Tumgik
#katantalks
sandu-zidian · 3 months
Text
I think JC is such a fascinating character bc he’s incredibly privileged and has power from both his upbringing and title as a sect leader, and yet throughout the story we can still see the way in which the social and political wheel impacts and sometimes censures him to act a specific way.
When he speaks out for WQ and WN, he’s admonished and belittled, to remind him of what the greater political world says he should believe; and he concurs by stepping back and speaking no further because no others step up as allies to add to his dissenting voice. JC begging WWX to give up on the Wen remnants is equally JC trying to protect WWX as it is him attempting to re-establish the status quo in order to protect his own sect, even at the cost of giving up on the more morally good cause (it’s unclear to me how JC personally feels about the wen remnants but not necessarily important since he gives up on any alternative other than their demise to protect his sect and his standing in the world, as humiliating the spot is at that point).
The rumors about JC’s ruthlessness against demonic cultivators, even going so far to state that he drags them back to Lotus Pier to be tortured, both vindicates JC’s work and twists his image into a terrifying individual. And yet the ability for JC to have such a wide scale ability to go after demonic cultivators and kill in them in probably terrible ways is generally allowed, only disapproved through rumors, a tool of the cultivation world to control the narrative surrounding those that live within its system. In fact, the rumors most likely help JC in his work to remind people who to go to for ridding the world of demonic cultivators, even if the rumors are only partially true (I can’t imagine JC bringing the enemy into his home. Does he torture them? Probably. Does he do it at Lotus Pier? Definitely not).
This ruthless reputation is how we as the audience view JC at the very beginning of the story before the plot lets us into the past and a glimpse into JC in a more honest manner. The privileged are not exempt from the tools of cultural hegemony; they are just more likely to benefit from it
83 notes · View notes
sandu-zidian · 6 months
Text
Do you guys think the Lan sect created backup libraries that are just filled with copies upon copies of the books that are slowly filling the newly rebuilt main library? Imagine the feeling of losing tomes upon tomes of knowledge and history, with only a few of them having copies in far flung regions of the world. Imagine LWJ sitting at his desk for hours, painstakingly copying books or trying to rewrite books and tablets from memory because only a few people (and sometimes only himself) remember the contents of an obscure book from hundreds of years ago
135 notes · View notes
sandu-zidian · 3 months
Text
Damn you really can’t go far in the blue eye samurai tag without someone going ballistics about how someone is labeling Mizu’s gender it’s honestly kind of funny how many posts I’ve passed on this topic. Mizu is a woman. Mizu is a trans man. Mizu is non-binary. Mizu’s relationship to gender is complex and the desire of revenge is too important to like actually sit and figure out what the fuck she really wants
59 notes · View notes
sandu-zidian · 4 months
Text
Tumblr media
Blorblo bleebus… save me
57 notes · View notes
sandu-zidian · 12 days
Text
Thinking about how we only ever meet fourth uncle (sishu). We never get to meet his brothers: no dashu, no ershu, no sanshu, no xiaoshu. Just sishu. What happened his brothers and maybe sisters, we’ll never know
28 notes · View notes
sandu-zidian · 2 months
Text
I'm having Yunmeng Shuangjie feelings I am losing it over the way these two idiots try to rationalize the decisions and emotions towards the other through duty and obligation.
Wei Wuxian attempts to rationalize the golden core transfer and his subsequent actions of secrecy and running away by trying to convince both himself and JC (and others) that he made those decisions out of duty, debt, and obligation: duty to JC, debt to Yunmeng Jiang, debt and obligation towards the Wen siblings. By doing so he hopes to mask the deep truth that his singular most important decision -- to transfer his own core to JC -- was done not out of duty, but out of love. If he admits to how love pushed him to try and fix JC, he would then have to grapple with the blatant truth that not only did the decision break the trust between himself and JC, but in fact did the opposite of fixing JC. The event only further breaks them apart. WWX refuses to acknowledge any feelings of regret he could possibly have about the golden core transfer -- either because did not understand how terrible living without a golden core could be, or because he knows that what he did to JC was agonizing -- by only accepting his actions as done by a servant for a master, as a disciple for his sect and sect leader.
Jiang Cheng also suffers from this rationalization. When WWX defects and later dies, JC attempts to reinforce his righteous anger and rage towards WWX by viewing his betrayal not as done by a close friend and brother, but as betrayal done by a sect member and first disciple. By publicly and internally deriding WWX as a traitor to Yunmeng Jiang, forgoing his duty and obligation to his sect leader and the sect that took him in, JC can delude himself into accepting the derision and gloating exalted by the rest of the cultivation world and reject the complex and often contradictory feelings of grief and loss he feels towards WWX that stem from the painful truth that WWX hurt him not because he was a trusted discple, but because he was a close confidante and an almost-brother. Such pitiful emotions are unacceptable for someone so hated as WWX. So, JC aligns his emotional turmoil with the rest of society by refusing to remember the whole truth of his relationship with WWX as not just a trusted disciple, but as a dear friend and an older brother. In doing so, JC's negative emotions are quite unfair (though in his defense it's not like JC knew the truth behind WWX's confounding actions) and also never allow JC any chance to actually come to terms with WWX's betrayal and painful downfall.
I think the best Yunmeng Shuangjie reconciliation stories are the ones where JC has to admit that his comtempt towards WWX during the 13 years that he was dead was unneccessarily unfair and allowed him no place to truly accept and grieve for the loss of his brother, and where WWX has to admit to himself the true reason for the golden core transfer and how he cannot run away from the reality of the pain such a decision caused both himself and his brother, and perhaps even admit that it wasn't really the right decision, if there even is a right decision for that scenario at all. I need JC to yell at WWX about how the whole golden core transfer just serves to prove that WWX never accepted himself as family to the Jiang siblings when JC and JYL both cared for him deeply as a brother, while WWX yells back at JC about how he could possibly dare to see JC as family when all he has done in the years since his resurrection was act as if WWX was nothing but a sect traitor and stranger not worthy of a truthful conversation.
26 notes · View notes
sandu-zidian · 7 months
Text
Zhancheng scratches such a specific itch for me as a ship purely bc fics where they have a nebulous situationship that could be described as friends with benefits minus being friends encapsulates whatever the fuck kind of emotions both had in that 13 years of relative peace. Using each other as the worst form of therapy and none of this is healthy but hey it’s about sex being the vehicle of punishment and self flagellation!!!!! Amiright or amiright
55 notes · View notes
sandu-zidian · 4 months
Text
At some point I HAVE to draw Gu Xiang and Jiang Cheng together literally they’re almost the same character
28 notes · View notes
sandu-zidian · 2 months
Text
Reading Pride and Prejudice for the first time but this is so zhancheng coded JAKDJSJDJSJDJSSJSJDJ
24 notes · View notes
sandu-zidian · 4 months
Text
The sheer dissonance in my brain when I think about JC and whether he’s aroace or bi in my brain. Like he’s schrodinger’s cat he’s both aroace and bi I literally can’t explain it
28 notes · View notes
sandu-zidian · 4 months
Text
Sometimes I think about how some of the stuff JC haters have said about JC would put them on WWX’s hit list lmao
27 notes · View notes
sandu-zidian · 4 months
Text
Cant believe I’m actually writing a short paper for my linguistics anthro class on fucking Goncharov
24 notes · View notes
sandu-zidian · 1 year
Text
I think Jiang Cheng needs to get hosed down like a cat being doused with water
170 notes · View notes
sandu-zidian · 3 months
Text
Tumblr media
This comic is gonna slap so hard once i figure out how the fuck I’m gonna beam my vision down onto this fucking canvas 😭😭
16 notes · View notes
sandu-zidian · 7 months
Text
I love looking at all the stuff and hearing about the Ahsoka show (bc I'm not gonna actually watch the show that I know I'm not gonna like). It reminds me why I fucking hate new star wars media recently LMAO. Like everyone has their own opinions but uh. If Sabine was gonna do anything in her grief it was to buzz all her hair, get herself a dingy ass studio apartment that is covered in spray paint, pay her bills with bounty hunting and selling art on the side, and coping with everything by latching onto her mandalorian heritage rather than like, burying her armor or whatever the hell she did. She's got a new armor paint job every other day because she's repainting it in grief and in remembrance of family and friends who aren't around anymore but there's too many people to honor so new paint jobs it is.
Also, I don't really think Sabine would've suddenly decided to become a Jedi. Not everyone has to be a Jedi Disney!!! Are we just going to forget the tension between her and Kanan throughout Rebels? Are we going to forget how the reason why she learned to wield a lightsaber was all in service of her people, the Mandalorians? Sabine has never been, and never will be, interested in being a Jedi because it's not a lifestyle she finds appealing.
(Pretending to not care about Star Wars anymore while still very much caring about Star Wars because fuck those are my first blorbos!!)
27 notes · View notes
sandu-zidian · 1 year
Text
Not me seeing someone say that Andor was being very US-centric bc the show was directly paralleling real life experiences of racism and police brutality like. You do realize those are not just US problems.
151 notes · View notes