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I wonder what people who haven’t read the novels would think if I asked them to closely examine this cover and guess which character, while his victim was blindfolded and completely unaware of his attacker’s identity, forcibly pinned him against a tree, stole his first kiss, and pressed his wrists high above his head, trapping him against the trunk to prevent any escape. Kissed him fiercely and used his tongue and everything— before vanishing into the forest without a trace, taking with him a flower that had been pinned to the other’s chest, given to him by his beloved sister.

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NHS would absolutely consider asking lxc to ghost-marry nmj? Thoughts?

After Lan Wangji’s sentencing and Nie Mingjue’s death, the obligations of filial duty—namely, those to do with marriage—were very far from Lan Xichen’s mind.

He had no desire to hear about anything related to marriage, much less when the prospective union being spoken of was his own. Lan Xichen’s blood ran quiet and still, untouched by the maidens people insisted on putting before him at banquets and conferences, and the man who held his heart was dead; so what could one such as him have to do with marriage, when no part of it would bring him happiness?

"Marriage?" Lan Xichen said coolly, when the elder he most disliked dared to mention the subject during a sect meeting. "What need do I have of marriage? Wangji has an heir of his own blood, and we have no shortage of children born to the disciples from my generation.”

“You know nothing of Lan Yuan’s mother. If she were even remotely suited to marry the heir of a great sect, Wangji would have brought her home and wed her decently,” Lan Yanjian returned. “And you must marry. Should you not be the one to set the example for those who follow you?”

Lan Xichen smiled. It was not a false smile, because false smiles were forbidden; but because it was not false, it was not very pleasant, either.

“I will consider it,” he said: which did break the sect precepts, because it was a lie.

He spent the rest of the day wandering around the Cloud Recesses, trying to find a comfortable place to meditate; but the elders and a couple of his distant uncles kept following him, and entreating him to meet with some lady or other to see if he might like one of them, so he sent himself a message talisman emblazoned with the crest of the Nie sect and used it as an excuse to run away to Qinghe.

“I hear you’re having marriage troubles,” was the first thing Nie Huaisang said, when Lan Xichen went into his office to greet him. “Er-ge, you know I don’t really understand these things, but I might be able to help you this time.”

“Thank you, A-Sang, but I’ll manage on my own. I won’t give in, no matter what they say, so why don’t we have some t—”

“I will be able to help you,” Huaisang persisted, “because I’m having the same trouble myself.”

Lan Xichen blinked. “Why?”

"The trouble is that I can’t get married. It would be unfilial for a younger brother to wed before his xiongzhang, and da-ge never got married,” Nie Huaisang muttered, mopping his temples with a handkerchief. “My aunts are afraid that if I marry now, without ever having paid my respects to a sister-in-law, my married life will be full of tribulations. My wife might even die early, they said, and then what would I do!?”

He sounded truly sorrowful. “You know I don’t need a wife, Er-ge, but that won’t stop my clan from worrying about it. Every day, it’s nothing but if only our Nie-zongzhu was married before he died, and won’t poor Er-gongzi be too frightened to marry even if he likes someone, and then Second Young Master Nie has no business getting married anyway, because he’s such a coward...but I think that was the time Jin Zixing came here to discuss the Moling trade route with San-ge. He’s as horrible as his brother, Xichen-ge, really.”

Jin Zixing had died that very week of some kind of disfiguring pox, so Lan Xichen reminded himself that it was a sin to speak ill of the dead and tried to focus on the matter at hand.

“But you and I are trapped in different mires this time,” he pointed out. “You’re not trying to avoid marriage at all. ”

“Not so! Not so,” Nie Huaisang cried, opening his fan so forcefully that it blew a lock of Lan Xichen’s hair back over his shoulders. “You are as close as my own blood brother, so I’ll get straight to the point. If I arranged a minghun for you and Da-ge, it would put an end to both our troubles at once. Will you do it?”

Lan Xichen nodded, stricken nearly dumb. “But Huaisang, you—”

“You’ll have to marry into the Nie sect, though,” Huaisang mused, “because you are the living party, and you can’t marry again. If Da-ge marries into your family, you’ll be at liberty to take a second spouse, and that won’t solve anything.”

“A-Sang—”

“And, if you married Da-ge, you could have children of your own without disinheriting Lan Yuan,” Nie Huaisang said triumphantly. “There! What do you think of that?”

“How could I have children of my own?” Lan Xichen asked. “I don’t want to.”

Nie Huaisang looked at him over the top of his white fan. “Da-ge told me what you two were planning before he died. If you still want to—to go ahead without him, I will consider your children my brother’s sons and daughters, and they will be his in the eyes of our clan laws. You wouldn’t need to break your wedding vows, and I wouldn’t need to raise my own child or wear myself out by educating an adopted one.”

“You want my children as your heirs?” Lan Xichen demanded. “I—you would take a child born to the master of another sect as the heir to yours?”

Huaisang smiled. It was a small, sad smile, more pitiful than any tantrum or hunger strike he ever had in the past, and Lan Xichen nearly began to weep at the sight of it.

“I always thought my nieces and nephews would be your children,” he whispered, “and I would rather have them than not. Because if Da-ge had lived, and you married someone else, he would have spent the rest of his life wishing your children were his, too.”

And just like that, the thing was settled. Lan Xichen was married the next time he journeyed to Qinghe, before the elders noticed that his parents’ tablets were missing from the ancestral hall; but when he bowed to the rooster that was meant to stand in for his bridegroom, the bird choked, paralyzed with what seemed like fear, and gaped at him in disbelief before crumpling onto the floor.

“It’s just stunned,” Huaisang announced, when he came over to inspect it. “Oh, look! It’s coming around. You can take it back to the kitchens now, Zonghui—but make sure to paint the tips of its wings, so the cooks know to leave it alone. We can’t make the poor creature into soup now that he’s been part of the wedding.”

Suddenly, Lan Xichen felt incredibly heavy. He could scarcely move, for his limbs felt like lead, and it was all he could do to straighten up and go change his clothes for the wedding banquet.

He awoke in a stupor much later that night, unable to make any sense of where he was; and when he staggered over to the nearest mirror, he was certain that someone else was looking back at him.

The face in the mirror seemed confused, too. It was his, without a doubt, but the will that walked him across the room to the dressing table was not.

That will took command of his lips, making them tremble and gasp with yearning; and then his hand crept up his side, unbidden, and cupped the soft curve of his own white cheek.

“What’s going on?” his lips cry, bewildered. “Xichen, why am I you?”

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Wei Wuxian ☆ ep 32

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things we loved and lost

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And another fanfic I need to read.

Hear me out…

Ok. So. In the world of MDZS, sect leaders and their heirs are determined based on lineage following a fairly common order of succession.

Jiang Fengmian dies, it goes to his son.

Nie Mingjue dies, it goes to his brother.

And so on and so forth…

This is also true of the Jin sect, with the caveat that any child born of the sect leader’s blood seems to have a shot at becoming sect leader, not just those born of the sect leader and his wife (Also just realized this applies to the Nie sect, too, considering the Nie brothers have different mothers). Which is how “son of a whore” Jin Guangyao became sect leader, bypassing next-in-the-order-of-succession Jin Ling, who was still a child.

So, because Jin Ling is still a child when Jin Guangyao dies, leadership of the Jin Sect *should* theoretically go to the next adult in the sect leader’s bloodline.

And who would that be?

Mo Xuanyu.

…and that’s the story of how Wei Wuxian got the last laugh and became leader of the Jin sect.

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“Wen Ning’s number on speed dial”

I need this in a fanfic.

Sizhui, post-canon, in a spot of trouble

“welp, guess it’s time to call my uncle!” *starts whistling*  “Lan Xichen?” “nope! other uncle.” “Jiang Cheng?” “nope! other uncle.” “you’re not Jin Ling, how many uncles do you even—” *Wen Ning busts in like the kool-aid man*

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just a little idea i had in mind... baoshan sanren who was originally the only daughter of a sect leader, beautiful and lovely, who had to learn cultivation in secret from her brothers, who grew to be better than they could ever dream of. who, once her father found out what she was doing, was set to be married of to wen zhongzhu's second son, as soon as she turned of age. who, with the help of her brothers, ran off into the mountains, never to seen again.

who did come back, this time... unearthly. her loveliness melted away to an unsettling beauty, sharp and cutting. her once black hair, whiter than the whitest jade, her ears sharp and teeth even sharper. her once black eyes turned into eyes that shift into indescribable colours, as light hits.

she roams the countryside, helping the common people. she gives them blessings, blessings only an immortal could give. to the common people, she is known as the wandering goddess.

to the sects, baoshan sanren. she does not visit her home sect, and yet visits her brothers, when they are roaming away from it. the only sect she visits, is gusu lan.

she retreats back to her mountain, after the death of lan yi, the only other (known) female cultivator of her generation. this time, she is truly never seen again.

and, yet, children descend from her mountain, with white hair and kaleidoscope eyes, the same unnerving beauty. our immortal mastar, baoshan sanren, they say. who saved us from certain death, who comes to the rescue of any child who asks. they are never to go back to the mountain, they say.

a-ying hears this from a former storyteller turned beggar, remembers mamas white hair and words telling him about her master, who would come if he asked. scoffs, because if she truly comes to any child who asks, why hasnt baoshan sanren come yet ?

years later, left to die in burial mounds, a white haired woman with dark eyes, lightless as burial mounds is, stands over him, and asks. 'will you finally come, now, child?'

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working on a huaisang WIP drawing mostly inspired by the anime style (tho I stole his braids from the live action and I might adjust him still)

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Still pondering LXC in seclusion pondering the question of NHS. Contrary to rumors of blorbo feelings (alas, I’m fond of LXC but he barely cracks my top ten favorite CQL characters) the actual reason I think LXC is not angry at NHS has nothing to do with whether or not I think he’s capable of the cognitive dissonance of feeling both both guilt and anger at the same time. This is the cognitive dissonance novel, your honor! Half of the named characters are juggling with at least three contradictory emotions/ideas at any given moment. (Although I do think in fact he has a hard time with being mad specifically because lmao, that man does not have easy access to his anger.) Nor do I think it has anything to with what the correct emotions are to have in this scenario (no such thing) or whether NHS deserves any anger from LXC (is this even a question? Obviously yes. But deserve’s got nothing to do with it).

It’s that I think anger towards NHS doesn’t make sense to Lan Xichen in Lan Xichen’s present understanding of himself, in the way he sees NHS, and his interpretation of the relationship they have. I think the primary question that’s going to haunt LXC about NHS is “Why didn’t Huaisang come to me with his suspicions about his brother’s death? Why didn’t he try to seek justice with help from me, Nie Mingjue’s oldest friend, someone he’s leaned on for years? Is there something about the way I presented myself that made him think I wouldn’t believe him, or worse, that I would put him in danger by sharing this with A-Yao? Did he believe that I would compromise my morals for A-Yao, excuse the murder, choose A-Yao over justice for Mingjue, and if so, what would that belief say about me?”

NHS’s choice to go up against JGY by himself is inexplicable to LXC because he doesn’t know NHS as well as he thinks he does. Why would someone as helpless and incapable as NHS try to go it alone, when LXC was right there, unless there’s some fault in LXC that he himself has failed to perceive? Some disconnection between the person Lan Xichen thought he was, the person he strove to be, and the way someone so close to him apparently actually saw him?

(Meanwhile, while I think it’s very fun if at some point LXC was NHS’s primary suspect for the Da-ge murder, I don’t think his otherwise very telling choice not to go to LXC has anything to do with LXC, or NHS worrying that LXC would out him or side with JGY! It’s that what NHS wants is revenge, not justice. He wants a vengeance that feels proportional to his brother’s suffering, something that matches the scope of his own grief. There’s no one out there that he trusts to feel the same—that JGY not only needs to die, but needs to die as badly as possible—and therefore there is no one that he can trust to help him. I think NHS actually has LXC’s number exactly, not that LXC realizes this, and that is that LXC would help him get justice, but would never have helped him get revenge.)

As an ardent Jiang Cheng enjoyer, I can certainly testify to how delicious a potent cocktail of conflicting love/hate/anger/guilt can be in a fictional character. But I think what’s going on with Lan Xichen is even more interesting than that, and the reason that he falls apart so badly he keeps going into seclusion over and over again (despite attempting to drag himself out of it) is because the question of whether he was wrong to trust, and whether he himself was worthy of trust, thrusts him into a shattering self-identity crisis that simply does not leave much mental room for him to grapple with his feelings about other people and their choices (and again, to the degree that he can, NHS is just…low on the list).

Maybe he’ll recover enough over time that he can actually think about NHS and go “what the fuck, how could you do that to me” but I think that day is very far off and will require a mental recategorization of NHS from “my best friend’s failflop little brother who I have kindly helped to prop up for years out of affection and resignation” to “person with perceptible agency who can actually make choices and accomplish things and someone for whom there is any point at all in holding him accountable for his actions”, but I genuinely I don’t think that’s the work currently occupying LXC’s three available functioning brain cells.

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WANGXIAN OFFICIAL BIRTHDAY ILLUSTRATIONS!! 🩵❤

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mdzs jp audio drama x the chara shop collaboration, illustration by: GEAROUS

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I need everyone to read what Zhu Zanjin had to say about his intentions for JGY's line delivery in the "die with me" scene... (because I occasionally see people reading it as a power move / spiteful gesture). ZZJ said he advocated with the director to let him deliver a softer line, and explained his thoughts on that scene in an interview:

[the whole interview was translated by ayu, whose twitter is currently locked, but the thread is here just in case!]

(also don't you love zzj's optimism? in the end a-yao was loved, and that gave him the strength to make the right choice!)

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Wei Wuxian | The Untamed

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Wei Wuxian | The Untamed

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hanguang jun pretty: 16/?