happy monday, timeline, this morning i woke up thinking about spinal cord injuries in the cql / mdzs world. (brain, why??)
but anyway I'm on it and can't get off it now, so here we are

this generally falls into my interest in how cultivation / spiritual energy and injuries and disabilities intersect, how healing works in this world, and also how spiritual energy might be used to manage chronic conditions and disabilities.

Anyway, I don't actually have many coherent thoughts on this, it's just something I'm mulling over.

One thought: even though LWJ's whipping injuries are of course on his back, I don't think I've seen anyone address what that could do below the surface? Plenty of exploration of the flesh injury, but not much on skeletal/nervous system effects.

According to book canon it took LWJ years to recover from the whipping and its aftermath. Obviously a lot of things about the severity of his injury could do that, but it does seem like one option could be him basically going through the danmei version of spinal rehab.

That would complicate the 'he gets up and goes to Burial Mounds' thing, but between spiritual energy letting people power through things that would otherwise be debilitating (or deadly) and the fanon that the trip makes his injury and recovery worse/longer - it could still fit:

He had a back/spinal injury and should have stayed still until he healed, instead he went on an arduous journey to Burial Mounds, exacerbating his injury, perhaps picking up an infection, dangerously depleting the spiritual energy that's meant to be knitting him back together...

Just an idea, but maybe not an implausible one.

And whether that would have longterm implications for his body beyond the scarring would then also be up for interpretation.

If anyone else has considered this / seen explorations of it, I'd love to know!