Thread by @starsatlas, a thread of me ranting about how completely unfair it is to [...]

a thread of me ranting about how completely unfair it is to lan wangji’s character (and also to lan sizhui’s) to presume that he only cared for his son because of his love for wei wuxian (+ other stupid things people said)

first of all: lan wangji gained his fame specifically because of his good morals and how he helped /anyone/ who needed him, regardless of personal gain or loss to him. it’s a complete misreading of his character to assume he wouldn’t have saved lan sizhui regardless of any +

— connection that the child might have had to wei wuxian.

secondly: lan sizhui and wei wuxian had a really good relationship from what we can see in the book, where sizhui understands lan wangji’s meaning even based off a single glance. they clearly had good communication +

— between each other, as father/son and as senior/junior. it’s an important part of lwj’s character that he’s extremely closed off and hard to read, so much so that wwx managed to mistake his love for hate before his resurrection. but sizhui manages to read him perfectly. +

— why? i’m sure lan wangji did his best to open up to the child, until lsz understands him to a point where only lxc can be said to compare, being able to decipher his expressions and his wishes. can you honestly see this and assume that this is a superficial love that is +

— the leftovers of his love for wei wuxian?? do you /honestly/ think lwj, someone with arguably the strictest moral senses in the book, is that cheap in his love?

next: people who think naming sizhui as such is pushing his “emotional baggage” onto his son. what??? +

— /so many/ parents name their children things that are significant to them. lan wangji is known to be someone with few words, who thinks carefully before he says anything, so that whatever he says has meaning. he definitely applied that thinking to sizhui’s name too +

— and chose something that had emotional weight to him. yes, sizhui means: to recollect and to long for. it is definitely assumed that lan wangji named him this after his mourning for wei wuxian. i don’t disagree, obviously, but i, for one, don’t think this was done +

— to appease his /own/ longing. a-yuan was originally under wwx’s care, and he could have considered it a way of keeping wwx in sizhui’s upbringing/memory, as the child didn’t actually remember him, even though he was clearly very important to him, as is revealed when sizhui +

— begins to recall his past. moreover, lan wangji raised a child he had barely known while being completely debilitated by the punishment he endured, and while mourning all alone for the man he loved. he endured all of this with silence and patience and did a good job. +

— is he not allowed to express /any/ of his pain? did he push his grief onto the juniors he raised? no. he cared for them and protected them so much more than any adults ever protected him at that age. he let them do what they wanted even though they were all lan disciples. +

— he gave so much more than he was ever given and his /huge/ amount of grief and yearning never affected them. so why can’t you cut a man some slack?

okay enough about the name.

about lan wangji’s character in general: his whole life does /not/ revolve around wei ying. +

lwj is someone who’s been empty of human connections and relationships his entire early life. he was only allowed to see his mother once a month, and when she passed away, i’m not sure if anyone really took the time to refulfill that role in his life. qingheng-jun (

https://abs.twimg.com/emoji/v2/... draggable="false" alt="🤡" title="Clownsgesicht" aria-label="Emoji: Clownsgesicht">) +

— locked himself away and canonically did not play any part in raising his children, and so lwj never had any real connection with his father either. lqr probably tried his best, but still put a lot of pressure onto the twin jades. the way they were raised essentially cut them+

— off from /everyone/ else, their peers especially. yes, wwx was the first friend lwj made and the first person other than lxc and lqr who lwj must have connected with personally, and so he’s that much more important to him. but lwj had 13 years /without/ wwx. +

— he grew up into a fully-formed adult who had learned how to communicate his intentions and co-exist with others while maintaining his quiet personality. the juniors obviously loved him and were protective of him, and even seemed to /expect/ some type of affection or care +

— from him, meaning that this was the nature of their relationship, that he wasn’t closed off from them, that he fucking made a connection with them. wwx is not the only person in his life anymore, and he is not the only person he has bonded with. it’s unkind and a weird +

— misreading to suggest that /every/ single thing he does is for the sake of wwx, as if his awkwardness and silence and personality are not worthy of having connections with anyone else? lwj has had emotional moments, too, in the book that have NOTHING to do with wwx at all.

in xuanwu cave, even in the presence of wwx, his grief was over the loss of his sect, the near-death state of his father, and xichen’s missing status. his first tears are shed for his family, so why do we have to assume he doesn’t have any feelings apart from his love for wwx?

is it because the fandom has misread his character as someone who exists purely for wwx? is it because the moments where he is his own person are deemed unworthy of attention? lwj was a child abandoned (willingly/unwillingly) by his parents who struggled all his life +

— to make meaningful bonds with others, and in the end, he did it! he managed to open up to people and make a new family for himself and he managed to love people and be loved even after all this pain he went though, and even DURING it. let’s not reduce his character +

— to simply existing for the sake of someone else. he managed to raise lan sizhui into someone who can genuinely say that he’s happy, a child that’s mature and knows when to ask for help, someone with empathy (the first one to show kindess to “mxy” in the book).

let’s not pretend he was a bad guardian or a bad father.

- end of thread-

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