It always was quite wide, but now it seemed pointy, weirdly sharp — reminding him more of beast baring its teeth rather than the bright rays of sun. It was keeping him on edge.
There was something dead behind Wei Ying's eyes whenever he laughed and Lan Wangji was the only one who could see it.
“I think you are seeing things, Wangji.” Lan Xichen had said, when he had aired a fraction of his thoughts to him. “I know that Wei Wuxian had been behaving strangely lately, but it all came to an end, did it not?”
The thing was — it both did and did not.
Sure, Wei Wuxian no longer did avoid Lan Wangji at each step, making up obvious excuses not to spend time with him. The day Wei Ying came back to his old seat, Lan Wangji was both surprised and exhilarated. Whatever it was that kept Wei Ying so worked up, must have been finally resolved.
Except now Lan Wangji wasn’t quite sure whether it actually did happen.
“I like you, Lan Zhan!” Wei Ying blurted out when Lan Wangji asked him why did the other boy actively avoided him. Granted, there’s been a lot of evasion in his answers at first — enough for Lan Wangji to angrily turn on his heel and storm off, if not for this confession, halting his steps. “I like you, I fancy you, I whatever you.”
Lan Wangji turned around slowly, hardly believing his ears. Wei Ying scratched the back of his neck, clearly embarrassed.
“Recently I realised I’ve liked you for quite some time — I just didn’t know what to do about it.” He turned his head to the side, not meeting Lan Wangji’s eyes. “I know you probably don’t feel the same way. Still, I hope it won’t make—”
Wei Ying didn’t manage to finish this sentence. Lan Wangji had kissed him, before any more words could escape his lips.
At that time Lan Wangji didn’t question the sudden change in Wei Ying’s attitude.
How quickly he bounced back to where they were before he started acting weird. How haunted his eyes were during that time and the way Wei Ying had seemed hyper aware of the distance between them at all times during that month — looking almost frantic the few times Lan Wangji had tried confronting him.
He is looking all depressed and tired because how Lan Wangji is just being unreasonable. Can’t he see how much he struggled to marry him? Because his stubborn uncle wasn’t ready for it
What do you mean he is mad wen xu burned his house like relax😔
I think a lot of people forget that Wen Ning is hot. We know that both Lan Wangji and Jiang Cheng are jealous of him, but this is generally assumed to be because Wei Wuxian prioritizes Wen Ning over the two of them during the events of the novels. He prioritizes Wen Ning as a member of his found family, as a partner in crime and as his closest friend. But it is so much funnier—so much juicier, drama-wise—to remember that Wen Ning is described as physically beautiful many times in the books. An enemy of the state just stole Wei Wuxian from right under your nose, and he’s also hot. Humiliating. Devastating. 2 dead 3k injured
JC and LWJ posturing and trying to impress Wei Wuxian to get him to stay/go with them to LP/Gusu and OH WAIT HERE COMES WEN NING WITH A STEEL CHAIR (his soft brown eyes)
I think a lot of people forget that Wen Ning is hot. We know that both Lan Wangji and Jiang Cheng are jealous of him, but this is generally assumed to be because Wei Wuxian prioritizes Wen Ning over the two of them during the events of the novels. He prioritizes Wen Ning as a member of his found family, as a partner in crime and as his closest friend. But it is so much funnier—so much juicier, drama-wise—to remember that Wen Ning is described as physically beautiful many times in the books. An enemy of the state just stole Wei Wuxian from right under your nose, and he’s also hot. Humiliating. Devastating. 2 dead 3k injured
That’s why Lan Wangji deserves better than wei wuxian in a partner lmao someone loyal and someone who compliments his good looks and yearning. Wwx is a good person but as love interest just falls short in front of lan wangji
Do you have any feelings opinions or analysis of the golden core reveal or just how the scene in the ancestral hall went down?? Because I have a lot of feelings about it but I can't quite put them together into words and I love your analysis of the story and jiang cheng
thank you for the ask!!!! and thank you for your kind comments!!
god i have so many opinions about the golden core reveal, and the ancestral hall scene that precedes it. i don't quite have all my thoughts in proper essay order right now, but i will probably write another long-ass post about my Hot Takes some day soon.
unorganized thoughts as of right now:
for the ancestral hall scene, i am almost purely on jiang cheng's side. jiang cheng was rude as hell and he did verbally escalate instead of peacefully allowing wangxian to leave, yes. however, they are in his house. they are in front of his ancestors. they are in his ancestral hall, which they entered without permission. to me, it seems like wei wuxian wants to have his cake and eat it too: he wants to avoid jiang cheng and all the anger the jiang cheng of the present has at his (very real and rather devastating) mistakes, but he also wants to freely come and go in jiang cheng's own goddamn house, like he used to be able to when he still had a positive relationship with jiang cheng. if wei wuxian is going to act like jiang cheng and yunmeng jiang are nothing to him anymore, then he should properly commit to being a full outsider.
it's also interesting how wei wuxian focuses his retorts in his argument with jiang cheng on "how dare you be cruel to lan zhan!!! i'm protecting lan zhan!!!!" when in my view the vast majority of jiang cheng's verbal abuse was directed towards wei wuxian himself. jiang cheng calls lan wangji "riffraff" and "an outsider," but that...is incredibly mild language to me. jiang cheng is ruder to wen ning (by calling him a "wen dog") for heaven's sake. instead, jiang cheng is much nastier towards wei wuxian himself: wei wuxian is shameless, wei wuxian's idiotic hero complex got all his family members killed, wei wuxian is why jin ling is an orphan, wei wuxian is a heartless ingrate, etc etc.
wei wuxian, defend YOURSELF! jiang cheng is barely being nasty at all to lan wangji, but he IS being nasty to YOU! compared to all the horrid shit he yells at you, he barely even brings up lan wangji at all! at the very least, tell jiang cheng not to call wen ning a "wen dog"!
i haven't fully thought this out yet so i'm not sure how fully i stand by it, but the fact that wei wuxian gets that heated "defending lan wangji" when jiang cheng barely even insulted lan wangji that much, is very interesting. it implies to me that, while wei wuxian thinks he does not have the right to properly rebut jiang cheng's criticisms of himself, that he truly is guilty and therefore should just take jiang cheng's verbal abuse of him lying down - deep down, he is still upset about jiang cheng blaming him specifically. when jiang cheng calls wei wuxian an ingrate who got all of jiang cheng's family members killed, wei wuxian is in fact upset and does in fact want to protest. however, he is unable to openly do so because he also feels incredibly guilty himself about the role he played in jin zixuan and jiang yanli's deaths, and therefore thinks he does not have the right to defend himself against jiang cheng's rage on the same issue.
but wei wuxian is still upset and still wishes to rebut jiang cheng's fury. therefore, "defending lan wangji" becomes an excuse for wei wuxian, a pretext to find issue with jiang cheng's arguments and therefore fight back. it's somewhat similar to when someone writes an incredibly effective counterargument to your post, so you hyperfocus on mocking them for a spelling error instead: you can't think of a way to properly rebut their rebuttal, so you jump on the first thing that gives you an excuse to disagree with them and poke holes in their argument. wei wuxian believes (accurately or not) that he does not have the right to defend himself against jiang cheng; however, he is fully justified in defending lan wangji from jiang cheng, which gives him an excuse to argue back when jiang cheng insults wei wuxian.
this is evidenced by the fact that, in the ancestral hall scene, wei wuxian does not defend wen ning from jiang cheng at all. jiang cheng also gives wei wuxian shit for "let[ting] the Wen dog wander around in front of our gates," but wei wuxian just fully lets that comment slide in favor of defending only lan wangji. while this could be because lan wangji is present to hear jiang cheng say this while wen ning is not, for me, another reason comes to mind as well: in wei wuxian's mind, wen ning is also involved, however tangentially, in the deaths of jin zixuan and jiang yanli. wei wuxian's guilt extends to encompass wei ning as well. therefore, wei wuxian feels that he also does not have the right to defend wen ning from jiang cheng. it is only lan wangji out of the three people jiang cheng insults that wei wuxian has the right to defend, because lan wangji alone was not involved in the jiang family tragedy of wei wuxian's first life.
also, it was wei wuxian who first escalated a verbal confrontation into a physical one.
regarding the golden core transfer scene.....first, i find it absolutely hilarious that wen ning of all people spilled the beans to jiang cheng, and got so mad about it to boot. king, you helped operate on him. king, you helped lie to him about it. king, there is no shortage of things you have the full right to be angry with sect leader jiang about, but him believing the lies you actively chose to tell him and not figuring out that you were lying is not one of them. as someone else put it, one person between wen ning and jiang cheng had a free and active hand in removing wei wuxian's core and putting it into jiang cheng, and that person was not jiang cheng. wen ning helping violate jiang cheng's bodily autonomy and then weaponizing said nonconsensual surgery later in an argument against the same jiang cheng is kind of crazy to me, honestly.
imo (and i'm stealing from an analysis i read somewhere), wen ning was this harsh about the golden core reveal despite being one of the surgeons who nonconsensually operated on jiang cheng and then lied to him about it for similar reasons as i described for wei wuxian above. wen ning is also deeply angry with jiang cheng for a lot of things: jiang cheng repeatedly calls him a "thing" and kicks him around like he isn't a human being; jiang cheng also led the first siege of the burial mounds, which killed all save one of wen ning's family members. that is a completely reasonable thing to be mad about. but wen ning, having seen firsthand the wrongdoings of qishan wen, probably has a guilt complex of sorts about being a wen; more importantly, he feels incredibly guilty about his "role" in killing jin ling's father. therefore, wen ning probably does not feel he has the right to defend himself from jiang cheng.
but deep down wen ning is still angry. he is still incredibly angry with jiang cheng for the things jiang cheng did to wen ning. and, while wen ning may not feel like he has the right to defend himself from jiang cheng, defending wei wuxian from jiang cheng is a different matter. in wen ning's eyes, wei wuxian did no major wrong and always had good intentions. therefore, jiang cheng has no right to be angry with wei wuxian. therefore, if wen ning absolutely wrecks jiang cheng's shit defending wei wuxian (and not wen ning himself), then wen ning would be entirely justified.
second - and my thoughts on this haven't fully baked yet - there's this undercurrent in both the golden core transfer scene and the guanyin temple scene that, because wei wuxian gave jiang cheng his core, jiang cheng does not have the right to be angry with wei wuxian for the pain wei wuxian's actions caused jiang cheng. that jiang cheng is now permanently indebted to wei wuxian, which therefore voids all of jiang cheng's right to say that wei wuxian hurt him.
i don't like this undercurrent. i don't like this idea at all. if someone - even accidentally - caused you a lot of pain, the fact that they also once sacrificed themself for you does not negate the pain they caused you. you should be grateful for what they did for you, but that doesn't mean you no longer have a right to your pain.
to flip the script, jiang cheng in reality also sacrificed himself for wei wuxian: he only lost his golden core to begin with because he drew that wen patrol away from wei wuxian. it is factually correct to say that, were it not for jiang cheng, wei wuxian would very likely be dead. but if anyone were to say: "jiang cheng once sacrificed himself for wei wuxian, meaning that wei wuxian owes his life to jiang cheng; therefore, wei wuxian does not have the right to be angry with jiang cheng for the first siege of the burial mounds," that would be fucking stupid. because that's not how it works.
i hold this to be true even though there is a cause-and-effect relationship between each person's sacrifice and their later actions. wei wuxian not having a golden core explains a lot of his later lying and other behavior, and jiang cheng having been tortured because he saved wei wuxian in turn explains a lot of his later resentment and other behavior as well. but neither of their fates were set in stone. both of them still had free will and still could have made different decisions afterwards.
the above is all a lot of blaming, refutation of blaming, and morality wank, so here are some assorted non-morality opinions:
the gift of the magi esque dual-sacrifice wei wuxian and jiang cheng pulled for each other is my favorite part of the story. like holy shit.
wen ning did phrase the golden core reveal to be as hurtful as possible. i find the idea of a sacrifice performed out of love and care for the recipient later being weaponized against that same recipient to be a very interesting idea.
wei wuxian absolutely did not give up his golden core out of only a sense of duty. there was quite a lot of duty, obligation, and guilt (spurred on by jiang fengmian and yu ziyuan's last words to him) mixed into his reasons, but i think wei wuxian gave his golden core to jiang cheng because he loved jiang cheng and didn't want to watch jiang cheng suffer.
jiang cheng, meanwhile, led the wen patrol away and thus got captured in place of wei wuxian purely because he loved wei wuxian. in doing so, he specifically failed his duty to his dead parents, his ancestors, and his sect.
wei wuxian's internal narration about how he later conceptualized the golden core transfer as "his duty to the jiang" is interesting because it is written to be a post-hoc justification. as in, he came up with those reasons and that line of thinking after he already gave up his golden core, and was trying to make the outcome acceptable to himself.
jiang cheng postcanon is in a position to start healing. this take is also stolen from an analysis i read somewhere else, but the one question that's been cooking jiang cheng for the past 13 years is Why. why did wei wuxian do all that? did wei wuxian ever truly care about him, about his family, or was wei wuxian lying from the start? wei wuxian consistently accomplishes the impossible, so how could wei wuxian allow this to happen? but now that jiang cheng knows wei wuxian gave his golden core to him, suddenly all these questions have answers. the cause and effect relationship between A and B makes sense now. and now that jiang cheng has answers, he can let the questions stop cooking his brain and begin to heal and move on.
thank you again for the ask and the kind comments!
Lan wangji x Wen Xu (ancient china setting) ft . wangxian PART 1
The day Lan Kingdom lost to Wen Kingdom Lan Wangji was 6 years old. He was younger prince of the kingdom . His older brother prince lan xichen was allowed to stay in gusu and when he comes of age he can be head of lan clan operating under wen empire
Lwj was taken to Qishan’s capital Nightless city and the empress decided he when grows up would marry Crown prince Wen xu who is 8 years old . Lwj throughout the years was trained in Harem how to be perfect noble consort for Crown Prince , his whole world belonged to Wen Xu
When they got married, because of his beauty and temperament he was cherished by his husband and it made lan wangji extremely happy .
Unknown to lwj was that the general of Wen army Wei Wuxian has been in love with him since he saw him during Lantern festivities when they were 15 , now 5 years later his feelings for lan wangji only increased
But from this moment on, everything that you say to me, and do for me — I’ll remember them all, I won’t forget even a single thing. You are wonderful. I like you. In other words, I fancy you, I love you, I want you, and I cannot bear to be apart from you. — mo dao zu shi 魔道祖师 • official art by 长阳 pt. 1/2
modern wei wuxian making a separate instagram account where he just posts pictures of lan wangji because he just cant help it, his bestie-turned-bf-turned-husband is just too pretty and amazing and brilliant and he highkey wants to brag. lan wangji doesn't wanna update his own profile anyway. it's like his own personal lan wangji fanpage. it has like 50k followers. he's trying to tell lan wangji he has a fanbase but lan wangji just kisses his head and continues whatever he's doing. lan wangji doesn't really care for it nor does he get it. he's just a regular person with a job that doesn't require him to be famous to be successful (although he's known in his field. but for him, he's just doing his work well as he should be. and if that makes him known, he's just grateful to be acknowledged in the profession ((i havent decided what lan wangji's job is. whatever it is, he's really really good at it))). but he keeps letting wei wuxian take pics and post about him tho cause he trusts wei wuxian and wei wuxian seems super happy doing it
meanwhile, lan wangji's own instagram has three posts only: the first post captioned "first" with a subtle mirror selca thirst trap photo (he didnt mean for it to be a thirst trap, that's just how he exists. wei wuxian also begged for him to post something so that he would stop seeming like a creep lurking on ig without a single post or bio. it becomes this pinterest viral photo that everyone uses everywhere on sns. lan wangji only found out when wei wuxian told him. he feels quite indifferent towards it), a pic of his bunnies captioned "🐰🐰", and a pic of him and wei wuxian captioned "👨🏻❤️👨🏻" or something short and cheesy like "mine". his bio is some really pretty and poetic quote or line, very artsy, very mysterious. (yes, modern lan wangji is a serial emoji user. if he can express it through emojis only, he will.).
(of course wei wuxian himself is also quite popular. his own ig has like 100k+ followers. he's some sort of micro influencer but he doesn't profit off of it or anything, he just likes doing it for fun. he shares STEM-related info, news, etc. in between thirst traps and meme posts and the pics from the conferences he attends and presents in. people tried to cancel him once for some male-coded reason cause he said something controversial for people online but very much real and correct. he got suspended but then he made a new account and his first ig story post was that one emma roberts "surprise, btich. i bet you thought you'd seen the last of me" meme)
Wei Wuxian definitely one of those internet personalities who are hated for no reason , you bet people calling wwx a creep for “invasing” his boyfriend’s privacy and posting online.
I honestly stopped being a full on wangxian shippers because how annoying wei wuxian stans are. I see wangxian mostly as extension of lan wangji only and focus on ships such as lwj x wen xu more
I totally forgot to post it here. I need more of you like family pics with them (btw poor Xu-er hope one day we'll get his official design... I'm pretty ok with my own btw)
Hua Cheng fell in love with Xie Lian as a child and had literally nothing else to devote his life to, he was all-in from the beginning. His entire existence became Xie Lian, and that devotion carried on for centuries. That’s beautiful. That’s eternal.
But Lan Wangji? He had everything else. He had duty, rules, his sect, his position, his family’s expectations. And he still chose Wei Wuxian over all of it. Even when he didn’t understand WWX’s choices, even when WWX died, even when he had no closure, he didn’t let go. He carried his love silently for 13 years, reshaped himself, and waited.
Hua Cheng always knew Xie Lian was alive. LWJ thought Wei Wuxian was gone forever. But he still lived like WWX was his only truth. He still waited as if 13 years could be 800. WangXian is as eternal as HuaLian even tho they are not immortal or know each other from a young age.
Does anyone else get emotional thinking about how LWJ and WWX were not a couple when WWX died, and in fact rarely saw each other and had very little involvement in each other's lives?
So when LWJ spent 13 years alone, he wasn't mourning the loss of a lover or a change to his daily life, he was just. Mourning a good man? Mourning that WWX didn't exist somewhere in the world. Regretting his own lack of action and living every day knowing that the rules he believed in, the society he was a part of, would destroy a light as bright as WWX's in fear. In jealousy.
Just. I know LWJ was in love with him, so of course WWX's death was devastating. But I think it's so important to LWJ's narrative that he didn't know WWX would ever return his feelings. He had no idea that they would be married some day. So in his grief he really wasn't mourning their future together, he was pure and simple mourning WWX's loss to the world. And that hits me hard
Whimsical Kudi @chosenstarr - Tumblr Blog | Tumgag
jacobvanloon
kianamaiart
pixelskylines
germansingergirl
izzy806
baratheonpilled
dededos
