#golden core

[19silvermirrors]

Reconciliation detail💜 (Golden core-approved🌞)

[aurasacred]

How in the heck did Wei Wuxian hide his missing core for so long in his first life? He should have been found out well before he ever had a chance to rescue the Wen remnants at Qiongqi Pass.

It's established in canon that one of the first things a healer does is check their patient's qi before treating whatever problems they have. And yet you expect me to believe that not a single time during a literal WAR did Wei Wuxian receive an injury bad enough to visit a healer? Even with (especially because of) his use of resentment, a healer would immediately check his qi to make sure he wasn't going into a deviation because of his cultivation. They'd have found out about his missing core the very first time he got injured.

If he did somehow manage to avoid the healers for the entire war, or refused to let them treat him, that in itself should have sent up blaring red flags. And in CQL, he was unconscious for 3 days after Wen Ruohan's death, yet not a single healer treating him during that time went, "Hey, uhhhhh, something's missing"?

It's one of the most implausible things about MDZS canon for me. An established and common diagnostic technique was somehow just never used on the one person who was trying to hide a Very Big Secret that said technique would have immediately discovered? I call BS. Either Wei Wuxian is way better at avoiding medical care than he seems, or all those healers were really dropping the ball.

[starzknight]

Dunno if this is anything

I also dunno if i should tag this as gore or body horror? Cause there's no blood or anything but still...

[flamingwell]

There's one important thing I think a lot of fic writers miss about the loss of a golden core. Cultivators are much more long lived than mundane people. The whole idea is to cultivate to immortality after all. And cultivator society is made up of people who all expect to live very long lives. So the loss of a golden core—it's not just a loss of power. It's not even "just" the loss of career and identity and place in society. It's the loss of many many years off of the life expectancy of a former cultivator. This is basically the equivalent of a fatal illness. Any character that loses their golden core is going to die young (compared to what they would otherwise have expected), while any of their loved ones that doesn't die from violence would outlive them by many, many years. No wonder WWX was so ready to give his core to his baby brother! Yes, of course it's partly because of all the other reasons we know so well, but also—he didn't want his brother to die young! No wonder Jiang Cheng is so furious when he finds out about the core transfer! Yes, there's so many reasons, but one of them is that he's already lost so much family—including watching WWX die before—and he doesn't want to do it again! (MXY might have had a core but it's much weaker than WWXs and he'll still die much sooner than he would have otherwise).

Loss of a golden core is a fucking terminal diagnosis from the perspective of cultivators!

[matlabkuch-bhii]

Okay so hear me out, but I've been in a MDZS space for a while and was recently listening to Iris by Goo Goo Dolls, and it resonated so bad. Now most people would think of Wangxian when they first hear it, but personally I think of Chengxian, platonic or otherwise, so it's a bit freeform for me. Mostly it's because of the lyrics,

"You're the closest to heaven that I'll ever be"

Which obviously relates to the golden core transfer from JC's perspective and "I don't want to go home tonight," essentially being post reveal, of not wanting to deal with it, but could also be not wanting to go home to Lotus Pier after the siege to deal with the wreckage that's left.

Then the lyrics,

"All I can taste is this moment,

All I can breathe is your life,"

Which so obviously refers again to the Golden core transfer, essentially JC is breathing the life given to him by WWX, but also tasting the moment could refer to a number of things, the way he actually lost his core trying to protect WWX, or the moment of the siege, or even the death of JYL, take your pick.

"I just don't want to miss you tonight,"

To me that's about the 13 years of torment, believing WWX was still alive somehow, or being unwilling to let go, chasing his ghost in other demonic cultivators.

"And I don't want the world to see me, cos I don't think that they'd understand"

To me this refers to the both of them, both of them desperately do not want to reveal their secrets, because they don't think anyone would understand, not even each other.

"When everything's meant to be broken, I just want you to know who I am,"

I think this refers to both of them for me again, everything really did break in the war, but it always was going to, there were a lot of cracks and pressure there, so the yearning to be understood by each other, but it didn't happen. The need to be understood as to why WWX defected, or JC struggling with accepting WWX as someone like family.

The finally, there's,

"Well you can't fight the tears that ain't coming, or the moment of truth in your lies,"

I interpret this as the 13 years of JC struggling to mourn, and also the golden core reveal, the moment of truth between all the lies and how it absolutely shatters their lives, ultimately with WWX deciding to leave JC in the past.

Personally, I'm new to the fandom, and I know I'm taking A LOT of creative license with the song, considering it has a completely different meaning and I'm jumping all over the timeline of the series, still this is my loose, personal and creative interpretation, I just felt like it fits the vibe.

[cut-aare]

Mdzs rant:

Like bro. I've seen the animated series but OMFG I had no fucking idea how DEEP this book was. Wwx was and is still my favourite character because of how much I resonate w him,,, but learning sm about how his death was GRUESOME that mxtx herself couldn't write it??? OMFG... That changed how I view him (I have sm respect for him)

And secondly, Jiang Cheng managed to rip my heart into shreds?! He's such A WELL WRITTEN CHARACTER LIKE WHATTTT (I didn't expect to LOVE HIM) HIS DEVELOPMENT JSJDHHDHDHDHDH his relationship with pre and post wwx ughhhh i love how practically it was written to be. And him managing to carry the burden of rebuilding an entirely destroyed sect by himself? Damn. His impulsiveness (which i EXTREMELY RESONATE WITH) which resulted him in his golden core getting removed? (EDIT : I just realised that he may have saved wwx from the wens by doing that😭😭) Top notch element in the authors writing. Shoving his own grief down to raise his dead A-jie and Jin Zixuan's child Jin Ling? I can never bro. I have SO MUCH RESPECT FOR THIS MAN I LOVE HIM

Brothers I'm so fucking deep that I've almost cried when I realised how gruesome and bad every betrayal and killing were (esp wwxs death, jc's realisation about his golden core, xichen feeling betrayed, jin ling trying to keep it together, sizhui not remembering his past, lan zhan keeping it together and trying to move on...). I live for how mxtx wrote every character. I want to write stories like these omfgggg

[aigoosm]

has anyone pointed out how in the donghua, yiling laozu wei wuxian looked far much more older (in a way) compared to lan zhan and jiang cheng ? it’s almost like they’re making him appear much more physically mature compared to the others— symbolizing how he’s slowly starting to age without a golden core helping him retain his youth.

is it intentional ? or it’s really just the donghua’s art style ? like yes, i have thoughts about the art style since in some earlier episodes it looked a little inconsistent but i do not judge since i’m not really a good artist myself.

it does make me wonder though, if it was intentional. but the image of mature looking wei ying during his yiling laozu era felt consistent.

[pancake-umbreon]

mdzs headcanon that might not be accurate to the lore at all but who freaking cares. life is short.

losing your golden core gives you chronic pain! (+ bonus chronic fatigue)

like i'll get to the Other Effects it has on your body later but i think that when you have such a level of cultivation to form a golden core in the first place, it does wonders for your body. however, losing all that in the blink of an eye will be prolonged hell on earth because suddenly your body has to adjust to being without all of those enhancements and protections that the golden core provides.

now, the only people who are shown to have lost their golden cores just Give The Fuck Up - iirc wei wuxian is the only one shown to have kept going in spite of losing his golden core. but this means that a) i can really let this hc go wild and b) i can give wwx chronic pain! i'm not really counting jiang cheng here, because he got a golden core back in like a week. but i imagine that he was also probably deeply spurred on by the prospect of doing anything to get his golden core back, and thus ignored the pain and the fatigue.

i'm also gonna address the theory of the possibility of regenerating one's golden core even after losing it right now, actually. if this were possible, i think that recultivating a golden core would very slowly, very gradually ebb away the pain and fatigue, because your body finally has those enhancements again that were violently ripped out of it. but it never fully goes away. because the more you age before developing a golden core, the weaker it will be.

anyways! wei wuxian, get in the pear wiggler <3 since the golden core grants you more endurance and such, lacking it means that allllll of wwx's scars and more severe injuries are now felt at all times. burn scar from the wen branding iron? Chronic Pain. breaking probably every bone in his body from falling into the burial mounds? Chronic Pain. surgery scar from where his golden core was extracted in the first place? Chronic Fucking Pain-

wwx is just really really good at hiding his problems, as we all know. like it's not a problem when he gets resurrected into mxy's body, which has a golden core, but i like to think it was absolutely an issue in his burial mounds era. and wen qing had to pull him aside one day and say "girliepop i can tell you're hiding. if you don't let me give you some damn treatment right now i'm gonna beat your ass"

in conclusion! at all times i am looking for new ways to make my blorbos disabled /silly

i'm probably forgetting several things but i wrote this at like 10pm while eepy