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?