just like we're always gonna do.

meanwhile, also during the 13 year timeskip, lan wangji gets really into proper rabbit pet care (to the extent this universe allows, anyways). to learn from the best, lan wangji joins a social circle of rabbit pet owners. as most people in their society are only interested in rabbits as a source of food, this social circle is quite small.

jiang cheng then joins the same circle.

both lan wangji and jiang cheng are horrified to be sharing a social circle. however, neither party will leave the circle if it means the other party gets to stay, so both of them stick around. this makes things incredibly awkward as the circle is not very big to begin with.

jiang cheng brings his pet rabbit, mianhua, to every meeting. mianhua is very obviously well-taken-care-of and has a friendly disposition to boot, so she's a hit with everyone in the circle. not wanting to be shown up, lan wangji starts bringing his most well behaved rabbit to meetings as well. lan wangji's chosen rabbit is named yunyun, and is a male.

to the mutual despair of lan wangji and jiang cheng, mianhua and yunyun become friends.

wei wuxian comes back to life! events proceed as they do in canon.

postcanon, jiang cheng has even more beef with lan wangji now. meanwhile, jiang cheng is doing his best not to think about wei wuxian because he doesn't want to start crying in public.

and then, both jiang cheng and lan wangji.....continue to attend the social circle's meetings. things are even worse between them now, but once again, neither party will leave the social circle if it means the other party gets to stay. somehow, they manage to make this work by both pretending that the other party is not present.

to the mutual despair of lan wangji and jiang cheng, mianhua and yunyun are still friends.

time passes.

then, during one meeting, both jiang cheng and lan wangji, by pure chance, happen to leave mianhua and yunyun together unattended.

JC: lan wangji you fucking son of a bitch, your vermin got my mianhua pregnant! what do you plan to do about this?! LWJ: a premature accusation. JC: what the fuck do you mean?! LWJ: you are eager to lay the responsibility at my yunyun's door. but perhaps the issue lies instead with your creature's....how should i say it? LWJ: ah, yes. LWJ: looseness. JC:

[jiang cheng walks away, the basket still in his arms.] [jiang cheng carefully tucks the basket into the roots of a nearby tree.] [jiang cheng walks back towards lan wangji.] [jiang cheng punches lan wangji.]

I started mentally drafting out a whole long good-faith response about how personal dealbreakers aren’t moral imperatives, or the absurdity of holding a child raised in an inherently prejudiced society to the same standards of conduct as an adult, or how being kinda shitty in a one-off moment of extreme stress isn’t tantamount to being the governor of Florida, or a bunch of other things, but the important thing here is

guanyin is generally accepted to be a chinese localization of the indian boddhisattva avalokiteśvara. she's a very popular deity so she ends up being associated with a lot of different things, but the ones that i think are important in this context are 1) motherhood 2) androgyny 3) perception of and infinite compassion for suffering.

in many artistic depictions she's shown holding a child and is associated with the protection of mothers and children, to the point that she has been compared to the christian madonna. people pray to her for filial children--perhaps meng shi herself did! with this in mind jgy having people pray to her as guanyin is like. it's crazy to me. he's covertly having people worship her not just as a goddess, but as a mother goddess and goddess of motherhood. as the archetypal mother. imo it shows that he thinks of her in this madonna-like capacity and wanted her publicly respected in the same way. but because her occupation is considered so shameful it can't be done quite above board.

the second thing is that avalokiteśvara is a (usually) male deity! so the fact that he has female/androgynous aspects/versions (more than just guanyin, tangentially) is also relevant to what's going on here imo. when people first see jgy's guanyin statue they think it's patterned after him. only wwx has the context to know that it's patterned after meng shi, to whom jgy happens to bear a striking resemblance. HOWEVER. i think the import of it goes deeper than just another example of misperception and people seeing jgy as a different (worse) person than he really was. if you combine it with the fact that avalokiteśvara/guanyin are a deity with both male and female aspects you get, imo, evidence that there's a sort of porosity of identity between jgy and meng shi--that they are, in some way, male and female aspects of the same thing, or, at the very least, that he has come to identify himself very very heavily with his mother. which makes sense, he's been sort of living out (his idea of) her wishes for him his whole life. he identifies with her trauma and takes revenge for her, as if he's there in her place, as an avatar of her. so though some people think the most important thing to jgy is himself and others think the most important thing to him is his mother--i would ask where exactly one ends and the other begins.

"what if Meng Shi didn't die" is an AU concept that I ADORE, not only because I genuinely believe her presence would fix a decent amount of JGY's shit (one of JGY's most significant core motivations is Making Mama Proud, and I do think that if she'd been alive to tell him that enduring constant emotional and physical abuse from the Jins just isn't fucking worth it, he might have done things pretty differently), but also because having his own mum witness his Fall In Love/Lifelong Obsession With Every Tall Handsome Man Who's Nice To Him tendencies would be inherently hilarious

You know that as soon as the social portion of every discussion conference began, Jin Guangyao said, "Oh my, Jiang-zongzhu, I hope you're not busy, for Jin Ling wished to show you he can walk/how fast he can run/Fairy's new tricks/how well he can shoot."

their alt accounts find each other on the single parent subreddit they both frequent, fail to recognize each other, and end up bonding over a (perceived) shared struggle....

Luo Binghe and SQQ: we saw it folks, very low key. However if you don’t think Binghe loudly referred to himself as ‘Husband’ at the top of his lungs in every subsequent interaction with someone for months after, you’re wrong.

Lan Zhan and WWX: a family affair at the Cloud Recesses. It’s very simple but nice. Wei Wuxian insists on dressing up like a bride even though everyone assures him he doesn’t have to. Jiang Cheng is invited, no one thinks he’ll show up, but when he does he complains the whole time. Wen Ning cries. Lan Quiren cries for different reasons.

oh mannn. see this would be a good time for me to have reread/rewatched yi city recently, but I have not. should probably do that, it's been a while and I'm sure it would be good for me to suffer again

certainly I feel like there are novel moments that are less discussed than they could be (the bunny apples he carves for a-qing in particular come to mind), and small details I think about way too much, but one thing that I remember from my last reread is this bit from after xiao xingchen has killed himself and xue yang's first attempt at resurrecting him has failed:

Without thinking, he used his hands to cover the gash on Xiao Xingchen's neck. However, the blood had already run dry. Xiao Xingchen's face was as white as a sheet, and large blotches of darkened blood were dried around his nape. It was completely pointless to compress the wound now.

it's the order of operations.

like...xue yang knows how death works. but xiao xingchen's happens so fast, and seems to take him so off guard, and there is something to me about the way that he leaps, like, immediately to problem-solving of the most drastic kind ("okay so I'll just bring him back to life then"). and it's only after that fails that he, like. on some level acknowledges what actually happened. it's like he's refused to recognize the wound itself - and even more, maybe, refusing to recognize what it means (not just that xiao xingchen is dead but that xiao xingchen kills himself).

it's such the wrong way around. and there's something there, too, about xue yang's solution to a problem being not to address the source/cause but correct the result.

(also the "remaking a-qing's bed" of it all as well, but that gets covered more.)

[ID: A collection of tags/reblogs that say:

idk who first person is but did he kill his dad ? i don't think so

i will admit that an ancient chinese noble probably has worse daddy issues on average than your normal brittish transfer student. however. adine has it WAY worse i promise you

idk who first person is but did he kill his dad ? i don't think so / long story short: he did

sorry for the other one but jgy just obliterates everyone in this field

jgy's daddy issues leave hundreds dead what more could you WANT???????

yeah but out of everything he did that one wans't (wasn't) a crime it was a public service

I usually don't vote in these if I don't know both characters. fairness and all that. but good lord I do not think it is possible to have daddy issues more severe than Jiggy's

Post: "my favorite tag:" Attached screenshot of tags: "IM SO SORRY I DIDNT SEE THE PROPAGANDA ABOUT THE GUY WHEN I FIRST SAW IT I ALR VITED (already voted) ADAINE. but she doesnt really desere (deserve) to win i think whatever the guy has going on is kore (more) severe"

Post by @/patricideawards: "he did / (caps, large text) WHAT." Attached screenshot of tags: "idk who the fuck that is but did she have her father gang raped death and slightly beyond. i doubt it. get on his level. rape. death" / patricideawards's tags: patricideawards. patricide awards. I didn't know anything about this guy adding him to the bracket and everybody in the tags was vague about how he killed his dad ToT jfc. rape tw

Interviewer: “Are you ready for some thirst tweets?” Lan Wangji, taking papers: “Mn.”

Tweet: Wei Wuxian @‌yilinglaozu: “ok but when did Hanguang-Jun become zaddy”. Lan Wangji, looking up seriously: “When you died and made me a single dad, Wei Ying.” Interviewer: “That’s not what zaddy means.” Lan Wangji: “No?”

Tweet: Not Su She @‌hgjenthusiast: “Hanguang-Jun could punch me in the face and I would thank him”. Lan Wangji, laughing and grinning brightly: “That can be arranged.” Interviewer: “He means that in a sexy way.” Lan Wangji: “I don’t.”

Tweet: Wei Wuxian: “i would let Hanguang-Jun [redacted] my [redacted]”. Lan Wangji: “I do that every day, Wei Ying.”