kintsukuroi

Like. I’ve always sorta understood that things grow moldy or stale or sour or such if left out, but I never really internalized it in a meaningful way.

But now I’m just like.

Yeah. The hungering dust. There exists omnivorous dust in the air that will eat my food if I don’t.

Those bagels have been sitting there for a week. Are we going to eat them soon or are we leaving them for the hungering dust?

Pizza’s been sitting out on the counter for an hour. Everyone’s enjoying the pizza, but if we don’t want “everyone” to include the hungering dust then we should probably put it away soon.

That’s just. That’s how food works to me now. There exists an invisible predator in the air that hungers for your yummies, and it will not hesitate to eat your food if you don’t make the effort to protect and preserve it. And eat what can’t be preserved before the dust can.

My wife has set up a camera to continuously monitor the situation.

Wife: Maybe we should set up some padding beneath where they'll fall out of the nest? Normally they fall onto grass, not concrete. Me: Seems like we're really coddling these birds. Wife: Well, yeah. Me: I just don't want you to get invested. Wife: Way, way too late for that. I'm all in.

And here they are up close, in their resting state.

bonus/proof:

HE VERY MUCH DOES. I'm sorry, Wen Ning! His whole family is wiped out AND he's a fierce corpse AND he murdered his bestie's brother-in-law by accident (which got everyone in trouble) AND got experimented on by Xue Yang for awhile there! He's a Jiang Cheng-Song Lan combo! PRETTY BAD TIMES!

Though... okay, controversial critique maybe, but a frustration I have personally with all versions of canon is that it doesn't fully confront how awful Wen Ning's whole deal is. When we meet Wen Ning again post-timeskip, we get a moment of "oh no! who put those nails there!" and then hop straight into wacky Drunkji hijinks. He doesn't grieve or wish to avenge his sister's death, which he would have witnessed firsthand. He doesn't ask about his people's fate (though he somehow knows they all died?), and he doesn't appear to process their demise at ALL in drama canon. In novel canon, if he does process it, it's not till well after he regains lucidity; when he and Wei Wuxian first converse in volume 2, he expresses sadness/horror at how Wei Wuxian died, but nothing for himself or his own people.

the overwhelming impression i got of wen ning from the novel is that the novel is just completely unconcerned with wen ning as an independent individual. wen ning is there in the story to be wei wuxian's primary necromantic summon, wei wuxian's shy uwu friend, the cause of wei wuxian's downfall.....but not his own person. everything he does is to advance wei wuxian's narrative. every time he gets angry, it's for wei wuxian's sake. none of the content involving him in the story is actually about him.

first, i do agree that mxtx probably didn't think too hard about this character compared to many others, she barely even talks about him in the interviews. he is a supporting comic relief sidekick whose main purpose is to advance the protagonist's story, not to clash with him while pursuing his own goals, so he doesn't end up as developed as many others. he's still my pookie mxtx is still an amazing writer who can create a cool character even half-assed, in this essay i will

second, i very much disagree with wen ning not grieving his sister or his people, or the narration not confronting it. that's literally the main thing he does. that's among the first things he talks about after regaining consciousness - after kneeling in apology for being the cause of all those deaths, and telling about his own imprisonment.

“I’ve heard a little,” Wen Ning said. “What have you heard?” “I heard the Burial Mounds is gone. That everyone there…they’re all gone.” Wei Wuxian had wanted to tell him some fun, inconsequential gossip—like how the Lan family precepts had gone from three thousand to four thousand, or other such things. He hadn’t expected Wen Ning to bring up something so heavy from the get-go and could think of nothing to say.

wen ning, post-timeskip, is not a silly, content goofball. wei wuxian, who was at least aware of the passage of time when he was dead, and who had some time to adjust after revival, is the one who wants to joke and gossip - wen ning, who doesn't even know how much time has passed, who woke up yesterday, who can only think of death and loss, is a wreck of his former sunny self. he's a constant whiplash between wei wuxian's present shenanigans with lan wangji, and memories of his past life - an ominous foreshadowing, because we're not even supposed to know who died and how at that point .

(from a doylian perspective, this is why he never talks about his tragedy in detail - his appearances are before the corresponding flashback sections. from a watsonian one, he doesn't need to talk - wei wuxian has matching wounds.)

we're fortunately spared wen ning's internal narration, but all his movements and words are soaked in grief if you just. look at him. he's depressed as fuck. his grief may not be as visible compared to jiang cheng's crackling anger, to lan wangji's scarred back, to wei wuxian's frayed smile, to nie huaisang's bloody revenge (comparable, actually, to song lan's silent sorrow - with even more "screen time" than song lan).

but here it is when they reach burial mounds and find the implied place of wen qing's execution/cremation:

His head hung low, and he stood unmoving next to a stone beast statue. “Wen Ning, what are you looking at?” Wen Ning pointed to the base of the statue. It had been built atop a thick, round and short stump. Beside the stump were three smaller, shorter stumps that were charred black, as if they had been burned by raging fire. Wen Ning kneeled and dug his fingers deep into the earth to grab a handful of black soil. Holding it in his palm, he whispered, “… Jiejie.” Wei Wuxian didn’t know what to say. He walked over and gave him a firm pat on the shoulder. There had been two extremely arduous periods in Wei Wuxian’s life, both of them spent here. He’d never intended to revisit his old haunts or take a trip down memory lane. And for Wen Ning, the Burial Mounds were even harder to forget.

or the ruins of the village where the wen remnants lived:

Ever since they had ascended the mountain, Wen Ning’s footsteps had been particularly heavy. Now he stopped in front of one of the houses, unable to move his feet at all. This was a house he’d built with his own hands. Before he’d left, this house had been perfectly intact. Although it was simple and rudimentary, it had been a perfect shelter from storms and a home to people he knew and cherished. As the saying went, “things remain, but people change.” While the things remained, there was nothing left here to remind him of the people that were long gone. “Don’t look,” Wei Wuxian told him. “…I knew long ago that it would be like this,” Wen Ning said. “I just wanted to see if there was anything left…”

or when the wen remnants rise from the blood pool:

Wen Ning hurled a number of fierce corpses to the ground. He was shaking as he shouted to the bloody corpse, “Is it you?!” The bloody corpse ignored him. The bloody corpses tore through the fierce corpses like they’d gone mad, and Wen Ning yelled to them, “Is it you?!” The Demon-Quelling Cave was filled with shrill cries, high and low, but not a single one answered him. Not a single one could.

as the OP said, it is indeed well after he regains lucidity - except he was completely absent from the story between his awakening and the second siege, so it's not like he had a chance before. we do get a lighthearted scene with him scaring the family of farmers to help wangxian escape earlier on - but even then the narrative doesn't miss the chance to remind us how thoroughly fucked he is:

Wei Wuxian sighed. “Didn’t I tell you to find a place to hide and not worry about anything?” Wen Ning gave a wry smile. “But, gongzi…where would I go to hide?” Once upon a time, he’d had somewhere he could return to, people he could follow. But now, everyone other than Wei Wuxian was incomparably unfamiliar to him.

which brings us to the next point,

third - wen ning, indeed, doesn't really get to be his own person for the majority of the novel, but that's his character arc, not an oversight. wei wuxian himself brings this up multiple times! he wants wen ning to go and live his own life! he tells him to leave!

but like the narrator helpfully told us in the quote above, wen ning has nowhere else to go. his family is dead, his sect had fallen, he has no other friends except wei wuxian, he can't make new ones without being attacked on sight, he can't cultivate anymore, he doesn't even need to seek food or shelter - the only things he can do are 1) follow wei wuxian and help him out; 2) try to repay his debt to jin ling, which would be a disaster for everyone; 3) go hunt monsters and eradicate evil like song lan? except that's also kinda what wei wuxian is doing, so that's what wen ning does.

a body going through the motions, i suppose.

until he recognizes lan sizhui, and for the first time post-timeskip, there is light in his eyes:

“Do…do you know, who…who gave you that name?” Wen Ning then asked. The dead could not form facial expressions. Maybe it was only Lan Sizhui’s imagination, but Wen Ning’s eyes seemed to light up. He also thought Wen Ning looked excited—excited enough to be stumbling over his words. It was making him excited as well, as if a secret that had been sealed for years was about to be revealed.

you can argue that latching onto sizhui like a lifeline is still not "being his own person" - but to me, the thread going all the way through wen ning's story is family: the power he went against, the surname that doomed him, the loved ones he lost - and now, someone he found. to me, this is a deeply depressed person seeing the light at the end of a fifteen-years-long dark tunnel, a hope, a future. someone from his family lives, so maybe there's something to live for, and despite everything, it's not wei wuxian.

after the guanyin temple showdown, wen ning willfully abandons wei wuxian and says he's going to walk the rest of the way on his own.

One gently squeezes my hand between both of his palms as he says “squish.” I reciprocate. When he looks like he’s feeling sad or lost, I ask if I can squish him, and he will show me where I can squish him. Sometimes it’s almost like a hug, but most of the time, it’s just a hand or an arm I press between my palms. Then he squishes my hand in return, says “squish,” and moves on. He will come ask for squishes now, when he recognizes that he needs them.

Another boy smiles and sticks his chin out at me, and if he’s really excited, he’ll lean his whole body toward me. The first time he finally won a game at circle time, he got so excited he even ran over and bumped chins with me. He now does it when he sees me outside of school too. I stick out my chin to acknowledge him, and he grins and runs over and I lean down for a chin bump.

Yet another child swings my hand really fast. At a time when another child would be seeking a hug, she stands beside me and holds my hand, and swings it back and forth, with a smile if I’m lucky. The look on her face when I initiate the hand swinging is priceless.

Another one bumps his hip against mine when he walks by in the hallway or on the playground, or when he gets up after I’m done working with him. No eye contact, no words, but he goes out of his way to “crash” into me, and I tell him that it’s good to see him. He now loves to crash into me when I’m least expecting it. He doesn’t want anything, really. Just a bump to say “Hi, I appreciate you’re here.” And when he’s upset and we have to take a break, I’ll bump him, ask if he needs to take a walk, and we just go wander for a bit and discuss whatever’s wrong, and he’s practically glued to my side. Then one more bump before we go back into the room to face the problem.

I verbally express affection. A LOT.

My husband… doesn’t. I don’t know why. For the longest time part of me wondered if it meant he loved me less.

At some point I told him about a thing I had done as a kid. Holding hands, three squeezes means ‘I Love You’.

Suddenly he’s telling me I Love You all the time.

Holding my hand, obviously, but also randomly.

taptaptap

on my hand, my shoulder, my butt, my knee, whatever body part is closest to him, with whatever part of him is closest to me

All the time.

More often than I ever verbally said it.

It’s an ingrained signal now, I can tap three times on whatever part of him, and get three taps back in his sleep. Apparently I do the same.

It’s made a huge difference for us.