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[liverbiver9]

It puzzles me when people cite LOTR as the standard of “simple” or “predictable” or “black and white” fantasy. Because in my copy, the hero fails. Frodo chooses the Ring, and it’s only Gollum’s own desperation for it that inadvertently saves the day. The fate of the world, this whole blood-soaked war, all the millennia-old machinations of elves and gods, comes down to two addicts squabbling over their Precious, and that is precisely and powerfully Tolkien’s point. 

And then the hero goes home, and finds home a smoking desolation, his neighbors turned on one another, that secondary villain no one finished off having destroyed Frodo’s last oasis not even out of evil so much as spite, and then that villain dies pointlessly, and then his killer dies pointlessly. The hero is left not with a cathartic homecoming, the story come full circle in another party; he is left to pick up the pieces of what was and what shall never be again. 

And it’s not enough. The hero cannot heal, and so departs for the fabled western shores in what remains a blunt and bracing metaphor for death (especially given his aged companions). When Sam tells his family, “Well, I’m back” at the very end, it is an earned triumph, but the very fact that someone making it back qualifies as a triumph tells you what kind of story this is: one that is too honest to allow its characters to claim a clean victory over entropy, let alone evil. 

“I can’t recall the taste of food, nor the sound of water, nor the touch of grass. I’m naked in the dark. There’s nothing–no veil between me and the wheel of fire. I can see him with my waking eyes.”

So where’s this silly shallow hippie fever-dream I’ve heard so much about? It sounds like a much lesser story than the one that actually exists.

[liverbiver9]

by far the funniest mdzs ao3 tag i've come across

[liverbiver9]

for the blorbo who suggested wlw wangxian, FEAST YOUR EYES

[liverbiver9]

WIP Wednesday

Another snippet from what I've working on for the @mdzsbigbang

“Fuck!” he shouted, causing all the servants in the area to gasp. The Emperor widened his eyes and took a step towards him.  “Is everything alright with you?” he asked.  “No! Everything’s terrible!” Wèi Wúxiàn wailed. “I don’t want to be here anymore!”

[liverbiver9]

The writer's blessing:

May you write 1,500 words with ease. May your characters be lively and not cardboard. May you need little editing. May your muse visit you as soon as you sit. May the Internet not distract you much. May your phone lie dormant while you write.

[liverbiver9]

Mxtx love interests and their relationships with captivity are fascinating and all, but I’d rather just focus on how funny Hua Cheng’s is in particular.

We have Luo Binghe‘s creepy replica bamboo hut and the tragic horror of watching him succumb to his worst impulses and try destroying the world to trap Shen Qingqiu by his side.

We have Lan Wangji warring internally with himself for years over his smothering need to hide Wei Wuxian from the world and save him from himself.

And then there’s Hua Cheng

Professional Gege Catch and Release Wildlife Expert Hua Cheng.

This man is a gege rehabilitation facilitator who does what he loves and loves what he does.

He tags his gege with a gps tracker so he can study his migration patterns. He humanely traps and relocates his gege whenever he’s strayed into danger.

If you hit a gege with your car, all you need to do is call Hua Cheng and he’ll be there with an animal control slip leash, a GoPro to promote his TikTok campaign promoting awareness of gege welfare and conservation to the masses, and Yin Yu is on the phone preparing the treatment center for a new arrival.

He’s one of those guys who lovingly cares for a feral cat colony in his backyard, providing handmade housing with heating and regular check ups.

He’s insane don’t get me wrong. But his crippling self doubt and unbreakable compulsion to provide merged in such a weird way, it comes off a little more wildlife rescue than I think is intended.

[liverbiver9]

[liverbiver9]

Maids, cleaners, janitors, and sanitation workers are all the most important people of civilization by far. Even 12 hours without them is VERY noticable and they simply need to be highly compensated for it

[liverbiver9]

idk. i think fandom could use a lot less of “every person’s interpretation of a text is valid and true!” and more of “reading a text means taking all parts of it into account, including the bits you don’t like or the pairings you don’t ship, to consider what the full picture is and what the larger themes are.”

projecting your fantasies onto a text, hyperfocusing on the characters you think are hot/shippable and building entire theories based on micro interactions that don’t take other competing dynamics and plotlines into account isn’t “analysis” it’s projection and fantasy. which is fine, but take responsibility for your desires and your fantasies instead of making fandom inhospitable for everyone. some readings of a text are plain wrong, others miss or willfully erase vital context just to rationalize romantic pairings. these are not accurate readings of the text. doesn’t mean they should be attacked or shamed, but neither can you expect people to validate every single headcanon and shipper fantasy as a legitimate “reading” of the text either.

[liverbiver9]

💙 These Mortal Treasures by ChilianXianzi

These Mortal Treasures

by ChilianXianzi

T, 9k, Wangxian

Summary: "Is that something that Wei Ying would like?" Lan Wangji asks softly, carefully, "To be kept?" There's that fleeting, lost look in Wei Ying's eyes once more, and Lan Wangji thinks it's unacceptable - That Wei Ying had not felt welcomed in his own home, so much so that he decided to wander the world away from it. So much so that he is afraid that he would be unwelcome as well elsewhere. Lan Wangji barely stops himself from hissing, from letting the steam of his icy breath escape in the close air between them. He only vaguely remembers the Jiangs, a young Cultivation Clan barely a century old, but his disdain towards them feels ancient now in the wake of all this. How foolish of them, to simply let go of someone so bright, someone so unfailingly kind and giving. How convenient, for Lan Wangji's own gain. Kay's comments: I adore this story. The excerpt that's in the summary already encapsulates perfectly what I adore so much about it, Lan Wangji's and Wei Wuxian's relationship in this one is *chef's kiss*. Dragon Lan Wangji watching mortal Wei Wuxian and making sure he feels safe and happy in his home and that he wants to become part of his hoard, being absolutely enraged at the thought that anyone hadn't treated Wei Wuxian as the treasure he is in the past and of course, egg!Yuan!! And eggnancy!! Love that for them and love Lan Wangji tearing the Jins a new one as well.

pov lan wangji, canon divergence, dragon lan wangji, rogue cultivator wei wuxian, wei wuxian leaves the yunmeng jiang sect, possessive lan wangji, domestic fluff, angst with a happy ending, cultivation sect politics, not jiang cheng friendly, mpreg, eggpreg, eggnancy, developing relationship, strangers to lovers

~*~

(Please REBLOG as a signal boost for this hard-working author if you like – or think others might like – this story.)

[liverbiver9]

we Stan a supportive husband

[liverbiver9]

Wei Wuxian | The Untamed

[liverbiver9]

so the biting scene was kinda wtf ridiculous to me at first but then i let it spin like a rotisserie chicken in my mind for a bit and like.

lan zhan is exceptionally powerful and hardworking and highly observant and has spent his whole life crafting himself into the perfect member of his clan, which means among other things suppressing all his emotions, and he really struggles with verbal communication and just people in general. and then in the span of like a week or two, he is powerless to stop his home from being burned down, is physically injured, then forced to leave his father on his deathbed to go be used as a human shield by the evil fucks who caused all this, while his brother is gone and may or may not be in danger himself. and then on top of all that, he is stuck in a cave without his weapons with a monster and his crush (not his crush bc he can’t have those types of feelings), who also happens to be the most annoying person in the universe who has been openly and inappropriately flirting with various women AND himself and then saving the women AND himself and just keeps being a yappy little shit and grabs his very personal sacred headband and won’t fucking shut the fuck up and is half naked on top of all that, and lan zhan isn’t able to communicate his feelings in the best of times and is currently too weak to even punch him in his obnoxious pretty face so of course he’s just gonna bites you bites you bites you bites you bites you bites you bites you bites you

i get it, babe. you’re so valid.

[liverbiver9]

i think it’s interesting how people often characterize lan wangji’s perspective of wei wuxian during and after the yiling laozi arc like “free my man, he did nothing wrong.” but to me, i feel like this is just selling short his character and his devotion to wwx. the way i see it, when wei wuxian is at his worst and in the years after when wwx comes back, lan wangji isn’t condoning his actions of that era. it’s more like, “i know you were trying to do the right thing, and things spiraled out of control, and i failed to help you back then, and i won’t fail you again.” it’s not wei wuxian’s actions that lan wangji is so defensive of but his intentions. even if lwj didn’t know at the time (and even when he comes back, at first) why wwx chose the ghostly path and gave up righteous cultivation, he has an unshakeable faith in wwx’s moral code, that wwx will do what he feels is right. or at least, doing what he thinks he needs to do to survive. this doesn’t necessarily mean that lan zhan thinks what wwx did as his mental state eroded WAS right. we see this so many times when lan zhan tries to help him, hoping that wwx will return to gusu with him. it’s not until it’s too late, when wwx is truly breaking down, that he understands that that wasn’t the right way to help wwx. the right way is to just be there for him, which is what he does when wwx returns. letting wwx make his own decisions while showing him that there is still someone who believes in him. imo this is much more meaningful than the other interpretation that i see a lot that i mentioned above. it’s about being there for wei wuxian even if he does make the wrong decisions because at the end of the day he knows that wwx, at his core, has good intentions.

[liverbiver9]

You are SO right

Modern WWX is a string bean who got a second growth spurt right after high school, so teenji is taller than teenxian. Then when they meet up again after high school wwx has gained a good 2 inches at MINIMUM on lwj.

This ficlet will forever be rent free in my mind. It’s perfect. Cemented the “modern au wwx is taller” headcanon for me permanently.

[liverbiver9]

i might have just done something great

[liverbiver9]

the whump fan’s dilemma