remnants of posts that stuck with an energybender

and I call bullshit

that little snake didn’t change his mind

he led him there on purpose. he made it look like he wanted lan xichen to die with him on purpose, and he pushed him out of the way on purpose.

think about it, who, aside from lan wangji knows lan xichen the best? lan xichen has been manipulated by jin guangyao for so long, that he knew exactly where to strike to break lan xichen once and for all  

this is why he reminded lan xichen of all the times jin guangyao had helped him, had helped his clan, had essentially saved his life. all jin guangyao is doing in that last scene is adding one more life debt to the burden of gratitude lan xichen is already carrying, because he knew that the honorable, pure, and infinitely forgiving zewu-jun would literally shatter under the strain

that little fucker was like, “I’ve given you everything including your life, and you killed me, so live with that if you can”

people talk about jin guangyao‘s last moments as if he redeemed himself by saving lan xichen from a situation that he put him in in the first place

and that’s bullshit, because he knows, and we know, that lan xichen would have preferred to die rather than live with the truth

Here’s the way I see it, JGY didn’t mean to lead LXC there at all. He meant to get HIMSELF there, and LXC just followed. So he pushed LXC away because “fuck you I don’t want you to die with me”.

Cause, okay. Looking at the sequence of events… it’s stab, emotional outburst, go to coffin, push away LXC. At this time he is utterly ruined, missing an arm, hope dashed, in intense pain, and just got stabbed by the one person he cares for. I don’t think he has the mental capacity to plan to ruin LXC. This is a moment where he isn’t thinking about LXC’s feelings, only his own.

To me, I think the outburst was how he genuinely felt. He broke through a silencing spell to say it. When he guilt-tripped JC, it was very deliberate. He spoke calmly. Here he is full ham. He is hitting LXC where it hurts the same way NMJ called him “son of a whore”. It’s not calculated, it’s an outburst.

If the plan was “lead LXC there, resurrect Dage, push away LXC, guilt him for life”, it’s way too complicated. First it depends on LXC following him, which he can’t know LXC would do, because he clearly never expected lxc to stab him. Then it depends on him actually being able to save LXC last minute, also an unlikely scenario. It’s just a step too complicated in an emotionally intense moment.

The way I read this is that JGY cannot stand dying by LXC’s hands, so he choose to die by NMJ’s. NMJ has been his nemesis, his fear, so to challenge this on the last moment and shout “I ain’t afraid of you” make sense. LXC was that one person he thought WOULDN’T harm him, so dying by LXC’s hand is unacceptable.

If you think of it like this, the plan is “release NMJ, die”, much more straight forward thought for a pain addled brain.

But then LXC followed him, so pushing LXC away was a reaction, and not premeditated.

His last words were not addressed to LXC at all, but to NMJ.

I choose to interpret the actions this way because if you try to think of the event from JGY’s POV, this is the most straightforward way you can interpret it while being canonically consistent.

you can’t just be like, he withdrew into meditation blah-blah and then just leave it there

lan xichen is the one who told wei wuxian the story about his parents. 

he actually asked wei wuxian if he thought qingheng-jun did the right thing. 

when wei wuxian says he doesn’t know, lan xichen even asks what would be the right thing to do, and still gets no answer

it’s a neat bit of foreshadowing to meng yao’s and lan xichen’s relationship and meng yao’s betrayal, but it just leaves me more unsatisfied with the ending

people always point out the parallels between qingheng-jun bringing his wife back to cloud recesses despite the crime she committed and lan zhan doing the same thing with wei wuxian, but to me, that totally fades next to lan xichen explicitly trusting someone (or falling in love with someone, depending on what interpretation of canon you prefer) and finding out that person has been a stranger whose behavior and motives are nothing like he believed them to be

to me, the parallels between qingheng-jun and lan xichen are much greater, but we’re left with the same unsatisfying ending 

lan xichen, who was still tempted to acquit meng yao of his crimes, even after hearing them all in excruciating detail, should have (at the very least) come out of that experience with a greater understanding of his father’s motives

at most, there is a veritable wealth of lan xichen’s character development we never get to explore. his entire world view has been drastically changed, all his beliefs shaken to their core, and he is bound to be permanently altered by the entire ordeal

lan xichen: did i ever tell you how our father brought our mother back to the cloud recesses to keep her safe from the cultivation world?

lan xichen: *flute solo*

i had a nice little rant about the fact that jyg is a vindictive little snake who intentionally wanted lan xichen to suffer for the choices he made as much as humanly possible 

but what really gets me is nie huaisang 

nie mingjue, lan xichen, and jin guangyao were sworn brothers. then jin guangyao went and killed nie mingiue practically under lan xichen’s nose and with lan xichen’s unwitting help

to nie huaisang, who probably looked up to lan xichen, that must have been the worst betrayal ever, and I doubt he gave three shits that lan xichen made his mistakes in ignorance 

when you lose your only brother, your only family, you probably aren’t going to go poking into the motivations of the people who contributed to that loss, you’re just gonna be pissed and ready to fuck up everyone even remotely responsible

nie huaisang’s intricate plan was focused on taking down jin guangyao but he used lan xichen’s hands to actually kill him, just like jin guangyao used lan xichen’s hands to kill nie mingjue 

and it’s a nice bit of poetic justice, brilliantly done from a storytelling point of view but

did lan xichen really deserve all that? just for wanting to believe the best of people, for trying to give everyone a benefit of the doubt, for caring so much about a person he considered a brother that he refused to think the worst of them until he had irrefutable proof?

Nie Mingjue did not just die because Lan Xichen was too naive to realize what was happening. To believe that would be to ignore the fact that Nie Mingjue raised his concerns regarding Meng Yao. Lan Xichen’s answer to that was: Let’s all be brothers. 

Boy has a soft head, a soft heart and a soft spine.

I admit. He grows a spine near the end. At some point even he could no longer deny the fact that all those who raise their voices against Meng Yao ended up dead. And he immediately sided with his brother and Wei Wuxian who is probably the only man in the world he truly dislikes because of the suffering Lan Wangji endured on his behalf. Something people who ship the big dumb-dumb with the sniveling snake refuse to acknowledge. Him demanding an explanation from Meng Yao for his crimes was not to absolve Meng Yao. But to absolve himself. From the moment he started helping WangXian to gather evidence against Meng Yao he knew he too would be responsible. Because he more then once vouched for Meng Yao. Because even Nie Mingjue raised his voice and Lan Xichen, being ever passive and submissive refused to follow through. At the time. As I said, he eventually grew a spine. He is the leader of the clan that fundamentally preaches eradication of evil. He needed to find a way to justify himself. To absolve himself. After all, his own brother was punished “for siding with evil”. And he got no absolution, no conclusion, not forgiveness. So he went into seclusion to atone for his crimes. 

A big problem in this fandom is people who ship Meng Yao and Lan Xichen. They inject their headcanons into profile pages that are supposed to be objective and write metas as if their ship is canon. This muddies the waters for many newcomers into the fandom. So they start of without and objective stance. 

Lan Xichen is a big softy and people take advantage of him. Meng Yao gas-lighted him into thinking he helped him rebuild Cloud Recesses. What nonsense. Lan Clan was never destroyed. Lan clan was on the front lines fighting a war looooong before Meng Yao became head cultivator. They rebuild themselves. They were never destroyed, only humiliated. Lotus Pier was destroyed. Yunmeng Jiang was destroyed. And they rebuilt themselves without Meng Yao. But Lan Xichen is naive and submissive. He is passive. 

He know that his kind and gentle mother had a reason to kill the man she killed, but he refuses to question it. By his own admission, because it would be to painful. He knew siege at Burial mounds was wrong. He did not participate. Lan Qiren led the Lan forces, not him. But he did nothing to stop it. He knew there was something wrong with Meng Yao, but refused to look into it, believing that a promise of brotherhood would just smooth things over. 

Nie Huaisang is absolved. He could not have anticipated things would happen the way they did in the temple. He improvised. It was not his intent for Lan Xichen to stab the snake. That was on the spot decision. He wanted the snake humiliated in front of the whole cultivation world. He wanted a siege of Koi Tower. Allowing himself to be captured was his way of gathering up the reigns once he lost control of the direction. 

Huh.

is it Tender?

is it Homoerotic?

is it Implicitly homosexual?

is it Noticeably repressed?