#untaming

[theosthotss]

Untaming

lestapiastri pirate au - 8.2k - 1/2 chapters - ongoing archive locked on ao3 🔒 Oscar wants freedom. The Navy want their dog back. Max and Charles are very confused. There's something on the horizon Oscar can't see coming, and he needs to watch out. Pirates are the least of his problems on the high seas.

[fatalism-and-villainy]

Thinking about that fic has me thinking about danmei, and about how the last thread of my creative attachment to CQL fandom at the moment is the Qin Su/Wen Qing fic that I have not started or planned at all but that I am fairly invested in someday writing, and that had me thinking about Li Xiaofan, @coldwind-shiningstars' and my (but mostly their) OC that we decided to have be lavender married to Nie Huaisang. And from there I started thinking about headcanons Novy and I came up with together about her very intricate and toxic polycule of lesbians, and how, because Xiaofan and Huaisang are terrible parents, their kids would functionally end up being raised by some of Xiaofan's bedmates. And I remember I had this whole scenario in my head of a woman who left the Unclean Realm after a messy breakup with Xiaofan and married a man and had children, and this caused spectacular drama between her and the other women, and I had this picture of her giving an impassioned speech to Xiaofan about how she poured so much of herself into Xiaofan's children that it's a wonder she even has energy left over now to raise the children of her own body. This is how far-removed from the source material unchecked worldbuilding inside one's own head can get.

[theosthotss]

I have come here in search of Untaming crumbs because OMG that was so good. 10/10 hit the spot perfectly

okay i have small small crumbs, unfortunately ive like barely written anything for ch2 BUT my exams have just finished so i will be soooo locked in on getting this chaoter together from now on

IN THE MEAN TIME heres a wee crumb

It's like something takes over him. The growling guard dog, biting the hand that feeds it, darting in front of the crew and parrying their blows. Shocked and angry glares come with every slash of his sword, and the foul, sour scent coating the boat makes his skin crawl but he has to-

He has to protect Max.

He can't see Charles anymore, and he fights down the sick feeling in his stomach as he edges backwards, blocking strike after strike. They're cornered and he knows it. It's really the only thing he knows right now, in the swirl of panic he's locked in, the only thing getting through the haze that his mind has descended into. He doesn't know why he's gone against the Navy, or why he's protecting a fucking pirate captain, or why he's let himself get into this stupid fucking position.

There's a body that gets too close to him, blade gliding through the air far too close to Max, and he lashes out. His arm moves on instinct, his sword finding it's target, slashing through flesh, and it barely registers in Oscar's brain that he's just attacked a Navy officer.

Max hits the fence behind him, and Oscar's breath quickens. He's backed into a corner, the consequences of his actions staring him down, resentment and bitterness choking him.

And then there's a large, calloused hand clutching at him from behind, and he's being dragged, back, back, over the- fuck- over the edge of the fucking boat, and he's in free fall.

The air rushes past him, and the salty smell of the sea gets closer by the moment. He thinks this is a good way to die. Protecting Max. Being good.

[fatalism-and-villainy]

#i have. thoughts about WWX and food - please share!

So I think it’s relevant that all of the most traumatic periods of time in Wei Wuxian’s life involve starvation in some way. There’s living on the streets as a little kid, having survived his parents’ death and not having any caretaker, and having to scavenge for food; there’s spending three months in the Burial Mounds, after what is certainly a very traumatizing medical procedure, getting terrorized by resentful spirits while having to subsist on corpse cannibalism and god knows what else; and then there’s living at the Burial Mounds with the Wens, during which he’s demonstrably in extremely poor mental health, where it’s mentioned that they frequently don’t have enough food, and where the stress of procuring food is a part of daily life. 

So I think it’s safe to say that Wei Wuxian associates food with care, with protection, with security. Especially since one of the most prominent caretakers in his life, Jiang Yanli, shows care regularly through food. And there are several occasions where Wei Wuxian asks for help, or rather obscures his need for help, by asking for food. I’m thinking of these two scenes in particular:

The first is for his little mock-whiny “i’m baby!!” ritual. He’s trying to hide that he lost his core and deflect attention from his PTSD and assorted Issues, which he does by joking around and acting childish, and also distilling his distress into something seemingly trivial like not getting his basic needs met. But given the parentified role Jiang Yanli has had in both his and Jiang Cheng’s life, I think there’s a degree to which he doesn’t know how to ask for support from her except by acting like a child.

And then in the second one, on the boat with Lan Wangji and Wen Ning, he’s explicitly remembering the former scene, while hallucinating his sister (with Lan Wangji and Wen Ning looking on in concern). And the way he says “I’m hungry” with that little laugh seems to me like he’s trying to assuage their concern for him, sort of akin to “oh, i’m fine actually, it’s nothing.” But he’s also grieving for Jiang Yanli, and probably the general loss of the familial support system he had with her and Jiang Cheng, and his craving for food is very much tied to his emotional distress in the moment and his loss of that particular kind of care that she provided for him. 

So, yeah - basically in his grand tradition of pretending he’s more okay than he is, he sometimes invokes hunger as a more “trivial” concern than his more complex emotional states to explain away his situational distress, but I think hunger is also very much tied into most of his emotional pitfalls, because it’s something he deeply associates with the most significant trauma and mental stress of his life.  

[fatalism-and-villainy]

I think Jiang Cheng is actually similar to Lan Wangji in that he also shows affection through giving gifts, though for mostly different reasons. 

Like, Jiang Cheng’s demonstrably bad at expressing his feelings with words, and I also think that the most positive aspect of his own personhood, for him, is his status and power and wealth. That role he’s inherited, and the security that comes with it, are the cushioning for the festering pit of self-loathing inside him. And so his outward behaviour towards other who matter to him often manifests as spending money on them. 

This manifests in a particular way with Wei Wuxian post-canon, because Jiang Cheng hasn’t lost his competitive impulse towards him and subconsciously feels his money and position give him something of an edge over this person he’s always been compared unfavourably to. Also he’s just in major “WE CAN’T LET WEI WUXIAN KNOW WE LIKE HIM” mode and so he defaults to passive-aggressively dragging him off to the tailor shop saying “you’re too scruffy, you’ll embarrass me dressed like this” and then commissioning five expensive sets of robes for him. 

[fatalism-and-villainy]

“How can Jiang Cheng stans ignore the fact that he tortured demonic cultivators?” Oh I am not ignoring it, I simply decided it was cool and sexy

[fatalism-and-villainy]

Is there actual evidence in canon for the belief that Lan Xichen is socially reticent, doesn’t have many friends, and doesn’t open up to people easily? I see people stating this all the time as if it’s fact, but I’ve always gotten a different impression - that he’s not only more at ease in social situations than Lan Wangji, but that he also likes people a good deal and has a decent amount of friends. 

Like, it’s entirely possible that there is detailing about his personality or interpersonal habits in the novel that I’m forgetting about, which is what I’m wondering about - but the evidence I’ve seen proposed thus far is just that we don’t see any of his other social relationships outside of Nie Mingjue or Jin Guangyao. And I’ve already argued that due to the scope of the story and the nature of the cast, I’m not convinced by that line of argument.