Not To Mention Jin Ling Then Trying To Turn All Of His Hatred Onto Wen Ning Afterwards. He's A Kid Who's

Not to mention Jin Ling then trying to turn all of his hatred onto Wen Ning afterwards. He's a kid who's been reminded of his parents' deaths with every breath he takes, only having stories about them and being fed Jiang Cheng's unhinged hatred for all the love that was lost. If Wei Wuxian turned out to not be the monster he thought he was, then he...he has to hate someone else!

But then Wen Ning turns out to be even MORE gentle than Wei Wuxian, filled with guilt for what happened, flinging himself in front of Lan Sizhui and saying "I won't fight back, get your anger out on me if it'll put you at ease!"

That scene had me crying too yo. Everyone rallies behind Lan Sizhui and calls Jin Ling out for being too aggressive - no one takes his side, no one understands how much he's been affected by his life. Jiang Cheng's solution is to tell him to get angry, but now that's just turned all of his peers against him and calling him violent and unreasonable. So he just breaks down sobbing saying "Yes, I'm a horrible person!" even though NONE of what happened is his fault and he has a right to be angry and trying to find an outlet for his emotion. He just doesn't know HOW. No one ever taught him, everyone ridicules him for crying and distances themselves from his anger. People treat him delicately yet say he needs to toughen up.

I think the worst part is that Wei Wuxian's first scathing (accidental) comment, "Your mother never taught you any manners" is kinda really true. He never had a mother to teach him to express himself, to support him and be vulnerable with him. We joke about how many uncles Jin Ling has but I mean how many AUNTS does he have? How many mother figures does he have? Qin Su is basically traumatized by the death of Jin Rusong so is maybe not the motherly type. Nie Huisang, Lan Xichen, Jiang Cheng - unmarried, unmarried, unmarried.

Wei Wuxian is really the first one to A: tell Jin Ling to get over himself and doesn't treat him like some untouchable young master who no one has the right to lord over, B: openly admits when he's sorry and apologizes and teaches Jin Ling the concept of emotional vulnerability, C: stands by Jin Ling's side to teach him to be himself rather than scolding or threatening or guilting him to fit in better. The fact that Wei Wuxian is NOT a woman may even be better because Jin Ling is seeing that men don't have to fit into the unyielding mold of tough guys but can still have fun without being a pushover.

Jin Ling is such a tragedy because there really is no one left to blame. It's not that easy. Wei Wuxian and Wen Ning are responsible, but they're not maniacal villains laughing at the top of a mountain without a care in the world for the consequences. They cared, they had family who were lost, they suffered before and don't want anyone to suffer again - they hate themselves just as much for their part in what happened.

Even Jin Guangyao is such a complicated case for Jin Ling. It's the uncle who was always nice to him, who gave him his spirit dog, who was always putting on a smile. In comparison to Jiang Cheng, Jin Guangyao was a lifeline. And then Jin Guangyao turns out to be a villain who doesn't bat an eye at killing and threatening...but who also didn't WANT these bad things to be "necessary." He too was wronged by the world and lashed out at its unfairness.

This fifteen year old kid has gone through so much, simultaneously pampered into a spoiled brat and utterly isolated from his peers, filled with vengeance for his entire life but also trying to love and be loved. He learned from Jiang Cheng to pretend to be above it all, and he learned from Jin Guangyao to be kind and forgive, but all of it was lies and unhealthy coping. Jiang Cheng essentially taught him to argue with anyone who disagrees with him or looks down on him to assert his dominance, and Jin Guangyao taught him to suppress his desire to speak his mind and never start fights because of etiquette and self-preservation - to the point that he rejects who he is and wants to be.

At this age, Jin Ling's already having to learn the lesson that everyone's going to be throwing opinions around, no one is perfect, you can't easily sort people into categories. In the end, he can take advice from others, but it's up to him to make the choice of who he wants to be. And he's learned that unrelenting resentment makes for an easy path to walk in life, but it's not actually how life works. The cultivation world can turn on someone they worshipped unconditionally. That included Wei Wuxian, that included Jin Guangyao, and even to an extent Jin Ling himself.

He has to take over the Jin Clan after all these scandals and atrocities, but he's become the kind of kid who will answer an insignificant man's plea for help, who is making friends who won't judge him and will stand by him even when he makes mistakes, and by the end of the story he's matured, yet also finally learned to be a kid. Nothing's perfect, none of the tragedies of the past can be reversed (and Jiang Cheng's still gonna get into fights whenever he accidentally runs into Wen Ning), but at least now Jin Ling can choose how he decides to live, who he hates and who he forgives.

while reading the books, i remember wei wuxian’s relationship with jin ling hitting me especially hard. i was crying when the whole stabbing thing happened. but i truly adore what becomes of them and do you know why? because jin ling does something the others could never, something miraculous really––he actually unlearns the prejudice he’s been taught to hold against wei wuxian. he meets wwx, full of disdain, slowly learning about who wwx really is and it has nothing to do with wwx’s outward appearance. and when the truth is revealed, the internal warring for jin ling is plainly portrayed and even if he does give in to a hate intermingled with grief that he has internalised towards this one entity (wei wuxian was never a person in his mind, just the ‘killer’ of his parents, a phantom, before the events of the book happened), you can tell his heart has already turned, that it will keep turning and that’s what happens. you have jin ling, an orphaned child, who hated someone whom his mother loved dearly, because that man caused his parents’ death but it is such a commendable thing that wei wuxian was able to create a space in jin ling’s heart and jin ling was able to accept it. it’s the way both jin ling & jiang cheng blame the death of their parents on wwx but only the former was able to see wei wuxian clearly and actually forge a bond of love with him.

it’s the fact that if ANYONE in this story can actually rightfully hold a grudge against wei wuxian, it’s jin ling, but instead this teenager decides that wei wuxian is much too good and that having him as an uncle is lovely, after all.

Baby like 🫨

Quanyinweek2024 - day 1: kids -

Xie Lian steals Ming Yue from Quanyin lol

Ahhhh it's so pretty tho

mdzs jp audio drama x MEDICOS + MDZS characters (幻鏡🪞 ver)

BINGE READ FASTER GODSPEED

People excited about the new content involving TGCF and MDZS:

Me who hasn't finished either book series and needs to avoid spoilers:

mdzs x 微博会员 + official illustrations! ❤💙🐇

Anyone else start as a fanfic writer then started writing your own original ideas, and the best way to do it is to write your drafts like fanfiction of your own work? Like that's the only way I get stuff done.

I write a story with the characters I like, write an arc with facts about the world and characters as it becomes relevant, no real point to the scenes except me having fun with a scene I happen to be enjoying. I take a character I wanna have fun with, say "Go do that important thing so we have a plot while you show off how cool you are", then add random ideas that sound generic but fun to act as story beats. They went to a town, they got beat up by monsters, they discovered a super power, they make friends.

I take breaks between writing the story to obsess over other stuff, then come back when I have an epiphany in the shower a month later and quickly resolve the current arc in order to jump them into the next one. Like, there's still continuity, they mention "Hey we just went through something, wanna talk about your feelings?" "Not really man, wanna go on a quest for that Macguffin and uncover our deep-seated issues that way?" "Sure!" But the story follows a barely-connected story beat with side characters and new world building for the new adventure. And then this happens over and over.

Then I come back, one day.

I'm 600 pages into this Sysphian writing style of starting arcs that have barely any organization yet undeniable continuity and I think to myself, "Man, what if I just start the whole thing over now that I know where the story KINDA goes." So I start writing my second draft...like it's a fanfic of my original draft. I can do whatever the hell I want with these quirky facts about the characters, maybe translate one hobby into a backstory, take this tragic fact about the backstory and make it into an actual trait that defines how they react to situations, take these two characters that would TOTALLY get along and make them friends, I can take a character who should be getting introduced way later and just introduce them now!

And then it's...it's good? It's something I would genuinely read without cringing at??

It's got foreshadowing and interpersonal conflict and secret passions and even more secret traumas and it's humorous and the introduction of characters or quests actually seem to...make sense??? Like oh shit there's actually a REASON we want this thing, it's not a Macguffin anymore! Oh crap these two characters who were later revealed to be related can have a really interesting dynamic if I introduce them like they know from the beginning they're related instead of dropping it like the most casual thing ever in an arc 300 pages later??? These two characters are prominent figures so they would likely get along but have SO much sass between their one braincell. Ya know, this guy would be a really great guy for them to talk to in order to solve that weakness they have, but they wouldn't fix it because they don't get along. OH MY GOD I COULD SHIP THESE TWO AND IT WOULD BE PERFECT -

And what I get is a story where a lot of things have changed, mainly plot-wise, but the bare bones of the former story is still there. I think "Would this character know anything about this topic?" and then think "Well I made them an inventor with a backstory like this, so maybe they wouldn't know it directly, but they'd know a famous story about it" or "Yeah, that knowledge works with their backstory. Actually, if I take that thing I can expand it into this whole other thing. Wait, that means they would definitely know this other character. Oh, they would NOT get along with this character, how can I get THEM in the same room?"

Bonus, because my draft is so long, I feel the natural urge to be like "I wanna write the most exciting scene RIGHT NOW, how do I skip over all the fluff to get to the stuff I wanna WORK with" and so I've written a way more interesting hook that feels more natural jumping into the middle of their lives. I don't have to have the long-winded backstory from birth to the present, but now I can have them reference their backstory as more of a mystery to the characters they just meet - who are learning at the same time as the audience. I can think about how this character perceives that backstory and chooses to describe it, how another who was related might see it differently, and make it unclear who had the more accurate recounting since, ya know, I didn't actually write it beat for beat in this version!

The characters sometimes evolve into something completely different from my original telling - and I have NO IDEA how but I'll take it man! I had a shy and nice character get introduced as a more mysterious but knowledgeable and competent character because I had finally figured his personality out later on. He's still a tragic and kind person, but now he's being introduced to someone who doesn't know him and I get to see how yo he would be so much cooler if THIS was the side of him we saw FIRST. This is how he acts to strangers, rather than bearing his heart and true personality on the first go around because in the first draft I just wanted to get to the part where we're already going with his true version.

This is just how I write fanfiction. This character had this thing about them, but what if it was introduced like THIS?!

Basically I'm an AU OC writer at heart. Ask me to pull a story outta my ass and you'll get the equivalent of burnt toast, but ask me to write a fanfic of my own characters and I am a Master Chef in my natural habitat making a buffet. Why does my brain work like this? Am I the only one that does this?