Thread by @cerbykerby

me, trying to sleep:

brain: okay so since lwj is 27 years old in the shrek-inspired threadfic au and he didn't spend his teenage years in love, wouldn't he have a fatalistic view on love and marriage since his only exposure to it is through his parents?

me:

it's such a tasty thought tho? lwj falling for wwx and immediately deciding that he absolutely cannot marry this man because he has seen how a marriage made in the name of love and protection destroyed his family and he is very conscious of the fact that he is his father's son.

he would rather not have wwx's name in his family registry, wwx's presence in the cloud recesses, heaven's and earth's and his ancestors' and his parents' acknowledgement, and side-by-side graves if it means wwx might go through what lwj's mother went through. 🥹

mama lan's alive in this au, and i think it would hurt her very much inside to see how deeply her baby loves this boy and yet be so terrified of how entrapping marriage can be that he is willing to risk wwx walking away and leaving him at any moment.

and she can't even reassure him, either! she can't say anything about how it's alright and he should marry wwx because clearly he loves him and so on so forth because SHE is his evidence that love isn't enough in a marriage and could even destroy the beloved one.

mdm lan, standing over qhj's grave: look at our son. look at what you did to him. he has anxiety and commitment issues now because of you.

oh man do u guys think that, since mama lan lives in this au, she starts seeing more and more of qhj in lwj as lwj grows older?

like when he was liddol, he was chubby and cute and she had an easier time overlooking his similarities to her husband.

but as he grows into an adult, the similarities become undeniable. he may have her eyes, but he has his father's face and demeanor, and it is very easy for her to see qhj in him.

and what if lwj is aware of this so he starts seeing her less 🥹🥹🥹

she still pesters him to continue visiting, of course, because he's her baby!! she loves him!

but sometimes he does something or has a certain reaction and she hesitates for just a fraction of a second.

and lwj sees it. and he knows.

things get a bit more difficult for her, emotionally, when lwj brings wwx on a visit to the cloud recesses. sometimes she would see the way lwj looks at wwx and suddenly she's twenty years-old again and meeting the lan sect heir for the first time.

but lwj's gaze doesn't linger and follow wwx the way qhj's once had for her. as soon as wwx walks away, lwj drops his gaze to the ground and blinks in a way that she knows, as his mother, means that he's upset but doesn't want to show it and doesn't want her to point it out.

anyways she definitely points it out and then demands that her really tall baby come cuddle with her so that she can pinch his cheeks and tell him that, yes, the way his parents approached marriage was wrong, but that means he'll just have to approach it right.

OKAY GOODNIGHT ♥️

if u guys need more fluff, then pls imagine lwj either picking up mama lan or bending all the way down just so she can give him proper forehead smooches 😚