I love when a character allows themself to be hurt when it’s preventable, not because of anything but that they’d rather them than anyone else.
I love when they take the load of multiple people on their back because it’s better one be hurt than loads. Even if that one ends up shattered.
I love the look of horror on friends’ faces when they realize what had been done. What had been done for them.And all the character can do is smile sadly.
I love when a character knows what they’re getting into. They know how much they’ll hurt. They know they’ll be begging and crying and pleading for it to stop. They know there’ll be parts of them that regret the decision. That wish they had left the others in the dust to suffer instead. They know they’ll likely never be the same again.
Whumpee surrenders themself to Whumper to save Caretaker’s life.
As soon as they do it, Whumper smiles wide and starts laughing. Caretaker was never the one in danger, they were the one Whumper needed. And Whumpee is how they’ll make Caretaker cooperate.
After they’ve had a little fun with their new hostage, that is.
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.
time travel, fix it, angst, whump, captivity, hostage situations, threat of torture, hurt everybody, temporary character death, hurt/comfort, emotional hurt/comfort, tearjerker, feels, you will cry, self-sacrifice, POV multiple, adorable juniors, traumatized juniors, adorable a-yuan, qiongqi path ambush canon divergence, family feels, future reveal, jin zixuan lives, jiang yanli lives, wen remnants live, golden core reveal, found family, jiang sibling feels, pining, idiots in love, love confessions, first kiss, cuddling & snuggling, platonic cuddling, qi deviation, golden core surgery, baby golden core, wei wuxian is a good dad, lan wangji is a good dad, communication, nightmares, PTSD, panic attacks, wedding, adoption, cynophobia, wei wuxian’s fear of dogs, puppy therapy, healing, recovery, fix it, epic, parent-child relationship, father-son relationship, happy ending, favorite
(You may wish to REBLOG as a signal boost for this author if you like – or think others might like – this story.)
I’m a sucker for self-sacrifice. When the whumpee offers themselves to be hurt instead of another person because they don’t deserve it and the whumpee knows that they themselves can handle it better than the other person because they’ve gone through it before. Or when the whumpee shoves someone out of the way of an attack and gets hit instead. All the pain and angst that follows just gives me all the whumperflies.
Whumper is draining whumpee A of blood for an experiment; whumpee B steps in so whumper can take their blood instead
Whumper has been experimenting heavily on whumpee A; whumpee B sees that A is declining quickly and offers themself for whumper’s experiment
Heroes and villains:
Villain has kidnapped sidekick and is torturing him; hero takes sidekick’s place, knowing that sidekick can succeed him as hero
Sidekick saves hero from villain’s attack and gets gravely injured; hero snaps but has to decide between attacking villain and taking care of sidekick
Villain kidnaps civilian and threatens hero with civilian’s death; hero rescues civilian knowing that it’s all a trap and villain just wants hero dead
Supervillain orders villain to kill hero; villain makes the fatal choice to save hero instead
Immortality:
Whumpee becomes a royal bodyguard; when whumper kidnaps the royal to execute them, whumpee volunteers instead, but neither the royal nor whumper know that he’s immortal
Whumper threatens whumpee’s team; immortal whumpee makes a deal: whumper will kill him once for every team member that was saved; only whumpee knows that he can only come back to life a certain number of times
Magic/curses:
Inhuman whumpee has their scales/feathers/blood etc. harvested for a spell to find others like them; whumpee decides to kill themself so the magic won’t work
Whumpee has been cursed and is very sick; caretaker can’t bear to see whumpee suffer and manages to shift the curse so they’re the one dying instead
Team whump:
Whumpee is on the run with a team and for whatever reason their affiliation with the group puts everyone in extreme danger; whumpee gives themself up to whumper to protect everyone
Whumper gives whumpee an enchanted dagger, telling him that his soul is the only thing that will save his team; whumpee stabs himself to save everyone
