Adventures on Two Wheels

Jiang Cheng: Don't you ever talk to me and my son nephew again.

Jin Ling: Don't u ever talk to me and my dad jiujiu again.

listen…you can’t just point at one of my favorite scenes in the entire show and call it a ‘tiny discussion request’…

all right, so, funny story — while I was writing my response to this ask, I sat down and rewatched that scene on YouTube with 1) the sound off (otherwise my brain will process the dialogue and not the subs) and 2) with English subtitles on, and I just…I can’t even…it was an experience. Only six minutes of an experience, mind you, but I don’t think I fully understood what y’all were suffering out there in the subtitled world. People put up with fifty episodes of these subs??? You are all much stronger and more forgiving than I.

If anyone’s still wondering if the dialogue sounds better in Chinese? It absolutely sounds better in Chinese.

One thing that I really love about this scene is how every character is active in the conversation, even if they’re not the ones actively speaking. In the first half of the conversation, the camera/editing tracks Lan Wangji’s responses to Jiang Cheng and Wei Wuxian’s conversation, and you can literally see Lan Wangji piecing together what Wei Wuxian isn’t saying way before it comes up in conversation (all hail Wang Yibo, microexpression king). While Wei Wuxian and Jiang Cheng are bickering about some imaginary secluded master and their powerful secret cultivation techniques, Lan Wangji is already lightyears past either of them, working through the ramifications of Wei Wuxian’s demonic cultivation to reach the sole conclusion of come back to Gusu with me before he even opens his mouth to speak.

But that’s for later.

(Also, this is gonna have spoilers by implication for anyone who hasn’t finished the show/book, so read with caution! And the spoiler will be for something that, from the bottom of my heart, I, someone who cares about spoilers not at all, would encourage you to remain unspoiled for.)

So first off, in the Star Wars universe, there is no way to recreate the circumstances that had Wei Wuxian inventing demonic cultivation in canon. You cannot take away someone’s access to the Force without also taking away their access to the Dark Side. In the immortal words of Han Solo, “That’s not how the Force works.” And if that’s true, then Wei Wuxian doesn’t end up in a situation where the only option available to him is his single-plank bridge, because either the Force is there or the Dark Side also isn’t. Yeah, sure, the Dark Side is dubiously more powerful than the Force, but I don’t think that matters much, because the Force is pretty damn powerful, and…

Wei Wuxian has never loved anything so much that he’s unwilling to lose it. He’s not ‘attached’ to anything. There’s a lot of stuff and people he loves very much, but never in a particularly possessive way, and never in a way that supplants his other goals. Wei Wuxian will fight to the ends of the earth and to his own destruction, but only for moral imperatives. Things he’s willing to give up: his golden core, his family, his home, his reputation, literally everything he has. He fights to save the Wens not because he doesn’t want to live without them, but because it’s the right thing to do. He doesn’t even know most of them. And when he does, he loses pretty much everything he has, which, so we’re clear, no one else is willing to do.

There’s no possessive side to his love, nothing that he clings to when the only other option is letting go of his moral absolutes. You can make an argument that his inventing demonic cultivation is this on its own—that his use of an ethically dubious method to preserve his life and save the cultivation world from the Wens is comparable to going to the Dark Side for similar reasons (save the galaxy from the Wens, etc)—but again, I don’t think that’s necessarily a useful comparison, because you can’t replicate it based on Star Wars canon.

LAN WANGJI, ON THE OTHER HAND. Lan Wangji’s love is deeply possessive (and not just in a kinky way, though, you know, that too). He’s incredibly attached to Wei Wuxian; he’s willing to go to incredible lengths to keep from losing him a second time. This turns out to be fine, because Wei Wuxian is, without a doubt, a good person and someone who deserves to be saved, but I don’t think that’s at the forefront of Lan Wangji’s mind—this is more explicit in book canon, but when they first (re)meet at Dafan Mountain and Jiang Cheng tries to hit Wei Wuxian with Zidian to force his soul out of the body he assumes Wei Wuxian is forcibly possessing, Lan Wangji blocks the strike. Zidian doesn’t work anyway because Wei Wuxian got resurrected via sacrifice, but Lan Wangji would have no reason to block it if he thought that—he assumes Wei Wuxian is forcibly possessing Mo Xuanyu (a Bad Thing) and therefore moves to prevent him being removed.

I’m not even a little bit saying this makes Lan Wangji a bad person (it’s actually a personality trait I’m extremely fond of in fictional characters), but I am saying that being willing to do morally dubious things to prevent the loss of people you love (another book thing, but saving Wei Wuxian after the massacre at the Nightless City is frankly another example of this) is literally exactly what turned Anakin into Darth Vader in canon. Lan Wangji has no interest in vengeance (except on a very petty and non-violent level), which is a point in his favor and definitely lessens the possibility of him turning to the Dark Side, and he’s got enough self-restraint that I’m not saying it’s a done deal, but.

Lan Wangji is the kind of character who would be an amazing Jedi, held up as a shining example to all, up until the point at which circumstances conspire to fuck Wei Wuxian over and he becomes a Sith Lord without warning, leaving people all around him going, “What? Him? Him???”

Wei Wuxian, on the other hand, is the kind of guy who spends days in the Jedi vaults inspecting Sith holocrons and having terrible ideas and being disapproved of for being too reckless and emotional (though he actually isn’t? Lan Wangji is way more likely to make a choice based on emotions than Wei Wuxian is—this is why Wei Wuxian is a better Jedi), but then when it comes right down to it, his interest is purely academic. The Dark Side can’t touch him.

THE TAGS:  #i have a lot of feelings about star wars and mdzs okay  #and lwj isn’t like  #inevitably going to become a sith lord  #he’s a lot harder to manipulate than anakin for one thing  #and he’s got more self-control  #but he’s definitely the kind of jedi the council is always a little worried about  #who always kind of has the dark side hovering at his edges  #because he’s too emotional!  #he can’t accept his feelings and release them into the force!  #and under the right circumstances  #yeah  #between the two of them  #he’s the one who’d become a sith lord  #modao zushi  #meta  

THIS WAS ALL SO AMAZING. fascinating and well thought out and oh my god??? I loved reading it SO MUCH and it’s SUCH a wonderful and extremely well thought out look into their characterizations??? I want to print it out and carry it around with me for a while and see if a crossover comes fully formed out of the ether out of sheer obsessive will

although I’ll argue, for the sake of argument, that if we WANT to keep the original societal dynamic (aka LWJ considered to be shining paragon and WWX the Fall risk), we could take away the part where Jedi can feel each other tendencies and emotions (I don’t read a lot of Star Wars fic but I haven’t seen that used before in what I’ve read, so I’m pretty sure it’s optional, and actually where did you get it from?, it sounds super interesting!)

EITHER POSSIBILITY SOUNDS AMAZING AND HILARIOUS THOUGH. I now need 30 different crossovers with each exploring a different possible interpretation.

more things to say, um. did I already mention I am in awe of the characterization you’ve teased out when constructing the crossover possibilities? because I am. that was fantastic. thank you for writing it out.

Lan Wangji’s more morally dubious personality traits are something that are very very near and dear to my heart and which are actually fairly difficult to properly explore and it’s incredible to see them so clearly written out here. thank you.

finally, something that I shamefully refrained from saying to the original post but I definitely should have: Yiling Laozu is indeed smoking hot.

he shouldn’t be. he’s a disaster.

Did I…did I make that up? *searches memory frantically* IS THAT NOT A THING? I have read a lot of Star Wars fic, but to be fair, it’s been a while; it hasn’t been a main fandom of mine in years. And now that I’m thinking about it…it might mostly be a thing in master/padawan bonds? (Either in canon or fanon, I regularly lose track of which is which with Star Wars.)

But if it’s only a master/padawan thing (or maybe I’m just making all of this up, damn, I’m going to have to go back and read more SW fic), that provides a THIRD FUNNY POSSIBILITY, which is:

The Jedi Council fucking loves Lan Wangji, clearly the perfect Jedi, so calm, so at peace, so one with the Force—except for his original Jedi Master, who’s just standing there going, “WHAT CALM. Can you guys not tell that that kid is three mean comments from Jin Zixun and a bad hair day for Wei Wuxian away from becoming Darth Wei-Ying-Protection-Squad???” And the Jedi Council is always saying to Wei Wuxian, you know, “Quit being like this, you must,” but his Jedi Master is like, “Nah, he’s good. We’ve got nothing to worry about. You keep doing you, kid. I mean, maybe stop jumping out of moving vehicles, that shit stresses me out, please don’t die, but don’t worry about your feelings, your feelings are solid.”

(I have no idea who their Jedi Masters are. MDZS canon suggests Lan Qiren and Jiang Fengmian as the most obvious options, but a) that gets into family dynamics we can’t have, and b) I’m actually very into the idea that an aged-up Lan Xichen is Lan Wangji’s Jedi Master, even though we’ve still got the family dynamic issue. But he’s the guy who Knows Lan Wangji.)

But yeah—Lan Wangji, dude who loves possessively and dwells on every little thing and has never let a single thing go in his Entire Life? Definitely on track to be corrupted by the Dark Side. Wei Wuxian, guy who’s always cheerful and gives stuff up whenever it’s required of him and can’t even remember Jin Zixun’s name? He’s gonna be fine.