Im so sad that predatory bulldykes corrupting femmes into having nasty lesbo sex with them is made up by rightwing homophobes because that sounds really hot. I want that for myself
Look, I love Wei Wuxian and think he had very good reasons for doing the things he did, but I do think if you’re looking at the contrast between how Lan Wangji and Jiang Cheng feel about him post-resurrection their very different personalities and moral outlooks account for maybe half of the gulf and the rest is just that Lan Wangji isn’t really one of the people Wei Wuxian fucked over. He hurt his feelings and killed members of his clan, but he’s not the one he flaked on, or left, or broke promises to. Lying to a guy you’re in love with but are not pursuing a relationship with is different from lying to your coworker/roommate/platonic life partner you’re supposed to be doing post genocide reconstruction with. Being mean to your crush is not the same thing as refusing to explain to your little brother what you’re dealing with in terms of physical capability and ongoing trauma and how that relates to why you keep ditching him and your shared responsibilities to daydrink. Xichen and Lan Qiren made it out of Nevernight alive and well. Wei Wuxian (probably) didn’t contribute to Sizhui being orphaned, although if his parents were cultivators I suppose it’s possible that he did kill them during the war. Even if that’s the case, they were not people who Lan Wangji considered part of a family he shared with Wei Wuxian. He doesn’t look at his child and think about what a better life his kid would be leading if he’d had the strength to cut Wei Wuxian off for real. Even when it comes to things that are superficially equivalent, like Wei Wuxian playing a role in both Lan and Jiang cultivators being possessed and killed, the fact that Wei Wuxian was himself a member of the Jiang clan and they’re being fucked over by someone who used to be one of them is a pretty big contextual difference. Again, this is not me coming for a teenager with PTSD who was doing his best and trying to both look after his family and avert a genocide! I’m just saying that Jiang Cheng has a lot of reasons that Lan Wangji does not to be experiencing some ambivalence on the topic of everybody’s favourite necromancer.
Jayce is a real homie, doing some massage to Viktor to ease his pain
Full pic on ❌and 🦋
Hehe, I am thinking that JC got tangled in some shenanigans that keep following Wei Wuxian, and in effect got sent to some other dimension where everything is the same but isn't.
And now WWX has to go and retrieve him - and for that ends up going through quite a few realities in a "Where isy my shidi?" adventure that places him face to face with a variety of Jiang Chengs and his own feelings of shame, guilt, love and anger towards his shidi.
He sees a Jiang Cheng who have lost their core and a one that didn't, ones that reclaimed his sect and one that was enslaved by Wen Zhuliu as some sick standin for his mom. One that saved Yanli and sacrificed his sect and one that never forgave Wei Wuxian (ohz so that's how his actual hate feels) and one that got over WWX's death and forgot (and that's how indifference feels, Wei Wuxian hates it!). There is a reality where JC didn't get a replacement core and Wei Wuxian was the Jiang Sect Leader who kept him under lock and key (and that Jiang Cheng was miserable, but didn't want to run away, as long as his Wei Wuxian loved him still...).
There is one where Jiang Cheng is married to Lan Xichen and they have kids??? (Wei Wuxian hates it! Hates it! Hates it!!! ....just can't explain why... His shidi would never...right? And what does it mean Jiang Cheng gave birth to the kids?? Oh gods, he never wants to have Lan Xichen sit him down for a sex talk ever again>_<!!! The alpha/omega sex sure is something!) That world unsettled him the most. How is it that Jiang Cheng is happily married here? How is it that Lan Xichen chose him to marry??? Doesn't he mind the awful personality and constant anger? His shidi is very pretty and great, and strong, but he is just like his mom and... Lan Xichen almost slaps him in the head in that universe. Which is scary, because Lan Xichen never gets angry to Wei Wuxian's memory. And on account of a joke? Wei Wuxian doesn't get it.
"If you stopped looking at him and trying to see his mother instead of the boy you grew up with." The big alpha tells him. "Then you'd understand."
And uh, yeah, that one kinda....stung a bit. Maybe that reality wasn't that bad - for Jiang chengttonhave someone who cared for him and understood him. For his shidi to have family again, one that loved him as he should be loved even if it didn't include Wei Wuxian. Even if his shidi had to birth babies and take that monstrous Lan pillar...(he hated it, hated it, heated it!!!)
It's still better, however, than the one reality Wei Wuxian stepped into that just... Didn't have Jiang Cheng of its own. One where he died at the hands of Wen Chao, where the Sunshot Campaign never even got off the ground, because their Wei Wuxian burned the Wen to the ground and salted the ashes. There's no Lan Sizhui there, no Wen Ning. Wen Quing died under his hands like all the others. There's no Yunmeng Jiang. Just Wei Wuxian full of rage and the world that lives in fear of him. What a miserable existence.
He left that world as fast as he could, sick to his stomach.
On the quest to reclaim his precious shidi.
'replacing jc in someone's affection' I am crying! wwx doesn't do it once but twice! It's fascinating! Also, this makes me understand why some people, reading the novel, come to the conclusion that wwx doesn't care anymore about jc. Yeah, it's a valid interpretation!
Listen, I just rotated, and rotated, and rotated this scenario (—because, like, both child and adult Wei Wuxian are sincerely in need of support and affection, but I think receiving it as a child while it was withheld from someone he loved, what might have seemed like taking it away from someone who also needed it, also contributed to his boundary problems and self-sacrificial tendencies and eventual resentment—like he needs it but it hurts someone he loves deeply when he gets it but he still needs it, how can he reconcile these conflicting truths?? OK I will stop now—) and, uh, have a tiny little sketch of that zhanchengxian fic concept below, with which I will exorcise my sad past chengxian/past zhancheng/current wangxian thoughts.
It was going to be a perfect triple triple drabble but I needed 80 more words in the centre section to describe Jiang Cheng's tears. You know how it is.
At first he was busy and grateful for it.
Then, Jin Ling settled, elders cowed, sect in order, Jiang Cheng was forced to returned to Lotus Pier. Empty, now.
His sect ran as it always did. He slept poorly. He dreamed often. He walked up and down the pier at night, pursued by lesser ghosts, echoes of people who were alive, just gone. His own life closed around him as tight as any noose, one long merciless sequence of work, sleep, work.
He had a minor qi deviation.
“Go back to dual cultivation,” said the doctor.
“That’s no longer possible,” he said.
The doctor looked up. When Jiang Cheng didn’t say anything else, she said, “Well. Come here for acupuncture once a week. Consider visiting Jin Ling.”
Relax, she didn’t bother to say.
Jiang Ping, his one surviving cousin, took tea with him, and said: “I know things have been stressful. Perhaps you would consider marriage now?”
“I didn’t think marriage was relaxing,” said Jiang Cheng, drily.
“It can be. After everything, well… it’s nice to have someone there.” Jiang Ping looked up, thinking. “Having someone there and working a lot. I don’t think it’s possible for Sect Leader to work harder, so you’ll have to try the other thing.”
Jiang Cheng let out a snort despite himself. Jiang Ping grinned at him.
He could get married, he supposed. What was there to prevent him?
He didn’t call for a matchmaker. He worked harder, kept himself so busy he could hardly think, but at night, laying in his bed, he ached with loneliness before sleep. And in sleep, he saw them, Lan Wangji and Wei Wuxian both, invariably walking away from him, hand in hand.
Sometimes he was silent; sometimes he called to them. It didn’t matter. They never turned around.
-
In Wei Wuxian’s dream, it was high summer, air as thick as syrup, and he was lying under the trees along the riverbank with his head in Jiang Cheng’s lap.
Above him, Jiang Cheng was eating tanghulu. Playfully, Wei Wuxian opened his mouth like a baby bird, and Jiang Cheng, rolling his eyes, took a piece of fruit and fed it to him, red and almost glowing. His index finger brushed against Wei Wuxian’s mouth.
Sometimes, he dreamed and he didn’t know whether it was just a dream or a fragment of a memory. He thought this might have happened—he faintly remembered begging Jiang Cheng to let him rest his head in his lap, across his narrow, muscled thighs.
Suddenly it was night, and Jiang Cheng was gone.
“Jiang Cheng?” called Wei Wuxian, and found his voice was a child’s voice, high-pitched and nervous. “Jiang Cheng?”
He rushed through Lotus Pier, now dark and empty, towards Jiang Cheng’s room. Then, in the way of dreams, Jiang Cheng was in front of him, a child again, too, face swollen with tears as he wept alone on the pier.
Wei Wuxian froze, panicked.
Someone picked him up; Uncle Jiang had appeared. But instead of saying anything, he turned and walked away. “Uncle Jiang,” Wei Wuxian whispered, but Jiang Fengmian didn’t respond.
All Wei Wuxian could do was look over Uncle Jiang’s shoulder at Jiang Cheng, at his crumpled, sobbing face. You don’t understand, he thought, suddenly, I love you but I need this, I need it, I need it.
That face changed again, blurred into Jiang Cheng's adult face, still weeping as he knelt on the pier. And then the strong arms around him weren’t Uncle Jiang’s but Lan Zhan’s, holding him tight in a bridal carry, taking him away as he squirmed to look back, to not look away from Jiang Cheng’s face, they had been so happy only a moment ago—
Wei Wuxian woke late, his face wet. Went to look for a handkerchief. Opened a drawer he hadn’t looked in before to find: two purple hair ribbons. An open jar of salve, carved with the insignia of a well-known Yunmeng herbalist. And a lavender handkerchief, embroidered with a little frog. Wei Wuxian traced it gently with his thumb.
-
The day was a little crisp, but bright and beautiful. Lan Wangji had risen at the appointed time, eaten breakfast serenely with the sect, and taught some advanced guqin lessons. Lan Sizhui was coming along beautifully, playing more delicate and precise every day, a delight to teach.
Everything was just as it should be in the Cloud Recesses, but Lan Wangji was still somehow uneasy.
He had gained everything he had dreamed of as a teenager, in one bewildering fell swoop. His life had been overturned, but for the better, the man he had wanted for so long delivered to him on a silver platter. He was unbelievably lucky.
Of course, he grieved what had happened to his brother. Lan Xichen deserved only good things. It was bitter to find out someone you had loved so deeply had deceived you—had failed you—had abandoned you.
But with the exception of that dark spot, the suffering and absence of his brother, his life was everything he had ever asked for, wasn’t it? A pristine life, on the surface.
If there was a dark shadow underneath, the ripple of something passing through a lake on a sunny day—something slipping out of an incautious hand, lost to the water—that too was life, wasn’t it?
He had never been so happy in his life. He had never before been so happy in his life, as he had once imagined it.
He averted his eyes from that shadow.
Until, one day, he returned home, and found Wei Ying, sitting at the room’s low table, holding a handkerchief in one hand. Remnants of a different life that had collected in his home. No—that he had kept. Gripped tightly.
“Lan Zhan,” Wei Ying said, brightly, face stretched in a brittle smile. “What’s this?”
Sorry your fic just made me so feral I have to let it out ahhhhh the thought of all of that combined with Jason’s transformation… being reduced to instinct so completely and still feeling the same way about being fed on? Perhaps even more intensely? Yum
Dude. DUDE. NEVER APOLOGIZE FOR THAT this the feral zone, ok, I am right there with you skfjfjdkjs
Because YES. Y E S. I don't know how else to say it but you g e t me, ok, like that's!!! That's it!!! That's the fic!!!! It's Jason feeling this way about Tim, and the feeling is SO bone deep that even when he isn't in control of himself, he WANTS it. He craves it in an animal way. It's deep in his hindbrain to want it. He wants to be needed so fully, to be the source of sustenance and support, to provide. And for someone to want it too. To live because of him. To want him with them, always OwO
I'm insane about this concept, anon, you are in good company skdmffjsk
ok i've never read the novel but your tags on that post about jc and matchmaker requirements...mxtx girl i don't think you wrote what you thought you wrote lmao (jc noticing beauty? doesn't seem like he does sorry that's whats on the page)
Exactly!! The only time that novel Jiang Cheng is even hinted at having sexual thoughts is when (after loudly decrying NHS and WWX for looking at spring books) he wakes up with a book next to his head.
I do kind of sort of enjoy the idea that MXTX shared, that while that's his list for the matchmakers, that's not actually what he wants in a wife. Emotional vulnerability? 0%, he can't be targeted. Tactical evasion: A+++. No one will ever know he wants to be held!!!
Tim: *walks into Jason’s room* I can’t sleep
Jason: not my problem, replacement
Tim: *lays down on top of Jason*
Jason: *pulls him close and hugs him tightly* go away
Tim: *kisses his chest* I’m leaving
Jason: okay good
Both of them in less than a minute: *asleep*