Summary:  Lan Wangji spends four days in captivity alone, in pain, and grieving before disciples from other sects arrive at Qishan.

My comments:  Oh, my heart just breaks for him, poor baby, so isolated and hurt and afraid, yet so determined to show NONE of it to his captors.

***Be sure to check out the gifset/tags Author links as inspiration.

Summary:  It was either a kidnapping or an invitation to a sleepover; Wei Wuxian honestly couldn’t tell which.

My comments:  When wwx is injured, Nie Huaisang sees an opportunity to mend fences after puppeteering so many people for so many years.

Excerpt:  When they reached the Unclean Realm, they flew over the walls of the fortress and landed in a court that Wei Wexian didn’t remember, a terrace above a garden space with ponds and potted trees and lush plants. The rooms facing it had wide open doors, revealing interiors rich with embroidery, tassels, and bright paint. If this was the way to the dungeons now, Nie Huaisang really had done extensive remodeling. As they landed, people in Nie colors appeared in the doorways, staring with startled curiosity.

Summary Part 1:  Jiang Cheng may not be talking to Wei WuXian, but that’s no reason for him to allow Wei WuXian and Lan WangJi to wander around unwed, reflecting badly on their Sects. (Or: Jiang Cheng spite-throws Wei WuXian a wedding.)

My comments:  Oh, my feelings are sore: I think they got a workout. Over the course of 4 stories:  jc and wwx (and lwj) get to the point where they can communicate; jc finds lxc and realizes that they have a lot of similarities and maybe jc can keep him from making similar mistakes; lan sizhui learns that sacrificing yourself for a friend can actually do more damage than good; and jin ling looks at all his elders and realizes that forgiveness and growth is gonna have to start with him, and it should include nhs, who is lonely and very, very brittle.

Basically, everyone needs therapy and they kinda get it.

Summary: After years of a mad quest, Wen Ruohan is finally given proof of a powerful creature living among mortals. He is delighted to find that it truly believes itself to be only a boy named “Wei Wuxian.” While Wen Ruohan tries to unlock Wei Wuxian’s secret, the sects unite against him. If he can achieve his goal before they arrive, even the combined might of the cultivation world would not be enough to humble him. Meanwhile, Lan Wangji dreams of Wei Wuxian in the Cold Pond Cave, and works tirelessly to rescue him from Wen Ruohan’s clutches. No one is prepared for what awaits the allied sects in Nightless City at the conclusion of the war, and it very well might mean the end of the world as they know it.

My comments: Oh, oh, I really loved this one! And I’m so frustrated, because I can’t say too much about it because it’s a surprise worth not spoiling. Ugh. But essentially, wen ruohan believes that wwx is a mythical creature, has him kidnapped, creepily courts him for a while, gets pissy, throws him in a dungeon, has wen qing and wen zhouliu ‘work on him’… and poor wwx STILL has no idea what they think he is or what he’s supposed to be doing about it.

Meanwhile, the other sects (and especially lan wangji) are gearing up to rescue him back, but they take a long, political time about it. (Lwj is ready to go do the whole thing single-handedly.) Then, when the trigger gets pulled and wwx busts out, well, that’s only the first half of the story, isn’t it. And the rest of the cultivation world is as greedy as wrh… or simply fearful… of what wwx has become.

Summary:  The Lans agree to take in the DafanWen after Wei Wuxian rescues them from Qiongli Path. Their only condition: that Wei Wuxian lets himself be purified of resentful energy. Lan Wangji thinks this is how he will finally get his Wei Ying back, free from demonic influences. Wei Wuxian thinks this is a fancy way of saying “execution.”

My comments:  Good story, the angst is simply delicious.

Story in which wwx and wen qing just go along with the Lans’ apparent desire to execute wwx as payment for harboring the wens. (Of course, the Lans want no such thing, especially lwj, who will be doing the Cleansing Ritual.) The problem is that none of the wounds from before and during being dropped into the Burial Mounds ever actually healed, and wwx is just held together with resentful energy and chutzpah.

He has one week before the ritual, so spends it with Lan Qiren trying to get down everything he can about resentful energy and why you shouldn’t go try to use it. Exposure therapy certainly has a beneficial effect on lqr’s opinion of wwx… too bad he’ll be dead tomorrow.

Summary:  Wei Ying leaves. He follows

My comments:  In case the summary didn’t do it for you, please enjoy these author tags: Noping Out Of Society With Your Boyfriend And Your 50 Wen Refugees: The Novel//Overzealous Use Of Imagery//Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies//Well Except Wen Ning But He Was Already Dead So//Fix-It of Sorts __________

Well DAMN, this starts with a bang, the Jins stating that wwx and the wens (vanished from their ken) should be hunted down and brought to justice. This makes lwj… feel some things. (None of them good.)

Story is from lwj’s POV – and his voice is FANTASTIC, and author’s style is dreamy and vivid, which brings his perspective to life. He follows wwx and the Wens, and eventually finds them, hidden behind talismans and barriers in a far corner of the wide, wild world. He joins them, but acceptance of him is slow (except for A-Yuan), and wwx is not doing well at all, draining himself until there’s nothing left. But slowly their lives congeal, homes are wrestled from the ruin of the abandoned town, crops are planted, wwx and lwj learn to understand each other better (and lwj is THOROUGHLY commited, although quietly sad that he’ll never see his brother again).

Culminates in an endeavor which shreds lwj’s back (like the 33 lashes) and very nearly kills him and forces this tiny Wen Clan to make a choice.

Excerpt:  “Bright-gege, where’s Xian-gege ?”

“He is— occupied.” The explanation is insufficient, but he does not know what else to say. Perhaps a-Yuan is familiar with Wei Ying’s clouded moods, because the boy frowns in something resembling recognition.

“Is he still sad?”

“I believe so.”

He considers this. “When a-Yuan is sad, Xian-gege makes it better.”

Wangji has no idea how to explain the wrenching, sucking sorrow of Wei Ying’s situation, of the estrangement of his family, how he has given up everything he has known to sequester himself in the furthest corner of the world in the hopes of keeping a-Yuan and all the rest safe. It is something even he cannot conceive in its entirety, everything Wei Ying has willingly let go in the name of doing what is right. He does not have the words to explain it to the boy.

“Sometimes,” he says, stilted, “the only thing one can do is be sad.”

Another excerpt *** The writing is often just pure poetry: ***:

“You should rest,” he murmurs, thumb sweeping against the curve of his knee, cloth bunching and unbunching with each stroke. Wei Ying watches the motion and meets his gaze. This is how he looks kissed: mouth bruise-dark, color high on his cheeks, neat-combed hair mussed where Wangji has threaded fingers through it. Wangji memorizes it, folds it thrice and tucks it in his chest, buried among the roots of the sapling seeded within.

Summary:  The young man leaned forward, elbow on a propped up knee. “You are all respectable cultivators,” he said in a lilting tone even as the veritable army below pointed their swords at him. “Was this really the best way you could think of to get my attention?”

With the threat of the Wen sect looming, the other major sects decide to summon the aid of a man they’d killed centuries ago: the Yiling Patriarch, Wei Wuxian.

My comments:  Oooh, this is intense. Like, things are presented in the summary as kind of a joke only they’re really, really NOT.

Wwx comes into a room full of cultivators, all of whom thought making mo xuanyu sacrifice himself for the greater good was a viable option. They don’t start out on the right foot at all. (On the other hand, the underlying current is that wwx is laughing at all of them. Primarily for being such short-sighted idiots. But also, through his antics, he makes them see what a gruesome and unethical path they’re carving through this war.)

Story is in three parts. The first just deals with a passive view of wwx, a frightening and powerful demonic cultivator of old, called up to ask for something they… don’t quite realize they were asking for.

Second part is more focused on lwj, and how he sees what is happening. It’s much more human, and then leaves you hanging with a very big What If.

Third part… it’d be Spoilers if I told you ;)

Summary:  What if the past was not something you truly recover from? 

My comments:  This is a punch right in the feels: visceral pain and anguish from everyone involved. First story is lwj pov and simply tragic and painful and gut-wrenching. (You will cry.) It’s many, many years until he can even walk, and he’s so diminished, it’s an effort just to exist, and that’s the best he can do. A-Yuan holds his family together, even unwittingly. As lxc muses in the third story, without A-Yuan, there would be no life, for lwj would have killed himself as soon as he was able, and lxc would easily have followed him soon after.

The second story is A-Yuan’s, and it’s gorgeous, to see how he looks at the adults around him, the conclusions he comes to, and the lifelong character traits growing up living with a severely crippled father gives him. He’s a special person, driven and fiery and, as he gets older, powerful.

The fourth story ISN’T FINISHED, omg, I hadn’t realized when I started reading, and now I’m brutally gripped by this author and will HAVE TO WAIT, it’s gonna kill me. The story is so good, however, that I’ll just start from the beginning and read it all again because who doesn’t love being dragged across an emotional shredder? This is a favorite.

ETA: I DID just start over at the beginning, and damned if my eyes aren’t swollen for crying for two days. But it ends in a very good place! (Nothing magical, just two people working with what they’ve got and slowly making it better.) The fourth story starts with wwx’s arrival – Sizhui finds him, recognizes his song, and literally drags him back to his father because he’s long since worked out who lwj is in love with. It… is slow going, with misunderstandings and sooo many mental health issues. Wwx is a traumatized mess, because he was starving and losing everything and going insane only weeks earlier, and now he’s in a weak and severely undernourished body (cue eating disorder behavior) that ISN’T HIS, so there’s mild body horror and disorientation. Plus his obliviousness doesn’t do anyone any favors. (Jingyi eventually shouts at him and fixes that.)

Lan Wangji has had 13 years to acclimate to HIS foreign and unwieldy body, and poor wwx has only had weeks or months, so there’s a gap that needs to be accomodated, and lwj does a beautiful job with that. By halfway through, they are doing their best to learn to communicate truthfully, and start a journey towards healing, and it’s lovely.

*[I waffled over whether to call it a ‘happy’ ending or a ‘positive’ ending.  The fic deals with serious and permanent injuries.  Things get much better, but there is no miraculous cure.  So you might need to know that going in.]

Summary;  To get his hands on the Yin Tiger Seal, Jin Guangshan decides to make Wei Wuxian part of the Lanling Jin sect through marriage to his son and heir.

Exactly nobody is happy about this.

Excerpt:  It had been a fear of his power, fear of his demonic cultivation, fear of his Yin Tiger Seal that had prompted this ridiculous gambit, but in marrying Wei Wuxian to Jin Zixuan, Jin Guangshan had handed him something just as effective, if not more so— political power. He may not have the seal anymore, but it had never been anything more than a fickle thing to use in the most extreme of situations. The demonic cultivation, the raw power and ingenuity that came with it— that was all Wei Wuxian. It couldn’t be taught, or removed, or destroyed. It was his mind, his will power, his sheer determination that made him so dangerous, and Jin Guangshan hadn’t understood that. He had coveted the seal as an artifact of power, he had coveted Wei Wuxian as a conduit of power, but he had not understood that that was not all Wei Wuxian was.

By making Wei Wuxian the spouse of the heir to the most powerful and influential Great Sect, Jin Guangshan had practically handed Wei Wuxian the keys to his kingdom. It would only be his own fault if he found himself replaced on the throne someday soon.

Summary: Lan Wangji had come to Carp Tower to seal an alliance with the Yiling Patriarch, in order to prevent a war the Lan Sect couldn’t win. But the deal was brokered by the Jin sect for reasons of their own, and instead Lan Wangji found himself all but coerced into an unexpected marriage.

My comments: I just want to live in this series. I’ll bring my comfy chair and my cats and favorite bits of art and I’ll never leave. This world is engrossing and I love it to pieces. The characterizations are perfect, and entertaining, the set up is great, just… the whole story is on fire in the best way.

In this AU, wwx has been in the Burial Mounds for most of his life (well, he’s on his third life now, but…) and alone for much of it. But now he’s got the Dafan Wens to protect and be his family. But the Jin want something from him, and he’s been ‘encouraged’ to visit Carp Tower through some strategic hostage-taking and information that Cloud Recesses had plans to attack them. Meanwhile, the Lan have been told that Cloud Recesses is under imminent attack by the Yiling Patriarch unless they cement an impromptu alliance. So with no time to breathe or ask questions, boom, wangxian are married, willy nilly.

Of course, nothing is as it seems, and these two smart boys figure it out quickly. But that doesn’t mean that lwj isn’t committed to his new husband and his family, a stubborn attachment that only grows stronger as he learns wwx’s tragic past and witnesses his bright humor, fierce love for his family, and very sharp mind. (The fact that he’s young and beautiful is purely incidental.)

Excerpt 1: …they had no choice. The wars of the previous generation and the volcanic eruption in Qishan had left the countryside devastated, cities and sects in ruins, all across the continent. The Lan had been lucky to survive at all, and now they were lucky the powerful Jin had chosen to intercede in order to stop the attack on Cloud Recesses by the Burial Mounds. Lan Wangji said, “I agreed to this, Brother.” He didn’t add, “It will be fine,” because it wouldn’t. It would be what it was.

Excerpt 2: Fortunately, Wei Wuxian had an affinity for Yin Iron that came from spending a lot of time dead with it.

N.B. [If you loved this story, you should probably go read… everything… by Moominmammashandbag, because I feel like the tone, characterizations, and blend of both humor and actually fraught situations is similar.]

archiveofourown.org

Summary:  Wei Wuxian has been haunting his childhood home for three years. He’s perfected the fine art of scaring away all the tenants, and has grown used to living with the dying flowers in the garden as his only company.

When Lan Wangji buys the house, Wei Wuxian fully intends to drive him off too. Except Lan Wangji is beautiful, and interesting, and captivating company - even if he supposedly doesn’t know Wei Wuxian exists.

My comments:  In which wwx is haunting his old house, and particularly loves to tease the new guy.  But… there’s something odd about him and his brother, because wwx can swear they’ve made eye contact once or twice.  Wwx reveals himself (metaphorically) over time, learning to like and trust his new, oblivious roommate.  No potential for angst and misunderstandings here, is there?!