jiang cheng is a funny character because i fully support either liking him or not liking him, but i see so many takes (especially when he shows up in a supporting role in fic) that seem completely unhinged until i pin down which of what i consider the fundamental facts of his character are just not being applied at all.
it’s like:
1) this is not a mentally well guy, especially after Plot starts happening, and he spends the entire story getting less okay. the only time we ever see any improvement happen in jiang cheng is when wei wuxian piths himself getting the guy out of his suicidal phase, causing many more problems going forward but fixing that one. jiang cheng is not okay and it’s all downhill.
2) he cares so fucking much. like you can write a jiang cheng who is a deeply selfish bastard and you have an excellent textual basis, but it's not because he doesn't care about other people, at least the ones that are his; that's a different kind of problem than the one he has.
he would in fact be less of a problem a lot of the time if he cared less, because he does not have the emotional management tools to be useful about it. also the narrative is conspiring against him but like.
(there are a lot of ways to be selfish and jiang cheng and lan wangji are actually remarkably similar in the basic type of selfish impulses they have. they just have very different childhoods and values shaping how they act about it. and then lan wangji manages to become a mostly functional adult, while jiang cheng is generously an electrified pile of bad coping mechanisms. he's functioning! but like. at what cost.)
3) jiang cheng is dutiful. even the most selfish jiang cheng is someone who perceives and values himself in terms of his function and obligation; he and wei wuxian have different personalities and worldviews, and for that matter expectations placed on them, but they both learned that lesson, presumably together.
4) sort of an extension of 1 and to a lesser extent 2, Jiang Cheng is emotionally insecure as a base state. his parents made some major errors, at least half of which should have been avoidable except they would have had to deal with their own shit first.
it's not out of the question, in a different lifetime where he didn't get several years of compounded irresolvable traumas as his coming-of-age present and then left alone to stew in pain and denial for over a decade, for him to have learned to handle it better and even mostly get over it! that could have happened! it just didn't.
to an extent he's insecure about different things as a grown man than he was as a boy, life experience makes a difference. he's built confidence about some things and become absolutely shattered about others. but he's a person who is easy to wound, in all kinds of complicated identity-related ways, especially by Wei Wuxian specifically, and his kneejerk response to that is to lash out in reply, whether the wounding was intentional or not.
the fact that Wei Wuxian spent most of their lives giving every evidence of being completely immune to being harmed by this reaction masked its toxicity until things got real ugly real fast.
jiang cheng absolutely has the capacity to not do this! it's a deeply rooted bad habit, not actually a fundamental of his character. but it requires self-awareness, will, and (if he's going to keep it up) a lot of practice. it's not the kind of thing that just goes away on its own, even with a bunch of alterations in context.
i don’t have like a closing argument here i just keep finding that takes on jiang cheng that don’t work for me, whether generous or condemnatory, always seem to disagree with me on one of these main points.
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for real WHERE does the idea that [utdr humans] are nongendered so that "you can project on them" come from. their literal character arcs are about NOT being a blank slate to be filled in by the audience
i think i understand the assumption on some level for undertale, because there is a very intentional effort to make you identify with the "player character" in order to make your choices feel like your own (the beating heart of undertale's metanarrative lies in giving you an alternative path to violence against its enemies after all, and whether you're still willing to persue it for your own selfish reasons. YOUR agency is crucial).
of course, the cardinal plot twist of the main ending sweeps the rug from under your feet on that in every way, and frisk's individuality becomes, in turn, a tool to further UT's OTHER main theme: completionism as a form of diegetic violence within the story. replaying the game would steal frisk's life and happy ending from them for our own perverse sentimentality, emotionally forcing our hand away from the reset button.
i think their neutrality absolutely aids in that immersion. but also, there's this weird attitude by (mostly) cis fans where it being functional within the story makes it... somehow "editable" and "up to the player" as well? which is gross and shows their ass on how they approach gender neutrality in general lol.
but also like. there's plenty of neutral, non PCharacters in undertale and deltarune. even when undertale was just an earthbound fangame and the player immersion metanarrative was completely absent, toby still described frisk as a "young, androgynous person". sometimes characters are just neutral by design. it's not that hard to understand lol.
anyone who makes this argument for kris deltarune is braindead. nothing else to say about it.
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i’ve woken up in a hotel room
my worries as big as the moon
having no idea who or what or where I am
something good comes with the bad
a song’s never just sad
there’s hope, there’s a silver lining show me my silver lining - first aid kit, silver lining
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I’m not sure how to word my sadness while scrolling through the qsmp tag this morning. There was only one person that I saw (well I saw other people mentioning them as id blocked them about a week ago lmao) stiring the pot and being negative/racist while most others were either reacting to the cesspool that is Twitter or that one person which was kind of creating an echo chamber of worry/negativity.
Unfortunately there isn’t really anything we can do about the assholes other than block and move on. Don’t engage with them as they are looking for that. They want outrage and drama.
The only thing we can do is be extra positive towards the ccs. Encourage them, make more fan content supporting their rp choices, engage in the fandom in a positive way to drown out the negative.
The qsmp is very special. Don’t let the ass holes ruin it for you. Take a break from Twitter if you need to. Block people and report them for hate speech if need be. Be a positive force to counter the negativity
Forever and Cellbit were talking about cross banning everyone shitting on Bagerah and I think that is the best way we can also proceed. Don’t give the assholes any attention. Don’t argue with them. Just block and move on/continue supporting the ccs.
Please don’t let this fandom turn into the dsmp fandom
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