Fucking Ouch - Tumblr Posts
Day 99, and I am reminded of code 99...
And I am not ok.
Because, obviously, I cannot count.
And we also have lost Tech.
There that really good post going around about Xiao XingChen and Song ZiChen that talks about their relationship with class and reputation, and I keep circling back to it like once a day, thinking about all the ways this affects other characters and how they’re seen by the cultivation world at large.
And I know I’m back on my Wei Wuxian didn’t deserve all the shit he got train, but what consistently bothers me is that everyone treats him/uses him in a way they find convenient, and that she sheer ambiguity of his place in the cultivation world is what allows 90% of damage to happen.
Compared to the other orphans of his (or close to his) generation, he seems to fare better than most, because Jiang Fengmian decides to take him in. But that action alone just serves to broaden the ambiguity, and to make his place more uncertain. He is Jiang Fengmian’s adopted son when convenient to other people to see him as such, or he is the son of Jiang Fengmian’s servant when seeing him as the adopted son would give him too much importance. He is part of the family, except when he is not. He is Jiang Cheng’s and Jiang Yanli’s brother, except when he is not.
His time at Cloud Recesses is a really good example of this because the distinction is easy to see. Nie HuaiSang is known as a terrible student. We literally see him bring a bird to the class. He has a stash of porn he shares with others. We never see him answer a single question, and we don’t even know if he is capable of it if Lan Qiren were ever to call on him. But he is also the younger brother of the Nie Sect Leader, and likely to be the next Sect Leader himself. Would Lan Qiren ever dare throw a book at Nie HuaiSang in front of all the other future Sect Leaders? Of course not. And these little distinctions are everywhere.
I wanna say, just put aside Wei Wuxian’s obnoxious personality for a moment, but even that is impossible to do, because most of it seems to have developed as a coping technique for the sheer ambiguity he is forced to live with. He is literally moving across shifting ground his entire life, as the son of Cangse Sanren, or the adopted son of Jiang Fengmian, or the son of a servant, a brother to the next sect leader, or a companion to the next sect leader, or a servant of the next sect leader, trying to be whatever people around him expect him to be, whenever it is convenient for them. There isn’t a single person around him that is blameless of this, except maybe Jiang Yanli for her simplicity of affection, and Lan Wangji for his sheer complexity of it.
And I think there is no greater example of this than the golden core transfer. Sometimes I wonder what is it that hit him harder (in CQL at least), Madam Yu’s admonishment that he is to protect Jiang Cheng at all cost, or Jiang Fengmian’s? Is he to protect Jiang Cheng as a brother? As the next leader of his sect? As a servant protecting a master? As an orphan who has brought his bad luck to the entire sect? As a son of a man he owes his life to? As a son of a woman who has despised him his entire life? What range of possible sacrifices covers all those bases?
If Jiang Cheng was incapable of medical consent for the golden core procedure, which Wei Wuxian gets to make a decision? The Wei Wuxian who is his brother and equal? The Wei Wuxian who is his older brother and a protector? The Wei Wuxian who is responsible for its loss in the first place? The Wei Wuxian who is destined to forever be inferior in rank? The one Madam Yu despised or the one Jiang Fengmian loved? Do any of them get to make it? How is he to know? And who else could possibly go from being a powerful cultivator to a coreless, powerless human being, and still go on, except a child forced to build his entire life on other people’s constantly shifting perceptions and expectations?
Sometimes I think how easily he slipped into the Yiling Patriarch role, like he’s just putting on another suit people expect him to wear, and I wanna cry all over again. This ambiguity of status, in a wold that is literally built around it, can be applied to quite a few of the other characters as well, but nowhere else does it do such profound damage as it does with Wei Wuxian.
freaking rip my heart out and burn it idc
Moving away party for friend today.. I hate it.
Feel like I need to get shitfaced and happy real fast before someone hugs me again. Don't think I can handle that rn..
And all of the sudden this wave of intense heartbreaking sadness hits you when you realize they've now actually moved away..
hold the fuck up
Las Nevadas has a karaoke place I guess it’s a gogo but stfu
Karl used to have those karaoke nights when they were on stage and sung and all.
Las Nevadas has an Eiffel Tower
SapNap actually had an Eiffel Tower built at some point.
And last but not least, Las Nevadas has a place for a wedding.
Las Nevadas was built for Karl and SapNap I’m not okay nobody touch me 😀
How could you lie about wanting me?
happy new year the grief is never-ending but the good news is so is the love (x)
”…hey, Alto?”
“mm. What? Im busy here”
“…eating a burger?”
“yeah, what of it?”
“…nevermind.”
“….”
“…do you think we’ll always be like this?”
“like what, Benny? Crazy motherfuckers who get their asses kicked too often?”
“…no, like- well, I guess so. Like… unfinished”
“unfinished? You better not be on another one of y’er drunken spiels”
“no, i- im not. I just, i-… will we always be unhealed, i mean?”
“..unhealed… how?”
“well, it’s not like the foundation has exactly helped with any of the traumatic shit we go through. I… I’ve seen so many die, Clef. So, so many people. But they just keep coming, don’t they? I.. I don’t want to die like that, incomplete.”
“mm.”
“…do you think we’ll die, before we can even process what we’ve seen, Francis?”
“…im not sure i want to talk ‘bout this anymore, Ben.”
THE LAST OF US (2023) #01.07 ‘Left Behind’