oh god why is kels talking about mdzs

[renhyuck]

**GUY WHO JUST FINISHED READING MDZS**

guys. guys. oh my fyucking god. hello. i am ruined. this book has ruined me. i literally. you know when you’re reading something so good you just carry it around with you everywhere bc you’re so obsessed? i was literally reading this at my LASER APPOINTMENT sorry to my technician who is absolutely lovely and the best but i was too fucking absorbed in this BOOK!!!

i succumbed guys. i always talked about the ancient chinese gays jokingly bc so many of my friends were into danmei/xianxia and i never was.. and now i’ve fallen too TT___TT

anyway umm. im just gonna dump a whole load of incoherent thoughts here. sorry for being ~too into it~ already but i dont care i am just so excited about this damn BOOK.

yes i keep saying book. it’s bc i planned to watch the live action first but then i started the book and i consume written media far more thoroughly and readily then visual media so. it’s a lot easier to lie in bed at 5am reading a book than watching tv. but i AM watching through the live action currently (with the lovely fisher/haedeluna !! who has to endure the torment of me constantly squealing over literally everything that happens ever). actually i think reading it first is vastly enhancing my enjoyment of the show bc i know whats coming and im so excited to see it play out on screen.

ANYWAY. enough rambling before my rambling. spoilers for the entire book herein, and events in the live action up to ep 40~ (listen im gonna have finished the show by the time i finish this post but whatever)

CHARACTERS

i literally cannot write about every character because this post will be too long for anyone to ever want to read it. anyway lol.

wei wuxian: me starting this show “haha im gonna make u my meow meow” wwx does not need anything to make him a meow meow. wwx is not a meow meow. but good lord maannnnn I KNEW AS SOON AS HE APPEARED. the first cheeky grin he did i knew i’d follow this boy the end of the earth and I DID !! I WOULD !!

part of it is surely my penchant for characters like him. as the original mdzs anon so rightfully pointed out.. the chenle parallels. cheeky jokester but repressed af under all of that (not just in latent homosexuality, but in… basically everything. why deal with your emotions when you can just joke?).

i was always anticipating an ultimate ‘good guy turns evil’ sort of turning point but it never really *happened*. he just made the choices he felt were right — he sacrificed himself however he could if only to make everyone around him’s lives better. absolute fucking arrow through the heart at ‘there was no second path, he choose the only one available to him’ or whatever it was when it was revealed that he gave his golden core to jiang cheng. HE FUCKING GAVE HIM HIS GOLDEN CORE LIKE… okay he was literally never going to tell anyone like thats the kind of person wwx is. he’d go to any lengths for the people he loves and like that’s one of the things that drives me absolutely CRAZY when a character is so self sacrificing.

ummmm i really really REALLY love wwx <3 perfect boy perfect protagonist.

lan wangji: honestly i know lwj is gonna be a character i warm up to, or rather become more and more interested in just bc he has so much to unpack that i haven’t begun to unpack. every time i think of how much he did for wwx it makes me want to fall to my knees because its that kind of earth shattering love that just knocks the wind from my lungs. THIRTY THREE LASHES!!! THIRTY THREE! THREE YEARS IN SECLUSION. my heart fucking clenches every time he looks at wwx, especially post resurrection because he just looks like he cannot believe wwx is real. the more i watch and read, the more i notice the little things about him and the more i fall in love with him. this is like a mark my words sort of post: he’s gonna end up close to the top, if not AT the top, of my favourite character list in time.

wen ning: literal apologies to everyone. to EVERYONE who listens to me talk about this boy. but anyone who knows my taste in boys should know he’s absolute KELS BAIT. he’s literally a big shy puppy boy with wide eyes and a stutter and he pouts. yes he is a corpse okay but. y’know like. what more do you WANT?? literally the second i saw this dressed in black covered in chains black eyes monster.. thing. fly over the hill i was like WHO IS THAT HE’S FUCKING COOL and then when he actually shows up (totally alive and not dressed like a metal band drummer) in cloud recesses and he’s just the most gentle, pure hearted innocent boy. like. FUCK dude!! i have always been **GUY WHO LOVES THE SIDE CHARACTERS** so it was inevitable i’d attach to a side character but.. SOMEONE WARN ME ABOUT THE PUPPY BOY NEXT TIME!!

okay like. wei wuxian is nice to him ONCE. in the show it’s a little more obviously, because not only does he help him with the bow, but he saves his life, but in the book all he does is help him with the bow and basically tell him he believes in him and he’s an amazing archer. and that’s enough for wen ning to follow him for life. and he DOES. this sickly boy who has been sheltered and picked on his entire life, taking a single act of kindness and repaying it over and over. ‘every kindness should be returned’ to the max. he could have said he was even with wwx after saving him in the dungeon (WHICH LIKE!! god the fact he was so fearless when it came to saving him there :((( ), but he helped him again at lotus pier without question, he bought jiang cheng and jiang yanli to his sister’s residence… just because he was so gentle hearted and wanted to constantly repay the lifelong debt he believed he owed to wwx. and he continues to, over and over in death (maybe too because he knows nothing else apart from following people).

umm something about the sheer horror of not having control over your body in death too like the i cannot imagine the horror this boy has gone through i can’t even imagine what it was like :( if i write a single fic for this fandom (i doubt i am only going to write a single fic for this fandom) it is most certainly going to be wen ning centric.

nie huaisang: this genius little bastard. i LOVE nhs so so much. actually, originally i found him really annoying (like when i watched the first few episodes) but now knowing how much of a mastermind he truly is is so fucking rewarding. the concept alone of him playing up how incompetent and foolish he is while being an absolute genius is just. so so good i love it when characters allow themselves to be underestimated. especially because he’s the exact opposite of everything expected from his clan (and the opposite of his brother), who would ever think this nervous man who only carries a fan is a threat?

literally screaming rn bc its soooo fun watching cql and knowing how much nhs is plotting behind the scenes. umm he is simply the best?

my fic reading rn is focused on him because i can’t get enough of his character.

jiang cheng: i feel like by all means i should dislike jiang cheng because he's a bitter, angry person who wallows in resentment and doesn't really.. progress too much? but reall i fucking love jiang cheng so fucking much. there’s something about his character that i think is incredibly well written that i just can’t quite put into words. he’s just. so fucking painfully human. i bear no ill will towards him for his hatred of wwx — really i bear no ill will towards him for anything. he acts in irrational stupid ways, he digs his heels in, and throughout it all he’s just. i can’t help but love him. despite the amount he and wwx fought, despite how much he hated him for being the son he could never be. god. he really loved him. him throwing himself in front of his mother to stop her from whipping wwx. man. i just love jiang cheng a lot.

wen qing: DESERVES SO MUCH BETTER. she’s a doctor she’s a pacifist she risks so much just to protect her family. hell. she DIES to protect her family. i just. i just love her so so much. i can’t even imagine all the horrors she went through throughout her life just to protect those she loves. i know it’s a big long theme of the older siblings sheltering the younger siblings in this story but her and jiang yanli are the ones that hurt me the most. which speaking of…

jiang yanli: i still don’t see why she died... i mean i guess it’s to put the final nail in the coffin of jiang cheng and wwx’s relationship but. man. i just wish she’d lived. again the whole symbolism of older siblings dying for their younger siblings except she DIDN’T NEED TO DIE!! im very pleased she had a larger role in the live action at least — her character was great and i spent so much time swooning over her.

xue yang: he is the KILLERRRR. i just finished watching the yi city arc in cql and god he was way more fucked up than i remember. i cannot see how many anyone would try to redeem him but he’s fun in a ‘what the flying fuck is wrong with you’ way.

xiao xingchen: the sheer pain xxc causes me… there is so much tragedy in his character arc. the naivety of his choice to leave the mountain, wanting to save the world, finding his soulmate in song lan and then giving up his sight for him. the fact even after he and song lan part ways (in a way that isn’t the most friendly) he is still so needlessly kind. he takes in a-qing, he takes in fucking xue yang, and it ends up being his death.

xxc gets the ‘why did you make me cry’ award (this also goes to wen qing — the two times i shed tears were xxc’s death and wen qing finding wen ning’s body)

jin guangyao: is it bad i feel sorry for him? life just keeps kicking him while he’s down. he did so much awful shit but i really kinda feel sorry for him. he did not get a good lot in life and every time it seemed like things were going well… it was fucked up. i saw someone call him a pathetic little meow meow and yep thats pretty much it. also his and lan xichen’s blatant fucking flirting is hilarious to me.

AGENDAS:

umm. honestly i was so shocked to find out wangxian were supposed to be the only canonically gay characters. you cannot tell me that song lan and xiao xingchen weren’t lovers IM SORRRYYY. literally the first time they showed up in cql i was like ‘well they must be canon in the book’ [deranged rambling about this below]. anyways

wangxian: like obviously. i was ready to chew through a pallet of bricks about halfway through the book bc wwx would not believe lwj liked him... HE LIKED YOU FROM THE VERY START. ugh i love some good mutual pining and repression. I FUCKIHG LOVE THE DEVOTION TROPE like whatever im a sucker for basic tropes but just. watching from wwx’s pov as lwj gave himself up for him again and again just hit so hard. i just have so many feelings about these two the lengths that lwj went to again and again purely for wwx’s sake is just heartbreaking. especially when wwx comes back and we get to see him slowly realise how lwj has been changed by him. the keeping the emperor’s smile in his room, the thirty three lashes, the way he’s so much more.. tender?? with wwx because he has already lost him once. i just love the evolution of their relationship and how lwj would, and did, give up near everything he had just for wwx, because he really had been in love with him from the day they met.

(also i won’t lie the first thing i did once i finished the book was go read bottom lwj because i like the ‘grumpy’ one getting railed)

songxiao: another really obvious one. they’re basically a parallel to wangxian, and i think i’ve said ‘he cut out his eyes for him’ enough times to drive literally everyone insane. obviously i am a sucker for themes of devotion/giving everything for the one you love but. these two are A Lot. they’re absolute soulmates and their ending just felt like having my heart torn out. not only the tragedy of it all, but when it was said that xue yang couldn’t even bring xxc back because xxc’s soul was shattered by the realisation he’d killed song lan. fuck dude. FUCK. they deserved a way better ending than what they got, but the world isn’t fair. ao3 always has the fix-it fic i need.

wen qing/jiang yanli: that one glance they share in like.. episode 4??? i cant even remember it was so CHARGED i have not stopped thinking about these two. i wish they had more bonding time — they’re similar in the fact they’re both caregivers to their younger siblings and place a high value on family, but the way they.. perform?? is so different. yeah. i can't formulate my thoughts properly but i really wish we got more of them together.

these are the three ships that immediately stood out to me. i've been reading a lot of nhs/jc but thats just bc i like nhs more than anything and thats his most popular ship so... catch me coming back here with new and fancy pairings (you know i will because im rarepairfucker5000)

ummm other things???

listen. this is gonna be the post i look back on in six months when i finally crawl out of the hole of this fandom and rejoin the world of the living. i’ve read more fic for mdzs in the past 2 weeks than i have for nct in the past like. 4 months. ummm it’s nice to be really interested in something again and just read fic without inhibition? cool. cool. this post is pointless probably but hey i said i’d make it so… i have so many more things i could talk about but i’ll stop now.