Naamloos

Wei Wuxian: in fact I was in a coma until the day before yesterday since someone stabbed me

Wwx- chooses to be my brother, therefore is my brother

Jin Zixuan- doesnt want to be with me? Fine. Im still me. Now he does want to be with me? Prove it. And get my little brother to my baby's coming out party.

Jin Zixun- insults my clan? Oh dear. Time for me to set the record straight about the level of importance your opinion carries in my eyes. And make you into a public fool to boot.

Madam Jin- Wants to be friends. Is friends.

Jiang Cheng- is a more complicated relationship for sure, but she still never asks him to be anyone other than himself and she doesn't change herself or her loyalties to accommodate his jealousy.

Same with her mom and her dad. Except she also doesn't change who she is for them, either, even when her mother demands it.

She is both a fierce woman and a very well written character. Radical acceptance in the form of a person. Literally- when her world stops being acceptable to her, some prick puts a sword through her throat.

Say what you want about her, but she tended every single one of her attachments in the healthiest possible way given her status and situation.

For those who don’t know, I’m putting together a little fandom worldbuilding resource of fan made planets/galaxies/alien species etc. and I’m officially accepting entries for it!

In short, the idea is to create a database of fandom created worldbuilding elements for creators to reference and use in their own works (like little Easter eggs hinting at other fandom works). Its opt-in only, so only elements submitted through this form will be added to the database and the form will be open indefinitely!

There’s more information in the form itself, but the only hard rules are that the elements submitted must be your own and you must be ok with other creators potentially using or referencing them in their own works.

The goal is to have the first round of entries compiled and publicly shared in the beginning of July and all subsequent entries will be added as they are submitted!

Feel free to spread the word wherever you think people would be interested!

He seems more focused on Héra and her rejection.

In LOTR universe, marriages are usually based on love. Yet when they initially talk after the proposal, Héra makes it clear she does not want to marry. And Wulf keeps pressing for her to do so.

He later kidnaps her and intentionally slashes a cut on her face as if to mark her.

When he offers and she says "If I marry you," he has a fit of rage over the word "if." He calls her arrogant...for her...considering not marrying him? Not falling into his arms?

When besieging the keep, even after Helm dies, he keeps going because he wants to make it Héra's tomb.

When she rides out in the bridal gown, he is furious that she would think he still wants her (as he mistakenly believes before she corrects him), but he still wants to fight her himself. He tells the soldiers to go on and that he'll deal with Héra himself.

Even at the end, when she tries to show him mercy by not killing him, he blames her for his fate and tries to kill her.

I encountered plenty static characters who stayed the same pretty much throughout the story and they were still interested and nuance. People should understand that static character deal isn't about becoming better or worse. It's about how they maneuver the environments and circumstances to maintain their principles, beliefs and who they are as a person.

Would you consider Nie Huisang, Wei Wuxian's friend??

No. Not in the slightest.

They occasionally hung out for less than three months at a summer school camp and that's the last we ever hear of them having any kind of significant connection and it doesn't cross Wei Wuxian's mind to think of him any deeper outside of the context of Nie Huaisang being a lot more calculated and driven than any one, including himself, could have expected after the death Nie Huaisang orchestrated against Jin Guangyao.

He works in pragmatism to Wei Wuxian's idealism. I think for him to be a friend he has to have significant and vested interest in Wei Wuxian, which he does not, that was for Jin Guangyao, who betrayed his trust, personally, and morally. Wei Wuxian was a means to an end to help him orchestrate his revenge due to Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji quite literally being the only ones competent and concerned about pursuing the strings he left, nothing more.

Like no, the novel makes it clear that at several points that he was being willfully blind and ignorant of JGY's and the cultivation world's faults. The fact that LWJ and WWX found out about JGY killing NMJ after only a little bit of digging because they thought to suspect him, which Lan Xichen somehow didn't think to do despite spending close to twenty years working with him. That's a very long time, and that says more about his tendency to turn a blind eye, to not look deeper, to look away from the uncomfortable truth, than any good about JGY's manipulation abilities.

That is not to say Lan Xichen isn't a good person. He is. The problem is that he's not willing to put in the work to be good. He's unwilling to stand up to anyone. When WWX rightfully calls out JGS for trying to be the next Wen Rouhan, (about which JGY was like 'I mean, you're right, but you're not supposed to say it...."), he convenienly ignores that, opting to irrelevantly comment about how 'his heart had changed'. (Which made no sense?? LXC barely knew anything about WWX at that point!)

He's content to stay in his comfort zone, to go with the easy solution of letting others decide. If there's a problem, he'll go with the flow, and if there's a deeper ugly truth to it? He doesn't want to know about it. The situation of his parents is a perfect example. He says it himself: he doesn't want to know, and thus doesn't want to understand what happened with them.

Also for someone whose whole thing is being nice, he can be unbelievably tactless. Look at the ending events of the Guanyin Temple, where JGY is missing a limb and LXC, without thinking, asks Nie Huaisang of all people to give him medicine to heal. You know, the same Nie Huaisang who, at least to LXC's knowledge, has just learned that this same man is responsible for the death and dismemberment of his brother's body, as well as many others. And he now wants his help. To heal his brother's killer. Yikes. It's a wonder that NHS didn't immediately plan to kill LXC right then and there. And even if LXC was physically and mentally exhausted, it was still an incredibly thoughtless move.

Look at the way he laughs about NMJ (a member of the gentry) taking a third of the prey on Phoenix Mountain- "Oh typical Dage, that's just like him!"- while ignoring accusations against WWX (a son of a servant) doing the same, because he's subconsciously agreeing that it was a problem when WWX did it. He's being blatantly hypocritical and it's frustrating that he doesn't even realise it, or acknowledges it.

One of his redeeming factors can be his love for LWJ, but he's frustratingly careless about that too. For all his teasing (in which we never see LWJ indulging, he just unhappily and sulkily endures that. Teasing is not supposed to be fun or amusing if it's only one sided. Compare that to how he responds with snarky remarks to WWX's teasing, meaning he enjoys their banter) and pushing and advocating for LWJ's happiness, he never seems to deeply consider what actually makes him happy.

Everything he does for LWJ turns out to be the very opposite of what Lwj actually wants; inviting WWX and the others for the Caiyi hunt? Not what Lwj wanted, LXC merely convinced himself of that. His pushing LWJ to go talk to WWX at any chance? Doesn't ask or seem interested in why exactly LWJ would want to talk to WWX, nor help him in not letting their conversations constantly devolve into arguments. Shutting LWJ's protests at how WWX was right at the banquet with the 'his heart had changed'? Convenient for him to say, both hurting (even if it was unintended) his brother and changing the subject. And somehow everyone forgets that it was LXC who led the thirty three Lan elders to the cave after the Nightless City for Lan Wangji to fight against, for 'his own good.' And of course his whole angry, projection and deflection fuelled rant at the Guanyin Temple, where he tries to make WWX feel guilty about his brother's confession (which, you know WWX didn't remember because of the trauma clouding his memories), and make him think that he owed LWJ a relationship, which was exactly what LWJ was most afraid of.

This is further spotlighted when Wen Ning himself tries to bow to Wei Wuxian (out of perceived failures) and Wei Wuxian literally puts himself of the same level of Wen Ning in the share of the consequences of their choices, putting no more blame on Wen Ning then he does himself. Loyalty for Wei Wuxian and Wen Ning is rooted in understanding and empathy. Jiang Cheng does not know how to extend empathy towards others and belittles that in others with the expectations of being entitled to empathy given to his misfortunes.

Jiang Cheng very much is a classist man as he views a clanless Wen Ning like an animal, Wei Wuxian as a disloyal man who doesn't respect social station, and Jin Guangyao as someone yearning for a position he can not be good enough for due to his birth mother's status as a prostitute.

"This is Ankh-Morpork, you know. We've got extra pronouns here."

"Female? He told you he was female?" "She," Angua corrected. "This is Ankh-Morpork, you know. We've got extra pronouns here." She could smell his bewilderment... "Well, I would have though she'd have the decency to keep it to herself," Carrot said finally. "I don't think it's very clever, you know, to go around drawing attention to the fact." "Carrot, I think you might have something wrong with your head," said Angua. "What?" "I think you might have it stuck up your bum."

Sir Terry Pratchett - "Feet of Clay"

This is CARROT being the asshole. Carrot who has, throughout all the prior books, been depicted as basically the best of all possible people. He is noble, brave, considerate, kind. He is the good guy in the entire City...

... and yet, he grew up dwarf, and has picked up their more conservative views on gender identity.

Discworld dwarves start out in the books as basically a people without visible gender differences (thanks to the woman growing beards just like the men) and using "he/him" pronouns as their default. Anything else is seen as breaking the most basic of social conventions. (Dwarf dating is described early on as being two dwarves who like each other spending an inordinately long time trying to find out, as tactfully as possible, what gender the other dwarf is)

Carrot does immediately adopt the "she" pronoun for Cheery, which is but wishes she didn't make such a fuss about it. He's prepared to tolerate her choices, but he doesn't APPROVE of them, and thinks that that is enough.

Carrot, because he IS Carrot, does learn to open his mind on this subject, perhaps his final frontier of bias, but I do love that it's addressed as something he has to work on, and succeed.

1) I don't have the book to hand, but when Cheery comes out she changes her name to Cheri, because "sometimes, when you shout who you are to the whole world, you need to do it quietly." It's such a beautiful expression of coming out being a process, and one that needn't be undertaken all at once.

The reason that he's A Good Person™ is that he stops and listens and actually thinks very hard about the issue when someone is like "Well, that's bullshit and here's why." He looks at the evidence instead of what he's been told, and he values people and outcomes more than tradition and feelings of comfort or vague ideals. When it turns out the thing he thinks is actually bullshit, he usually changes his worldview to be fairer and he definitely changes his behavior to be better.

The older and more mature he gets, the more we see him actively seeking out opportunities to learn and grow and understand more about what people need and where they're coming from and why they do what they do. Instead of learning during moments of crisis and fucking it up, he's exploring on his own and learning how to handle unfamiliar situations better.

Much like with Vimes, he's meant to model the fact that good people don't spring from the ground fully formed with no bad thoughts or impulses or prejudices. People will fuck up and trip dick-first into blind spots they didn't even know they had and find things they never even thought they had to think about. You act like a good person by reevaluating received wisdom and valuing people over dogma and learning the difference between facts and bigotry.

Attempts to view Mandalorian history through a simplistic, black-and-white lens of absolute pacifism versus inherent terrorism ignore the fundamental laws of geopolitics. Violence itself is abhorrent, but in the harsh realities of the Outer Rim, it remained a necessary tool for survival for centuries. Mandalore sits on the dangerous borders of the Outer Rim, where banditry, pirate raids, and slave trading are daily realities. Under these conditions, the rigid, militaristic structure of Mandalorian culture was formed not out of a blind love for war, but for purely practical, evolutionary reasons. The people required a strength capable of protecting their homes where the laws of the Republic never reached.

Granted, the planet’s history was plagued by brutal clan wars that claimed thousands of lives, and this prolonged internal conflict absolutely demanded a solution. However, the presence of past violence does not give a ruler the right to completely erase the entire culture of their own nation. Yet, Satine Kryze chose the path of total cultural genocide. When a vast portion of the population is exiled to the moon of Concordia simply for refusing to abandon the memory of their ancestors and traditions, it is not humanism—it is forced displacement of dissidents hidden behind a facade of beautiful rhetoric.

Have you actually looked at her Royal Guard and the Sundari police force? They have absolutely nothing in common with traditional Mandalorian armor!

The traditional beskar'gam, which served as a symbol of clan sovereignty and centuries-old identity, was effectively banned. Instead, the enforcers of the New Mandalorians were dressed in a faceless, standardized uniform completely severed from their cultural roots. Furthermore, the native language was deliberately suppressed and replaced by Galactic Basic. And if they teach the native language, it has become secondary for its own people, which no one speaks. and this is a clear example of the death of culture

Even bilingual street signs vanished from the cities.

Sure, some particularly "clever" people will bring up that cadets learn the Mandalorian alphabet and that the police vehicles have "Police" written on them in Mando'a. They’ll look at this and claim the culture is alive and well.

But let’s not mistake the living breath of a culture for its mere objectification.

Leaving native lettering on law enforcement vehicles is a textbook example of colonial cynicism. History is packed with instances where a regime systematically hollows out a people's identity, yet leaves ancient symbols exclusively on the facades of prisons, courts, and gendarmeries. Why? To stamp state-sanctioned violence with a "familiar," "legal" seal, forcing compliance.

Satine’s regime pulled off a sinister bait-and-switch: traditional armor and clan weaponry—the centuries-old guarantees of personal freedom—were outlawed and branded as barbarism. The police were dressed in faceless uniforms that visually mirror the worst of Zamyatin’s dystopian nightmares, and daily public life was shifted entirely to Galactic Basic.

Slapping three native letters onto a police cruiser floating through that sterile hell isn't "preserving heritage." It's an insulting candy wrapper. Satine stripped Mandalorians of their soul and their right to self-defense, while mercifully allowing the elite to poke at letters on tablets. A real culture breathes through freedom, not decorative stickers on the machinery of a police state.

Some critics argue that because even Death Watch speaks Basic among themselves on Concordia, Satine cannot be blamed for the decline of the Mandalorian language. However, this argument is peak hypocrisy. Death Watch consists of exiles whom Satine’s regime banished to the moon of Concordia, stripping them of resources, a normal life, and social integration. They grew up in a reservation, enduring cultural shock within a fractured society. The fact that a generation raised in exile partially lost their native language practice and uses Basic to coordinate a radical movement is a direct consequence of Satine's own policies—policies that split her own people and threw the dissidents overboard.

The sterile, cubical metropolises, where citizens walk around with identical haircuts and in identical clothing, are not a triumph of freedom; they represent a totalitarian unification masked as enlightenment, reminiscent of a living dystopian nightmare straight out of Zamyatin's "We.":

The mass disarmament of the population, which Satine's propaganda framed as the ultimate virtue, pursued a far more grounded political objective. Any regime that bases its authority on the total disarmament of its citizens is not fighting for abstract planetary peace. It is simply terrified of an internal uprising and does everything within its power to strip society of the slightest ability to resist state authority.

Even if one were to fully accept the position of Satine’s defenders and write off Death Watch exclusively as radical terrorists, the Duchess’s actions fail under scrutiny. When a ruler faces a genuine terrorist threat, the duty of the state is to isolate the criminals in prisons or eliminate them. Satine, however, preferred to act with cowardly half-measures, desperate to preserve the absolute purity of her idealistic facade. As Niccolò Machiavelli once wrote:

“Men ought either to be well treated or crushed, because they can avenge themselves of lighter injuries, of more serious ones they cannot.”

The Duchess simply cast a heavily armed, embittered army out the door onto the neighboring moon of Concordia, allowing this cancerous growth to fester and multiply. This refusal to "get one's hands dirty" with actual justice is not mercy; it is criminal negligence, for which the innocent citizens of Sundari later paid with their lives.