i think i made a post about this already, but i think it's really important to understanding both of them and their relationship that (in the novel) the iconic part of Wei Wuxian's first impression on Wen Ning wasn't being kind and friendly to him, after meeting him practicing alone, and wasn't the mere fact of niceness.
and it wasn't standing up for him to his shitty cousin and talking him up, and making sure he got a chance to show off, either.
it was that after Wen Ning choked under pressure and fumbled that chance and made Wei Wuxian look stupid for championing him, Wei Wuxian was not even a little bit mad at him. it did not even occur to Wei Wuxian to be mad at him. most people would be mad at that point! he clearly expected to get yelled at!
but Wei Wuxian was so far from that kind of insecurity he did not even experience these events as humiliating, and he thereby revealed he had not taken those steps to build up Wen Ning on his own behalf, with any selfish motive, but purely from the unfiltered impulse to help.
Wei Wuxian did not in the least feel that having taken Wen Ning's 'side' (unsolicited, probably almost entirely unwanted) entitled him to anything from Wen Ning.
Wen Ning actually has high standards! it was not the little bit of kindness or the brashness that won him over, it was the fact that that kindness persisted undisturbed after Wen Ning provided the provocation of failure.
Mu Qing, grinning: Before you were what?
Feng Xin: Before I was-
Mu Qing: What?
Feng Xin: Before I was inter-
Mu Qing: Before you were interrupted?
Feng Xin: Cut me off one more time and I swear I'll-
Mu Qing: What?
Feng Xin: *makes frustrated sound*
Xie Lian, nervously: Stop that. Before he hurts you.
Ok so another rant about Jiang Cheng cause I have so much beef with this man. Of course this is from a personal perspective and you're allowed to disagree. I don't care. Tbh a lot of my issues with Jiang Cheng are really issues I have with some of his stans
Like one of the excuses his stans have to defend him is that he couldn't have possibly known what Wei Ying was thinking and it's not fair to expect him to but like... no??? I very much disagree with that statement because Wei Ying isn't just some stranger. He is his brother. The person he grew up with. The man he's known for almost 2 decades. The person who's protected him and whom he has also protected almost all his life.
Yeah he might not have been able to discern the truth but he couldn't give his brother the benefit of the doubt? His grief and anger doesn't excuse him from blindly blaming him for the Jiang massacre. From blindly believing what other people were saying about him. Yeah Wei Ying had faults but that didn't matter because the Wens were always going to attack regardless. Like they did with the Cloud Rescess. Their accusation of Wei Yings insolence was just an excuse and it's a VERY common tactic employed by dictators to justify their actions.
And i genuinely do not understand why so many of his stans give him a pass to be an asshole just because he has anger issues or just because of his trauma. Whilst at the same time ignoring Wei Yings. I don't know why so many of his stans can't comprehend the difference between understandable and justifiable.
And the fact that he expected Wei Ying to just abandon the Wens and leave them to die was immoral to the extreme. The fact that some of his stans see Wei Ying 'breaking his promise' as being more egregious than Jiang Cheng basically allowing a genocide to happen right under his nose is unbelievable. Not to mention it's worth arguing that he might have actively participated in the genocide. The fact that he solely blamed Wei Ying for the death of Jin Zixuan and doesn't even try to argue that hey maybe Jin Zixun shouldn't have blindly accused Wei Ying of cursing him and tried to ambush and kill him.
It's like he had all of his mother's anger but none of her backbone. The fact that he never shares with Jin Ling the whole truth about how his father and mother died was so manipulative because it was basically him passing on his generational trauma to a child he was supposed to protect. All he does is parrot the opinion of others. Let's other peoples words get to him. Allows his jealousy to warp his perception of someone he's known longer than almost anyone. How is it Lan Zhan can understand Wei Ying and see the conflict within him better than Jiang Cheng does?
Also politics isn't a one way road. There are multiple routes that can get you to the same destination. Him showing some backbone and defending Wei Ying even if it was just giving him the benefit of the doubt could have impressed enough clans for them to support him but no. He shows no standard of his own. Terrified of going against the status quo. He's actually a good mirror to Lan Zhan with the difference being Lan Zhan realized his faults in the end and tried to fix them whilst Jiang Cheng just rooted himself more firmly in his rotting muck.
And again you are allowed to like him regardless. You don't have to desperately find ways to justify his actions.
even if he was objectively guilty of every single crime levelled at him at any point in the narrative, the cumulative influence of jin guangyao's time as a spy for the sunshot forces during the war and his tenure as xiandu is still orders of magnitude more substantive, and positive, than anything else accomplished by any other named character in the text.
even if you believe he did every single foul thing he is accused of doing, he still saved the life of the gusu lan heir and ensured irreplaceable sect knowledge wasn't lost during the razing of the cloud recesses. he still killed literal tyrant and megalomaniac wen ruohan and ended a war. he still pushed through his watchtower program, which saved countless commoners' lives, and rooted out corruption in jinlintai to the point that no jin sect disciple would ever think about accepting a bribe in the city. he is the reason why wangxian get to fuck nasty on every surface of the cloud recesses post-canon--because jin guangyao used his influence to ensure the cloud recesses were rebuilt. he is the one who pulled nie huaisang's hands out of the fire after nie mingjue set all of his precious belongings on fire. he's the one who arranged to have those burn wounds tended to. he still built a temple in his mother's image and interred her body beneath guanyin so that all those prayers would go to meng shi, to grant her a better afterlife. he still gave fairy to jin ling.
even with the least charitable, worst faith interpretation of his character, these things remain true.
When I first started MDZS I had a theory that the fierce corpse they were piecing together was WWX's original body and it had been kept and experimented on by some wannabe demonic cultivators hoping to figure out how he was so powerful.
And I'm thinking about it again.
Imagine WWX, fresh from whatever afterlife his soul was in, ready to just fulfill the requirements of the spell that brought him back then lay low and spend the rest of his new life in peace. That plan immediately gets thrown off course by a cursed hand and LWJ showing up. He is now, through circumstance and his own inability to Let Things Go, dragged into this mystery of finding out who this fierce corpse is and why it's here.
And at some point he realizes he recognizes those hands. He knows those marks. He remembers those calluses.
And he has to deal with the fact that the betrayal and rage fueling it is HIS betrayal and rage. All the emotions that he set aside to stay focused on keeping himself and the Wen remnants alive for as long as possible are now right in front of him and impossible to ignore any longer.
When does LWJ put it together? After WWX? At the same time? It would be hilarious and tragic if LWJ realized first and assumed WWX already knew so he didn't say anything.
No idea how this would fit into the whole thing with NMJ and JGY. I could see a story getting away with NHS still getting involved for WWX (I don't care what anyone else says, they were FRIENDS), but is NMJ dead? Did he die the same way? Is he alive and just hanging around the background this time? Is he now a SECOND Fierce corpse they have to deal with? I can't imagine him dying the way he did and NOT becoming a fierce corpse.
It's been too long since I've read canon to dig into the details but this idea has been hanging around in the back of my head ever since I first read it. Anyone else thought the fierce corpse was WWX? I can't be the only one.
Need to see more people talk about Hua Cheng’s intelligence.
He literally learnt a language just by looking and studying it despite having no context for it. He has a near perfect memory and can recall multiple facts in any given area. He runs a gambling house and city and manages all the money. He’s picked up multiple art forms and can recreate Xie Lian perfectly down to his exact robes just from memories he had of him when he was a child. He learnt how to use a saber just through watching Xie Lian once and got so good at it in such a short span of time Xie Lian assumed he was a general and then he won Mt Tonglu. Have I mentioned his memory it’s genuinely scary the other immortals in the series don’t have a memory like his. He reads multiple academic essays and books from multiple kingdoms and time periods implying he’s a polyglot on an insane level. He’s amazing at investigating.
HE BEAT MULTIPLE CIVIL GODS AT DEBATING.
Like just incase you don’t get that, these guys got to heaven for being so smart. They were considered good enough to become a god because of their intelligence and he outsmarted them. He’s so so intelligent like yeah he’s great with a sword but that is Xie Lians thing, he’s only as good as he is because he wants to be Xie Lians equal.
This guy spent his immortality learning literally everything (except calligraphy) and he mastered all of it and sure he is immortal but it’s clear he mastered it in short spans of time. He was carving statues like Michelangelo in under 10 years. Again he learnt to be amazing with a sabre while he was still alive so like 3 years max and mostly from memory. He established a full city with labour, homes, jobs and runs it despite dying as a starving orphan at 17.
HE BEAT MULTIPLE CIVIL GODS AT DEBATING.
lan xichen painted ayao four landscapes?? which ayao displayed proudly in the study off the reception hall?
HC that wwx likes to ramdonly sing and even bounce in a little dance, his voice is so pretty sometimes random young master try to hire him or swoon him to be his little spoiled caged bird, LWJ is ENRAGED
Ok, but listen.
Jiang Cheng, in nothing but his inner robes, gunning it barefoot down the walkaways of Lotus Pier, because his beloved nephew (age four) decided to escape his bed and climb into an unsecured boat that is now being pushed by wind into the lake, much to Jin Ling's wailing dismay.
JC didn't even think to use Sandu, just launched himself full-tilt from the end of the pier with sheer physical brass of knowing he can eat that twenty metres...
A few minutes later, he was rowing the boat back with one arm, the other full of a wailing nephew, adrenaline finally settling down.
💠💙Fortunate Lines
By:diamondbruise
Summary:
“Ah, Lan Zhan, you will not believe what kind of divination I got! Now I feel embarrassed for dragging you here.”
Lan Wangji raised an eyebrow, an unpleasant feeling in his chest. There was a distinct impression of Wei Ying’s dramatics hiding true disappointment.
“You know what she said?” Wei Ying asked, with levity in his voice that was so perfect Lan Wangji could have been fooled, had it not been for the way Wei Ying kept his gaze away from him. “I’m never going to get married!”
or, lwj and wwx visit a fortune teller
Chapter:1/1
Words:8,114
Status:completed
“Ah. This man will bring Master Lan some heartache, I am afraid,” she said, and with the words, Lan Wangji couldn’t help but freeze, eyes widening ever so slightly. How could she know? Lan Wangji’s heartbeat was suddenly going out of rhythm. A guess such as this from a fraud would be risky, even insulting to an everyday customer. How could she know that his love was a man?
~~
according to the fortune teller, Wei Ying would not get married, and Lan Wangji would. A happy marriage, the woman had described it. How could a marriage be happy, if it was not with Wei Ying? Lan Wangji felt sick thinking about it. The woman had been right; his love was both deep and devoted. It would be a betrayal against both himself and Wei Ying to move on to someone new.
~~
Was there a person in the sects who could compare to Wei Ying? Was there another person walking the earth who could make his heart ache so maddeningly? The thought was unimaginable.
~~
wwx: will i have a wife? fortune teller, getting a thousand visions of wwx calling himself lwj's wife: no wwx: elaborate fortune teller: i don't want to
😂😂😂