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c-fandom has this saying that’s like wwx could unscrew s/o’s head when he’s alone but when he’s around lwj, he couldn’t even open a water bottle. it’s the best thing ever for many reasons, and it’s an easy reminder about how deliberate and conscious wwx is about being cared for.
like, that he’s not actually a damsel in distress — that he is very capable, he is the most powerful person in the book (comparable only to lwj) and he is in fact the one that’s usually protecting others and doing the grunt work.
the reason why his constant and purposeful ploys at being a damsel in distress when he’s w lwj work so well is bc by that point in the novel, we know that wwx is OP, unmatched, literally a household name — and it’s w lwj only (other than jyl) that he allows himself to be “weak”
and it’s not weak in a bad sense, it’s about a sense of vulnerability, about him giving himself over to lwj and being like, Here are my soft spots, here are the places that make me hurt, here is my underbelly presented to you, you can do whatever you like to me. it’s unraveling,
it’s about unbecoming, it’s about how when he is w lwj, he does not have to be anything but himself, that he is neither a shield or a sword or an undead thing or a cautionary tale or a nightmare, he can just be as he is, no qualifications, and he knows lwj will care for him,
same thing w how wwx plays around w gender performance when he’s around lwj, right, like how mxtx says even as teens, wwx would sajiao and be coquettish w lwj, that he spoke to lwj in a way he never spoke to anyone else, and that’s why even jc could tell how enamored wwx was;
mxtx is doing a lot of heavy gender work in this novel, and i know i always say i’ll make a thread w receipts and then forget but tldr a lot of the ylz arc is thinking critically about distorted masculinity as posturing, as brash and un-genuine and how wwx uses this distortion +
to his advantage a few times, in a really interesting contrast to how ylz’s actual methods are focused on yin/feminine energies + again the idea of “weapons of the weak” that are generally associated w women. but this is a shrouded thing, bc we see how wwx tries to overcompensate
w that distorted masc mask in public, especially as he gets increasingly unwell, right? but then when we think about how he is w jyl, how he is w lwj, his truest self, the wonder is in how in his second life especially, he has the room to unveil that mask,
to reconsider what it means to be a man, what an ideal masculinity looks like, what ways he can best understand and organize himself in a gendered world. and that’s why we see him playing around w feminization both casually and sexually w lwj,
twisting the dark yin energy that he tried to fight against in his first life into a method of regrowth, the newness that can only come after decay and death, softness and deliberate docility. when he’s w lwj.
so it’s really important to keep this in mind when talking about wwx’s feminization? that it’s not always a kink but a nonsexual thing too, that his many comparisons to women are not coincidental +
and are not solely for the sake of reproducing gender roles, but instead the careful consideration of him embracing femininity more broadly as a freeing thing for him, his yin energy as a source of rest and structure instead of the thing eating him alive.
