guardian, now with ye zun feels!

[green]

warning, I don't do meta, just feels.

I rewatched the last eps, and now I'm about to rewatch them AGAIN with syriala (aka Bee), who is excited and worried and full of feels and I can't help but be full of feels with her. We're watching 33-40 tomorrow if we can.

this icon, the text is coming from The Boy With the Thorn In His Side, because I have Ye Zun feels that haven't been properly expressed yet.


Like, okay I'm coming straight from Teen Wolf fandom, where I have spent years deciphering Peter Hale and writing him as sympathetic and loveable despite his murder spree and (arguably) temporary insanity and let me tell you that Ye Zun has given me all those same feels and turned them up to TEN THOUSAND.

Peter spent 6 years in a catatonic state while aware of his surroundings sorta and in pain, healing cell by cell from a horrible fire, while he plotted and planned how to be safe and also to get revenge for the killers of his pack. He was bugfuck insane when he came out of it, and...

Ye Zun, imprisoned for TEN THOUSAND YEARS. Aware. Minimal contact with others, certainly no skin contact since he had no skin and was trapped in a pillar. God, when I think of how touched starved he would be...

Ahem.

Cruel and unusual punishment. Apparently the Hallows don't care about cruelty. They are very alien. My disjointed thoughts but

YE ZUN! BABY! Taken and abused at a young age and brainwashed to believe his only familial connection left in the world abandoned him. MY TEARS, I TELL YOU. God, but he was treated so badly and of course he's going to lash out - and that's how his power awakes? and he's free but is he really? and then he's NOT.

Okay this is all very random but my feeeeels.

I can't wait for Bee to join me in this angst because I know her well.

God, the ending is such a TRAGEDY. Ye Zun's story is just as much a tragedy as Shen Wei and Zhao Yunlan's. I have this need to bundle them up together and send them for therapy (they ALL need therapy) and healing and hugs. But also darkfic because that's how I roll. I've been writing Steter for years and now here I have Ye Zun to play with and he is a GIFT.

Don't get me wrong, I love Weilan and the angst and utter LOVE AND DEVOTION there is delicious. Just. Delicious. But ughhhhhhhh ten thousand year old tragic baby brother, it is giving me LIFE.

I wrote a ship manifesto for Steter (Peter Hale/Stiles Stilinski) once and one of my main points was that broken people deserve love too. And they don't have to be *deserving* or do anything special to get love, because us broken people have been through shit and that's enough. And that's how I feel about Ye Zun except he just makes me cry and laugh and I love himmmmm...

Ugh but how touch starved is Shen Wei, for reals? I mean, I know I'm jumping tracks here but I feel for Shen Wei being who he is, this untouchable powerful being who no one really cares about on a personal level until Zhao Yunlan and god now I need fic with touch starved Shen Wei.

*cries*

Comments

[lynndyre]

Heeeeeeeee YES THIS

Like, on the one hand, ZYL/SW OTP. On the other hand SOMEONE PET THE PRETTY MURDER-BABY BROTHER HE NEEDS A HUG

Everyone needs a hug. All of them. *smooshes together* The touch starvation is so strong.

[green]

I TOO WILL SMOOSH THEM TOGETHER.

I'm so glad I'm understood. lol

<3333

[lynndyre]

Like, I'm pretty sure Ye Zun both wants to hurt Shen Wei and also cling all over him and hiss and refuse to let go like the feral creature he is. (Which just makes me want Zhao Yunlan petting them both)

[green]

as they used to say I AM INTERESTED AND WOULD LIKE TO SUBSCRIBE TO YOUR NEWSLETTER

[kimboo_york]

I am piling on to say: SAME

[qikiqtarjuaq]

Pretty Murder-Baby is such an on-point description of Ye Zun. His story really is tragic the more you think about it. I keep wondering if things would be different if Shen Wei hadn't fallen into a deep sleep and had more time to talk to Ye Zun in the pillar. He was already pretty far gone in the flashback with his hatred and brainwashing, but I felt like he was still redeemable at that point.

[lynndyre]

Every time I went to screencap from ep35 I ended up back on that scene of his powers manifesting and he's just so angry and scared of EVERYTHING-- I agree, I would love it if they had talked more, been awake together, just something to put them on the same page, because yes.

[extrapenguin]

My brain has decided to "solve" this dilemma with an OT3. After all, Ye Zun thinks that everything gege has, he should also have, including Zhao Yunlan. This has the bonus of the murder dumpling getting hugs from *two* people.

[green]

I am on board with this. :D

[extrapenguin]

\o/ I have *so many ideas*, you wouldn't believe. Ye Zun gets to reconcile with his brother and get help with his weapons-grade Issues! He gets cuddles and food!

[green]

Hooray!!!

[lynndyre]

Everyone gets more hugs! It's win-win, really!

[kimboo_york]

thanks for making me all the cries, holy shit. YES. All of this. I have lurked in the TW fandom for years and I adore Peter FOR ALL THESE REASONS and now you've made this connection to Ye Zun and I cannot unsee it and and FEELSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS

I really need to track down a Ye Zun icon. I love yours, I love the brothers together. UGH. *sobs*

[green]

Peter is my second favorite TW character, right after Stiles. I adore him. <333 But yes, ugh, FEELS.

I'm making icons! I am sure to have a bunch of Ye Zun in my next batch because my love must be rendered in icon form. lol

[mecurtin]

tell her about your theory about the perfect Ye Zun pairing! she must joooooinnnnn ussssss!

As you probably know, I was never a big Peter Hale fan. BUT: Loki. I really love Loki, y'all, and he's a LOT worse than Ye Zun.

[green]

Aww, I LOVE Loki. (big surprise)

[kimboo_york]

Ahhhhhhhh!!!! You mean the PERFECT YE ZUN PAIRING OF PAIN AND JOY??!?!?!

Wherein Ye Zun, somehow being dragged back to Haixing with (or even without!) ZYL and Shen Wei and discovers Zhang Shi, the OTHER eternally old Dixingren, an entity who has lived for 10k years "up top" through cunning, deception, and kindness and is now in the nubile former-body of ZYL b/c of ZYL's dying request? The same human body Ye Zun shamelessly flirted with when he was trying to trick ZYL into thinking he was Shen Wei? The body of the man who loved his brother? YOU MEAN THAT PAIRING?

Okay. :D

At some point now, though, someone is going to have to write fic where Ye Zun and Loki cross paths and...hold on, I'm having a moment...

[green]

niiiiiice

[teaotter]

Yes, please, to all of that!

[green]

I just have so many feels!

[demitas]

YES HELLO FELLOW STETER FAN. I had not linked Ye Zun and Peter in my brain yet and now I have, so thank you for that! I think!

I have some unresolved Ye Zun issues that I am slowly working through because OUCH episode 38 still hurts but yeah, I can 100% appreciate these feels. I am not there on my rewatch and am dreading 35-40 a little bit, but given how much more I've been getting out of the earlier episodes on 2nd watch, I'm sure I'll get a boatload more feels from them this time around.

(Also yes 1000% yes to touch-starved Shen Wei pretty please!)

[green]

so thank you for that! I think!

HAHA You're welcome. *bows*

I'm going to have to work on this touch-starved idea. :D

[ranalore]

So, here is a thing I said to Boni before I watched the last three episodes of the show, when we were discussing Zhu Yilong's surprise that people liked Ye Zun so much:

Zhu Yilong has clearly not heard of the woobification process, for which Ye Zun couldn't be a more ideal candidate if they tried. And I mean, I really, really don't condone him eating people and instigating genocide, and maybe the last three episodes will reveal new information about his past that makes me feel more strongly that he deserves eternal punishment/death. Where things stand now, though, he kind of never stood a chance. He was clearly only not dead because the rebel chieftain found it useful to have a whipping boy, he thought his only living family had abandoned him, he spent every second of every day in extreme survival mode, these are worst-case torture conditions. These are Stockholmed hostage conditions, and especially if the rebel chieftain got him young enough (and my personal head canon is that he and SW are late teens when ZYL meets them in the past), he never stood a chance. That is just stuff he can't help. I mean, the Hallows may have their own kind of intelligence, but none of that was stuff they were going to see when they neutralized him. My question is, has the government of Dixing left him in the pillar, and told him he deserved it, because of those things? How much did those who established said government really know? Is his imprisonment part of Everything That's Wrong With Dixing? If so, why does SW agree with it all when he wakes up? Or did YZ tell a different story, so the Dixing government believe he's worse than he really is, and SW's not about to upset the balance of, basically, everything by freeing him? So many possibilities.

~~~~

Basically, YES, somebody get that boy ALL the hugs. And then therapy. Lots and lots of therapy.

[green]

This has given me more feels, omg. I'm going to bed now but yes, oh my heart. Thank you for sharing.

[ranalore]

And now that I've discussed the Hallows with people more, I think they may indeed be sentient, but they are alien, by which I don't just mean extraterrestrial, but perhaps entirely unrelateable by humanoids, and it's possible they didn't empillar Ye Zun for his crimes, but they analyzed his power and made the unilateral decision that it needed to be contained. And then they put Shen Wei to sleep as the only other existent power that might be able to neutralize Ye Zun's power should their containment fail, and perhaps, in their conception, containment is mercy, but... And by the time Shen Wei woke up, all of the atrocities of both rebel leaders had been attributed to Ye Zun, probably, and he might even have come to be superstitiously blamed for all the misfortunes that befell Dixing (and the scattering of the Hallows themselves), and by the time anybody bothered to talk to him about any of it, he was inclined to both claim credit for all of it and threaten more. This is my working theory of the moment, at any rate, for why Shen Wei would wake up and come to believe Ye Zun deserved empillarment, and I think poor Ye Zun at that point is just willing to be the person his brother most hates, just so Shen Wei feels something for him that's equal to his obsession with his brother, and I'm hurting my own heart now so I'll stop.

(Could I commission a personal Ye Zun icon? I'll pay in a drabble, if so. Ye Zun or Weilan, one-word prompt.)

[green]

Oh my god this makes SO much sense and it hurts my heart, too. I was making notes for a possible AU fic based on the bb!Ye Zun ficlet I wrote and I need him to still be empillared (*adds to dictionary*) but I needed a reason WHY... and ohhhh if it's his power and not his actions, that makes so much sense and ughhhh I love it, I'm totally going to see if I can work with that. If that's okay with you.

I am happy to make you an icon of dubious quality, no drabbles required! Do you have something specific in mind?

[ranalore]

I need him to still be empillared

Oh, no, this makes me so pre-emptively sad!

I'm totally going to see if I can work with that. If that's okay with you.

Oh, that's not original to me, I think it was mecurtin who came up with it first, and then a lot of us have just been...adding to it (might be winter_blossom who came up with the containment due to power). Really, the part that's mine is the reasoning as to why Shen Wei and all of Dixing would come to believe Ye Zun deserved being stuck in a pillar for 10K+ years.

I am happy to make you an icon of dubious quality

Yay! Really, I have no ideas, except I love his long white hair, and maybe a time when he's looking a little more uncertain/frightened/sad, as opposed to just, you know, genocidal (though I do love that look, too).

[green]

Is this one okay?

[ranalore]

YES PERFECT. Dear god, look at him. Sweet murder cupcake.

Thank you so much!

[green]

You're welcome! :D

[extrapenguin]

I actually was meh to dislike on Ye Zun until the final episodes and upon reflection.

Other things I have also sort of thought about in relation to people's reactions to Ye Zun are restorative vs punitive justice and people's inclination to empathize. In a punitive framework, he's a murderous villain and deserves to be punished; in a restorative framework, he is someone who needs rehabilitation (and thus therapy); for someone who empathizes with him (a necessary step in rehabilitation), he is a victim of a lot of shit and deserves therapy. Point of view and inclination.

[extrapenguin]

I 100% agree that Ye Zun was part of the tragedy of the ending, and wish that he'd been treated better in canon, and that fic would give him redemption arcs.

I'd actually argue that Shen Wei is merely touch-hungry, since we see him kinda-hug Professor Ouyang while escorting him out of that alcohol-serving establishment, and I imagine he'd get in some occasional touching with how connected he is. Ye Zun, on the other hand... I wonder whether he'd have just completely given up the fight if someone had given him a hug.

The Hallows are cruel and I am ... not at all convinced that the correct response is to hoard them, vs destroying them. The SID has dixing power suppressing handcuffs, just destroy the Hallows and handcuff Ye Zun if the pillar breaks! Then you can decide what to do with him! - Weilan is a nice ship, so maybe they can be together and send the brother off to therapy? Ye Zun needs the most therapy, followed by Shen Wei. (Zhao Yunlan has his issued, but they're more "normal" issues and less "we need a team of dedicated specialists" issues.)

[green]

Ye Zun, on the other hand... I wonder whether he'd have just completely given up the fight if someone had given him a hug.

Ugh I love this.

I love it all. <3333

[extrapenguin]

I reeeeally want to write some touch-starved Ye Zun now, but I have an assignment to write before I can let my id fly free... (But, like, Ye Zun gets a hug! Ye Zun gets his hair ruffled! Ye Zun gets fed! Ye Zun gets to sleep in a cuddlepile! Ye Zun learns that it's possible for people to be nice to be each other!)

[green]

YESSSSSS