galadhir | (no subject)

Getting lured back to Tumblr by all the Untamed content over there. Mostly going through the blogs of Jin Guangyao stans and reblogging everything - basically being irritating to two websites at once. But this time I'm going to post about it here, so I don't just end up fading out again.

The Untamed/MDZS fandom must be the largest I've ever been in, and that includes the Tolkien fandom, and it is absolutely bursting with really great fic. Quite a lot of which is even Jin Guangyao centric. Of course I've done my usual thing of gravitating to a widely controversial character rather than nestling happily in the main pairing, which cuts down my reading choices somewhat. But I don't think I could ever be content shipping a pairing for which the canon had already come through. What is left for the fan writer to fix in those cases? Much harder to give JGY a happy ending, especially if you also want everyone else (except Jin Guangshan, he can die) to live and be happy too. But that's what makes it fun.

I'm currently in the middle of podficcing Shiome's Last of our kind, for which I can just about manage to produce a chapter a week. There are 14 chapters and I've done 8. So that should be finished in February. After which, I'm in a quandary as to whether I podfic Derillarch's Peony to Lotus series, or whether I attempt to finish the story I started writing months and months ago.

(That's 'The Will of Heaven', in which JGY comes back to life the same way WWX did, and must attempt to become Lan Furen while fooling the rest of the cultivation world that he is someone else entirely, or else deal with the consequences.)

There is so much good fic out there that it doesn't seem like the fandom needs mine. But there are not very many JGY centric podfics, so I do almost feel like I can make a bigger difference by podficcing than by writing, atm.

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Yes, at the end JC doesn’t have much choice but to try and stop WWX. He doesn’t have the whole picture (through no fault of his own) and to an outsider it really looks like WWX went mad through his cultivation method. It’s not like some survivors from Qiongqi Pass would’ve gone and said, “Well yeah WWX killed JZX but actually at first he was minding his own business and we attacked him unprovoked” – because in their eyes WWX was evil and had very likely cursed Jin Zixun (because that guy had no other enemies who would wish him harm…) so confronting him was the just thing to do in their eyes.

That WWX would’ve kept out of everyone’s business and lived his life in the Burial Mounds, had lived his life in the BM for at least a year without doing anything, didn’t count and also wasn’t logical for them – he was using evil methods and had that super powerful tool, of course he’d want to overthrow the sect leaders at some point! *sigh*

And it seemed like JC held back for a very long time from actively going against WWX – until JYL’s death. And well, WWX was totally gone then anyway. But I’m sure it was a huge conflict for him and I don’t understand how people can misread all of this so much…

I read a funny meta on tumblr recently, about all of them meeting at Jinlintai for the conference and JC suddenly being confronted with WWX in his mask right there out in the open without his knowledge, and how he playacts through this really well! Like, he tends to be very emotional and this could’ve caused him to break down (it possibly would have in the past), but he acts so well here, which is what they all have to depend on! JC throwing a fit while the Twin Jades and WWX try to investigate a murder would’ve been very unhelpful. XD

I find WWX irritating at times, too. XD And I always wondered how people were like, “What an awful sibling relationship, JC obviously hates WWX with how he acts, always sniping at him!” and to me that was just… a typical sibling relationship. XD Like, I’ve got a friend who acted very similarly with her brother when they were younger, always throwing sarcastic comments at each other or playfully hitting each other or tumbling around on the lawn. They were very close in age and both quite confident characters that loved to do outdoor stuff. So I never questioned that dynamic but it seems people find it… weird? Even violent?

Ahahaha I looked at that title and was like, “Hmmm sounds familiar…” but it didn’t fit your username. Started to read the beginning and was like, “I know that fic!” XD Just under your ff.net name back then, I’ve got that one downloaded from waaaayyy back when. XD

I do think we tend to be very generous about attributing the flaws of the characters we love to trauma and outside circumstances, while insisting that the characters who are opposed to our blorbo should have acted as though they weren't also affected by trauma and outside circumstances.

It's pretty clear that by the time JYL dies and WWX finds himself killing all those cultivators that he has become fairly unhinged by grief and resentful cultivation. But it's also clear by the time JC kills WWX that he has also become fairly unhinged by the death of his sister, mother, father, people etc and the fear and responsibility of having to be the one who is responsible for making all this better.

Even if you don't agree with his choices, I really don't see how you can disagree that he was doing his best! Sometimes when people have been traumatised for a long time, their best isn't very good, but who can blame them for that?

I don't know a lot about sibling relationships in general (my sisters were both over 18 years older than me and had left home by the time I came along, so they always felt more like aunts,) but it's pretty clear that both WWX and JYL understand that this is just the way JC expresses his love. Later on, Jin Ling seems to understand that "I'll break your legs" means this too. I had kind of assumed it was a cultural thing, but I am also happy to believe it's just a family dynamic that I'm not used to.

*G* FF.net was the first fan site I ever joined, and I hadn't got used to the idea that you could just make up a name for yourself, so that one I joined with my irl name. And then I wised up later and got several pseuds :)