#Despite all the love LWJ has for his brother I don't think he ever manages to reach him.

[crossdressingdeath]

Seeing your post about how JYL has a 'ranking system' in her head when it comes to WWX and JC hits so hard, but honestly, the more I read into the Jiang family dynamics, the more I agree. JYL obviously loves WWX, but I don't know if she's capable of putting him above JC. And we see her defending him, and she obviously gives her life for him, but she was also reacting in the moment. Not to speak lightly of her sacrifice of course, but I just feel like there are certain limits to how 1/7

far she's actually willing to go for him. I was initially one of JYL's staunch defenders, and always said that, unlike JC, she didn't have the same amount of political power as him, wasn't in a position to do anything about the Wens, ect. But...I'm starting to question if that's really true. JYL may not have had much direct political power herself, but she was the sister of a sect leader, and even if JC was unwilling to help, JYL had just married into the richest and most powerful sect 2/7

at the time. It was a love marriage, JZX adored her and would've done anything for her if she'd just bothered to ask him for it. Madam Jin also cared for her and respected her, and between her and JZX, had JYL actually bothered to tell them anything, I'm sure they would have been able to sort something out. Or she could have had it as a condition of her marriage - I'm not marrying into the sect that's trying to kill my brother unless you tell your father to stop. Had it been reversed and 3/7

The Lans were calling for JYL and JC’s deaths, no way in hell WWX would’ve just married into the sect, regardless of LWJ’s involvement. Instead she just doesn’t really do anything. We see no proof that she ever tried to see WWX after the wedding dress incident, which — god I instantly saw it as a sweet gesture, but now it just bothers me, because your brother is living in squalor, and you decide to show if the expensive dress that you’ll be 4/7

wearing when marrying into the sect that's trying to kill him, you bring along one bowl of soup for him, and don't even try to explain WHY you're marrying into said sect. Beyond that, we don't see a single moment up until her death where JYL actually seems concerned about WWX, puts in effort to try to see him - she doesn't even ask him how he's doing the one time she does come to see him. When we compare that to how WQ treats WN, yeah, she's outwardly not as loving or sweet, but she 5/7

goes to the ends of the earth for her brother, even going as far as to betray her sect and risk WRH's wrath because he asks her to. And now we come back to that ranking system you mentioned before - yeah, it really does seem like JYL places her blood family first, which definitely hurts, but in comparison, despite only knowing him for a shorter amount of time, WQ truly grows to think of WWX as a second brother. And she treats him as such, at an equal level with WN - after JZX dies 6/7

WQ doesn't attack WWX for what happened. She doesn't try to come up with a way to sacrifice WWX instead and let WN survive in his stead. She and WN, two people who have become WWX's family, both give their lives to protect both him and the rest of their remaining family members. And it's just frustrating to think that the one member of WWX's adopted family who we all thought treated him like an actual brother, might not have really been on his side after all. 7/7

Yes! To start with the wedding dress thing, because it drives me nuts when people treat that like some super sweet act of love: JYL shows up in the Burial Mounds with no money, no sign of having tried to talk the sects around, no news outside of her own, no food beyond a couple bowls of soup (one of which she gives to the guy who can’t eat), and doesn’t so much as ask WWX if he’s okay. She literally came all that way to have a family meal, ask WWX to name the future nephew it’s becoming increasingly clear he’ll never meet, and tell him about her impending marriage into the family that’s currently doing everything in its power to destroy WWX’s life. Like, if you think about it that entire visit is such a slap in the face; “Here’s a bowl of soup while the people under your protection are starving, oh by the way I’m going to marry the son of the guy actively trying to get you killed, okay bye”. All you can say in regards to her helping WWX is that she does potentially manage to persuade JZX to invite him to JL’s one month celebration, but if memory serves the novel never actually specifies whose idea that was and it was JZX who decided to go get WWX after JGY told him about seeing JZXun heading in the direction of the Burial Mounds. And even then JZX does the same thing JYL does; sees WWX outnumbered and surrounded and tells him to stand down. At least in JZX’s case you could argue that the actual fighting hadn’t broken out and JZX probably trusted in his authority to be able to sort the situation out so long as WWX wasn’t actually acting aggressive (or defensive, rather), and he’s also physically strong enough that he may well have been able to intervene if the cultivators had attacked. JYL, when she does the same thing, has no authority and no physical power to defend WWX with. And yeah, both JZX and Madam Jin adore JYL, and neither of them seem super fond of JGS (JZX respects his father, but I don’t get the sense he loves him); if JYL had asked them for help it’s entirely possible they would’ve started at least circulating her version of events and demanding a proper investigation into what happened. But there’s no mention of her so much as trying, and she doesn’t offer to ask them when she visits WWX.

And yeah, compare WQ to JYL and it’s... well. WQ is so quick to offer WWX her love and care? She’s harsh, but she loves him and views him and WN on such equal footing that she and WN willingly hand themselves over to the Jins for WWX’s sake without her so much as bringing up the possibility of saving WN instead. There’s no ranking for WQ; WWX and WN are her brothers, and she loves them, and she’d do anything to protect them. When it becomes clear she can’t save WN (like hell the sects would let him live, and by this point it’s pretty clear that WWX won’t be able to protect them forever) she throws her whole weight behind defending the brother she thinks she might still be able to save, even if it means bringing WN with her to die. WQ knows WWX for... a year or two? Maybe? The timeline is a little hazy. Not long compared to JYL, anyway. And yet she’s willing to walk all the way to Lanling to die in the hope of saving him. It’s for her whole family, yes, but she makes a point of including him. Basically, I think this fandom needs more stuff wherein the Jiangs and Wens survive and the Wens are fully like “Our brother now, you don’t deserve him”.

The thing with JYL is... she loves WWX, she genuinely does, but he is never going to be first for her. To the point where she outright enables JC’s abuse, in places; she always expects WWX to be the one to grin and bear it. Hell, one of their first conversations involves JYL cheerily allowing WWX to cover up JC locking him out of his bedroom and scaring him out into the woods by threatening to set dogs on him! Let me rephrase that: she allows a traumatized nine-year-old to hide the fact that the kid her dad expects him to share a room with locked him out of said room on his FIRST NIGHT and threatened him with his LITERALLY WORST FEAR, and as far as we know makes no attempt to tell JFM herself. To keep JC out of trouble. That is such a thing! WWX was scared to the point of running away and JFM expects him to share a room with the person responsible for that and JYL goes along with him promising not to tell JFM so that JC won’t get in trouble! And from that day forwards everything is just “Boys will be boys” to her. Like, let me put it this way. Before LWJ (and arguably the Wens before that, although WWX saw himself more as protector than protected there) JYL was the person WWX trusted to protect and care for and comfort him above all others, yeah? She’s the one he thinks of as having his back? He doesn’t tell her about JC trying to kill him. JC tries to kill WWX three times before JYL’s death, and WWX doesn’t say a word to her about any of them. You could argue that he doesn’t want to involve her, but... JYL pretty clearly takes JC’s side every time JC starts having a go at WWX. When he chases him out of their room, when he starts snapping about how annoying WWX is, when he stabs WWX... She never outright says it, but there really does come a point where by staying neutral you’re siding with the aggressor, and she reaches that point a lot. Hell, the stabbing is one of those aforementioned near-murders! JC stabbed him! According to WWX (who downplays serious injuries, he never exaggerates them) he had to hold his guts in! WWX is talking about a pretty fucking serious injury (and JYL grew up in a cultivation sect, I don’t believe for a second she doesn’t at least know what constitutes a serious injury) while JC whines about a broken arm like it’s worse than having to physically hold your guts in until you can reach a doctor and JYL acts like those are equal! JC could easily have killed WWX and has enough training with the sword to know better than to go for a blow like that in a staged fight and JYL doesn’t even suggest he should apologise.

Honestly? The more I think about JYL the more it pisses me off that she’s treated like WWX’s best sister more than WQ is. Imagine WQ seeing one brother stab the other in the gut and take the former’s side because the latter broke the former’s arm. Imagine WQ so much as considering allowing a child to cover up the kid he’s supposed to share a room with locking him out and scaring him into running away. She wouldn’t! Because WQ sees her brothers as equals. She won’t pick WN over WWX just because they’re blood siblings; she loves them both, and will choose based on who she thinks is in the right. And she wouldn’t just stay neutral to avoid rocking the boat, oh no. If WQ heard WWX say that WN stabbed him and did enough damage that he had to hold his guts in... oh boy would WN have a bad day. The thing with JYL is that she seems like a good sister in comparison to the rest of the Jiangs; stick canon JYL into a family that genuinely loves WWX and sees him as equal to their other children, and she would not look anywhere near as good.

[yoongi-gummies]

WEI WUXIAN & XUE YANG AU

homeless au!!!

when wwx's parents died and he ended up homeless, what if he went to find them?

baby wwx begging and eating out of the trash while trying to get out of yiling to find his parents

bc he never actually finds out what happened at first, they just never came back and eventually he was kicked out onto the streets

and so he comes across baby xue yang!!

and xue yang having his hand freshly broken so ofc wwx can't just leave him there

so he manages to flag down a good Samaritan or smthn who helps xue yang as much as he can for free

and wwx decides to stick with him bc they're tired of being alone ✨

and xue yang decides to help him look for his parents because wwx just helped him despite not even knowing him

so they get even further from yiling

meanwhile Jiang Fengmian is looking for bby wwx in the only place he knows to look but is unable to find him

xue yang and wwx begging and doing their best to protect eachother while moving from place to place, eventually settling down in yiling while being very young

they beg enough to survive and decide to start cultivation on their own

they're both smart and resourceful so they make it up as they go along, asking any passing cultivator questions and doing their best

n they're both super smart, wwx having a natural talent for it and xue yang being determined to get it right

so theyre doing it and protecting eachother bc they're all eachother has for a while

and then they find the burial mounds and like the idiot teenagers they are, they decide to go in and find out what's happening there

xue yang gets injured by the resentful energy enough so that it makes wwx panic hard and he busts out his natural inclination to resentful energy and demonic cultivation by saving xue yang and clearing the small area they're in of the energy

after that theyre both learning what they can about resentful energy and eventually decide to clear out a part of the mountain and stay there, grow their own food and stuff

so they're helping out the people of yiling, usually only for food as payment. and they're very good at it for raggedy teenagers no one really knows. they stick to themselves too and don't really socialize all that much, maybe the occasional jibe or threat from wwx/xue yang

the cultivation clans start hearing word of them though, because two mysterious rogue cultivators dressing in all black rough robes and practising what is most likely demonic cultivation? Odd™

and they're worried but not too much because the pair never really leave yiling

but the lans deicide to get involved, and lan wangji is sent to do a night hunt there and find the two

he ends up getting saved by them, the pair showing up out of nowhere and taking out his target while wearing very unconventional masks

wwx wears a blindfold as his eyes turn red when he uses his cultivation, and uses a cultivation method he came up with to still see his surroundings

xue yang wears a mask that covers the entire lower half of his face, so his reactions/emotions don't show as much

lwj is rightfully kinda alarmed bc he wasn't expecting them to be skilled enough to get ahead of him and hunt his target faster, considering he's sect trained by the lans and as far as anybody knows, they're both just rogues

but theyre friendly enough and invite him back for tea, mostly wwxs doing, and he goes

and makes an impulsive decision to invite them to gusu and the cloud recesses because they're both very skilled and he thinks 1, living in a homemade hut in the mountains is not very healthy and they're both looking very thin, and 2, that they're both skilled and he'd like them to be formally taught

they agree, as long as they can wear their masks and can leave whenever they want to

lwj agrees and takes them back ✨

wwx is friendly, chatters with everyone and plays with a clueless kind of act but it's clear he's very skilled and capable. him maneuvering easily with a blindfold on at all times would be a tell of that, but on top of it him getting into full debates with lan qiren with his crude, street-gained knowledge but he knows enough to go back and forth with him

it INTRIGUES lwj a lot, and it's only made worse by wwx showing a genuine-seeming interest in being his friend. wwx drawing him near perfectly without having ever seen him without the blindfold on. it just really piques his interest

n it's clear wwx and xue yang are kinda two sides of the same coin with eachother. xue yang being able to fill in for wwx with lan qirens debates, albeit with a little more outward hostility, and then always seeming to come to the same conclusions and make if not the same then similar decisions

they tease and argue relentlessly but it's clear they're seperate from everyone else, by their own making. they care for eachother, and essentially only eachother. they're like brothers, anyone would assume they are

lwj eventually learns abt their past tho and it makes him really really

just sad, and kinda proud that they've managed to be some of the most known cultivators while being homeless and rogue

lwj and wwx fall in love, ofc, and maybe xue yang meets a traveling xingchen and song lan and they have their whole thing but without xue yangs rampant psychopathic tendencies

some extra details bc I can!!

jiang cheng having heard from his father about a child from the wei's that he failed to find that would've grown up with him finally hearing of a Wei Wuxian in the cloud recesses and wondering if this is who his brother was meant to be. he's super interested in wwxs whole vibe, and it only adds to it w wwx being ranked up with the heir cultivators like himself, and maybe they do become friends maybe not, both kinda work

xue yang having someone there to pull him back up and rely on from the pinky incident would, I think, make a world of difference. i think it'd make him less "murder everyone who's ever talked to anyone who wrongs me" and more "protect myself and Wei Ying"

wwx and xue yang both using a blend of demonic cultivation and regular cultivation and while it taking serious tolls on both of them, them still practicing it because they just want to help people. using it to protect people in exchange for warm home cooked food? it'd be worth it to them, living on the streets as they were

I don't think they'd ever truely separate, they would find their own purposes ofc but they see eachother as FAMILY so they'd never ever wanna not be close to the other. lwj learns to love (read: tolerate) xue yang as easily and he learns to love wwx, because he knows they're just a package pair, they come together or not at all

this can follow canon however, maybe with less wwx-dying but really, however. it had a lot more little details, such as wwx and xue yang wearing those long veil-hats wen qing wore when she was gonna take out wwx golden core whenever theyre in gusu/major clan cities just bc they can, but I decided to omit a lot of them for the sake of this thing making sense and being at least kinda chronological. I made it w @hunnie-byun who makes literally every idea I have so much better, she contributed most of this 🥺