#twin prides tag

[morethanwonderful]

Do y'all ever think about Wei Wuxian's relationships and the places that foster them?

After Wei Wuxian's brief stay there, the Cloud Recesses are burnt down by the Wens. The place is destroyed completely, but it's built back up exactly the same as it was before. Resurrected Wei Wuxian can still recognize and navigate it by memory from when he was a teenager before all the destruction.

On the other hand, Lotus Pier, the place where Wei Wuxian spent the better part of a decade growing up, is almost unrecognizable to him when he returns post-resurrection. After Lotus Pier was sacked and massacred, after the twin prides fell apart in the war's aftermath, Jiang Cheng rebuilt the place grander and utterly different than it was before. The buildings Wwx remembers, including his old rooms, are gone.

I think that works quite well as a stand in for certain aspects of Lan Wangji and Jiang Cheng's relationships with Wei Wuxian. Lan Zhan becomes Wei Wuxian's support, always solid and the same as he's ever been, and Jiang Cheng tries to remake himself into someone utterly apart from his old martial brother and the relationship they had.

[morethanwonderful-archive]

The thing about Wei Wuxian and Jiang Cheng is that they did both love each other pre-resurrection, and they did both want to do the right thing as kids, but they operated in fully different moral realities.

I think Jiang Cheng saw the darkness of their world, and he said "okay" and adapted to it, whereas Wei Wuxian saw the darkness of their world and dared to try to fix it, and that's where it all came apart.

Jiang Cheng wanted his and Wei Wuxian's bond to be a "you and me against the world, we don't need anybody else" type of love. They could work together as the twin prides and protect the Yunmeng Jiang from the Wen, and that was all they needed. That was the right thing to do.

Wei Wuxian, however, never landed on that same "you and me against the world" wavelength. He's a social butterfly. He was never so isolated from their peers as Jiang Cheng was. As much as he loved his brother, he would never have discounted the rest of the world just to stay with him. His understanding of their relationship and his definition of right and wrong regarding it was completely different, and that's a huge part of why they imploded.

[fandom-trash-goblin]

If you are dead, I am not alive. If I'm alive, you can't be dead. Oh, I hated you— But you were still my brother.

Cain & Abel. Wei Wuxian & Jiang Cheng. Sirius & Regulus.

[hyperfixatinator]

ROTTMNT Theory: Donatello's Hidden Role

After rewatching ROTTMNT (shorts and movie included), I realized something about Donnie's character that I've hardly seen anyone mention, and I'm going to talk about it in depth here.

I'll assume you've already watched the series and dive right in, but spoiler warning under the cut in case you care about that.

Let me start with something seemingly off topic. Raph is the oldest of the four brothers, which landed him the responsibility of keeping his younger siblings safe when their father was unavailable. (Not trying to bash Splinter. He's gradually grown to be a better parent later on, but you can't deny he was fairly neglectful in the beginning of the series)

The constant pressure Raph went through was brought up in the episode "Anatawa Hitorijanai", and then the movie showed he still struggles with it now.

He's constantly shouldering the burden of being their family's sole protector, but is this the truth? What if I told you there are actually two protectors in the family? And that the other one was Donnie all along?

When you look closely, Donnie is surprisingly protective of his loved ones. I did a tally of how often each brother exhibits what could be protective behavior, and Donnie was in second place (29) after Raph (35). Some of these choices are debatable, but here's a bunch of examples as pictures.

Would you believe me if I told you I still have a couple smaller examples I had to leave out due to the picture limit? And that's not even including the few moments where Donnie and Raph ever-so-subtly parallel each other.

All things considered, Donnie and Raph aren't so different. Raph is the primary protector who faces the threats head-on with his physical strength, while Donnie is the secondary protector who tends to use more distant methods with his tech and wit. However, when push comes to shove, Donnie will also step up to take direct action when he deems it necessary.

They may be the brains and the brawn, but they both use their respective skills to defend and support their family.

[benevolenterrancy]

@incorrectly-quoting-mxtx I'm choosing to take that as a compliment 😌 ~Fisher Price: Little Cultivators, My First Necromancer Set~

[kyannnite]

still the ides of march for me which means i legally can post what i’ve been thinking about for the past week (inspired by the death of julius caesar by camuccini)

[lilmoonberry]

twin prides of yunmeng bb

[moeblob]

Today.............. has genuinely. Been. A Day.

Have some OC doodles I started yesterday before tragedy struck and are like the bare minimum effort for today to finish. Since the two princes were originally not /in canon/ for another plot but rather made for a mafia AU as cousins to one of the main characters for the base plot. I was like. Huh let's give them a happier life. So here they're just princes and instead of the police department/detectives that most of the main cast is in base plot, those are the royal guards around the twins' castle.

[gncrezan]

obsessed with @idrellegames so i’m adding to the pile of drawings of people’s wayfarers (alongside some tiny sketches n doodles) !! genuinely one of the best written IFs i’ve had the chance to play, and an amazing beautiful UI as well ❤️

[sinterblackwell]

gotta be honest guys, i’ve read some solid books this month (shoutout to university of the underworld!!) but really, this mdzs fanfic absolutely tossed these reads out of the water like….

i don’t know what else i can say.

[morethanwonderful]

I guess it runs in the family

[fierrochase-falafel]

CQL music analysis part 1: Local homosexual lunatic over-analyses people singing (with spoilers)

The Untamed has 2 albums, one of which contains all the songs with vocals they had recorded for the show. While I recommend all of them, a few favourites of mine being Bu Wang (for Lan Wangji) and Woodland (for Wen Qing), I'd like to focus on the fact that only 2 of them are in the show: the classic Wu Ji and Yi Nan Ping.

It's interesting that Yi Nan Ping is the only song other than Wu Ji, the literal wangxian song, to actually appear in the show.

Considering the main characters of the show are Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji, it makes sense that their joint song Wu Ji is the most well-known; especially when you add the fact that it appears at the end of every CQL episode. It also appears several times in the middle of the show (especially episode 50, where they played it about 5 times just to make it really sink in how close wangxian are). On the album it has a Xiao Zhan only edition, a Wang Yibo only edition, a chorus edition with both Xiao Zhan and Wang Yibo, and a Bibi Zhou edition- it's very clear that this is a song made up of Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji, whether by themselves or together they are singing to and about each other.

Yi Nan Ping, however, is labelled on the album as [Interlude], as opposed to the [Theme] of Wu Ji. It's 4th from the bottom of the album. The song is recognised as Jiang Yanli's song at large by fans, which makes sense because it's heard when Jiang Yanli is onscreen, but I am going to speculate as to why it was not labelled directly as Jiang Yanli's song despite it clearly reflecting her character. The only 2 vocal tracks being Wu Ji and Yi Nan Ping was very deliberate to reflect Wei Wuxian's closest relationships. The show centers around him ultimately, it's largely in his point of view and so we hear vocal tracks in moments where he feels the most intense. For Wu Ji, it shows his relationship with Lan Wangji quite clearly, as one of his closest relationships.

My theory with Yi Nan Ping is that the reason it's not labelled Jiang Yanli's song is because it represents the bond of the Yunmeng trio itself rather than just Jiang Yanli. Jiang Yanli's loving and caring nature is presented as that which brings the 3 of them together- when she first brings her brothers back from the Yunmeng woods, consistently when she gives them lotus and pork rib soup, when she dies to protect Wei Wuxian. The lotus and pork rib soup is kinda like a motif representing when they were kids and could just play with each other, and come back to drink her soup that tastes like home. None of the actors for the characters sing in this song, the song is more like a sisterly blanket Yanli has for all of them where it represents their bond together rather than their own voices. One could also intepret it as Jiang Yanli singing, and that bringing all 3 of them together. I think it says a lot about her that she doesn't have an individual song named as being for her, but the songs she is involved in uplift the ones she loves and it becomes 'their song' rather than 'her song'.

Wu Ji, compared to Yi Nan Ping, has both the voices of Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji in abundance. Focusing on the chorus version, even if Wang Yibo says less individual lines (which is quite in character for Lan Wangji), his presence in the song is always felt. When I listen to Wu Ji, it's like Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji are two halves of one tiger tally, the song incomplete without each other's voices pulling through. Wu Ji requires that which Yi Nan Ping doesn't: in the sense of the characters having to mutually acknowledge and be open about their feelings, singing them out loudly to the world together. Considering Wei Wuxian and Jiang Cheng's relationship is frought with hidden feelings and miscommunication, Jiang Yanli's open love being what brings them together makes perfect sense- it's notable that the former 2 are only open with each other when they're forced to be at last in Guanyin temple (Wei Wuxian wouldn't have voluntarily told Jiang Cheng about the golden core operation, and Jiang Cheng never actually ended up telling Wei Wuxian why he ran away in the first place, resulting in his core loss). Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji though come clean within their first conversation after Wei Wuxian's resurrection, and have always put the effort to understand the other's position on important matters. In CQL, they're always as open about their feelings as they can manage from the get-go. Personally, I feel this sets up a dichotomy between Wei Wuxian's 2 closest relationships- that with the Jiang siblings and that with Lan Wangji.

Furthermore, where Yi Nan Ping reminisces about the past consistently (the most notable refrain in the chorus being, 'Can you still hear someone calling out “A-Xian”?', using the first online translation I could find by radishtears), Wu Ji reminisces vaguely about the past but always comes back to looking to the future (repeating, 'Why not soar high and free as a bird with the winds and waves, and sing this one song together to the world?', courtesy the genius lyrics translation). Yi Nan Ping is always a soft, comforting echo representing Wei Wuxian's past with the Jiang siblings and Wu Ji boldly looks to his future with Lan Wangji. They represent very different relationships and carry different connotations to a current Wei Wuxian, but they are the most important relationships to him to the point that they have vocal tracks directly present in the web series.

[fandom-trash-goblin]

—your heart beats in my ribs and mine in yours

Wei Wuxian & Jiang Cheng: the golden core reveal

(part 1)

[pnutsdotorg]

i thought that was walter white and his evil twin. sorry im not part of this fandom

anon I remember your tags and being so perplexed by them that I showed everyone in the room when you reblogged it .

I was so amused... put those tags BACK!!!

[astriiformes]

Okay, now you HAVE to post that cover of "Solidarity Forever".

I've shared it in my filk tag a couple times! And also really need to get around to posting the file for the zine I handed out at conventions last year (which has the lyrics in it) because I do want to share those with people.

This isn't the world's best recording (or even the best one I have) but it is one of me actually performing it in cosplay as Raine -- and leading the crowd in the chorus, which was particularly satisfying -- at CONvergence last year:

(The recording should start around the right timestamp for me introducing the song, and it runs until 47:45 or so!)

Raine is truly one of my favorite costume I've ever done, having an excuse to run around conventions with a viola is already ideal for me, especially since I run in filk circles, and really leaning into the "social justice bard" nature of it all by writing Boiling Isles protest songs and handing out little anti-Belos C.A.T.Ts zines (with a final page pointing people towards actual musical and transgender advocacy organizations) based off the ones I've run into while doing real street activism has been so fun -- and I hope a cool and effective way to teach younger fans especially about things like social justics and folk/protest music history!

Also, like:

Gender

[kyannnite]

it’s okay jiang cheng let it all out