I have so much to post, apparently. Re: Jiang Cheng this time. This one will be significant Untamed spoilers, again let's just say for the whole flashback because I don't recall exactly what happens when. Spoiler I sorta get the feeling that Jiang Cheng is the kind of guy who tries to marry his mother. Not in an incestuous way. He just has a really specific idea of what the dynamic between a married couple is like, further complicated by how his own relationship with his mother affects the way he perceives his parents' dynamic. He went directly for the most formidable, self assured, aggressive woman he could find. I find this very entertaining. Wen Qing isn't actually like Madam Yu at all, beyond knowing her own value and not being afraid to say it. Madam Yu seemed to think she would make her son stronger by treating him harshly and withdrawing emotionally. Wen Qing would not make that kind of mistake. She's prickly, but to peers or those who outrank her (threats). If she shared Madam Yu's views about how to treat children and other people you have power over, she would have been abusing her brother instead of wearing her heart on her sleeve whenever she interacts with him. She's a caring, gentle person who's practical enough, and has enough horrific life experiences, to know that caring and gentle aren't always safe or effective things to be. I think Jiang Cheng thinks marriage amounts to signing up to martyr himself to the whims of a woman who's much more amazing than he is, and suffer for loving her for the rest of his life. I can only imagine that he'd treat Wen Qing like a queen while screaming internally. Of course he's thrilled if she's pleased, but he doesn't understand how she possibly could be, or what it means if she is. Is he doing it wrong? Wen Qing takes duty dead seriously. She would probably take it very personally even if the clan was thriving and so was pretty much everything else in the vicinity she had any influence over, which seems fairly likely, if she couldn't figure out what to do for her own damn husband. Who is probably struggling with whether to dote or avoid, or both at the same time. It sounds pretty hilariously terrible. Not because they're even necessarily bad for each other so much as they both have incredibly traumatic backgrounds they've never really had the time or opportunity to address at all. But I'm pretty sure it's impossible to spiral into an unhappy marriage with Wen Qing for very long without having to explain yourself to Wen Ning, who is not likely to be terribly impressed with excessive self pity related to growing up in the shadow of a brilliant older sibling.
I'm glad I'm not the only one who is both all about Wen Ning and overall pleasantly surprised by fandom's treatment of Wen Ning. You just never know where the woobie curse will strike, and the poor guy has already been through so much. But for the most part, people seem to recognize that shy and awkward don't cancel out extremely courageous when he thinks something isn't right, or contender for the highest on-screen body count. (I wasn't actually counting, but he's gotta be pretty high up there.) Maybe it's down to fandom probably attracting a relatively high percentage of neurodiverse authors. Whatever it is, I'll take it.
There is some slight woobification. A general tendency to concentrate on the more gentle and awkward aspect of his personality. And not the part that takes multiple hits from a whip made of lightning and keeps getting up just to prove a point. I really wish there was more Wen Ning centric fic. And more Wen Ning/ Wei Ying/ Lan Wangji fic necause I have acquired a thirst for this ot3.
Friend on Discord: enthusiastically recs The Untamed. Me:*watches* Me: .... Me: "The Untamed" do you mean " The Adventures of An ADHD Necromancer And His Long-Suffering Autistic Paladin Boyfriend" ? Because that's what we got here.
HELLO YES I read one fic and now I am here forever bonus extra points for exploration of the truly weird power dynamics between WN and WWX :D
Was it this one, throughline, by lunatea? I can't recall if you linked it or not, but it's a modern (sort of) AU and is mildly guilty of Wen Ning woobiefication with the justification he's being kept out of the loop for good reason. Also, it has the best chronic anxiety POV I've ever seen. I felt attacked and vindicated all at once. Also also @OtherCat, there's a reason me and my gf call this show "ADHD bi disaster Ruins Everything." :D
The Dex-Starr Red Lantern origin story has gone around again. And the important thing to remember here is that Red Lanterns apparently rage-puke blood/plasma. Me: so basically they're having qi devations. Crossovercrack! Powers Activate!: Nie Minjue becomes a Red Lantern.
I’ve been putting recs in the fanfic rec thread, but here is the crosspost roundup. Come From My Inkstone has updated to 8/25 chapters since last I looked, iirc. It may be of particular interest to people in this thread, as Nie Huaisang is the POV character, his relationship with his brother figures heavily into the story, and Wen Ning is a particular focal character as well. There’s some tantalizing bits in the author’s notes about narrative parallels. Inhuman(e) could probably fit into canon while adding a very spicy element, and I love that? Xue Yang believes he has discovered a monster, and reacts exactly like he totally would.
I was just vaguely curious about whether the Jin family generational characters had some kind of meaning, but then google went ahead and decided to take things in a whole nother direction
Also, I've written fic. 2k, sfw, jin guangyao + jiang yanli + (technically) jin ling, because the 'father, can i hold the baby' 'lmao no' scene bothered me, and I have opinions about 1) jin guangyao's child-wrangling skills, and 2) jiang yanli's desire to hoard little brothers
on episode five now, cannot stop thinking about this show needing a daemon/HDM AU, stat, because wei wuxian is the platonic ideal of "person with a parrot daemon"
...on that note, have we all seen this fic in which daemons are linked to your golden core? (there are spoilers, sorry, so maybe hold off on reading it a while longer! and no parrot daemon for wwx :p )
