When I First Heard That Song I Was Thinking About Them

Vietnam and Opoczno girls 🏳️‍🌈💘

DA-GE PLZZZZZZZ

Wei wuxian : Are you sexually active?

Jin Guangyao: No , I just lie there

so yeah, upon further consideration, my Type of favorite character is 100% “person with a horribly misplaced sense of duty that ruins their life and ultimately kills them”

So I've said multipe times now (here and here) that thinking nmj is just so blinded by privilege he doesn't undertand that acting out of line gets people killed is, in my opinion, a misunderstanding of his character that ignores the part where he's, you know, actively dying the whole time and thinks that's a good thing. But that doesn't mean I don't think privilege plays no role at all in how he views the world.

Specifically, his view that death (at least premature or violent death) means something.

Death isn't always a tragedy to NMJ, but it is always meaningful. If you kill an evil dangerous person for your righteous cause, that death had meaning. There was evil in the world and now there is less of it. Similarly, if you die in the pursuit of your righteous cause, that death has meaning, because the sheer dedication you gave to it that you were willing to die for it will further that cause, and your bretheren will be invigorated by your sacrifice to fight even harder.

If a death isn't meaningful, that's an injustice and it is up to the living to give it meaning. That's what cuts so deep about his father's murder. There were no consequences, no changes, no meaning. Wen Ruohan was just going to get away with it! He fights and wins an entire war to make it mean something, to make it so that the unjust murder of Nie Mingjue's father is part of Wen Ruohan's downfall.

But this is a view he can only hold because he's the kind of person who's death will be meaningful. Most ordinary people's deaths are meaningless. Not ontologically, not inherently, but they are made meaningless because no one cares. For death to be meaningful you either have to be so powerful that anything you risk your life for will be impacted in some way. (Like, say, if you sacrifice a long life for immense martial power in a faustian bargain with a blade) Or if people with that kind of power care enough about you to do so for you. For most people, this isn't true. A starving street kid has no power to change the unfair world that put them there, even if they risk their life trying, and no one will do it for them once they die.

Nie Mingjue knows this in abstract, and of course rightfully believes it's wrong. But all that does is make it yet another righteous cause people should be willing to die for. Everyone's deaths should mean something, we'll make it so or die trying!

This is what the conflict between nieyao is about at its core. Because Jin Guangyao, fundamentally, cannot conceive of his own death as meaningful. Nie Mingjue grew up around powerful men who could change the world but refuse to do so because god forbid they risk a single hair on their perfect heads. Meng Yao, on the other hand, grew up in an environment where no one of importance would blink twice if you died. He was surrounded by meaningless death. Indeed his entire early life is defined by that lack of care.

Meng Shi dies and no one cares. Meng Yao gets thrown off a flight off stairs and no one cares. He has to be the one to do the caring, and once he's gone no one else will do it for him.

So he has to live.

Jin Guangyao eventually gets far enough that he actually does aquire the power to change some things... as long as he's alive. If he changes too much, holds on too tightly to his ideals, he'll die and it'll all be for nothing. He can't sacrifice himself for his goals because doing so would immediately render those goals unobtainable. No one will care about what he tried to do. He won't be a heroic sacrifice, he'll just be trash that finally cleaned itself up.

And well... Nie Mingjue dies, and someone makes it mean something. Makes it mean so much that the entire story of mdzs would not exist without it. Jin Guangyao dies and it doesn't mean anything. Most people are glad to be rid of him, and the few that are not don't do anything to change that.

That's my favorite variantions of that ship,

WN Rarepair Tournament

Please consider each rarepair and vote for the ship you like the best / find the most interesting / that compels you the most / etc.

[Please be kind and respectful in the notes. Anti-Propaganda is NOT allowed.]

🔽 Propaganda below 🔽

XueWang from Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation (MDZS)

Characters: Lan Wangji x Xue Yang

Submission 1: They’re kinda like dark mirrors of each other if you think about it. They both lost the object of their obsession to self-destruction of some kind. They both refuse to move on from said obsession and have built themselves into monuments mourning them (Xue Yang with his preservation of Xiao Xingchen’s body and the way he literally impersonates Xiao Xingchen and Lan Wangji branding himself and going around dressed for mourning). They have each taken in what physical remnants of their obsession remain (Xue Yang turning Song Lan into a fierce corpse and holding onto Yi City and Lan Wangji taking in and raising Sizhui). Each of them admire the other’s object of obsession to some extent (Xue Yang idolizes Wei Wuxian for his cultivation method and Lan Wangji praised Xiao Xingchen for his ideals and sense of justice). This is to say I could totally see these guys recognizing their common grief and latching onto each other as a result. Doing mutual proxyfucking or some shit

Submission 2: Think about it: Xiao Xingchen is dead. Wei Ying is dead. And they find someone who's definitely not the same... but close enough if they close their eyes and pretend.

Fic Recs: of use by rynleaf & six inches by Sectionladvivi; horrible mirror by Sectionladvivi

XueXian from Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation

Characters: Xue Yang x Wei Wuxian

No propaganda submitted

XueYao from Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation (MDZS)

Characters: Jin Guangyao x Xue Yang

No propaganda submitted

Fic Recs: Lise (User)

Did the trend w my lovelies

Meng Yao striving // stained // weighed down (sparks amidst snow)