I have a SHITTY THROAT and a BLOCKED NOSE, I HATE being ill oh my god. Anyway I'll power through and give my honeypies an update for the mad scientist AU because I didn't post yesterday and I want to do something with my brain... Lan Wangji is bonding with Wei Ying. He is spending so much time with him and is being told all of the boy's deepest thoughts and feelings. They aren't just limited to Cleansing sessions anymore; Wei Ying is yelling his name from across the camp and bounding over to leap onto his back, likely expecting to be sidestepped or something. Everyone watches in a mixture of shock and confusion as, instead of pulling his usual stunts of looking at people who touch him with icy disdain, Lan Wangji merely hikes Wei Ying's legs up his waist and begins carrying him along with perfect posture. Wei Ying is surprised, laughing more out of startlement than anything else, batting at the man's shoulders and saying "Lan Zhan, you can put me down!! I'm too heavy!" As though he isn't both extremely underweight and also as though he hasn't told him how much it hurts to move for long stretches of time.
This is a regular occurrence. It becomes commonplace to see Lan Wangji and Wei Ying together, even moreso than seeing the gui cultivator with any of The Lads. Xue Yang is over here like "dude what the hell, you're ditching me :(" and Wei Ying goes "nuh uh, extra gege instead!" Xue Yang takes a scrutinising look at Lan Wangji, watches him stare back with that autism look in his eyes and honestly that's all he needs to do - Lan Wangji is now a new gege. It seems like this guy is the only one who can get Wei Ying to do things he's hesitant about doing, as long as he promises to stay with him the whole time. There is not a moment where they're apart. The Wen siblings are, of course, a little hurt by it, but it's hard to not understand where Wei Ying is coming from. It's best to let him come to them rather than trying to force him to forgive them. Wen Qing feels this the most because she's the one who takes on the brunt of responsibilities for her family.
What's going on with the Dafan Wen?? Well, they're in the clutches of the Wen still, so all The Lads can hope is that Wen Ruohan has too much on his mind with the war to consider using them as weapons. After all, as far as he's concerned, Wen Ning, Wen Qing, and Xue Yang have been taken against their will - therefore, no reason to go around slaughtering potential bargaining tools! If anything, he believes that three of the four Lads are being used as a blackmail tool against Wei Wuxian. That's right, folks, he genuinely believes that Wei Wuxian would totally still be on the side of the Wen if he was not being blackmailed. He thinks that his brainwashing was literally so good, and that even though Wei Wuxian killed Wen Zhuliu (by the way, the Big Shots do not know this) and was consequently thrown into the Burial Mounds for it, he's still using the techniques he taught, so he can't be THAT bothered about it! (We have to respect a guy so far up his own ass that he thinks he's That Good.)
Meanwhile, Lan Xichen is loving all of this!! He's all like "oh em gee my didi is bonding with people so much, this is great, I should talk to him about this!!" So they talk and Lan Wangji is like "yeah I like and admire Wei Ying" so Lan Xichen goes "yeah that's great, it's always good to have a friend you admire-" "I want to put my fingers into his mouth." "...So it's always great to have a person that you love, no matter what their gender happens to be-" Anyway. His didi is a cutsleeve too. Poor shifu...he won't be getting any grandkids...unless someone (most likely Wei Wuxian) fucks around with something and gets their internal biology changed. Who knows with that boy? He is actually determined to get to know Wei Wuxian personally without being caught by Wangji (he's watching him like a hawk these days), so he starts having like...biweekly tea sessions with him that are supposed to be about how his cultivation base works and strategising with him but do sometimes end up as mini things like "sooo, do you like my diiidiii??"
Nie Mingjue is all about the grind. While Lan Xichen is trying to learn everything about Wei Wuxian, he is in the background, Meng Yao and him going through all these different attack strategies that just never seem to work. Then Wei Wuxian, who has been peering at the war table with interest, points to an unprotected flank and goes "yeah I could put my palsies there." Nie Mingjue, who has been working with only their army, is hit with the sudden life changing thought of 'oh my fucking god. He has an undead army that we haven't thought about.' It's safe to say that he's very approving of Wei Wuxian after that, much to the delight of Nie Huaisang. What has Nie Huaisang been doing?? SO glad you asked - now that Wei Wuxian is back with his family, he's been working on his other pet project. Meng Yao.
Meng Yao obviously has his whole family situation going on, but also refuses to let Jin Zixuan know that they're related for some unknown reason. Whenever Nie Huaisang brings it up, he's like "no I have to be able to prove myself to him before I reveal that I am his brother. I cannot let his standards be shifted by that knowledge before I have gained his approval naturally." Something or other about 'honour' or whatever THAT means. Nie Huaisang has no time for that and instead goes about making the half brothers connect before they possibly die or whatever, meaning he must go to Jin Zixuan. Of course, instead of just saying "yo you've got a half brother hanging around in our sect", he instead chases the teenager up on that idea he had about talismans to find his family.
Jin Zixuan, still firmly in his "I hate my dad and am going to be nothing like him" era (is it an era if it's just his life now), has been dealing with the stresses of being the youngest kid at the war meetings and having to look out for basically all that is left of his sect. The rest of the sect is evil and not even worth acknowledging honestly, and the knowledge that if they win this war, he will be the sect leader of the Jin Sect is more than a little bit too much for him to handle. Instead of being a big boy and talking about it with someone (because he doesn't feel like he can tell anyone except Luo Qingyang, who can't help much), he latches onto his other issues, like finding his family. After being reminded by Nie Huaisang about his idea, he goes up to not Wei Wuxian but Lan Wangji and is like "is Wei Wuxian healthy enough to help me with this idea?" because basically everyone knows that Wei Wuxian is an unreliable source for these questions.
Lan Wangji considers it carefully and discusses it with Wen Qing, who both decide that Wei Ying can help out because it would be exercising the qi part of his golden core. He hasn't used it nearly enough for a while, so it would be good to help remind him out it works, meaning that as long as he only works with that medium he's allowed to help. Wei Ying has been itching for something important to do - he's not allowed to do much guidao because of his fucked up body or whateva - and leaps at the chance to use talismanry. To make it clear, I've decided that Wei Ying was always interested in the medium of talismanry and read up on it a whole bunch, but was never fully able to make use of it because the Wen saw it as more of a copout/weakling's weapon due to it not requiring much qi to wield most talismans. When he was in the Burial Mounds, he played around with it more, but he really flourished when he got out because he had so many cool materials at his disposal. So, this is like his first major project with talismans involved, and let's just say Jin Zixuan is lucky that Wei Wuxian has a natural talent for talismans (like his baba (another decision I've made)).
