yunmeng-jiang

[yunmeng-jiang]

Something about how Lan Wangji and Lan Xichen took the same parental trauma and, due to their differing ages and characters and the somewhat different pressures they were under, came away with very distinct conclusions that mostly seemed pretty similar at first, since they were cast in the same mold, i.e. the Lan disciplines.

Both of them these under-parented kids trying to reconcile the message that the world is fundamentally just with the lived experience that it absolutely was not.

Lan Xichen comes away with this idea that justice is arrived at by keeping everyone happy--have I compared him to Jane Bennet yet, she's my reference archetype for this kind of eldest sibling--and working for the best possible final outcome. In which possibility he persistently has faith even when it fails to come to fruition; a disappointing compromise is just a lesson to do better next time.

This is a pretty resilient coping mechanism, since it can stand up to not only a lot of bad shit randomly falling out of the sky but to other people and even you fucking up supremely in a lot of different ways, and also to being harmed by enemies, because of course enemies will do that.

It cannot survive the sense of being totally helpless, or a loss without recoup or silver lining, because it relies on the conviction that you can bargain with the universe. That you are in a position to do so, and that the universe is disposed toward mercy.

(This I think is why he attached himself so intensely to Meng Yao--at his darkest moment, when everything was falling around him and he was alone, someone came and restored his faith in the world being, fundamentally, a good place, that will pick you up when you fall and offer second chances. Right up until it gets pulled out from under him, that's what that person means to him, every time he sees him again: that at its core life is kind, and you can be safe again after trauma.

The irony is imo less that this person is actually bad than that Meng Yao is the last person who believes that.)

Lan Wangji, on the other hand, younger and more rigid and somewhat more sheltered, comes away with the idea that bad things are the direct consequence of flawed actions. Punishment is natural law; on earth as it is in heaven; only perfection merits mercy.

(Mumble mumble Legalism I haven't read enough Chinese history to unpack that lol but.)

The advantage of believing this is that it frees you from the bulk of internal conflict. If bad things happen it's because they ought to. You can stop them from happening by doing everything right. There is no need therefore to be afraid, and relatively little need to be angry, and when you are angry it can happen in a contained, approved way, toward disruptions to the system.

This is not a worldview that can survive very many disruptions. It does not have a lot of shock absorption built in; to keep it mostly intact in the face of the universe glaringly failing to deliver requires, more or less, going systematically insane.

Plenty of people raised with these kinds of values do in fact choose to do that. If choose is the right word.

If our Lan Zhan hadn't already gotten his coping mechanism shaken up and expanded by Wei Wuxian and his charismatic undermining of the Lan Sect's system of making their laws appear to be the laws of the universe, I think he'd have been a lot more likely to break when the Wen took Cloud Recesses. Not in an obvious way, necessarily, not cracking up and screaming or berserking, and probably not even going into complete shutdown, but like. Retreating from reality a lot more.

Living way more completely in his own head, and lashing out more at people who threatened his elaborate, infinitely brittle mental architecture.

(In his worst moments, this is Lan Qiren.)

As it is, it takes Lan Wangji a long time and a pretty large amount of trauma to fully break out of this belief system, even once he's been confronted with its inadequacy to handle the actual complexities of the unstructured world.

(This is narratively important, I think, because Lan Zhan having gone through that growth is kind of the reward for the tragedy of the thirteen years; a cathartic grace note.)

And just when Lan Wangji's reached his success state on processing all that and been, essentially, rewarded by the universe with a Wei Wuxian, Lan Xichen's far more robust just-world coping mechanism is finally brought to its own shattering point. And how.

...also Jiang Yanli is a very similar person to Zewu-jun in a lot of ways, but not having been orphaned as a child or thrust into politics from a young age the scale of her ambition is more modest. But that's its own post probably!

[yunmeng-jiang]

unwell about the twin prides of Yunmeng in the big 25

[yunmeng-jiang]

✨SPIN THE WHEEL TO GET YOUR CHARACTER✨

[yunmeng-jiang]

This is incredibly funny without context

[yunmeng-jiang]

three years postcanon, jin guangyao comes back to life!

jin guangyao is then approached by a genie. the genie says that, due to the hardships he has endured, jin guangyao has been awarded with one miracle: he can choose to bring 1 out of 2 dead candidates back to life.

jin guangyao can only choose 1 person to revive from the provided list of 2 candidates. he also must make a decision in the next 24 hours.

[yunmeng-jiang]

going insane over all the ways in which jiang cheng not only doesn’t let his justified resentment fester, but moves past it for everyone else’s sakes. and how he never gets a lick of credit for it. he accepted jin zixuan and allowed him to marry his sister even after the blatant disrespect he showed for both jiang yanli and the jiang sect all because it made jiang yanli happy and he could accept that jzx changed. despite the fact that wen ning and wei wuxian are responsible for the deaths of jin zixuan and jiang yanli (not to mention tons of other people), jiang cheng lets them be at the end of the story, even after wen ning has the audacity to chew him out for something he didn’t even KNOW happened. the wen clan massacred every person he ever loved or cared about except jyl and wwx but he still tried to stand up for those who were left at that sect conference. out of everyone he has been forced to not allow his grief or anger inform his decisions. nie huaisang and jin guangyao both get to murder people who wrong them and their loved ones, and not only does jiang cheng not get to do that, but even if he could, he would choose not to if he thought it would be better for the people he cares about.

[yunmeng-jiang]

Xue Yang was already well known at 15, so well known that Nie Mingjue knew about him. What the fuck did 7th grader Xue Yang do to earn that kind of reputation by 15??? What the fuck was this 13 y/o up to??

[yunmeng-jiang]

Day 4. Sage Green. 5 years. And he couldn't take his body home. (I'm very sorry for everyone who sees that, but I have such mood today) ...................... Day 1, 2, 3 and more mxtx art you can find in my blog ฅ^•ﻌ•^ฅ

[yunmeng-jiang]

i think what really sets me off is that poetry, literature, and calligraphy were not only masculine pastimes to have (+ the scholar class was male-only, famously), nie huaisang focusing so much on them is reminiscent of chinese dynastic succession struggles. in the past, unambitious siblings would throw themselves into the arts, poetry, music, etc, while eschewing politics and power plays so their siblings who DID have ambitions for the throne wouldnt kill them. having martial and military power made you a threat, and with how the cultivation world at the time looked geopolitically, it was crucial for him not to attract too much attention (esp with what type of cultivation qinghe nie is known for). it's such a small detail but makes perfect sense, especially taking into account how he is meant to be a frivolous second young master and not the heir like his brother (where such a sentiment would be much more frowned upon). there is sm nuance to his character but western fans see his fans and how he has no idea how to pick up a sword and go "ok hes the effeminate limp wristed artist lol"

[yunmeng-jiang]

having Feng Xin as a blorbo but not being into fengqing is worse than having Lan Xichen as a blorbo but mainly being into xiyao in a queerplatonic way (<- ask me how I know this)

[yunmeng-jiang]

i get why feng xin wasn't a cultivator, but honestly? feng xin as a cultivator AND bodyguard would have been so funny. just imagine feng xin with a knack for talismans but no one else can read his fucking handwriting so no one knows what to expect when he pulls them out. protection array? sound muffling? attention diverting? no one knows! sometimes not even feng xin. imagine him tying explosive talismans to his arrows. imagine him creating xianxia flash grenades.

[yunmeng-jiang]

HAPPY BIRTHDAY! @suibianjie!

[yunmeng-jiang]

>be wei wuxian >20m, cs major, sexy bastard, single but dont let it get to me >now living in dirt-cheap unit with cringe bestie jiang cheng >lifeisgood.jpeg >valentine's day approaching >mfw stupid capitalistic holiday invented to sell more chocolate >jiang cheng agrees >jiang cheng has been spending a lot of time out of the shared unit >no friends no bitches so this is unusual >detective.jpeg >follow jiang cheng >he goes to his sister yanli's apartment >spy through the window >jiang cheng is making chocolate >what.jpeg >jiang cheng is making homemade valentine's day chocolate >he's actually really good at this >what.jpeg >it's not the kind of chocolate i enjoy >which means it's not for me >WHAT.jpeg

when he got home (made sure to duck before he left yanli's house so he wouldn't see me, then arrived at our shared unit 30 minutes after him) he was acting normal. what do i do????? and how do i figure out who it's for????????

[yunmeng-jiang]

He was as tall as he was tall, and his eyes were the color they were. To describe his hair one would say that he had some. His face had all the features you'd expect, and none of the ones you wouldn't. "There he is," people would often say of him, but only when he was there. And they were right.

[yunmeng-jiang]

sometimes I think about older Mianmian meeting Jin Ling and I just. have to take a moment.

what do you do when you leave soceity for noble righteous reasons and strike out on your own... only to find out that your best friend got married, had a son, and then was tragically killed by the guy that you left society to stand up for, all in less than two years? that you were at each others' sides your whole lives but because you left in such a scandalous way, you can't even go to his funeral - if you even find out at about it in time? might things have gone differently if you'd been there? could you have saved him? how do you even begin to mourn him? and do you have any right to try and talk to his son?

on a happier note, I think she WOULD talk to him because she knows no one else at Koi Tower would have told him any cool and/or deeply embarrassing stories about Zixuan and you know she absolutely has to remedy that. Cool Auntie Mianmian to the rescue!

[yunmeng-jiang]

sorry but the only abuse enabler in the jiang family was jiang fengmian. if you're going to simultaneously ignore jiang fengmian and argue that jiang yanli and/or jiang cheng were "enabling" the abuse of wei wuxian at the hands of yu ziyuan - despite both jiang yanli and jiang cheng at the time being children living under yu ziyuan and jiang fengmian's authority, despite the fact that jiang fengmian was literally a sect leader and yu ziyuan's husband in a deeply patriarchal society - then i simply do not respect your intelligence. sorry

[yunmeng-jiang]

Theories on why there’s a strong reaction to my other post

1. Black water is water tyrant. For some reason he just really likes playing the role of gods and is both earth master and water master

2. They never interact and this is an inside joke with the fandom

3. Black water kills water master in 2 seconds and that’s the only interaction

DONT TELL ME. IM BETTING 1