larothoughts

[larothoughts]

fem!jiggy part 4 (wangxian)

part one: qinghe nie part two: the war part three: gusu lan

i tried writing things in chronological order but i think for this, we need to go back over wangxian so we get some context on how things changed in this au. wangxian's post-war relationship is better as a direct result of xiyao's marriage. with lxc having no wife in canon, i feel like lwj had a lot more pressure on his shoulders to marry instead of lxc. hanging out with wwx and going off on his own willy-nilly was unacceptable and so he kept to himself until the phoenix mountain hunt (and then his unresolved sexual tension exploded lol.) that distance worsened his relationship with wwx, while his willingness to visit wwx in this verse helped mend it.

cloud recesses lectures

the first change is meng yao's presence at the gusu lan lectures. while in canon he's only present as part of nie huaisang's entourage to and from the cloud recesses, this version is considered a true nie cultivator and nie zongzhu's close deputy. during this time meng yao had a serious chance of becoming nie-furen, and so nie huaisang pleading for meng yao's attendance was his way of officially introducing her to the gentry.

(also it gives meng yao time to know lan xichen, who she'll have to accept as part of mingjue's life if she marries in. da-ge is honorable enough to stop sleeping with xichen after marrying if she asks, but he won't be able to stop loving him. better to place meng yao and xichen in close proximity first and observe how well they coexist without mingjue between them.)

everyone still thinks meng yao is a man, so she is placed in nie huisang's room and thus can make sure huaisang actually studies this time around. it also means she's allowed one-on-one tutoring time with xichen without anyone whispering about a maiden's honor.

it is this tutoring that leads to a mortifying encounter between xiyao and wangxian at the library. basically xichen walks in to find lwj ignoring wwx, who is rolling around on the floor with a silencing spell on him. lwj's ears go red at being caught indulging in wwx's behavior and not just finding a senior disciple to assist him. and xichen can't hide his own flash of disappointment that the library isn't empty, having not been informed of qiren's punishment assignment for wwx's words in class.

now both lan brothers are aware of their burgeoning relationships. for xichen this means pushing wanji and wwx together more forcefully so his little brother has less time to question him about meng yao and nie mingjue and what's going on there. he's not entirely successful, because lwj comes to his quarters beet red and mumbles something about him and meng yao and xichen realizes with horror that lwj hadn't even known gayness was a thing. well lwj doesn't know meng yao's a woman, but xichen's been sleeping with mingjue for years?? he thought they were just doing the whole 'everyone knows and has their own opinions but no one is allowed to talk about it because that would make it real' lan thing.

but no, lwj actually doesn't know. oh gods, of course he's confused about what he's feeling towards wwx.

the awkward, painful and clipped conversation that follows leaves lwj in a frosty mood the next few days, which xichen knows is just his little brother processing. wwx, on the other hand, thinks lwj has suddenly decided he hates him and whines about it to jiang cheng and huaisang.  this somehow leads to them doing their past-curfew alcohol partying thing that leads both of them to suffer punishment strikes the next morning. unlike in canon, lwj is slightly more aware of his own feelings and can acknowledge he doesn't like seeing wwx in pain. thus he tells wwx about the cold pond himself... in the most stilted, constipated way possible.

(not sure if i want to include the cold pond scene with lan yi here... without the yin iron it's a bit too romantic, wwx may actually get a clue too early!!)

basically, the time in the recesses has less fighting and more soft wangxian moments. most notably during the lantern-making scene, lwj openly raises the lantern together with wwx instead of creepily watching behind him. like in canon, post-lectures lwj keeps all of wwx's drawings and gifts. unlike in canon, they actually exchange a few letters in the time before the qishan wen discussion conference. mostly it's wwx expounding the greatness of lotus pier and telling lwj to visit (which does lead to lwj visiting after the war in this au, letter in hand in case anyone claims he has no right to be here. look, wwx obviously wrote this, don't you recognize his handwriting??)

hanguang-jun and the yiling patriarch

the second change is during the war. wwx and lwj actually make a name for themselves as a two-man team to take down entire battalions, with wwx directing his corpse army via flute and lwj providing close-range defense so wwx can concentrate. for the sake of easy reading, one of their first acts was to chase the wens out of yiling. with the terror of the burial mounds looming behind wwx, he earns the yiling patriarch title early.

since lwj is less angry at wwx for making him have feelings, i think his desire to keep wwx safe overrides his unwillingness to associate with wwx's heretical cultivation. sure, it's making lqr froth at the mouth, but this is war and lwj won't let wwx die just because he disapproves of his wicked tricks. inadvertently, hanguang-jun acting as the yiling patriarch's partner in key battles reassures the other cultivators. you see, half of those dead wens can be attributed to hanguang-jun! wwx's heretical tricks are strong, but they're not that strong.

things of course change at the final battle against wrh. it's the first time wwx so openly uses the stygian tiger amulet, and his almost single-handed victory against wrh's fierce puppets strike fear in the cultivators watching him. with lwj only swooping in after wwx collapses, the gentry can't shift credit away from wwx this time. his victories are entirely his own, and that suddenly makes him very dangerous.

so wangxian is starting in the positives post-war instead of the negatives. lwj had asked wwx to come back to gusu maybe once or twice during the war but stopped when wwx snapped that their forces needed him on the field. after the war, however, lwj returns to asking.

in canon, wwx thinks lwj hates him and wants to take him to gusu lan to lock him up. in this verse, wwx thinks lwj hates his cultivation and wants to take him to gusu lan to fix him. in both universes, wwx refuses. his siblings need him to help rebuild at lotus pier, and so he waves away lwj's protests about his safety and walks off.

lotus pier

during the reconstruction phase, jiang cheng and wwx still argue over wwx not training the disciples like he used to. wwx, using alcohol to self-medicate since he heals a lot slower now without his core, can only weakly say that no proper aspiring cultivator will want to learn from a known heretic. jiang cheng tells him that's the entire point of getting wwx back in jiang purples and using his sword again. wwx uses reestablishing their supply lines as an excuse to escape the conversation, and then the argument repeats again the day after.

wwx does help with these kinds of non-physical tasks, so it's not just an excuse. the townspeople all recognize wwx and are still fond enough to renew their contracts with lotus pier. while some are wary of the yiling patriarch rumors, seeing him in his sect uniform and clarity bell helps the first disciple image jiang cheng so desperately wants him to portray. unfortunately, wwx has a much a harder time with reforging alliances with cultivator-related businesses. the minor sects all fear wwx and some are even unwilling to let him in their door. those who do meet him often make pointed comments about his lack of sword.

now jiang cheng and jiang yanli aren't completely oblivious to wwx's strange behavior. a lot of it can be blamed on him missing what they lost when lotus pier burned. while all the siblings have post-traumatic stress from the incident in some way or another, jiang yanli reminds her brother that wwx spent the entirety of the war using resentful energy. the more he wallowed in his pain and trauma, the more powerful he became. so it makes sense that of the three of them, wwx is suffering the most.

jiang cheng says it's no excuse not to even carry his sword on him. sure, if he really had been dropped into the burial mounds it makes sense for wwx to be wary of flying. but it doesn't stop him from using his sword. and don't blame ptsd, a-jie! wwx didn't even use suibian during the war!

no doctors allowed (e.g. laro makes up cultivation medicine)

wwx avoids going to the healers except for very basic treatment (ointments, tinctures, bandages.) this is easy to miss because of how overworked all the healers are now that the war has ended and so many people need long-term care. wen zhuliu's victims are also taking up the medical community's time. while a full core melting is agreed to be impossible to reverse, there are several people whose cores were either only partially melted or simply cracked. no one has time to spare for someone who appears able-bodied, just mentally scarred.

one small detail i wanted to note is that wwx's meridians are still intact due to his core being surgically removed. i know this differs in every xianxia world, but in this one people just don't do the invasive spiritual check thing where they touch someone's wrist for a second. to reach one's spiritual root and golden core, it would take a cultivator time and effort to feed their qi into the person, traverse their meridians, and then find the core. not only is this very dangerous (giving anyone untrusted direct access to one's root and core is just asking for trouble) but it's completely unnecessary for qi infusions.

normally, people just grab another's wrist and feed qi into their meridians. the minute it leaves them, they sever the connection to it so that the patient's golden core can circulate, neutralize, and then use that qi as their own without trouble.  because wwx's spiritual system is intact, anyone doing a quick qi transfer can only detect the usual meridian at his wrist and won't even think of looking further.

another reason to not carelessly inject spiritual energy into wwx is the incompatibility between spiritual and resentful energy. this is the real reason no one checked wwx's health in the three days he spent unconscious after the war. long story short, spiritual energy meeting pure resentful energy (like the kind wwx is drenched in, to be explained in a later part) will cause an immediate qi explosion. which is not very healthy when that explosion happens within someone's veins. lwj didn't even let the doctors try, telling them he'll play cleansing for wwx until the resentful energy clears enough for treatment to be possible.

but not even three days of playing is enough. wwx then wakes up and refuses to go to gusu lan for further treatment. lwj can only hope his time at lotus pier is enough to slowly rid the resentment from his body. if he can visit at a time wwx is mostly clean, he can take wwx to see a cultivation doctor in yunping that his sister-in-law has recommended to him. even if the information is years out of date, jin ziyao's childhood spent growing up in the greater yunmeng area is still a priceless resource. if wwx doesn't want to come to gusu lan, lwj will do all he can to help him with the resources closer to wwx's home. with a-yao helping with the sect rebuilding efforts, lwj has just a little more free time to make his promised visit to lotus pier.

the wen encampment

when lwj finds wwx and the wens on the road away from qiongqi path, he stays behind to stall any jins trying to pursue them. hanguang-jun is recognizable and respected, and the jins who do come across him have already been warned by lan-furen not to harm a hair on any lan's head. and this is lan-furen's brother-in-law! while they don't like listening to a different sect's orders, jin guangshan has made it clear his daughter's demonic cultivation experiments are way more important than the lives of a few jin goons.

rather than letting the jins go so he can investigate the camp himself, lwj makes the difficult decision to prioritize covering wwx's escape. surely if something so terrible has happened, the jins here will want to report to their sect leader? before they protest, he escorts the jin cultivators back to the banquet hall and has them retell their cover story in front of the cultivation world. jin guangshan of courses uses this opportunity to denounce wwx and openly criticize him for murdering innocent, righteous cultivators. lwj makes the same correction as in canon when jgs claims wwx has disparaged jiang zongzhu, but otherwise is unable to come to wwx's defense. he believes wwx's words, but he hasn't seen the camp nor has he seen any mistreatment with his own eyes.

he does confide in his brother wwx's accusations without explicitly mentioning they came from wwx. xichen, troubled, pulls a-yao into the conversation. he knows she spends most of her visits here consulting with her father on her watchtower project, but has she heard anything about the state of the wen camps? a-yao demurs in a way that tells them she's not talking about this within koi tower, and so they wait until they've returned to the cloud recesses to hear her thoughts on the matter.

the running of the wen camps is jin zixun's main responsibility. it's only fair for such an important job assigned by all the sects be led by a main line jin. still, a-yao is sure she doesn't need to remind them what kind of self-absorbed idiot jin zixun is. it wouldn't surprise her if her cousin's guilty of negligence and general mishandling, and that some overseers may have used the opportunity to get revenge on the wen dogs that hurt their families. which is unfair, yes, but there's no universe where jin guangshan reprimands a main line jin like zixun for abusing a few wen dogs. he'll likely claim it's an internal jin sect matter if she brings it up to him in private.

lwj reminds her that handling the wen prisoners was a matter agreed upon by the entire sunshot campaign alliance. no, a-yao corrects. the entire alliance agreed lanling jin will handle the wen prisoners. how lanling jin does so is an internal jin matter. when lwj turns to his brother, he's disappointed to see xichen's somber expression. he doesn't need to hear his brother speak to know that gusu lan is not in a position to openly accuse another great sect of war crimes. ziyao's marriage came with several trade agreements and concessions from jgs. giving him an excuse to break those agreements will ruin gusu lan economically, and they just built back up the trust their civilians had in them.

lwj clenches his fists but must bow his head. xichen and a-yao are lan-zongzhu and lan-furen, and so their main concern must always be the sect first and foremost. only lwj as the second son and soon-to-be-replaced-heir has enough freedom to act without immediately jeopardizing the delicate political balance between the remaining great sects.

the burial mounds

jiang cheng visiting wwx and wwx being exiled still happens. lwj, upon hearing the news, takes the first night hunt close by. the first visit goes the same way as it does in canon, with lwj meeting a-yuan and wen ning regaining consciousness. unlike in canon, this is only the first of many visits lwj makes to the burial mounds.

lwj has warmed up to a-yao ever since the council elders called her in for petty nitpicking and she coldly clapped back. it's the first time he's seen the elders struck speechless, and even if a-yao is punished and pressured to apologize, it's a memory that changes his perception ofher. fellow lan disappointments should stick together, and his brother shouldn't have to worry about a-yao getting along with lwj on top of her (not) getting along with the elders.

it's a-yao who covers for lwj slipping away to yiling, who finds ways to gather funds he can donate to the settlement, who suggests several supplies wwx and the wens may appreciate. she does this all with the excuse that she wants her brother-in-law to be happy, which isn't untrue. the better their relationship, the more likely lwj will tell her any information about the burial mounds she could find useful. but the main reason she's being so generous is to make sure the wen remnants do not perish during their first winter. lwj is concerned for wwx's safety; a-yao is concerned for wen qing's. not because she cares about wen qing, but because she needs her former coworker alive for her own schemes in the future. 

after the first three unsuccessful attempts to chase lwj away for his own good, wwx eventually gives up and tiredly lets lwj do what he wants. except for one thing: he won't let lwj take him to gusu lan. lwj is stubborn, but wwx is stubborn too. he's neither blind nor deaf, and it's not uncommon knowledge that the lan council of elders dislike jin ziyao. which means they'll certainly dislike wwx no matter what lwj says. if sect leader lan can't protect his own wife from their scrutiny, what chance does lwj have protecting wwx?

wwx seems to realize the inherent romantic subtext in comparing himself to a-yao and, in an embarrassed huff, kicks lwj out of the wards. by the next time lwj arrives with a qiankun pouch filled with tools, wwx's pretending their last conversation didn't happen.

a-yuan

wwx brings a-yuan with him to meet with jiang cheng and jyl. a-yuan stays outside with wen ning until jyl pulls out the soup, which is when the jiang siblings meet their i-swear-he's-not-mine-he-just-calls-me-dad nephew for the first time. and then jyl tells a-yuan she hopes he'll be a good cousin to her baby after he's born, and wwx's denial crumbles like ash.

it's probably the reason why, when one of lwj's visits corresponds with a-yuan falling seriously ill, wwx and the wens make an agonizing choice. lwj leaves with a-yuan in his arms, because anything is safer than remaining in the unhygienic, poisonous miasma that is the burial mounds.

lwj returns to gusu lan early with a dirt-covered toddler and a single-minded refusal to let anyone take him from him. an orphan he found on his night hunt, is what a-yao speculates out loud. how noble of hanguang-jun, to not only rescue a needing child but to want to take responsibility for his care. how sad it would be to see this boy taken away from his parental figure, especially when a-yao herself hasn't had the... opportunity to be a parent herself. the main reason lwj escapes the lan elders with little more than a scolding is because looking after a toddler keeps him in the sect longer. maybe staying with the cloud recesses will remind their clan heir of what it truly means to be a lan.

a-yao is pleased with this development as well. she's collected enough data on the burial mounds from lwj and knows for a fact that wen qing is still alive. a-yuan himself is a delightful bonus. lanling jin has their hostage in wwx's sister, and now gusu lan has theirs in wwx's son.

[larothoughts]

fem!jiggy thoughts (part 3: gusu lan)

part one: qinghe nie part two: the war

ok so this is where the real backstory to the au in my head starts. in this au, meng yao is ultimately a villain and the rest of this backstory covers her descent into the darkness.

i'll probably write a 'good ending' later but here is the original, starting with jin ziyao's marriage into gusu lan. (for easy reading, she will be referred to as a-yao from now on.)

the wedding

after years of soul-sucking war, everyone clamors for the chance to celebrate something good. and the wedding of the great zewu-jun of gusu lan to the war hero lianfang-zun is an event no one wants to miss.

behind the political schmoozing, however, tempers have not cooled between 3-zun. their three-way confrontation right after wrh’s death (in which nmj attacked a-yao for her betrayal and lxc stood against him to protect her) has left everyone hurt and betrayed. but to no one's surprise it is nmj who feels the brunt of that betrayal once lxc and a-yao are officially betrothed.

in the weeks before the wedding, lxc heads to the unclean realm himself and begs for understanding on a-yao's behalf. nmj is not surprised a-yao refrained from coming. with nmj's temper still hot, it's a logical move to make herself scarce but not a particularly brave one. not a move befitting a former nie cultivator, but a-yao hasn't been a nie cultivator in years.

after several meetings, nmj begrudgingly tells lxc he won't interfere with xiyao's relationship or wedding. in exchange, however, nmj demands he and lxc swear brotherhood. it is the closest two sect leaders can tie themselves together outside of marriage and is a slight warning to a-yao: she may be his wife, but she isn't the only one lxc can rely on.

(leaving a-yao out of the brotherhood pact ironically makes things better and not worse, because things are clearer between the two of them. a-yao and nmj both swear loyalty to lxc but not to each other. a-yao does not need to wear yet another mask and nmj does not need to be forced to make nice. she is his sworn brother's wife, not his own sworn sister, and so if he wants to stand against her for lxc's sake then he's completely free to do so.)

and so the first time 3-zun meet in one place since the victory banquet is at xiyao's wedding. lxc is so happy, it's easy to forget their underlying tension throughout the celebrations. but nmj does catch a-yao the morning after while she's sitting in the hanshi's back garden. it'd be scandalous if it were any man but nmj, her new husband's sworn brother. it'd be even more scandalous if anyone saw nmj wrapping his arms around her waist from behind and pressing a large hand to her left breast.

nmj, after months of coming to terms with everything, has finally cooled his temper. now, it's time to have their talk.

three vows

mornings are a liminal space, one where truths are spoken and vows are made.

accessing the back gardens of the hanshi requires permission from the sect leader and a blood key into its wards. nmj has been keyed in longer than even a-yao has, and so his ability to simply waltz in isn't a surprise to anyone. what does surprise a-yao is nmj's astuteness. he must have really grown to understand a-yao's slipperiness for him to realize physically restraining her is the best way to keep her from escaping. even more unbelievably, he seems to know a-yao won't reflexively gut him for doing so.

a-yao does not like being touched by men for obvious reasons. even huaisang is only allowed to touch her in specific areas, and never in any way that cages her in. the only exception to that rule is lan xichen and, in the past, nie mingjue. or maybe not so in the past, if he's so brazenly holding her as if they were still lovers and not... whatever they are.

nmj quietly asks if lxc knows the full extent of what a-yao did under wrh. yes, everyone knows she tortured and killed his nie cultivators, but how many people know of the resentful energy clinging to her body back then? how many people suspect her time as wen rouhan's chief torturer encompassed more than mindless interrogation?

nies and their sabers are naturally more sensitive to resentment due to their cultivation path. baxia, who'd flung herself at a-yao the moment nmj had been freed, hadn't acted on nmj's rage alone. does lxc know a-yao practiced demonic cultivation under wrh, and does she dare continue to practice it now that she's become lan-furen?

jin ziyao, formally meng yao, is aware she is on the last dregs of nmj's patience. he has his hand on her heartbeat, his arms around her ribcage. he can snap her like a twig before she can harm a hair on lxc's head, and so she tells him the truth.

yes, she meddled with demonic cultivation during the war. yes, lxc suspects but hasn't asked. not because he doesn't know her hands are stained in blood, but because he needs plausible deniability to stand guiltless in front of her new clan's ancient elders. lxc is lan zongzhu, leader of the most righteous sect of the now four great sects. he is a politician and a virtuous one, and she cannot ask him to listen to her secrets and keep them to himself. she cannot ask him to break his rules.

she would never hurt lxc. a-yao vows it to nmj right there and then: she will never let her husband come to harm no matter what schemes nmj believes she's cooking. nmj may not trust a-yao, he may view her as a traitorous self-serving bitch aiming to secure her standing by using his oldest friend. he may have lost all hope in her goodness the moment she cut down her former sect brothers and put her blade to nmj's neck in nightless city, but please believe she's telling the truth now.

nmj believes she thinks she's telling the truth. he's known her for long enough to guess that her definition of hurting lxc is not the same as his own. a-yao counters that that's what his and lxc's sworn brotherhood is for. if nmj believes a-yao is heading down a path that will hurt xichen, he's free to stop her. if he convinces her it will save xichen, she'll even let him take her life.

it's this second vow that finally relaxes nmj's grip. but before he can ask her to swear the final and third vow he needs to let her go entirely, lxc crawls out of bed to see where his new bride has gone. his tired brain believes he sees nmj cuddling with a-yao and so he sleepily cuddles up beside them.

the third vow lies unspoken and unpromised: the vow never to meddle with resentful energy again.

with xichen interrupting their conversation, nmj accepts the concessions he'd extracted from a-yao and ushers them all back into the hanshi. one wouldn't think two vows are enough to change nmj's mind from wanting to hurt a-yao to wanting to sleep with her. but even at nmj's angriest, he's never stopped loving that brilliant, frighteningly ruthless woman he'd first met in a backwater pond.

he just couldn't put his heart over his responsibilities as a sect leader, and it was the lack of trust in a-yao's abilities as nie-furen that ultimately broke them.

now, a-yao is no longer a part of qinghe nie. nmj has no obligation to worry about her loyalty to his own sect when xichen has taken responsibility instead. extracting promises from a-yao to protect xichen is the best he can ask for in his position as an outsider looking in, and so nmj doesn't protest when lxc pulls him into their marriage bed.

reconstruction

the two years after the war is spent almost entirely on reconstruction. the burning of the cloud recesses by wen xu had damaged buildings, destroyed scrolls, and weakened the wards wherever ward stones were cracked open. a-yao's administrative and logistical skills are immediately put to use as gusu lan's newest lan-furen. lan qiren nearly wept at her feet for how good she is at paperwork. it endears her to the younger sect members who are floundering in the wake of all these new responsibilities. it endears her to the older sect members who appreciate her photographic memory and unwavering adherence to the lan sect's many rules.

but there is one group in gusu lan that a-yao cannot endear herself to no matter what she does: the lan council of elders. their complaints are easy to ignore right after the wedding, with sunshot's victory fresh in their minds and everyone reluctant to stir the pot that had just settled. they're still easy to ignore the year after, when lxc remains within the cloud recesses to oversee the rebuilding of the sect.

then, lxc begins traveling out to towns within gusu lan territory to assist in the greater area's rebuilding efforts. lwj takes over most night-hunting duties and lqr acts in xichen's place as diplomatic liason outside the sect. without the three main line lans within cloud recesses, all inner sect duties fall to xichen's wife, jin ziyao.

it leaves her all alone.

the opening is too perfect for the lan council of elders not to start undermining a-yao's work. while they claim they are looking out for the sect's future by putting a-yao 'in her place' (she's an outsider who shouldn't have so much influence on xichen, look at how the last lan-furen affected qingheng-jun), the truth is they're simply unwilling to give up the power they accumulated during qingheng-jun's seclusion. they ensured they never had to answer to anyone but the sect leader, and they've raised lxc to be an obedient sect leader unwilling to go against them. a-yao demanding responsibilities that rightfully belong to lan-furen threaten their power, and the council doesn't like it.

a-yao wants to laugh. compared to the viper pit that is lanling jin, the elders' attempts are pitiful. the moment she bears lan xichen an heir, her position will be secured no matter what they try. her role as the mother of their next sect leader will allow her to shut them up for good.

except she isn't pregnant. she can't seem to get pregnant no matter how much she tries, and it's beginning to scare her. in a fit of insanity, she even stops using contraception with nie mingjue in case the issue is with xichen, but that doesn't work either. and no matter how charismatic, well-liked and skilled a-yao is, the longer she isn't giving xichen an heir the more unstable her position becomes.

then, as if intentionally hitting a-yao when she's the most vulnerable, wei wuxian reappears in the rumor mill. the elders lose their collective minds.

sins of the past

while xiyao's wedding and the sects' reconstruction efforts kept gossip to a minimum, the smear campaign against wwx has been going on since the victory banquet. his every public appearance since has only fueled the flames: wwx hasn't stopped using his 'evil' cultivation and never carries his sword; wwx is too casual with his own sect leader, uncontrolled and out-of-line; wwx is antagonistic towards their new chief cultivator jin guangshan, and who but a villain would dare interfere with jgs's attempts to get the cultivation world back in order?

a-yao could not care less what the gentry are saying about wwx. wen rouhan had given her the task of taking him down in the war, but she's no longer meng yao, chief demonic cultivator and torturer within the wen court. she is lan-furen and completely removed from her sordid past, with the gentry believing all she had done under wen rouhan was a little physical torture. nie mingjue will not say otherwise, not with lan xichen's happiness on the line, and the witnesses to her deeds are all likely dead.

and then her damn brother-in-law lan wangji refuses to stop associating with wwx. whispers of lwj visiting lotus pier during his night hunts eventually reach the lans, and suddenly the evils of demonic cultivation are all the council of elders can talk about.

lwj was seen strolling around with a seemingly drunk wwx. lwj is indulging wwx's wicked ways. lwj is clearly enamored with this demonic, arrogant hooligan when he should be finding a partner in someone righteous and give gusu lan the heir it sorely needs.

watching lwj take his unjust punishment forces a-yao to acknowledge her precarious situation. she'd always known the council of elders held far more power here than the elders did in lanling jin or qinghe nie, but to have enough power to beat the second jade of lan for essentially no reason? it's horrifying, because it shows a-yao how little xichen is able to protect those he loves. if he can't even stop his brother from taking his punishment, then what can he do if the council turns the full force of their disapproval onto a-yao?

and they will go after a-yao. talk of wwx's demonic cultivation reminds the world of wen rouhan funding his own demonic cultivation experiments at the end of the war. talk of wen rouhan reminds the world of jin ziyao's role as a spy in the wen court and the possible atrocities she'd committed to maintain her cover. and talk of jin ziyao reminds the world of her unusual barrenness: mere bad luck or a possible punishment from the gods?

the demonic arms race

while in this verse there is no yin iron, after wwx introduces demonic cultivation to the war wrh immediately begins researching it to use himself. like in cql, he does this by torturing his own subjects, conducting human experiments, etc. etc. so even though wwx is the creator using the most ethical version of his ghost path, everyone associates demonic (ghost) cultivation with wrh's evil nonsense.

but wrh did not study demonic cultivation alone. i fleshed out this point from part 2, about how wen qing and meng yao did not get along under wrh. wen qing is reluctant and horrified by wrh's experiments. meng yao is fascinated. and so it's no wonder a-yao, with xue yang's help, becomes wrh's foremost researcher in demonic cultivation. the one thing she's always lacked was personal power, so taking the resentment-aligned nie cultivation method she struggles with and twisting it to her own ends is so ironic, it's addicting.

even better, every battle against wwx uncovers more and more theory for meng yao to wrap her brain around. the end of the sunshot campaign becomes a demonic cultivation arms race, and more often than not it's meng yao being pitted against wwx and not wrh.

not that anyone should know that.

when the council of lan elders summon her to their chambers to confront her with minor proof of her alleged misdeeds, a-yao knows she must have miscalculated.

jin guangshan had made a big show of destroying all the demonic cultivators and research he'd seized from wen rouhan's laboratories. as chief cultivator, it is his duty to rid of the world of wrh's evil, nevermind it being wwx who invented this cultivation path to begin with. she should have known his greed over the stygian tiger amulet would be enough to stop him from actually destroying wen rouhan's research. or, more accurately, her research.

she should have known her father would take every opportunity to seize power, even if it means using the demonic cultivation he so publicly decries wwx for.

if she were anyone else, jin guangshan would have no reasonable excuse to demand she visit koi tower, chief cultivator or not. but she's not anyone else. she is his daughter.

refusing would leave her at the mercy of the lan council's questions. refusing would be considered unfilial. and so a-yao has no choice but to go and see what schemes jin guangshan has been spinning around her without her noticing.

a deal with the devil

now jgs has had more than a year to reevaluate the mess that was his bastard daughter marrying into the lan clan. her appearing at lxc's shoulder as lan-furen and forcing jgs to show her respect in public has always infuriated him. it grates on his ego. him, having to bow to that bitch and keep things civil so those damn gusu monks don't withdraw the support. him, having to give her the zi character just so lanling jin doesn't lose any more face.

he hates it, which is why he's so thrilled when the demonic cultivators he'd nabbed from wrh after the war tell him about her skill in demonic cultivation. the things she did for wrh, the crimes she committed that even lxc may not know of: that information leads him right to the piece of leverage he needs to finally put the bitch in her place.

jgs welcomes a-yao into koi tower and lays out the situation. they both know blackmail isn't enough to force a-yao's hand, not with that silver tongue of hers able to speak her way out of anything. no, it's jgs's conversation with a captured xue yang that gives him the edge in this negotiation. does his dear daughter know what her old coworker had told him?

it isn't simple bad luck that's kept a-yao from conceiving. channeling high levels of resentful energy through one's body destroys the womb, and a-yao has more than met the threshold for such damage. she'll never be able to conceive a child. she'll never be able to give lan xichen an heir.

she will never fully secure the title of lan-furen, the title she's worked her entire life to achieve, and it's all her own fault.

a-yao knows jgs could be lying, but in her heart she'd already suspected the truth. it's crushing. she'd spent the last few years denying the allegations thrown against her, defending herself, destroying all evidence of her crimes. who knew the last piece of evidence would be her body itself: that, for the months she spent drenched with resentment under wrh's eye, a-yao has become effectively barren.

what, a-yao croaks, is the point of him bringing this up now?

jgs uncovers the one thing that can save her from her childless fate: a certain sealed jar from the early days of her demonic experiments, one she had thought wen qing had long destroyed. its creation had been the real reason she'd assisted wen rouhan in the first place. back then, she still believed she could find a way to return to qinghe nie.

she believed solving the generations-long curse of the saber spirit plaguing the main line would be enough, and so she'd gotten her hands on a main line nie for her experiments. she and nmj had once been lovers, after all. combining their genetics had been easy.

who knew jin guangshan would not only get his hands on her halted experiment, but be able to leverage it against her? if she helps him restart wrh's demonic experiments, jgs will keep silent about her past crimes. if she helps him obtain wwx and wwx's stygian tiger amulet, he will give her the jar containing her daughter.

it's too tempting an offer. it's a deal with the devil. it's the exact situation nie minjue had wanted her to vow never to place herself in, and she's suddenly glad the words never made it past her lips.

if returning to demonic cultivation will get her through her crisis, then a-yao can only agree.

a golden traitor

within days of agreeing, a-yao successfully sets up an underground demonic lab in koi tower's dungeons. she then kills the demonic wen cultivators who'd ratted her out. a-yao did not claw her way into being lan-furen to be taken down now, and so she will force jgs to rely on her alone in his quest for power.

jgs already failed to secure wwx when jyl refused to reinstate her engagement with his son. and while jgs has secured xue yang, he cannot control him the same way a-yao can.

reviving wen rouhan's worst experiments is almost nostalgic. with xue yang by her side and a-yao once again researching a topic she's so naturally talented in, it's like she never left nightless city at all.

she hates how she doesn't hate it. yes, she despises her father for putting her in this situation. yes, she despises having to lie to lxc and see how proud he is of her attempting to patch things up with her family, when that couldn't be further from the truth. but she doesn't despise peeling off the mask of lan-furen that's started to suffocate her.

she loves lan xichen but not gusu lan, and a-yao hates having to admit nie mingjue was right all along. a proper sect leader and his furen always thinks of the sect first and themselves second, but a-yao will always put herself and those she loves first, sect be damned.

why else would she be willingly splitting her loyalties and conspiring with a different sect? working to realize jin guangshan's ambitions gives an enemy sect power; it is a clear betrayal to her vows to her husband's sect. if the council of elders finds out there's a golden traitor in their midst, they'll try and burn her alive.

that's fine. seeing the way they treat lwj and wwx, they'll try and burn her alive no matter what she does.

a-yao may have agreed to her father's terms, but she only intends to assist in establishing lanling jin's own demonic cultivation research department. she has no desire to go after wwx or his stygian tiger amulet. demonic cultivator or not, he's still a high-ranking member of yunmeng jiang, a war hero, and most importantly her brother-in-law's love interest. giving jin guangshan that much power will certainly threaten gusu lan, and the entire purpose of her doing this is to secure her position within the sect. lwj will not tolerate her moving against wwx. lxc will not go against his little brother. wwx is too dangerous of a target and no amount of filial piety can convince a-yao to follow her father's orders.

no, better to steal the jar from under her father's nose and strangle him with the rope he'd so kindly given her. that's her plan until the phoenix mountain hunt happens-- and wwx begins to really fuck things up.

the phoenix mountain hunt

things were already going poorly before wwx's tantrum. a-yao blames nmj. her husband would've never found the courage to ask after her if nmj hadn't pointed out her deteriorating health.

lxc is aware of a-yao's increasing stress. he even knows it has something to do with her father. yet when he clasps her hands and asks if he should talk to jgs on her behalf, all a-yao can do is smile and tell him she's handling it.

(it would have been different if nmj had asked, because nmj is straightforward and blunt and would have had the right to claim that jar from jin guangshan the minute he became aware of its existence. but then the jar will be qinghe nie's hands, and a-yao needs it in gusu lan's. she cannot ask nmj for his help, and she refuses to risk lxc's regard when she can handle this mess on her own.)

lxc doesn't press her further, but nmj eyeballs her all throughout the entire opening ceremony. minor sect leaders whisper and needle and hint at her continued lack of pregnancy. jgs leers at her with such smugness, she wonders if he remembers he's supposed to keep his power over her a secret. wwx then makes a nuisance of himself mid-hunt and draws the ire of jin zixun, who has never once treated a-yao with the respect she deserves. who demands a-yao find a way to restock the creatures on the mountain as if she's a mere jin servant and not a member of a different sect entirely.

a-yao has never felt so mortified. her husband doesn't even chastise jin zixun in public for his words, not like jiang yanli does for wwx's sake. lxc only seems to realize the insult when nmj loudly reminds jin zixun that a-yao is his superior in rank, and by then it's too late for him to stand up for his wife.

it almost makes wwx's fight with jin zixun in the banquet hall worth it, if only the location he's looking for isn't one that a-yao is intimately familiar with. of all places, it is the one jgs has marked as a source for her demonic experiments. and of all people to accompany wwx there, it has to be wen qing.

the following events are like watching a carriage crashing into a tree, and nothing a-yao can do can stop it. wwx finds the prisoners slated to be used in the jins' demonic experiments. wwx finds the disposed bodies. wwx is the originator of demonic cultivation and is one of the few who can look at the camp and see the demonic rituals being conducted there.

wwx takes the survivors alive and flees, and only his choice to go on the run rather than return to the gentry and lay out lanling jin's crimes keeps a-yao from going into a full-on meltdown.

the turning point

and so, for the first time, a-yao actively begins plotting to take down wwx. her brother-in-law's love interest or not, she cannot risk him exposing her.

part 4: wangxian

[larothoughts]

fem!jiggy thoughts (part 2: the war)

part 1: qinghe nie

hmmm so this part of the au I've been thinking of is a lot less coherent. some of these are just events i imagine happen with lots of holes in-between. i'll have to think of the logic between them all later when i'm smarter lol.

lan xichen arrives

meng yao, after being publicly accepted as a daughter to save face with the nie sect, is shuffled away to the edge of the jin estate and 'forgotten.' no maids, servants, etc. she has to do everything herself. no one is willing to acknowledge her and incite the wrath of madam jin. she isn't allowed to train with the jin disciples. she isn't even allowed in koi tower. she had to give jin guangshan a thinly-veiled threat that her starving to death would likely give nmj incentive to kick down the jin's door just to receive a stipend that allowed her to eat.

it's soul-crushing, but meng yao has already built herself up from nothing once. rather than despair at everything she's lost, meng yao takes this transitional time to analyze the lanling situation.

it's a mess.

madam jin is a tyrant whose hold over the servants is near-absolute. her ignoring meng yao is actually the best case scenario, since madam jin definitely has the power to making meng yao's life a living hell if she wants. jin zixuan is... spoiled and naive in a bad way, the kind of way that infuriates meng yao because he is allowed to be naive. he doesn't care that he's excluded from most sect matters other than in swords/bow training and night hunts. as lanling jin's power is almost entirely political/monetary, this means he has no real power at all.

jin guangshan is more of a mixed bag. on one hand, meng yao is an illegitimate child guaranteed to piss off madam jin. on the other hand, at least she's a girl illegitimate child, perfect for use as a political pawn and no real threat to jin zixuan's claim to sect leadership. on a third hand, the fact that nmj essentially forced jgs to acknowledge her hurts his pride, because who does this upstart brat think he is? thinking he could get one over on him???

on the final hand, meng yao is a pretty girl just like her mother, and jgs always loves being surrounded... by pretty girls.

(meng yao is so so grateful sisi convinced her to eschew going to the jin sect after her mother's death. the way jgs looks at her makes her skin crawl, even if she sometimes uses his disgusting interest to her advantage when trying to keep madam jin from arranging an 'accident'.)

a few possible subplots during this arc: interacting with mianmian (she pities meng yao and understands her struggles as a woman in lanling jin, but she isn't in a good position to help even herself, much less meng yao;) sending letters to nie huaisang (who is VERY upset at nmj's actions but is powerless to change his mind;) and maybe even sending letters to lan xichen who one day stops replying.

so when meng yao, still living on the outskirts and having to venture out into lanling herself to run errands, finds an injured lxc in town-- she immediately sneaks him into her living quarters.

three-zun

now meng yao is familiar with lan xichen, and their relationship is complicated by their relationship(s) with nmj. the first layer is nmj and lxc's relationship, being close friends from childhood whose status as clan heirs/sect leaders prevented things from developing into anything more. even when meng yao was nmj's lover, she knew a part of his heart would always belong with xichen; hell, after getting to know him, part of her heart may belong to him too.

because the second layer is lxc and meng yao's relationship. during the cloud recesses lectures, lxc treated her as a fellow cultivator and not as someone barely above a servant. he knew how much nmj cherished her and so he showed her care because she meant so much to nmj. how could meng yao not love his earnest affection for the man she also loved?

it's different than her feelings for nmj, because nmj and lxc are incredibly different men.

nmj is a pragmatic man who loves honesty and honestly. while his love his unconditional, his acceptance relies on what he considers right and wrong. lxc's acceptance relies on whom he loves, whom he also loves unconditionally. this often results in a situation where nmj is viewed as judgmental/callous by refusing to fully accept the ones he loves (see nie huaisang as a good example of this); and lxc is viewed as passive and an enabler by refusing to condemn the actions of those he loves (see him not interfering with lan qiren unreasonably punishing lwj for him loving wwx)

all of this to say: in this awful situation where meng yao's actions resulted in her expulsion from the nie sect (despite knowing nmj still loves her, the fact that he rejected her stings like her parents abandoning her all over again,) lxc's appearance in lanling is like a beacon of hope.

a cynical reading would say meng yao cozies up to lxc just to secure her position in the gentry now that she's lost nmj. a kinder reading would say meng yao, appreciating lxc's unconditional love in the wake of her expulsion, finds herself incredibly motivated to live up to xichen's expectations of being a good person. knowing he forgives her transgressions makes her ironically more honest than she was with nmj, whom she actively hid things from because she knew he wouldn't approve.

so meng yao takes lxc in and nurses him back to health. her quarters are perfect because the servants won't ever stop by (scared of madam jin,) the jin cultivators won't care (mixture of being scared of madam jin, scared of 'ruining' jgs's political pawn, and looking down on her for being a woman,) and the townspeople won't tattle. the one group meng yao has managed to endear herself to are the lanling townsfolk. they've been suffering under pompous lanling jin cultivators who only help the wealthy for decades, this nice young lady who goes out of her way to help them is baby and they won't turn her in no matter what.

(i imagine at this point meng yao, being ignored, acts the way she did in qinghe aka like a young man, not caring a bit that she's alone with a man in her personal quarters. this part needs more fleshing out, tbd later when my brain comes back online.)

the wens

eventually, the wens give up scouring the town and storm koi tower. they demand lanling jin reveal any intel on lxc's location, knowing from reports he likely passed by. madam jin, knowing meng yao and lxc were familiar, can't resist the chance to get rid of her husband's embarrassing mistake by dragging her before them.

but of course meng yao has already smuggled lxc back into town at that point, and the wens find nothing in her chambers.

even more embarrassing, the wen see the poor conditions jgs's 'beloved daughter' is living in. little comments about how lanling jin couldn't even afford to provide for their family, how quaint, loses so much face for jgs he finally intervenes and moves meng yao into living quarters closer to the main family. while this definitely raises meng yao's position within lanling jin, it also means she can no longer hide lxc (she can't rely on the townsfolk's good will to keep him hidden forever.)

so she uses her move from one courtyard to another to slip lxc away, taking advantage of the hustle and bustle to disguise any carriages being rented out and horses used. she keys him into the butterfly talisman she managed to reverse engineer from watching jin disciples send each other messages across the estate-- so she can send him messages no matter where he is.

(now the exact state of xiyao at this point is something a smarter me needs to work on... mostly lxc's point of view.

when meng yao was a disciple of qinghe nie, lxc found himself charmed by her intelligence and sharp wit. if he had to give nmj to anyone, a-yao would certainly be his pick. in their male-dominated society where men can have multiple wives but women can't have multiple husbands, it was always going to end in only one of them marrying a-yao.

being a nie disciple, it made sense for that to be nmj. but what nmj cannot forgive, lxc can; and if nmj will not find a wife in a-yao... then perhaps lxc can do so instead.)

the indoctrination camp happens. jin zixuan and the other clan heirs are sent away, lxc is hopefully able to use the busy roads to hide his path back to the cloud recesses, and meng yao becomes very aware of how much jgs wants to suck up to wen ruohan. even before they find out wen chao had left jin zixuan for dead, meng yao could already see jin guanshan planning ahead.

(that's what she would do. the most disconcerting thing about spending time with her father in such close quarters is realizing how many traits she had in common with him.)

when jin zixuan returns, jgs makes a big show of welcoming him home. he 'shudders to think' how the future of lanling jin would be like if they had to rely on meng yao to continue their lineage. the implication infuriates madam jin (did he really suggest his illegitimate daughter may inherit the sect if jzx dies?) but raises alarm bells for meng yao. there is no way jgs would ever allow her to inherit, so making a bit show of it here can only mean one thing: he's talking her up like a product he's going to sell.

so meng yao isn't surprised at all when he announces that he is negotiating a marriage between his illegitimate but still blood-related "only" daughter to wen rouhan's heir, wen xu.

off to nightless city

madam jin is quickly on board. no one else in the sect protests or even cares. she's being thrown into the lion's den like a sacrificial lamb and meng yao refuses to let the wen take her life.

war is coming. everyone knows it, including jgs. marrying her to the wens is genius: if the wens win, then lanling jin has a connection to the wens' inner circle. if they lose, jgs can denounce meng yao is illegitimate (he was forced to accept her because of those darn nies) and let her be executed for 'being a wen.'

it's lose-lose for her the moment they take their bows, and so the path forward is simple: until the war is over, meng yao must not marry wen xu. she can't stop jgs from betrothing her to him, so what meng yao needs to do is keep them in the betrothal period for as long as humanly possible.

eventually everyone agrees to meng yao moving to the wen sect and living there for a trial period, because despite being jgs' daughter, she was only recently recognized. this is to make sure meng yao is an 'appropriate' bride for wen xu, at least according to wrh and jgs.

while jgs probably doesn't care at all if she's taken to nightless city and assaulted/killed etc. right away, meng yao obviously does not want that to happen. using xue yang's words after his escape, she rightfully deduces that wrh accepted the betrothal not because she is a jin, but because she was nmj's former right-hand woman. she has intel he wants, and all she has to do is convince him she's amenable to betraying the nies of her own volition. let him think he can convince her to switch sides with sugar instead of the stick, because getting her on his side would help him destroy the biggest threat to the wens in this upcoming war.

the night before she leaves for qishan, meng yao sends a messenger butterfly to lxc. she will use the opportunity within nightless city to give him information to help the war effort. it is the most a political pawn like her can do. she does not send a butterfly to nmj, who she was also able to key in out of sheer familiarity with his spiritual signature. because nmj is so honest, he needs to think she betrayed him. if he even catches a whiff of her possible double-agenting, he won't react properly, and wrh is a terrifying ruler for a reason.

lxc, on the other hand, is very unlikely to come face-to-face with wrh. he is also more passive and harder to read. more importantly, lxc still has a good opinion of meng yao for saving him. he'll believe her without question, and in a tumultuous time when even meng yao isn't sure where her loyalties lie other than towards "i have to survive," she finds his faith in her addicting. he is a steady rock in a sea of uncertainty, and she knows she won't ever have to worry about him doubting her if she sends him reports instead of to nmj.

the sunshot campaign

this portion roughly follows canon, with meng yao endearing herself to wrh once the war begins as the perfect, ruthless daughter-in-law. there's probably some subplot with wen qing as well: both women are considered important to wrh's cause, both are at his side for dubious reasons and with questionable survival odds. ultimately, they loathe each other; they both get in each other's way in their game to withstand wrh's moods.

canon progresses. when wen ruohan loses patience with the long betrothal (it's war time, marriages have been conducted in even shorter time,) meng yao arranges for wen xu's death at nmj's hand.

she would have preferred lxc to do the honors as revenge for the cloud recesses' burning, but for the sake of her plan it has to be nmj. it gives wrh incentive to capture nmj, to set up the scene meng yao's been waiting for. because betraying nmj is the final act that will solidify wrh's trust in her. meng yao is a great actor, but wrh is far too shrewd. the only way to make her lashing out believable... is to lash out for real.

losing her standing with the nies had hurt meng yao to the core; it was the first time she was cast aside after she'd gotten used to being accepted (which hurts worse than being cast out by a stranger.) while she puts on a brave face in lanling and knows intellectually that nmj set her up for success by limiting the rumors and forcing jgs to acknowledge her as a daughter... that doesn't change the fact that he cast her away. the same way her father did by not once coming back for her.

nmj thought handing her over to lanling was righteous, that jgs would take good care of his daughter. he probably even thought meng yao would be grateful, being able to take up the role she'd wanted as a child. he couldn't fathom a world where lanling was a cesspit more dangerous to her than even the worst misogynistic pigs of qinghe nie. he couldn't fathom a world where meng yao no longer yearned for her father's acknowledgement, not as long as she had nmj's.

now she doesn't even have that. so yes, she killed her former sect members without a shred of guilt. she beat nmj with all the viciousness she'd kept bottled up. she enjoyed it,

that's what made the act real enough to trick wrh, because it was real. loving and hating nmj are not exclusive. in fact, she's certain he feels the same way about her. if any other nie cultivator had been caught murdering their brethren, nmj may have very well demanded their execution. but he sent meng yao off to lanling with honors. he still loved her even as he condemned her, and that makes the bitter part of herself hate him even more.

especially when she finally kills wrh and reveals herself to be working alongside lxc the entire time. lxc is ecstatic and so, so relieved meng yao managed to make it out the other side of the war alive. nmj instead sees the dead nie cultivators on the floor and condemns her further. that he doesn't seem to realize the true danger she'd put herself in to get to this point, because naivety is the privilege of the powerful.

regardless of his feelings, it doesn't change the fact that the war is over-- and meng yao was the one to deal the killing blow.

after the war

the landscape after the war is a mess. wwx used demonic cultivation to turn the tide in their favor. meng yao slaughtered her old sect mates in a cold bid to get wrh to lower his guard. jgs barely contributed to the war effort and used the after-party as the opportunity to seize political power, and actually succeeded.

with wen xu dead, meng yao's betrothal is obviously annulled. her return to lanling jin is unbearably awkward; no one had expected her to live after being shipped off to nightless city, much less come back as a war hero.

meng yao doesn't care. the only reason she came back to lanling jin was to receive actual, legitimate recognition of her place in the jin sect: legitimacy worthy of a sect leader's future wife.

when jin guangshan attempts to rename her jin guangyao, lan xichen innocently asks why his future wife, the great lianfang-zun, would be denied her generational character. one would think the jin were insulting the lans instead of forming an alliance with them, if he so clearly viewed meng yao as lesser even than her twit of a cousin jin zixun. so begrudgingly, meng yao becomes jin ziyao, shortly to become the future lan furen.

it's a fairy tale ending, one that meng yao has literally sacrificed blood, sweat and tears for. except it's not. and it's all wei wuxian's fault.

part 3: gusu lan

[larothoughts]

shi wudu thoughts (tgcf spoilers)

ok so i don't look into fan stuff until after i finish a series and for some reason i keep having wildly different impressions of events than other people?? maybe i just can't read lol

for example: i always thought the reason shi wudu strangled shi qingxuan was to force he xuan to make the choice instead of sqx.

like, there this asshole is torturing sqx, forcing him to pick between two terrible options as a twisted way of bringing sqx down to he xuan and shi wudu's level. he wanted to make the only innocent party in this fiasco dirty his hands by choosing, because until now swd had always shielded sqx. he never had to face the two-men-one-cup problem as swd always bore the guilt of choice for the both of them. sqx's naive optimism (paid for by he xuan's tragedy) is therefore both infuriating and endearing to he xuan. and after days of trying to get sqx to not interfere, he finally decides that sqx must suffer for his ignorance.

so there he xuan is menacing the two of them: sqx crying and having a meltdown and still trying to find a way out of this with both his brother and best friend intact. swd powerless and at he xuan's mercy, snapping at sqx to pull himself together. i know the common interpretation is very face value: that swd would rather he and sqx die than be cursed to wander around with horrible fates.

i just find it more interesting to consider that swd's last act successfully took the choice out of sqx's hands.

my assumption when reading was that swd did not actually want sqx to die. he simply knew the best way to keep sqx from choosing was to force he xuan to kill swd first. remember, swd has watched over sqx and 'ming yi' for centuries at this point. these last few days have also made him aware of how he xuan consistently protects sqx even now. the best way to get him to abandon his plan and kill swd outright, then, is to threaten one of the few things he xuan still seems to care about: sqx's life.

swd's sudden beheading achieved everything he wanted: sqx spared the guilt and regret of having to make one choice over the other; swd cemented in the role of the ultimate villain even to his brother by his attempted fraticide; and the last leg of he xuan's plan derailed. even better, it was a sign to he xuan that shi wudu knew.

the main takeaway i got from the shi brothers' backstory was that swd would do literally anything to keep his brother safe. maybe that's why i figured the only way he'd try to strangle sqx to death was if he was absolutely sure he xuan would kill him before he succeeded. it was swd's final fuck you to he xuan, forcing him acknowledge the steep price of his revenge: his relationship with sqx, and the affection shi wudu knows he still holds for him.

[muigiel]

I absolutely agree with your main thesis, that SWD pretended to kill SQX to force HX to kill SWD himself. But I want to offer some different thoughts on other points you raised.

HXs initial plan was to show SQX the truth and then leave him behind to go after SWD. SQX wasn’t going to be present for SWDs death in this scenario, so of course HX would have killed SWD himself. He only included SQX bc SQX insisted on protecting his brother from punishment even after he knew everything about SWDs crimes. HX didn’t want to make SQX suffer for his ignorance (he’d already done that by educating him), I’d say he wanted to give SQX one last, incredibly cruel chance to choose the „right side“ (according to HX): acknowledging his brother’s need for punishment by doing it himself. I have no idea tho why he thought this might work for anything other than tormenting them. Alternatively, he might have hoped that SWD would choose the fate switching option which held more benefit to SWD himself? But I don’t wanna dive into why I think that option was bs rn.

You said you don’t look into fandom stuff until after finishing a series, which is interesting to me bc you still arrived at the conclusion that HX had any positive feelings for SQX (left at the time of his revenge). I realise I have some skewed perception in that bc I spoiled myself for who HX is even before I saw him together with SQX for the first time, so my impression of the „lesbians in the desert“ was more like „there goes my boy forced to accompany the one who stole his fate“ ^^

Still, looking at how HX treated SQX during the Black Water Arc, all HX does could be attributed to him wanting to treat SQX fairly. To me, this feels like a Yin Yu & Quan Yizhen situation: just because HX doesn’t like SQX doesn’t mean he will let him come do (undue) harm. What I mean is, I doubt that HX would consider losing his relationship with SQX the price of his revenge. I think what he actually regrets is what he did to Ming Yi.

[larothoughts]

lol i freely admit that tgcf being a danmei naturally skews my perception of all male closeness into a slightly shippy light. beefleaf to me has a very interesting dynamic because of its lost potential. it's not a completely fanon ship (for example sasuhina from the naruto fandom, existing only as the consequence of the narusakura ship) since there's some significant book-time showing them interacting; but i also agree that their relationship pre-reveal hadn't quite reached any true romantic (sqx) /platonic (he xuan) point.

to me, he xuan giving sqx any chances at all despite him interfering shows he wasn't completely apathetic to sqx. i may write a longer beefleaf analysis later, but long story short, it would have been much easier for he xuan if sqx was out of the way. i couldn't help but wonder if he xuan would have given any other mark of his so many opportunities to 'prove himself.' after the first time, shouldn't sqx's refusal to let his brother go give he xuan all the justification he needed to remove him from the equation?

the theory that swd knew he xuan was reluctant to let sqx die and used it to his advantage (to the point of strangling sqx) is interesting to me because of what it reveals about he xuan. swd is vicious, untrusting and wouldn't put any stock in the idea that he xuan would act out of 'fairness.' him being so assured that he xuan would intervene meant shi wudu saw something in he xuan and sqx's relationship. that's why i framed my shi wudu thoughts in a beefleaf light, since i have no idea how swd would have justified hurting sqx if he didn't think he xuan even cared.

(now i'm 100% sure he xuan would explain himself as you had --it was about fairness, not sqx himself, sqx was just a tool for his revenge-- but i never believed he xuan was as stone cold as he saw himself as. his marked avoidance of sqx post-story plus stalking sqx through his mortal life strikes me more as a sign of consideration and regret for hurting sqx than wanting to bask in the successful result of his revenge.)

[muigiel]

I don’t mind shipping whatever no matter how much or how little basis it has in canon ^^ my favourite tgcf ship is yinxuan and they never even talk xD

I wouldn’t call it apathy nor friendship that made HX give SQX so many chances and I think it’s an important characteristic that he did this no matter who SQX was and what he felt for him. It’s something that marks him as different from SWD. When the choice was to either watch his beloved brother die or get a bunch of strangers killed, SWD chose the strangers bc he didn’t care about their deaths, putting his personal feelings above morality and justice.

HX knew that SWD had a vested interest in his death and probably had a hand in it, possibly also in the misfortune that had befallen the rest of his family. Theoretically, that should be all HX needed to enact his revenge: someone to take revenge on. But he didn’t just go and kill SWD. He conducted an elaborate scheme and waited hundreds of years to find out exactly what SWD had done to him and only then acted.

This shows to me that for HX, it doesn’t matter whether he hates (eg SWD) or likes (possibly SQX) someone. He isn’t going to punish them without knowing all the facts, because his quest is ultimately one of justice. Regarding SQX that means giving him every possible (and impossible) chance to redeem himself in HXs eyes. To SWD, this would look like HX having feelings for SQX, since SWD couldn’t imagine any other reason for such behaviour.

Gotta ask, where does the HX stalking SQX as a mortal thing come from? I see it mentioned a lot but I don’t remember it happening? The only instances I recall are the human array, which HC called him to, and then the feast at Pu Qi shrine, which was for everyone who helped with the human array

[larothoughts]

hmm i swore i saw it from either an mxtx interview or author's notes but google searching i'm only finding reddit people mentioning it and no direct sources;;; so it's possible it's just a rumor?? if anyone has a link to the interview or can confirm/not confirm its true, feel free

basically someone asked what happened to beefleaf after tgcf ended and mxtx was like 'oh, hx secretly followed/watched over sqx until sqx died. they never met in person again.' the 'never met in person again' part was used in a bunch of anti-beefleaf arguments so maybe that's another reason why beefleaf shippers remember it so strongly lol

[larothoughts]

shi wudu thoughts (tgcf spoilers)

ok so i don't look into fan stuff until after i finish a series and for some reason i keep having wildly different impressions of events than other people?? maybe i just can't read lol

for example: i always thought the reason shi wudu strangled shi qingxuan was to force he xuan to make the choice instead of sqx.

like, there this asshole is torturing sqx, forcing him to pick between two terrible options as a twisted way of bringing sqx down to he xuan and shi wudu's level. he wanted to make the only innocent party in this fiasco dirty his hands by choosing, because until now swd had always shielded sqx. he never had to face the two-men-one-cup problem as swd always bore the guilt of choice for the both of them. sqx's naive optimism (paid for by he xuan's tragedy) is therefore both infuriating and endearing to he xuan. and after days of trying to get sqx to not interfere, he finally decides that sqx must suffer for his ignorance.

so there he xuan is menacing the two of them: sqx crying and having a meltdown and still trying to find a way out of this with both his brother and best friend intact. swd powerless and at he xuan's mercy, snapping at sqx to pull himself together. i know the common interpretation is very face value: that swd would rather he and sqx die than be cursed to wander around with horrible fates.

i just find it more interesting to consider that swd's last act successfully took the choice out of sqx's hands.

my assumption when reading was that swd did not actually want sqx to die. he simply knew the best way to keep sqx from choosing was to force he xuan to kill swd first. remember, swd has watched over sqx and 'ming yi' for centuries at this point. these last few days have also made him aware of how he xuan consistently protects sqx even now. the best way to get him to abandon his plan and kill swd outright, then, is to threaten one of the few things he xuan still seems to care about: sqx's life.

swd's sudden beheading achieved everything he wanted: sqx spared the guilt and regret of having to make one choice over the other; swd cemented in the role of the ultimate villain even to his brother by his attempted fraticide; and the last leg of he xuan's plan derailed. even better, it was a sign to he xuan that shi wudu knew.

the main takeaway i got from the shi brothers' backstory was that swd would do literally anything to keep his brother safe. maybe that's why i figured the only way he'd try to strangle sqx to death was if he was absolutely sure he xuan would kill him before he succeeded. it was swd's final fuck you to he xuan, forcing him acknowledge the steep price of his revenge: his relationship with sqx, and the affection shi wudu knows he still holds for him.

[muigiel]

I absolutely agree with your main thesis, that SWD pretended to kill SQX to force HX to kill SWD himself. But I want to offer some different thoughts on other points you raised.

HXs initial plan was to show SQX the truth and then leave him behind to go after SWD. SQX wasn’t going to be present for SWDs death in this scenario, so of course HX would have killed SWD himself. He only included SQX bc SQX insisted on protecting his brother from punishment even after he knew everything about SWDs crimes. HX didn’t want to make SQX suffer for his ignorance (he’d already done that by educating him), I’d say he wanted to give SQX one last, incredibly cruel chance to choose the „right side“ (according to HX): acknowledging his brother’s need for punishment by doing it himself. I have no idea tho why he thought this might work for anything other than tormenting them. Alternatively, he might have hoped that SWD would choose the fate switching option which held more benefit to SWD himself? But I don’t wanna dive into why I think that option was bs rn.

You said you don’t look into fandom stuff until after finishing a series, which is interesting to me bc you still arrived at the conclusion that HX had any positive feelings for SQX (left at the time of his revenge). I realise I have some skewed perception in that bc I spoiled myself for who HX is even before I saw him together with SQX for the first time, so my impression of the „lesbians in the desert“ was more like „there goes my boy forced to accompany the one who stole his fate“ ^^

Still, looking at how HX treated SQX during the Black Water Arc, all HX does could be attributed to him wanting to treat SQX fairly. To me, this feels like a Yin Yu & Quan Yizhen situation: just because HX doesn’t like SQX doesn’t mean he will let him come do (undue) harm. What I mean is, I doubt that HX would consider losing his relationship with SQX the price of his revenge. I think what he actually regrets is what he did to Ming Yi.

[larothoughts]

lol i freely admit that tgcf being a danmei naturally skews my perception of all male closeness into a slightly shippy light. beefleaf to me has a very interesting dynamic because of its lost potential. it's not a completely fanon ship (for example sasuhina from the naruto fandom, existing only as the consequence of the narusakura ship) since there's some significant book-time showing them interacting; but i also agree that their relationship pre-reveal hadn't quite reached any true romantic (sqx) /platonic (he xuan) point.

to me, he xuan giving sqx any chances at all despite him interfering shows he wasn't completely apathetic to sqx. i may write a longer beefleaf analysis later, but long story short, it would have been much easier for he xuan if sqx was out of the way. i couldn't help but wonder if he xuan would have given any other mark of his so many opportunities to 'prove himself.' after the first time, shouldn't sqx's refusal to let his brother go give he xuan all the justification he needed to remove him from the equation?

the theory that swd knew he xuan was reluctant to let sqx die and used it to his advantage (to the point of strangling sqx) is interesting to me because of what it reveals about he xuan. swd is vicious, untrusting and wouldn't put any stock in the idea that he xuan would act out of 'fairness.' him being so assured that he xuan would intervene meant shi wudu saw something in he xuan and sqx's relationship. that's why i framed my shi wudu thoughts in a beefleaf light, since i have no idea how swd would have justified hurting sqx if he didn't think he xuan even cared.

(now i'm 100% sure he xuan would explain himself as you had --it was about fairness, not sqx himself, sqx was just a tool for his revenge-- but i never believed he xuan was as stone cold as he saw himself as. his marked avoidance of sqx post-story plus stalking sqx through his mortal life strikes me more as a sign of consideration and regret for hurting sqx than wanting to bask in the successful result of his revenge.)

[larothoughts]

shi wudu thoughts (tgcf spoilers)

ok so i don't look into fan stuff until after i finish a series and for some reason i keep having wildly different impressions of events than other people?? maybe i just can't read lol

for example: i always thought the reason shi wudu strangled shi qingxuan was to force he xuan to make the choice instead of sqx.

like, there this asshole is torturing sqx, forcing him to pick between two terrible options as a twisted way of bringing sqx down to he xuan and shi wudu's level. he wanted to make the only innocent party in this fiasco dirty his hands by choosing, because until now swd had always shielded sqx. he never had to face the two-men-one-cup problem as swd always bore the guilt of choice for the both of them. sqx's naive optimism (paid for by he xuan's tragedy) is therefore both infuriating and endearing to he xuan. and after days of trying to get sqx to not interfere, he finally decides that sqx must suffer for his ignorance.

so there he xuan is menacing the two of them: sqx crying and having a meltdown and still trying to find a way out of this with both his brother and best friend intact. swd powerless and at he xuan's mercy, snapping at sqx to pull himself together. i know the common interpretation is very face value: that swd would rather he and sqx die than be cursed to wander around with horrible fates.

i just find it more interesting to consider that swd's last act successfully took the choice out of sqx's hands.

my assumption when reading was that swd did not actually want sqx to die. he simply knew the best way to keep sqx from choosing was to force he xuan to kill swd first. remember, swd has watched over sqx and 'ming yi' for centuries at this point. these last few days have also made him aware of how he xuan consistently protects sqx even now. the best way to get him to abandon his plan and kill swd outright, then, is to threaten one of the few things he xuan still seems to care about: sqx's life.

swd's sudden beheading achieved everything he wanted: sqx spared the guilt and regret of having to make one choice over the other; swd cemented in the role of the ultimate villain even to his brother by his attempted fraticide; and the last leg of he xuan's plan derailed. even better, it was a sign to he xuan that shi wudu knew.

the main takeaway i got from the shi brothers' backstory was that swd would do literally anything to keep his brother safe. maybe that's why i figured the only way he'd try to strangle sqx to death was if he was absolutely sure he xuan would kill him before he succeeded. it was swd's final fuck you to he xuan, forcing him acknowledge the steep price of his revenge: his relationship with sqx, and the affection shi wudu knows he still holds for him.

[larothoughts]

fem!jiggy thoughts (part 1: qinghe nie)

this is part of a larger mdzs au i definitely do NOT have time to write completely. but i've been turning it over in my head for days at this point and it needs to be written down else i forget everything.

basically, how drastically things would have changed with a genderbent meng yao.

(the following timeline is a mix between canons; basically it's the drama timeline without the yin-iron/puppets. but i'm even less familiar with the mdzs timeline as i am with svsss so forgive me for any errors;;;)

the brothel

now i fully believe meng shi, smart as she was and living in a brothel, would've done all she could to hide meng yao's true gender from the madam and her coworkers. this was her son, only meng shi is allowed to bathe him, his father will come back to retrieve him one day. secretly, she still taught meng yao that her father was a great man; that one day she wouldn't need to hide as he will surely take her in.

sisi, the only other person aware of meng yao's true gender, would've seen a young and already-pretty meng yao and been emboldened to pull her aside: 'do not go to lanling jin once your mother dies. not even being his daughter will protect you from jin guangshan.'

because jgs has a reputation amongst brothel workers, the working women of lanling, everyone except for the women he bedded and charmed. if meng yao had been a boy, then maybe sisi would've been assured that the worst jgs could do was throw him down koi tower. but as a girl, when meng yao was as pretty as her mother? no. absolutely not.

so when meng shi dies, sisi sneaks out a still cross-dressing meng yao and urges her to run as far away from the madam's reach as she could. she was still passably androgynous in her youth, but the minute the madam realized she was a girl, she'd force her to take on her mother's debt in her place. so meng yao runs.

qinghe nie

now sisi may have stressed the importance of not going to lanling jin as a no-name girl with a pretty face, but meng yao is tenacious. if she could build a reputation as a cultivator, then surely her father would at least be willing to hear her story out. to acknowledge her as a member of his family. (because meng shi was right too; if meng yao was legitimized as a jin, being a woman would no longer be as dangerous as it was for her now. she would have the power to finally dress and act the way she wants.) the yunmeng jiang sect is a bit too close to home for her comfort, so she goes to the next best sect accepting civilian members: qinghe nie.

one would think NOT being known as a bastard son of a whore would make her experience here much better. it doesn't. sure, the og!qinghe nie bullies liked to use his status to torment meng yao, but in the meritocratic no-bullshit environment chifeng-zun has established, it's strength that ultimately matters. and in both the og universe and in this one, meng yao just isn't as strong as the other recruits. being weak, effeminate and too-differential are all frowned upon traits for a man to be in qinghe nie; but in this au, meng yao would rather be bullied for weakness than be forced to give up cultivating altogether. it's not like female cultivators aren't allowed, just that female cultivators in qinghe nie are held at a higher physical standard. if anyone found out she was actually a girl, they'd take one look at her soft and petite frame and remove her from the ranks entirely. so meng yao grits her teeth and tries to make herself useful no matter how humiliating it is when her fellow disciples treat her more like a servant than a comrade.

then, nie mingjue comes across her half-dressed. she's mortified. the one person who should never know her real gender just walks up behind her, all because the other disciples had set her camp up across the pond as more bullying and she figured she'd use the privacy to her advantage. rather than demand answers or react with violence, however, chifeng-zun just frowns.

"I wasn't aware there were women in this squadron." "There... aren't," Meng Yao answers. She flushes slightly when Nie Mingjue's gaze flickers down to the still-visible swell of her breast, barely hidden beneath the robe she'd yanked over herself in panic. There is an awkward silence, one that fills her with skin-crawling dread. She has half a mind to throw her dignity away entirely and beg for mercy on her knees, but the man surprises her by turning his gaze away from her body out of... out of respect? The idea of a man not ogling her the way all men ogled women is strangely endearing. "Your name?" the sect leader finally says. It briefly crosses her mind to lie. It'll be a difficult but not impossible task to slip away from this squad and pretend to be recruited into another under a different alias. She's an expert disguise-artist when given enough time and determination; her work helping the brothel sisters prepare for the night beforehand was testament to that. Meng Yao wants to lie, because that's always been her first instinct in the face of danger. But from the way everyone spoke about Chifeng-zun, the righteous Nie Mingjue, Meng Yao suspects lying of any kind here may be her actual undoing. "Meng Yao," she answers him, decisive. "My name is Meng Yao."

the inner circle

no one is more shocked than meng yao when, only a few days later, chifeng-zun reassigns her to his personal squadron. he sees her contributions, recognizes her worth, and promotes her into the ranks as an inner disciple. and the cost of this promotion--and therefore unrestricted access to the nie library, where meng yao could finally, finally get her hands on a cultivation manual better suited to her than the dumb one handed out to new recruits--is the added job all members of chifeng-zun's squad must partake in sooner or later: babysitting nie huaisang.

in fact, this is her main job. meng yao is briefly offended that chifeng-zun assumes her gender makes her the perfect babysitter. she's only mollified at the promise of (1) aforementioned access to the nie library as an inner disciple, (2) the sect leader's promise to keep her true gender a secret from everyone but huaisang and (3) her job is less babysitter and more last-line-of-defense, the same as all his other squad members. the difference is, nie huaisang hates having to put up with the usual burly, no-nonsense nie cultivators silently judging his foppish pursuits. they ruin his aesthetic!

meng yao is still annoyed that mingjue assumes her being female means nie huaisang will better allow himself to be guarded (because feminine pursuits means he would prefer a female guard??) but... the man is trying. and having unrestrained access to both the young master and the sect leader is an advantage she'd be insane not to secure. even if her sudden promotion makes her relationship with the lower-ranked nie disciples even worse.

almost perfect

these years are, in hindsight, some of the best of meng yao's life. she dotes on huaisang as if he's her own little brother, finally manages to cultivate her golden core, and finds pride in clearing away qinghe nie's hidden enemies. she has mingjue's admiration and trust, and holds enough sway with the non-disciples to see her plans put into action. things are almost perfect, but for a few things: the lower-ranked disciples still view meng yao as a snake that slept 'his' way to the top of the hierarchy; and nie mingjue refuses to take her as his wife.

well, refuse is a strong word. more like 'will not offer,' a predicament huaisang laments alongside meng yao because just look at her! she'd be a perfect nie-furen! also i know you're sleeping together da-ge, yao-jie is discreet but you certainly aren't! no one even entertains the idea of meng yao being taken in as a concubine; the moment one of the mostly powerless nie elders tries to bring it up (a civilian, mingjue? a man??) the nie brothers shut it down.

the lack of proposal is not out of disrespect. it's because nie mingjue knows he's going to die young. marrying meng yao would require her to reveal her true gender to calm down the nie elders, and once known that information can't be taken back. leaving behind a widow and a non-combatant brother is a far more dangerous situation than leaving behind a non-combatant brother and his trusted attendant. leaving behind a widow related to jin guangshan is even worse. that power-hungry bastard would use any opportunity to gain ground, and his grieving daughter in qinghe nie would put the entire sect in jeopardy.

(mingjue would like to think meng yao would have more loyalty to qinghe than that, but even through rose-tinted glasses he knows meng yao is a practical woman. if it ensured her own safety and possibly huaisang's, she'd open the gates of qinghe nie herself. that was the entire point of meng yao telling him her background, a warning disguised as her detailing how useful she could be. it makes mingjue uneasy, the idea of what meng yao would do if backed into a corner. so he spends as much energy as possible to keep that from happening.)

the fall

meng yao takes nie huaisang to the gusu lan lectures again and again. tensions with the wen sect keep rising. xue yang is captured and taken into the qinghe nie dungeons, only to be broken out by wen cultivators less than a day later. in the ensuing battle, mingjue catches meng yao murdering the same former squad mate that used to steal credit for her victories. he sees her smile, her purposeful use of a wen-style attack, and how easy it is for her to switch from confident to 'terrified' once she realizes he sees her. the shift shakes something fundamental in him, the realization that this woman he loves is so capable of putting on a mask. that she put a mask on in front of him, when she'd once vowed never to do so unless it was for the good of the sect.

murdering the captain of her former squadron was not for the good of the sect.

before he can confront her, xue yang cuts his way through the last of the nie defenses and leaves one last parting gift via declaration: that wen rouhan was quite interested in the beautiful woman who'd stolen nie minjue's heart. that she could do so much better in nightless city, if she ever found herself wanting.

the aftermath of the escape is devastating. meng yao eschews dignity and does what she thought of doing the first time her gender was revealed: she gets down on her knees and begs for mingjue to let her stay as a nie disciple. already word has spread throughout qinghe nie and the wider gentry that meng yao is not just a woman, but a devious and power-grabbing one. that she hid her gender to get close to the sect leader, then engineered a perfect reveal to catch his attention. that she could have easily seized control of the entire sect before anyone had any idea of the threat she was.

mingjue, meanwhile, doesn't know what is and isn't true. he's questioning everything about meng yao, even their first meeting as insinuated by the rumors. it hurts him deeply that he can no longer trust her word; and it hurts her to lose his regard so absolutely.

in a world that favors men, mingjue wouldn't hesitate to kick male!meng yao out within the day. in this one, fem!meng yao is instead locked in her rooms until mingjue can come up with a solution that won't end in her certain death. because despite huaisang's begging, he is firm in the fact that meng yao cannot stay. not even taking into account mingjue and huaisang's feelings, the outrage amongst the nie disciples is enough they'd likely rebel if she remained. mingjue does not want to see meng yao slain by a disciple of his own sect. he doesn't, against his better judgment, want to see meng yao slain at all.

lanling jin

in a great twist of fate, huaisang points out the best solution is the plan meng yao gave up on so many years ago. for better or for worse, meng yao's name is now known across the gentry. she'd been a high-ranking member of qinghe nie for many years, is valued by both brothers and is still respected for her intelligence. mingjue keeps silent on the matter of their broken trust, their long-lasting affair, and any rumors other than the fact that meng yao is a woman. instead, he sends meng yao to lanling jin with a retinue of disciples from his personal squadron, as well as an apology gift for besmirching the honor of jin guangshan's daughter.

he sends her to koi tower with a glowing letter of recommendation and an earnest request for jin guangshan to take care of someone both nie brothers care about greatly. jin guangshan reads the two letters through gritted teeth, sat in front of the stoic nie retainers bracketing meng yao on either side. with meng yao's name and accomplishments on everyone's minds, with the thinly-veiled threat of nie retribution in those damn letters-- jin guangshan cannot hide her away as he would his other bastards.

he has no choice but to accept meng yao into lanling jin as his daughter, even with his wife glaring daggers at him all the while.

it is the last gift mingjue is willing to give meng yao. if not his hand, fulfilling her dream is the next best thing he can offer. unfortunately, as with most things in meng yao's life, it is simply not enough.

a few weeks later, the cloud recesses burn.

part 2: the war part 3: gusu lan

[larothoughts]

qijiu thoughts: complicated codependence

after reading a few more shen jiu fics i figured maybe the diverging point when it comes to fan-interpretation is understanding how codependent qijiu is. like, it's not just qi-ge who won't let go of shen jiu, shen jiu 100% spitefully, unwillingly yet helplessly refuses to let go of qi-ge either. the obvious author answer to this is for sj to remove himself from qi-ge because of toxic codependence (see my rant on anti-qijiu pro-sj fics), except i don't think it's in-character for him to ever do so??

the man literally died twice because he couldn't let go of qi-ge until the very, very end. he'll never give up on him as easily as he does in fic, this man is a canonical stubborn asshole who can't let go of anything. that's his entire problem lol

(first time was obviously after lbh gave him xuan su's shards. sj, who had spent the entire time being tortured refusing to bend, cracks at the realization that qi-ge came this time and died. i forgot if him eating xuan su's shards is canon in the qijiu extras or if it's a fanon theory, but i 100% find this in-character of sj to do as a final f*** you to the universe.)

(second time was the qi deviation that caused shen yuan to take over his life. i'll go over this later, but i believe sqh, who transmigrated decades before, likely tried to nudge qijiu into reconciling and instead made it worse. so while in the og!pidw universe, sj never deviated hard enough to die; in this svsss universe, sqh trying to get sj to face his own heart demons literally caused him to die. oops. system got pretty mad because lbh MUST go into the abyss, and so had to scramble to find a sj replacement lol)

preface

much of this is my own interpretation of things btw. i haven't read the qijiu extras in a while so it's very possible some of these things don't follow canon. especially the whole cognitive dissonance part. i've always leaned towards the 'shen jiu is an unreliable, in-denial narrator of his own story, he can't admit anything to himself until he's literally at death's door' interpretation of sj's tsundereness, so that's 100% my own bias peeking through here.

how qing ding peak made everything worse

this a fanon theory i like that has merit given how long qijiu had problems: things would've been so much different if yue qi wasn't chosen by qing ding. like, literally any other peak, qijiu would've had 75% chance of having a happy ending. i feel like any peak with a halfway decent lord with basic empathy skills would have thought 'hmm yes, if we rescue the friend of this little prodigy we can ensure his loyalty to us for life' instead of 'let's dangle the chance of rescuing his friend as a way to get this kid to work as hard as he can until it's too late, then allow the failure to break him down completely so we can reshape him into the perfect successor.' though to be honest the former sect leader probably didn't expect yue qi to literally be broken down.

my thought is that the sect leader kept putting off the rescue over and over, hoping to drag things out until the inevitable happened. but yue qi, naturally wary of adults, panicked once he realized what his shizun was doing. he tried to pull xuan su without permission to force the leader into acknowledging his strength and letting him go... which then led to the entire soul-binding fiasco we see in canon. sure, the former sect leader could've lost his newest experiment, but throwing him into the caves had the bonus of making him late anyway. so a success all around everyone!

we can further theorize the character of the previous sect leader (and how his grooming of yue qi possibly led to his guilt complex and inability to communicate his honest feelings) but ultimately it was qing ding peak's teachings itself that led to yqy's inability to reconcile with sj. because qing ding is the diplomat's peak. the politics peak. the peak where people often cannot say exactly what they mean, must never overtly show favor to anyone, must control every single thing they do or say else the political fallout ruins their sect's reputation.

so it really didn't help that their reunion happened in the middle of sj committing pretty bad crimes like murdering and looting disciples. yue qi went immediately into political clean-up mode, sj misunderstood yue qi's silence as 'i will never tell you' instead of 'not now sj we need to bury these bodies in the bushes', and then later sj was so scornful yue qi's guilt-complex kicked in and he figured 'sj will never forgive me, obviously he doesn't want to hear excuses.' and as yue qi's political position grew, the less he could overtly support and protect shen jiu. the more careful he was of his words and actions, so far removed from the qi-ge sj once knew that sj can't help but lash out. by the time yqy was mentally well enough to talk about the lingxi cave fiasco (if ever), sj had already built up a protective wall of 'this qi-ge is an imposter, the real qi-ge would not have left me.' and yqy didn't know how to tell him the truth without sj's psyche collapsing in on itself. so... he just continued not to tell him.

in which qi-ge is alive but also dead, as declared by shen jiu

sj barely recognized qi-ge once they reunited. yue qi has always been the peacemaker amongst the rowdy slaves, sure, but he'd always been on sj's side. he told sj everything, things he never told the other slaves, and only really clammed up when they were facing beatings by adults in a true us-versus-them scenario. now, however, he's clamming up with shen jiu. he hates it, this intrinsically qi-ge thing that this fake qi-ge doesn't realize he's doing. more than the shiny clothes and well-fed appearance, this is what makes the chasm between them feel real. qi-ge never came back for him, because qi-ge was dead. cang qiong killed qi-ge and all that's left is this qi-ge puppet going through motions of caring for sj it obviously doesn't understand.

(this is easier for him to accept, because if yue qi wasn't mentally dead than he really did willingly abandon shen jiu in the dirt, and accepting that would make shen jiu lose his mind.)

now what to do when qi-ge is dead and he doesn't need sj to protect him anymore? logically, sj should've stayed long enough to fix his cultivation, save up funds, and then leave to become a rogue cultivator before his past had the chance to catch up to him. but sj is not logical. he's spiteful and angry and contrary. he claws his way up the disciple hierarchy on qing jing and spits in the face of yue qi's awkward overtures. he hates the other qing jing disciples, his own shizun, lqg and a bunch of the other head disciples; in fact, he hates cang qiong as a whole because they were the ones that took qi-ge away from him. but at the end of the day, a dead qi-ge puppet is still kind of qi-ge and even if qi-ge threw sj away that didn't mean the reverse was true. sj will not give even a dead puppet qi-ge up; he belongs to him whether he likes it or not (/spitefully).

so as it becomes clearer and clearer that yue qi will indeed become the next sect leader, sj begrudgingly finds himself stuck in cang qiong. one would think things would get better after the former peak lords ascend, since that meant the evil brainwashing sect leader and the resentful qiu-naming qing jing peak lord would've finally fucked off. but no, things actually get worse.

because now that the former sect leader isn't actively sabotaging qijiu's relationship (sure, he didn't mean to break yue qi's mind that bad, but even the worst broken eggs can be turned into a decent obedient successor, except shen jiu's continued existence is threatening to undo all his hard work) yue qi is more able to try and make overt amends. the problem is, by acting more like the real qi-ge, he's threatening sj's mental defense of 'qi-ge is dead, this qi-ge is a fake.'

when cognitive dissonance gives you qi deviations

the more qi-ge acts like he's honestly sorry, the more shen jiu must accept that qi-ge isn't dead. that he either chose to leave sj behind (devastating given sj's abandonment issues) or was forced to leave sj behind and refused to tell him why (more abandonment issues; does he not trust sj anymore??) worse for peak morale, the more overtly sj rejects yqy, the more annoyed the other peak lords get. doesn't sj know how bad it looks for their sect, to have their top two lords fighting like this?? why is yqy not shutting it down, isn't he a politician?

well yes, but as sect leader he now has the freedom to pick and choose when to put his politicking hat on. lqg follows sqq to a brothel and causes a ruckus in the middle of the street? scold sqq for being so overt, because they both know the best way into the brothel is through the back via code word! they learned how to sneak into brothels as street kids ages ago and sqq could have totally done so discreetly! argue with lqg but refuse to explain himself? sqq please, he can't take your side for no reason, especially in front of all these peak lords who already knows he favors you!!

and because shen jiu is facing the cognitive dissonance of qi-ge's... qi-ge-ness, he sets up tests rigged to fail no matter how yqy responds. this way he is always right! if yqy sides with sj, sj's annoyed because he's clearly trying to placate him like a child. if yqy sides against sj, he's obviously choosing to abandon sj again!!

yqy is fully aware of the trap because yqy is a trained politician capable of reading social cues (and sj hasn't changed all that much from when they were kids, he still has that same spiteful edge to him yqy is so fond of). he intentionally falls for them because (1) he deserves to be hated by sj and (2) being hated by sj keeps him from lashing out too much at the other peak lords. yqy is very used to sj's temper tantrums, it's when he lashes out at other people that things become unmanageable.

(during the latter half of their rule over cang qiong, i feel that yqy learned to stop actively chasing reconciliation. he came around for tea and present-giving, kept things civil, and still let sj get away with all kinds of terrible things. he fell for all of sj's traps with his eyes wide open and it infuriates sj, everything about this drives him mad. he doesn't want this soft, unspoken affection, because this was how qi-ge used to handle sj's tsundereness back when they were on the streets. it's another sign that qi-ge is still qi-ge, and this fact brings sj both selfish comfort and undeniable agony.)

it's an awkward balancing act that continues to sour sj's reputation with the other peak lords, but it's mostly manageable until sqh sticks his nose into their business and pushes sj over the edge.

how transmigrators ruin everything

"maybe yqy did something impulsive, did you think of that? why can't you forgive him, he tried so hard? aren't you tired of being angry all the time?" bitch no, sj has been keeping the worst of the qi deviations away for years by performing mental gymnastics around his walls of denial stOP KNOCKING THEM DOWN. Even worse, lbh arrives on the peak and shen jiu hates him. not just because he's got all the potential shen jiu had stolen away from him, but he's so glad to be here. he's making his mother proud. all while shen jiu was dragged here essentially against his will, trapped himself in this bamboo prison out of spite, and then realized the dead thing he's been looking after for decades isn't dead after all. that qi-ge actually did, for realsies, leave him at the qius. that all these overtures, the silent acceptance of his faults, everything could just be out of guilt (qi-ge is ashamed of him) and not out of a ghost reenacting its former lingering affection (the real qi-ge would've still loved him.)

the dissonance, abandonment issues, frustration and everything culminates in a devastating qi deviation. ironically, now that yqy's rule is mostly secure and sj's reputation has soured enough to start negatively affecting the sect, sj finally feels safe enough to let go. in this moment of emotional clarity, sj finally releases qi-ge from his grasp and decides to die.

that was not supposed to happen.

qi-ge's no good, very bad sacrifice

in another universe where og!sqh was too busy plotting to betray cang qiong mountain, the frosty and emotionally charged stand-off between yqy and sj continues for years. then, lqg dies. i'm torn between yqy believing sj killed lqg or not. either way, i don't think he'd be 'disappointed' in sj as portrayed in some fics. i also don't think it would infuriate sj that yqy thinks he's capable of killing lqg, because if anyone knows how much of a murder kitten shen jiu is, it's yqy. maybe he's offended yqy thinks him dumb enough to kill him in such a sloppy way. maybe he's even more offended that this turns the other peak lords against him and yqy just lets it happen.

or maybe (through my qijiu-tinted glasses) it pisses him off that yqy does tell the peak lords that they should all stand together, and the other peak lords ignore him and hate sj anyway. they're disrespecting yqy because they think he is compromised, and sj worked too goddamn hard to solidify yqy's position to have it undone by a murder he didn't even do.

(ironically, if lqg was alive he'd tell the other peak lords to f*** off for disobeying yqy. lqg's canon respect for yqy is something i feel needs more acknowledgement, likely because i feel half the reason they don't get along is because of sj's utter disrespect of their sect leader. who cares if sj is a street rat or the son of a wealthy family, no one disrespects yue-shixiong!)

now the story of sj's road to becoming lbh's plaything is a well-worn track that everyone knows. i do subscribe to the idea that sj took one look at huan hua's eagerness, lbh's vendetta, and yqy's recklessness and made the same decision he did in the svsss verse: he'd rather qi-ge be free (happy) than dead. this is a battle he cannot win, and he'll be damned if he lets lbh drag cang qiong down with him. when yqy promises him he'll save him from the water prison, sj spits in his face and tells him for the final time that xiao jiu and qi-ge are both dead. he let sj go decades ago, and now sj is letting qi-ge go in return.

sj faces the torture with the tenacious spirit of someone who'd withstood worse torture for years. in fact, he's a bit impressed by lbh taking revenge on him the same way sj took revenge on qiu jianluo. either way, even with more than 50% of his body missing, sj faces his fate in utter defiance. and then lbh shows up with xuan su.

the reveal of qi-ge's failed rescue and demise was devastating for a lot of reasons. most obviously, sj's sacrifice to keep cang qiong safe from the fallout was a failure. everything he'd done and sacrificed to keep qi-ge safe, all the scorn he'd borne as the hated qing jing peak lord was thrown away because qi-ge wanted to be a moron.

the other reason why sj broke was because qi-ge did come for him. he simply failed. and the tiny part of him that always suspected qi-ge was still qi-ge now has confirmation that all those years ago, qi-ge likely did the same. he came for him at the qius, but he failed. the only difference now is lbh's willingness to tell him the truth vs. yqy's decades-long silence. the only difference now is that yqy is actually, physically dead.

sj has been living on borrowed time ever since he looked the new yqy (fake qi-ge) in the eyes and allowed himself to be brought to cang qiong mountain. everything he did was to elevate himself into a position where no one could hurt him (and qi-ge) anymore, the same way he'd acted back when they were on the streets. now that he was in this state and qi-ge was dead, his time was clearly up. and sj refuses to let lbh have the last laugh. as much as he respected lbh for his ruthlessness, it's not enough to stave off sj's spite. he didn't let qjl control him in the end, and he won't let lbh do so either.

final thoughts

some last, disorganized thoughts on qijiu's relationship

rather than yqy telling sj what happened, i think showing him the scars all over his body would be much more impactful. sj knows how worthless words can be; he's likely prefer being able to touch each scar and check the meridians for himself. yqy doesn't need to say a word, his entire body is a testament to the torture he'd endured.

ironically, sj fixing up cang qiong as a tactician and his personal refusal to put himself in weak situations made yqy incapable of showing his care through action. all of his crises were political/reputation-based/etc. all things qing ding's teachings guaranteed yqy to fail all his speech-checks. and yqy is definitely not the type of person to engineer a false crisis just to swoop in to save sj... not because of any moral reasons, but because risking sj in any way would be absolutely unacceptable. in yqy's world, it's sj > the sect > good morals. he does have good morals, yes, but he's also pragmatic and self-aware enough to know when to put the things he cares about first.

there was a theory i read before about yqy and sj's trauma responses being to shut down and say nothing in the face of accusations, and i agree with this. saying nothing often netted less punishment than 'making excuses.' even without this coping mechanism, the mental trauma of having his mind and body broken could've easily stopped yqy from being able to even speak around the topic for years. if he doesn't talk about it and no one sees his scars, he can pretend it never happened. sj's scorn of him is forever a sign that it did happen, but that's fine, he's always made exceptions for shen jiu.

i don't really know where the uncomfortably-creepy-no-boundaries yqy towards sy came from? in the original novel sy clearly like yqy and views him in a positive, big-brother-shape light. even towards the end of the novel when yqy confesses, sy feels more guilty for being an imposter than angry that yqy failed sj. yqy even steps aside for lbh thinking 'well, at least sqq is happy now' because that's what he wanted for sj for so, so long. for him to be happy, even if that meant forgetting qi-ge.

(the no-boundaries thing is something i disagree with in general, because i think yqy's political and social training would make that very unlikely. he doesn't call sqq xiao-jiu as often as he does in fics, i think he did so in canon because he was delirious and exhausted post-drawing-xuan-su. i figured qijiu's latter years cooled off a bit as yqy realized direct overtures weren't working and went the coaxing-stray-cat route to everyone else's befuddlement.)

does qi-ge know sy is not sj? i can go either way with this. the theory that he does know but he's repressing it out of his own mental wellbeing is intriguing; but so is him assuming sj losing his memories means sy is a different person. which means he's always been happier without qi-ge. either way, i do believe yqy no longer views sqq-y the same as sqq-j. after the first few years post-qi-deviation, i think yqy is emotionally mature enough to realize sy is here to stay and that the sj he once knew (either because of his lost memories or whole-soul transplantation) is gone.

i am a qijiu shipper, but i do also like platonic qijiu. my only prerequisite for any other-ship-jiu fic is some kind of qijiu reconciliation. i honestly don't think either of them would have good romantic relationships unless they fix their own relationship first. qi-ge can't marry someone, that would remove sj from being the most important person on qi-ge's list. despite scorning him, sj being number one is one of the only things holding sj together throughout their divorce era. sj cannot marry anyone because that would give qi-ge the false impression that sj is happy and qi-ge is now free. and qi-ge is not allowed to be free. he will belong to sj for as long as sj wants and nothing is allowed to interfere with that impression. lol both of these are sj-based, but sj's always been the dominant party in this relationship. whether or not qi-ge is jealous of sj's new lover is irrelevant; as long as sj is happy, the og!sj-simp qi-ge is also happy.

i have too many qijiu thoughts and not enough time to write a fic about them, alas. i find their relationship fascinating and very integral to their personalities no matter the au or ship.

[larothoughts]

stacked dimensions, ascension, and gods

this is a crazy conglomeration of ideas from various fics relating to moshang-sqh-is-god theories and how ascension works in other xianxia mediums. basically me with a svsss thought experiment: what if our world is pidw's equivalent to heaven?

heaven is just the dimension stacked above your own

we never see heavenly officials interfere with stuff like in tgcf, it really seems like once you ascend you never come back down again. people from modern china have omnipotent knowledge of events, things, creatures, etc. of thousands of worlds (books) they are interested in. like god existing in the 5th dimension, sy and sqh can see into pidw's past and future just by flipping pages in a book.

ascension very oversimplified is the idea of removing oneself from the reincarnation cycle. under this theory, achieving ascension as a cultivator simply means punching up and entering the reincarnation cycle of the dimension above your own.

the idea that worlds are stacked on top and around each other, ranked in ascending and descending order, is a confusing mess i first learned about in the manga magi. each resident of a world above is viewed as a god to the world below. i imagine this also makes each successive world more and more difficult to punch up through. it's hilarious to imagine that cultivation DOES exist in the modern world, it's just far more guarded/secretive and possibly related to religions preaching the concept of heaven (punching up a dimension) and hell (falling down a dimension.)

the average person does neither and simply reincarnates within their native dimension. while punching up a dimension is closely gatekept, what many people don't realize is that falling down is always an option. because the price of falling is often too high. it's like intentionally choosing to go to a less developed world without your sense of sight and with one hand tied behind your back. sure, heaven provides their version of handicap assistance (the system) but why would you cripple yourself in a world far more dangerous than your own? after your past self presumably worked so hard to ascend? for love???

a soul's connection to their previous dimensional incarnation

when sy and sqh died, i imagined they faced the heavenly emperor or big god equivalent (probably living a few dimensions above our own world), who gave them the choice to reincarnate or to throw themselves into a lower realm. maybe both were recent ascensions from the pidw universe. their premature deaths clearly showed lingering attachment to it: sqh couldn't help but write out the story, and sy couldn't help but fanatically read it.

(did sqh literally create pidw with his own two hands? how could that be possible if he's missing a past incarnation of himself?

i don't have all the answers, it's possibly a time paradox related to how time means nothing when every world is a book and you can flip to whatever page you want.)

long story short, both sj and sqh were missing something from their previous dimension, and really, it doesn't hurt to let them know they could go back if they really wanted to. so they do.

there is a price for going against the natural order, though. they have to sign away much of their free will to the system, which acts as a nanny failsafe that'll throw them back up a dimension if they violate too many lower realm rules (to avoid collapsing the dimension entirely. don't want those pesky 4th and 5th dimension anomalies corrupting everything!) they don't remember this agreement because no one remembers what happens between life and death-- but the fact that the systems can control them is proof their souls signed on the dotted line.

now sqh 'transmigrated' the correct way, by being reborn into the past self linked to his love (og shang qinghua, he probably ascended 2 or 3 lifetimes after that but this is the one with mobeijun). he got to keep all his godly knowledge minus the whole 'agreement with the big god' thing. his system was stricter with some of his actions because the entire point of him falling from heaven was to be with mobei-jun-- something he failed to achieve in his og sqh life. system doesn't care if current hamster man, who doesn't remember making this deal, wants to run away! system was tasked with making sure they got together!

now sy... sy really was a glitch in the universe. so of course his system was especially unreasonable/illogical/unfair. sy barely qualified to ascend in the first place, now this mess of a soul wants to descend???

why the systems are so damn mean

i'm not smart enough to completely make this make sense, but bear with me: sy is the end result of shen jiu killing himself by eating xuan su's shards. something something binding xuan su and yqy together meant yqy's soul was forever stuck in his sword, making reincarnation/ascension impossible. sj's flawed cultivation also damaged his soul, enough so that when he died via xuan su, the agony of his soul leaving his body was enough to draw out whatever was left of yqy in the shards and the two kind of... merged into one. the qijiu soul amalgamation was the one that rejoined the reincarnation cycle, and eventually was able to ascend. but his incomplete mess of a soul made his ascended body weak, leading to the whole 'sick sy destined to die' headcanon.

so wth does this have to do with sy's glitchy fall from heaven? why fall in love with lbh? it's because lbh is a glitch too. a descendant of pidw's oldest glitch... the creation of the heavenly demon.

the first heavenly demon was a modern person whose soul was forcibly chucked down a dimension for crimes against the universe. this is no longer the punishment protocol the big gods use because just look at how badly the heavenly demon thing worked out. they are the reason why modern systems have such strict don't-talk-about-us protocols in place, why dotted lines need to be signed, why systems lean more towards unreasonable and harsh rather than lenient.

because that first criminal whose soul was sent to hell (pidw) had a rudimentary system meant to keep watch and make sure they didn't take over the realm with their godly knowledge. a system he was able to overpower and turn into a weapon that literally breaks the rules of the world: xin mo. now the big gods in heaven really didn't want the pidw universe to collapse in on itself, so they did meddle a bit: whittled down the heavenly demon population to two or three, added an endless abyss as a pressure valve in case the edges of the world start to crack, took away the corrupted system xin mo and chucked it as far out of reach as possible. normal things. the end result native-fied the heavenly demon enough to integrate them back into the dimension, problem solved!

but that doesn't mean the heavenly demon line 100% fits into the pidw universe. they're still a little too op. and things get worse when lbh finds xin mo, reigniting the old heavenly demon vs. system fight wherein lbh wants to use the system to bend the world to his whims, and the system wants to eat lbh because that's ITS JOB. it's meant to destroy dimension-collapsing things and lbh is one hair away from collapsing everything.

the metaphysical sense of wrongness around lbh is what draws the attention of the qijiu soul amalgamation. lbh is an anomaly, a corrupted soul, one that seems to be as inexplicably drawn to punching back up to heaven (but failing) as qijiu's soul weakness inexplicably draws it to hell (but also failing, sick body notwithstanding.)

so when the qijiu soul amalgamation aka shen yuan finally dies, especially after he dies thinking about lbh, why not fuck it all and throw himself back down for love?

the logistics of yeeting a glitched soul into its components

so there are a lot of problems with sy's choice. one, shen yuan as shen yuan doesn't exist in a lifetime that'll let him fall in love with lbh. the first incarnation of the qijiu soul amalgamation reincarnated many years after lbh's reign was forcibly ended by the big gods in heaven deus ex nerfing him. two, trying to stuff him into either sj or yqy at birth (like with sqh) won't work. the souls won't recognize each other.

the yqy part of his soul came from a post-xuan-su binding soul, and the sj part of his soul came from a heart-broken-damaged-foundation shen jiu soul. so the big gods split the difference and chucked him into the first post-xuan-su era sj-is-qi-deviating-bc-of-qijiu-angst event... aka the start of svsss in sqq's body. cue svsss shenanigans, wherein everyone (eventually) gets their happily ever after.

final thoughts aka it's hard to be a qijiu shipper

the logical thing my smooth brain can't 100% work out is how this affects yqy's bound soul during the svsss era. sj's soul is long gone, having merged into sy and then returning through post-ascension 5th dimension time bullshit. but yqy is still alive during this period, and his poor soul must be so confused. despite sy clearly not being sj, he still inexplicably likes and wants to protect sy (who kind of is sj, in a roundabout way.) all i can think of sad qi-ge hours. poor man can't catch a break his entire life is a tragedy.

one solution to his soul problem could be his death. sj was only able to bond with it after the yqy's death because his soul in life was splintered between sword and body. maybe when yqy finally dies, xuan su's shards are returned to sy as cang qiong's second in command. the shards draw him in, and when he touches them, they absorb into his body... completely destroying the last remnants of the system clinging to him.

the system is tied to a contract made by his soul, and the bit of yqy's soul added to sy makes it different enough to shake that system loose. when he ascends a second time (likely with lbh by his side), his soul is no longer broken to the point of illness. it's sy's one last gift from dad.

(maybe when sy made that deal with the big god to be with lbh, each separate part of his soul made a deal too: sj, who died on xuan su, wishing for a universe where yqy lived a long life; and yqy, who died knowing sj was tortured, wishing for a universe where sj was safe from lbh. so technically all 3 of their wishes were granted by sy wifebeaming lbh lol)

[larothoughts]

when it comes to self-insert and abuser-projecting, however, no one wins the award more than my hero academia mYG OD

[larothoughts]

anti-ship adjacent ships: liujiu and qijiu

so there's this weird thing that's happening in svsss of all fandoms that reminds me a lot of voltron's klance and sheith fiasco AKA the formation of what i like to call anti-ship adjacent ships

basically, when someone's favorite ship is more indicative of them being an anti-shipper of another ship.

i've had to start excluding liujiu in my ao3 searches because more often than not, the fics that come up are yqy-bashing and what?? this is svsss, right? mxtx's trashiest, most problematic, harem-bicycle-shen-yuan svsss? what is this moral outrage doing in my degenerate danmei fic space, and why are you mischaracterizing yqy just to make an excuse to hate on him??

i've had a few thoughts on the rising dichotomy of shen jiu sympathizers both validating sj's bad behavior and hating yqy for enabling the same behavior. and then shipping him with lqg because liujiu is 'less toxic.' As an old lady fanfic reader who's trawled through all the godforsaken dead dove ships of the old livejournal kink_meme, i'm writing these out because making sense of things helps me cope and i am too old for this shit

(this is actually more 'why anti-qijiu' word vomit than liujiu specific--it just so happens that so many liujiu fics are bizarrely anti-qijiu.)

narrative reasons for anti-yqy liujiu fic:

aka why an author finds it easier for the plot to bash qi-ge

accepting either romantic or platonic qijiu means trying to fix qijiu. this is hard. yqy and sj already have a proven history of failure, while sj and lqg (aka author's ideal white-knight love interest) would be the perfect do-over. making yqy a clear abusive villain sj must cut off ties with 'for his mental health' solves the problem without having to fix things. it frees the author to write what they thought qi-ge should have done to 'save shen jiu right.'

on the same note, liujiu have nearly no canon crumbs. the author can write them however they want without being constrained by their canon relationship.

why lqg over other possible ships? other than yqy, lqg is one of the few characters with any sort of previous relationship with sj. lqg is canonically hot, has strong (even if negative) feelings towards sj, and has no textual or subtextual canon ship (beyond a one-sided crush on shen yuan, with lbh getting in his way lol.) he is also the same generation as sj and thus avoids any age gap squicks like with sj's other ship partners (looking at you tlj)

yqy is the only person in cang qiong with higher authority than shen jiu. while other peak lords are antagonistic, all are ranked lower and can't get in liujiu's way the same way as yqy can as a sect leader. not even the old palace master has the same power because he's the head of a different sect. so if you really want to write a villain abusing their (implicit) power over shen jiu, yqy is the only one that fits the bill.

lbh, as sj's disciple, does not fit the same abuse of power trope even if he becomes an op demon lord. as for bingjiu, lbh's brand of diabolical stalkerish yandere is so over-the-top it's hard to equate him to any real relationship. it's easier to twist yqy's passivity to villainy because it's closer to reasonable human behavior.

if one is coming from the tgcf fandom, yue qingyuan is the closest junwu-adjacent character in terms of personality and rank (on the surface.) so it's easy to transfer any junwu hate to yqy by giving him all of junwu's worst traits and making him 'junwu-lite'

same thing as above but with mdzs and the lan xichen hate for his inaction regarding his own little meowmeow (jgy).

personal author-reasons for anti-yqy liujiu fic:

aka when the character himself doesn't matter

let's get a silly one out of the way: maybe the author only headcanons top shen jiu and most qijiu has sj being a bottom. lqg gives off better hot twinky bottom energy than submissive-but-still-tops yqy. this does not explain the anti-shipping though.

less silly: an author is projecting either themselves or other people in their real life onto their fic, and changing the character's personalities to match their real life projected counterparts (even if ooc). sj is a clear abuse-survivor insert, which shoe-horns other characters into roles that real people in the author's lives have. i think yqy is often seen as the insert for someone who 'could have helped but didn't.' there are many valid reasons why someone would be more mad at the person who averted their gaze rather than their actual abuser, but that doesn't change the fact that qijiu's relationship in canon is so much more complicated.

(it's easier to hate enablers instead of abusers, because hating abusers and inviting confrontation is dangerous. most of the time, enablers won't hurt you directly. they are the safer person to hate.)

an author thinks they could have saved sj better, that qi-ge had more than enough time to fix things and his failure not to do so must be punished by taking away his sj-simp-card and throwing him into the villain bin. this is similar to the phenomenon where an author hates the wife of canon anime couples b/c the author could clearly wife him better. and then writes a fic bashing said wife.

an author sees a messy relationship and equates messy with abusive. in reality many relationships can be messy but not abusive, messy but still fixable, but due to their personal experiences they see any attempt to do so as toxic. in this scenario yqy is often the abuser-insert and his ooc characterization takes after the author's own abuser.

specifically in fics where lqg has the personality of a cardboard cut-out: using liujiu to tell others they are still pro-ship, when in reality they dislike qijiu for their own reasons (and can't help but write it in their fic). it really reminds me of middle school lol like kids trying to find their identity by hating another identity. the whole 'ew pink is overrated, i hate preps which means i must be a nerdy rebel' and then two years later you realize you're not a nerdy rebel after all, you just based your entire identity on what you thought was the opposite of what you hated.

why i try not to read anti-qijiu liujiu fics:

aka write whatever you want, but sometimes i have to choose not to read

authors can write whatever they want. we're all doing this for free, so it's expected that a lot of fanfic have venting and some self-imposing onto a fictional character. i don't expect authors to NOT put themselves in their fic in some way. at the same time, however, i hope authors are self-aware enough to not bash another character just because that character reminds them of someone irl.

aka i get uncomfortable when i read a fic that has an author's obvious real-person insert. i'm not reading svsss fic anymore, i'm reading the author's version of punishing their abuser using fiction. i love transformative media that adds onto the canon! i love different interpretations even! but i'm here to read svsss? where are the svsss characters??

i'm not into character-bashing in general. i think the point of svsss and all of bingqiu's misunderstandings is the fact that good/evil is not a binary. sy spent the whole series fearing the 'evil' binghe despite the fact that post-abyss binghe was a complex person, causing a chain reaction of disaster. hell, shen jiu is the king of gray characters! he is a scum villain, evil and misunderstood, to be a sj-fan means to understand that no one is entirely good or evil. so it's even more cognitively dissonant when a pro-sj fic is so categorically anti-qijiu, as this often paints sj as good/misunderstood and yqy as bad.

(the only character-bashing i don't care about is the old palace master mxtx clearly wrote him to be bashed so throw him in a fire)

i don't mind liujiu actually, i think the dynamic has potential (see all the sj harem fic i've read lol) but qi-ge is such a big part of sj's character that vilifying/getting rid of him does sj a disservice too? sj has a shit ton of bad coping mechanisms, these aren't going to be magically fixed if yqy gets his limbs chopped off as 'just punishment' (??) for not stopping sj from abusing his own students (????)

in conclusion

there is no point to this rambling, and you don't need to agree with me on anything. these are just thoughts i had when trying to figure out why anti-ship adjacent ships even exist. the moral outrage is giving me war flashbacks of anti-sheith klance fans using their age gap as justification for their own ship, rather than liking klance for... being klance.

(I briefly considered going over all liujiu vs qijiu morality arguments, but if you're an sj fan i feel like morality arguments are pointless. he is an angry feral scum kitten who hits kids, no sj-fan has the moral high ground here.)

it's always unfortunate to see so much anti-shipping spilling into fandom, since by default most of us are living in the fringe minority anyway. further dividing us is just going to sink the whole ocean ala the death of livejournal and chinese ban on ao3. there's no point in ships if there ain't an ocean to sail in! aren't we all here because we are fans of these stories???

bonus

to make up for what must feel like a huge anti liujiu wall of text, here are some of my general thoughts on how their relationship would work. i'm more familiar with sj so most of these are from his pov.

while sj often has schemes upon schemes upon schemes, when it comes to anger/criticism/negativity, he's scathingly honest. lqg, a fellow honest asshole, is often on the same wavelength. once misunderstandings are cleared up and lqg realizes sj will do whatever it takes to protect big bro yqy (and thus the sect), they're able to work together as a ruthless team against cang qiong's enemies.

let's also assume fixing sj's emotional issues stops him from the worst of his scumminess aka whipping his disciples half to death.

teamwork -> enemies to lovers -> only one bed trope???

sj needs someone who will overtly believe in his goodness, and lqg, once he realizes the mistakes in his assumptions, is a loyal wall of support. unlike qi-ge who must always play diplomat, lqg blazes over all social cues. who cares if this looks bad on cang qiong, he'll throw down with anyone if his boo is insulted.

lqg is upfront and honest. there are no hidden plots for sj to be paranoid about in lqg, he's a Good Man through-and-through. if lqg has problems, he'll tell him. if he needs to apologize and sj tells him why, he'll do so. and if sj asks him a question, he'll always do his best to answer.

while lqg knows sj has trauma and a dark past, he will never truly understand what it was like. and that's exactly what sj wants. he likes how lqg knows him more as he is now in the present vs. someone who has lived through the same past. being with him is a reminder that he is now a powerful peak lord, not the starving street rat he once was.

for lqg, sj is like a complex puzzle box. an enigma so outside of his understanding of how the world works, he can't help but be drawn to it. he used to equate scheming with evil, but once he realizes much of sj's scheming was for the good of the sect, he lets himself be impressed by sj's intelligence. the fact that sj became a peak lord from nothing shows a certain type of strength-- and lqg has always appreciated strength.

a big roadblock in their relationship was sj's antagonism towards yqy (their sect leader whom lqg respects.) once qijiu reconcile (or sj stops being so disrespectful to yqy in public) lqg is better able to see him as an ally vs. an enemy.

sj rewards this loyalty by taking care of lqg's hidden enemies, because straightforward brutes are especially susceptible to devious snakes like that. sj would know. whether or not he tells lqg can go either way. he tells lqg if only to stop lqg from hearing it elsewhere and assuming the worst; or he doesn't tell lqg because he knows lqg trusts him and confusing his mind with schemes would just make him grumpy for not understanding.

...even if he's cute when he's grumpy.

[larothoughts]

a place to write out some fandom thoughts, which may or may not be controversial but whatever. my primary fan-adjacent activity is reading/writing fanfic so assume most things will be related to that