#but jiang cheng IS selfish. deeply so. that doesn't mean he doesn't care for others

[trans-xianxian]

saw a post about how jiang cheng isn't selfish because he's done all of this stuff for his loved ones and it's like yeah. jiang cheng loves very deeply and that's. exactly why he's selfish. jiang cheng being selfish doesn't equal jiang cheng being heartless or unloving. his goals are to selfishly keep his loved ones, most notably wei wuxian, to himself at the expense of their own personal autonomy. when jiang cheng goes to the burial mounds and begs wei wuxian to give the wen remnants up and come home, he does it because he loves him, but he also does it because he's a selfish coward who puts his own wants for wei wuxians safety and companionship above wei wuxians personal wishes and the lives of the wens. these things are not mutually exclusive in fact they are intricately connected

#obviously wanting someone to be safe and together with you is not selfish on its own #but demanding they achieve that by abandoning their goals #instead of by finding a way to help them and keep them safe #is #and I don't blame jiang cheng for not being able to help #just like I don't blame lan wangji for the same thing #but jiang cheng IS selfish. deeply so. that doesn't mean he doesn't care for others #or that he never acts selflessly #I can think of many times he acts selflessly! and yet he is still selfish #jiang cheng stans please free yourself from the belief tgat he has to be perfect in order for you to love him he Does kind of suck #and thats good it adds flavor #ghost posts #text #jc #wwx #yunmeng bros

[sword-dad-fukuzawa]

26 thru 29 for the writer asks?

REYNIIII TY!!

Weird Asks

26. How do you get into your character’s head? How do you get out? Do you ever regret going in there in the first place?

This depends largely on what the piece of media is. It's pretty easy for Genshin/PGR characters because I can just go through their voice lines and character stories in order to get a handle on their "voice," but for book and anime characters, it's a little harder. Voice acting certainly helps, and revisiting their media helps too so I can get a handle on their speech patterns, tics, and inner monologue.

But if I'm being honest, it's less that I get into a character's head and more they get into mine. If I write a character-centric piece, it's because they appeared one day in my brain's orangerie, sat down at the wrought iron garden table, and started talking--and wouldn't shut the hell up until I wrote what down they were saying XD. I fancy myself less a writer and more a translator or transcriber sometimes.

They get out of my head once they've exhausted what they need to say. Otherwise, they're stuck in there.

I honestly don't regret this. I think my most genuine pieces are the ones where I was just a voyeur to a character's narrative, hastily writing down everything they did in order to turn it into something later.

27. Who is the most stressful character you’ve ever written? Why?

DAZAI. DAZAI DAZAI DAZAI DAZAI, DAZAI MOTHERFUCKING OSAMU.

I hate hate hate this man so much because he's so difficult to write. Not only does he occupy a very strange space in BSD's narrative--both an active participant in the plot and yet watching it happen, both confined within the story and yet manipulating it from the outside--but he has a very complicated relationship with his own identity that is nearly impossible for me to conceptualize! Like.

He hates himself. He knows he's necessary. He thinks he's not human. He's the most human of all. He's not human in the least. He loves his friends. He's saving them because he was told to. He cares about Chuuya. He hates Chuuya. He wishes he was dead. He refuses to die. Like c'mon man gimme a break!! I can't handle all that complexity in a 5k word fic!!

I read the entirety of No Longer Human on a follower's recommendation in order to try and capture his "voice" and it only halfway worked. I dislike writing OOC BSD characters so Dazai is extremely stressful.

28. Who is the most delightful character you’ve ever written? Why?

I answered this for Quinn with Venti, but I also want to say that Jiang Cheng is absolutely delightful to write about for the opposite reasons.

Without spoiling any of thee plot of MDZS--current timline JC? He's an asshole, he's selfish, he's emotionally constipated and unable to process his grief. He hurts people. He himself is hurting. He loves his brother. He hates his brother. He wants to rewind time and he knows he can't. He pretends he doesn't care but also he cares deeply, cares perhaps more than anyone else in the book with maybe a couple exceptions. His particular cocktail of anger issues and neuroses are absolutely delightful to explore, worsen through angst, or attempt to alleviate.

29. Where do you draw your inspiration? What do you do when the inspiration well runs dry?

Prophetic visions that just come to me randomly! This means my writing is inconsistent and variable and I'll have months of very little writing. Like right now.

When the well runs dry, honestly, I just wait it out. This is my recharging period, my time of absorbing and processing The World in order to regurgitate it later when the mood strikes again. I know that the inspo fairy will come back eventually, and there's no use agonizing about it or forcing myself to write things I know I'll hate later.

Other than the visions, I take inspo from stuff I read, quotes I hear, my own experiences...and occasionally the concepts of my friends :)

#reyni :0 #ty again! #weird asks