#jiang sibling feels

Summary:When Sizhui, Jingyi, and Zizhen are captured with Jin Ling at the Guanyin Temple, they’re sure that Hanguang Jun and Wei Wuxian will fix everything - until Su She stabs Lan Wangji through the stomach, and everything falls apart around them. In a last, frantic attempt to undo the damage Jin Guangyao has done, Wei Wuxian activates a deadly array to send the four juniors back in time, sending them to the morning of Jin Ling’s one-month celebration. With the fate of everyone and everything they love in their hands, Sizhui, Jin Ling, Zizhen and Jingyi race to prevent the ambush at Qiongqi Pass and the subsequent fallout, but Jin Guangyao has returned from the future as well, and he has no intention of letting what he wants fall through his hands a second time.

My comments: Okay, wow, this was so epic, it’s hard to break down. The gist of it is that the four juniors get sent back in time from a moment of utter tragedy and overwhelming loss to fix the future. So they’re all pretty fucking traumatized from the get-go. (Future Jin Guangyao is a complete and terrifying psychopath.)

If I had to pick 3 tags to describe the story it’d be WHUMP, H/C and BONDING. So, author doesn’t hold back on the violence, which I fully endorse and devour. (I might have rated this one an M, actually, just for graphic violence and stressful situations.) Everyone gets a turn to be utterly beat up if not straight up tortured. POV is multiple, and that includes everyone (I never expected to admire and empathize with Jin Zixuan so much!). BUT, before you run away screaming, know that there is soooo much comfort and healing and bonding going on, throughout whatever the current trauma is (there are many) as well as after. I did a quick search, and there are 102 uses of “I love you”, and it’s not limited to wangxian. wwx says it to jiang cheng and a-yuan and all the poor time-travelling teens who have just lost everything and everyone in their entire worlds and suddenly are only a few years younger than their ‘fathers’. The juniors say it to each other and their dads. jyl says it to everyone. the lan bros say it, the nie brothers say it. Everybody is just so fucking supportive and trying so hard and they just have faced what a world could be like if they DON’T communicate, and so by god, they’re not gonna go that route, and also, no one’s gonna let them forget it.

I really, really loved how all the time travelers latched onto their 'parents’ and the relationships that they grew: with them, with their families and with their itty bitty counterparts. It highlighted the Juniors’ innocence (and trauma) to be compared to people only a few years older and yet so much more mature and experienced because of having been through the war.

So. An epic, plotty, TASTY time travel fix it that features everyone and the way they all fit into each other’s lives, getting into situations that are truly terrifying that have NO EXIT, being hurt and watching it happen to people you love, and lots of escapes-by-the-skin-of-their-teeth-and-please-god-are-they-still-breathing. It’s an excellent and satisfying balance.

Summary:  What was so special about Wei Ying that Jiang Cheng’s parents expected him to become a guardian of Lotus Pier?

Or: Baoshan Sanren’s lineage has a special talent, one that Wei Wuxian inherits. No one is quite sure what to do with a dragon, least of all Lan Wangji.

My comments:  Ah, this story just grabbed me by my heart and didn’t let go. Wwx is kept by the jaings SOLELY for the use he can be to them as a defense-dragon, and he’s never allowed to forget it, which is horribly abusive. Jyl and jc adore him, though, and don’t like how he’s treated.

He gets a taste of a different life during the cloud recesses stint, when people just like him… including lqr, who figures him out right away and becomes a mentor. And lan zhan… lan zhan makes him warm and fuzzy and dumb, and lights a nascent little bond within him.

But then shit utterly hits the fan as canon progresses, and some terrible things happen, and choices are made by various people that have horrific and unintended consequences, and wwx ends up coreless in the burial mounds, struggling to survive.

There’s a lot of focus on the close bond between wwx and his siblings in spite of how the jiang parents treat him. Throughout the story, he struggles to understand that he can be accepted for other reasons than his ability to fight and die, and there can be family for him - and a home - just because he is wei wuxian, and for no other reason.

I am warning you now: you will HAVE FEELINGS.

Excerpt:  “We’re going to be late!” Jiang Cheng said impatiently. He put his hands on his hips and glowered threateningly up at the lanky dragon halfway up the tree. “Do you want to keep jiejie waiting? Maybe I’ll tell her you didn’t want to come!”

Wei Wuxian made a protesting noise, tipping sideways in his haste to slink to the ground. He caught himself in time, somehow, and briefly dangled upside down from the branch, frozen cautiously in place and not quite sure how he’d managed it.

There was an ominous crack. He peered at the branch, realizing too late what was about to happen, and then squawked when it broke and sent him hurtling to the ground.

He landed with a boom that shook the earth, the broken branch held safely between his front paws as he blinked dazedly at the sky. Jiang Cheng loomed over him with a deeply judgmental expression.

“That was embarrassing to watch,” he said.