layljon

[layljon]

Poet to Bigot

by Langston Hughes

I have done so little For you, And you have done so little For me, That we have good reason Never to agree.

I, however, Have such meager Power, Clutching at a Moment, While you control An hour.

But your hour is A stone.

My moment is A flower.

[layljon]

Guys please I beg you, give me your favorite fics of non-canon ships. I’m talking idfics, dead doves, drama, smut. I’ll take anything and everything, any rare pair. I want to read the dynamic and think „that should’ve made no sense but now I’m enlightened and I know better”.

[layljon]

Ximang x The wind rises

[layljon]

With how much he yearns, Mo Xi is an honorary lesbian

[layljon]

Wei Wuxian is able to screw his perspective so well I'm surprised he's the one getting dicked down.

Honestly I love him as much as every other guy does. But man... He projected so hard, half of the fandom projects with him. And I do get it a little bit because he does have the magical power of ✨️commoners' gossip✨️ backing him up. He's a perfect unreliable narrator. He's not purposefully lying to himself or actively keeping his motivations from others. He's solely powered by his insecurities, fears and guilt. But he's also never corrected:

He's wickedly smart, so his rationalisations make perfect sense.

Lan Zhan literally doesn't talk - just sends his brain waves with hopes of passing down every important information to Wei Wuxian apparently.

Jiang Cheng is too proud to say anything and a little bit pissed and also Wei Wuxian avoids him with even more skill than Jiang Fengmian avoided any responsibility in parenting.

Wen Ning barely has more first hand information than Wei Wuxian and also has no fucking idea which topics he should avoid so for the most time he avoids all of them.

Half of the remaining cast is dead.

And therefore Wei Wuxian basically accepts gossips and ghost tales as truth even though he KNOWS they're bullshit because half of them is directly about him.

[layljon]

The way both Jiang Cheng and Mo Xi make a huge sacrifice for their shixiong and live with the thought that at least they could do that. At least this one action was important. Just for it to be later revealed that the other person also sacrificed something and therefor their sacrifice is rendered useless. That Jiang Cheng still is the very reason that Wei Wuxian goes down the demonic path and his later death in kind - that he just postponed it and caused the very reason of his disgrace. And that Mo Xi didn't save anyone with his vow, that him giving up 10 years of his life and the freedom to act on his moral code if needed was just a thing he did and not something meaningful.

[layljon]

Something about Liu Qingge and Jiang Cheng both carrying around physical objects of their loved ones so they can return it, but the Receiving never quite having the same impact as the Returning. LQG carrying around Shen Qingqiu's fans until he can take it back, except SQQ's already forgotten about it/gotten a new one and no longer has the same use for it. JC carrying suiban around on his back until he finds Wei Wuxian, except WWX can no longer use it. There is no real relevance for the object on the receiving end. Not anymore, at least. And it's very. Hmm.

[layljon]

The way both Mo Xi and Gu Mang are both in need of care and gentleness. But both need different kinds of care the most.

Mo Xi has a strong body but his mind is on the verge of breaking.

He's constantly stopping himself from crying, probably has depression or at least is in a state of mourning for the last 8 years. He's conflicted and in denial about the conflict and has no idea what to do with himself. He lives for others and not himself and it shows.

Gu Mang's mind is impossibly strong but his body's frail. He's core was shattered his every bone tortured. He was abused for years and was sensitive to pain to begin with. He gets sick easily.

Mo Xi deserves honesty and sincerity and being coddled. Deserves being able to not making any decisions because he deserves to not have any important dilemmas.

And Gu Mang deserves a gentle touch, en extra blanket and the softest sheets. Deserves a rest and sweet words directed at him.

[layljon]

I think something that brings Mo Xi comfort is the belief he's capable of cruelty. He tries to keep up this facade in his head with something akin to desperation. And yet it always stands in dissonance with his actions.

When he's asked what should Gu Mang's punishment be, he wants to say "death". He doesn't have a heart to do so but objectively even death is not a cruel end to a traitor. It's a rather fair punishment.

When he learns of Gu Mang's fate, he's horrified. The cruelty he could imagine was insulting him in prison for a short period of time or making his life a bit more difficult if he's crippled. He says he hates him to the bones but in the next breath he wants to bid farewell to him. He imagined the final parting after Gu Mang's death, the last farewell, last one-sided conversation, sending his soul away with red peonies. With the symbol of virtue. Symbol of honor and bravery and affection.

When he first sees him he curses him out in anger and really it's more pain than disdain. And he's so shocked he could even say something like that he goes speechless.

Obviously he's not a cruel person. He doesn't even have the imagination for it. The cruelest thing he can imagine? Others will call it mercy. And yet, when he's all alone, when he is abandoned and hasn't even one soul on earth he trusts completely... being capable of cruelty seems comforting.

[layljon]

Ok, so if you're OK with spoilers there is a great thread on twitter that explains all of the connections between 2ha and yuwu.

But if you don't want to see anything even a little bit spoilery then you can safely assume that if the names match, it's the same place. You can kinda assume that Chonghua is more or less in the same place that Shisheng Peak is located and that the events taking place in yuwu precede the plot of 2ha by 700 years. There are some more or less important easter eggs sprinkled through the series so you can just see how much of them you'll notice. And then check the ones you haven't caught after finishing the books.

I need someone to confirm (or not) this for me :

Is the city of Linyi in Chongua (in Yuwu) is the same Linyi within Rufeng Sect territory (in 2ha) ?

Or am I reading too much into this ?

(I need so many more stories in the word Meatbun created. The actual history of this world behind the stories, the fall of Chonghua, the founders of the upper and lower cultivation worlds in more details… I don’t think I could ever get tired of it)

[layljon]

I'm reading an easter egg for yuwu. And at first I just skimmed over the first 3 paragraphs and got so scared. Because I realised that yes, it's a draft of a little bit different story but it still was made into yuwu. It still starts about the same, just gets an addition of modern timeline. And I realised that stuff happens in modern timeline almost instantly and then you're really thrown into the plot of the final version of yuwu. So I freaked out.

But then I was still really set on reading something with the characters and there's not a lot of fanfics and I just wasn't in a mood for any of the ones I haven't read yet. So I decided to read the easter egg regardless. And it's so fucking funny. The whole time I read those chapters in yuwu I cried but the addition of modern Mo Xi in his grumpy grandpa era just does it for me. I can't stop laughing he doesn't even get a mean transmigration system, he's the mean one. I don't know if I would change the final draft of yuwu for the previous one but I sure as hell would gobble it down had it been a complete story.

It's hilarious. Just imagine being in shoes of his subordinates. If my boss gave me a Web novel to read for the case and I'd not only found that it had nothing to do with the case but was a gay self insert story about the suspect and MY BOSS. And consider that the boss doesn't even seem to know about the possibility of being a boykisser. I would die. I would die because eventually (really soon) he'll ask me what I've found and I'll have to say "there's nothing there". And untill the case is solved and dealt with completely I'll live in fear of him deciding that the novel must be important after all and everybody else is just stupid and actually READING IT.

[layljon]

i think this might be the entire novel

[layljon]

I'm so happy that Gu Mang got his eyes back in the end because it's an act of mercy that Mo Xi desperately needed. It would be ok if he didn't, they would serve as a reminder of all the suffering they went through. But sometimes all you want to do is forget what happened, push it into the darkest corner of your mind and not be reminded of it ever again.

And to Mo Xi those eyes were a constant reminder of heartbreak. The last time he have seen those eyes there was no warmth in them, no light. They were dim and empty and he told himself it'll get better, time heals wounds and in some time he'll see those eyes light up again.

But the time has passed and not only did he not see them light up, he didn't get to see them at all. The next time he saw Gu Mang those beautiful eyes from his memories were gone. "Time can only return to me a broken you."

And every time he gets to see the events of the past he seeks those eyes like a drowning man seeks air. He doesn't care that they're empty, that the soul behind them seems to have been broken. It's still better than the constant reminder that the blue eyes of a wolf carry.

Mo Xi already regrets that he has let the time flow with it's course. It's a sensitive topic for him. He lost his lover to the passing of time. He blamed himself for years for not being there for him because just a few days seemed insignificant before they happened. He's constantly aware that no matter when will he die, he should've live ten years longer. It was insignificant when he was an empty shell suffering out of obligation to stay alive for his nation and a little bit because of the yearning for an answer. And then Gu Mang regained his memories and time was stripping them from him little by little.

So when Mo Xi gets a chance to choose one wish, one thing that he can change. Chance to turn back time. He does. He asks for Gu Mang unaffected by the suffering of time, Gu Mang with his body whole and healthy. Gu Mang who remembers but is not constantly reminded of what happened when he looks in the mirror or sees himself in his lover's eyes

[layljon]

Something I never expected to happen is Ximang becoming my favourite couple. Not even in danmei but in a whole lot of media. I'm an avid dead dove fan and honestly while very tragic they just seemed too normal and sweet. But you know what? The way their love can show in the most mundane form I've seen in epic fantasy stories in a while just conquered my heart. While they have their huge sacrifices and grand gestures of love, that's not what gets me.

I'm just completely enamoured with how Mo Xi acts like what you'd expect from a perfect life partner today. He doesn't change his personality but he just genuinely likes Gu Mang so much that dealing with his stupid shit doesn't feel like dealing with someone's stupid shit anymore. When he's around him he's calmer because he's happy. Even when the situation is objectively awful it's still going better than when was alone during all those years.

But what really does it for me is how he makes huge sacrifices that go mostly unnoticed just because they seem mundane. Making a grand gesture in a heat of the moment is still hard and requires enormous courage. But making a mundane sacrifice that requires you to choose to do so over and over again, each day for the rest of your life is much harder. We're used to seeing the main characters recover from any disability or illness they may have. And a lot of the times their partner is aware of some possibility of recovery that is quite likely, or they're immortal and have all the time in the world together, or their lover's state is stable and not deteriorating.

However, it's not really the case for Mo Xi. He does know that there is one in a billion chance that Gu Mang will recover and is committed to making it happen. But he also knows that

1. It's unlikely, the recovery probably won't be full and even if both of Gu Mang's souls would be found, he still has his core broken and constitution weakened

2. If he does manage to find a way it'll take years, probably decades and they actually don't have much time left, they're in their thirties, not immortal at all, Gu Mang is weak even for a regular person in his state and Mo Xi already gave away 10 years of his lifespan. There's an ongoing war around them and in the time of war safety and longevity aren't really a given.

3. Gu Mang's state is actively deteriorating and there's really no bottom line there.

But Mo Xi still makes the commitment to stay with him for the rest of his life, use all his remaining strength and make every effort to succeed in a borderline delusional mission. And it's a decision he's gonna make repeatedly, every day of his life. And he doesn't even CONSIDER it a sacrifice.

He's a very domestic person and honestly everything a regular person could want from their partner

1. Gu Mang's goals are his goals - he's his biggest supporter

2. He's caring, aware of Gu Mangs likes and dislikes, even the preferences he doesn't actually disclose regularly

3. He's incredibly gentle towards his partner and acknowledges the need of being treated softly whilst still perceiving Gu Mang as strong and capable

4. He's never condescending not even when Gu Mang is still acting like a wolf and he himself still has a lot of negative feelings towards him

5. He's loyal to a fault - no matter if it's keeping up Gu Mang's legacy, his persistence in loving only one person even when it was already doomed for years, or protecting this person from any further harm sometimes against all reason

6. There's not one second when he let's his ego act up. He's obviously a proud general but with Gu Mang he has no need to prove himself better than

7. He doesn't let heartbreak affect his moral code, he does act up and jealousy does make him a bit petty but it's the least impactful kind of pettiness he can be - it's basically the kind that makes you annoyed with person who has no idea what are the doing wrong. He still decided to support Gu Mang's goals after he defected though

8. Treats every sacrifice he makes as his own choice. He's not going to hold it over Gu Mang's head or grow resentful in time would it get no reciprocation. In his mind it's him who made the decision himself, nobody forced him or expected him to

[layljon]

The fact that Gu Mang somehow managed to realise he was gay, decide that he has to test the waters in the dumbest way possible and see what Mo Xi thinks about gay sex, realise it's an awful idea and go into panic mode and then loose his virginity to his crush before he even realised he had a crush in the first place - all of that in the span of one hour is absolutely hilarious. It took me like 4 years to get to the 3rd step.

[layljon]

It's time to put my misery to sleep after the last 6 months and stop wallowing in self pity. And obviously my hairdresser is going to help me with that by cutting off all of my fried ends and dumping them in the trash together with every negative feeling I had since November. The weather got nice it's time to look hot again.

[layljon]

Mo Xi is genuinely so screwed in the head that he thinks himself a beast for having human desires. He has this belief that he's somehow a fraud for not being an ascetic cube of ice all of Chonghua sees him as. But that makes him so much better and softer in reality. He's this strict military man but when he sees Gu Mang he just melts into a puddle of love. He's convinced he's a beast and yet for Gu Mang he only has the gentlest touch, the kindest words, the most sincere concern. It's so ingrained in him that even when he hates Gu Mang, the slightest voice of complaint will make him smooth down his edges. Oh, Mo Xi you would've loved catholic guilt.