anything goes

[talesfromnatea]

okay Shen Jiu&Shen Yuan are siblings AU except they meet AS DISCIPLES. Shen Yuan, head disciple of the Animal/Beast Husbandry Peak (or, if we go with this post's awesome ideas, the Hunting/Scouting Peak) runs into Qing Jing Peak Head Disciple Shen Jiu and they're both just staring at each other because that's my face!!! Why do you have it!! But Shen Jiu leaves without a word except a huff bc he's not admitting to being disturbed.

Shen Yuan writes his (peasant) mother that night like. Hey mom!!! What the fuck!! We even share a family name!!! What!!!

He gets a hesitant reply that yes. That might be his ge. Who Shen Yuan did not know he had. He thought he was an only child! Turns out his parents sold his then-two-years-old brother for a sack of rice during a famine year when their mother was pregnant with him! What the FUCK!

So after having a crisis he goes to find Shen Jiu and is like. So... hah... I'm your didi?

obviously Shen Jiu is fucking pissed. What do you MEAN his parents sold him as a slave but lovingly raised their SECOND child! He wants to kill Shen Yuan so bad. Also someone but Yue Qi now knows he was a slave. This is not good.

Shen Yuan is not giving up though!! He wants to know his gege and also he feels fucking BAD and wants to do SOMETHING about the fact that his newly found Jiu-ge is so clearly fucking miserable. He can see it!! That's his own face!!! You can't lie with his own face!!!

[just-close-the-door-ghosts]

Hey hey do you think that Jiang Cheng ever woke up and realized hes known Jin Ling longer then he knew Jiang Yanli?

That he ever realized hes been without his sister and family longer than he ever had them? That hes been grieving longer he than she loved him for?

Do you think about how one day he'll realize Jin Ling is older than is Jiang Yanli ever was?

Do think he could remember the paths that were there before Lotus Pier burned? Would he be able to see the ghosts or does he just feel them with every breath? Does he ever find himself faced with a wall cause he was remembering and trying walk somewhere that doesnt exist anymore?

[ohohoho-nyohohoho]

lol peak hilarity is when people put lwj's grief and jc's grief anywhere on the same level. i know amanormativity has a death grip on society but losing your gradeschool crush who youve barely spoken to at all is nowhere near comparable to losing your entire family

[monabee-draws]

Everyone always forgets that Yunmeng Jiang was specifically known as the one sect that was open to the public. Normal people spent time on the grounds, hawkers sold items and food on the water at Lotus Pier. Townspeople brought their kids there to watch the cultivators. When the Wens came for the Jiang, do you think they discriminated? Picked and chose who to kill? Spared the civillians, the new disciples not even in tailored purple yet? The grounds staff? The cooks and labourers and elders and babies? They slaughtered not just a sect but a community, and Jiang Cheng was dragged back days after the bodies were left piled there, and tortured by the same man who killed his parents. Then he had to come back and clear the bodies and bury them and scrub the blood from the wood and pray and perform exorcisms until the resentful departed could leave for the afterlife. How many bodies do you think they never managed to dredge from the lotus roots in the lake?

[monabee-draws]

Crazy that one of the underlying takeaways from MDZS is that you should be punished for believing what people show you.

Jiang Cheng was never told anything about wwx's actions and repeatedly watched him break all his promises to him and YMJ (even after he, JC, gave up himself and YMJ for wwx, he did not receive the same in return from his own knowledge pool.) Yet, he is very suddenly expected to be remorseful and grateful when Wen Ning reveals the core transfer. The world JC lived in had these truths: WWX isn't helping to rebuild our home, training our disciples. He has become a drunk and is actively undermining the sect and what little authority I've been able to cultivate, which is devastating enough when I am the only young war hero/sect leader excluded from the great sects' sworn brotherhood allyship. When I (JC) try to find out why he's doing this and stop him, he brushes me off and makes light of it. I continue to tolerate it anyway because he's wwx and I love him. Then, instead of putting in the work he should be to save our people he turns around and saves the Wens, at great expense and danger not only to our sect but himself, as one of the only people I still have left. When I tell him he cannot have both he chooses them. I still make sure he knows he's loved and belongs with the Jiang (by bringing our sister to see him before her wedding) even though, by all accounts, he has foresaken us on what feels like a series of whims. Then, he kills our brother in law (he never gives me an explanation or excuse.) Then, when I and everyone he's pissed off confront him, he gets our sister killed, goes crazy, and is torn apart by his own ghosts. Somehow 13 years later after picking up all the pieces he left behind and raising the nephew he orphaned and rebuilding the sect he abandoned (alone) I am simultaneously expected to be remorseful for not being grateful to him all these years for something I never asked him to do or knew about, and which I was actively tricked into and repeatedly lied to about. In the adaptations where I don't immediately fall on my sword and punish myself in the epilogue (seclusion in CQL the donghua) the fanbase determines I am a terrible horrible person for it.

This post is also tangentially about Lan Xichen taking the heat for JGY's actions even in MXTX's writing (abandoned by LWJ at the height of his pain, entering seclusion.)

[clementine-and-pomegranates]

Golden Core Sacrifice

MXTX wrote the golden core sacrifice the way she did for a reason!

Look, if she wanted WWX to give up his golden core for JC there were many different ways JC could have lost it, but I think this is why I never understood people who say JC never loved WWX.

By choosing to protect WWX he not only is giving a statement that he does in fact love WWX, whether that love is familial or platonic or romantic you pick, but he's putting WWX on equal ground. As someone of high birth he's giving up his life for someone "lower" than him.

I see so many arguments where people say that JC never saw WWX as nothing more than a servant but that just seems off, because would someone like JC, give up their life/golden core for a servant?

Sure ig if he's all noble like LWJ, but JC is a sect heir up until this point. He is keenly aware that people will fall on their swords if it meant protecting the heir to the sect aka him. He is meant to be a leader, a ruler, he is above his men and WWX is meant to be one of those men.

His mother tried again and again to remind JC of that. That WWX is the son of a servant, and should things go south he is meant to protect JC with his life. Even JFM reminded him of that in his last moments!! WWX life was less than that of JC, but in JC sacrificing himself he rebutted that statement.

And when I see people claim that JC is selfish and doesn't deserve WWX's sacrifice, that just ruins the point of it!! It spits on both of their sacrifices!!!

They lost their golden cores for each other, like????!!! That is what makes it such a tragedy!

JC could not bear the thought of losing WWX or worse having him killed by the wens, and WWX could not bear to see JC lose his cultivation, the thing he lived for.

And yes WWX and the whole class/debt system comes into play, but even then I can't imagine a lowly servant willingly giving up such a priceless thing. Forcibly yes, but even if it was willingly, JC wouldn't have had the reaction he did at the end of the series.

MXTX did not expand much on his thoughts in the books and we got like 3 paragraphs describing JC's pov, but it was put at the end for a reason (this ofc is not including the other adaptations). It was meant for us the viewers/readers to take a moment to reevaluate what we knew of JC and his character, (even though were given foreshadowing with the Yi city arc).

All in all this is a way of me saying I don't get it when people say JC never loved WWX.

[obsidianstrawberrymilk]

You know some anti-JC stuff I'm like. Okay I disagree with you but at the very least I can understand how you would get to that point. JC mistreats WWX? Like, you're wrong, but a (very) selective/biased reading of the text makes it *possible*. JC abuses JL? Again, you're wrong, but a specific reading of and ignoring the cultural context of the text makes it *possible*. JC is a bad sect leader? Like, again, biased reading of the text, but.... sure. Whatever.

Some things though, I'm like. Literally what are you talking about. "JC forced JYL to marry JZX" it is an entire plot point that he did not do that. The book tells you the exact opposite.

"JC didn't rebuild Lotus Pier/the Jiangs" okay so who did? Because you understand the whole clan was gone, right? It was him, WWX who was getting drunk off his ass then dying, Jiang Yanli who eventually married out and also died, and a husk of Lotus Pier which had still been damaged and altered by the war. They had.... a few buildings? What the fuck else do you call what he did than rebuilding?

"JC never protected WWX" it is an entire plot point that he lost his core doing that. That is a thing the book tells you. He covers WWX with his body against his own mother and Zidian during the siege on Lotus Pier.

[allpiesforourown]

Imagine you're in a car with your brother and you keep telling him "slow down, you're going too fast" and he insists "I've got it under control!" And then he hits someone and you get out of the car and find out it's your sister. Your brother goes crazy from guilt and starts running over people left and right until you have to kill him to make sure no one else dies. Then years later he comes back to life and his boyfriend reveals oh guess what fuckhead. The reason he had to drive recklessly everywhere? Because he gave his legs to you in a secret operation you didnt know about. That's mdzs from Jiang Cheng's pov

[allpiesforourown]

Thank you mdzs fans for being miserable and unable to take a joke like always

Edit: image description via @nebulations

[eiyriny]

Sometimes i think JC antis somehow projects the dynamic between Wen Ning and WWX to JC and WWX relationships.

Everything JC antis love to say abt WWX needing to appease JC—how WWX supposedly had to be careful around JC, cater to his emotions, and take the blame for his actions—actually applies far more to how Wen Ning behave with WWX.

Just look at the scene where WWX blamed and physically assaulted Wen Ning for JZX's death.

When he saw Wei Wuxian open his eyes, he fell silent and kneeled on the ground. Wen Qing, whose eyes were red, also did not say a word.

Wei Wuxian sat up. After a moment of silence, a sudden surge of rage and hatred welled up in him, and he kicked Wen Ning in the chest, knocking him over.

Startled, Wen Qing shrank back and clenched her fists, but only lowered her head and pressed her lips together to keep them shut. “Who did you kill?” Wei Wuxian screamed. “Do you know who you killed?!”

Having endured the assault, Wen Ning crawled upright and kneeled once more, not daring to say a word.

Wei Wuxian grabbed him by the collar and yanked him up high. “You could have killed anyone,” he roared. “Why did you have to kill Jin Zixuan?!”

Wen Qing watched from the side, shedding tears of sorrow and panic. She desperately wanted to step forward and protect her little brother, but forced herself to hold.

All of a sudden, Wen Ning whispered, “…I’m…sorry…”

He was a dead man. His face could form no expression, and his eyes could not redden, much less shed tears. But in this moment, there was genuine anguish on this dead man’s face.

“I’m sorry…” he repeated. “It’s…it’s all my fault… I’m sorry…”

Listening to him stammer as he apologized over and over again, Wei Wuxian suddenly found it beyond ludicrous.

Big yikes tbh.

The whole scene left a bad taste in my mouth. Actually, the entire dynamic between the master necromancer and the corpse he dubiously brought back to life and turned into a loyal weapon just doesn’t sit right with me.

Honestly, Wen Ning’s character feels so out of place to me. In a cast full of rich, complex characters, he stands out– in a bad way, because of how little agency mxtx gives him. Wen Ning character exists solely to lick the ground WWX walks on.

[eggburnt]

Never really found their art so I made one ✍️

No repost.

[apparently-artless]

ONE PIECE: STAMPEDE - Hancock & Luffy

[baby-xemnas]

Can you draw a Sketch of Luffy x Hancock?🥺

help

(i dont do free requests but i felt like it so it's a good excuse)

[opbackgrounds]

Firstly, why do people keep bringing out their baby pets when Hancock is coming along, and secondly, I appreciate that despite Hancock no longer being an antagonistic figure her base personality has not changed. She's in love, but it doesn't change who she is.

[soaked-doors]

old man yaoi posting

[heisoark]

Im normal about luffy i promise

[wellfine]

Au fucking revoir Mister Prince

[plang-works]

my little spin on the iconic delicious in dungeon comic, but with my favorite scene from thriller bark

[eiyriny]

I think MXTX putting the revelation abt JC losing his core to save WWX near the end of the novel is actually a really brilliant move. Besides being a nice plot twist, it also inadvertently acts like a test for us, the readers: are we capable of changing our opinion when we are provided with new information or are we too stuck in our old opinions and hatred no matter what?

It’s like we are experiencing the same thing the characters go through with WWX. They think they already know everything abt him, that he's the Yilling Patriach, the scourage of the world, that he’s ruthless, immoral, and completely evil. And this mirrored exactly how Jiang Cheng is introduced to us. He's spiteful and unreasonably hostile toward the protagonist. Then there's all these bad rumours that surround him. He's exactly introduced in a way for us, the readers to hate him.

But just like the characters journey with WWX, the more the story progresses, the more the story challenges our initial assumptions about JC. The golden core reveal is the pivotal moment that directly forces us to reconsider how we’ve viewed him up until that point, upending everything we thought we knew, where we’re finally confronted with a version of events that completely recontextualizes JC's character.

And just like how some characters in the novel are able to change their opinion on Wei Wuxian, some readers are able to do the same with Jiang Cheng, but there are also those that are still stuck in the past opinions and hatred, like the mob characters that are incapable and unwilling of changing their perspective no matter what new truths come to light.