#canonically jiang cheng gives himself up to be captured by the wens in order to save wwx’s life | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

crossdressingdeath · 4 years

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sorry for barrelling into your inbox to complain about jiang cheng again but it's genuinely so annoying how many people treat his constant verbal abuse towards wwx as a fun quirk or Just JC Being JC. i know siblings can be vitriolic, but jc blaming wwx for his family's deaths, knowing full well it isn't true and wwx already hates himself for it? jc calling wwx a selfish brat who doesn't face consequences after knowing what wwx suffered? not cute. no reason why wwx should let that disrespect fly

like will he get angry, will he flip out because I have done this commendable courageous thing? Oh no, I should find a way to praise him for taking a long hike in the woods too like it's the same thing so he doesn't feel left out. The contrast with other brother pairs is glaring (like I can picture cases when they separate for the public image of the sect, but there still would be no bad blood between them and they'll get assistance) I'm fully converted to your JC is a bad brother agenda, 2/5

even though frankly I don't think that JC ever saw WWX as his brother. Brother like subordinate, yeah, but his brother, nah, WWX isn't adopted and JC never calls him anything approaching brother or even martial brother. Now I have to ask for your top 3 worst scene where JC lets someone down! Can also be a top 5, top 10 or a full ranking lol :p For real, I was mostly meuh about JC but followed a stan a while back and realized that the whole process of writing meta about JC is literally just 3/5

about trying to justify, explain away or dismiss his actions because during the *entirety* of the story, he didn't do or say a single thing that could be seen in a good light... Not without mellowing his character without canon support, giving him the moral skills of a toddler (ongoing genocide or my feelings, what is most important?) or whataboutisms about other people or situations - like even his fans aren't proud of his actions. That or trying to shift blame on WWX by making his golden 4/5

core sacrifice a wrongdoing or an imposition on JC that WWX should be grateful that JC accepts or ever deigns to forgive him about because JC would have be 100% ok on his own... He would not, he was letting himself die of hunger and lack of sleep in enemy territory, and his incapacity of letting go of things trumps that of LWJ or even WWX who lost 3 families and was turned on by everyone in the cultivation world lol. He can be angry about if of, but not seeing it as a sacrifice on WWX part ?!5/5

So much of JC meta (from what I’ve seen on my dash, I don’t go looking for it because fuck that) is fixated on “He saved WWX from the Wens that one time! It was a huge sacrifice! Everything else he did doesn’t matter because he did a good thing this one time!” ...Okay, I’m exaggerating, but it is like... that is one of two good things JC does. He asks his mother not to whip WWX and cut his hand off (which, wow, what a fucking saint, we should give him a fucking medal for not wanting his brother to be mutilated) and he gets the Wens away from WWX. And, guess what? After he gets the Wens away from WWX and faces serious consequences for doing so, he never goes out of his way to help WWX again. In fact, he makes the situation worse for WWX more often than not. I genuinely think that JC realized helping WWX could hurt him in this new life they’d found themselves in and immediately decided he wasn’t worth the effort.

And yeah, WWX spent most of his childhood having to flinch away from any impressive feat he performed, downplay his genius and cultivation talent (or play it up to ludicrous levels so it could be passed off as a joke), out of fear for how YZY and JC would react. Thinking about it, I wonder if that’s why his reaction to LWJ praising him in a way he can’t laugh off or wave away is so... dramatic. He clearly took pride in how good he was at pretty much everything, and rightly so, but I imagine it was always soured slightly by how JC would complain about it, as if it was WWX’s fault that he was in fact brilliant and JC was... not. WWX’s always effusive in praise for JC because if he isn’t, if he doesn’t act like their actions are equal, JC will throw even more of a tantrum about it. And he’ll still throw a tantrum because he doesn’t want to be pitied, except if WWX doesn’t give him that “pity” he’ll be in even more trouble for “showing off”, and... WWX can never win with JC.

And the whole thing with the golden core! It is such bullshit. “He didn’t get consent!” And how, exactly, was he supposed to do that when JC was openly letting himself die and refusing to speak to him?! WWX had to trick him because it was the only way to get JC to so much as listen to him. And, let’s face it, even if WWX had managed to actually discuss it with JC the result would’ve been the same. JC would’ve yelled and screamed about how it was all WWX’s fault that the Jiangs died and that JC lost his golden core and WWX would’ve still given his golden core to JC except with a side order of nonstop guilting over “letting” this whole situation unfold. At most discussing the matter with JC beforehand would mean JC wouldn’t get pissy about WWX not training the disciples (he’d find something else to be a dick about instead! And probably get pissy about him not teaching the disciples demonic cultivation). ...Also there’s a good chance they’d both get immediately captured by the Wens because they were hanging out at the foot of the mountain and JC wouldn’t be able to fight them off, but that’s not the point right now. Also, acting like it’s an imposition that JC got an insanely powerful golden core for free is just... ugh. Oh, pity him, pity him, he’s now got one of the strongest cores of his generation because his brother loved him enough to sacrifice his own! So sad, so hard for the poor boy! I mean, it’s not like JC cares that WWX lost everything so that JC could have a golden core. If he cared about that sort of thing he wouldn’t have stabbed WWX in the gut and called him a traitor to the sects when WWX suggested they stage a fight. I know the whole getting captured by the Wens and having his core removed business must have... sucked. A lot. But that doesn’t mean I’m going to feel bad for him for getting WWX’s golden core.

(On a related note, people acting like JC not telling WWX he got captured leading the Wens away from WWX is some sort of great deed is kinda... Well. Yeah, on this one, singular occasion JC didn’t guilt his brother over something that wasn’t at all his fault! What a great guy!)

Anyway, the only part of the golden core transfer that JC seems at all upset about is that now he’s conflicted about leading an army to slaughter WWX and the innocent civilians under his protection, which really he should’ve already been conflicted about at the very least, so I really don’t see why people act like he’s the victim in the whole situation.

#grapehate #asks #anon

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wantonlywindswept · 4 years

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Catching Lightning in a Killing Jar 1?

/points at the Zhao clan, Wen Zhuliu and Madam Yu’s weird relationship, and Madam Lan

IT’S. FREE. REAL. ESTATE.

aka liz gives jiang cheng pikachu powers 2k20

Anyway I’m not sure where I’m going with this, exactly, so this is a sort of trial run for this story idea? I uhnno lemme know what you guys think.

Canon divergence, there’s capture and torture and Wen Ruohan being creepy, but that’s not new.

----

Jiang Cheng doesn't remember much of what happened after he was captured by the Wen soldiers.

He knows he ran until his lungs burned, until he couldn't breathe, and then he ran some more. He knows he fought. He knows he spit in Wen Chao's face, that he called Wang Lingjiao a whore, and that the Jiang discipline whip--when swung hard enough--can cut to bone. He knows that Wen Zhuliu was ordered to take his core.

He does not know why he still has it.

Chains clink as Jiang Cheng struggles to come back to himself, shifting painfully on a cold stone floor that he doesn't recognize. His head throbs and his mouth tastes like ash; the lashes across his chest and back scream with even the slightest movement. Blood flakes off his skin as he shakily lifts himself on hands and knees, the manacles attached to his wrists and ankles dragging across the ground.

There are well-tailored boots just on the edge of his vision, and the world fades out of focus as Jiang Cheng lifts his head, squinting through the dimly-lit room at the figure towering above him.

The wounds on his body burn, but the blood in his veins runs cold.

"Hello, A-Cheng," Wen Ruohan greets with an indulgent smile. "We have some things to discuss, you and I."

Jiang Cheng stares, and stares some more, until the trembling in his arms grows to be too much and he collapses back onto the ground.

What the fuck.

He flinches as a chair is dragged across the floor; furious at his own fear, he rolls onto his side with a snarl. He glares up at the Wen Sect Leader and wishes he felt more like an equal and less like a butterfly waiting to be skewered.

"My name," he spits, "Is Jiang Wanyin."

"A pity," Wen Ruohan replies, unconcerned. He sits on the chair as if it were a throne, resting his chin in one hand and looking down at Jiang Cheng with a gleam of interest in his eyes. "Being a Jiang will get you nothing, here. Being a Zhao, however..."

Wen Ruohan smiles, and it is terrifying.

"Being a Zhao was enough to save your life."

Jiang Cheng wants to get up and punch him. He wants to tear the smirk off Wen Ruohan's face with his nails, claw through soft flesh until he reaches organs and bones.

He wants, desperately, to run and hide.

"What do you care about my great-grandfather?" he sneers instead.

"The Zhao clan has a very unique lineage," Wen Ruohan replies, with all the strictness of a Lan instructor but none of their humanity. "Although the family is small, and the abilities can skip many generations, it can sometimes produce the most fascinating of cultivators. Like my Zhuliu, for instance."

Jiang Cheng's breathing stutters to a halt.

'Your name was once Zhao Zhuliu,' his mother said to the man who would kill her, while Jiang Cheng watched in stupefied, useless horror and didn't even register the conversation. 'Is the name Wen so precious that you would betray your ancestors for it?'

"That can't..."

"Jiang Cheng," Wen Ruohan says, reciting names as if they were the pedigree of a horse, "Son of Yu Ziyuan. Grandson of Yu Renshu. Great-grandson of Zhao Weizhe."

He leans forward, reaching out a hand to pat Jiang Cheng on the head like he's one of said horses, and Jiang Cheng recoils violently away. But he's too weak to move far; he shudders beneath Wen Ruohan's deceptively gentle fingers stroking through his hair.

"It's lucky Zhuliu felt your core," Wen Ruohan continues, "Otherwise I would have never known that your line finally bore fruit. You haven't accessed your true potential, yet, but I have ways of expediting the process."

His fingers tighten in Jiang Cheng's hair and Jiang Cheng is so fucking stupid, he's no match for the man's power but that doesn't mean he can't resist, he should have never allowed him to get so close--

He tries to scramble away, trembling in rage and nauseating, helpless fear, but Wen Ruohan just chuckles and tightens his grip, dragging Jiang Cheng forward to lay his other hand flat across his eyes.

Power surges beneath his palm and Jiang Cheng screams.

He screams and he screams and he screams, he screams until his throat is flayed raw and he tastes blood on his tongue. He screams until he vomits, until he sobs, hiccuping for air and curling up on the floor like a child with his face buried in his hands.

He did not know that pain like this could exist.

It feels like a thunderclap went off in his head; the reverberations ricochet around inside his skull. It feels like his eyeballs melted from their sockets, and only trembling fingers prove they haven't. It feels like something inside of him has been torn open, the space in his mind suddenly vast and too-silent and waiting to be filled, and he's blind and he cannot see and he can see everything.

When arms lift him from the ground he can only whimper, shivering with his eyes squeezed tightly shut, shying away when the cold iron around his wrists and ankles disappears. His body spasms in the aftermath of agony; it quakes with the rumble of laughter in the chest he's being held against.

"Little Zhao Cheng," Wen Ruohan murmurs, "I think you'll do nicely."

#mdzs fanfiction #jiang cheng #liz writes mdzs #mdzs #catching lightning in a killing jar #for once i thought up the title before the story #go figure #anyway JC is descended from the zhao clan which produced wen zhuliu #and can produce other cultivators with weird-ass abilities #which includes madam lan #BECAUSE SHE'S FREE REAL ESTATE AND DESERVED BETTER #anyway i feel like a lot of this will be original world building plot #and that's a lot of effort to put in if people aren't interested?#so we'll see how this goes #still have other stories to play with anywho

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