Unsorted Untamed Thoughts

[rhysiana]

I resisted getting into this fandom for months, largely because I didn't have time to watch something with subtitles and therefore couldn't multitask, but isolation crafting/writing finally screwed up my wrist enough that I needed a show to enforce idleness, so here I am, full of thoughts and feelings.

• I'm told the book shows more of WWX at home in Lotus Pier, but one of the things that struck me in the show is how little he's shown ever being rooted in place, except for when he's living in the Burial Mounds with his found family of refugees... and even then, he lives in a cave apart from them, doing different work than everyone else, a point they mention explicitly. At almost all other times, we see him in inns and guest quarters in other people's houses. By contrast, we see LWJ in the Jingshi and the library of Cloud Recesses, two places where he seems rooted down to the bedrock. His desire to bring WWX to Cloud Recesses reads to me as a desire to not just protect him but also to give him the home he never seems to have--but of course the fact he lets WWX go to wander and waits for him to come back of his own free will proves he understands the kind of support WWX actually needs better than his father ever understood anything about his mother. (What is it with me and rooted/rootless characters?)
• Things I need: art of LWJ as a modern goth. Because even before he was mourning WWX, WWX was commenting disparagingly about how he was always dressed for a funeral. I just want to see him with an umbrella and combat boots and, idk, grayscale? red? eyeshadow. Fingerless gloves. Everything still in white.
• Nie Huaisang is fast becoming my favorite supporting character in fics.

Comments

[stultiloquentia]

Oh, god, LWJ in modern gothic white, with Opinions about lace. And ethically sourced leather. He comes from money, but he's an expert thrifter who knows a hundred delicate mending and cleaning techniques.

I have too many feelings about WWX and the concept of home to fit in a comment. I am trying to write the fic, if my damned brain would cooperate. WWX in the Cloud Recesses is such an interesting, difficult fit. How do you think it would work? Who bends, and how?

[rhysiana]

He would definitely be of the Meticulous Goth subtype rather than the Grunge Goth subtype. And no one understands how he keeps everything clean, no matter what he's doing. (The intimidation factor of being able to wear all white while kicking ass is in fact a device M has used for an NPC in a game he was running, and it applies to LWJ so much. If he was ever showing a stain on his robes in canon, it was a sure sign shit was serious.)

I think WWX will never really think of Cloud Recesses as a whole as home, but it won't matter that much, because his actual home is just wherever LWJ is. It will be another instance of there-but-apart for him, but the real difference this time will be the stability, the absolute sureness LWJ provides. The fixed point around which WWX can orbit that refuses to allow itself to be moved. LWJ has practiced steadiness his whole life--perhaps now he finally knows why. So: I think Cloud Recesses will learn to bend just enough to make a space for WWX, but he'll likely never really be part of the Gusu Lan. (He will always be the Yiling Patriarch.) I feel like there might be a period at first where he tries to abide by (more of) their rules, out of a desire to not shame/undermine LWJ, but it's a doomed effort, and LWJ will find a way to let him know it was appreciated but unnecessary. He's already brought alcohol into Cloud Recesses for WWX without bothering to hide it, after all. He has no interest in changing WWX in anyway, not after 16 years without him. Anyone who doesn't like it can kick rocks, as far as LWJ is concerned.

[rhysiana]

Modern subculture AU WWX thoughts: He would obviously be punk rather than goth, and (were this in a high school setting, for example) would be one of those people at the intersection of a bunch of unrelated friend groups, of but not central to all of them. (Me, project? Never.)