosts like you’re supposed to.”

“Hey, mounting swords and flying was also only a fantasy once!” Wei Wuxian said.

He's also a hypocrite. Because even though he berates WWX for misbehaving, he himself breaks the rules. He drinks, he even goads WWX into buying liquor, the only difference is that he doesn't get punished for it, and he doesn't feel like coming forward and getting punished for it :

Naturally, Jiang Cheng was too embarrassed to talk about what Wei Wuxian had been up to. After all, all of them had egged him on to go and buy alcohol, and they all deserved to be punished as well. He could only speak vaguely. “It’s nothing. It’s nothing. It’s not that bad! He can walk. Wei Wuxian, why haven’t you gotten off yet?”

It's no wonder WWX is so impressed by LWJ's integrity in spite of his social status, when he's clearly used to the other dynamic :

“Lan Zhan, I really admire you,” Wei Wuxian said sincerely. “After I told you that you had to punish yourself too, you actually did it. You didn’t let yourself off at all. I can’t argue against that.”

A dynamic which is shown repeating in the Lotus Pod Extra where WWX is the only one to get punished for sunbathing, and which repeats here when Wei Wuxian here stops jiang cheng from confronting Zixuan over YanLi's honor (and jc's) and does it himself.

Zixuan :“Why don’t you ask what about her could make me satisfied?” he said in return.

Suddenly, Jiang Cheng rose. Wei Wuxian pushed him away and stepped between them, smiling coldly. “You think you’re very satisfactory? As though you have the right to be so picky!”

Zixuan: “If she’s unhappy, then let her break off the engagement! I certainly don’t cherish your wonderful disciple-sister. If you cherish her so much, why don’t you take it up with your father? Doesn’t he love you more than his own son?”

After hearing the last sentence, Jiang Cheng’s eyes narrowed, and Wei Wuxian was no longer able to contain his own fury. He flew at Jin Zixuan, his fist raised.

WWX takes the punishment alone. Same way he offers to do when he hurts himself falling from a tree because jc threatened him with dogs. meanwhile jc is gleeful to see him being punished.

[Wei Wuxian] was kneeling on the stretch of pebble road to which Lan Qiren had assigned him when Jiang Cheng walked over from afar and mocked him. “You’re kneeling so obediently.”

“It’s not like you don’t know I have to do this all the time.” Wei Wuxian’s voice filled with schadenfreude. “But this Jin Zixuan guy, there’s no way he hasn’t been pampered and spoiled rotten since birth. No one’s ever forced him to kneel, I’m sure of it. If he doesn’t wind up crying for mommy and daddy today, I’m not named Wei.”....

Wei Wuxian "...It’s a good thing you didn’t do anything.”

“I was going to. If you hadn’t pushed me away, the other side of Jin Zixuan’s face would be hideous too.”

“Stop it. His face is uglier for being lopsided."

WWX is happy to have spared jc from getting into trouble but jc makes the whole thing about himself anyway (like everything else ever) and is upset JFM would rush over for WWX - in his mind. Even though JFM clearly had to rush over to meet with Jin Guangshan not to coddle WWX in any way.

"Jiang Fengmian had never rushed to another clan in less than a day because of him. Regardless of whether what happened was big or small, or good or bad." Never

WWX on the other hand tries to be observant of jc's feelings and reassure him & distract him from his moods :

When Wei Wuxian saw Jiang Cheng’s melancholy expression, he thought he was still upset with what Jin Zixuan said. “You should leave. You don’t need to keep me company any longer. If Lan Wangji comes again, he’ll catch you. If you have time, you should find Jin Zixuan and watch his pitiful kneeling.”

Later in the book after nearly dying in the Xuanwu cave WWX leaves his sick bed to run after jc and comfort him after his mother's rant, even though WWX had to listen to his parents (and himself) being slandered by YZY. jc doesn't spare any thoughts for how other people might be feeling or suffering. His entire perception of the world is centered around himself. To him even WWX's greatest fear doesn't generate empathy, only amusement or later on a form of torture.

From that point onward, they made trouble everywhere together, and if they encountered a dog, Jiang Cheng would always chase it away for him, then enjoy a peal of derisive, unbridled laughter at Wei Wuxian’s expense beneath whichever tree the boy had leapt atop.

he grew up on the streets, often having to fight for food with vicious dogs. After several bites and chases, he gradually became extremely scared of all dogs, no matter the size. Jiang Cheng laughed at him because of this quite a lot of times.

This brings me to the last point. jc's resentment of WWX's interest in Lan Zhan, or in a serious friendship outside of him. I see so many ppl say that bc WWX fought he was kicked out of the Cloud Recesses early... but was he?

Jiang Cheng was somewhat taken aback. “Lan Wangji? What was he doing here? He still has the nerve to come see you again?”

“Yeah, I think his bravery is laudable if he still has the nerve to come see me. His uncle probably told him to check on me and see if I was kneeling properly.”

Jiang Cheng’s instincts were sending him ominous signals. “So were you kneeling properly?”

“I was then,” Wei Wuxian replied. “But I waited for him to walk away a bit, then took a tree branch, lowered my head, and dug out a hole in the dirt near me. It’s the pile right by your foot—there are ant tunnels there. It took me so much effort to find them. Anyway, I waited for him to turn back and see my shoulders shaking. He had to have thought I was crying, so he came back and asked. You should have seen his face when he caught sight of the ant tunnels!

“…” Jiang Cheng said, “Why don’t you just get the hell out and go back to Yunmeng? I bet he never wants to see you again.”

Thus, that evening, Wei Wuxian packed up his things, got the hell out, and went back to Yunmeng with Jiang Fengmian.

Repeatedly throught his stay in the Cloud Recesses even while NHS was observing that LWJ's behavior around WWX was strange and unique, jc was telling WWX he is hated and bothersome. When WWX wanted to apologize to LWJ jc is completely dismissive of it :

“He hates me already? I was thinking of apologizing to him,” Wei Wuxian said.

“Oh, so you want to apologize now? It’s too late!” Jiang Cheng said derisively. “He’s exactly like his uncle. He thinks you’ve been wicked ever since you were an embryo, so it’s beneath his dignity to pay you any attention.”

Later on when WWX mentioned wanting to invite LWJ to Lotus Pier jc categorically says no.

“Jiang Cheng had on a stern expression, “Let’s make this clear. I don’t want him to come, anyhow. Don’t invite him.”

BONUS

jc also always doubts WWX. He suspects him immediately of wrongdoings. He doesn't believe that getting hit with the discipline ruler in Cloud Recesses actually hurt him until LXC confirms that WWX might take more than a few days to heal. He doesn't understand WWX is in actual trouble from the Waterborne abyss and assumes he's fooling around luckily Lan Zhan is there to rescue him:

The disciple’s lower body had already been swallowed by the black whirlpool. It spun faster and faster, and he continued to sink deeper and deeper, as though something hidden beneath the water was pulling down on his legs.

Mounted on Sandu, Jiang Cheng had risen calmly until he was about sixty meters above the whirlpool before he looked down. Filled with displeasure at what he saw, he shouted and dove down. “What are you up to now?!”

The suction force inside Lake Biling grew ever stronger. Wei Wuxian’s sword was optimized for agility, and consequently, its strength happened to fall just short, and they were nearly pulled to the surface of the lake. Wei Wuxian steadied himself and held on to Su She with both hands.

“Someone help! If I can’t pull him up soon, I’ll have to let go!” he shouted.

Suddenly, the back of Wei Wuxian’s collar tightened, and his body was lifted into the air. He twisted his neck and saw Lan Wangji holding him up with one hand.

He maintains this same mindset when he tries to whip LWJ and WWX as they're attempting to leave Lotus Pier after the ancestral hall confrontation when WWX passes out.

Is jc evil in the Cloud Recesses ? No. He's just an annoying, basic, disagreeable asshole who doesn't bring anything positive to someone like WWX. People like jc become obsessed with kind, outgoing, generous people, people who don't set boundaries on what they give and what others take in their friendships. Even though they're dependent on them for their social interactions, because who else would socialize with them willingly, they resent them in equal measure, but at the same time they wouldn't be drawn to another selfish, self centered piece of shit person like themselves.

On a personal note, even Cloud Recesses jiang cheng is someone I would exclude from any personal friend group. Friendship with him is adding a minefield of jealousies and snide comments to every interaction. Things that then others will need to compensate around because he won't compromise or empathize w issues outside of his own concerns.

Translation source : x

#This is long af because I wanted to have one post where I included everything #I’ve bitched about jc’s behavior in the cloud recesses for a long time so it was time to put down the quotes #mdzs #Cloud Recesses #Lan Wangji #Wei Wuxian #Nie Huaisang #jiang cheng

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vrishchikawrites · 3 years

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Anon asks - There was another idea I had seen on @crossdressingdeath's tumblr where JC's reputation was ruined because of his behaviour and WWX's attempts to protect him from the consequences of his behaviour. The concept happens pre Qiongqi Path where JC attacks WWX to the point it injures and frightens him. A passerby sees WWX startled and asks him what's wrong but WWX dismisses it as nothing. Said bystander ends up thinking that JC had sexually assaulted him resulting in the cultivation world gossiping about JC being a rapist when really he isn't. Overall, the cultivation world gossips about the other shitty things JC had done and because he did alot of pretty bad things, he can't defend himself and resorts to victim blaming WWX. That however only has him dig a deeper hole for himself. WWX, on the other hand is left confused as to why everybody was pitying him all of a sudden when they used to hate and/or fear him. By the time the truth comes to light, the cultivation world thinks JC had deserved it anyway with it ending with JC hated just for him being himself and public opinion on WWX flipping. If you don't mind, can you make it light-hearted?

(Probably not as light-hearted as you would wish. It is a bit complicated. Be a little gentle because I wrote this twice and ended up fleshing it out much more. Is this a short prompt or a long one? who knows. writer is tired. she will sleep now.)

Everyone has personal boundaries, even people who are usually tactile and social. Boundaries exist even between family members who love and trust each other.

Wei Wuxian is a veteran fresh from war. He has survived bloody battlefields, spent days dealing with one hostile enemy after another. Even before that, he had spent his days constantly battling resentful ghosts and monsters in a place he can’t bear thinking of now. Before that, he had survived torture at the hands of the Wens. And before-

Better not to think about it.

So, when Jiang Cheng presses up against him threateningly, his face twisted and eyes furious, Wei Wuxian can’t help but flinch. He takes a step back and puts some distance between them quickly. Jiang Cheng has grown increasingly bitter and discontent in these past few months and Wei Wuxian is getting tired of dealing with it. He doesn’t want to be in such close proximity with a man seething with fury.

Unfortunately, that reaction proves to be a mistake because Jiang Cheng follows him, “What? Are you too big for us now? Turning away from me in disgust now that you’re a war hero and the best of us?” Jiang Cheng is so close, their noses almost touch and Wei Wuxian feels his hair stand on end in response.

“Jiang Cheng,” He says lowly, something unsettling stirring in his chest. He feels almost anxious. His heart is racing and the proximity makes him feel like he’s trapped, “Back away.”

“Back away?” Jiang Cheng snarls, “Who are you to command me, Wei Wuxian? Do you know what people are saying about YunmengJiang? Do you know who-”

“Back away,” Wei Wuxian says tightly, his skin crawling, “Now.” His hard-earned instincts are sounding alarms. He feels threatened and provoked. He feels the resentful energy in him respond to the danger.

“What are you going to do? Send a few ghosts at me?” He sneers, “Try it! We’ll see how brave you are under the wrath of my Zidian.”

No. Wei Wuxian isn’t going to just stand here and let Jiang Cheng pick up Yu-furen’s habits, He’s just about to react, to give Jiang Cheng the thrashing he clearly desires when he realizes they are outside. He glances beyond his Sect Leader’s shoulder and sees a small group of three clad in bright white looking at them with wide eyes.

He bites back his angry retort and masters himself. He’s not going to squabble with Jiang Cheng in front of Lan disciples. His relationship with Lan Zhan is strained as it is.

“We’re in public,” He says, hoping that concern for his Sect’s reputation would move Jiang Cheng if concern for Wei Wuxian doesn’t.

Jiang Cheng looks over his shoulder and sneers at the Lan disciples before rolling his head, “Lans, of course.” He snarls and pushes Wei Wuxian away roughly, “I’ll deal with you later.”

Wei Wuxian takes a deep breath and watches his brother leave.

The Lan disciples are still looking at him with heartwarming concern. He waves at them with a smile and watches as they start like little ducklings and bow to him before fleeing.

Cute.

---

“We have to do something!” Lan Zhanxiao insists, “Did you see how he looked? Wei Wuxian was clearly trying to-”

“Shh! Keep your voice down!” Lan Lishan reprimands.

“Don’t say his name!” Lan Guan whispers urgently, looking around in a panic. There are already a few curious and interested eyes glancing in their direction. Wei Wuxian is a notorious name, after all. Even non-cultivators are interested in the man who had just a material impact on the war. It is hard to tell if they would’ve won without that powerful unorthodox cultivator on their side.

“We can’t just stand by and do nothing,” Lan Zhanxiao, always the righteous one, continues. He doesn’t care about the people around them, “If Wei Wuxian is hurt and we do nothing to prevent it, aren’t we culpable as well?”

“This is Wei Wuxian. Who would dare?” Lan Guan asks incredulously, “He is one of the most powerful cultivators in existence.”

“Is he?” Zhanxiao demands, “Doesn’t everyone know he’s very loyal to Jiang-zongzhu? Would he take a step against him? Even if it meant saving himself?”

“He should be building his own sect,” Lan Lishan says reluctantly, “He’s the Grandmaster of his cultivation form. It may be an unorthodox method, but it is still something new and entirely unique.” He would know. Lan Lishan is an avid student of history and cultivation theory. He knows that most cultivators with unique abilities tend to form their own sect to pass their teachings down.

He shudders at the prospect of cultivating resentful energy but Wei Wuxian has mentioned it is a technique people with absent or damaged Golden Cores can use.

The potential is almost limitless.

“See what I mean?” Lan Zhanxiao points out, “Hasn’t he been isolated from other cultivators because they fear his methods? If Jiang-zongzhu is really hurting him or…” He grimaces and lowers his voice, “That expression, Shan-ge, it reminds me of jiejie. What if Jiang-zongzhu is… doing something inappropriate?”

They all exchange alarmed glances, “You don’t think…?” Lan Guan breathes, horrified.

“He was scrambling to get away,” Lan Zhanxiao says, “And Jiang-zongzhu kept pressing-”

“We can’t talk about this here,” Lan Lishan says firmly, “Come, let’s leave.”

Unfortunately, they leave chaos behind.

---

Rumors are a powerful entity in the cultivation world. They are born in tea and wine houses, spread from one tradesman to another and spread to the far reaches of cultivation society in a matter of months.

The rumors about Jiang’ Wanyin’s treatment of a war hero are no exception to this rule. People gossip about it with their friends and neighbors, share the news with vendors while on errands, and the rumors continue to grow. With every retelling, the story changes, growing increasingly distorted and vile.

“The entire business is unpleasant,” A small clan cultivator says to one of his tradesman friends, “Jealousy really alters a man.” He speaks about old rumors then, speculations about Wei Wuxian’s parentage, Madam Yu’s wrath, and the Jiang heir’s relatively lackluster growth in comparison to his prodigious shixiong.

“Surely not,” Another cultivator scoffs, “Who would dare raise a hand against Wei Wuxian? Did he not decimate a large Wen battalion with just his flute and some music?”

“Merchants at Lotus Pier say Wei Wuxian always looks wan and tired these days. He has grown pale.” One woman whispers to her companion, “He spends more time in wine houses with ghost maidens than in the comfort of his rebuilt home.”

“It seems so improbable!” A young cultivator protests, “Why would Jiang-zongzhu provoke the sleeping dragon like this? Wei Wuxian is stable now but who knows when he will give into resentment?”

“Lan disciples saw it.”

And that’s the crux of the matter. If the rumor didn’t originate from Lan disciples, it might not have traveled so far. Lans are known for their honest and forthright nature, after all. What cause did they have to lie? And no Lan spoke carelessly, so their words must be the whole truth, without any exaggeration.

Because Lans are the source, everything they say is taken as fact. If one Lan disciple finds Jiang-zongzhu’s behavior horribly inappropriate then it must be. If another Lan is worried about Wei Wuxian’s safety, there must be a just cause.

The rumors spread and propagate, and soon almost the entirety of the cultivation world is aware of them.

---

Gossip is forbidden at Cloud Recesses. Disciples are usually discouraged from meddling in other sect business. Rumor-mongering is punished severely, with all parties involved facing the wrath of the disciple whip.

But Lans are raised to be righteous and compassionate. If someone is in trouble, a Lan must act. He must offer a helping hand and take the victim away from danger.

When the rumors reach Caiyi Town and land on the ear of one Lan Ruyao, he hesitates. He asks around, gets more information, and then rushes back to Cloud Recesses, intent on knowing it all.

Lan Ruyao seeks the three disciples that are the cause of it all and demands an explanation, his mind disturbed with worry. What he hears gives him no comfort for he cannot discard their concerns. The behavior they describe is alarming and their observations are precise, without any emotion clouding their judgment.

Lan Lishan narrates the incident in detail, describing every action with no embellishment or exaggeration. He speaks of Wei Wuxian’s retreat, of Jiang Wanyin’s insistence, the threat of whipping, and words spoken with cruelty and disrespect.

Lan Ruyao’s mind is disturbed as he retreats, absentmindedly assigning some lines to the junior disciples. They have erred by being so indiscreet but their cause is righteous. They don’t deserve severe punishment.

He meditates on the matter for an entire morning, trying to decide on a course of action.

You see, Lan Ruyao is Lan Wangji’s peer. He has known the Second Jade for many years, and while they are not close, they are of the same clan. The entire cultivation world may believe Lan Wangji hates Wei Wuxian, but Ruyao knows better. The Second Jade wouldn’t have been so insistent on bringing Wei Wuxian to Gusu if he didn’t care.

Lan Ruyao suspects both of them hold each other in some esteem. They have saved each other’s sides many times and seem to get along well when they’re not quarreling. He believes that they are friends.

It would be unwise to keep this from Lan Wangji.

Decision made, he quickly requests a private meeting with the Second Jade. The request is granted promptly and soon Lan Ruyao finds himself before his peer, readying himself for a difficult conversation.

The Second Jade listens to his piece without any interruption, his expression blank and beautiful as white jade. But his golden eyes are twin chips of flint, coldly furious.

Indeed, they are friends.

Lan Wangji summons the three junior disciples and questions them thoroughly. His demeanor becomes frostier as the interview progresses, his spiritual energy gaining a deadly edge when the juniors murmur of ‘inappropriate behavior.’

“You have my gratitude,” Lan Wangji says finally, bowing to him and nodding to the juniors, “Rest assured, I will address the matter directly.”

---

“Lan Zhan, wait!” Wei Wuxian protests as Lan Zhan drags him away by the elbow, his uncharacteristic behavior taking him by surprise, “Don’t take him so seriously, Lan Zhan! You know he’s a temperamental brat.”

Lan Zhan doesn’t say anything until they are a fair distance away from Jiang Cheng and the Lotus Pier. Wei Wuxian tries to get an explanation for such unusual behavior but his companion is entirely silent, guiding him towards a crop of trees that offer some semblance of privacy.

“How long have you borne this?” Lan Zhan asks once they stop walking, his golden eyes bright and fierce, “How long have you endured without speaking a word to me or your friends?”

“All my life,” He rolls his eyes, “You know Jiang Cheng has a temper and says careless things, Lan Zhan. Don’t worry, I know how to handle him.”

“All your life?” Somehow, Lan Zhan seems stricken, “Wei Ying!”

“Aiya, Lan Zhan,” Honestly, he is moved by Lan Zhan’s concern for him. They have spent so many years just quarreling and being distrustful towards each other. The concern is a pleasant distraction from the wretched state of their relationship, “Don’t worry about it. I can deal with everything Jiang Cheng throws at me.”

“How can you be so callous about your own well-being?” Lan Zhan asks, his tone betraying his dismay, “Do you not care-” He visibly bites back those angry words and calms himself, his voice taking on a gentler note, “Did you think I would not help? That your friends wouldn’t offer you shelter or protection?”

Really, this is a bit of an overreaction, isn’t it?

“Do I really have any friends left, Lan Zhan?” He asks casually but the reaction he receives is anything but casual. Lan Zhan’s eyes widen as though he has been struck, “Aiya, please don’t look like that,” Wei Wuxian feels a stir of panic because Lan Zhan looks almost hurt, “I’m just being a brat.”

“Have a care,” Lan Zhan says, “Your dismissal of this matter doesn’t put me at ease.”

“Lan Zhan,” He sighs, “I’m used to it. You saw how we were at Cloud Recesses. Did I look unusually troubled then?”

“You’ve become… accustomed to it?” Lan Zhan asks, once again looking uncharacteristically stricken. Wei Wuxian feels a stir of concern in his stomach and reaches out, placing a hand on the Second Jade’s arm, “You’re accustomed to it.”

Not knowing what to do in response to such open emotion from Lan Zhan, he looks for something to distract him. Immediately, his mind remembers an old promise, “Let’s focus on something more pleasant. It’s about time you saw Lotus Pier in its full glory, Lan Zhan! I want to show you all of my favorite places, including all of the trees I climbed!”

“Wei Ying,” Lan Zhan’s voice is low and pained.

Wei Wuxian’s smile softens as he tugs on the Second Jade’s arm, “Don’t think of unpleasant things, Lan Zhan. It’s a beautiful day and we haven’t seen each other in months! Let’s be happy, alright?”

Wei Wuxian feels a jolt of surprise as Lan Zhan raises a hand and covers his fingers, squeezing gently. The touch is warm and reassuring, and it sets Wei his heart racing.

Lan Zhan studies him for a long moment before dipping his head elegantly, his grip on Wei Wuxian’s fingers still firm and steady, “If Wei Ying wishes it,” He promises, “I will make it so.”

Oh.

---

It all comes to a head at the Discussion Conference. Wei Wuxian is accustomed to being the center of attention these days but the quality of that attention is different now. Instead of wary glances, he sees eyes filled with sympathy and tentative smiles of welcome.

Wei Wuxian being Wei Wuxian, ignores the nagging suspicion that lingers at the back of his mind and smiles brightly back at them.

That seems to make things worse because the looks of sympathy seem to somehow intensify. He even sees a few women blink their limpid eyes and turn away, as though disguising tears. Somewhat alarmed, he glances at Jiang Cheng and winces.

His martial brother is bristling with anger. There’s a thundercloud-like expression on his face as he meets every eye in the room with a clear challenge.

If glances towards him are filled with sympathy, those towards Jiang Cheng are filled with contempt and disapproval. Between that and Lan Zhan’s protective hovering, Wei Wuxian is at the end of his patience.

He needs answers and he needs them now before the situation can escalate somehow.

Baffled by the situation, Wei Wuxian looks around and finds the most reliable source of gossip he can find. “What is going on?” He demands as soon as he is at Nie Huiasang’s side, “Why are people glaring at Jiang Cheng like he’s a fierce corpse?”

Nie Huaisang waves his fan, his expression a strange mix of amusement and grim satisfaction. For one, his old friend doesn’t hide behind his usual prevarications. He glances around the room and seems to catch someone’s eye. Wei Wuxian follows that gaze only to blink as Lan Zhan walks sedately towards them, expression stern and disapproving, “Do you know what’s going on, Lan Zhan?”

The Second Jade remains silent, his eyes fixed on Jiang Cheng. Wei Wuxian sighs in frustration and glares at Nie Huaisang, “Nie-xiong, what?”

His curt tone is enough to snape Nie Huaisang out of his musings. The man smiles wryly behind his fan, “Ah, Wei-xiong,” He waves his free hand, “There has been some speculation about your relationship with-”

“Why don’t you speak up?” A loud voice asks and Wei Wuxian turns around, “Why don’t you defend Wei Wuxian, Jiang-zongzhu? You’re going to let people slander your loyal Head Disciple so boldly?”

It’s Wang Jin, the Sect Leader of Runan Wang Clan. The man’s face is twisted in rage and disgust as he stares at Jiang Cheng. Wei Wuxian frowns, ready to step forward and stand by Jiang Cheng in such a hostile environment.

Lan Zhan’s hand on his arm stops him.

He looks at the Second Jade questioningly but the man just shakes his head, “Wait.”

“Why should he defend him?” An annoying Jin pipes up, his voice sharp and mocking, “We know what Wei Wuxian is! He may pretend to be loyal on the surface, but he is nothing but a faithless dog-”

“Jin Zixun!” Nie Mingjue snaps, “I will not have you insult one of our men in my presence! He fought and bled on our side.”

Nie Mingjue’s words silence him and Jin Guangyao speaks up soothingly as Wei Wuxian frowns, studying the scene with keen eyes, “Let us all calm down. I’m sure Wang-zongzhu means well.” He smiles placidly, “There have been rumors, just a bit of gossip about Wei-gongzi speaking ill of Jiang-zongzhu.” Wei Wuxian tilts his head to the side, mind whirling.

He refuses to be angry. There’s something about this situation that has his instincts rattled. He needs to focus.

“The Hanguang-jin himself said they were lies. Wei Wuxian has never spoken ill of Jiang Wanyin!” Well, that’s not entirely true. He is certain he has called Jiang Cheng a temperamental brat in Lan Zhan’s presence more than once. “Jiang-zongzhu should know better than to-”

“Why does Jiang-zongzhu need to do anything for that man?” Jin Zixun demands and Wei Wuxian feels a stir of amusement. All of this drama on his account? He’s honored.

“What kind of Sect Leader is he?” Wang-zongzhu asks, fuming, “If he doesn’t even defend his own Head Disciple? Has he not brought glory to YungmengJiang? Doesn’t the Sect owe him a debt of gratitude?” Wei Wuxian winces and Jiang Cheng’s expression turns stony, “If you want to talk of rumors, why not discuss the other rumors?” Wang-zongzhu turns to Jiang Cheng with a scowl, “Is he not your brother in all but blood? Didn’t the former Jiang-zongzhu raise Wei Wuxian as his nephew? Is this how YunmengJiang treats its brightest disciple? How will you face Jiang Fengmian, Jiang-zongzhu?”

Wei Wuxian bites back a groan as Jiang Cheng’s expression darkens with fury. This is the absolute worst thing to say to his martial brother.

“Why is he so concerned about this?” Wei Wuxian asks, almost to himself.

Nie Huiasang leans in and whispers in his ear, “His sisters were… assaulted by the Wens.”

Wei Wuxian feels a shudder crawl down his spine and shakes his head. Those disgusting wretches deserved the death he inflicted on them.

He still doesn’t understand what this has to do with him.

He glances at Lan Zhan, he is looking at the scene with his usual frosty expression, giving nothing away. He looks ahead to see Jiang Cheng ready to erupt and frowns. “Lan Zhan, I need to… help, somehow.”

“Wei Ying needs to do nothing.”

He’s about to protest when Jiang Cheng finally snaps, “Glory to YunmengJiang? He has brought nothing but devastation to it!” Wei Wuxian flinches and Lan Zhan steps forward and to the side, pointedly placing himself between the two Jiang Sect cultivators, “YunmengJiang has always been glorious. My ancestors bled and fought for it! We earned our glory through centuries of cultivation and diligence! I owe him a debt? Wei Wuxian owes me the lives of my parents! He provoked the Wens to save Lan Wangji’s life and I lost my family because of it!”

“Jiang-zongzhu, perhaps-”

“Shut up!” Jiang Cheng interrupted Jin Guangyao, “How I treat my Head Disciple is none of your business.”

“It is very much our business if you’re abusing him,” Nie Mingjue says and it silences everyone.

Wei Wuxian is… dumbfounded. He feels like he’s just a mass of confusion at this point because nothing about this situation makes sense. “Abuse?” He whispers harshly to Nie Huaisang, grabbing his arm to drag him away to a quieter corner, “Nie Huaisang, what is going on? Jiang Cheng doesn’t abuse me!”

“Does he not?” It is Lan Zhan who speaks, his expression solemn, “Truly, Wei Ying? Does he not abuse you?”

“Of course, not-”

“So he didn’t threaten you with Zidian?” Nie Huaisang asks, “Or try to physically intimidate you while you were clearly trying to step away?”

Wei Wuxian frowns, “Well yes, but that is just him being angry! He does that all the time.”

“That is no comfort to us.” Lan Zhan says stiffly.

“Didn’t he push you away several times? We have accounts from people who saw you fall to the ground.” Nie Huaisang’s expression is unusually stern, “Didn’t he seek to isolate you from everyone? Didn’t he keep telling you Wangji-xiong hated you?”

“Wangji-xiong gave every impression of hating me.” Wei Wuxian firmly denies, “Let us not attribute that particular error to someone else.”

“Indeed,” Lan Zhan nods graciously, as expected. He wouldn’t be Lan Zhan if he didn’t accept his own mistakes without hesitation.

“Wei-xiong,” Nie Huaisang tucks his fan away and he sees Lan Zhan focus on that, his eyes suddenly sharp, “He has been saying the same thing since you were at Cloud Recesses. He has always dragged you away from Lan Wangji. You saved Lan Wangji and Jin Zixuan’s lives. Why is he so intent on our Second Jade, hmm?”

Wei Wuxian shakes his head, “You’re making this unnecessarily complicated.” He says, “On the surface, all of these actions appear wrong but the intent behind them isn’t cruel.”

“Your love for him blinds you.” Wei Wuxian narrows his eyes sharply at his old friend, “If er-ge treated Wangji-xiong like that, you’d be furious. Just the threat of da-ge whipping would have you reaching for your flute.”

“Huaisang-”

“Did you think we wouldn’t feel the same way?”

Wei Wuxian studies him and Lan Zhan, realizing they are utterly serious. Concerned and a bit baffled, he looks at Jiang Cheng over his shoulder, only to find him nose to nose with Wang-zongzhu. “Heavens,” He breathes and steps forward, determined to intervene.

“You think what?” Jiang Cheng’s voice is full of disgust, “You… you think I have… that I’m some disgusting cutsleeve?!”

Wait, what?

“How dare you?! I would never touch a man!”

“Is that what he’s focusing on?” Nie Huaisang asks incredulously.

For once, Wei Wuxian has nothing to say.

---

It takes a few weeks for fresh rumors to make their rounds. People now know that Jiang Wanyin hasn’t behaved inappropriately with his martial brother, but that doesn’t make much difference.

The cultivation world, in general, still believes that Jiang Cheng’s behavior is abhorrent. Wei Wuxian is tempted to point out the hypocrisy of their words but knows it is futile. Once the masses make up their minds about something, few can persuade them to think otherwise. Jiang Cheng’s reputation has been tainted forever and there’s little they can do about it.

Unfortunately, this issue has also cemented the break between Wei Wuxian and his Sect Leader. There’s nothing that can repair the relationship now. He feels a pang of loss but he had already resigned himself to that when he had given away his Golden Core.

Fortunately, it seems he has some options available.

“Come to Gusu with me,” Lan Zhan says, his tone softer, his voice imploring, “Please.” This time, Wei Wuxian can’t mistake his intent. Lan Zhan’s reaction to the entire mess made one thing very clear to him.

Lan Wangji cares about him.

Isn’t that something? Never in his life did Wei Wuxian think he would be in such a position. He had always assumed Jiang Cheng would be by his side and Lan Wangji would stand against him. But everything is different now.

Wei Wuxian thinks of his childhood home, thinks of a life that has been irrevocably changed, and sinks in those memories for a brief moment. Despite what everyone thinks, there have been some good times. He doesn’t regret the course his life took when he was welcomed to the Lotus Pier by Jiang Fengmian.

He lingers, briefly, on regret,

Then, he shrugs it off and looks into the golden eyes of his future with a grin, “I’ll come to Gusu with you, Lan Zhan.”

And that’s that.

#short prompts #wei wuxian #lan wangji #mentions of abuse #anti jiang cheng #nie huaisang #too tired for tags

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canary3d-obsessed · 3 years

Text

Restless Rewatch: The Untamed, Episode 24 part two

(Masterpost) (Pinboard)

Warning: Spoilers for All 50 Episodes!

Arguing

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

(more after the cut!)

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

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

Crying Over You

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

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

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

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

Flashback Time

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

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

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

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

What is Love

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

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

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

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

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

Busted

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

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

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

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

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

Being Reasonable

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

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

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

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

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

Library Time

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

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

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

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

Boat Time

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

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

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

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

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

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

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ouyangzizhensdad · 3 years

Note

Perhaps you'd like a an ask that's not discourse related? If so, then I wanted to ask you if you know what jin zixuan thought of jin guangyao?

Hi anon,

I appreciate your non-discourse-related ask 😉. Your question made me realise that the novel seems to explicitly avoid giving us any real sense of what Jin Zixuan thought of Jin Guangyao, or how he reacted to the ways other people treated JGY. It seems that JZX remained unaware at the time that Meng Yao came on his birthday--and literally got kicked out. At Phoenix Mountain, JZX stops being mentioned after JGY appears and while his mother mistreats him--he’s only brought back into the narration at the very end to scream at JYL. JZX is also absent the night that WWX goes to Jinlintai to confront the Jins about Qiongqi path and in the direct aftermath. But let’s dig for crumbs and make sense of gaps, and let’s see what we can infer from them.

We know that, originally, Jin Zixuan was the epitome of the proud Jin: “The ways of the Jin Sect were proud, and Jin Zixuan inherited every single drop of this. With his high standards, he had been unsatisfied with this engagement since a long time ago.“ We could wonder if the circumstances of JGY’s birth would have been something JZX would have judged him for. We know that he took offense to WWX’s persona, although it is not spelled out exactly what offended him specifically: “Because of this engagement, Jin Zixuan had no positive impressions of the YunmengJiang Sect, and had frowned upon Wei Wuxian’s behavior since some time ago.“ However, it’s unclear whether the circumstances of WWX’s birth influenced how he perceived his behaviour. All we know for sure is that two other Jin family members--his father and Jin Zixun--never forgot about it and brought it up. We also know that in the past, JZX felt comfortable ignoring people’s good will towards him if he felt he was motivated in his view of them, as he did with JYL in the past:

Jin-furen had brought him to Lotus Pier a couple of times. Neither Wei Wuxian nor Jiang Cheng liked to play with him; only Jiang Yanli wanted to feed him the food that she made. Jin Zixuan, however, didn’t really like to pay her any attention.

At the same time, we do know that JZX had a sense of righteousness, what with him standing up against Wen Chao at Dusk-Creek Mountain. Likewise, we see with the soup incident that at least when it comes to a low-level cultivator who is a servant, a good deed done towards him without trying to gain his gratitude is enough to earn his respect, and for JZX to take action to raise the standing of that person:

Cleverly, the woman never acknowledged anything, but instead denied it ambiguously, her cheeks flushed, making it sound as though she was the one who did it, but didn’t want Jin Zixuan to know how much trouble she went through. And thus, Jin Zixuan didn’t force her to admit it any longer. However, in action, he had began to respect the cultivator. He began to pay attention to her, even raising her from a servant to a guest cultivator.

JZX even tells JYL: “Don’t think that just because you come from a powerful sect that you can steal and trample other people’s feelings. Some people, even if they come from poor backgrounds, their character are much better than the former’s. Please watch your conduct.” This underlines that, regardless of his upbringing, and perhaps even views that he might have held at some point in his life, at this point JZX seemed to want to judge others based on their character rather than their background. Of course, we can wonder if that reserve of good will would have extended to his half-brother, especially one that could try to take his place as the heir. However, considering the circumstances, from JGY’s birth to JGS’s decision to give him a name that did not align him with the same generation as JZX, we can wonder if anyone ever perceived then JGY as someone who could potentially become the next sect leader, as seen in this exchange between WWX and JC:

Jiang Cheng smirked, “Don’t carry your sword, then. It doesn’t matter. But don’t provoke Jin Zixuan from now on. He’s Jin Guangshan’s only son, after all. The future leader of the LanlingJin Sect will be him. If you beat him up, what should I, the sect leader, do? Beat him up with you? Or punish you?”

Wei Wuxian, “Isn’t Jin Guangyao here now? Jin Guangyao seems so much better than him.”

Jiang Cheng finished wiping his sword. After he scrutinized it for a while, he finally put Sandu back into its sheath, “So what, if he’s better? No matter how much better he is, no matter how clever, he could only be a servant who greets the guests. That’s all there is to his life. He can’t compare with Jin Zixuan.”

At Phoenix Mountain, while we do not see JZX say anything out of line to JGY, he is present while his mother and Jin Zixun disrespect him: and we get no reaction written for him while that takes place--he’s mostly licking his wounded pride. We also know that this disrespect by his family towards JGY was the norm, so we have to assume that JZX would have been a witness to it in other situations. In the context of that specific scene, it’s difficult to to infer something concrete from that silence: is it agreement? complicity? a certain indifference to JGY’s situation? an unwillingness of rock the boat or to seem to publicly challenge his mother? or simply him just being too self-absorbed by his romantic woes?

The next scene that would have made for an interesting case study is the night WWX comes to confront the Jins about the camp at Qiongqi Path. However, JZX is absent that night. Conveniently, or as a means to maintain a sense of ambiguity between him and WWX, we thereby do not know how JZX feels about what happened. He is also absent during the aftermath: “At midnight, in the Golden Pavilion on JinlinTai sat over fifty sect leaders from sects of all sizes. Jin Guangshan sat in the foremost seat. Jin Zixuan was away [...].” (interesting that CQL added JZX to that scene). Which means he is not there to react to the mistreatment of JGY by others or to react to the way JGY is clearly lying for the purposes of manipulating the general opinion on WWX and save the Jin’s reputation.

We also do not get to witness the conversation that leads JZX to come to Qiongqi Path to try to stop Jin Zixun. All we get is a sentence of dialogue from JZX explaining that he thought JGY looked strange which prompted JZX tp questioned him questions (we of course know that JGY was purposefully acting that way to get JZX to go to Qionqqi Path, so it’s hard to take that as a sign of clear familiarity between them that would have allowed JZX to read hidden emotions from him). Did JZX ask out of specific concern for or suspicions of JGY? We don’t know! It is interesting to note though that, in this scene, Jin Zixun refers to JGY as “A-Yao”, which the narration contextualises by telling us that Jin Zixun started calling him in a more intimate manner despite the original contemps he had held for him. However, when JZX mentions JGY to Jin Zixun, he calls him “Jin Guangyao” (for reference, Jin Zixun calls JZX “Zixuan”).

All in all, we get very little from looking at JZX. However, there is something to be said in the absence of any specific grievances expressed by JGY towards him in terms of framing how JZX may have acted towards him when they were both at Jinlintai. Indeed, when Jin Ling asks JGY why he arranged for his father to go to Qiongqi path, meeting his death, JGY mentions the unfairness of the situation of both sons, but never brings up anything JZX did specifically to him. And we know that JGY has a great memory which allows him to hold grudges.

Suddenly, Jin Ling screamed, “Why?!” He stood up from beside Jiang Cheng. Eyes red, he rushed toward Jin Guangyao as he shouted, “Why did you have to do this?!”

Nie Huaisang hurried to pull back Jin Ling, who seemed as though he wanted to fight with Jin Guangyao. Jin Guangyao returned the question, “Why?” He turned to Jin Ling, “A-Ling, then could you tell me why? Why is it that even if I face everyone with a smile, I might not even receive the lowest form of respect, while even though your father was extremely arrogant, people flocked to him? Could you tell me why we were born from the same person but your father could relax at home with the love of his life playing with his child, while I never even dared be alone for long with my wife, shivering out of fright at first glance of my son? And I was ordered to do such a thing by my father as if it was natural—to kill an extremely dangerous figure who could flip out and conjure up a bloody massacre with his corpses anytime!

“Why is it that even though we were born on the same day, Jin Guangshan could host a grand banquet for one son, and watch with his own eyes how his subordinate kicked his other son down Jinlintai, from the first stair to the last!”

He finally revealed the hatred hidden deep within him. It wasn’t directed at neither Jin Zixuan nor Wei Wuxian, but rather his own father.

As a result, we might infer that, at the very least, JZX never directly acted towards JGY in a way that reflected how JGS or Jin Zixun (at some point) treated him. At the same time, it’s difficult to suggest that he stood up for him when other people disrespected him, and we know that JZX’s mother disrespected JGY in lieu of directing her anger toward the real culprit, her awful husband. Little seems to suggest that they grew intimate after JGY came to Jinlintai. It’s really hard to divine, as a result, what JZX might have thought of JGY.

The most interesting thing to take away from this is that it seems absolutely deliberate on MXTX’s part to show us as little as possible in terms of interactions between JZX and JGY. We can speculate as to why that is: to separate JZX from the machinations of this sect? to avoid giving us more ammunition to guess that JGY was behind JZX’s death? to ensure that WWX remains ambiguous towards JZX? or just as a means to avoid having to figure out how to work this dynamic into already complicated scenes and character relationships? etc.

#mdzs meta #mdzs #jzx #jin zixuan #jgy #jin guangyao

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crossdressingdeath · 3 years

Note

I agree with your points on the various threads you talk about of the Jiang Family. Reading them gave me lot of insight on their characters especially JYL once I took off my rose-tinted glasses.

Madam Yu is poison when it comes to her family dynamics and unfortunately JC turns to her guide more so than his own father. Madam Yu is a character who purposely makes things harder for her self because she is unsatisfied and unhappy. People in the fandom like to say she is a victim because her husband is not in love with her. But really who would love her as a wife or as a mother? I wouldn't... Honestly can you imagine living your whole life being tense at the dining table. I always joke with my mother and play funny pranks it'd fucking hurt me if my own mother would have said she wished I wasn't born. I am no psychologist but ya gotta admit shit like that would make you have trust issues or make you rethink critically of your own mother.

For all the Madam Stan out... MY is incredibly hard to please with

People like Madam Yu is destined to live a lonely life because they are incredibly narrow-minded and point out all the faults in their own life instead of their own actions.

That is why WWX had a second chance. I always think that he must have received divine intervention and reaped his awards because of all the good and acculmated good karma earned in his first life. He followed his own moral code and did the right thing even if things went south for him.

She is not a victim, but an abuser, a woman who terrorizes her own husband, children, and everyone around her for no apparent reason.

I'm beginning to suspect that, just as JC must have been appeased by his actions, Madam Yu was as a child.

Well, WWX got a second chance because he was powerful enough and lucky enough in his acquaintances that he was picked up as a useful tool for revenge. It gets glossed over a lot because it's not a hugely important part of the story, but WWX only gets brought back so someone else can take advantage of his incredible skill and good nature; the only difference is that unlike the Jiangs NHS is happy to leave WWX alone to live his life once the task he needs him for is done. I don't think divine intervention figures into it, he was just useful. To useful to leave dead, as it happens. Remember, all the sects were trying to track down WWX's spirit, presumably so they could use it; NHS and MXY were just the ones to make it work.

But yeah, people always treat YZY like a victim when... name one thing that happens to her that isn't her own damn fault. Her husband doesn't love her? Well, maybe she shouldn't have forced him to marry her! Her children are useless? Maybe she should have taught them instead of just berating them when they weren't instantly perfect! Her sect was destroyed and she died? Maybe she shouldn't have picked a fight with the people who'd parked an army on her doorstep! Her husband likes his ward better than her son because he was in love with the kid's mother rather than his wife? ...Well, that one's something she made up so it's even more her fault than the others because any consequences are entirely in her head and any rumours about it came from her. Really, if JFM wasn't so insanely distant and conflict-averse she would've been out on her ass years before WWX showed up in Lotus Pier. In fact morally she should have been the moment she started mistreating his children; JFM might have been okay to ignore it for himself, but he didn't have the right to make that decision for his kids. YZY got infinitely more than she ever deserved just by being allowed to stay in Lotus Pier; she certainly didn't deserve love from anyone there. Also, I hate this insistence that JFM was abusive because he didn't bow before YZY's every whim; seriously, pay attention to those arguments and it's like "He was abusive to YZY because instead of leaving WWX to starve on the street he brought him into the sect and gave him a position worthy of his skills", "He was abusive to YZY because he occasionally told her off for abusing children", "He was abusive to YZY because he had feelings for someone other than her at some point", "He was abusive to YZY because she concluded he liked his brilliant and charming ward better than his jackass son who she actively prevented from learning anything approaching decent behaviour and he didn't immediately devote all his time and attention to showing her otherwise"... They range from stupid to the usual JC stan argument of "How dare he not shut up and take abuse and instead openly dislike being treated like that". YZY deserved death more than she deserved anything approaching love from the people in her life and people claiming that JFM was the abusive one because he didn't obediently adore the woman who'd been treating him like shit for years just because she wanted it are... so wrong.

#mdzs #lotus mom #asks

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buckysforeverprincess · 3 years

Text

Winter Wonderland-Tradition

Steve Rogers x Reader

Words: 508

Warnings: Nothing but fluff

A/N: Hello again and thanks for sticking with me so far! Just a little side note, the tree referred to is a real thing and it’s beautiful and so precious. It’s always wonderful if you can give back to a child who wants just some basic things. Hope you guys enjoy this drab!

“There it is!” You exclaim and jog to the big decorated Christmas tree in front of the JC Penney store in the mall, leaving your husband behind.

The tree was artificial but tall and fully decorated with twinkling white lights and fake gold and silver bulbs. There was even matching silver and gold garland circling it. It really was beautiful and made you smile, but the tree wasn’t the reason you were staring in awe.

Steve had finally joined you, coming up from behind and wrapping an arm around your waist.

“Look!” You pointed to the paper angels spread out all over the tree. “There’s so many of them.”

Your husband smiles and leans in, kissing the side of your head. “We’ll go on… looks like we got a lot to choose from.”

The Angel Tree was a tradition for the Rogers household and was run by a local group home. Every year the kids filled out a cut-out angel with their name and age as well as any items they want for Christmas. Some kids put things like an Xbox with games or the latest designer shoes. Others write simple items like socks and books, or maybe even a Barbie. It’s obvious they don’t have much but still want to get something and not feel left out, which is why you and your husband always come to this tree every year. To give back to those less fortunate.

“I’m gonna look for a little girl.” Steve nods and you kiss his cheek before walking away to look over the tree in search of making a child’s holiday a little brighter.

Circling around, you begin checking out the names, ages, and wishes on the paper angels. There were so many to choose from and part of you wished you could take them all and make every wish come true, but you knew you couldn’t. An army Captain’s salary was great, but it wasn’t as lucrative as Steve had once dreamed as a child.

“I found one!” Steve comes to find you, holding out an angel. “His name is Isiah and he’s five. He wants some action-figures, jeans, shirts, and a warm winter hat. I think that’s totally doable!”

You nod in agreement; the little boy's simplicity is something the two of you can do and warms your heart to be able to make his Christmas wish come true.

“Did you find one yet?” He asks and you shake your head.

“Not-“ Something on the tree catches your eye, and you focus on the angel in front of you. “Bella.” You grab the paper and study the words clearly written by an adult. “She’s three and she just wants a blanket and new winter coat. I think I’ll keep this one and will get her some more items suitable for a three-year-old.” You pull the angel close to your chest.

Steve wraps his arms around you, pulling you in for a hug. “I think we’re gonna give these two a very Merry Christmas.”

“A very Merry Christmas, indeed.” 🎁

Tags:

@thefanficfaerie

Forever tags:

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#Steve Rogers #steve rogers x reader #winter wonderland challenge #thefanficfaerie #christmas au #christmas fic

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pharahsgf · 3 years

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(sry for jc rant) this whole thing with jiang cheng would've been more understandable if, anytime during the story (be it cql or the donghua or the novel), he had shown compassion or even some empathy to literally anyone besides jiang yanli. But there's nothing! Never once did he even try to understand wwx's point of view when he (for example) helped mianmian. "But he had to do what was expected of him-" Then hoe come jiang yanli was so much... nicer in every way, even though they have the same parents? like i understand they had different expectations put on them etc etc but seriously, what happened to have made jaing cheng so unemphatic irt other people? like, was he ever homeless as a child? did his parents die when he was 4? there's also this talk about politics and i get it but also, one can still disagree with and hate jc for what actions he himself made? like the whole point is that jc never did anything to help wwx (or the old wens) in any way. he could've also helped wwx have sneak meetings w jyl, since he knows that they almost didn't see each other at all, but no? "oh, but he was the one who suggested that wwx name her kid-" "wait, he saved wwx by distracting those wen guards that one time-" bro idc!!! thats too little! i also don't care if he loved all of his family after all or not, i also care about how he treated other people. which was shitty!

yeah. a lot of the excuses ppl make for jiang cheng rely on the idea that his behaviour stems directly from things outside of his control, like his trauma and political position, but the fact remains that many characters in similar or worse situations do manage to be significantly less unempathetic and self-centered than he is. he clearly chooses to act like this, like we literally see his family members trying to convince him to care about other people only for him to be too caught up in his insecurity to notice.

the popular idea that jiang cheng Wants to be good but is limited by his experiences is just. patently untrue lmao. every chance he gets to do something good he passes up & then scolds wei wuxian for taking. it's insane.

#replies #anonymous

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jcmorrigan · 3 years

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I saw the tag- I am gonna ask you about the crossover universe- (omg I’m literally gushing about this)

OH, IT IS TIME!

So you can find a lot of this on the “What is the WHAM ARMY?” page on my blog – I’ll try to remember to link it; I’m drafting this in a word processor first so I don’t use it. Essentially, this is the universe I’ve created for my fanfic “Taking Back the Crown,” which is about…basically my favorite villains all moving into the same house and trying to take over the multiverse. And then it got lore. And more lore. Because I cannot write anything normal. The fic is nearing its 150th chapter and I’m nowhere NEAR exhausted of all the ideas I want to put in it – it’s just my big playground for hyperfixation fun. Anyway, here’s a rundown of the major points of it!

THE CAST

The main characters are the eight villains who are the founders of the WHAM ARMY. The faction name is an acronym of their first initials. They’re my ultrafaves, the villains I always get fluttery heart for, and probably the biggest collection of losers you can imagine. I’ll put them in order of the acronym and give you some background on how each entered the team.

Wuya (Xiaolin Showdown) – So the connecting factor between these people is that Mozenrath (his name is a few slots down) is their team leader and the one who decided to build a team in the first place. Wuya was recruited when Mozenrath found her puzzle box in an ancient vault. This is set post-series for XS (and Chronicles is not at all canon), so what had happened is in the big Showdown right after Raimundo was named team leader officially in the finale, the Xiaolin Monks won ALL the Shen Gong Wu to their side and stuffed Wuya in the box. So Mozenrath found her and let her out so they could be pals. A magic potion let her regain human form fairly early on, and her power isn’t even nerfed either the way Chase Young would’ve done.

Huntsman (American Dragon: Jake Long) – ADJL is also post-series in this timeline. Mozenrath has the power to resurrect people from the dead at will because he’s memorized an ancient and incredibly complex ritual that he can execute mentally (note that this means you can remove this ability from him by tampering with his memories). The Huntsman was resurrected so as to show Mozenrath around the old Huntsclan vault (which is where they found Wuya’s puzzle box). No other Huntsclan member survived the purge except Rose (and 88 and 89, but they don’t count and aren’t in this story), so the Huntsman is starting from square one.

Ayam Aghoul (Aladdin: The Animated Series): Basically just got sick of losing. He’d teamed up with a few other rando Aladdin rogues to try and pick a fight with Maleficent, and she sent him packing. So he ended up finding one of the few residents of the Seven Deserts who was powerful enough to match him AND had a similar grudge against Maleficent.

Mozenrath (Aladdin: The Animated Series): The man of the hour and the creator of the entire team. He starts the fic by crashing Maleficent’s KH Disney Villain alliance and trying to add himself to it, but…ends up being such a disrespectful nuisance that Hades just drags him straight down to the Underworld. That moment inspired him to get his OWN band of friends and start making a name for himself.

Archibald Snatcher (The Boxtrolls): Met Mozenrath in the Underworld after his death in film canon. Annoyed Hades one too many times by claiming that he wasn’t actually supposed to die, seeing as he isn’t allergic to dairy (he is), so Hades threw him in the same cell as Mozenrath and…

Roman Torchwick (RWBY): I started writing this fic in 2016, immediately post-V3, so it’s canon-divergent after the last episode of V3 (but I got all the later-game characters to show up eventually). Which means Roman is ALSO dead at the start of this fic. He ALSO comes storming up to Hades insisting he’s not even supposed to be dead. At the same time as Snatcher is already pestering him. Which is how Mozenrath, Snatcher, and Roman end up in the same jail cell in Tartarus and get the idea that maybe they should break back into the world of the living and try to build something BETTER than what any of the three had beforehand.

Mad Madam Mim (The Sword in the Stone): Mozenrath, immediately after breaking out of the Underworld, attempted to take over Arthur’s kingdom by just walking in and throwing magic around. It backfired horribly when Merlin showed up. But then Mim showed up to counter Merlin and realized that maybe she had a potential friend here who was as blackhearted as she.

Yzma (The Emperor’s New Groove): Post-TENG, no KNG or TENS (but I reference things from TENS every now and again). Merlin turned Mozenrath into a rat, so Mim brought him to Yzma’s Secret Lab to change him back. There, they found Yzma as a cat, and she so desperately wanted out of her living situation that she added herself to the team. She was also restored to human form shortly thereafter.

There is a potential ninth member of the core in the form of Vexen (Kingdom Hearts). KH is canon-divergent after DDD and basically ignores almost every game that comes out after Fragmentary Passage. Vexen, as Even, was trying to integrate into life as a hero in Radiant Garden, except everyone annoyed him way too much, so he decided to go be with people that would give right back any insults he dished out. And then realized he was much happier being on the evil team and doing mad science with no ethics. However, he will not be promoted to the upper ranks because 1. it would spoil the acronym and 2. he is unanimously agreed-upon to be the biggest wet blanket of the group and nobody wants him at the founder parties.

(Imagine my disbelief when the actual canon arc for Vexen was THE REVERSE ONE IN WHICH HE JUST DECIDES TO GO LIVE AT RADIANT GARDEN AND NOT BE ANNOYED BY ANYTHING and that’s why JC doesn’t like Kingdom Hearts III)

Anyway, this crew is a bunch of silly friends who enjoy partying, singing, dancing, drag, indulging in vices, causing mayhem, taking over cities, arranging for mass murder, piecing together smear campaigns…but they’re all pretty much ride or die for each other. And that goes double for the ships of the set: Mozenrath/Huntsman, Mim/Aghoul, Wuya/Yzma, and my favorite ship to end all favorites, Roman/Snatcher (RedHatBlackHat is the ship name).

From there, you have a B-Squad of, like, seventy other people based on my faves. Nonnie, I know you saw this because of Vincent Edgeworth, Victor Blake, and Albert Krueger, and they are three of COUNTLESS examples. It’s a found crime family that keeps getting bigger as I get more fave villains and there’s hardly a rhyme or a reason. Currently, they live in a floating fortress designed when they stole Terra Cyclonia (Storm Hawks) and hefted it out into the aether between worlds with crystal technology.

They have a rival hero faction in the form of the Cinnamons: a gathering of people who they’ve wronged who turned out to make pretty good friends themselves. While the WHAM ARMY are the villain-protag team that you feel slightly bad loving the escapades of, the Cinnamons are the rainbows, fluff, sunshine, (secret crippling depression and anxiety), and pep-talkers of the multiverse. They’re the deuteragonist team as opposed to the “villains” of the story. They also have eight “leaders,” but they were picked up a little less quickly than the WHAM ARMY founders, instead coming together over the span of a much longer quest. These people are:

Sora (Kingdom Hearts): Heart of the team and the person who pulled them all together, because Sora loves everyone. He, Riku, and Kairi witnessed the WHAM ARMY wreaking destruction on both Radiant Garden and Disney Castle, and Sora decided no one gets to treat his homes-away-from-home like that and get away with it! Between Mozenrath and the still-looming threats of Maleficent and Xehanort, he’s now collecting pals from all worlds to fight against evil and do as much good as they can do! (While having sleepovers.)

Ruby Rose (RWBY): Before she, Nora, Ren, and Jaune could get into Mistral, Sora interrupted them on their path and directed them right back around to Vale with the news that Roman Torchwick was back in action. After an incident involving the Destiny Trio and Team RNJR having to team up and actually kill the massive Grimm unleashed in the V3 endgame, they all headed out to Radiant Garden together to continue their mission.

Papyrus (Undertale): Sora found him while exploring worlds and they clicked immediately as pals. Then the WHAM ARMY, who was living in Mt. Ebott at the time, sparked an anti-monster racist sentiment through the town, and Papyrus was advised to leave the world for his own safety, so he went traveling with Sora.

Stork (Storm Hawks): Maleficent, who is also an active player in this game, made a power play by destroying the Condor with the entire Storm Hawks team onboard while they were on the Far Side of Atmos (post-series). Stork, believing himself to be the only survivor, attempted to take his own life – only for Sora to show up just in time and offer him something better: hope that his friends survived, and new friends to tag along with until they could prove either way.

Jasmine (Aladdin): The Cinnamons came looking to Agrabah for more information on Mozenrath. When Jasmine heard he was causing chaos, she decided to get personally involved.

Katara (Avatar: The Last Airbender): Post-ATLA, no LoK. Sora made a trip to the Fire Nation to see if he could head off the WHAM ARMY’s latest scheme, and ran into the Gaang along the way. After helping Katara, Aang, and Zuko protect the Fire Nation from a very near miss, Sora invited them to come travel with him. Only Katara accepted at first, the other two wanting to clean things up on their homeworld.

Kazuichi Soda (DanganRonpa): Post-SDR2, no DR3. Xehanort requested Izuru Kamukura be used as a vessel, and Kazuichi went in Izuru/Hajime’s place so his buddy didn’t have to. But the first chance he got, Kazuichi turned and ran from the Castle That Never Was…where Sora had just crash-landed. Kazuichi patched up Sora’s ship, and immediately became part of his crew. (Worth noting: in this AU, the Remnants of Despair were never brainwashed and were completely aware of what they were doing. Kazuichi is basically a redemption story, trying to be a better person to make up for the hell he caused. Also, while on the Despair side, he’d hacked off his leg to sew Junko’s in its place, disabling himself – that leg goes through an arc regarding what prosthesis is in its place.)

Rapunzel (Tangled): After the Vardaros arc of S2 of Rapunzel’s Tangled Adventure. Rapunzel was targeted by the WHAM ARMY because she was essentially a living MacGuffin for one of their spells. Sora showed up, and Rapunzel decided to go along with him for safety AND fun, leaving Cassandra to continue the pilgrimage to the Dark Kingdom. (Wrote this before KHIII was out. And before the Evil Cass twist.)

And just like the WHAM ARMY, these folks have a huge B-squad that lives in the Radiant Garden castle and helps them deal with the various tragedies they have to clean up after. Riku, Kairi, and Jaune Arc in particular get a decent amount of stage time.

As you can see, Maleficent (Sleeping Beauty/Kingdom Hearts) and her forces are another big set of chess pieces on the board! After she sent Mozenrath to gay baby jail and it didn’t stick, she’s been trying to continue plans for domination as usual but ALSO wipe the WHAM ARMY off the face of the multiverse. She, Jafar (Aladdin), Ursula (The Little Mermaid), and Hades (Hercules) all came straight here from KH. But I’m working to model that team’s inner circle on the team in “Quite a Glittering Assemblage,” the sister fic by gavillain (it’s basically this premise but Maleficent gets a team to start instead, but similarities end there, his is a whole different, fresh, and fun flavor). I’ve just gotten all these characters intro’d instory, but the other biggies are Loki (Marvel – I based him in the Cinematic Universe but he’s kind of just an amalgamation of Lokis), Dr. Doom (Marvel), Captain Hook (Once Upon a Time), Russell Edgington (True Blood), and Fish Mooney (Gotham). Currently, they operate out of the Forbidden Mountain in the Enchanted Dominion.

There’s also a very new addition as of the 140’s chapters: the Heathens. This is a squad of villains with moral lines in the sand (and some antiheroes or corrupted heroes). Basically, these aren’t your killers for fun. These are the people who steal candy from the gas station and think they’re slick, but the point is they’re enjoying themselves so just let it happen. The four founders of this one are Harley Quinn (DC – based on The Batman but an amalgamation of Harleys that leans sympathetic), Yang Xiao Long (RWBY), Giovanni Potage (Epithet Erased), and Velvet Crowe (Tales of Berseria). Currently, they operate out of the old mansion in Twilight Town.

The Xehanorts are here, and that team is largely who you think it is – though I stripped away Vexen, Demyx, Marluxia, Larxene, and Luxord in order to replace them ALL with Xaldin. More crossover shenanigans to come on this front. This team isn’t very active – they’re waiting for the Keyblade War – but they’re operating out of the World That Never Was.

There’s also another side villain faction: the Morbians, led by Mirage (Aladdin: The Animated Series). These are the demons of fear, the stuff that lurks in your nightmares, and…the villains I really like but who I don’t quite think fit in with the WHAM ARMY or any other more prominent group. But to give you an idea of what the flavor of this team is, she’s recruited not one but TWO Boogeymen – Pitch Black (Rise of the Guardians) and Oogie Boogie (The Nightmare Before Christmas).

There will be more villain factions to come, and I kind of want to splinter the Cinnamons to multiple bases as well. Obviously it’s easier to split villains up because they’re fun to write at war with each other – when I have hero teams come up against each other, usually they end up becoming best buddies instead of fighting, and that’s how I like it, but that’s why there’s just ONE BIG HERO TEAM as opposed to the many villain squads rattling around.

THE SETTING

So as you have probably gleaned, the multiverse setup is largely based on Kingdom Hearts, which is one of my favorite things (in the KH1 through Fragmentary Passage era anyway). There are many worlds that can be visited either by Gummi Ship or Corridor of Darkness. Basically any evil-aligned sorcerer can use Corridors in this ‘verse – they’ve opened their souls to Darkness and have magic, so they can do so.

The implication is that every world represents a separate “story” or part of one. As in if it’s a work of fiction HERE, it’s a world THERE. Some characters are actually savvy enough to know they’re fictional (e.g. Megavolt from Darkwing Duck, Xayide from The Neverending Story). Most of them aren’t built to handle the news, though, and just shrug it off if told. (No, really, the cosmic order prevents them from taking that news seriously if they’re not from something that regularly leans on the fourth wall anyway.)

But sometimes, things get AU’d in without their full worlds. I was inspired by how Final Fantasy is treated in canon KH, and once I started bringing in more FF stuff by the same method, I felt motivated to do that with MORE fandoms if I felt the characters could be divorced from their settings and histories easily. I’ve done it for most Disney Channel non-animated properties as well as Satellite City (ain’t that the worst combo you’ve ever looked at). I’m planning to do it for Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn because I’m coming up on a location I want to delve into the civilization of but don’t have many canon characters for, so guess what, you get the FE cast now.

Major worlds or relevant locations in play are the Cyclonian warship, Radiant Garden, Twilight Town, and occasionally the Enchanted Dominion, but we move from plotline to plotline with journeys to many, many, MANY worlds of things I want to play with the settings and casts of. Also, the Cyclonian warship is about to get replaced with another WHAM ARMY base; we’ll get there.

THE STORY

For the first major “book” of TBTC, the WHAM ARMY has found a spell that they think will let them conquer the entire multiverse by giving them control over Kingdom Hearts itself. All they have do to is collect a bunch of MacGuffins that correspond to twelve elements: fire, water, earth, air, light, darkness, life, death, time, space, entropy, and aether. In order to do this, they visit the worlds of KH, RWBY, Avatar, Storm Hawks, Okami, Undertale, Wakfu, The Legend of Zelda, The Neverending Story, My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, and many many more. The Cinnamons catch wind of what they’re doing and start assembling. Meanwhile Maleficent is on the hunt for the Book of Prophecies and starts hiring villains on her team as well. After many madcap adventures and some devastating tragedies near endgame, the Cinnamons accidentally put the Book of Prophecies in Maleficent’s hands at the same time that Maleficent finally captures Mozenrath and gets him under heel. The WHAM ARMY and Cinnamons both launch attacks on Maleficent’s forces, and each walks away with what they came for. This is also the part where we slowburn up to the four major WHAM ARMY ships and many Cinnamon ships. In the end, the WHAM ARMY actually gets all the ingredients for their spell, but what they don’t know is it will actually cause the DESTRUCTION of the worlds. So an outside force intervenes (Discord from MLPFIM, who later joins the WHAM ARMY because he wants friends who actually appreciate him as a villain and won’t make him change) to stop them, and the next thing they know, they’re starting from square one.

We’re now in the second “book” of this story. The Cinnamons are gathering up all lost friends – the rest of Team RWBY, the Gaang, the Storm Hawks (who did in fact survive the explosion), the lost KH characters. The WHAM ARMY, on the other hand, is gathering up more villains to bolster their forces for a new evil plan: to conquer the worlds one by one, starting with Atlantis (Disney’s Atlantis: The Lost Empire) and using portals to link to other territories of interest. While the WHAM ARMY is essentially working through a to-do list of what they need before they can launch such a massive invasion, the Cinnamons are finding strength in numbers because the writing’s on the wall that between Mozenrath, Maleficent, Mirage, and Xehanort, things are going to get worse before they get better, and as evil builds, good will need to rise to protect the innocent. As for Maleficent, she’s no longer able to chase the Book of Prophecies, and so, because she’s got Hades, Loki, and Salem (RWBY) there and they’re all like “Even though we’re pretty godlike, we are not that happy with how the gods we knew have run things,” Maleficent’s new goal is to slaughter the gods of all pantheons (minus those in her care) and replace them with her allies.

Anyway, as I had said in the post you saw, Anon – I basically take everything fictional I love and shove it into this AU for daydreams because it lets me imagine my faves having CROSSOVER INTERACTIONS and doing cool epic stuff on a multi-world scale. (But as much as I’ve talked up the epic aspect, a lot of it is just…like…people fucking around and hosting karaoke nights.) Anyway, I hope this gave you a good sense of the madness, and I hope it serves as a reminder to everyone that they can and should just. Make a daydream and/or fanfic universe that’s indulgent as hell. Just do it.

#wham army #tbtc #long post #i considered a read more #but i hate the tiny text on my blog #i need a new blog theme

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mdzs-overthink-athon · 3 years

Text

Adaptations - Part 13: Wen Ning is here, we’re... um... saved?

(Masterpost)

This scene appears in:

Mo Dao Zu Shi novel Chapter 10

Mo Dao Zu Shi manhua Chapter 23-24

Mo Dao Zu Shi donghua Episode 2

The Untamed / Chen Qing Ling drama Episode 2

In this scene, Wei Wuxian clocks that things are getting out of hand with the whole dancing stone goddess situation, so he begins playing the flute (much to Lan Jingyi’s annoyance)

WWX’s goal is, of course, to summon some undeads to throw at the monster and buy time, or maybe if he’s lucky, something that will actually defeat her. Except he instead summons a combination Plot Device, Smoking Gun, and Best Boy.

There he is.

More under the cut.

Everyone recognizes Wen Ning and subsequently freaks out, thinking they’re now fighting two big bads at once. WN meanwhile is hella OP and takes out the Dancing Dame in one blow.

With her gone, the juniors get braver and decide they should have a go at WN for some quick night hunt credit. This doesn’t sit well with WN and he goes into throttling mode.

WWX then tries to think of a tune to calm down his Ghost General, and in the manhua we get this nice flashback (from the character’s perspective - flash forward for us) of the cave scene.

Then WWX begins playing WangXian / WuJi on the flute, which of course summons another Best Boy.

After staring into Lan Wangji’s eyes for a really long time (longer in the special edition I guess? I watched both but honestly my memory’s not what it used to was)

WN: I’ll just uh.. stand here then, shall I.

Anyway after that, WWX comes to and dismisses WN to whence he came.

But of course, it’s too late - the Ghost General is out of the bag, and JC is now Highly Suspicious - but let’s save that fun time for next scene XD

So for me, this scene boils down to three very important elements:

Wei Wuxian being a hot necromancer

We get so many lovely opportunities to watch WWX softly kissing his flute on the lips and having demonic red eyes and just generally being hot and slightly sinister looking. It is important for any adaptation to make the most of this. Let’s see how they do.

Donghua:

OMG why am I even comparing anything? 11/10.

Drama:

OK I’ll grant he’s doing pretty good there with the hair flying loose and the odd mask, in combination it gives him a sort of shamanic look that is super amazing. Still not as hot as red-eyes up there, but noteworthy. 10/10.

Manhua:

TOO pretty, sorry manhua WWX you are far, far too lovely and princely for this scene. I also deduct an additional point for the fact that this is the hottest image I found from this scene, but it’s actually one where he’s trying to think of a relaxing tune, not trying to summon an undead army. 8/10.

Wen Ning being an undead badass

The Ghost General is kind of the pivotal character in this scene, not to mention this is his Grand Entrance and he is Best Boy. Also, I Will Not Apologize For My Gratuitous Use Of Capitalization. Now that’s out of the way...

Donghua:

There were a couple other shots of WN which included his face, and all of them looked kinda.. constipated, honestly. Like I get that he’s supposed to be suffering and Not Himself, but this is his debut and I just felt like they leaned a bit too heavy on the misery. But right here, he is definitely kicking ass and taking names, and the artistry of this shot is top-notch. I deduct a point for otherwise ham-handedly tragic looking WN, and give it 9/10.

Drama:

This strikes a perfect balance for me. The dramatic flowing hair framing the face perfectly. The dark eyes and stone-cold expression, a little sad, but a lot violent. He is so beautiful. 10/10.

Manhua:

The red aura is kinda cool. The SFX bother me a bit, though there are the chains and they do make noise, so I’m not sure if they really should bother me... mostly though I am sad that manhua WN looks ... so sad. He has every right to, with his tragic backstory and all, but I want to see him being a killing machine right now. A touch of sadness, OK, but the hair over the face, the pathetic expression, the slouched posture.. it’s too much. 6/10.

The Pining

You know I had to go there. I couldn’t not. This is the first moment LWJ dares to believe he’s really found his Wei Ying, and it is beautiful.

Donghua:

Donghua LWJ is scary here. I am legit worried about WWX at this point if I don’t know what’s going on. This doesn’t make me feel happy. On the other hand, with LWJ’s reputation for fighting and his tragic backstory (everybody’s got one!) it’s not surprising that he would look scary - it’s pretty realistic. But eh... I still don’t quite feel like it fits him as a character. 7/10.

Drama:

Drama LWJ is, as we know, The Most Beautiful (no canon-based refutations of this are allowed), but he’s still kinda scary as well. However, he’s not scary in a “will he break WWX’s wrist?” kind of way so much as a “uh oh he looks way too smart to be fooled, WWX is in trouble!” kind of way. This is acceptable. Also, the tenderness and longing is very much there in his expression along with the astute don’t-mess-with-me look. 12/10.

Manhua:

I have to admit this one leaves me cold. They’re going through all the right motions of a BL couple, gazing into the eyes, the hand grasp, the sparkles (or ash or snow or whatever that is floating around in the foreground) but it feels very hollow right here, as do most of the other panels of this meeting. 5/10.

So our totals are: donghua, 27. drama, 32. manhua, 19.

My personal fav: the drama. This is another face-based (versus action-based) scene for me, and the actors in CQL nail it. I dearly love red-eyed donghua WWX, but he can’t make up for stone-cold badass CQL WN or soft and yearning CQL LWJ.

(Source: manhua) (Source: novel translation) (Source: donghua) (Source: drama)

#MDZS #MDZS meta #MDZS spoilers #CQL #Adaptations Part 13 #cw brief blood #long post

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adhd-wifi · 4 years

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MDZS Cultivational Sects & Daoist Elements (WuXing)

So I was entertaining a new AU idea (which I will share in a bit maybe), and then I realized just how prevalent the Daoist philosophies are in the story. In fact, the Five Major Cultivation Sects directly represent each of the Five Elements - WuXing (五行) - consisting of Water (水), Wood (木), Fire (火), Earth (土), and Metal (金). (Side note, the cycle actually starts from Wood, but I started with Water since that’s the Jiang Sect.)

Full disclaimer, while I am Chinese and have knowledge of this, I grew up in Singapore with primarily Buddhist beliefs (though I’ve basically been agnostic my whole life), so some of what I say here might be inaccurate, and please feel free to correct me if I’m wrong.

Also...if everyone already knew this and I didn’t notice, just take this as my usual ramblings LMAO

That aside, here are the explanations! Warning: Spoilers!

Yunmeng Jiang Sect（云梦江氏）= Water (水)

The 江 (jiāng) character uses the (氵) radical, which is derived from (水)

Their home is Lotus Pier, surrounded by waters all around

The Water Element is technically the last in the cycle and seen as the lowest due to it being more associated with the negative “Yin (阴)” than any other element, and (at least) after Lotus Pier was destroyed, it did become the weakest sect of the five, story-wise

The Water Element is seen as virtuous, with manifests as both gentle tranquility (JFM, JYL) and fierce force (JC, YZY). WWX himself is both gentle and fierce.

Its main negative traits are fear, anxiety and indecision, and also difficulty in choosing more than one side to stick to (reflective of JC and WWX’s fight which led to WWX leaving the Jiang Sect after siding with the Wen Remnants)

Said to be the easiest element to go into a downward spiral in life, which fits the Fall of Lotus Pier, the declining relationship between the Jiang siblings (especially after JYL’s death), and WWX’s descent into demonic cultivation

Gusu Lan Sect（姑苏蓝氏）= Wood (木)

The 蓝 (lán) character uses the (艹) radical, derived from (草 - grass)

Also, 蓝 means “blue”, and blue is one of the main colours representing the Wood Element

While the Cloud Recesses primarily use sky/cloud motifs, it is located in a forested mountain away from most human influence

More in tune with nature than all the other sects, and is mostly vegetarian

The Wood Element is seen as righteous, noble, and patience, and it is seen as the first and highest in the cycle with having the most association to the positive “Yang (阳)”

It’s also the element that promotes self-growth the most, which you could say represents the Twin Jades of Lan the most out of the cast, as LWJ and LXC have had their ideals challenged the most throughout the course of the story, primarily due to WWX and JGY respectively

The primary negative trait of the Wood Element is stubborn anger, which is most evident in LWJ, but also LQR, and overall through the extremely strict (to the point of almost delusional self-righteousness) ideals of conformity and “punishment” of the Lan sect as a whole

QiShan Wen Sect（岐山温氏）= Fire (火)

The 温 (wēn) character means “warmth”, clearly associated with fire and the sun, the Wen Sect’s motif

Red is, unsurprisingly, the primary colour representing the Fire Element

I am struggling to not make SEVERAL Avatar: The Last Airbender jokes here because so much of it is literally just the Fire Nation

The Fire Element is strongly associated with prosperity, intensity, and strength, which ties in with the Wen Sect initially being the most powerful sect

Its primary negative traits are aggression and hatred, which fits the tyrannical nature of the Wen Sect as a whole in the beginning of the story, which led to the blind hatred of anyone named Wen following the Sunshot Campaign

However, it also has a much more honourable side of bravery and bringing warmth, which ties in with WQ and WN committing treason and housing the Jiang siblings during the war, then the Wen Remnants bringing warmth to the Burial Mounds while living there with WWX, giving him a family

Qinghe Nie Sect（清河聂氏）= Earth (土)

The Nie Sect is the only one out of the Five Sects without anything in its name linking it to the Earth element

However, the Unclean Realm is shown to be desolate place, almost entirely free of plants and waters, instead surrounded by stone and earth

Even their ancestral hall for putting the violent Blade Spirits to rest is simply know as the Stone Castles

The Earth Element is considered the most “balanced” of the five, seen as equal parts “Yin (阴)” & “Yang (阳)”, and as such, is seen as the most harmonious of the elements which seeks peace

This ties into the fact that it was ultimately NHS’s secretive actions that led to the end of the main conflict of the story, out love for his brother and desire to avenge him

Expanding on NMJ and NHS, they are two complete opposites in terms of personality, NMJ taking on the more reckless & headstrong traits of the element, while NHS takes on the more cautious & quiet traits, the two of them reflecting the two extremes of the element

The Earth element is also seen as STRONGLY family oriented, which also ties into the Nie brothers' harmony, since they genuinely loved each other almost unproblematically despite their differences (compared to literally every other family in the story I’M JUST SAYING)

One of my favourite traits of the Earth Element in relation to the Nie brothers is “tolerance”, because while on the surface it seemed that NMJ was the less tolerant one of the two, he let Meng Yao get away with a lot, leading to his own death, and then NHS ends up being far more cruel and ruthless than anyone expected from him because of how much he COULDN’T tolerate his brother’s murderer’s existence, going as far as to literally destroy his reputation as much as he could before letting the man die

Honestly the Nie Sect and the Earth Element are the most interesting ones out of all of them to me I could talk about this for a long time lol

Lanling Jin Sect（兰陵金氏）= Metal (金)

It’s literally the same character. 金 (jīn), meaning gold, is also the character for “metal” in WuXing because gold is seen as the most precious metal

The Metal Element, unsurprisingly, symbolises wealth, ambition, persistence, and firm strength. Given the Jin Sect being as grand and proud as it is, it fits painfully well

Also, since all the Jin Sect members seem to have a pride problem, it ties into the Metal Element’s negative traits of judgement of others, being controlling, and arrogance

Out of all the sects, the Jin Sect takes on the most negative traits of their element, though most of it is through JGS and JGY

JGS’s constant desire for power is blatantly shown throughout his entire existence within the story, and with JGY he showed the traits of being cunning and possessing good foresight in his plans to seize power

On the more positive side, JZX displayed the most notable positive trait of the Metal Element, which is courage, such as when he defended MianMian, when he confessed to JYL at the cost of his pride, and then when he went to QiongQi Pass alone to try and stop his bitch ass cousin from killing WWX

Other Notes:

WWX, the lowest and most “Yin (阴)” of the Sects (Jiang/Water), is directly opposite of LWJ’s sect (Lan/Wood), the highest and most “Yang (阳)”, but also right next to each other in the cycle as a result

In the elemental “generating” cycle, Wood generates or feeds Fire. In the “controlling” cycle, Water douses Fire. In MDZS, the Lan Sect falling to the Wen Sect started the Wen indoctrination, and the fall of Lotus Pier led to the start of the Sunshot Campaign

The Fire Element “controls” the Metal Element, so with the Wen Sect gone, the Jin Sect had no opposition with rising to power because all the other Sects/Elements still had their “controlling” element present

The Nie Sect is the least obvious in its elemental representation, while the Jin Sect is the most obvious. I like to take this as the Jin Sect being flashy about their power while never noticing the threat of the Nie Sect right under their noses (Perish, JGY)

Welp, that’s all I have for now. Please, if I got something wrong please let me know, because as you can see, I am now quite invested in looking into the symbolism even more.

#mdzs #mo dao zu shi #the grandmaster of demonic cultivation #mdzs meta #mdzs headcanons #this was honestly just 3 hours of rambling and googling daoism #it's fine tho not gonna lie #my metas #my headcanons #can y'all tell i went off-track a little upon getting to the nie sect?#I love the nie sect okay #my ramblings #my posts #chinese things

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palaugranetes · 4 years

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🔵BLAUGRANETS🔴

22 OCTOBER 2020

Riqui: Well I guess there is no other choice than doing this..

Pedri: Do what?

Riqui Added Arnau

Riqui: Well we have another one here. At this rate, we might as well just include the whole squad. BUT Welcome to this adult free mess bro!

Iñaki: 💙❤💙❤💙❤

Carlitos: Benvingut nanu!

Ronald: MANITO!!!!

Ronald: Look at you using those braincells @Riqui

Riqui: Nothing new

Ansu: BRO!!!! @Arnau 💙❤

Arnau: What even is this?

Frenkie: Adult Free Space.

Frenkie: WELCOME!! ❤💙

Arnau: Why is this even?

Francisco: Well I really am not quite sure of that yet.. But welcome!!!

Carlitos: This exists because we are sick and tired of the grown-ups.

Arnau: Who are the grown-ups? Aren't we all technically grown-ups?

Arnau: Well beside Ansu and Pedri.

Ansu: BOY DO NOT.

JC: 😂😂😂😂😂

Dembz: 😂😂😂😂😂

Ansu: 😒😒😒

JC:"Dembz: 😂😂😂😂😂"

Dembz: 🤜🏿

Ansu: I hate both of you so much.

Frenkie: It's only a week.. Just hang in there🤭🤭

Ansu: 😒😒

Pedri: 🙄🙄🙄

23 OCTOBER 2020

Carlitos: Anyways.. What I meant is that we are sick and tired of the ones in charge, their incompetence and their stupidity.

Riqui: Here here 🍻

Ronald: Thought popcorn was your TM

Riqui: 🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿

Riqui: Happy Now?

Ronald: Elated!

Arnau: Ahhh I get it now. I see your point.

Arnau: So how long has this been going on?

Pedri: Like a month or so

Francisco: We still don't know what is happening here most of the times

Sergiño: Hey dude!! Another newbie here!! Welcome @Arnau

Arnau: 🤗🤗🤗

Ansu: What we do know is that El Clasico is tomorrow and I am about to jump out of my skin!

Riqui: I mean...

Carlitos: What do you guys think?

JC: Well what version of FCB is going to show up.. It depends on that.

Arnau: I really cannot sit through another Getafe type match... there aren't enough hugs in the world.

Iñaki: I feel ya bro.. pure torture.

Ronald: Look we tried..

Riqui: No Ronald.. You did.

Carlitos: And now that Jordi is back .. Y'all need to try harder.

Carlitos: I mean I love the guy but he needs to remember how to football.

Riqui: You say y'all as if any of us not named Frenkie Ansu and Sergiño is going to start.. Don't drag all of us into that mess..

Ansu: 🙄🙄

Carlitos: Oh no no Nanu I am happy for you.

Riqui: We'd be dead were it not for you kiddo.

Sergiño: I am just glad I'll be back to the right flank tbh

Sergiño: Like I'll play wherever I'm asked but...

Pedri: Exactly.. Imagine me playing on the left.. I'll do it sure of course, I'll try my best but it is not my favorite.

Francisco: Well I think it's natural.

Riqui: Ever since Antoine spoke he has been benched 🤭

Carlitos: Are we sure that is the only reason?

Riqui: Jeez

Dembz: 😐😐😐😐

Carlitos: Sorry.. But I only say this because I know what he can do..

Dembz: I guess we are all rusty...

Riqui: I wouldn't know.. I've played all of 10 minutes..

Carlitos: 🙄

JC: Well y'all better not make me watch for nothing.

Riqui: Again.. Can't help you there bro.

JC: WHOEVER IT IS. DO NOT.

Riqui: Sometimes I wish Puyi is here just to like make them focus.

Carlitos: Remember when he yelled at Geri? 😂😂

Riqui: Which time 😂😂

Carlitos: All of them 😂

Ansu: OMG GUYS!!

Ansu: We should ask for his help.

Francisco: To come and make 'us' focus??

Pedri: It doesn't work that way dude.

Ansu: NO! With Geri

JC: I'm listening

Dembz: Are we really going to go ask for help from Carles Puyol?! Ansumane are you nuts!?

Ansu: GOT ANY BETTER IDEAS OUSMANE!?

Dembz: No..

Dembz: And stop yelling @Iñaki is probably asleep.

Frenkie: We all should be ...

Ansu: BUT my Puyi idea.

Ronald: Can wait till after El Clasico.

Ronald: Go to sleep now

Ansu: 😒

24 OCTOBER 2020

JC: 4 OUT OF 11!!!

JC: Oh for fuck sake😒

JC: ANSU YOU BRILLIANT GENIUS I COULD KISS YOU!!!

..........

JC: I AM GOING TO KICK HIM! PHIL WHAT!!!!?!?!?!?!?!

JC: What the fuck was that shit....

JC: But it wasn't...

JC: I give up.. Screw this..

...........

Arnau: This blows.

Iñaki: Once again.. pure torture.

Arnau: No but we were doing actually okay..

Iñaki: I mean.. relatively so-so.. we could have had it...

Arnau: What even was that 2nd ..

Iñaki: Bro.. Let it go..

Arnau: 🤦🏼‍♂️🤦🏼‍♂️

Iñaki: 😐

Ansu: I hate us so much.

Pedri: I should not have said anything the other day..

Pedri: I jinxed myself.

Francisco: That was horrible

Sergiño: Truly awful

Riqui: I am going to keep my comments to myself.

Riqui: Because if I speak, I will get in trouble.

Carlitos: Okay José.

Riqui: HOW DARE YOU.

Carlitos: It was a José move.

Ansu: I just... WHY TAKE ME OUT SO EARLY!

Dembz: A Mess.

Frenkie: So we are just going to get a penalty every time we breathe next to a player!?

JC: BS. Just that.. BS.

Ansu: Siempre igual.

Frenkie: I hate this.

Riqui: We all do.

25 OCTOBER 2020

Ronald: On the bright side..

Riqui: There is not one bright side in this

Ronald: There is.

Ronald: The fact that it's over.

Riqui: Okay one bright side to this. And now we have Juventus next.

Riqui: Without Gerard

Riqui: Which means he will have time...

Riqui: Which means we are screwed.

Carlitos: I would like to go back to the match please.

Riqui: So I was right.. There is no bright side.

Dembz: Dammit.

Riqui: Good night.

Pedri: Night!

JC: See ya later

Carlitos: Nanit!

Sergiño: ✌🏽

26 OCTOBER 2020

Frenkie: They did not just say that.. 🤦🏼‍♂️

Frenkie: As if we needed more backlash...

Carlitos: WHY WOULD THEY EVEN SPEAK!??

Carlitos: WHEN HAS THAT EVER HELPED ANYONE?!

Riqui: Just leave already for the love of everything good...

Riqui: We are a meme Club I swear...

Riqui: When has complaining ever benefited us ever?!

Carlitos: As if they don't know

Ansu: Did he really say that or did I hallucinate it!?

Riqui: They did kiddo

Carlitos: They did kiddo.

JC: Yikes

Francisco: What is the point?

Arnau: What is the point of their existence really

Iñaki: They have so many problems coming their way, the guys say they are taking action against them

Arnau: Well they should have let them finish the season and not just send them off like that.. They deserved to play the play-offs.

Iñaki: Don't remind me.

Arnau: Can the president just issue an arrest warrant against them already?!

Riqui: I wish

Carlitos: THE AUDACITY OF THEM TRYING TO POSTPONE THE REFERENDUM. THE AUDACITY.

Riqui: I hope they end up in Jail. Or like exiled.. whichever can happen quicker..

Ansu: We cannot have one day of peace in this place.

Riqui: How else will the time pass..

Ansu: I rather not have it pass in stress.

Carlitos: Well.. tough.

Riqui: And another one tomorrow.

Riqui: AND FOR WHAT... JUST LEAVE

Sergiño: I am having such a dèjà-vu..

Riqui: About?

Sergiño: Tr*mp..

Riqui: Well.. Kinda.. sorta..

Riqui: Like.. take away the mania and psychopathic behavior and total lack of human empathy and decency... yeah it could be him

Sergiño: I meant the desperate need for him to just leave.

Riqui: Oh well yes that... spot on.

Carlitos: we have to wait more I guess.... But now Juve.

Frenkie: Exactly. Juve.

Ansu: Ronald's big moment. Hope he doesn't screw it up.

Ronald: Appreciate the vote of confidence.. really. So sweet.

Ansu: Anytime broski Anytime.

Pedri: Did you really just say broski?

Ansu: And what about it?

Pedri: Nothing..

Ansu: Mhm...

27 OCTOBER 2020

JC: Another meeting today?

Riqui: Yep

JC: Evening?

Riqui: Yep

JC: You think he will?

Riqui: Who the hell knows.. He might be coming out to announce a new sponsor for all I know

Carlitos: I hear he will

Ansu: Will he though?

Carlitos: Well I'm not his babysitter but I hope so.

Ansu: We shall see.

Frenkie: Ready to take off to Torino?

Pedri: YES!!

Francisco: Cannot wait tbh

Francisco: I saw Gerard today and he was being very suspicious.

Riqui: I do not need this now

Sergiño: I hung out with him during training this morning.. He seemed normal

Dembz: So what is the truth...

Ronald: All I know is he has time now.

Ronald: And I feel sorry for you guys..

Ronald: Not you @Riqui 💙 and Sergi would agree

Riqui: 😒 I hate you 💙

...............

Arnau: HOLY CRAP HE DID IT!!!

Arnau: WE ARE FREE!!!!!!

Carlitos: I cannot believe it. Someone slap me.

Carlitos: I DID NOT MEAN IT LITERALLY RONALD!

Ronald: You asked.

Riqui: I JUST... I WOULD LIKE TO SAY....

Riqui: 🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉

Carlitos: WAIT A FUCKING MINUTE! WHAT DO YOU MEAN A EUROPEAN SUPER LEAGUE.. BRO!!

Ansu: Like I said.. We cannot have not 1 moment of peace.

Riqui: Is he really playing a victim?!

Carlitos: Great... more games for us not to play😒

Ansu: But things are changing.. so

Frenkie: Oh wow.. oh wow.. OH WOW

Francisco: What even is the point of a Super league?!

Francisco: It's like the Nations' League.. What is the point of that

Pedri: Money.

Pedri: 🤷🏻‍♂️

Francisco: Fair point.

Iñaki: Isn't everything?

Francisco: Yep.

Dembz: So now what guys?...

Riqui: Now we are free. We wait for the new President.

Riqui: And maybe a new coach 🙄

Dembz: I dig that.

Pedri: How do you guys think Leo is feeling??

Ansu: I wonder what the adults gc is like right now.

Ansu: Dammit Carles when are you going to be useful!

Carlitos: RUDE MUCH

Ansu: We need to know

Riqui: 😂

Frenkie: So now that he is gone.. What are we going to complain about in this Club.

Riqui: It's us.. We always have something. But enjoy this Win bro

Frenkie: I am.

Sergiño: I hope we can enjoy more wins

Francisco: Leo must be very happy.

Riqui: I wanna post something.. but I don't know if I should.

Dembz: Do it subtly.

Arnau: Have you met him? He doesn't know subtlety.

Riqui: I brought you here to back me up dude not join them😒

#fc barcelona #blaugranets gc #babies gc #riqui puig #carles aleña #ansu fati #frenkie de jong #ronald araujo #jean clair todibo #pedri #francisco trincão #ousmane dembele #iñaki peña #sergiño dest #arnau tenas #he finally left #football #football imagine #episode 9

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vrishchikawrites · 3 years

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LAN XICHEN AND JIANG CHENG:

JC stans want Jiang Cheng to end up with Lan Xichen because he is the First Jade of Lan, while Lan Wangji, who is Wei Wuxian’s husband, is only Second. For once in his miserable life, Jiang Cheng will get the better end of the deal than Wei Wuxian, right? But the thing is, as far as the narrative goes, nobody can beat Hanguang-jun other than Wei Wuxian- his own brother included. We are repeatedly given evidence that Lan Wangji is stronger than Lan Xichen, is more of an expert at the guqin than Lan Xichen, is more skilled in Clan Techniques than Lan Xichen, is more righteous than Lan Xichen, etc. etc. Nobody but Lan Wangji could have survived the 33 whip lashes, fought 33 well-trained Elders while also protecting his dying beloved, undertaken dangerous night hunts in desolate areas with no expectations of repayment, and end up Hanguang-jun. When one hears of the name ‘Lan’, one thinks of Hanguang-jun, Lan Wangji, the Second Jade of Lan, and then, Lan Xichen, his brother, the First Jade. Lan Wangji did have more freedom than Lan Xichen, but it is not that much more, and thus we can attribute his values and his morals as his own. Where does Xicheng come in? We know that Jiang Cheng does not care about pesky qualities such as honour or integrity, to say nothing of his homophobic tendencies, but if he were to become a “disgusting” cut-sleeve, he would not settle for anything but the best, which Lan Xichen is not. Jiang Cheng is also extremely jealous and vindicative, easy to offend and anger, and can absolutely never handle being below anyone. Lan Xichen might not be as talented as his brother, but he is still leagues better than the “Wielder Of His Own Damn Sword”, Jiang-Zhongzu. They would not mesh well together. But we know all this. Let us talk about Lan Xichen. Rulers should be good to their people and their primary strength should lie in being able to detach themselves from their personal feelings in kingdom-related matters and take a professional approach. In the book’s context, a Sect Leader should be cold and practical in the matters involving the Sect. Jiang Fengmian fails to do this with his wife, and ends up getting most of his Sect killed due to his cowardice. Lan Xichen does this with A-Yao. As Sect Leader, Lan Xichen’s warmth causes less diplomatic incidents, since he is good with pacifying and mollifying prickly Sect Heads, but he can be easily swayed by weakness, real or feigned, and such beliefs work to his disadvantage. One more thing I would like to point out is that Lan Wangji, after losing the love of his life and being whipped 33 times (with a Spiritual Weapon) for treason, only remained in seclusion long enough to heal his body. If he could function in such a painful situation, all the while caring for an orphaned child and watching his brother happily interact with the person most responsible for, why could not Lan Xichen? He wasn’t even physically impaired! Oh boo-hoo, my most trusted friend of 20 years betrayed me and killed my Sworn Brother? Yes! Yes, he did, and it was a most traumatising thing to do, but he did not do it without your own help and encouragement! It is not Lan Xichen’s fault for being taken by a Master Manipulator, of course, but it is his fault for being passive and taking the easy way out 2/3 times in order not to upset his Sworn Brothers and the rest of the elitist Cultivation World! There are metas that state that once Lan Xichen is given confirmation of ill-will and misdeeds, he does not hesitate to choose the path of righteousness and conviction, but it is the time that he takes to obtain such confirmations is what irks me. He makes no moves of his own, does not go out of his way to investigate events he himself was suspicious about until his brother encourages (read: forces by showing unignorable evidence) him to, and spends most of his time after the Siege sitting on his hands (other than rebuilding his Sect, I will give him that) and entertaining A-Yao! *Sigh* This is quite a cruel take on him, and if we view him through the same lens we do

our favourite characters many of his faults will fizzle out quickly, but I just think he should not be let off as scott-free as he currently is being let. If I have misunderstood something, or mentioned anything wrong, please do not hesitate to correct me! It will help with my understanding of his character and help me write better fics.

Dee - This was a submission not an ask - my reply under the cut off

I try not to say much about LXC and maintain a neutral POV on him because he is, from what I read in the novel, a good character. Not perfect and certainly not as wise as he's often made out to be, but good. Honestly, to me he comes across as someone who is somewhat naive, unaware of his own prejudices, but willing to pursue the truth when prompted. He also seems to be a bit stubborn and is very confident in his own judgment. I believe all of that can be attributed to the fact that he's a Sect Heir and a Sect Leader later. He needs to have that solid belief in his judgment to lead.

To me, LWJ and LXC present interesting parallels. Both loved (platonic in LXC's case, love is love) people from lower social classes, both were confronted with somewhat unsavory characteristics. The parallels are very striking, tbh.

LWJ loved a morally strong man - LXC loved a morally weak one.

LWJ's love for WWX enlightened him - LXC's love for JGY blinded him.

LWJ took WWX to task on every mistake - LXC covered up or made excuses for JGY's red flags.

WWX's taught LWJ to challenge and question everything - JGY taught LXC to trust blindly and accept excuses.

LWJ learned to fight, even if it meant disrupting peace - LXC learned to look the other way in order to maintain peace.

It wasn't until LXC was pushed by LWJ and WWX that he took action but he still took action. Arguably, it would've been just as painful for LXC to suspect JGY as it would've been LWJ to suspect WWX. When you love someone and their character sinks to the gutter, the hurt is immeasurable. It is nearly the worst betrayal you can face. I don't blame LXC for wanting to avoid it.

Also, LXC had a lot of reasons to act the way he did. As readers, we have the benefit of hindsight but when people are confronted with difficult situations and insufficient information, they act differently. So yeah, it is a bit dissatisfying that he doesn't get called out for some of this foolishness, but honestly, it is a minor thing.

As for LXC and JC, I agree. It is definitely a way to one-up WWX with the 'better' Lan. We don't really know how skilled LXC is and how he can stand against LWJ or WWX. I'm rather certain he's stronger than JC at any rate. JGY was able to fight and defeat JC but he had to trick both LXC and LWJ into sealing their powers. His cultivation is strong. He's just not as sharp and intelligent as LWJ and WWX are but they're exceptional.

#submission #anti jiang cheng

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one-doesnt-simply-walk-in-bagend · 4 years

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MDZS Pacific Rim au

Ok I’m gay and love soulmate shit like souls just meant for each other whether platonic/familial/romantic just that shits so good and what better way to express that than in huge robots beating up giant monsters?

So jaegers right? Ok sect backgrounds

Yunmeng Jiang: Specialize in water battles with controlled yet fluid movements. They specialize in midranged battle with swords and whips that keep kaiju at a distance but theyre also very adept at close combat. They definitely have hidden daggers in every open crevice of their jaegers

Gusu Lan: Specialize in more aerial battles, not like sustained in air battles but using different maneuvers to gain the advantage over kaiju. They tend to work in pairs and work in tandem to disorient and overwhelm the kaiju. They’re strict because not only do you have to vibe with your copilot but you also have to know what other pilots are thinking so you can work together

Qinghe Nie: Ok so Nies made some of the og jaegers with nuclear power and low shielding because it give them a Massive Boost in power but it was also dangerous for their pilots. While the other sects went for better shielding and less dangerous power sources, the nies kept the trade off because pilots felt that risking their lives was worth protecting their people. Nie pilots tend to die young

Lanling Jin: Kind of like the Nies the Jin style has trade offs. They opt for thing light plating so they are quick to maneuver and get at weak points on kaiju. They specialize in speed and precision to keep them alive and effective. They’re basically squishy genjis

Qishan Wen: Idk I feel they have experimental but dangerous tech that they test. The sects are wary of them but they get results so there’s not much they can complain about. The wens have the advantage because so many of their population are drafted for their pilot program where the other sects take volunteers and people who want to become disciples.

This might get long so imma put the rest under a read more :L

Ok so do we want plot or soulmates first? Hmmm plot to explain the soulmates

We start with wwx and jc. Yzy trains them fast and hard with the other disciples and they both excel in their training. Wwx and jc have a jaeger named Night’s Envy.

They are a team to be reckoned with as they balance each other. Wwx is impulsive but has great instincts and his ideas are brilliant if risky. Jc on the other hand is calculating and analytical and he takes his brothers ideas and turns them into a viable plan they can both pull off.

Yzy is always harsh on wwx for his tactics saying hes going to get his brother hurt one day but wwx just laughs it off with jc bc they trust each other so well.

Also because they drift, they know of each others insecurities and help each other when tensions spike etc etc. We are here for supportive brothers ok?? They are the Twin Heroes of Yunmeng and are inseparable.

God I havent even gotten to the plot yet. Ok this is a bit of a step back to their training days but this is where wwx and lwj met. Wwx and jc go to the Cloud Recesses training facility because its the most advanced in the country. It’s strict there but their training is top notch and keeps their pilots alive. Ofc wwx gets busted by lwj for alcohol and thats how wwx gets on lwjs radar.

Lwj doesnt know how to feel about wwx, besides annoyed, because hes such an amazing pilot but doesnt control his actions. Wwx excels in the studies and training but is so carefree and flippant about everything that it frustrates him to no end. Doesn’t help that wwx loves to rile lwj up to get a reaction

They end up developing a competitive relationship and always try to outdo each other in training sims and sparing. All the other disciples know about the top two students duking it out for top spot but they keep switching between each session. Before they get to actually try drifting together wwx gets into a fight with jzx and gets kicked out (spoilers they are drift compatible)

Ok back to our Twin Heroes. Night’s Envy gets deployed for a kaiju but their fight starts to drift into Wen territory. Idk regulations or smth say they shouldn’t infringe on anothers territory so yzy tells them to come back but wwx spots the kaiju headed for an undefended village. It would take the wens time to deploy their own pilots so wwx and jc look at each other and nod. Wwx says their headed to save the village and yzy is furious telling him off for being impulsive and not listening but it was also jc’s idea (he wont say that tho bc he doesnt want him to get into trouble)

Wwx has a wild idea, jc finds out how to make it work, and they go after the kaiju as it bears down on the village. They’re able to push it back but it gets a hit in and jc gets injured and knocked out. Wwx is left to pilot solo and manages to subdue the kaiju before piloting the jaeger to crash next to the village

This is where Wen Qing and Wen Ning come in because this is their village and they pull wwx and jc out from the wreckage. Wq stabilizes both of them and wwx is the one to wake up first. Their comms were broken in the fight and the village doesnt have advanced enough comms to get to the jiangs so wwx stays and helps the village while taking care of his brother who is still Out

Little do they know that the Wens are Unhappy about them infringing on their territory and bar yzy from sending parties to collect her pilots and jaeger and theres now Tension. (Wens are just using this as an excuse bc they want more power in the jaeger industry and want to incorporate the other sects)

Once wwx catches wind of this, he enlists wn’s help in getting them out and they’re able to get an unconscious jc back into the jiang’s hands but then he himself gets caught by wen chao and wen zhuliu. he’s able to say wn was his prisoner and forced so hes safe but wwx is now in their hands.

He gets beaten, tortured, etc for information but manages to escape and find his way back to the wen village. Wq helps him back to health bc he protected her brother and he stays there because he can be safe there. (This is where he basically adopts a-yuan bc i say so)

When jc wakes up hes back with the jiangs but his brother isn’t there. He goes Off and hes doing everything he can to try and get back to find his brother but he was unconscious and has no clue about the village let alone where it is.

Soon war breaks out between the sects bc the wens are using their weird tech to take territories from the other sects and now the sects are fighting on two fronts: the kaiju and the wens. Finding wwx is lowest priority for the sects but jc is still out there searching and when lwj hears of it, so is he

I think once the war breaks out wwx starts to move his village of wens to a safer territory from both the wens and other sects bc he knows no one will be spared. During his time at he village, he ventures out to bigger wen cities and learns about their experimental/dangerous tech and learns how to use it and program it to his advantage

He makes his way back to the jiang territories once he has amassed a thorough knowledge of the wen tech. he uses that knowledge to take out wen pilots and outposts in the territories he pushes through and becomes a ghost. the only evidence of his presence is the destruction left in his wake.

Jc and lwj at this point have just started searching together and thats when they stumble upon wwx using wen tech against the wens. Jc is so angry with wwx for leaving him and being away so long but hes also crying as he hugs him close. Lwj is wary of the tech wwx is using because its experimental and dangerous idk. Jc takes wwx back and they continue fighting the war.

Now the jiangs and thus the rest of the sects have an advantage because they have an insider who knows the wen’s plans (meng yao) and someone who knows how their tech works and can use it against them (wwx). wwx is able to set up some tech to hold off kaiju so certain forces can be pushed to the wen front to end the war quicker

in the final battle wwx is able to get them a huge advantage with the tech but gets hit hard with backlash and gets knocked out during the battle and lwj and jc defend his unconscious figure as meng yao gets the final blow on wrh and the battle ends.

Idk i want lans to still be healers cuz i want lwj to take care of an unconscious wwx while jc and the others deal with the end of war idk meetings etc plus there are still like,,, kaiju attacking lmao

jgs is gonna be targeting wwx since he knows the wens tech and its uses etc. the jins go after the remaining wens bc they want their tech blah blah. they find wq’s village and wwx goes off. he goes and rescues them (wn is injured but alive) and takes them away. jgs spins this as wwx trying to amass his own tech to take over or something and people believe that for some reason w/e

the massacre at nightless city is wwx trying to talk to them about the wen remnants being no fighting army etc etc but doesnt matter and someone attacks him and he fights back but of course experimental tech isnt always good and it accidentally gets too powerful and hurts a Lot of People (jyl is alive). wwx is knocked out by the backlash and lwj takes him to safety.

wn is there and he takes wwx back to where the rest of the remnants are hiding and lwj fights off 33 elders who try to follow/intercept wn and wwx

I haven’t decided how the rest is gonna go but I have Ideas. Tbqh there’s a lot missing in between the bullets but i wanted to get this all down

#mo dao zu shi #wei wuxian #jiang cheng #lan wangji #mdzs pacific rim au #wwx #lwj #jwy #mdzs #mine #long post

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crossdressingdeath · 3 years

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Every so often I’ll come across a fic that has a summary that essentially reads: “after JFM brings WWX to Lotus Pier YZY takes JC to MeishanYu where he becomes the sect heir” and it always acts like this situation is a fix-it for the entire plot of the novel. And I was thinking about this premise over the past few days and realising just how little it makes sense. (I would like to clarify that I have not read any of the fics with this premise but that is because they all look to be written by JC stans and I decided a while ago that I wasn’t interested in anything like that. I would also like to say that I have only the vaguest understanding of Chinese culture so if something is glaring wrong in here I accept corrections.)

So. The logistics of the events coming to pass. The summaries imply that YZY left Lotus Pier with JC in tow, marched into her natal sect and without question JC was named sect heir and never had any problems ever.

Firstly: if YZY is such an amazing mother to take her son away from the ‘awful’ environment of Lotus Pier under JFM, why does she leave her daughter there? There never seems to be any mention of JYL also going to Meishan so this really just feels like YZY doesn’t actually care about anyone other than JC (in a similar way to the author not caring about anyone other than JC).

Secondly: the actual inheritance thing. As far as I can tell YZY and therefore JC are so far down the line of inheritance for the MeishanYu sect that it doesn’t actually matter. JFM calls YZY ‘Third Lady’ which based on my understanding means that she has two older sisters who would be the First and Second Ladies. In the line of succession her eldest sister would be first, then her children, then her second sister, that sister’s children, and then YZY and JC behind them (this isn’t even taking into account any older brothers she might have). I think I read somewhere that marriage order is based at least partially on age so we can assume that the two older sisters got married before YZY, and it wouldn’t be unreasonable to assume that the eldest child of the eldest daughter could be fifteen when JC is nine, so at the very least the eldest sister could have a child who is close to being of age (though I freely admit that I have little idea as to what is classed as ‘of age’ within this world) while the son YZY brings is a child who throws a tantrum over having his pets sent away for someone else’s mental health and being told he’s going to share a room.

(Sidenote: I know JFM has JC’s dogs sent away but for all we know they’re just taken out of Lotus Pier itself (as in the bit where the cultivators live). We know there’s a market area where non-cultivators live literally right outside so rather than sending three puppies miles away to other cities, couldn’t JFM have just found someone living outside of the cultivator’s part of Lotus Pier to give the dogs to? Wouldn’t that have been the easiest option? And one that could potentially allow JC to visit the dogs he was so upset about? Did he just not ask to see them so JFM decided that he didn’t actually care about them? Did JC go see them every week until they died and was just angry that he wasn’t allowed to own them anymore? What proof do we have that JC never saw those dogs ever again?)

Anyway, back on track. Thirdly: YZY married out of the MeishanYu sect and into the YunmengJiang sect. She was very insistent on this. She wanted this a great deal even though we know that JFM didn’t particularly want to marry her. I believe that by the culture of the time marrying out of a family meant you were no longer part of that family. Like you might visit or write and introduce your children to them but you weren’t part of the family in the sense that you weren’t in the line of inheritance for anything of that family. So YZY marching into her natal sect with her bratty son behind her, declaring that he would be the sect heir to MeishanYu honestly reads to me as YZY flat out not understanding anything about how family inheritance works. She married into YunmengJiang. By the rules of the time, she should be devoted to building up the YunmengJiang sect, not leaving and returning to her natal sect because she doesn’t like the mother of the child her husband brought in off the streets. JC especially isn’t in line for inheriting MeishanYu because he is a member of the Jiang clan. Honestly the best equivalent I can think of is if people expected Jin Ling, heir (and sect leader and the end of the novel) to LanlingJin to also take over the running of YunmengJiang even though nowhere is it implied that he’s in any way in line of that — JYL married out, any children of hers were part of the Jin clan with no inheritance in the Jiang clan (it’s also for this reason that I am firmly of the belief that Jin Ling was mostly raised at Koi Tower rather than Lotus Pier, who lets the heir to a sect be entirely raised by another sect? For all we know Jin Ling spends a couple of months a year with JC and the novel just happened to take place during those months, and it’s saying something if Jin Ling spends the entire time he has per year with JC running away on night hunts without JC there). So, to put a long point short: YZY married out of the MeishanYu sect and has literally no inheritance there and neither do her children.

Also, at this point hasn’t she essentially kidnapped the heir to YunmengJiang? I doubt JFM is going to say “oh you don’t like my best friends’ son so you want to take our son away. Of course you can do that I have no problem at all with losing my sect heir due to your petty dislike of someone who has been dead for years now. Goodbye.” JFM may not really stand up to YZY, but there’s some things even he isn’t going to tolerate from her. So YZY is causing a political disaster between her natal sect and the sect she married into by kidnapping the sect heir of one and attempting to make him the sect heir of the other. At the very least I feel like JFM could divorce her on the grounds of kidnapping his son and trying to depose the sect heir of her natal sect in favour of a child who by law cannot inherit that sect.

From what I can tell these fics look like they’re set up to be fix-its. Again, I haven’t read them, but I can feel just by reading the summaries and glancing over the tags that they’re intended to be stories about how without the father who ‘hates him so much’ and ‘that awful WWX who always held him back from his true potential’ that JC is so much happier and more skilled and also absolutely going to be the best person in their generation at everything and in at least one of these it looks like he ends up marrying LXC (which is just. No). Honestly it could be a fix-it for JYL and WWX who would no longer be being berated for their general existence (WWX) and hobbies (JYL, specifically how she likes to cook). Them growing up without YZY constantly breathing down their necks and having better mental health as a consequence? Yes please.

Honestly I wouldn’t mind seeing something where the concept was written by someone who didn’t think that ‘actually all the positive traits of other characters are JC’s character traits and also JC should have been the main character’. Something where it’s set up as YZY taking JC with her to Meishan, expecting everything to obviously work out the way she wants, only to be shot down. Her eldest sister is potentially sect leader if their parents have stepped down and has a fifteen-year-old child who everyone in the sect is pleased with as their sect heir. YZY and her expectations get shot down, it’s made clear that she and JC aren’t even in the line of succession since they’re officially part of YunmengJiang and not MeishanYu, and she’s told to leave. She returns to Lotus Pier, angry but still convinced everything there will go her way because JFM has never stood up to her before, only to get back and find JFM in the process of organising their divorce. This isn’t an internal matter due to her not doing the duties expected of the mistress of Lotus Pier anymore, this is a political matter where she kidnapped the sect heir and tried to depose the sect heir of MeishanYu. She’s legally part of YunmengJiang, her actions reflect on the sect as a whole and could be taken as hostile intent. Really the only way to keep this from potentially escalating is to divorce her so that everyone knows her actions aren’t condoned by JFM individually and YunmengJiang as a whole. The end result is that instead of JC somehow fixing everything as a result of having less political influence/lower status than before (sect heir of MeishanYu which is a minor sect compared to the sect heir of YunmengJiang which is a great sect) and without an extremely loyal WWX supporting him, YZY instead undergoes some consequences for once in her life and the family dynamic of the Jiangs + WWX might even manage to be healthier without her constantly being around to antagonise everyone.

Yeah, I’m pretty sure YZY’s children would be so far down the line of succession that they’d have to murder a bunch of people to stand a chance of ruling Meishan, and her taking JC, the heir to the Jiang sect, to another sect without his father’s permission and with the intention of deposing the rightful heir of that sect would be... just a bit of a problem, yeah. Also like. I suspect the reason YZY doesn’t canonically do that is because not even she is that stupid. That goes beyond being a bitch and straight into Actual Crimes. Also love the idea that JC, the most useless of all the great sect leaders, would be less useless in a position of infinitely less power. ...To be fair he would certainly do a lot less damage.

#lotus mom #grapehate #anon #asks

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razberryyum · 5 years

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The Untamed/陈情令 Rewatch, Episode 2 (spoilers for everything)

(covers MDZS chaps 6 - 10 and a bit of 13)

WangXian meter: 🐰🐰🐰🐰🐰🐰🐰🐰🐰

(a 🐰 is earned every time there is a WangXian scene or even when they’re just thinking of each other)

I always tell people when I’m trying to get them to watch The Untamed that when they get to this particular scene in the second episode, they’ll know if they will be into the show. To me, this is the game-changer moment: you’re either in or out after this. If this scene doesn’t emotionally move you enough to at least continue on with the drama, nothing else will. It is seriously one of the most romantic scenes I have ever seen captured on screen. This was the moment that made me realize not only was I now fully committed to CQL, but that I had also found a new obsession and was ready to devote myself to Mo Dao Zu Shi. After all, something that can lead to the creation of such a beautiful scene MUST hold other invaluable treasures. So into the MDZS rabbit hole I went, happily diving head first.

Even now I’m still amazed that this scene exists in the intact form that it does. I started The Untamed with little to no expectations, especially knowing the restrictions it was under AND having just finished Guardian and experiencing how poor creative decisions can arise due to censorship (or at least, using that as an excuse for their dumb story choices). As I mentioned previously, the first episode was a hard sell since they definitely did not put their best foot forward first, but I liked Xiao Zhan immediately and Wei Wuxian as a character was interesting enough that I wanted to learn more about his past that led to his death and rebirth. The small glimpses we saw of his relationship with Lan Zhan also fascinated me, but then with this second episode, the weak points of the pilot still remained: there was still bad CGI (the statue) and very amateurish technical mistakes (in the recognition scene, at one point, in a close-up shot they’re holding onto each other, but in the next far away backside shot they’re clearly standing apart from each other, only to return to holding each other once again once the camera cuts back to a close-up...whoever the editor is on CQL probably should dunk their head in the toilet every time these editing errors pop up) that made my initial viewing of this episode a frustrating one for most of its runtime. I think I spent most of my initial viewing just distracted, playing on my phone or something, until the big WangXian moment happened and then I was shocked and awed. I know I wasn’t paying close attention that first time because when I rewatched the episode later on, I realized I missed a lot of dialogue and details. I have since revisited this second episode numerous times more, and I do feel bad about how dismissive I was initially. It’s a pretty loaded episode: it has funny, poignant, creepy, mysterious, and cool moments while still feeding us bits of the overarching plot. I definitely have developed an affection for it since my first viewing and it’s become one of my favorite episodes in the series.

Of Pining & other Heart-achy Things

This simple line from Jiang Cheng is enough to make my eyes well up with tears: I can’t help but imagine Lan Zhan traveling around the world for sixteen years, most likely all alone, stopping at different places to play Inquiry, fervently hoping that maybe one day he’ll finally receive an answering chord from Wei Ying, only to be confronted by a deafening silence again and again and again. How utterly sad and disappointed he must have been every time, and yet still, he never gave up and just went to the next location to do the same thing and experience the same heavy disappointment all over again. If that doesn’t make your heart ache, I’m sorry to tell you, your heart is no longer functional.

It’s a detail I don’t remember if the novel covered, but I’m assuming that Lan Zhan was the one to bring Wei Ying’s inventions like the spirit attraction flag and the compass back to Gusu and incorporate them for use in his sect’s normal cultivation practices. I know other people have use his tools as well since that nameless cultivator at the start of the episode was also using the spirit compass, but I feel that with Lan Wangji, he probably purposefully acquired and adapted WWX’s techniques so that every time they’re used, they can serve as a reminder of Wei Ying for him. Though it does make me wonder how Lan Zhan managed to get those approved by his uncle; I can’t imagine Lan Qiren being ok with using anything that was created by the man whom he blames for the corruption of his beloved nephew and model student. Did LWJ just pretend he created them instead? That doesn’t even sound right. Maybe Uncle Lan decided to be merciful and just let Lan Zhan win this one since he was probably obviously miserable after Wei Ying’s death. Yeah, I can buy that scenario, especially since the flag and compass are pretty useful tools.

I wondered did LWJ already suspect “Mo Xuanyu” was Wei Ying before he started playing Wuji on his flute. It’s curious that he happened to be in that part of the forest at that time. I’m guessing his Wei Ying senses were tingled when he heard about Mo Xuanyu’s skills from Sizhui and the boys so that’s why he was hanging around the vicinity just in case MXY reveals his true identity. After waiting 16 years for this reunion, it’s no wonder Lan Zhan had no qualms about holding onto WWX’s wrist in public for much longer than socially appropriate.

I actually get a little emotional every time I rewatch this episode and watch Jin Ling display his mad archery skills because I would always think of how much he takes after his dad. His parents would’ve been so proud to see him all grown up like this; Shijie would’ve been so happy she probably would get teary-eyed as well every time she saw her boy in action. Sure, he’s a spoiled little princess, but he is also a pretty skilled princess with a heart of gold and I just wish they had more time together as a family.

They looked so happy, look at all those smiles. It really makes me so sad that Wei Ying will probably never be able to hug JC like that again, and of course he’ll never be able to hug Shijie period. Great now I want to cry again.

Lan Jingyi Appreciation Section

I don’t think I’ve ever mentioned this precious boy by name so far, so I wanted to take this opportunity to show him some much deserved love. Lan Jingyi with his resting bitch face and steady stream of snark was really the MVP of this episode. He actually made me laugh out loud a few times...in fact, he almost always makes me laugh as soon as he scrunches up his face like he’s smelling something bad. I recently saw someone mention that he’s really the most un-Lan of the Lans (sorry, I forgot who posted that so I apologies for not giving proper credit) and that is really the perfect description of him. I love this kid as much as I love Sizhui and Jin Ling, and I am also sincerely fascinated by him. I mean, who raised him in the Gusu Lan sect? Cuz I cannot imagine Lan Qiren being the one since Jingyi undoubtedly would’ve had all his snark driven out of him at an early age. Hell, the amount of disciplinary action he probably had to have gone through would’ve probably killed him at a young age. Did he join the sect when he was already fully formed so that’s why he’s still breaking Lan sect rules right and left? He threatened an old man and is like rude to everyone. I don’t know all 3000 rules but I’m pretty sure being mean to the elderly and insulting to supposedly mentally unstable people are probably not allowed. If anything, his disposition would make him more suitable for the Lanling Jin sect and yet he’s with the stuffy Lans. WHY? I could watch a whole spin-off series with just him and the other juniors as long as we get to learn about how he came to be with the Gusu Lan sect. He’s hilarious and adorable, and among the many the reasons why I wish we had more episodes for the present-day arc, one of them is because I wanted to spend more time with the juniors, especially Lan Jingyi, even if it meant the screenwriters would’ve had to go off book and create new scenes for them. It would’ve been well worth it to hear LJY throw more shade at people.

Random Bits of Randomness

It’s kinda crazy how WWX just stood there with his back turned, oblivious to Jin Ling’s attack. If Lan Zhan’s blade hadn’t blocked JL’s sword, that would’ve been the end of our main protagonist. I just thought that was such an odd scene...I would’ve felt just a little better if Wei Ying had at least had a little more awareness that an attack was heading for him and made some attempt to get out of the way.

Ugh, that mask. First of all it’s ugly AF, and secondly it’s so freaking ill-fitting it was distracting. Would’ve been nice if the production team gave him a mask that actually fit his face. I mean, did it HAVE to be THAT damn big? I’m amazed they don’t have bts clips of Xiao Zhan tripping and hurting himself because the stupid mask blocked his vision.

Other than being a brilliant mastermind and Oscar-worthy actor, Nie Huaisang has got to be one of the greatest cultivators if not THE greatest cultivator of all time to be able to conjure up an illusion like that. That thing was doing real damage to people. If it was just a phantom, what the heck was holding up those two cultivators in midair like that? And what kicked Jin Ling around? I know Wei Ying was able to drive people crazy with his flute during his Yiling Patriarch phase, but his handiwork still felt more grounded and reasonable than this.

Questions I still have (please feel free to answer them):

- Who was that old man at the grave? Someone NHS paid to just hang around the graves until the juniors and WWX came by?

- So NHS basically fucked up Yan’s entire family and God knows how many other people just to get WWX to eventually play his flute to lure Wen Ning out from wherever he was hiding?

- How did JGY not know Wen Ning escaped? Or did he just leave those details to Xue Yang so he didn’t really care about what happened to Wen Ning? I’m trying if this was addressed in the book but my mind is coming up empty. I don’t think it was brought up in the show though, or I just completely missed it.

Overall Episode Rating: 9 Lil Apples out of 10

#The Untamed #陈情令 #spoilers #Untamed Rewatch #WangXian #Mo Dao Zu Shi #CQL #MDZS #魔道祖师 #Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation #Lan Zhan Lan Wangji #Wei Ying Wei Wuxian #Lan Jingyi #Jin Ling #Nie Huaisang #Jiang Yanli #Jin Zixuan #Jin Guangyao

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