character ask game 💚🤍🖤 - so uh, talk to us about Lan Sizhui? 😁😏
one aspect about them i love
Honestly I did not spend that much brainspace on LSZ before writing trust me as though I were your enemy, which is a very *cough* specific and premise-based take on his character, so... speaking from my brief newfound interest in the character, I love the untapped potential of his character? Most of what we see is very surface level--not to say his kindness and proactive Good-Boy-ness isn't genuine if it's not backed by the correct impulses, I think on one hand he genuinely values being considerate and careful and kind (and him being the only Lan junior who tries speaking gently to 'Mo Xuanyu' when he's just acting deliberately 'crazy' still gives me feelings. i, like wwx, have the 'such a nice kid! how tf did the Lan sect spit HIM out?' reaction 😂)
...but on the other hand, 'Lan' Sizhui has no real choice but to be a Good Kid. He's kind of adopted into the Lan family, but his main point of adoption is Lan Wangji, and it happened during the years LWJ was thoroughly destroying all of his Good Boy rep within (parts of, at least) the sect--something I thought about but didn't manage to work thoroughly into the fic was that LSZ probably deals with a lot of spillover dislike by, say, the 33 elders that were severely wounded by LWJ. And then there's all the shit he'd just barely remember... In conclusion, LSZ pretty probably grew up with the impression that Something Bad happened when he was a kid but nobody will talk about it, and dealt with feeling like he was on Thin Fucking Ice with a significant portion of the Lan elders without knowing why. Perfect recipe for a kid to repress any 'bad' feeling or behavior he might ever have!
So... what's under that surface? Especially when he starts learning about the truth of everything that happened at the end of canon, and learns where he actually came from?
Fun to think about.
one aspect i wish more people understood about them
I am not familiar enough w how people usually characterize him to really speak on this...
one (or more) headcanon(s) i have about this character
something that I did decide on during writing is that while he's not disliked by many people in the younger generations, he really doesn't have any friends except for Lan Jingyi. He doesn't get close to people easily, so it takes someone as enthusiastic and bad at reading subtlety as Jingyi to hang in there and earn the position :P
one character i love seeing them interact with
Tbh I'm not immune, his interactions with WWX and LWJ when he's a little kid hit me right in the heart. It's especially adorable in CQL, when he's sitting in LWJ's lap and you can see LWJ getting baby fever in realtime. They may not be the best guardian-ish figures, but his connection to both of them is still obviously important to him, and seeing the beginnings of it is still painfully sweet.
one character i wish they would interact with/interact with more
Honestly there's a lot I wish here! I'd like to see something of him traveling with Wen Ning (I've heard there's a movie, but also that it sucks, and based on Fatal Journey i believe it); I'd like to have seen more one-on-one interaction with LWJ when he's older, instead of always just being part of the Group of Juniors. After writing this fic, I'm also wishing that he'd ever really interacted with SMS, lol.
one headcanon i have that involves them and one other character
Separate from any fics i may or may not be writing < <.... I think he had a good, if not at all close, relationship with Jin Guangyao, and looked up to him a little bit (lsz: wow you're repressing EVERYTHING and you're doing it so well i wanna be you when i grow up). He felt a little guilty about it because while LWJ never said anything specific, he didn't seem to like Lianfang-zun much, but whenever LSZ saw him (at conferences and meetings in Jinlintai, or during JGY's frequent visits to the Lan sect) JGY was always super nice and friendly, and jokes aside was modeling a type of poised strength that was very different from LWJ's uncaring-of-social-consequences conduct that LSZ, to say the least, did not feel like he was capable of.
(jgy, on his end, is having a 'wow what a nice kid how tf is he someone adopted by that rude boy lwj' moment)
hmm, reverse unpopular opinions meme for mo xuanyu?
So the first thing I love about Mo Xuanyu is that he occupies one of the kind of porous places in the narrative that I talk about in this post, that provides the “potential to expand [the story] beyond the bounds of its structure.” He’s so central to the plot, but there’s so much about him and his motivations we don’t know, that can’t be known. It’s a narrative gap that beckons for exploration!
Like many other people, I’m of course uncomfortable with the way he’s not given any interiority and is basically there as a plot device, but I do find the hints and lacunae surrounding him quite fascinating.
Like Jin Guangyao, Wei Wuxian, and others, he’s representative of the power of reputation in this setting. But there’s a totality to his embodiment of that theme that isn’t there with the others - he’s the natural endpoint of the circulation of secondhand accounts and hearsay, being entirely made up of, and eclipsed by, the stories told about him. But what I like about that in his particular case is that the available information about him seems deliberately provocative, like it’s actively inviting the reader to challenge it. I mean, did anyone actually take “he harassed the Jin sect disciples/Jin Guangyao” at face value, given how much it resembles a garden-variety homophobic smear campaign? And yet there’s no getting to the truth of what happened, no skimming off the surface impression to get to the actual series of events. So we’re left with a character who seems very much like the kind of Bad Representation that I love about these books, and also a commentary on Bad Representation.
(See, my preferred interpretation is that Mo Xuanyu being a sexual harasser is a convenient narrative for JGY to lean into in banishing him, but that Mo Xuanyu is also genuinely bad at boundaries and takes rejection very badly - it’s the Mental Illness - and also has a tendency to interpret any rejection as being based in homophobia, for not entirely unjustified reasons. That, combined with his inclination towards latching on very enthusiastically to people, does make him quite pushy.)
Oh, and I also love his parallels with Jin Guangyao! I think Jin Guangyao really did feel affectionately towards him, especially at first - he looked at the boy that his father chose to acknowledge, who got everything Jin Guangyao was punished for wanting, and yet saw his own innocence and hope in him, and remembered his own mother’s dreams for him, and couldn’t resist the urge to take him under his wing. It makes their eventual falling out all the more heartbreaking.
(And while I am a bit disgruntled with some of the narrative/thematic implications of CQL making Jin Guangyao one of Mo Xuanyu’s intended victims, I do really like what it does for his character - it bestows more prominence on their relationship for Mo Xuanyu, and gives the impression of him as someone capable of violently and insistently turning on people he used to love. Which I find very crunchy.)
As for what I love about my Mo Xuanyu - i.e. the parts of him that are more headcanon-based:
Well, see above, for starters - his boundary issues, and his intense attachment cycles that he doesn’t know how to manage in a healthy way. The way he’s doing a lot wrong, in how he relates to others, but could do more right if he were more valued, and more secure in his life and relationships with others.
I really like how enmeshed he is in the hierarchies of his society even as he chafes against them. He knows he’s treated poorly, regarded poorly, and yet there’s a subconscious part of him that feels he deserves it. So my Sangyu fic featured him participating in the kind of obsequiousness and passivity expected from someone of his station towards a social superior, and deeply resenting that impulse in himself while also embracing it. He has so much anger bubbling under the surface just threatening to burst out at any moment, but because it doesn’t feel totally legitimate or justified to him, and because he doesn’t really have a sanctioned means to express it, it really has nowhere to go. And the biggest act of violence he displays is towards himself. :((
Oh, and I love my headcanon of him being very into art and aesthetics and decorative things. (Esp because it’s an interesting contrast to the “bad” makeup he wears.) I want him to dedicate his time to flower arrangements and write self-indulgent romance novels on the side.
thenymreaper said: ooh my thought is jgy - nmj agreed to hear clarity from jgy but i don't think the reverse would happen
This is a very good point 🤔
madtomedgar said: also in camp jgy because if lxc can't see either then the only protection he has from nmj is gone
Very true, whether it’s objective truth or his perception, I think JGY sees Mingjue as a near constant physical threat. Plus he’s not the most trusting guy even when he can see
@paradife-loft said: third vote for jgy, because I don't think he'd be able to trust that nmj would remember well enough to take his lower cultivation level into account, and in a survival situation that could be Bad. (now I'm trying to come up w/ arguments for nmj though just bc I feel like there is Bias here XD)
OH, that is such a good point, holy shit. So, not only worried about Mingjue purposefully neglecting his safety because he doesn’t like or trust him, but also inadvertently doing it. Bahaha, maybe a little 😁 I think that Mingjue would be more vocal about it, like out loud asking if JGY is telling the truth or not trusting his judgement/skills (which would still make JGY Quite Displeased).
@themoonbunnyverse said: The upsety spaguetty king is jgy. Trusting someone else with his wellbeing?? In this economy?? (Of course that's only If Nmj is the only one sighted. As you said, If it's lxc the sighted one, the truce would be that they could at least agree that they can trust Xichen)
jaiosdhgao IN THIS ECONOMY?? And totally, they could both grudgingly be unhappy about it if Xichen were in charge but they trust him and his skills implicitly, so that would be less fun
@justawanderingbabbit said: One possibility would be them being forced to trade off who sees. (Some device or the curse can be shifted.) Worse, it can't be given to the person who had it last, so it has to be passed on to each in turn. Neither NMJ nor JGY would want to trust the other and LXC would be disconsolate that they're having trouble cooperating.
👀 Oh. [points] I like this. Now I’m trying to decide whether this would be the progression of the curse/device or the beginning of it for maximum Plot and Angst factor....
ok ok prompts!!! so, I would be Delighted by some more qinxiyao family fic (deleted scenes or things you might have wanted to include in the big bang fic but didn't get to?), or, alternately, anything in the modern tcgf au? anything at all; they're all so excellent <3
both of these are such excellent prompts I started working on both of them, but the modern au got finished first! I’ll probably both a) do a lot of edits on this and b) do the qinxiyao family fic in a week or so, but here this is for now. Also, for those not in James and my brains, this is a very small part of a very large AU! Small note, all characters appearing in this fic are trans; however, He Xuan is still very much an egg and so they are referred to throughout the fic as “he/him,” although SQX at least is aware of this and wondering when to bring it up with her. She is, however, unaware that “Ming Yi” is a stolen identity and He Xuan is actually the eco-terrorist who’s been blowing up her brother’s fish hatcheries. It’s a long story.
If Xie Lian was being honest, he didn't much like the internet. It was so bright and everything moved too fast. People used a bewildering array of slang and images. It was surprisingly difficult to avoid spending hours reading upsetting news stories. People spent days arguing about pornography.
Also, his phone didn't really connect to WiFi very well. Even by the loosest definitions of the word, he hardly counted as a netizen.
People were usually shocked when he told them this, though, because Xie Lian's best friend was one of China's most popular beauty influencers.
Xie Lian's face appeared on her Weibo with some regularity. She talked about him often. He'd gone viral three separate times on Douyin, entirely accidentally.
What Shi Qingxuan was most famous for, however, was makeup tutorials. He had never actually appeared in one of these, but, since there were very few people in the world capable of saying no to a very determined Shi Qingxuan, this was about to change. He was used to being in her charmingly decorated little apartment but not quite used to becoming a decorated thing himself. He'd even put on one of the outfits Hua Cheng had designed and sewn for him, based on some of his old dance costumes and a few frantic weeks of historical research, and kept swishing the skirts around his legs.
Shi Qingxuan started setting up, chattering away to Xie Lian as she did. "You need anything before we start? Bathroom, water, a snack? I edit my videos pretty heavily, so we can always take a break, but it’s good to be comfy."
"No, I'm fine," Xie Lian said, and then had to close his eyes when she clicked on the ring light.
He fiddled with the makeup compacts laid out on the table.
Shi Qingxuan adjusted her light, scootched Xie Lian’s chair a little to the left and a little back, and then fiddled with the camera. It was quite the involved operation, Xie Lian thought; he knew a lot went into making videos, but he hadn’t realized it took this much effort before the camera was even on. Shi Qingxuan had done his makeup before, of course, but mostly just for fun, or something she could take a picture of and post on Weibo. It had been so long since he'd been filmed.
He watched Shi Qingxuan press record on her camera and then sit back and flash it a smile, putting on her Influencer Face. She squeezed his hand under the table.
“Hi everyone, welcome to Feng Shi!” she said, chirpy. “I’m Shi Qingxuan, and today we’re doing xianxia makeup with my good friend, Xie Lian. Now, for this look, we’re going to need…”
When Xie Lian was little, the makeup artists for his dance troupe had known he took about twice as long as anyone else did to get his makeup done. He was the darling of the company, though, so this was tolerated with fondness.
He didn't like the way the foundation felt on his face when it dried. His eyes watered when they put on eyeliner. He liked to spin his chair from side to side.
He'd had much worse things on his face than paint since then, and had learned how to be still.
Shi Qingxuan patted his hand cheerfully as she pulled out the setting powder.
"You're always one of my favorite models," she said. "You're so photogenic and so patient!"
"Thank you," Xie Lian said, and held still while she brushed it in his face.
Ruoye, probably noticing the warmth, slithered out of Xie Lian's robes and curled up on top of his head so she could get the full blast of heat from the ring light. She flickered out her tongue to scent Shi Qingxuan when she leaned in with a liquid eyeliner pen.
Shi Qingxuan made little kissy sounds at her, which only confirmed Xie Lian's certainty that he had good taste in friends. Most people were startled by Ruoye originally, but how they responded to her after Xie Lian introduced them was a good litmus test.
Ruoye settled in, and Xie Lian reached up a finger to stroke her scales.
He was feeling good, content and warm, happy to sit still. Then the apartment door clicked open, and Xie Lian stiffened.
"Ming-xiong? Is that you?" Shi Qingxuan called.
Ming Yi mumbled something back and shuffled into the room, buried deep in his black hoodie. As always, Xie Lian's first thought upon seeing him was wondering how he could see through all that hair.
The hoodie had a fish skeleton painted on it that he recognized instantly as one of Hua Cheng's drawings; it made Xie Lian smile, thinking of how insistent San Lang was that they absolutely weren't friends, no way, there was no particular reason he would make custom hoodies for Ming Yi. The fish were a coincidence. He’d even made Ming Yi custom salmon breakup boots while proclaiming it meant nothing.
Xie Lian, wearing an elaborate hanfu Hua Cheng had designed, sewn, and embroidered himself, even making him a period-appropriate duduo to flatten his chest, absolutely did not buy any of these excuses. Hua Cheng covered people he cared about with his art.
Ming Yi grunted a greeting and wandered off, probably to raid the fridge. Shi Qingxuan winked at Xie Lian.
“I’ll edit most of this out,” she said, conspiratorial, “But my viewers love Ming-xiong. Especially when he’s out of focus in the background. They’ve made memes. I haven’t told them anything about him. It’s good to keep a little mystery! It keeps people watching.”
Xie Lian, having no real idea what she was talking about, smiled and suppressed his instinct to nod. Shi Qingxuan began painting a flower on his forehead with red pigment.
Finally, Shi Qingxuan gently removed Ruoye from Xie Lian’s head and shoulders and settled a wig cap over his hair, then the wig she’d pre-prepared. A few bobby pins, a few tucks, and then she stepped back, grinning.
“Ta-dah! How do you like it, taizi dianxia?”
“It’s beautiful,” Xie Lian said, honestly.
“We’ll end the video here, I think,” she said, “But I’ll get some posed photos of you to edit in here if that’s alright. Oh, tilt your head back and forth a little? Good. Smile at the camera!”
Shi Qingxuan fluttered her fingers at the camera in a wave; Xie Lian waved too, a few seconds later. As she leaned forward to click off the camera he straightened his legs out to try and loosen them up. His knees made terrible crunching sounds as they stretched.
“You can take a little break if you want,” Shi Qingxuan said. “I’ll set up the area where we’ll take photos, but I’ll try to make it quick. You’re a darling for sitting through all this, you know?"
She was already bustling around again. She seemed to have an endless fountain of energy; Xie Lian found it admirable. He laid flat on his back on her bed, careful to not get makeup on her sheets or wrinkle his clothes. Ming Yi sat next to him, eating shrimp chips. He put a few directly into Xie Lian's mouth, feeding him like a little bird, and Xie Lian felt warm. Like Hua Cheng, it could be hard to know when Ming Yi liked you, but there were ways to tell.
He let Shi Qingxuan pose him until she was satisfied with the numbers of pictures she’d taken, trying very hard not to feel like the chuunibyou teenager he’d once been. He felt himself mostly immune to embarrassment at this point, but he supposed there were always exceptions.
Eventually, they cleaned up, although Xie Lian had promised Hua Cheng to show off the full look, so he didn’t get changed or clean his face.
“I’ll buy dinner,” Shi Qingxuan said. “We deserve it. You too, Ming-xiong!”
She herded them both out of the apartment and down the street to a small noodles stall. They all ordered (in He Xuan’s case, three bowls) and Xie Lian was fumbling for his phone when he heard Shi Qingxuan cheerfully tell the clerk to put it all on the same ticket. She tapped her phone to pay for it all before Xie Lian could protest.
A few people asked Xie Lian for pictures as they ate. He posed obligingly, hoping he hadn't spilled any sauce on his clothes while eating. When he was done, he packed up his leftovers, let Shi Qingxuan nag him into calling a Didi instead of trying to walk home, and bid both her and Ming Yi farewell. Ruoye, who had spent most of the time they were eating in Xie Lian's backpack, made a brief appearance too like she wanted to say goodbye as well.
Xie Lian clicked his own apartment door closed quietly and tiptoed over to slide his leftovers into the refrigerator. Down the hall, a light shone out from underneath Hua Cheng's studio door.
There was an old picture of the two of them on the fridge; it was them in a hospital pediatric ward group room. Xie Lian, age fifteen, was beaming at the camera, his "FIGHT! JUVENILE SLE" shirt a bright red and his pants an immaculate white. Next to him, Hua Cheng, his right eye patched with patterned tape, bald and tiny, stared up at him with devotion.
Ruoye bonked her head gently on the freezer door. Xie Lian pulled out one of her mice and slid her gently into her tank before giving her the treat; she was swallowing the mouse as he left the kitchen.
Hua Cheng turned to him as Xie Lian opened the door to his studio. His eye got wide, and his face looked like it did sometimes when he looked at Xie Lian, like he was seeing something holy. He slid his headphones off his ears.
Xie Lian did a little twirl for him, letting him see the way the fabric moved, and then tilted his face up for a kiss when Hua Cheng came over to him.
“Gege, you look beautiful,” he said.
“San Lang,” said Xie Lian. “It’s all you and Qingxuan. I’ll get her to send you the pictures later.”
Hua Cheng kissed the top of his head. He was dressed down, in a soft shirt and pants, not wearing his prosthetic eye. Xie Lian leaned his head into Hua Cheng’s chest.
“Gege seems tired,” Hua Cheng said. “Would you like to get ready for bed? Do you need dinner or your medicine? I can help you take all that off.”
“San Lang, you’re working,” Xie Lian said. “I already ate, so I think I’d like to sleep. But you don’t have to help.”
"Gege is more important than commissions," Hua Cheng said, and Xie Lian let him bundle him off to bed.
paradife-loft replied to your post “I can’t remember which of you I saw point out that Jin Guangyao and...”
*raises hand* 'twas me! and yes, exactly - the unfortunate thing is that I've seen approximately the same sort of "horrible evil mastermind manipulator with no actual love for the person!" sentiments re: Anthy as well, which is just. somehow managing to miss the point even MORE than with MDZS. damn.
@paradife-loft oh thank you for your brilliance! I’m sorry I didn’t remember it was you
yep- the reactions are very similar, but way more understandable with JGY who the CQL narrative tells us is a villain (and the book kinda lets us make up our own minds about) vs Anthy, who we are pretty clearly meant to sympathize with, that’s kind of the entire point of the show (also Anthy as a teenage girl is a whole lot more inherently sympathetic than 30something JGY)
thinking now about how my personal witchy first mental association with mdzs was Wicked, not SKU, entirely because WWX is the focus and not JGY
do you need a twitter account to help out with the xiyao troll comment-collecting, or no? because I've gotten several that I'd be happy to send their way if not being on twitter isn't an obstacle
Hey!
First: sorry that you got hit by the troll too :/ (I already saw your tags, *sigh* it’s really bad)
Second: I am posting it publically because I think it might be relevant to other folks as well - I hope you don’t mind (if - just tell me, then I’ll delete it and make a separate post of it)
No, a twitter account isn’t needed to send over the comments you have received. The folks taking care of it have set up a google form which is accessible without having a twitter handle
Twitter thread (openly accessible): some information & the respective user
Google Form: comments / relevant info can be uploaded here
