And This Is Why I Am So Glad I Did Not Get An Official Copy When It Came Out. First, I Was Broke And

And this is why I am so glad I did not get an official copy when it came out. First, I was broke and could not afford it. Then I heard what people were saying. So. If I do get an official copy? It will not be in English and I will just MTL it. Or use the Wayback machine.

Been inundated with posts about the character descriptions in the 7seas mxtx releases, and I just wanna say that I find it the highest level of disrespect how a publisher treated someone’s serious writing that they bought the publishing rights for as a little jokey joke that’s lead to so many people’s misconceptions about said book. Tell me: why do these character sheets include publisher/translator opinions on the characters? Why do these character sheets directly go against what the actual text has to say about these characters? Why do these novels need character sheets?

Playing a Choose Your Own Adventure app, specifically because one of my fav authors finally has a story on it.

It is actually what I imagine the in-universe fanfic website claims happened. I adore it already.

But hot diggity is it weird playing a something that sexes it up as an asexual.

This is a huge part of the why, as I’ve learned more and more about the source material, the Jiang Cheng/Wen Qing ship bugs me. She’s seen exactly what he does to people he owes favors to, especially when he believes them lesser than him. Even if we discount the core transfer, he knew he owed her and Wen Ning specifically for sheltering them in Yiling.

"Jiang Cheng should have been allowed informed consent".

He did. As in he was informed he'd receive a core regardless and accepted. Also his issue was never about the harm it would cause to Wei Wuxian or the loss it would be for Wei Wuxian. It was compounded that he did owe grace to Wei Wuxian for what he had done for Jiang Cheng. Let's also stop omitting that Jiang Cheng was set on committing suicide by starving himself because he could no longer cultivate in direct contrast to Wei Wuxian reasoning that he was simply giving back what he had been given by the Jiang Clan anyways by giving his core that was developed with their methods.

The only reason he is upset about anything to do with that situation is that once again he did and always had relied on what Wei Wuxian said and did for him while constantly calling Wei Wuxian ungrateful.

Perhaps they ought not to have eaten the dragon. There had been people objecting to it at the time. Surely such meat was poisonous. Perhaps it was even an affront, an insult to some intangible order of nature they ought to honour.

But the city was starving, the siege had gone on too long, and the king's troops were still a week's march away. The scorched earth would be fertile again in time, but right now it was barren. Right now there were mouths to feed. So they changed their crossbows for butcher knives and got to work.

None of the royal commanders asked any questions that could not be answered. After all, their aid had come shamefully late. The dragon's horned skull made a noble gift, a fitting tribute from a triumphant city to its humbled king. Who would have thought to question them?

And none of the townsfolk spoke up, when the first golden-eyed babes were born. Children who grew up barefoot and fearless, clambering over the city's patched and rebuilt roofs like they had no notion of falling, with a strange glitter to their skin when the sunlight hit it just so. No one breathed a word about dragons.

Because soon enough there were deft, young hands taking loaves straight out of the oven, heedlessly lifting iron from the forge, plunging into boiling laundry water. And some of them more wondrous still, wild, warm-skinned youths, with inexplicable knowledge and peculiar remedies.

A blessing, their families said proudly. A blessing after so much hardship. Which it was, in its way. This city would never fear dragon fire again.

Emotionally checking out of the Jiang… yeah. Yeah I see that. Which would be another reason Lan Wangji would be freaking out, because as far as he knew Wei Wuxian was devoted to the Jiang.

Remember how I made this post (a continuation of this thought) about how Wei Wuxian never visiting the ancestral hall post-fall of Lotus Pier was probably because the next thing he wanted to tell the former Jiang leaders was also the last thing he wanted to say to them: that he was officially leaving? Well, after deep-diving into this, I wonder if I'd actually unintentionally hit the nail on the head and that Wei Wuxian avoiding the ancestral hall was a sign that he had actually already emotionally checked out of viewing himself as a part of the Jiang sect once he fulfilled the debt pressed on him by Jiang Fengmian and Madam Yu.

I mean, the man in the three months after the fall of Jiang Clan sacrificed his golden core to the next heir, liberated Lotus Pier, and successfully wrought vengeance against the Wen who killed them. Everything after that—attending the conferences Jiang Cheng needs him to, showing off the might of the clan during competitions, etc. etc.—feels like him just going through the motions in an attempt to get his thoughts to align with his actions, to fool himself into being alright. But the fact that he could never quite work up the desire to step foot into the ancestral hall to honor his martial ancestors until his second life? Sounds like his attempts at acceptance proved unsuccessful until he experienced the true support of the loved ones in his second life.

Not gonna lie, I first read this poll title as “Send Prey Somewhere” which influenced my choice a bit.