I wonder if Jin Guangyao ever had the strange feeling he was parenting a small Jiang Cheng. Probably not when Jin Ling was happy—when would he have spent any time with a happy Jiang Cheng?—but imagine Jin Guangyao watching Jin Ling try food he's unsure about and the deeply suspicious expression is exactly like Jiang Cheng listening to Sect Leader Yao at the last conference. Jin Ling's big childhood feelings, his outbursts of temper and sulking, his desire to do well and prove himself (to his terrible cousins) all make Jiang Cheng's behaviour (though more publicly contained) increasingly familiar. Something something unwanted diagonal intimacies. Somehow even this leads to divorce (Guanyin Temple).
while reading the books, i remember wei wuxian’s relationship with jin ling hitting me especially hard. i was crying when the whole stabbing thing happened. but i truly adore what becomes of them and do you know why? because jin ling does something the others could never, something miraculous really––he actually unlearns the prejudice he’s been taught to hold against wei wuxian. he meets wwx, full of disdain, slowly learning about who wwx really is and it has nothing to do with wwx’s outward appearance. and when the truth is revealed, the internal warring for jin ling is plainly portrayed and even if he does give in to a hate intermingled with grief that he has internalised towards this one entity (wei wuxian was never a person in his mind, just the ‘killer’ of his parents, a phantom, before the events of the book happened), you can tell his heart has already turned, that it will keep turning and that’s what happens. you have jin ling, an orphaned child, who hated someone whom his mother loved dearly, because that man caused his parents’ death but it is such a commendable thing that wei wuxian was able to create a space in jin ling’s heart and jin ling was able to accept it. it’s the way both jin ling & jiang cheng blame the death of their parents on wwx but only the former was able to see wei wuxian clearly and actually forge a bond of love with him.
it’s the fact that if ANYONE in this story can actually rightfully hold a grudge against wei wuxian, it’s jin ling, but instead this teenager decides that wei wuxian is much too good and that having him as an uncle is lovely, after all.
✨ MXTX’s boys Polaroids ✨
lan xichen painted ayao four landscapes?? which ayao displayed proudly in the study off the reception hall?
I think a lot of characters in mdzs are written to be foils of wei wuxian, you know, lan wangji, xue yang, jin guangyao, wen chao, jiang cheng, the list could keep going. BUT in contrast to these contrasts, wen ning is wei wuxian's parallel.
They're both a talented child who, under the prejudices of society, become corpses of themselves, yet despite it all are able to persist because of love and understanding. Of course, the corpse thing is more figurative in the case of wei wuxian if we look at him the moments before during and after nightless city. Where he is entirely the yiling patriarch society lauds him to be. Which is just a superficial inauthentic shell of who we know wei ying is. And then he actually dies, so boom, there's your corpse (except 404 corpse not found, my point still stands).
And idk, I think one of the best parts of mdzs is that any of the characters could be the main character. Any of these characters could be the main pov.
But overall, while wei wuxian's foils illuminate his bright sides, his parallels, like wen ning, just make his tragedies that much darker. It's like, wei wuxian, isn't just solely persecuted, this persecution of hope and brightness is an epidemic. And that's so fucked to recognize and so hot of mxtx's brain to deliver as a theme.
AU where Meng Shi was just a bit more cynical and spent her hard-earned on buying Meng Yao study materials for the Imperial Examination instead of dodgy cultivation manuals. Cultivation is for his father to teach him, after all.
Meng Yao fucking blitzes the exam, because of course he does, and the first time he arrives at Koi Tower it's with an imperial mandate to audit the shit out of them for tax purposes.
Jiang Cheng: Go to hell!
Lan Zhan: Can I please leave your home before you invite me back in?
Also
Jiang Cheng: If I could go back in time, I'd find child Mo Xuanyu. And I'd give him to a loving family
Wei Wuxian: Aww that's so sweet!
Jiang Cheng: So that he'd never have a reason to resurrect you, and you'd be stuck in the body of someone ugly instead!
Wei Wuxian: aww
Also also
Jiang Cheng: YOU DEFLOWERED MY BABY BROTHER!
Wei Wuxian: I'm older than-
Jiang Cheng: NO ONE ASKED YOU!
Lan Zhan: *throws a bag of gold at jc's head*
Jiang Cheng: THE FUCK-
Lan Zhan: For Wei Ying's virtue
Jiang Cheng: YOU THINK ONE BAG OF GOLD IS ENOUGH TO MAKE UP FOR-
Lan Zhan: *throws another bag of gold*
Jiang Cheng: HOW MANY OF THESE DO YOU HAVE!?
Lan Zhan: How much do I need to buy your silence?
the sounds of flute in the night
geto sensei 💪✨️
When the moon can be seen during the day