love, the breaking of your soul upon my lips

❤️ The Beast of Gusu

by Netrixie

M, 212k, wangxian, nielan, series complete

Summary:  A world where I went, “What if Wei Ying was a wolf?” and then ran with it. We’ve got wangxian, nielan, fluff and angst, soft!boys and A-Yuan. You’ll want to get comfortable, because part 1 is 150k words :)

Enjoy!

My comments:  Ahhh, what an entertaining and satisfying story. You’d think that after 200k words I’d be satiated, but really, I could wallow in this one for a couple more days. Wei Wuxian is a wolf (werewolf is off the mark, especially as someone coming from the Teen Wolf fandom – wwx is a shifter whose other form is a wolf, so forget all the western lore associated with werewolves). He’s also just as irrepressible and bubbly as a student as he ever was, and fascinated by lwj and nearly drunk off his smell. (As a matter of fact, he avoids going into the Jingshi for quite a while, afraid that he’ll be overcome. Which he kind of is. Bless.) His persistence pays off, and it’s not long before lwj returns his interest. Lan Xichen (who ships it hard) finds him in his wolf form, and the secret is out, so he goes ahead and tells lwj (whom I expected to be revealed as an ice dragon or something for half the story but he’s simply a very physically and spiritually strong human) which leads to much cuddling and making out. So there’s a satisfying amount of sexual tension as the story progresses.

There is plot, of course, involving whatever the hell happened to lzc in the past, why lqr hates wwx so much, and the wens placing known spies in cloud recesses. The war approaches, and there’s a poison being used that is inducing shifters to shift, both revealing them and rendering them unwilling slaves to Wen Rouhan. Wwx is feral for a while, which is tragic and lonely: but Song Lan and Xiao Xingchen show up to keep him company while he searches for… something he can’t remember.

I love all the imagery in describing the coordinated fighting styles of wwx as a wolf in the shadows and lwj glowing with power in his Lan whites. Actually, author describes Clan powers (particularly Lan and Wen) almost as an entity in itself, to the wolf’s senses, which is awesome. I also love how much of a water baby the wolf is: he just walks up to rivers and ponds and flops over into them to hang out for a while. Wwx spends a lot of time in bathtubs when he’s human, too, actually.

The bulk of the series is the first story, from wwx’s POV. Second story presents a few alternate POV of specific scenes. Third is The Thing That Happened To Lan Xichen, alternating POV with Nie Mingjue. And final story is an epilogue wrapping up a few loose ends from the tale as a whole.

shapeshifter au, shifter au, wolf wei wuxian, werewolf wei wuxian (not really tho), slow burn, students at cloud recesses, ust, nielan, fix-it, lan xichen ships it, the jiangs have healthy family relationships, jiang siblings, lan qiren is a dick, so is qinghen jun, angst, found family, wei ying is lan xichen’s anger translator, soft, fluff, family feels, wwx is an irrepressible puppy, crushes, getting together, first kiss, coming out, courting rituals, poisoned wei wuxian, hurt/comfort, weddings, kissing, making out, domestic, battle, feral wei wuxian, ferity, forced shifting, politics, powerful wei wuxian, powerful lan wangji, human lan wangji, happy ending, favorite, @netrixie​

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Original rec by Mojo. Bookmarked on July 11, 2020.

Kay’s comments: 💙 Another throwback because I’m currently in a mood and re-reading my old favourites. This one takes place in a world where some people are shapeshifters and Wei Wuxian is one of them. Not just that, he’s a wolf shifter; an especially strong shift that’s considered divine. Featuring a wonderful canon-divergence story with Wangxian getting together during the Cloud Recesses Study Arc and following them onwards through the war. Part two delivers on some heart-breaking Nielan backstory featuring asshole Lan Qiren, breaking up and making up and coming of age.

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MILLIE BOBBY BROWN as ELEVEN

This is a common strategy of white feminism: to align with women of color when it suits, trumpeting a nonexistent sisterhood as a mask for appropriating our work to advance the myth of a better world run by women. The truth is, it is women of color, most especially Indigenous women, who are at the forefront of environmental rights because their own rights are inseparable from the battle for the environment.

According to the World Resources Institute, protecting Indigenous lands is among the most successful methods of fighting deforestation and climate change: remove such protections and environmental catastrophe is unavoidable. The battle for land rights is deadly. From 2002 to 2015, some 1,237 eco-activists were killed for defending (mostly) Indigenous lands.

2017 was the deadliest yet with around four activists killed per week. Indigenous women on the front lines who list their lives include Berta Cáceres, Lesbia Janeth Urquía, and Efigenia Vásquez. To dress this up as a warmhearted girl power story not only trivializes their work, it erases the danger such women are in."