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#haunted guqin
poorly-drawn-mdzs · 11 months
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If a ghost says it, you have to do it.
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lanwangjihouse · 4 months
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tag of the week:
#it's the way he dramatically flaps his robes 〰 walking to his guqin 〰 like a tragic gothic hero would sit down at his organ 〰 to play a haunting love song ✳ @retronation #lan wangji's solution for everything is to whip out his guqin 〰 sad? sad guqin song 〰 happy? play a little duet with your guqin and his dizi 〰 angry? kill people with your guqin 〰 horny? play that guqin fast because you got other things to be doing ✳ @peanutbutter-nutella
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greenwitching · 2 months
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tagged by @orallech
The rules: Shuffle your On Repeat playlist and share 10 tracks, then tag 10 people
Heat of The Moment by NSP
Baby You're a Haunted House by Gerard Way
Boyfriend by Dove Cameron(Reinaeiry cover)
Curses by The Crane Wives
Hopeless Wanderer by Mumford and Sons
Strawberry Blonde by Mitski
Primadonna by Marina and the Diamonds
Mary on a Cross by Ghost
No Scrubs by TLC
Come as You Are by Nirvana
tagging: @sandushengshou @guqin-and-flute @necroscura @floral-shark @agendratum @omegal0ki and anyone else who wants to say I tagged them
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guqinstrings · 1 month
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-ˋˏ🌥 ┈┈ @hetaoren inquired ; ❛  have you considered trying something else?  ❜
   WHAT? 
   A steady blink, soft golden gaze trailing over the table toward his Uncle. The question of course causes him pause, causes him to blink confused and watch the other man across from him. Startled was definitely the word that he would use, baffled was another. He drags his fingers along the edge of his Guqin, feeling the twists and curves of the wood beneath his hand. A comfort certainly, something that eases some of the tightness in his chest. He takes a breath and moves his hands a bit to drop down into his lap. 
   “Are you–” his words falter, confusion evident on his face. He swallows and tries again, do not waste words. “Suggesting I get a hobby, Shufu?” Which was, perhaps, one of the strangest things he’s ever heard. Try something else. Something to direct his mind toward, that wasn’t constantly on the one single person who certainly did occupy so much of it. It was not a bad suggestion, but he wasn’t certain it was one that would work. Lan Wangji spent a lot of time training the Juniors, and when he wasn’t doing that he was helping the Cultivation world. That habit of appearing wherever there is chaos, it was definitely not inaccurate. 
   Lan Wangji chased any form of unrest in the world. He went whenever he was needed, helped wherever it was needed. However, he didn’t do it just to help, he chased the phantoms of a man who wasn't around anymore. Chased ghosts that continued to haunt his waking days and his dream filled nights. The same ghost he played Inquiry for every single night, and failed just as many times as he played. Hoping and begging for an answer. 
   To try something else–perhaps it was simply more that he didn’t want to. 
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   His Uncle never liked Wei Wuxian, and he liked him even less after everything that happened after the Sunshot Campaign. And he can see that his Uncle is trying to help. Regardless of what happened at the Burial Mounds, of his opinion of Wei Wuxian, of what happened after Lan Wangji fighting his own Sect for Wei Wuxian. His Uncle still and always would care. He was the man who raised him and Lan Xichen, who had taken care of and taught them what it meant to be a Lan. He was a harsh teacher, but he still cared and loved them. 
   “I am fine.” He knows what they say about him, but he physically is fine. Mentally? “I do not mean to cause you worry, Shufu.”
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yugiri315 · 2 years
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LWJ Cosplay Log
Layer 0:  Hair, Props, and Cheating!
False Lapels (假领)
I caved and made cheater lapels, a purely modern invention so you don’t die in your layers.  In winter, I will wear my full undergarments.  In summer, I will tie this fake lapel around my neck to ventilate and streamline the dressing process.  Everyone be wearing cheater lapels now!  Who cares about authenticity when you look good and aren’t overheating.
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Magic Weapons (法器)
As mentioned before, LWJ originally was a casual cosplay.  Meaning I was just going to buy him and dress up but being the nitpicker I am, I was not 100% happy with the choices on Taobao (at the time).  Hence, I made LWJ from scratch (what was I thinking, mistakes were made…).  But I did buy Bichen to keep myself to task.  Nothing makes you finish a cosplay like having a piece of it haunting you.
Made a foam guqin but was feeling burnout by then so didn’t put as much effort in recording the process.  I mean, it’s printing scaled patterns, cutting them out, and then tracing the foam.  Then it’s all glued together.  Lots of glue keeping everything together.  A lot like how I made Levi’s ODMG way back, so I’ll link that tutorial for anyone interested.  Also, anyone can make a bag so nothing to say there.  Tassels were dyed using the Koolaid method I used for the leathers.
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Yugiri’s ODMG Tutorial:  https://yugiri315.tumblr.com/post/647365286642712576/one-of-my-first-tutorials-i-made-odmg-so-i-could
Wig
Everyone in ancient China had long hair so gotta work it!  Historically, adults put all their hair up in public.  Any deviation from that would indicate anywhere from poor manners to foreign origin and was generally frowned upon.  A man having his hair down and disheveled could even be judged a criminal on the run.  Lan Wangji’s hairstyle would therefore be considered improper for a gentleman of his age and station.  Sticking a guan on your half-topknot or slapping a ribbon on isn’t some quick fix that will make you instantly socially acceptable.  You just look like a rich maybe-barbaric asshole.
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More Info on men’s hair here.
Then film was invented and eventually wuxia dramas, a genre that often explored and tested cultural conventions and featured characters from the fringes of society like orphans, outlaws, and women prominently.  Between the nature of wuxia and modern sensibilities, somehow the anachronistic half up-do was invented and accepted as “historical.”  This happens in Bollywood and Hollywood too, where some anachronistic elements cement themselves as historical fact in the popular zeitgeist.  So now hip, young gentlemen from fantasy China have this nice half-do or ponytail.  Having a guan or just a hairpin or ribbon indicated which side of middle-class you’re on and only old, stuffy characters put all their hair up (sometimes).
BUT, I would like to propose a caveat.  Wangji is a cultivator.  In fiction that means he’s a martial arts wizard knight but they are modelled after actual sages and alchemists trying to achieve immortality in the mountains and mystical Taoist priests that Chinese writers simply embellished.  In older fictions, you will see cultivators are more historically grounded and their powers are relegated to the improbable but humanly possible spectrum compared to their modern renditions, where one can be born with golden cores or immortality can be achieved easily depending on the writer.  In some cases, actual famed Taoist priests make an appearance with OPed supernatural powers like Qiu Chuji in Jin Yong’s Legend of Condor Heroes.  A note about historical Taoist priests and sages is as they have exited mundane society to be more in tune with the natural world or are considered eccentrics, they are often portrayed with their hair down similar to the style of CQL Wangji or with some more disheveled and flexible hairdos.  So it’s possible the cultivator hair style popularized in modern media today is based after some historical reality but poor historical research, lack of accurate sources, and just preference has misplaced it and now it’s part of pop culture and could not be more natural!
That explains the back of LWJ’s head but as for the front and still sporting forelocks into middle age…as my Chinese friends put it, LWJ is a 坏哥哥 that makes WWX all hot and bothered XDXDXD.
So yeah, how should LWJ style his hair is a surprisingly complicated question.  Do you go by profession, socioeconomic standing, sexual appeal, fantasy worldbuilding creativity license, his inner bad boy rebellious side?  The anime may have truly captured everything about his character on the top of his head!
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Our Hanguang-jun here may be a prim and proper killjoy but he is fashionable and sexy.  Thus his beautiful, silky locks must be free!! (and what a pain it is to maintain and store him XD)
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For synthetic wig fibers, I wetted it with a homemade detangling spray and heat when styling.  Usually, I finish wig styling with a hardcore, glue-like spray like Got2B, especially with a complicated hairdo like this.  But I’m contemplating this as a generic cosplay or hanfu wig so want to leave myself an opening to restyle it if I’m feeling ambitious.  We will see. 
DIY Wig Detangling Spray:   It’s basically 1:4 to 1:6 dilution of lotion/fabric softener/conditioner in water
https://www.deviantart.com/stealthos-aurion/art/Tut-HOMEMADE-WIG-DETANGLER-252023136 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=StFHQ0mPdY0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mcyqp2iqk0g&t=175s
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heraldoftrash · 6 months
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Was reading “She Is Haunting” and took a nap. Woke up inspired. So here’s a fun description of medium Wei Ying and a ghost.
Wei Ying woke up with words in his head. Words that rang of anger and revenge. They skittered about like beetles exposed from an overturned rock. A hot anger that scurried up his throat. A deep sadness that fluttered across his lungs, but most overwhelming a desire for revenge that webbed tightly across his skin.
The thoughts were not his own. His own thoughts sat alongside the others. Separate and objective. Like a therapist analyzing a broken patient on a chaise.
Occasionally, when he crashed on his bed from an exhaustion he had let coalesce over a few weeks, the dead would invite themselves in. His usual defenses he mentally shored up before sleeping were easily breached in his fragile state. He hadn’t let himself reach this point in a long time, but the case him and his new co-worked? Friend? were working was difficult and consuming.
But he could feel the dead in the room. The sweat under his armpits and trickling down his neck while his breath clouded in the chill before his eyes. An oppressive weight hung in the air. The room’s corners were deep, dark and impenetrable. In one corner, the dark moved, swaying like a pendulum.
He knew it spotted him watching. The dark stared back. Then in one slither, it stepped forward, separating like a scab from a wound.
Wei Ying took her in as her form took shape. Calling it a her was generous. The dead, the long, forgotten dead were never truly able to find themselves as human. They had been buried too deep in reality and in thought. The body fading and memory merging with the creatures that had taken it over.
From the way she appeared, she had been lost a long time.
Her hair no longer flowed down in waves but jutted from her head in a multitude of sharp antennas. The hair wrapped around each shined like black chitin. Her body had the form of a human - legs, torso, arms - but was unsettling in its discrepancies. Her knees bent back like the dead cricket Wei Ying had found, legs detached, in his bathroom. Her skin was an off white - not of a body recently deceased- but more of the maggots that squirmed in between the layers of fat and muscles. Her skin sagged in places and stretched too taut in others, showing protruding joints.
Her neck extended too far as if a mantis with its head sitting like a pin top. Her eyes shined black. Full black compound eyes of a fly that reflected Wei Ying sitting up in his bed in multitude. His blinked while hers remained penetrating across the few feet that separated them.
He waited. He could still feel her emotions next to his. His skill as a medium could let him cut her off, suppress her, and force her to retreat. But she had appeared now before him for a reason.
He nodded to her. “I am here.”
“You are here.” Her voice like a grasshopper’s song, the skittering legs of roaches, the flutter of butterflies alongside the drone of a cicada. Dissonant and musical.
Not all dead could communicate, even with basic repetition. Wei Ying was encouraged. “I am listening.”
All movement of her paused. As if she weighed his words heavily, until finally she spoke again. “You will not force.”
Realization and sympathy spread tepidly in lapping waves. The guqin language was useful in drawing answers from the dead but it was always layered with a compulsion few could resist. The dead had already lost so much power, and the guqin stripped away the remaining will to keep secrets close. Wei Ying understood. He too would refuse the call of guqin were he dead.
“I will not force you.” He turned his palm up in a gesture of invitation, resting it unthreateningly on his bedspread. “I will listen.”
She have no sign of acknowledgment of his words, but instead approached, her gait reminiscent of a broken moth dragging itself across the floor. She stood over him, the decay of earth pungent. Her hand hovered over his.
Looking down, he noticed her hand lacked knuckles and the rigidity of his own. Instead, the fingers were segmented and the same off color as the rest of her body. Small hairs covered them in a fine down. Without the stiffness and bone of a human hand, they hung loosely, drooping above his own.
Without fear, he lifted his head to look directly into her unblinking gaze and raised his hand part way to hers. She dropped her own to meet his, and he fell into darkness.
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treemaidengeek · 1 year
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Ten First Lines Game
(Stolen from @theleakypen because it sounds fun! I played slightly fast & loose with "first line" based on the grammatical structures of some fics. Too brain fog to tag so if you think it sounds fun too, /punts)
Rules: post the first sentence of your last ten fics. If you haven’t written ten fics, share as many first-sentences as you have.
1. Wen Zhuliu should have been dead.
His throat bore an ugly collar of scars from where Yu Ziyuan's son--the one whose golden core he knew he had destroyed--had hung and electrocuted him with his mother’s Zidian.
(Pluck the sun from the sky and swallow it whole (The Untamed))
2. Usually there is a bit of plain bread and water. Some days I see no one at all and receive no food.
(The Hospitality of the Qishan Wen (The Untamed))
3. Meng Yao knelt on the rough stone below Wen Rouhan’s throne, a guard's sword biting painfully into the back of his neck, and prayed that he had not made a grave miscalculation.
(Nevernight (The Untamed)
4. Changcheng slept, haunted by fractured nightmares.
(Whumptober: Don't Get Kidnapped (Guardian))
5. –a man under a fallen cornice, can’t feel his crushed arms or legs and trying very hard not to panic about it–
–a woman sprawled among the rubble, couldn’t find her laptop, without the servers the past ten years of her life’s work remained only on that one stupid machine, it all happened so fucking fast–
–a child hurting so bad, doesn’t understand what he did wrong, should have cleaned his room like Mommy told him and never ever yelled at her about how stupid and mean she was, now he didn’t know where she was and it was his fault–
–a man lying in a mess of broken glass and blood, nerves screaming, his cell phone just out of reach, he couldn’t pass out without messaging his wife or she would never–
"Hey. Hey, Xiao Guo."
(Whumptober: Magical Exhaustion & Protectiveness [went til I actually hit a sentence XD] (Guardian))
6. "Kneel."
"Fuck you."
(Whumptober: Forced to Kneel (Guardian))
7. Lan-er's fingers flew over the guqin strings, faster and faster. The skin at the nape of my neck prickled.
(Whumptober: Possession and Protectiveness (The Untamed))
8. Closing his eyes did nothing to block out the grunts and strangled cries coming from across the hall, but Jae Chan did it anyway. ( Whumptober: Screams From Across the Hall (While You Were Sleeping [kdrama]))
9. Da Qing ran.
Dixing's cobbled streets and rocky ground were ripping up the pads of his paws.
(Whumptober: Nowhere to Run & Caged (Guardian))
10. The Reverend Daughter Harrowhark Nonagesimus curled up into a fetal position inside her bone cocoon and fumed.
(Whumptober: This Wasn’t Supposed to Happen (The Locked Tomb))
Bonus round:
Jin soldiers sprawled all around them in the dark, their pale robes stained with fresh mud and fresher blood.
Jin Guangyao's heart pounded in his ears. He couldn't remember what had happened.
(unnamed WIP in sequence with Nevernight & Pluck the Sun From the Sky)
This was really interesting! Structurally my habits are all over the place, except that the point is to set the scene, draw the reader into the moment, & often introduce a character. Technically speaking my first sentences ran from a single word (kneel) to several paragraphs of fragments. Several of them are short sentences that really rely on their follow-ups to complete the idea.
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amorremanet · 2 years
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WIP Wednesday: “but fools will be fools”
What time is it? ……Time to shove more WIP fic at tumblr.
Today we’ve got modern cultivation AU Wangxian, and they……sure are.
Upfront, this fic’s title comes from a lyric in the classic Harold Arlen song, popularized by the exquisite Judy Garland in her version of A Star Is Born (1954), “The Man That Got Away” (see also: her performance @ Carnegie Hall, Ella Fitzgerald, Jim Bailey in Judy Garland drag on The Ed Sullivan Show, Rufus Wainwright at Carnegie Hall, Rufus Wainwright @ The Hearn (June 2016), Rufus Wainwright @ Capitol Studios, Andrew Rannells @ Broadway Backwards 2014, and—THE MOST ESSENTIAL LISTENING, if you listen to no other version of the song, listen to THIS ONE—Billy Porter performing the song as Pray Tell on Pose).
So, yeah, that’s about where Wangxian are, right now.
Specifically, that’s where Lan Wangji is about everything. They certainly did have an epic falling-out about ten years before this fic takes place—which LWJ alludes to while he’s mostly being In His Feelings—and since then, Wangji has spectacularly Not Moved On Even A Little Bit.
Wei Wuxian hasn’t moved on, either; he’s just been more openly dysfunctional in the process, in ways that have recently landed him in rehab. But he’s trying! And when they reunite (in ways that were absolutely *NOT!!* orchestrated by Nie Huaisang, he has no idea what you’re talking about* 😇), Wei Wuxian feels much more “Here You Come Again” (Dolly Parton) and “Do I Wanna Know?” (Arctic Monkeys) about it all.
*: Nie Huaisang knows exactly what you’re talking about, and his motives are about 5% “wanting his brother-in-law [Xichen] to be less stressed, which makes Da-ge less stressed,” 10% “wanting Lan Wangji to be less………Like This, because it stresses out Da-ge, Er-ge, and San-ge when he is Like This,” 10% “wanting something nice to happen for Wei Wuxian because he’s one of the few people Nie Huaisang can genuinely call a friend and he’s really Been Through It lately,” and 75% “oh, I can’t wait to see how this turns out~”
Last Wangji heard, his fated person yet endures, still alive, though not for lack of trying on his own part. Unfortunately, he commands attention, and even studiously avoiding cultivation society prattle hasn’t let Wangji escape any awareness of his fated person’s copious lost weekends, blackouts that ended with him in San Francisco or Hong Kong or Amsterdam, and two near-death brushes with alcohol poisoning.
Or was it three? Four? Oh, who even knows.
Per Xichen’s latest attempt at engaging his younger brother in gossip—in that process violating another of the many rules that comprise their family’s spiritual practice—Wei Ying has lately tried to help himself, for once, this past summer. Or perhaps his family finally forced him into it. Either way, Xichen seemed hopeful about Wei Ying’s future and Wangji cannot, for the life of him, imagine why. Probably a bunch of talk, whatever he heard about Wei Ying checking into rehab, neither more nor less. These days, the old cultivation clans produce more empty words than anything else.
Same as last night’s boy, incidentally. Slouched against the threshold, he says something about not really being the best hand in a kitchen. (Unfortunate for him, though if past patterns hold true for Wei Ying, his cooking likely remains atrocious enough to make this boy seem gifted—a thought Wangji keeps to himself. Hardly polite to discuss another boy while the one from last night wears out what little remains of his welcome.)
Apparently less than satisfied with Wangji refusing whatever conversational bait he meant to lay, the boy tries implying that he wouldn’t mind a hand, or at least a guide about what goes where, since he’d hate to mess things up. (Hardly worth the bare minimum acknowledgment, because Wangji has no time for offering him a guided tour. A kitchen is a kitchen, scarcely complicated, and Wangji has work to do. The tune he plucks out on his guqin has haunted him since adolescence, sad, and sweet, and longing, and perpetually unfinished. Failing to put it together by midnight will mean failing to satisfy another of this calendar year’s goals. In turn, this will mean that, come Friday, when he sits down with Hayden, his therapist, Wangji must discuss everything he could not accomplish in the past twelve months. So help him, that is one of the last things Wangji wants.…
If pressed, he’d call it a tie between “once more hitting the wall with this piece he can’t give up, despite all obvious evidence that he should” and “Wei Ying darkening his doorstep ever again.”
But as he ignores his increasingly unwanted guest in favor of the strings, Wangji’s fingers feel heavy and stupid, not graceful and skilled from a lifetime of practice. Thick and slow, like he’s shot his hands up full of Novocaine.… It’s hopeless—but honestly, what did he expect? Wangji’s muse for this piece died from exposure to a vapid, desperate frown and an infuriatingly beautiful voice insisting “But I—I’m straight, Lan Zhan! I like girls.”)
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sunriseverse · 1 year
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does. lwj lick his lips before firing off a concussive blast on his guqin in the intro? and other questions that are going to fucking HAUNT me.
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rosethornewrites · 2 years
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Saturday & Sunday T & G reading
The usual
Finished
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Never in doubt, by @bloody-bee-tea
Teen:
Drawing Moonlight, by Hellosweetie99
Wei Ying wants to draw Lan Zhan naked and Lan Zhan can't deny his husband anything.
Kids These Days, by Bideroo
When a group of determined children choose her mountain as the site of their... baffling ritual, Baoshan Sanren is forced to deal with it.
spirits in my head and they won't go, by faerietell
Lan Wangji had long accepted the death of his best friend and unrequited love, Wei Ying. So he certainly didn't expect the ghost of Wei Ying to haunt his apartment for a month.
General:
I got your back as I know you got mine, by hamlets_ghost
Lan Wangji thinks he may hate Wei Wuxian. His brother helps him realize that is not the case.
Hear my soul call out to you..., by Ladycroft4evr
“What else did your friend say, A-Yuan.”
A-Yuan thought about it. His friend talked a lot, and rather fast. It was hard to remember. “He…lost a toy.” he answered thoughtfully.
“Did you help him look for it?” Lan WangJi asked gently, rocking them both in place a little.
“We couldn’t find it. He said he will ask a star.”
“Ask a star?”
“He said star would grant wishes,” A-Yuan answered immediately, then turned a little hesitant. “Do they grant wishes?”
“I am not sure, little one,” Lan WangJi sighed, patting his back and arms gently. Touch seemed to soothe A-Yuan whenever he was tired or unwell, so he kept up a little rhythm. “What would you like? I will bring it for you.”
“Can…can stars bring people?”
OR... the one in which Lan WangJi gives in to desperation and makes a wish upon a lonely star...
Punchline, by jiangnan
“Sorry guys, I’ll only know love it if hits me in the face!” Wei Wuxian laughed.
Lan Wangji, heart feeling like it was bursting in distress, could not restrain himself any longer, as he walked up to Wei Wuxian.
And without hesitation, punched him in the face.
A little sweet and spicy..., by Ladycroft4evr
It's a continuation to the previous fic, but for anyone new here, WangXian met at an event hosted by Jins and fell in (a little bit of lust first😂 and then) love and got married and Wei Ying runs an NGO and LWJ stepped down from his family business and they are living HEA ❤❤❤ just some domestic fluff from their everyday life... hope everyone likes it, including you wonderful folks who stuck around for the follow up... enjoy ❤❤
Don't You Know Who I Am?, by Hellosweetie99
Wei Wuxian gets kidnapped by idiots who have hurt children, they get what's coming to them. Lan Zhan likes how powerful his husband is.
Three Can Keep a Secret (If One of them's Dead), by NevillesGran (2nd in a series, 6 chapters)
Jiang Yanli died. Wei Wuxian desperately set about bringing her back. While he was too busy passing out and then dying himself, Jiang Cheng did his best to finish the job in secret.
This is the family and history with which Jin Ling grows up.
Unfinished
Teen:
Great, great is the city of Berlin, by Wistful_Devilless
Five years ago, after Wen Ruohan's Ponzi scheme was exposed and his family completely disgraced, Wei Wuxian stood up for the members of the Wen family who had nothing to do with the fraud and got cut off from his adoptive family, friends and the entire life he led.
Lan Wangji never forgave himself for not standing up for his best friend/crush, but Wei Wuxian was as good as dead - or at least impossible to find. With a conveniently found hint and a lot of dumb hope, he goes to Europe to look for Wei Wuxian, and hopefully be able to get his friend back.
Time, by WithBroomBefore
Time travel fix-it AU, diverging from after Wei Wuxian's death and before Lan Wangji's punishment.
One: Perhaps the not-voice is a spirit, wailing its own grief. Two: Perhaps it is Wei Wuxian. There is no shortage of unhappy spirits in the world, now, so there is no certainty of that, but Lan Wangji must find out if there is any chance at all. Three: They have not taken his guqin, but the guards will hear it if he plays, and they may stop him. Four: He must then leave Cloud Recesses.
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tauremornalome · 4 years
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goddd i desperately need gifs of that scene in the donghua where wen chao and his evil minions throw lwj and jiang cheng on the ground and almost kill them
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wangxianficrecs · 2 years
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Proud Author of a New Work
@canary3d-obsessed says:
Hi Mojo! Is it tacky to rec my own fic? [Never! You wrote it, be proud!] *shrugs* Fractured Spirit: a short smutfic in which Wei Wuxian, through empathy, learns a whole lot about sex, and is inspired to make a move on Lan Wangji. He has a little trouble staying focused.
Fractured Spirit
by Canary3d E, 3k, wangxian, nielan
Summary: Lan Xichen’s wistful gaze at the guqin was enough to overcome any of Wei Ying’s reluctance. After all, he had wrestled with the resentful spirits in the Xuanwu sword, and all the spirits of the burial mounds. Unsuccessfully, a small part of him whispered, but he shushed it. One haunted guqin could hardly disturb his equilibrium. ----------------- In which Wei Ying enters Empathy with a decidedly sensual part of Nie Mingjue's spirit, and gets his head filled with interesting images. Images that distract him as he takes things to a new level with Lan Zhan.
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cqlfeels · 3 years
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@lansplaining encouraged me to finish this random meta nobody asked for, so let's talk about Meng Yao, Meng Shi, and 孟母三遷 (mèng mǔ sān qiān), a proverb about good parenting.
A warning: this is super long (even for me!) and is less quality meta and more my ADHD brain jumping around a maze of loosely related ideas. Proceed with caution!
Let me start by briefly going through why I decided to write this, because it’s important. In haunting Meng Shi’s tag in my starvation for Meng Shi content, I’ve multiple times come across the idea that Meng Shi pushed Meng Yao too hard, that she should’ve been more careful with teaching him to seek his father’s approval at any cost, and that she was too naïve. I’ve never reblogged this kind of post because 1) I personally think it’s rude to go out of your way to ramble about how much you disagree with someone on their own post and 2) if this was an isolated incident I wouldn't care either way, so I didn’t want to direct this rant at anyone in particular. It’s more to do with a tendency, primarily (as far as I can tell) from fans who haven’t had much contact with Chinese culture, to oversimplify Meng Shi and make her relationship with Meng Yao slightly disturbing, and I think part of it is due to CQL basically cutting out her entire storyline (so fans simply don’t have info about her to assess her fairly) and part is due to misunderstanding what a good parent is supposed to act like in the context of Ancient China.
[Of course, Ancient China is not a very useful historical concept, not any more than “ye olde Europe” - things change a lot based on time and place - but you know. It’s fantasy. Extremely broad trends are okay in this case.]
Anyway, the idea behind the posts I mentioned is, basically, that Meng Shi (usually through no fault of her own) is to blame for Meng Yao’s obsession with power, since his desire for approval was inherited from lessons she taught him. Just to start with, I’d argue that Meng Yao isn’t power-hungry as much as he craves security and respect, but that’s a different meta. Let’s assume that she really did teach him to be Like That. Was she wrong to do so? I’m not looking for “does that make for a happy, well-adjusted childhood?” or “would you raise your own son as Meng Shi did?” - I’m trying to figure out, would she have been considered a bad mother in the context of the society she lived in? I don’t think she would’ve.
It is surprisingly hard to find texts about the obligations of parents in Ancient China. Their main obligation is to raise filial children, but I feel like that’s not very useful: whether or not parents are good parents, children are expected to be filial, so a child being filial really says more about the child than about the parent. Maybe the parent completely missed the mark and society at large was what taught the child to be filial!
We can assume, of course, that parents were to raise good people, and that by learning what a good person looked like, we could figure out whether the parent was successful, but once again, I feel like that’s pinning things on the outcome, not on the process - the best of parents can end up with an awful kid and vice versa.
While thinking about all this, it took me a frankly embarrassing amount of time to remember the story of Mother Meng and Meng Zi, but once I did, it wouldn’t leave my mind - in part because the Meng here is the exact same Meng of Meng Shi and Meng Yao (yay! fun if useless parallel!), and in part because this is a story about how a woman can successfully raise a son by herself.
Okay, so important note: one of the most influential ancient Chinese thinkers is Meng Zi (孟子 Mèng Zǐ), who is known in the West as Mencius. If you've never heard of him - he's perhaps second in importance only to Confucius. When Mencius was still a young child, his father died, so he was raised by his mother, who is usually known only as Mother Meng (in Chinese, 孟母 Mèng Mǔ.)
Mother Meng's story is told in Biographies of Exemplary Women (列女傳 Liènǚ Zhuàn), which for around 2000 years beginning around the 18th century BCE, was the most commonly used book used to educate women. The book is divided into sections, each one showing a different way women could be honorable and good. Mother Meng's story is told in the Maternal Models section (母儀傳 Mǔ Yí Zhuàn.) The story has a few parts, some of which I'll quote, always from Kinney's 2014 translation.
Before I go on to quote it, though, I'd like to establish that Mother Meng's story is so, so famous that even if Meng Shi had never read this particular book, I'm almost certain she would've been familiar with at least the outlines of Mother Meng's story. I'm not cherry picking a suitable chapter from the book, I'm literally going with the most famous story in it because Meng Shi would be most likely to know this one if she knew no other story.
Okay, the first part of the tale takes place when Mencius is a young boy and Mother Meng is a widow raising him.
The mother of Meng Ke of Zou [a different name for Mencius] was called Mother Meng. She lived near a graveyard. During Mencius’ youth, he enjoyed playing among the tombs, romping about pretending to prepare the ground for burials. Mother Meng said, “This is not the place to raise my son.” She therefore moved away and settled beside the marketplace. But there he liked to play at displaying and selling wares like a merchant. Again Mother Meng said, “This is not the place to raise my son,” and once more left and settled beside a school. There, however, he played at setting out sacrificial vessels, bowing, yielding, entering, and withdrawing. His mother said, “This, indeed, is where I can raise my son!” and settled there. When Mencius grew up, he studied the Six Arts, and finally became known as a great classicist. A man of discernment would say, “Mother Meng was good at gradual transformation.”
According to the translator's footnote, "gradual transformation" is "a childrearing technique, whereby a child is morally formed through daily exposure to correct models of behavior."
From this story comes the proverb 孟母三遷 (Mèng Mǔ sān qiān) - "Mother Meng moved three times." It's come to mean that a parent - especially the mother of a male child - should spare no efforts to provide an environment that will give their child a good education, paying particular attention to what models are surrounding them.
I'm sure I don't need to say if Meng Shi was at all familiar with this proverb (and she would probably be), she must have been very stressed out over literally raising her son in a brothel. (Here I must mention sex workers in ancient China were often essentially owned by the brothels, so literally "moving three times" wasn't really an option for Meng Shi even if she could miraculously pick up another trade.) Meng Shi did however at least try to surround Meng Yao with the accomplishments appropriate for the son of a cultivator:
Xiao-Meng, are you still learning those things lately? [...] The things your mom wants you to learn, things like calligraphy, etiquette, swordsmanship, meditation… How are those things going? [...] His mom’s raising him as a young master of a wealthy family. She taught him how to read and write, bought him all those swordsmanship pamphlets, and even wants to send him to school.
Meng Yao actually talks a little bit about “those swordsmanship pamphlets” in the only time in canon he directly shares memories about this mother:
Lan XiChen, “Your [guqin] skills are also considered quite fine outside of Gusu. Were they taught by your mother?”
Jin GuangYao, “No. I taught myself by watching others. She never taught me such things. She only taught me reading and writing, and bought a handful of expensive sword and cultivation guides for me to practice.”
Lan XiChen seemed surprised, “Sword and cultivation guides?”
Jin GuangYao, “Brother, you haven’t seen them before, have you? Those small booklets sold by the common folk. First jumbled sketches of human figures, then deliberately mystified captions.”
Lan XiChen shook his head, smiling. Jin GuangYao shook his head as well, “All of them are scams, especially to fool women like my mother and ignorant children. You won’t lose anything by practicing them, but you definitely won’t gain anything either.”
He sighed in a rueful way, “But how could my mother have known this? She bought them no matter how expensive they were, saying that if I returned to see my father in the future, I had to see him with as much competence as possible so that I don’t fall behind. All of the money was spent on this.”
See what’s happening? Meng Shi cannot physically take Meng Yao to cultivators, but she spares no efforts in giving him the closest thing she possibly can -- figuratively, we might say she moved three times.
Of course, these booklets don’t work, but as Meng Yao says, how could she have known this? The cultivation world is very closed off - think of how the entire Mo household gathers to see Lan juniors, and how Wei Wuxian mentions once that “Cultivation families, in the eyes of common folk, are like people favored by God, mysterious yet noble.” Not just noble, but mysterious. That tracks, too - I mean, they live in inaccessible households and mostly leave to night hunt or visit each other, neither of which is an activity that would allow commoners to get much more than an occasional glimpse of them.
Now, if Meng Shi doesn’t even know that a pearl for Jin Guangshan was just a trinket, if she doesn’t know even the wealth of a major sect, how can she read booklets and decide whether that’s genuine cultivation or not? All that she sees is a chance for Meng Yao to be surrounded by the ideas and skills of the people she wants him to emulate - cultivators - and therefore she does everything she can to get him that chance. Mother Meng moved three times.
Okay, but maybe the argument is not “Meng Shi shouldn’t have pushed Meng Yao to cultivation” but rather “she should’ve pushed him, just not too hard." To that, I present another tale from Mencius' childhood:
Once, when Mencius was young, he returned home after finishing his lessons and found his mother spinning. She asked him, “How far did you get in your studies today?” Mencius replied, “I’m in about the same place as I was before.” Mother Meng thereupon took up a knife and cut her weaving. Mencius was alarmed and asked her to explain. Mother Meng said, “Your abandoning your study is like my cutting this weaving. A man of discernment studies in order to establish a name and inquires to become broadly knowledgeable. By this means, when he is at rest, he can maintain tranquility and when he is active, he can keep trouble at a distance. If now you abandon your studies, you will not escape a life of menial servitude and will lack the means to keep yourself from misfortune. How is this different from weaving and spinning to eat? If one abandons these tasks midway, how can one clothe one’s husband and child and avoid being perpetually short of food? If a woman abandons that with which she nourishes others and a man is careless about cultivating his virtue, if they don’t become brigands or thieves, then they will end up as slaves or servants.” Mencius was afraid. Morning and evening he studied hard without ceasing. He served Zisi [a great scholar whose grandfather was Confucius] as his teacher and then became one of the most renowned classicists in the world.
Notice that Mother Meng moved three times to ensure Mencius would have the highest of aspirations - to become a scholar. But just aspiration isn’t enough. Not by any means. Now that Mencius is actually studying, Mother Meng is willing to take an extreme action to ensure he's taking it seriously. Mencius doesn't have a father to smooth his path to success. He has to learn that aspiring to greatness isn't enough. He'll have to put in the effort as if his life depended on it. And if he doesn't persist in his hard work, everything he's done thus far will be useless. Sounds like a lesson imparted on young Meng Yao, doesn’t it?
A lot of fandom rage towards Meng Shi would apply to China's Best Mom Contender, Mother Meng. She gives her son big dreams, and teaches him how to go about achieving them in a society where failing is easier than succeeding. Yes, it's fair to say that Meng Shi taught Meng Yao to refuse to settle for anything less than being “Jin Guangshan's son, a respected cultivator.” Yes, it's also fair to say that she probably didn't allow him much time to play like children his age did. But unfortunately, in the world of MDZS, poor children probably wouldn't get to play anyhow, the difference is that they'd usually be working, not studying. Studying is a privilege! It’s a privilege Meng Yao could not afford but was given to him anyway, through his mother’s many sacrifices. We can even say that while she was alive, Meng Shi was trying to ensure Meng Yao would one day have a better life, at the expense of a fun childhood - and that's very Mother Meng of her, whatever our modern Western sensibilities might have to say about that.
Finally, I’d skip other tales (which show Mother Meng and an adult Mencius) and go straight to the poem that ends the Mother Meng section:
The mother of Mencius
Was able to teach, transform, judge, and discriminate.
With skill she selected a place to raise her son,
Prompting him to accord with the great principles.
When her son’s studies did not advance,
She cut her weaving to illustrate her point.
Her son then perfected his virtue;
His achievements rank as the crowning glory of his generation.
I’d like to focus on the last verse - “His achievements rank as the crowning glory of his generation.” All that Mother Meng wanted was for Mencius to not completely ruin his life, but he became great. You can so very easily see a parallel with how Meng Shi hoped Meng Yao would be a cultivator but he became Jin Guangyao, Chief Cultivator, styled Lianfang-zun, one of the Three Venerable, hero of the Sunshot Campaign.
Of course you can say “Jin Guangyao did many Very Wrong Things to get there, though!” Which, sure, okay, fair point. How many and how wrong depends on which canon we're discussing, and your own interpretation, but there’s no version of the story in which Jin Guangyao is 100% an innocent child uwu. But blaming that on Meng Shi is just... straight up weird? I don’t see anyone going “If Jiang Fengmian hadn’t adopted Wei Wuxian, he’d never have dared become Yiling Laozu!” and that’s pretty much the same logic. Would street kid Wei Wuxian have invented a new type of cultivation if he had never been taken in by the Jiang? Probably not, but raising undead armies is very much not something Jiang Fengmian could’ve predicted. In the same way, how could Meng Shi have predicted that teaching her pre-adolescent son “You are the son of a cultivator, act like one and earn your place in society” would’ve ultimately resulted in innocent deaths? How could she predict “You’re not destined to having the same horrible life I did, you can get something better than this” was a bad thing to teach? I quite honestly don’t know.
Finally, I'd like to point towards a much flimsier evidence that Meng Shi did great as a parent. And that is Meng Yao’s love. Nie Huaisang at some point comments Meng Shi is someone who Meng Yao "cherishes more than his life," and I think his assessment is correct.
Even putting aside the fact he built a whole temple to get his mother to reincarnate into a better life, and even putting aside how he refuses to flee the country without her remains, there's still crystal clear evidence that Meng Shi must've done something right. Because a lifetime of people using his mother to bully him doesn't seem to have made Meng Yao resent her. Had their relationship not have been very strong, odds are he'd feel bitter and/or ashamed of her. That doesn't seem to be the case. He's attached to her even decades after her death.
I want to be very careful with equating mutual affection with good parenting, though. When I was a rather rebellious teenager, my mother (in typical Chinese fashion) used to say that parents and children don't have to love each other as long as they're dutiful to each other, by which she meant that a parent-child relationship isn't informed by warm and fuzzy feelings, but by whether you'd be willing to do anything for each other. Specific to my case, she meant "I don't care if it makes you hate me, you will do as you're told because that's what's best for you." (That may also be the reason why people more familiar with Chinese culture see the Jiang family less as outright abusive and more as #complicated, but that's another meta.)
Whether your kid wants to hug you every time they see you is of no consequence to traditional Chinese thought - raising them to be the best they can is all that matters, because at the end of the day, you won't be around forever, but you can definitely set up your kid's life so that it goes smoothly and virtuously. How that's accomplished varies depending on many factors, but to have the goal be "I want my child to love me" rather than "I want to raise my child right" would've been considered selfish as hell.
So even if all that Meng Shi had given Meng Yao had been stern lessons about the need to go get his birthright, she would've still have been considered a good mother!! In fact, she would've been doing everything she was supposed to do, under extremely difficult conditions! (Remember the importance of environment? That Meng Yao grew up to want to be a cultivator despite having probably never even met one speaks wonders about Meng Shi's childrearing powers!!)
But just based off how over the top Meng Yao's filal dutifulness is, I'd go a step further and say that even as she did the impossible, she was also loving enough to inspire genuine affection. This is complicated because children who have present fathers could expect their mothers to be tender with them. The first century BCE text 禮記 Lǐ Jì or The Classic of Rites says that:
Here now is the affection of a father for his sons - he loves the worthy among them, and places on a lower level those who do not show ability; but that of a mother for them is such, that while she loves the worthy, she pities those who do not show ability - the mother deals with them on the ground of affection and not of showing them honour; the father, on the ground of showing them honour and not of affection.
But when the father figure is lacking for any reason, the mother must abandon her tenderness because someone must guide the child, and without a father, the role falls to the mother. A single or widowed mother had to be very careful to not smother their children with affection and raise useless, spoiled kids, or so it was thought. (The presence of Qingheng-jun and Lan Qiren is why Madame Lan can be so affectionate with the Lan boys, by the way - if she was raising them by herself she would've been expected to be much more practical. AUs where she just gets her kids and runs away could do very cool things with this idea. But I digress!)
Where was I? Oh, okay. Because Meng Yao seems to not just respect, but actively miss her, it seems that Meng Shi somehow managed to deal with her son on the ground of both honor and affection, to paraphrase.
So basically, all things considered, it seems not only would Meng Shi have been considered a great mom (if people could look past her being a prostitute, anyway) but she also went above and beyond the bare minimum. She truly spared no efforts on any front to make sure her son had everything your average gongzi would have - someone to teach him and someone to love him, access to education and confidence in his birthright. That she couldn't actually make him a cultivator, that she couldn't actually raise him in a proper home with no one being cruel to herself or him - that's immaterial. Even Mother Meng couldn't control what her neighbors did, only what she taught her son! The key point is Meng Shi tried. She did everything she could to educate her son right. You couldn't ask more of her, and quite honestly, you should probably be asking less.
Of course we can't err on the other extreme and say she was Perfect. Given MXTX only ever writes flawed characters, we can safely assume that if we'd known more about Meng Shi, we would've seen many flaws. Indeed, just the fact she didn't teach Meng Yao the guqin when he apparently wanted to learn it might point to some conflict we don't know enough to speculate about (maybe she focused too much on cultivation when Meng Yao's interests lay elsewhere? Maybe she wasn't able to sufficiently shelter him and he felt it'd be a burden to ask her to teach him anything? Maybe maybe maybe, go wild with your fics.) Nevertheless, I would never hold a female character to a higher ideal than a male character - if the male cast of MDZS can be a hot mess and still be admirable for what they're trying to do, then so can Meng Shi.
At the end of the day, when I look at Meng Shi - and I've made myself a document with all the references to her in the novel canon so I could easily contemplate her life and character - all I see is a woman every bit as determined and resourceful as her son, willing to do everything it took to raise her little boy into the sophisticated and ambitious man he became.
Finally, here's a fun little parallel that I'm 100% sure was unintentional but I still love. I said Meng Shi couldn't have moved three times. She couldn't, but I think maybe she taught her son he was worth moving three times for. Qinghe Nie. Qishan Wen. Lanling Jin. Isn't that super fun to think about?
Alternatively, tl;dr: Oh My God I Can't Believe We're Blaming Women For The Actions Of Their Adult Children In The Year Of Our Lord 2k21, Meng Shi Was Doing Her Best, Chill!
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guqinstrings · 1 month
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-ˋˏ🌥 ┈┈ @adversitybloomed inquired ; ❛  what happened?  ❜
   THE WORDS GIVE HIM PAUSE, steps halting in their retreating movements. A steady blink of his bright golden gaze and then slowly, they trailed down toward his slightly disheveled robes. Her question makes more sense when he sees the steadily darkening spot on his usually pristine white robes, spreading from the unfortunate gash on his hip that was apparently a bit worse than he had thought it was. Granted, his cultivation was high enough that eventually it would stop and heal, the risk of infection was still a possibility. He learned that with the whips marks that were scattered across his back. 
   Lan Wangji would need to find an inn to rest at and take care of those rather than heading to the Cloud Recesses immediately, it seemed. He could send a message to them, and request help that way, but it wastes time. If he had simply avoided getting injured this wouldn’t be a problem, but he didn’t earn the monocure appearing wherever there is chaos by avoiding dangerous situations. Which draws him back to the young woman heading in the direction of where he had just retreated. 
   Again his gaze flicks up at her, this time taking in more of her appearance–a red and white hanfu adored her body, and fleetingly the name Wen Qing crossed his mind in almost a vicious way. Which steadily turned to Jiang Yanli when he spotted the Jiang Clarity bell attached to her belt. 
   Haunted by ghosts still. 
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   A Yunmeng Jiang Cultivator then and so far from Lotus Pier at that too. He wonders idly what brought her all the way out here, if she was chasing the same request for help that he was from the small village. However, Cultivators don’t cross territories to take on requests in neighboring Sects land without discussing it with the Sect Leader. There is a chance she could have simply been in the area for a completely unrelated reason, Lans do not assume. Her reasons could be entirely coincidental. Regardless of them, she shouldn’t continue forward. 
   While her concern is admirable and kind it is also unneeded. Physical wounds heal, and Lan Wangji was no stranger to picking himself up off of the ground after a particularly vicious fight. So he gave her a small humming sound, to inform her he had not ignored her question, and averted his gaze from her own. Stepping around her he clearly intends to leave without answering the question at all. 
   Before he does Hanguang-Jun gives pause and tilts his head slightly in her direction. 
   “Do not continue forward.” 
   The forest was unsafe, traversing through it was inadvisable, whatever he had gone up against in there was going to take more than just simple purification but rather a summoning and destruction. If a spirit cannot be quelled, the next step was eradication. He simply needed to regroup, perhaps get another Guqin player, and return to the forest when he was ready to take something like that on. Ideally, Lan Wangi would fetch Lan Sizhui from the Cloud Recesses for this. 
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MDZSxPokemon Snippets 2: Second partners introduction
Wangji and Chenqing first appearances, and a little explanation about how the evolution works in this au
When a Pokemon is getting ready to evolve a light glow start to surround their body.
Until the moment that the process is complete the pokemon needs to be outside of the spiritual weapon; not returning even once.
During that time the pokemon starts gathering energy into itself to support such drastic change on their anatomy; so to guaranty the success of the process is advisable to the cultivators to avoid using their spiritual swords to fly during that time. The whole process shouldn’t last longer than a day at most, but if by some reason the pokemon goes back inside their spiritual weapon during that time the glow would disperse and almost all the physical sights of an evolution will be lost.
Wangji
Unexpected Partner
When he told Shufu that Bichen finally decided to evolve into Glaceon, his first response was attempting to make Lan Wangji change his mind citing the dangers of the journey. When that failed Shufu then tried to convince his nephew to either let him go with him or at least bring his Abomanow along as protection, but Wangji stood his ground.
At the end of the first day of journey the biggest danger they found was a small Snorunt trying to invite them to a snowball fight, and having to rescue that same Snorunt after getting stuck in a giant ball when it tried to make a snowman.
Not So Unhelpful Hand
The same Snorunt that has follow them for their whole trip has been acting weird since the morning, stepping into the path dancing and trying to delay them further during lunch break, even going as far as hidding their possesions under the snow.
Finally, having enough of being ignored when she was trying to help the pokemon simply picked up Bichen on her tiny arms and with a yelp from the startled pokemon she ran away leaving his human behind. Lan Wangji quickly packed their things and gave them chase but the little Snorunt was an ice pokemon that has been born in those mountain and used every single shortcut and trick in her arsenal to keep the distance between herself and the furious Lan behind her.
By the time Lan Wangji finally managed to catch the sneaky pokemon, a blizzard was in the making. In the meantime Snorunt had found a small cavern for the three of them and was in the process of picking fallen branches from the snow to start a fire.
Captive Audience
The journey towards the Ice Rock was halted by the blizzard.
Inside the cave their little Snorunt, and Lan Wangji reproached himself for start calling her that, sat a little farther away from them, attempting to be sneaky while slowly inching to towards Bichen, who was curled up in preparation to sleep and glaring wherever he noticed her getting closer (his partner still hasn’t forgiven her for picking him up and spiriting away, and much less for putting him inside of what it looked like a baby cage made of ice to keep him from running away while she was picking fallen branches).
After the third time that Bichen tried to bite the ther pokemoon Lan Wangji gently picked the moody Eevee and carefully moved him until he was on his lap, blatantly ignoring the Ice pokemon and what was probably a pout on her face.
Feeling that attempting to meditate will only cause more troubles at the end, the cultivator instead released his guqin and started playing a song that has been haunting his dreams the same way a certain Yunmeng Jiang disciple.
As Lan Wangji let the notes of the melody that he’s been composing wash around the cave the little Snorunt for the first time since they met her stayed completely still, mesmerized by the sound coming from his guqin
Chenqing
Always Watching, Never Reaching
Since the moment that she first came into consciousness, Misdreavus has been alone. She didn’t have parents, or maybe she did once but they were not there anymore. She was the only one of her kind in the mountain, and none of the other ghosts pokemon knew what to do with a baby that looked so different from them. So they didn’t.
A ghost pokemon was not like the rest: Instead of rivers or mountains or forests, the only place they could exist without fear of been hunted down was in the most cursed places; where not even the bravest souls would enter willingly for fear of never leaving.
However that never stopped her from going as close of the barrier as possible, just for the chance of catching even a glimpse of how was the world outside of her home.
Most of the time it was only the same gloomy sky but sometimes, if she was really lucky, she may catch a glimpse of something more.
Something like the far away lights of some festival, or the distant echo of a laugh. Other times it was something as simple as an old granny washing her clothes on the river, or some kids playing too close to the barrier (she made sure of scaring them back to their houses, this place was too dangerous for them to stumble upon).
When she was a little younger Misdreavus tried to get close to the humans, but they always ran away scared or tried to hurt her to force her away. Pretty soon she decided to stop trying to approach them on her own; instead she would watch from the other side, helping from the shadows. Maybe if she was good and helped them in what she could someone would see it and thank her one day.
Hopeless Cause
Misdreavus hated when people fell into her home.
None of them ever came on their own fre will; it was always someone else who pushed them inside, and their screams of agony hurt her ears more than the constant yelling of the trapped souls. She only got close enough to see the end once, and never wanted to see it again. Sometimes they had company, a pokemon from outside that fell along with them and the humans ordered to protect them while they tried to run away. Some of them tried and failed, while a few actually tried to run away leaving the human behind, but the moment the humans perished so did they.
Not wanting to see this anymore Misdreavus made songs with the answers they were looking for and sang them behind the rocks.
‘the exit is this way’
‘There’s a cave here where you can rest’
‘you need to use the dark powers, that would scare them off’
‘please don’t fight, you need to be together to get out of here’
‘eat this, it would give you strength’
But no matter what she said they only keep running away. In very few cases the pokemon could understand her, and one extremely loyal one even tried to drag their humans on the direction she was pointing at but it was a lost cause.
Would someone ever listen to her? Would anybody realize that she was only trying to help them?
Over and over the cycle repeated itself: They fall, they fight, they fail, they’re down.
So when another human fell from the sky clutching a small brown pokemon tight on his chest to protect it from the impact she wasn’t expecting anything different
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theres-a-goldensky · 3 years
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30 More The Untamed Fic Recs
Here we go again. Another Wangxian rec list. Are you bored of me yet?
Were these recs helpful to you? If so, you can check out my other Wangxian rec posts:
Part 1 - 40 recs
Part 2 - 23 recs
Part 3 - 23 recs
As ever, feel free to reblog.
You can also head over to my bookmarks on AO3.
(All recs are complete) (I’ve noted pairings, length, and rating, but not any warnings or additional tags.)
** denotes personal favorite
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1. say it's here where our pieces fall in place by Lirelyn - ~69,000 words, explicit - Modern AU where Lan Zhan meets Wei Wuxian after he adopts a small A-Yuan, because Wei Wuxian also has a past with him. Lots of adorable family feelings and emotional hurt/comfort.
As often happened, Wei Ying’s voice preceded his entrance, calling to his co-worker through the open door, “Frankie, they forgot to order spoons again, can you hold down the fort a little longer while I —”
Lan Wangji was already looking to his entrance, head turning as if magnetized toward the voice, so he saw the moment when Wei Ying’s eyes landed on A-Yuan and the smile fell from his face. He looked stricken, and Lan Wangji immediately looked to his son in alarm. A-Yuan seemed fine. His small eyebrows were pulled together in a small frown as he looked back at Wei Ying, but that wasn’t surprising, given the expression on Wei Ying’s face. Lan Wangji had seen that face beaming, laughing, whining, wheedling, and occasionally angry, but never like this. He looked blank and hollow and it stirred something fierce in Lan Wangji: he wanted to rise up and obliterate whatever was making him look like that. Then his eyes lifted to Lan Wangji and there was a flash of something almost like betrayal, before he pressed his lips together and turned his back.
“I’m going to run out to the store and get spoons,” he said in a flat voice to his co-worker, and left without looking their way again.
2. the breaking of your soul (upon my lips) by sunsandships - ~41,000 words, mature - This is an AU of the novel where Wei Wuxian puts two and two together when Lan Zhan sneaks that kiss from him. It changes a lot of things.
Against his own will, Wei Wuxian found himself glancing at Lan Wangji’s hands. They were… certainly large enough that one of them could wrap around both of his wrists. And Lan Wangji was certainly strong enough, tall enough, broad-shouldered enough to bodily pin him against the trunk of a tree with no chance of him breaking free. Lan Wangji was the first person he’d come across in his slow comb through the vicinity of where he’d been so headily kissed.
Wei Wuxian drew a sharp breath. There was a connection to be made here. He didn’t think he was crazy enough to make it. Perhaps he truly was going slightly insane with demonic cultivation if he could believe Lan Wangji, the paragon of virtue and respectability, who lived unflinchingly under Gusu Lan’s three thousand edicts, who had at best only tolerated his presence as children, would sneak up to him while he was blindfolded, pin him against a tree, and steal a kiss from him in broad daylight.
3. and his wanting grows teeth by yukla - ~25,000 words, teen - This is a very interesting AU where Lan Zhan is a traveling cultivator and runs into Wei Wuxian and the Jiangs looking for shelter during a snowstorm. No spoilers, but this fic goes to a pretty dark place that genuinely shocked me, but I enjoyed. (Still ends well though.)
Without further ado, they are hustled past the entrance and into a smaller greeting area. Huang-bobo approaches the brazier in the center with his hands outstretched, warming his fingers in the heat, but Lan Wangji hangs back. As he carefully brushes the snow free from his shoulders, he feels the burn of a curious gaze trailing up and down his body, lingering at the guqin still strapped to his back; when the sensation pauses at his face and stays there, he lifts his head.
The boy with the ribbon lights up at the eye contact, flashes another dazzling smile, and gives a little wave.
“You must be new here,” he whispers, something like laughter threaded into his voice, eyes scrunching into winking half-moons. “All dressed up in white like that! You might lose yourself in the snowstorm!”
Something stirs to life in Lan Wangji’s chest. It’s—uncomfortable, he decides, and so he steps away. Teasing should not be encouraged with a response.
4. Ghosts Shouldn't by ShanaStoryteller - ~15,000 words, not rated - After Wei Ying's death, his spirit seems to linger. The story is told from Lan Xichen's point of view. I love an outsider point of view. I also love the way the author fleshes out his character as well.
Lan Xichen means to force his way inside, angry ghost of the Yiling Patriarch or no, but then his brother lets out slow breath, settling, the pain easing from his face as he falls back into a more peaceful sleep.
His hair is moving on its own, so subtly Lan Xichen might not have noticed it if he hadn’t been looking at Wangji so intently. It’s like someone’s running their hand through his hair.
The window frosts over suddenly, thick enough that he can’t see through it. Anxiety spikes through him so quickly he’s nauseous with it, but then the frost melts away and the opening notes of Healing start up again.
He can’t tell if it’s a warning or not. Maybe it’s just an acknowledgement. Wei Wuxian knows he’s there.
5. **leading tone by silencemostofall - ~32,000 words, general - This is a modern AU set in a world where people who love you leave a mark of color on you the first time you touch. Wei Wuxian has no color on him. So much emotional hurt/comfort. So much of Wei Wuxian's terrible self-esteem.
He can cover up his palms with his gloves, so that the blankness does not draw stares. But he has no marks on his fingertips, which he cannot easily hide, and none visible on his face or neck, the blankness of which is even more difficult to hide. People look at him and, with a single glance, understand the single most devastating truth that he knows about himself.
They assume that he does not have very many marks. He may be an eccentric, dramatic person, but the likelihood that an individual has all of their marks on, say, their feet or their torso or other places that are not immediately obvious-- that probability goes down as your number of marks increases. He can laugh as much as he wants about how he loves touching people for the first time with odd places, like the knee or the elbow, but it doesn't quite mask the feeling of other that he knows he exudes.
They assume that he does not have a lot of marks. This, while a heavy weight, is not unbearably so. It is okay that they think he is not much loved. It chafes a bit, and feels occasionally like something he has to furiously push down within himself, but it is not unbearable. What would be unbearable is if they knew the truth: that he does not just have very few marks, but none. That he is simply an individual who is not loved at all.
6. **pastel by antebunny - ~7,000 words, gen - This is a remix work of the above fic. It's from Lan Zhan's point of view and just different enough to be interesting. Still lots of emotional hurt/comfort. I love this concept a whole lot, and both of these fics are great.
It’s a simmering day in May, and Wei Ying is wearing long sleeves, long pants, and gloves.
His choice of dress isn’t unusual for many reasons. For one, there’s plenty of people who don’t like strangers seeing their soulmarks. There’s plenty of people who wish to keep them private by covering them up. For another, Wei Ying spends most of his day in various chilly computer science department rooms, He could just be wearing long sleeves for that.
7. one good thing by Yuu_chi - ~27,000 words, teen - Wei Wuxian has died (or did he??) and is haunting his old home. Lan Zhan moves in. This story has a happy ending! And so much yearning!
To the flowers struggling to grow on the other side of the glass, he says, “We’re getting a new roommate. Well, I’m getting a new roommate - you’re getting somebody who might actually be able to water you for a change.” The flowers outside sway a little in the breeze, and Wei Wuxian nods contemplatively. “He can’t be any worse than the last guy who lived here. Remember when I spooked him while he was cooking and he nearly burnt the house down? Of course you don’t. You’re fucking foliage, your memory is worse than mine. I remember though, so it’s cool.”
There’s the sound of shuffling behind him and Wei Wuxian looks up to see the stranger has entered the kitchen, setting the last of the boxes down on the table. Disgustingly neat handwriting declares the box kitchen - homeware. The stranger carefully brushes his hair back from his face and, without so much as a second of hesitation, cracks open the box and begins unpacking.
“Wow, you really don’t waste any time, do you?” Wei Wuxian marvels. “You literally just got here - who cares about unpacking? Sit down for a moment, breathe, have something to eat. It’s not going anywhere.”
8. with you, I am home by tellthemstories - ~47,000 words, mature - Modern AU where Wei Wuxian is being forced to return home to entertain marriage proposals. So naturally instead he "convinces" Lan Zhan to pretend to date him. I love a good fake dating fic, and this one hits all the right beats.
Lan Zhan does that almost-smile thing that Wei Wuxian takes to mean he’s happy, or at the very least not-mad. “You don’t have any money.”
“Not true. I have the money from our last job, when we settled the vengeful spirit for the flower shop girl.” (He doesn’t. They have Lan Zhan’s money. Wei Wuxian spent his on a pack of loquats and three bottles of Emperor’s Smile wine.)
“Fine,” Wei Wuxian says. “Do it for me.”
Thinking back on it two weeks later, standing alone in the middle of Jin Ling’s graduation banquet and watching Lan Zhan walk away from him, Wei Wuxian realises that this, this was the moment when he should have known. He should have realised in the way Lan Zhan doesn’t hesitate or negotiate and just says with that half-fond, half-exasperated tone he gets sometimes, “Fine.”
9. and in the spring i shed my skin by wvlfqveen - ~11,000 words, teen - Modern AU where Wei Ying can't find Lan Zhan, but hey, there happens to be a rabbit here instead. Features a very slow Wei Ying, emotional hurt/comfort and accidental love confessions.
Immediately, his heart settles and he grins down at his new friend. “Oh, hello there,” he coos, reaching out to pet the fluffy ears. The bunny is very, very still under his hand.
“Did Lan Zhan bring you today?,” he continues cooing. “I’m sorry I missed that, but your Dad didn’t tell me he was bringing you.”
Lan Zhan rarely brings his rabbits to work since they are as tolerant of crowds and unnecessary noise as he is. They were probably relevant to today’s lesson but…
Wei Ying frowns. “Why would he leave you alone? And where is your cage?”
10. how, or when, or from where by sarahyyy - ~10,000 words, gen - Wei Ying wakes up in the hospital with amnesia and can't remember the last few years of his life, including his best friend and the guy he's in love with.
Jiang Cheng rolls his eyes so hard Wei Wuxian is surprised his eyeballs don’t just fall out of his eye sockets. “That’s the worst part. He did. Whatever mating ritual you both have going on is so fucking weird, Wei Wuxian.” He snorts. “If you’d stayed asleep for any longer, I’d have lost my shit and thrown my myself out a window just so I wouldn’t have to talk to Lan Wangji again.”
Wei Wuxian blinks at him. “Is this a good time to ask who Lan Wangji is?”
Jiang Cheng glares at him. “Your Lan Zhan,” he says, annoyed. Wei Wuxian must look as confused as he feels, because Jiang Cheng’s annoyance bleeds out into concern. “Your Lan er-gege? Your soulmate, Lan Wangji?”
Wei Wuxian shakes his head. “No bells are ringing.”
11. ** a shared plate by yukla - ~26,000 words, teen - This is an absolutely gorgeous fic about Wei Wuxian traveling the world post-canon to rediscover himself and restore his faith in humanity and eventually find his way back to Lan Zhan. The whole thing is great, but the last two chapters are just *chef's kiss*
Lan Zhan,
Just as the mountains stand unchanging and the green rivers flow ceaselessly, we will meet again — and between then and now, you cannot hope to avoid my letters, either! Haha! Lan Zhan, I’ve seen so many things and met so many people, and it’s only been a month!
I miss you already
It’s so hot that I find myself missing the wind in Gusu’s mountains. Your poor Wei Ying is I’m melting away, Lan Zhan...
I’m realizing now, sixteen years is a long time to be away — the world is vast, and quite a bit different than I remembered. And in sixteen years, a child can also grow up into a man! It’s your job to catch me up on A-Yuan’s fun childhood stories! I do remember hearing something about a pile of rabbits...
12. with your arms outstretched to me by annemari - ~14,000 words, teen - Lan Zhan finally gets up the nerve to ask Wei Ying on a date, but things don't go as expected. Features emotional hurt/comfort (are we sensing a theme with these recs??) and just regular hurt/comfort.
"Oh, man, I was hoping you had some water with you," Wei Ying says. "I totally forgot to bring any for myself. Stupid of me."
"There is enough for both of us," Lan Wangji says. He has another bigger bottle in the car, as well.
Wei Ying hums but he only takes a few sips. He presses it back into Lan Wangji's hand. "I don't need any more."
Lan Wangji is considering arguing, but then Wei Ying shifts a bit, moving his ankle, and gasps very, very quietly.
13. ** A Lot of Edges Called Perhaps by hansbekhart - ~22,000 words, explicit - Wei Wuxian has finished traveling and returned to the Cloud Recesses and Lan Zhan. But their lives never do run smoothly.
“Lan Jingyi,” Wei Wuxian says, recognizing him after a moment. His heart slams against his rib cage. “Where is Lan Zhan? What’s happened?”
Lan Jingyi flaps a hand at him, gulping air. Wei Wuxian hands him the water, and leans back against Little Apple’s side as he waits impatiently for the boy to get his breath back.
“I’m so glad I found you,” Jingyi gasps, just as Wei Wuxian is about to throttle a proper answer out of him. “Hanguang Jun was in such a state when he woke up, we didn’t know if you’d come and gone already.”
“Where is he, Jingyi,” Wei Wuxian says, as evenly as he can. “What happened?”
14. So Why Not Crack Your Skull When the Mind Swells by greenteafiend - ~14,000 words, explicit - Wei Wuxian is cursed to feel extraordinary pain unless he's touching Lan Zhan. Yet more of Wei Wuxian's self-esteem issues and Lan Zhan's steadfast devotion.
“Are you hurt, Wei Ying?” Lan Wangji asks, pressing his hand to Wei Ying’s forehead to feel his temperature. There is no fever, but that doesn’t do much to mitigate Lan Wangji’s worries.
“No—I’m not hurt,” says Wei Ying, sagging forward to lean his weight into Lan Wangji’s hand like he can’t help himself.
It’s so strange—Lan Wangji can feel what Wei Ying is feeling. Although the relief is still very profound, wisps of other things are making themselves known; happiness; wistfulness; guilt. It’s all so fleeting that Lan Wangji can’t even begin to deduce what has provoked those feelings, but he wishes he knew their source.
15. puzzle pieces by Anonymous - ~6,000 words, teen - Modern AU where Wei Ying and Lan Zhan are roommates, and Wei Ying has started borrowing Lan Zhan's clothes.
“Hm? Oh.” With sleepy eyes that does— things to Lan Zhan’s heart, he blinks and tugs at the lower hem of the shirt, which is riding just above the curve of his thighs. Does Lan Zhan’s mouth water? Maybe. Yes. Absolutely. “Ah, yeah, sorry. Laundry day caught up to me before I could catch up with it. I saw this shirt left in the washer a few days ago, and—“ He blinks up at Lan Zhan through dark eyelashes that Lan Zhan wants to kiss, maybe, and gives him an uncharacteristically hesitant smile. “Do you mind?”
I mind the fact that we are not married, Lan Zhan thinks. But he can’t say that, and his tongue doesn’t know how to say anything else. So he stays silent.
“Oh,” Wei Ying says after a moment. “If you—oh, damn, I should’ve known, this is like real silk, must’ve been super expensive. Fuck. Okay, here, uh, I’ll take it off—“
16. ** Nothing But Trouble by brooklinegirl - ~60,000 words, explicit - Modern AU where Wei Ying is trying to be a good brother and get Jiang Cheng laid. Somehow this plan involves pretending to date Lan Zhan.
"I won't!" Wei Ying insists. "I'll ask out someone...high stakes. I'll find someone. I'll...okay, how's this? I swear that I'll ask someone out and keep at it for at least two dates."
"No."
"Three dates."
"Nope."
"Okay, okay, five. That's fair! That's more than fair! One person, five dates." He points at Jiang Cheng. "You have to do it, too. That's how a pact works."
Jiang Cheng stares at him. "Five dates," he says flatly. "Five. And yours can't be Nie Huaisang."
17. i'm the one for your fire by occultings (microcomets) - ~43,000 words, explicit - This is a Modern AU and a Cherry Magic AU! (Side note: GO WATCH CHERRY MAGIC IF YOU HAVEN'T.) But in short, Wei Ying turns 30 without losing his virginity and gets the power to hear people's thoughts when he touches them. He gets more than he bargained for with Lan Zhan. The author does a good job of translating the story to these characters. Wei Ying is not forced to be like Adachi, the main character of Cherry Magic. He's still himself, and the same goes for Lan Zhan.
Lan Zhan’s voice is so clear, so sudden that it’s as though it’s spoken, the slice of a sharp object through velvet.
He’s touching me.
Wei Ying startles for a moment, wonders if he’d somehow heard his own thoughts instead, but — no, that had definitely been Lan Zhan’s steady, factual baritone, loud and clear.
God, this is still so weird. It still doesn’t seem totally real. But how else can he account for hearing Lan Zhan’s voice in his head, as clearly as if he’d spoken to Wei Ying directly?
18. like blue flame over my fingertips by tangerinechar - ~37,000 words, teen - Modern AU where Lan Zhan and Wei Ying are roommates, and Lan Zhan just finds himself wanting to take care of Wei Ying.
Lan Wangji’s roommate. Is a problem.
He doesn’t get an answer to the roommate problem until the next morning, when Lan Xichen texts him telling him that the apartment he’d suggested (and helped pay rent for) to Lan Wangji said in the small text that it’d be two people per apartment, the second bedroom wasn’t actually a guest bedroom, sorry, Wangji, you can move in with me if you want, I have space —
No. Thank you for your kind offer, Brother, but I will be quite fine, Lan Wangji texts back.
19. ** some impulse of delight by handclaps - ~20,000 words, explicit - College AU where Wei Ying decides he needs to help Lan Zhan get used to touching people. Lan Zhan agrees. Wei Ying is dumb and in love. Lan Zhan is less dumb, but still as in love.
Lan Zhan shakes his head and fumbles, tries to push the cotton wool into Wei Wuxian’s hand.
“Sorry,” Wei Wuxian says, realising. “Touching people, I know.”
He feels dumb. He thought he’d worn Lan Zhan down more than this, that they were friends now and that his whole no touching thing was mostly overcome. He took Wei Wuxian’s hand easily, right? He looks down at his belly full of scratches, dabbing at them moodily.
“Sorry,” he says, again.
Lan Zhan makes some kind of noise, but he is busy packing the first aid kit back, placing everything exactly where it was before.
“Lan Zhan, you’re going to have to do something about this,” Wei Wuxian complains. “I know you don’t like touching people and usually it plays as a kind of gentlemanly thing, but what about emergencies?”
20. And I Will Call You Home by Spodumene - ~43,000 words, explicit - Wei Wuxian returns after a year of traveling and rejoins Lan Zhan in the Cloud Recesses. He's doing a good job of pining and ignoring the obvious. Look, at this point, it shouldn't be a surprise that I'm a sucker for stories where Wei Wuxian deals with his ~*~issues~*~ and Lan Zhan takes care of him, whether he asks for it or not. This story has lots of that. I also enjoyed the case fic aspect of it.
“I do, I think,” Wei Wuxian admits. “Would be nice to see his face again after so long. And at least this time, I’m going to show up draped in finery. What do you think, Lan Zhan? I can’t possibly disgrace him—or you—wearing a cloak like that.”
“You could never disgrace me,” Lan Wangji says gently, that soft, affectionate look back on his face.
Wei Wuxian grins, warmed to the tips of his toes.
“I’ll remind you of that later. The next time I’m three jars deep and feeling especially shameless, you’ll have to remember those words, Lan Er-gege.”
“Of course,” Lan Wangji says simply.
Wei Wuxian smiles some more, overwhelmed by fondness.
21. darling, am i a chore? by martyrsdaughter - ~7,000 words, explicit - Wei Wuxian really, really wants Lan Zhan to call him 'gege'. Lan Zhan knows a trump card when he sees one.
“You know what I want,” Wei Wuxian purrs, reaching up on his tiptoes to throw his arms over Lan Wangji’s shoulders. “Call me gege, won’t you? Call me and I’ll stop.”
Lan Wangji knows he will not stop, regardless of what he calls him. Still, he thinks about it. If there really is a way to make Wei Wuxian stop, should he not consider it? He doesn’t have any real interest in curbing his husband’s insatiable mischievousness, but he does like knowing things about him—everything there is to know.
If there’s something that persuasive in the world, that it can bring Wei Wuxian into submission when no one is under threat, could he stop himself from seeking it?
22. your name, safe in their mouth by astrolesbian - ~11,000 words, gen - Wei Wuxian & Lan Sizhui fic with the Wangxian in the background. Lan Sizhui wants another dad and Wei Wuxian wants a son, they just don't know how to explain that to each other.
“Hush,” Wei Wuxian says, in a low croon, like someone quieting a baby. Then he blinks, and looks away, awkward. “I mean—you shouldn’t speak. You’re tired. Rest if you need to.”
Lan Sizhui tucks his chin into his uncle’s shoulder, and lets his eyes fall closed.
“It doesn’t hurt too much, does it?” Wen Ning whispers to him kindly.
Lan Sizhui takes a deep breath, and takes stock of all his aches, his ringing ear, his hollow chest, the way he had selfishly wanted Wei Wuxian to keep speaking to him in that careful voice, like he was just a child to be soothed and there was no real danger. How dangerous, to pretend. “No,” he lies. “It doesn’t hurt that much at all.”
23. when you're doing all the leaving (then it's never your love lost) by tardigradeschool - ~26,000 words, teen - AU where Lan Zhan with Wei Wuxian to Jin Ling's one-month celebration. Things go down, and it leads to Lan Zhan discovering Wei Wuxian's missing golden core. This obviously will not do, and oh look, the best doctor in the world just happens to be right here.
“How—“ Lan Wangji chokes. “His core —?” He looks at Wen Ning, half accusatory in his shock. “Jin Zixun could not have—“
“No, no!” Wen Ning says, holding out his hands. “He hasn’t had one for years, don’t worry!”
This is not as reassuring as Wen Ning seems to think.
“Please explain,” Lan Wangji says, pained. He feels for Wei Wuxian’s pulse instead; in the absence of a golden core, it will have to do as reassurance that he’s still alive.
Wen Ning is so anxious that the story comes out in a ramble, out of order. Lan Wangji wants him to hurry up, but he’s also not confident in his own ability to speak, so he just keeps quiet and lets him talk. His heart feels as if it’s about to fall from his chest, beating nearly twice as fast as Wei Wuxian’s does under his fingers.
24. A Match in the Making by lareine - ~30,000 words, teen - A Modern AU where Wei Wuxian sees his single and bad ass friend Lan Zhan and his single and bad ass friend Mianmian and gets some very dumb ideas.
To return to the point: Lan Zhan was peak adulting. Mianmian was peak adulting. And if they were both at the peak, then they were on the same level. What level? That mysterious level thing that everyone mentioned when it came to dating.
Whatever level it was, Lan Zhan and Mianmian were on it together. Wei Ying nodded to himself. So, Lan Zhan and Mianmian were allowed to date each other. The next question was: were they compatible? Did they have chemistry or whatever the fuck people called it?
25. Crack me open, pour you out by Tenillypo - ~16,000 words, explicit - Lan Zhan gets cursed to say whatever he's thinking. So his worst nightmare. Mutual pining, first time, all good stuff.
Lan Wangji freezes with his chopsticks halfway to his mouth, lifting his eyes to stare at Wei Ying.
"I know! Just completely paralyzed." Wei Ying mimes being still as a board. "I don't know how long I lay there. It must have been two days at least. Good thing for Little Apple. He wandered back to the village when he got hungry, and eventually a few of them got brave enough to come look for me. When they rolled me over, the figure fell out of my hand and I could move again. Cunning little thing." He shakes his head. "I was weak as a kitten for a little while after they took me back to the village, and by the time I recovered, they'd burned the whole place to the ground. Such a waste."
Lan Wangji slowly lowers his chopsticks, heart racing unpleasantly. In his head, a picture of Wei Ying slowly wasting to death alone in the middle of the woods, with Lan Wangji a hundred miles away and none the wiser.
26. Crazy, Rich Cultivators by ShanaStoryteller - 13,000 words, no rating - Lan Zhan wants to bring his boyfriend home to meet his family. There are some things he definitely didn't realize about Wei Ying.
“He has a life here,” he says down the line. He doesn’t say that he has a life here too, one he likes a lot more than the one he had before. He misses home. He’d miss Wei Ying more. But he doesn’t say that, doesn’t say how vibrant he is and how beautiful and how little interest Lan Zhan has at seeing him among the high society he grew up with.
“Well, your life is here, Wangji,” his brother says. “You can’t stay away from home forever. You’re going to have to see how he does with the rest of us sooner or later. It might as well be sooner.”
It might as well be never, as far as he’s concerned. His family can meet Wei Ying at their wedding.
“I’ll ask,” he says.
Wei Ying has no interest in cultivation politics. They’re horrible, the five clans have an iron tight alliance that’s thirty seconds away from collapsing in on itself the moment someone from one sect steps on another sect’s toes. It’s the worst and he hates it. Surely even just the idea of it will be so horrifying to Wei Ying that Lan Zhan will be able to tell his brother no.
27. just our hands clasped so tight by electrum ~4,000 words, teen - Lan Zhan really, really, really just wants to give Wei Ying everything he wants.
“Despite your best efforts,” Wei Wuxian agrees. He shakes his head in mock-dismay. “How much longer do you think that will last if you keep buying everything I look at?” When this, too, fails to soften Lan Zhan’s resolve, he tries a different tactic. “We couldn’t even afford potatoes,” he says. “Back when I was with the Wens, at the Burial Mounds. Only radishes! If I survived that, I can certainly survive without another pretty comb.”
Lan Zhan’s expression is at once unmoved and yet somehow stricken. “I would have bought Wei Ying potatoes,” he says, like Wei Wuxian doesn’t know, by this point, that Lan Zhan would buy him anything. “If I had known…”
28. ** Rotten Work by ShanaStoryteller - ~64,000 words, no rating - Jin Ling & Wei Wuxian with Wangxian in the background. Jin Ling is the best boy! And as he tries to rehabilitate his sect and his family and keep himself alive at the same time, he realizes, horrifyingly, that he has to be the mature one.
29. ** an act too often neglected by Ariaste - Lan Xichen / Meng Yao, ~61,000 words, explicit - The Wangxian is in the background here, but the main story is about Lan Xichen meeting Meng Yao on a dating app and getting immediately dickmatized. Meanwhile. Meng Yao refuses to be won over by Lan Xichen's charm. It goes as well as you'd expect for him.
The caption below is equally sparse: “5’6. Demanding.”
Lan Xichen feels a low simmer of arousal kindle in the pit of his stomach, and he gazes at that word-- demanding --for nearly as long as he’d stared at the photograph. He swipes right.
A few minutes later, a notification pops up: < Hm, the size of your hands is promising.
This is familiar. This is the flirtation stage. Lan Xichen knows the steps to the dance.
30. My Land Beneath Me by longleggedgit - ~30,000 words, explicit - Modern AU where Wei Wuxian is cast out of his sect and out of China to America. And Lan Zhan just...follows.
Lan Zhan always waited for his tea to cool before drinking, which meant he had nothing to do but give Wei Wuxian a judgmental look. “No more McDonald’s.”
“You’re just bitter because you get indigestion from anything that actually tastes good,” Wei Wuxian grumbled.
Because Lan Zhan was insufferably mature and patient, he didn’t rise to the bait. “We have time to stop somewhere before class,” he said.
“Fine. But you’re paying this time.”
It was a bad joke, and predictably, fell flat; Lan Zhan was, after all, paying for everything, every time. Wei Wuxian frowned into his mug.
“You know,” he said, after another swallow, “you really don’t have to be here. I’m going to figure something out.”
*
Interested in 86 more The Untamed fic recs?
Part 1 - 40 recs Part 2 - 23 recs Part 3 - 23 recs
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