The Only Acceptable Amount Of Distance Is No Distance, Obviously

zhancheng to me is like this:

imagine a scenario in which jiang cheng actually does know quite a lot about lan wangji's tastes: his favorite and least favorite tea flavors, snacks, food, books, music, authors and artists, and so on.....except jiang cheng specifically sought out this information during the 13 year timeskip to make lan wangji miserable.

maybe lan wangji is just publicly A Bitch to him one too many times and jiang cheng finally decides he's had enough. so, for the next few months, jiang cheng spends an inordinate amount of time gradually sussing out everything he can learn about lan wangji's tastes. what kind of tea does he like? what kind of tea does he despise? which authors does he always read? what temperature does he prefer his room to be? what new trends in music does he find completely unbearable? when he passes through a region whose cuisine he hates, which restaurants does he find slightly less intolerable?

and then, the next time there's a discussion conference at lotus pier, jiang cheng weaponizes this knowledge. actually, the next time there's a public event anywhere wherein both jiang cheng and lan wangji are in attendance, jiang cheng weaponizes the fuck out of this knowledge. he makes sure that the tea lan wangji hates the most is served to everyone. he has his disciples buy all the local snacks he knows lan wangji has a preference for, just so lan wangji can't have any. he makes sure lan wangji's room and bed are heated to the exact temperature lan wangji finds just too hot to be comfortable. whenever lan wangji's favorite obscure author releases a new work that gusu lan doesn't think is cultivation-related enough to include in their library, jiang cheng has a bunch of his disciples swoop in and buy as many copies as possible, just so that it takes lan wangji a bit longer to get his hands on a volume. jiang cheng "leaks" to a few minor sect leaders the idea that lan wangji actually does like spicy food, and said minor sect leaders actually believe that information for a full year of hosted visits and public events.

this continues for all 13 years of the timeskip. of course, jiang cheng isn't outstandingly successful in actually making lan wangji miserable, because there are limits to what jiang cheng can actually achieve and what he's actually willing to spend enough time on; realistically, all he's accomplishing is causing lan wangji some minor irritations once in a while. but it's enough for jiang cheng to know that, every time lan wangji has to pass through yunmeng, he's absolutely miserable because jiang cheng has persuaded/paid every musician in the area to play the one song lan wangji hates the most.

jin guangyao, of course, figures out what's going on immediately. but even loyalty to lan xichen isn't going to make him sacrifice potentially useful dirt by putting a stop to jiang cheng's asshole behavior himself, so instead he just decides to watch and wait. he also just finds it really funny. meanwhile, lan wangji, for all 13 of these years, never figures out what's going on. he never figures out why he can't ever find the lanling-style osmanthus cakes he hates slightly less than the rest of lanling cuisine whenever he passes through the area and runs into disciples from yunmeng jiang. when his favorite obscure author releases a new book, he gets in line at the indie bookstore in qinghe he went out of his way to visit, and just doesn't question why everyone in front of him is wearing purple.

postcanon, though....now lan wangji has one hell of a source of insider information (wei wuxian), so the turns are about to get fucking tabled.

I love this soo much. I saw it once and now it's ingrained in my brain. It is soo soothing to watch, this man is like, just so happy in this.

I so very desperately want a crack MDZS mistaken identity AU where somehow the entire Jianghu becomes convinced that not only are Wei Wuxian and the Yiling Patriarch separate people, but that Wei Wuxian has become the Yiling Patriarch's wife/concubine/sex slave (whichever is funnier).

Bonus points if the misunderstanding becomes so widespread because Jiang Cheng throws a hissy fit over the misconception. Lan Zhan should also have exactly one (1) drink and promptly try to go on a drunken one night wife-stealing quest.

MASSIVE KUDOS if someone manages to write in everyone jumping to the conclusion that Wen Yuan is Wei Wuxian's biological child with the Patriarch, and just immediately assuming in relation to that, that evil resentment powers somehow gave Wei Wuxian a working womb. Somehow. Cue Lan Zhan chugging vinegar in a corner.

Everyone is screaming inside. Wei Wuxian says at some crucial point to everyone the truth that he is the Patriarch. No one believes him.

I would write this AU myself, but while my heart says yes, my mediocre writing skills say no.

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.

Wip?

Mother duck and the ducklings🩷

Soulmates AU wangxian where their skins reflect. So Lwj has all of Wwx' scars (bite marks from dogs, belt scars from Madam Yu, a surgery from when JC needed a kidney, a burn mark on his chest, etc) and Wwx has... Nothing. Because they have the same callouses from sports and bruises from training but Lwj has no scars nor does he write on himself or accidentally gets ink on his hands. So Wwx thinks he has no soulmate, because even when he writes things to him (Hi! How are you?? WHO are you?? Are you well??? Are you there????) he gets no reply. Lwj does see it, he just knows his parents were soulmates and their relationship was fucked up, and that his uncle's soulmate didn't want him, and that his brother's relationship with his soulmate is stranged because he likes someone else. So he doesn't want a soulmate at all.

Anyways. Shit happens in Wwx's life, he hits rock bottom and starts getting tattoos. Why not? It's not like he's saddling anyone with them.

Cue Lwj watching ink accumulate on his skin while he's working a CORPORATE JOB. His uncle thinks it unprofessional and they are creeping towards the neck and hands.

So he writes to his soulmate to please stop.

His soulmate: so you DO exist uh.

Lwj: I do not want a soulmate. Or tattoos. Please refrain from getting any more and from trying to contact me.

Wwx: ...

Wwx: okay.

Thirteen years later Lan Wanji falls in love with the gorgeous Biomedical Engineer working at his company, Wei Wuxian, and is doing his best to approach this man who has been so very obviously mistreated (Wwx is on his YLZ era with others). They get closer little by little. And then one day they are on a date and Wwx rolls up his sleeves and Lwj comes face to face with a lotus flower sleeve he knows intimately well.

Cue angst.

Pretty Wei Ying is always good - bunnies only make it better

suguru's bday

Whumpee who is recovering after the whumpTM, but it's not going great. They're so frustrated with themselves, with their caretakers, just with everything. Everyone is so soft and understanding and it bothers them and they want to scream, but they know they should be grateful.

Until Caretaker comes along. Caretaker isn't 'nice' like the others, they don't take bullshit. They're good for Whumpee, but they don't baby them. They treat them like an adult with anatomy, and it's so refreshing for Whumpee.

"You want to stay up, fine. But you will tell me when you can't anymore, because if I have to drag you off the floor we're both in trouble. Understand?"

"Stop whining. What do you need?" (And then they get or do whatever it is without issues or judgement.)

"Want to tell me why you're doing worse today?" -- "No..." -- "Okay."

"Where does it hurt?" -- "It doesn-" -- "Don't give me that, I can see it hurts. Now tell me where."

Caretaker trusts Whumpee to know what they need, and lets them know again and again they won't take this nonsense of hiding their pain. They're practical, and kind, and Whumpee needed that.

i have a severe disliking for the concept of wei wuxian & jiang cheng reconciliation which honestly, didn’t start out that way. my first reaction to seeing these tags and also stories was that “oh nice, jiang cheng growth will be shown post-canon” because for me this reconciliation is only possible in the scope of a redemption story. and yes, jiang cheng’s redemption specifically. but much to my surprise, alot of these conceptualisations put the weight of reunion and reconciliation squarely on wei wuxian’s shoulders and that feels fundamentally wrong somehow, when i know that it wasn’t wei wuxian’s outlook that needed changing but jiang cheng’s.

sometimes, it is so funny how my experience with mo dao zu shi keenly parallels my experience with the my hero academia fandom. for anyone in the know and for anyone who would relate, jiang cheng & bakugo katsuki are so hilariously alike–especially in the way the fandoms treat these characters and how the fandoms place the weight of mending things on the wronged main characters. (and if i allow myself to get even more meta–even the tag wars are so alike i feel myself going through deja vu these days lol)

listen, i get the appeal of creating fanon explanations for unsavoury actions of characters we like and i know that some things can be enjoyed in a varied manner but there’s a way to make a canonical asshole more likable that doesn’t handwave away their wrongs or create justifications out of thin air for them or–and this one actually grates on my nerves–recontextualise things so the person they wronged somehow “deserved it” and it is: taking accountability and atoning and having that introspection and awareness, through whatever journey of growth, that yeah i fucked up and now i need to unfuck things if possible. but now that i have dipped my toes into stories of reconciliation and found myself a bit, uh, repulsed, by how wei wuxian had to make more efforts (or even equal efforts), it has permanently soured me on the concept. which is a bit of a shame.