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[evilhasnever]

fellas, have you heard the latest xiyao news?

This is in regard to the Guanyin Temple scene with Lan Xichen, of course. Coupled with zzj’s interviews about his interpretation of “die with me” (he said he wanted to experience a last moment of warmth before he died, plain and simple) this sheds a very important light on JGY’s feelings and intentions towards LXC in the temple…..

Go here to see the whole video of his rehearsal and witness zhu zanjin’s absolutely heart wrenching EVERYTHING - gaze, tears, intensity, delivering the guanyin temple lines in his own voice, etc. it’s transcendent, truly.

(Btw source: this is from the newly released DVD Limited Ed of the Untamed Concert Nanjin & Bangkok 2019)

[evilhasnever]

the thought recently came to my mind and stayed there since so I really need to share it with someone. do you think in case jgy and/or nmj get resurrected/reborn with their memories intact post-canon, they would hold some kind of resentment towards lxc? for jgy, I think it's pretty in-character for him to disregard his part in ruining lxc's trust and lying and inadvertently using him in killing nmj, and simply be upset with the stabbing. and for nmj it's too pretty obvious of a moment of 'I told you so!', and lxc not listening to his warnings eventually got him killed. on the other hand, lxc has plenty of time to reflect on everything that has happened, and I doubt fierce corpses have any sense of time and space in order to process everything. I've just never seen this aspect in any of the post-canon fix-its I've read

Oh yay I love getting anons! I hope it’s ok if I tl;dr disagree with some of these ideas and give you my own :’) Let me start with: jgy and nmj at the end of the story are non-sentient fierce corpses (or, in jgy’s case, just a corpse that has not turned yet) so there won’t be any talking or processing anything at all. So, let us assume they are brought back in the exact same mental state they were at when they died.

I’m no NMJ scholar, mind you, but - while I think he would absolutely be angry when he comes back, I also think he would not be justified in being angry.  Certainly not at LXC! He’d likely be mad at LXC, JGY, NHS, and basically everyone but himself... but he is at least partially responsible for the situation that led to his own death. (Remember, he tried to kill JGY three times before JGY retaliated, and he never once stopped pressuring him to go against his father, which JGY genuinely could not do without being exiled or worse.) JGY would likely not have killed him had he not become a threat to his life first. Would NMJ still tell LXC “I told you so”? Probably. But LXC is absolutely not responsible for his death in any way, and absolutely does not deserve that anger. NMJ’s warnings that JGY would “be a danger to the world” were unfounded paranoia, entirely unrelated to the reasons for his eventual murder. Whether NMJ comes to term with that fact, though, I don’t really know. I have a rather uncharitable view of his canonical beliefs and his way of handling just about any situation that involved JGY, so... unless death changes him as a person, I am skeptical. Now for the xiyao part of the deal (you asked me, you had to be expecting this to be mainly about xiyao!)

I have given this one some thought previously, contemplating various postcanon AUs and things I wanted to write. I think it could go both ways... JGY would be justified in being angry with Lan Xichen, that is what his epic final speech seems to imply - he has always protected LXC (from hurt, from involvement, from horrible truths) and in return, he gets stabbed! But canonically we know that, even at his angriest, he still pushed LXC away to save his life. So was he still angry at him? Would he be angry at him after he comes back? Of course it’s complicated, but I’m leaning towards no. Especially when he knows that Huaisang tricked LXC, and he knows it was likely the accumulation of his revealed deeds that had shaken LXC’s faith in the first place. I think eventually he’d blame himself for it, rather than Lan Xichen.

There is a quote that stuck with me from one of the very first fics I read in this fandom years ago, from JGY to LXC;

“I forgive you,” he says roughly. “I forgave you before I was even dead[...]”

(from Grief Negotiations by Nomette)

I think, ultimately, that’s how I see it. Whether LXC forgives himself, that’s another story entirely.

[evilhasnever]

Xiyao having a genuinely good and, yes, healthy (especially by the standards of the narrative they are in) relationship and still coming to grief are not mutually exclusive. They are doomed by external forces and the narrative as it stands provides them with no way out.

[evilhasnever]

Fanfic writers are like crows. If you give them treats (comments) they will bring you shiny things (fanfic)

[evilhasnever]

[evilhasnever]

since so many ppl wanted moshang for the last one...

[evilhasnever]

a quick UPA inspired Starscream

[evilhasnever]

It’s always a good morning in Gusu when I wake up with you. 💙💛

[evilhasnever]

I'm back on my bullshit! Have another tender Xiyao drawing from my sketchbook!

Romantic statues are great sources of inspiration for tender fanart. The OG for this is "Hero & Leander" by Karl Steinhäuser, on display in Charlottenburg Palace, Berlin (I took about 50 pictures, i might use it for reference again).

[evilhasnever]

Compilation of xiyao things I drew for JGYmonth2021 over on twitter~

Prompts include first love and valentine’s, among others.

[evilhasnever]

that moment when you cross the point of no return with a character should be accompanied by a specific chime i think. like 🔔 congratulations! this one has been installed in the Permanent Collection and you will never stop thinking about them as long as you live

[evilhasnever]

He still wrote his number on the cupsleeve after this of course

[evilhasnever]

Xichen, please...

That's your little brother's privacy.

I'm sure it's against the Lan rules

[evilhasnever]

AO3 Comments are SO SO SOOOOOOO important because you can only leave Kudos ONCE. You add to the hit count ONCE (every 24 hours).

So whenever someone updates their fic, the ONLY way an author knows who their regular readers are is if they comment on each chapter. And we WANT to know who's still reading.

Believe it or not, some of us think about the name that pops up constantly in the comments and go "omg I can't wait to see what they think of THIS SPECIFIC SCENE cuz I KNOW they'll say something about it!!!"

[evilhasnever]

Papercraft commission of Lan Wangji and Wei Wuxian (and Li'l Apple and a bunny), in a pose inspired by Gustav Klimt's famous painting The Kiss! Lan Wangji may be a little disgruntled at being interrupted, but Wei Wuxian is, of course, laughing the whole time.

This piece had some of the most complicated layering I've ever done in a papercraft, which meant I had to take even more care than usual with how every piece of paper was placed and the order in which they could be glued - and I already take a lot of care with that, no matter what I'm making! But the extra time was definitely worth it - I'm really happy with how the final piece came out. ^_^ A very sweet scene for WangXian!

[evilhasnever]

I know xiyao did not literally meet in Yunping (it's likely that meng yao worked somewhere else as a bookkeeper after his mom died, etc.) but let's use Yunping as shorthand for "xiyao in hiding somewhere in yunmeng", anyway.

Point is: oh my god, the xiyao cottagecore period has all of the best tropes. a secret time away from the world, just the two of them, societal differences suspended while in hiding, there was only one bed, wound tending, secret identities, prince thrown among commoners, nicknames, first times, first love, etc.

for months

Look at this whole wartime romance blossoming quietly in a single flashback, a period of time that we only heard about from other people in the previous versions of the story, that we never saw until the donghua, but that apparently changed both of their lives so completely that lxc came out of it with pretty enlightened takes on grey morality and the nickname "a-yao" on his lips. Incredible. unparalleled. blessed content. whenever I think about it I want to bite my fist.