She Knows

okay I harp on about the differences between mdzs the novel and the untamed but isn’t it more impactful that wen qing didn’t know wei wuxian and jiang cheng before she chose to help them? all she fucking knew about wwx was that he was nice to her brother. and jc was actively insane with grief for the three seconds he was conscious in her presence. but she helped them anyway. not because she knew them or really cared about them on a personal level, but because she was a good person who didn’t want anyone to suffer if she had the ability to do something about it. because she was a doctor through and through. that’s why it’s so unfair when nie mingjue criticizes her for not stopping the wens (something he knew she wasn’t realistically capable of). without jiang cheng, his sect, and wei wuxian they never would’ve won the sunshot campaign. by helping jc and wwx, she won them that war and they killed her anyway and called it justice.

prompt for @/shiraayasha on twitter for the juniors quartet g4g here, thanks so much!

Merry Merry … very untamed and sexy Holidays.

One of my most pointless but beloved MDZS headcanons is that Lan Wangji was a fat baby. Just a little butterball until he was about 5 years old. Just the squishiest little cheeks you ever saw.

My other beloved fanon/head canon is that Lan Wangji was a biter as a small child. So that cute, wobbly-cheeked face was extremely disarming and numerous Lans have little scars from where the toddling Second Young Master Lan bit the absolute fuck outta them.

while i’m on the topic, it is very hilarious and also very insightful that mxtx actually plainly tells us how anyone else except wei wuxian would have fared without their golden cores/spiritual powers by putting thousand-plus cultivators in exactly that situation during the second siege. the way they all absolutely lose their shit, fumble around, lose coherence of thought, see-saw between decisions and become, essentially, helpless and useless is eye-opening. hell, jiang cheng ends up so affected that jin ling is able to manhandle him into the cave. the cultivators from the biggest clans aren’t able to come up with anything to save their asses and it takes shizui to point out the array for them to even consider it as an option. if wei wuxian, lan wangji and the juniors weren’t there, sooooo many disciples would have lost their lives–simply because of how incompetent they collectively became once they lost their spiritual powers. if they made a coordinated effort, they could have still held the corpses off, but it’s just that... they weren’t able to, mentally, get past their sudden lack of powers. they were disoriented.

now, i’m not saying that this isn’t a normal reaction to have. it’s totally understandable how these people were huge messes, especially in such a high stakes situation. it is just that it puts into perspective how AWESOME wei wuxian is to have had his golden core cut out of him, voluntarily, then beaten within a micrometre of his life, then thrown straight into the hell on earth aka the burial mounds and then instead of succumbing instantly, he instead overcame these impossible circumstances and somehow, survived and found alternative powers to keep him going. that is nothing short of mind-boggling, awe-inspiring, jaw-dropping. not one person in that siege-laying populace would be able to accomplish that and it held some of the finest cultivators their world has to offer. because no one, other than wei wuxian, had the internal capabilities to build their strengths up from a source that wasn’t their spiritual powers. without their golden cores, they would be toast faster than a human within one kilometre of the sun’s radius. and i love love love how mxtx hits us with this fact in our faces in exactly the scenes that are all about undoing the falsehoods and allegations that wei wuxian, until then, had been levied with in the larger cultivation world’s perspective.

Maybe it's a good thing that Lan Zhan had minimal rizz back in the day.

One while time compliment from him would've rendered baby Wei Wuxian catatonic.

Lan Zhan: You're so beautiful. Won't you please stop drinking alcohol in Cloud Recesses?

Wei Wuxian: *drops jug in shock*

Xie Lian's second ascension is hilarious when you think of how it looks like for the other gods. Disgraced formerly banished crown prince marches up to heaven, kick people's asses, stabs Jun Wu, gets banished again, then...doesn't take his anger out on mortals or target any of their shrines.

Sure no one can control ascension, it just kinda happens, it's up to fate whether you succeed or not- but it really looks like Xie Lian purposely ascended solely to beat them up and run the Heavenly Emperor through with a sword. And now that's done, he's as at peace as a buddha and settles into a humble life of busking and scrap collecting, no resentment at all in his heart now that he had fulfilled his heart's wish: beat up the gods in heaven and stab the heavenly emperor.

In the outsider's point of view, it's like Xie Lian went 'I know I was banished but fuck you fate I will march up there, deliver my justice, and only then will I accept my lot as a banished god. fuck you and also fuck you all'

"A boy who consumes cursed objects"

Oh suguru you would've loved Yuji 🤧

"And a boy who was blesses with a unique curse technique"

When did WWX fall in love--before he died, or after he was resurrected?

I propose a third option: both are true.

I'm very firmly in the camp of WWX being head over heels pretty much right from the start, but that ignores a lot of the emotional growth between the two of them after his resurrection. On the other hand, calling that growth "falling in love" ignores his obvious feelings right from the start, and also just doesn't seem like what's going on. His thoughts and feelings about LWJ don't really change all that much.

But here's what does change: WWX starts thinking about himself.

He starts putting himself and his needs into the equation. He goes from seeing LWJ as a trustworthy and good paragon of virtue to seeing him as someone he personally trusts. From objectively the most handsome person in existence to someone he personally really wants to sleep with finds handsome.

So it's not that he fell in love after resurrection--he loved LWJ right from the start--but also he did fall in love after resurrection, because that's when he started thinking about LWJ as someone he could be with. Not that he didn't want to be with him before; instead, he didn't have a concept of personally wanting (being able to want, being allowed to want, being allowed to have) anyone at all.

Wei Wuxian: I was dead for 13 years before someone sacrificed themselves to give me a body and bring me back.

Shen Qingqiu: It's always a good idea to have a backup body. You never know when you are going need one, and you don't want to end up in the body of some random scumbag.

Hua Cheng: Amateurs.