Instead Of Flipping A Coin On Who Gets To Be On Top, Criston And Alicent Flip A Coin On Who Gets To Scream

If you could change the fate of one character from The Untamed, whom would you choose and what change would you make?

…just one, anon? Just one?? Do you know the sheer body count of this show???

All of my gut instinct responses are the ladies of CQL, because they all get royally screwed over by the plot for reasons of various legitimacy (they were fridged. let’s be honest here. they were completely and totally fridged)

Jiang Yanli deserved a life outside of the men in her life. Wen Qing deserved to be respected for the leader and healer she was. Lan Yi deserved to be respected as an innovator and a sect leader, regardless of her gender. Cangse-sanren deserved to live in defiance of societal expectation, to love the man she chose, to raise their brilliant, beautiful son together. A-Qing deserved an entire life beyond her not-childhood.

But fate means more than just life or death; changing someone’s fate could mean a version of Jiang Cheng who forgives himself much earlier than canonical Jiang Cheng does; changing someone’s fate could mean a Lan Xichen who holds his blade and spares Jin Guangyao’s life, and never confronts the emotional agony of murdering his sworn brother, never goes into an indefinite seclusion. 

You know what? Fuck it – for novelty’s sake, I’m going to say Wen Zhuliu. Change his fate, and change it early – he never falls in with the Wen Sect, remains Zhao Zhuliu, rogue cultivator, Core-Melting Hand, dark-robed vigilante. He haunts the five provinces; he enacts a cold, unseen kind of justice. He occasionally turns up at Lotus Pier in the middle of the night, silent and shivering and bloodied, and Madam Yu snaps at the guards to fetch a healer for him. He’s almost always gone by the morning. Sometimes, when Madam Yu gets particularly vicious, a toxic kind of violence bubbling low in her gut, resentment and dissatisfaction boiling over, she ignites a talisman and meets Zhao Zhuliu in the woods beyond Lotus Pier a few nights later, and they go night-hunting together, taking aim only at the most ferocious of legendary beasts, the most vicious of vengeful spirits. Their exploits only make their way into public knowledge as gossip and myth, but Zhao Zhuliu is long accustomed to being the subject of both.

He is afforded a terrified kind of respect; he is left alone.

Of course, this means that Jiang Cheng never loses his core to Wen Zhuliu; this means Wei Wuxian never makes his sacrifice, the Yunmeng Shuangjie never experience that particular heartbreak. I’d love to see Zhao Zhuliu interact with Xiao Xingchen and Song Lan, two other rogue cultivators who choose to remain outside of sect politics. I’d love to see him defend the Wen refugees, just glare everyone else into terrified submission with implicit threat. I’d love to see his blank-faced surprise when Wei Wuxian, lead disciple of the Yunmeng Jiang Sect, a boy he’s watched grow up over his erratic visits to Lotus Pier, now a young man he’s seen cut ruthlessly through opponents during Sunshot, shows up in the fragile settlement Zhao Zhuliu’s helped the Wen refugees establish; I’d love to see Wei Wuxian offer to help with that wide, guileless smile of his, and in between building up the foundations of new houses, he breaks down Zhao Zhuliu’s walls, becomes the first to see Zhao Zhuliu for the man he is behind the fearsome reputation, the awful technique.

Would you teach me? Wei Wuxian asks one night, when everyone else is asleep. The cookfire burns low between them, occasionally spitting a spark into the darkness.

Zhao Zhuliu knows exactly what Wei Wuxian is asking. No, he says. After a moment, he adds, but I would consider it.

Why not? There is no hurt in Wei Wuxian’s tone, just idle curiosity as the lead disciple of Yunmeng Jiang leans back to look at the stars, long legs stretched before him.

I’ve always intended for the technique to die with me, Zhao Zhuliu says. It’s just taking longer than expected.

And Wei Wuxian looks at him with those dark, heavy-lidded eyes that have always seen more than he lets on in his carefree, careless demeanour, and Zhao Zhuliu feels seen, inspected, assessed, judged.

He thinks about his solitary night-hunts, the weeks spent in hard, lonely pursuit of brutal criminals on the fringes of society, where sect law wears thin and evil deeds go unreported, unpunished. He thinks about the invisibility of the justice he metes out, about a society that never wanted him, a world that barely tolerates him. He thinks about the suicidal missions and the dangerous night-hunts, thinks about the number of times he’s stumbled back to Lotus Pier in a haze of blood-loss and injury, thinks about how accustomed he’s grown to saluting death as it brushes his shoulder on its merciless path. He realizes that people feared him because he was fearless, and that he was fearless because he’d always expected to die young and unmourned.

Zhao Zhuliu lets out a long breath, one weighted now with the self-awareness that he’s always assumed his years were running out soon, and leans back against the wall of a half-built house, crossing his legs at the ankles and staring up at the stars. Around him are the delicate skeletons of lives he’s saved, lives he’s helping rebuild, living and breathing and laughing proof that his hands can do more than destroy.

Zhao-ge, Wei Wuxian says, eyes closed. Do you think Wen Qing would let us plant potatoes if you suggested it instead of me?

Not a chance, Wei-gongzi, Zhao Zhuliu says, and feels something warm and glowing settle in his chest, like the dying embers of the fire between them, barely visible in the dark.

the suffering never ends

It’s interesting how diseases rip through schools at incredible speeds despite being in an arguably modern, clean(ish) environment. I wonder if it has something to do with the whole “you need a doctor’s note to excuse your absence of even one day” combined with the average price of going to a doctor, the lack of education on things like “you’re still contagious even after the fever goes away”, and the overwhelming message of “if you don’t struggle through it, you’re a failure!”

“how interesting that something so huge and life-changing should happen so early in your life and so late in mine.”

my emmy nominated father and child duo i love them so much i’m so happy and so proud of them ❤️❤️

feeling so normal about this tweet

I don’t really Go Here but u can always rely on this man to read a right wing politician’s outfit for filth

Avavav always has the most interesting concepts

shijie coming for jin zixun’s entire life by first respectfully apologizing to him, then raising him up to the height of pure smugness, letting him haughtily soak in his perceived win for a brief victorious moment, before swiftly and cleanly cutting off his balls in front of all these irrelevant ass men who think they can talk shit about her little brother in her presence is literally the greatest takedown of all time. we stan a queen and her name is jiang yanli.