Wei Wuxian: -anyways, And Now We Turn To This Area, Which Is Nothing Suspicious-

wwx saying lwj’s title during his qiongqi dao monologue. not his bosom birth name, lan zhan, or the more formal and distant "lan-er-gongzi" that’s grown more familiar on his mouth during these many months. but the noble and dignified and righteous hanguang-jun. "if am doomed to death, may it be by hanguang-jun’s hand. that would be worth it."

wwx using a name lwj got during the throes of war as he fought and murdered hundreds of wen ruohan’s soldiers and turning it on its head to say, "if you are as good and moral as they all say you are, don’t doom these wens to the same fate." and that’s the thing, wwx does deem lwj as good and moral, more so than all the other gentries he’s met. as his self assigned zhiji, he sees lwj for who he is at the fundamental basis of his being, and indeed that is the bearer of light. wwx, with so many words, is saying, "you are worthy of your title, more than the whole of the jianghu is aware." and for that reason hinges his life and those of some few dozen refugees on his steadfast and unfailing belief of the other’s morality. with a single word, he assigns lwj the role of his judge, jury, and need be, the bringer of his demise. "if you really feel that my defense of the wen remnants is wrong, that i am wrong, draw your sword on me, hanguang-jun. go on, i’ll allow it, i’ll gladly agree to it—if it’s you, for no reason other than it’s your hand that i would meet my end by."

and the weight of that with it being one of only two times that he refers to lwj by his title during his first life. the first that he did so was during a bitter reunion, and laden with animosity. "hanguang-jun" said not with awe and admiration but to deride his standing as if the mere idea of him as a genuine moral authority is a foolish one. but the moment lwj also begins to doubt his role as a marshal of the law—as someone who is able to differentiate between right and wrong—there is a man who is willing to bet his life on his worthiness of fulfilling it.

(don’t mind me i’m fleshing out musings from my burial mounds au)

I aspire to his levels of bitchiness

Wei Wuxian: I birthed you! Show a little filial respect!

Lan Sizhui: Didn’t you claim it was a c-section last time you used that on me?

Wei Wuxian: Oh yeah! *points at his abdomen where the scar from the core removal used to be on his old body* It was right here! Your auntie spent hours cutting you out of me.

Lan Sizhui: This is possibly the darkest joke you’ve ever made, A-Die.

Jiang Cheng: *flipping between turning green and purple with rage* I hate both of you. Lan Sizhui, you are his son, and I’m banning you both from Lotus Pier.

Jin Ling: But I think they’re fun, JiuJiu!

Jiang Cheng: I’m banning you too.

As a guqin player, Lan Wangji has long nails, right? However (due to reasons and whatnot) they’ve been breaking a lot lately, which is inconvenient if you ask Lan Wangji, but downright a tragedy if you ask Wei Wuxian.

Cue to Wei Wuxian pretty much being gone the whole day for several days, falling asleep in the library, and also getting caught near the female disciples’ area twice, until he comes back one evening (past curfew) with the cultivation world’s first ever baby blue nail polish.

At first, he just wanted something to help strengthen Lan Wangji’s nails, it wasn’t even going to have color, but then the female disciples opened his eyes to this whole new world, and really, his Lan Zhan would look so good, wouldn’t he? 

And that’s why now Gusu Lan’s Hanguang-jun is often spotted with flawless baby blue nails, which causes many people to swoon at the sight of him, no matter how many times it happens, and yes, that includes Wei Wuxian. The end!

-Xie Lian looks so good in this- 🦋🌼

Poster done for Lwj birthday flower event in S Korea. A bit early, but happy birthday HGJ! 🩵

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.

Inappropriate use of curse technique

this entire scene is so revealing. notice how all these rich young masters are lost? lan qiren is asking them about something as important (and basic) for cultivators as handling a dead human soul, and they have to flip through their books for an answer.

my opinion is that they're ignorant because these obligations are, at best, boring procedural matters to them. unnecessary red tape, even. as members of the cultivation world's gentry, they're largely shielded from the possibility of becoming resentful corpses due to the soul tranquilization rites. this isnt their problem, so why should they care?

their ignorance stands in stark contrast to lan wangji's textbook perfect answer. (an early example of him displaying an earnest dedication to his duty that sets him apart from the rest of the gentry.) he makes it clear that destroying souls is an extreme last resort.

notably lan wangji's answer implies that orthodox cultivators are taught to procedurally destroy souls. but at the same time, many of these cultivators — namely the rich young masters who at this age are already going on night hunts — don't care enough to know, or much less adhere to, the correct order that places this method as a last resort. i think there's a strong implication that it's not uncommon for impatient or glory-obsessed cultivators to carelessly skip the first two methods entirely and just destroy the soul, because it's more convenient.

but the character whose reaction i find most interesting is wei wuxian. rather than automatically giving the textbook, orthodox answer, he visibly hesitates and contemplates. this is obviously something he's putting a lot of thought into!

and interestingly, when he does provide an answer, he never mentions destroying souls. he places manipulation of resentful energy between deliverance and suppression — implicitly excluding extinction (translated by seven seas as obliteration) from the order entirely.

i think it's important that unlike his classmates, wei wuxian is intimately familiar with destitution and precarity. moreover, as the novel reveals much later on, wei wuxian is not sheltered from the reality of the underclass facing extinction of the soul after death. he is keenly aware of the possibility that he could become one of them.

so when wei wuxian answers, he's speaking from the heart. it's true that he's trying to provoke lan qiren here, but it's equally true that he's giving an honest answer.

while rewriting this analysis for tumblr, it struck me as deeply ironic that lan qiren is singling out wei wuxian to accuse him of not taking his cultivator duties seriously and letting the glory get to his head.

but on closer examination, nobody in this room — not lan qiren, not the sheltered young masters, not even lan wangji — put as much thought and care into this issue as wei wuxian.