#jiang cheng meta

[in-danmei-hell-send-help]

I think what kills me about Jiang Cheng antis is that a lot of their talking points reek of anti survivor rhetoric. As someone who is a survivor and has done a lot of advocacy for victims and survivors of power based personal violence, I want to be the first to inform you that the narrative of the “pretty survivor” (which is steeped in cishet normative, white supremacist, and ableist ideas) is an extremely rare case. Trauma survivors are rarely pretty. The Wei Wuxian’s of the world are incredibly uncommon. 

Trauma--especially intense, horrific trauma like what Jiang Cheng went through--often leads to intense issues of anger and hatred. It makes you deeply emotional and can often lead to you becoming unstable. Jiang Cheng lost his entire family and community in the span of a few years. He didn’t have access to therapy (something that literally anyone would need to heal from that), he had to rebuild his entire sect, likely had to fight an uphill battle in order to be a significant part of Jin Ling’s life, all while cleaning up the mess that Wei Wuxian left behind.

This is not to hate on Wei Wuxian, he’s my third favorite character (after Jiang Cheng and Lan Wangji) and I love him deeply, but he left behind a legacy that Jiang Cheng had to clean up. Whether or not he realized this would happen, Wei Wuxian created a cultivation path (gui dao/ghost cultivation) that is extremely dangerous and horrific. While I still don’t know if I believe that Jiang Cheng killed every demonic cultivator he came across, I don’t know that it was necessarily a bad thing that he did kill them. We’ve talked a lot in the cxc server about gui dao and demonic cultivation and just how much it harms the mind and body. Wei Wuxian is the exception to the rule in having such control over it and even he eventually succumbed to it. If demonic cultivators are causing great harm, then a cultivators job is to stop that harm and the source of it. That may mean killing the demonic cultivator. I think people get mixed up when (I think it was Jingyi) said that Jiang Cheng kills the wrong person. I believe it was @twilightarc-gm who said that “wrong” doesn’t imply innocent but rather the fact that the person isn’t Wei Wuxian. We know that Jiang Cheng spent thirteen years trying to find Wei Wuxian and when he does find him, he doesn’t kill him despite having literally every reason to.

Like idk y’all, if the guy that got my entire clan wiped out, my sect burned down, and caused the deaths of my sister and her husband died and came back from dead, I wouldn’t just threaten him with a dog and yell at him. I would kill him. But he doesn’t he has every opportunity to in multiple instances after confirming that it’s Wei Wuxian, but he never does. He seems more interested in dragging Wei Wuxian home (literally stating that he’s going to bring Wei Wuxian home to Lotus Pier to kneel before his parents’ graves). Like that doesn’t imply that he’s going to kill Wei Wuxian, but rather make him repent. 

I think it’s telling that despite a lot of Jiang Cheng’s hurt and pain, he still chooses to not severely hurt or kill Wei Wuxian, it would be within his right to do so, but in the end after it’s all over, he let’s Wei Wuxian go. He doesn’t tell Wei Wuxian that he sacrificed himself for him, because he knew that Wei Wuxian would feel guilty and obligated to him, just like Wei Wuxian knew Jiang Cheng would feel guilty and obligated. That to me shows a survivor choosing to break the cycle of hurt and pain and I have to question why Jiang Cheng antis so often choose to ignore the side of him that does love Wei Wuxian (it’s up to the viewer whether they see that love as romantic or platonic), enough so to let him go and not burden him with pain.

Jiang Cheng’s story and character arc is at it’s core about trauma, survival, and rising above dire circumstances despite the odds. He attempts the impossible and manages to succeed in it. And to ignore that is a disservice to his character, survivors of trauma, and the effort MXTX put into creating such a complex and interesting character.

#Jiang Cheng #canon jiang cheng #jiang wanyin #mdzs #mo dao zu shi #yunmeng shuangjie #the untamed #cql #this sounds like a fucking essay #tell me u were a lit major without telling me u were a lit major #mdzs meta #jiang cheng meta #stop being shitty to characters that are ugly victims #it's fucking telling to a lot of survivors that u aren't a safe person #and that u don't care about survivors if they aren't a 'good' victim #news flash #the way abusers isolate their victims is by acting like pretty survivors #if ur gonna pull the the shit u do #and say with ur whole chest that characters like jc are irredeemable #then maybe don't say ur a safe person for people with trauma

[fubuwu]

The way they are making shit up just to justify insulting us for having jc as our favorite 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

Difference is, when we criticise wwx, it's never done out of hate for the character and his fans. Neither do we go directly to wngxn posts to shit on the main ship.

All our criticisms are fair because wwx did make mistakes. He is morally gray. A morally upright person would not raise the dead out, knowingly tear their souls out of rhe reincarnation cycle and brutally torture people in the name of vengeance.

As valid as he was for all that, it doesn't make him morally pure. Remember, lwj himself was horrified by what wwx had done initially and what he was becoming.

Those are valid criticisms of a character, as opposed to the made up, over exaggerated fanon bs you all make about jc.

You all want jc fans to be the problematic bullies so bad when it's not us jumping on people's fanfics, appreciation posts and hcs, and dragging people's name through the mud, is it? *glances towards the more recent Twitter drama*

Also, there is just so much wrong with all these takes op made, which makes it so clear to me that they only read the book from wwx's pov....

Implying jc spat on wq and wn's help when he did try to speak up for them in the conference.... Implying that he never loved wwx unconditionally despite willingly putting his life on the line for him numerous times.... Fuck out of here!

#jiang cheng #Jiang cheng meta #Also the insults in the tags and throughout the post is just vile #Jc antis need to grow tf up and touch grass #It's funny tho because someone in the comments said they had never come across rant posts like this from jc fans lmaooo #Probably because we don't obsessively hate over fictional characters like op and other jc antis do 🤣🤣

[ultfreakme]

Look I’m not going to say Jiang Cheng is not an absolute ass for deciding to lead the siege to Burial Mounds where he KNOWS only like a bunch of old people are there. BUT. They won’t have been fighting Wei Wuxian plus like 50 people. They’d be fighting Wei Wuxian’s corpse army which, btw, KILLED HUNDREDS IF NOT THOUSANDS OF PEOPLE.

and also:

Jiang Cheng thought Wei Wuxian had complete control of the corpses and had no reason until Nightless City to consider otherwise(this information that he learned while his sister was bleeding in his arms)

He has no clue when Wei Wuxian had control, and when he lost it, so for all he knows, Wei Wuxian was in perfect control when Jin Zixuan died and the whole Qiongqi path thing happened. That entire event is now personal for Jiang Cheng. His brother-in-law, his sister’s husband-- just died.

Then, in the middle of the confusing and messy fight in Nightless City, Jiang Yanli got hurt, in Jiang Cheng’s view BEACUSE of Wei Wuxian like he’s screaming at Wei Wuxian “I thought you could control this” and when he finally manages to gain some control, Jiang Yanli dies anyways.

Throughout his attempt at controlling the corpses, both Jiang Cheng and Wei Wuxian are scared for JYL, panicking, neither of them are in the right state of mind and WWX is trying to make things better, make this work, and he’s realizing he’s lost control but he can’t say that. This is his thing to fix so he says “I don’t know” and tries. But it isn’t enough.

So Jiang Cheng still doesn’t know the extent of Wei Wuxian’s control.

By the time the Burial Mound siege happens, Jiang Cheng is grieving, angry, most definitely being influenced by people like Jin Guangshan and Nie Mingjue’s discussions, and also has his personal grudges against Wei Wuxian because in his eyes, Wei Wuxian is why his sister and his brother-in-law are dead, and why is his nephew is an orphan. He also knows the kind of damage Wei Wuxian’s demonic cultivation can do.

So yeah, we the reader know that Burial Mound Wen remnants won’t cause any harm. We know they stand no chance and are innocent and they are being unfairly targeted when by all accounts the sects should’ve only aimed for Wei Wuxian by their dumbass logic that Wei Wuxian purposefully killed Jin Zixun and his lackeys with personal motives(once again, Jiang Cheng doesn’t know that event was a set-up for Wei Wuxian to be framed).

But after Nightless City, Burial Mounds + Wei Wuxian is seen as too powerful. All of the people leading the siege had different motivations. Jin Guangshan just wanted to get rid of the Wens and Wei Wuxian and Nie Mingjue has a personal grudges against the Wens for what happened to his family.

Jiang Cheng’s has little to do with the Wens and is almost entirely about Wei Wuxian. After Wei Wuxian’s death we know he has this obsession with demonic cultivators and specifically thinking Wei Wuxian is still alive. Burial Mound was all about his grief and mourning.

Was it right that he doesn’t give a shit about the Wens? Nope.

But he wasn’t marching in because he was gung-ho about torturing and destroying Wen remnant lives, like we have canon evidence where Jiang Cheng’s the type to kill and keep going. Wei Wuxian’s the ‘make the death linger and torture’ type. I doubt he gives a shit about them.

By this point even if Jiang Cheng thinks Wei Wuxian was losing control, he’s already labeled demonic cultivation as the absolute worst thing ever because it’s the reason why his remaining family got killed. This entire siege was about Wei Wuxian for Jiang Cheng.

And we know Jiang Cheng didn’t kill Wei Wuxian. The events surrounding the Burial Mound siege are so fragmented.

(side note: Jiang Cheng was there in nNghtless city when JGS was declaring they’re going to do the siege and people say ‘oh how dare Jiang cheng do nothing and condone this, how awful’. Lan Xichen was there, he was cool with it. So was Nie Mingjue. The first time this ‘let’s kill the Wens and wwx’ happened, it wasn’t solely a JC effort. It was a JGS thing. It only became a Yunmeng-Jin led siege when Jiang Yanli died, which of course it did a Jin heir and a hugely important Jiang died.)

I’m not saying Jiang Cheng was justified like you’ve gotta be an ass to go into the siege ready to kill innocents and what happened was a tragedy. He was also wrong in not trying to defend their lives in a moral sense. But the siege wasn’t just him hating wei wuxian for unjustified reasons, it was a tragic falling out built up throughout the book.

#jiang cheng meta #yes he was directly responsible but like if you're holding Jiang Cheng responsible for the siege- NO ONE ELSE WAS STOPPING IT EITHER #if you're hating on jiang cheng saying he's a monster because he approved of it #consider everyone else who approved- like lxc and nmj to the same standards too

[thejhambs]

Karma in MDZS - Part 2 - Sandu

Part 2 of 3

Part 1 | Part 3

Sandu: Three Poisons

This is the name of Jiang Cheng's sword

What is the reason for birth, according to systems that believe in the concept of karma? According to buddhist theory, there are three root causes for being stuck the samsara of life and rebirth. These three things are ignorance, attachment, and aversion.

Ignorance, on a very basic theological level, means not understanding that the cycle of life is a trap meant to keep you on this earth. Ignorance leads to you trying to understand, curiosity that you think can only be satiated while living. But, the worldly life does not satiate this ignorance, it just leads to more questions.

Material attachments can include ambition, the need to prove yourself, the need to get something that has been inaccessible, or the need to protect something that you are possessive of.

Aversion is hate. Dislike. Aversion leads to being born with dislikes, the need to eliminate something from earth, the need to get revenge, holding grudges.

These are the three poisons, or Sandu. In this post, I'm mostly going to focus on Sandu, how that impacts Wei Wuxian, and how the Jiangs are a metaphor for WWX's worldly attachment.

WWX's experiences in life are interesting. He's born to loving parents, and experiences love, but they die early on, and he lives in the streets. Then, he's found by Jiang Fengmian. To him, Jiang Fengmian saved him from the life in the streets, and so, he owes a debt of gratitude to the Jiangs.

There are 4 Jiangs and imo, the way they treat WWX lines up with the three poisons.

Jiang Fengmian is material attachment. The reason he finds Wei Wuxian, is because of his attachment to Wei Changze. Before dying, he tells WWX to take care of JC. He treats WWX as an investment for his son, making Wei Wuxian more and more in his debt so that Wei Wuxian could go on to be Jiang Cheng's right hand man. You can see this in the names he gives Wei Wuxian and his sword. Wuxian - without envy, so that he lives without being envious of JC. Suibian - As you please, so that Wei Wuxian does as the Jiangs please.

Jiang Yanli is ignorance, she and Wei Wuxian love each other as siblings, and would do anything for each other, but Jiang Yanli doesn't know the kind of situation that Wei Wuxian was in, she tries to help him without a full understanding of the situation he's in, and this ends up killing her.

Yu Ziyuan is aversion. She hates Wei Wuxian, sees him as an extension of Cangze Sanren, who she was jealous of and hated. She consistently abuses Wei Wuxian, and curses him till her dying breath. Her legacy is carried out by Jiang Cheng.

Jiang Cheng, the one with the most complex relationship with Wei Wuxian, is all three things, but in this case, he is especially aversion

WWX is attached, not just because of the debt he owes to them, but also due to the love he has for them. He takes the abuse dished out by Yu Ziyuan, he does his absolute best in the sect, and becomes head disciple, and he takes care of Jiang Chen and Jiang Yanli as though they are his siblings.

Wei Wuxian's first life is about how he gets rid of the three poisons in his life, each with a heavy sacrifice.

Attachment

When the Jiangs are attacked, and Jiang Fengmian and Yu Ziyuan die, Wei Wuxian's debt now goes to their heir, Jiang Cheng. When Jiang Cheng loses his core, Wei Wuxian deliberately pays his debt back by giving Jiang Cheng his core, and to him, this means starting a new, more equal relationship, where he can do things for Jiang Cheng without it being a matter of debt repayment. Sort of a relationship where they can forget about the tallying of who has done what for and to whom (no thank yous and sorries between us).

In this way, he sort of removes himself from material attachment. He gave away the source of his pride, the embodiment of his hard work, his most prized possession, away. He got rid of his worldly attachment. Jiang Fengmian's death is a metaphor for this riddance. You can also see that Wei Wuxian stops using his sword. He stops doing as the Jiangs please.

Aversion

Then, comes aversion. The example of aversion is very clear, it is with the Wens. Wei Wuxian hates the Wens. They killed the closest thing he had to a family, they caused him suffering by throwing him into the burial mounds, and they caused an entire war. He is ruthless with them, killing them on sight. For some reason, Yu Ziyuan's death exacerbates the hatred within Wei Wuxian. Possibly because Wei Wuxian's aversion was not strong before she died. Possibly because her legacy was carried out by Jiang Cheng, who seems to cheer Wei Wuxian on whenever he tortures the "Wen dogs".

Wei Wuxian, though, has 2 Wens who saved him and protected him. He owes them a debt. After the war, he chooses to save them from the Jin camps, to protect them. He moves them all to the burial mounds, where he gets closer to them, and so, his hate for them gets removed. This is around the same time that he cuts off ties with the Yunmeng Jiang clan, and Jiang Cheng.

Ignorance

The last sin for Wei Wuxian, Ignorance. With his ignorance, his curiosity about the world, Wei Wuxian creates a whole new system of cultivation, which he has shown interest in from the time we first see him in Cloud Recesses. I'm not saying that Wei Wuxian wasn't in a desperate time, I am saying that it was his soul's chosen destiny to create ghost cultivation, and the circumstances forced him to do so because of this chosen destiny. And, this chosen destiny shows ignorance to be rectified.

In his first life, Wei Wuxian does not practice Ghost cultivation in the most ethical way. We know that his cultivation is best for corpses with extremely high levels of resentful energy, so most corpses just aren't fit for him to control. So, the way he handles this is by taking corpses with low levels of resentment, and putting them in a blood pool full of high resentful energy. In fact, even the tiger seal amulet works in the same way, except faster.

When Jiang Yanli dies, Wei Wuxian sees the havoc that his own creation, the fruit of his ignorance, the tiger seal amulet has created, he decides to destroy the tiger seal amulet. After he succeeds, he dies, the last of poison in his life, removed.

#MDZS #Mo Dao Zhu Shi #grandmaster of demonic cultivation #gdc #mdzs meta #mo dao zhu shi meta #grandmaster of demonic cultivation meta #gdc meta #karma #wei wuxian #wei ying #wwx #wwx meta #Jiang Cheng #sandu shengshou #JC #Jiang Cheng meta #canon jiang cheng #wangxian

[piosplayhouse]

In the end, even the way Jiang Cheng mourns is dog-like. After years of dulling his teeth on hens pecking on his brother and sister to guard them the only way he knew how, his molars grew infected and inwards. Loss spreads like rot and itches flare without reprieve-- a dog without a cone will always bite at their stitches. And so, Jiang Cheng mourns like a dog, chasing after the blood-stained memories of a time he had a purpose. Reopening wounds to remember the scar.

#idk what this means actually i was just thinking about how my dog got his teeth removed like a week ago #jiang cheng #jiang cheng meta #jiang wanyin #jwy #mdzs #mo dao zu shi #gdc #the grandmaster of demonic cultivation #cql #the untamed

[lgbtlunaverse]

I know that because the story takes place after wwx comes back jiang cheng's whole "i don't believe wei wuxian is actually dead i'm gonna keep obsessively looking for him" shtick got retroactively legitimized, but it is pretty important to remember that wei wuxian was in fact super dead the entire time and if it hadn't been for a depressed 20-something doing a suicide ritual, influenced to an unknown degree by a revenge plot that wasn't in play yet at the time of wwx's death, he would never have come back at all. And jiang cheng would've kept going "No! He's still out there I know it" for eternity with absolutely no proof or results.

Jiang Cheng, my man, what the fuck

#local man finds new and exciting means to cope with grief in the absolute worst way possible #jiang cheng: wei wuxian is still alive! he's somewhere out there! #jin ling: ok jiujiu let's get you to bed #mdzs #jiang cheng #wei wuxian #mdzs meta #yunmeng shuangjie

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

I'm a doctor, not a miracle worker.

[First] Prev <–-> Next

#poorly drawn mdzs #mdzs #wen ning #wei wuxian #wen qing #jiang cheng #Truly Massive disclaimer here: I am a Jiang Cheng enjoyer. I like his character. I enjoy that he is very flawed and volatile. #This episode of the audio drama has a lot of great breakdown scenes featuring JC - and they all deserve a feature. #But underlying this comic is a small meta comment of 'ah man I have too many comics of JC just wailing sadly' #My goal is to draw 6-8 comics per episode - I sometimes have to truncate and cut good scenes out. #Especially when a large majority is just different flavours of trauma and toxic relationships to your self-worth. #I would also like to make a note here that just because you lose the ability to do something that is very tied to your core identity- #-does not mean your life is over. It will feel like the end of the world. It will send you into a spiral of grief. It will hurt so badly. #Sometimes we do not realize how tied up our identities can be in certain things until we are cut loose. #You don't lose yourself. I promise the pain will fade in time. I promise you will find other things to tether you. I promise you will be ok #Life moves forwards. Time moves forwards. You move forwards. #Ego death just means an opportunity for ego rebirth. You are never committed to being the same person forever. #To wrap this around to JC: Yeah I love the twist with the core transfer but man I would have loved to see JC accept the loss. #Obviously it happens for a reason (story) but I can have my AUs. I can have these 'what-ifs'. #described in alt text #I'm trying it out! *please* give me feedback - I want to eventually Add image ID to all of these comics one day

[enby-axels]

imo reducing the jiang clan dynamics to "wei wuxian was only a servant, never family" undermines the tragic reality that he was both. his position was a dubious, unclear thing, complicated by his debts and the jiangs' varying intentions.

jiang yanli had called him her brother and treated him like one in direct defiance of their class differences and her mother's words. jiang fengmian had seen wwx as a replacement for his parents, not a son, as evident in his passive refusal to defend wwx and his prioritization of his actual son's life. yu ziyuan had seen him as an arrogant servant transgressing class norms and threatening her son's position, and she had consequently scapegoated him at every turn. jiang cheng, the youngest, inherited all of their sentiments in one way or another.

the love was there, it was not enough. so mdzs concludes the jiang clan sub-plots by having jc let wwx leave. that's important. he chose to let to go of the yunmeng shuangjie promise, the oath of fealty. because wwx's position with the jiangs — a brother, yet also a servant, an outsider, never an equal, certainly never a son, bound by duty — made a mockery of love. i think that's more tragic than him being solely a servant and nothing more.

and not to make this lan wangji (actually, everything is always about lan wangji), but that's why it's so important that wwx found a home in him, in a relationship that has no need for debts like "thank you" and "sorry."

#mdzs #mdzs meta #my meta #wei wuxian #jiang yanli #jiang fengmian #yu ziyuan #jiang cheng #wangxian #relationship analysis

[gardensofthemoon]

Jiang Cheng is so. Is just so. He’s WWX’s shidi. His Sect Leader. His brother. His not-brother. His best friend. His enemy. His executioner. His most important person. His chance at forgiveness. His childhood sweetheart. His estranged acquaintance. His wife. His ex-wife. His home. Always, always his.

#chengxian #wwx perceives him as this sum of all these boxes he put jc in #bcs he still can’t see jc as a person #wwx loves jc so much but the way he loves him is uh. malegaze-y. jc is so loved and so objectified #sometimes i feel like wwx treats jc the way a misogynist treats a woman(?) #assuming what he thinks assuming he knows best assuming he’s the only one who can protect him. denying his agency and his personhood #and it comes from a place of love? of so much love. and devotion. and obsession #uhhhh this got out of hand #im not good at writing meta #jiang cheng #deep into cx brainrot send help

[rejectedfables]

in awe of the donghua for slapping "Jiang Cheng had to give up his dogs as a child so that Wei Wuxian could live with him in Lotus Pier" into the same episode as "Wei Wuxian refuses to give up the Wen dogs Clan Remnants so that he can live with Jiang Cheng in Lotus Pier".

Really hammering that nail home about how Jiang Cheng has repeatedly given up everything he reasonably can for Wei Wuxian, and how Wei Wuxian (with one major exception) simply does not do the same. Wei Wuxian does whatever he thinks is right, and does not evaluate the collateral damage of those choices.

His major exception, his one major sacrifice that's done explicitly for Jiang Cheng, is something that he grapples with for the entire rest of the story and which Jiang Cheng is barred from knowledge of until the end, preventing Jiang Cheng from being able to feel that there's been any kind of reciprocity between them. From his perspective, he has given and given and given while Wei Wuxian has simply done whatever the fuck he wants forever, and the second that interfered with the Jiang Clan he... simply left the Jiang Clan. From his perspective, actively prevented from knowledge that would prove him wrong (which he WANTS, by the way, he WANTS to be wrong), Wei Wuxian has taken and taken and taken, and then fucking left.

Anyway they're both right and they're both wrong and I love their messy complicated relationship and the donghua's choice to put these two scenes back to back was HUGE brained

#mdzs #mo dao zu shi #jiang wanyin #jiang cheng #wei wuxian #mdzs meta #the grandmaster of diabolism #grandmaster of demonic cultivation #JC antis can clown on my post if you wanna but that won't protect you from osteoporosis or shingles

[whetstonefires]

Underrated element of where Jiang Cheng is re: wwx after everything is that they always had a sort of dual relationship. Two different relationship premises, superimposed on one another.

There's the one where they grew up together, as close as brothers, beating each other up and complaining and being one another's closest companions, sharing a bedroom as kids and eating at the same family dinner table, actively encouraged by Jiang Fengmian to interact as equals.

And then there's the one where Wei Wuxian was in service to Jiang Cheng's family. Not as a servant--Jiang Fengmian absolutely refused to do that, even if he couldn't adopt him. But as a disciple of Jiang Cheng's father and recipient of his charity, as Jiang Cheng's future right hand and most trusted subordinate.

It's a vertical relationship, intimate in its own way but with very strict expectations about what obligations flow in what directions; they are not identical and reciprocal as between friends and equals.

(It's my opinion that Jiang Fengmian's core deal was a deep-seated discontent with the hierarchies he was at the top of, without access to any way to actually deconstruct them or even coherently articulate his opposition. Wei Changze was his dear friend, and no one thinks that's a good enough reason for him to treat Wei Changze's son like his own, because Wei Changze was also his servant, and you can't make that circle square. That's not a way you're allowed to love.)

Jiang Cheng and Wei Wuxian were like brothers; Wei Wuxian served Jiang Cheng.

The personal relationship was always the most important one. To them, in their hearts. But it was the other one that was real, that had weight in the world.

And it's important to understand that neither can be held up as more factual than the other, even though they conflict. Both relationships existed, and had power.

So then when Jiang Cheng chose to hate Wei Wuxian and articulate his grudge against him, he chose to do it in the language of fealty. Because as far as he knew, his case there was secure, watertight, and it wouldn't expose him emotionally or politically.

And those are the terms in which he's been condemning him all this time: for abandoning the Sect, for ingratitude, for lack of loyalty.

For fuckups, too, and poor judgment, but some of that now turns out to have been justified and some of it was mostly the fault of enemies behaving badly, or even Jiang Cheng himself allowing himself to be pushed into making unworthy choices.

And it was all for his sake.

The thing, the thing in my opinion, about what Wei Wuxian did, about the core transfer and his silent self-destruction around keeping it secret, is that that is a hideous thing to have done between two people who love each other, as an act of love. Beautiful, but awful. As the man who was like a brother to him, Jiang Cheng has a great deal of standing to object to it.

But as an act of vassalage, it's basically perfect.

If Wei Wuxian were only what he formally was to Jiang Cheng, if he is interpreted through a lens of fealty and obligation, he did exactly what he should have done, and went beyond what duty actually required. And went to his death silently, allowing himself to be judged, taking all the burden on himself rather than let harm come to his lord.

Like, obviously Jiang Cheng was harmed by the part where Jin Zixuan got manslaughtered and Jiang Yanli walked into the line of fire in situations where Wei Wuxian was resorting to violence and probably shouldn't have, but those are one step removed from the core issue. In terms of Wei Wuxian's intentional choices around Jiang Cheng himself, at the times he was feeling betrayed and abandoned Wei Wuxian was in fact being impossibly, poetically loyal, an absolute cliche about it.

But only in terms of the hierarchical form of their relationship.

Which means that even though Jiang Cheng has a lot of reasons to still be mad at Wei Wuxian, his actual complaints that he's centered for thirteen years are basically wiped out by the revelation of Wei Wuxian's sacrifice.

Wei Wuxian was in fact doing the tragic hero loyal vassal thing, which very much includes being misunderstood and slandered by the world. (Chenqing as a name choice absolutely references this expectation, and the idea that Jiang Cheng specifically will never understand that Wei Wuxian was trying to help him first and foremost all along; he is not subtle.)

The debts Jiang Cheng has been spitefully calling in and considering defaulted were already long paid.

So if at this point Jiang Cheng keeps pursuing that same line of rhetorical attack, now that he knows, he'll be putting himself morally in the wrong, and he knows it. But if he pivots to something else, he'll both be signalling the shape of that secret to the entire world and looking like a prize idiot.

Which is already how he feels.

To actually address the remaining grievances between them, which are considerable, would require releasing those safe, open grudges to Wei Wuxian's face and then reclaiming him as a loved one. Which is, one could fairly say, more than anyone could expect.

Which is why Wei Wuxian told him he didn't have to.

Which leaves Jiang Cheng at something of an impasse.

#hoc est meum #jiang cheng #wei wuxian #mdzs #meta #their vertical relationship was always the secure one #the one they could put into words #the one Jiang Cheng could COUNT on #and it's gone and it's what destroyed everything between them #the other relationship could be salvaged in some form #but jiang cheng would have to WANT to #and ofc he does but does he want it enough to choose to? #when wei wuxian isn't choosing him? #and ofc wwx doesn't feel jiang cheng is his to choose #the timing of the revelation is so ironic because imo #wwx spends a lot of the book processing his grief for himself #and the life he had before #and his relationship with jiang cheng #and he let it go and accepted he could never have it back after the debacle at Lotus Pier #only for jiang cheng to be forced to reexamine everything basically immediately lmao #but like wwx is not in a place where he can meet you halfway anymore jiang wanyin #he JUST got closure #it's too soon to go cutting open scars on a man who never lets himself grieve if he can help it #because if you grieve you stop and when you stop you die

[dani474]

Tell us your theory on why he says that PLEASE. I don’t think it’s true they have to fix things 😭

So, this post points out a huge flaw in Wei Wuxian's response and its discrepancy to what we know of their relationship in canon. The Golden Core transfer is one of MANY things they need to discuss to get past their estranged, brittle, slightly obsessive relationship.

When we take a close look at why Jiang Cheng is so angry and so hurt here, it's not just about his family or any debt Wei Wuxian might have had to his parents. Ultimately, it's about Wei Wuxian's promise to remain by Jiang Cheng's side. He lost his parents and their entire sect, then he lost his own core trying to protect Wei Wuxian (who doesn't know!) then his "martial brother/brother/best friend/whatever" not only goes missing for three months but returns with new powers and new issues he won't share with anyone. Not even Yanli.

Jiang Cheng wanted to protect Wei Wuxian but was unable to due to larger political circumstances and the fact that he didn't know about the transfer. He didn't know why Wei Wuxian was using demonic cultivation! He warns Wei Wuxian again and again that there are larger risks of his cultivation, and he turned out to be right. Trouble found Wei Wuxian even when he ran off and hid peacefully! And he never knew why.

To Jiang Cheng, Wei Wuxian asking to leave the sect -- regardless of whether or not it was to protect them from further scrutiny by the other sects -- is him asking to leave Jiang Cheng's side. To break their promise without any explanation. He already lost so much and all he can see here is losing another person he loves.

I want to drive that point in, really.

Any insecurity Jiang Cheng feels over Wei Wuxian's capabilities is often outweighed by his sense of responsibility towards rebuilding his sect and attempting to protect what remains of the family he had before the attack on Lotus Pier.

He didn't want to tell Wei Wuxian about why he lost his golden core for the same exact reason that Wei Wuxian kept the surgery a secret. They didn't want to hurt each other with the knowledge of such a great sacrifice. A sacrifice no one would have ever asked of either of them, no matter what was "owed." The Transfer was experimental and pretty much something no cultivator would even attempt. That's what made this choice so risky and so hard to account for.

Neither had any real way to weight the risks and consequences of this situation, and by never talking about it even during a tearful argument, we got canon events. (I've seen people talk about how Wei Wuxian's circumstances meant he had very little else to choose but survival, but this is true for Jiang Cheng too.)

And really. They both tried so hard to survive. And yet, when faced with terrible choices, they chose to protect each other. Putting their cultivation on the line to save each other's lives is not something anyone would normally do. Duty could have been a factor, but in my opinion, it wouldn't have taken Wei Wuxian that far. It wasn't even a factor in Jiang Cheng's.

And I think this is why people feel so put off by Wei Wuxian claiming it was done out of duty to the Yunmeng Jiang family. But it doesn't start with him. Their entire confrontation starts out with Jiang Cheng questioning what the sect meant to Wei Wuxian, if everything they gave him (everything they were to him) was worth nothing. This is almost entirely a projection of what Jiang Cheng asks when he cries. What he really feels is hidden in questions about martial duty.

"Why did you not tell me?"

For all his words, it was less about their sect and so much more about Jiang Cheng feeling like he was worth nothing to Wei Wuxian.

We know this. But Wei Wuxian doesn't.

I didn't notice it immediately, but Wei Wuxian's whole thing is deflection. It's about telling small truths and laughing things off or forcing himself to forget entirely. By the end of their confrontation, he does it again by asking Jiang Cheng to let it stay in the past, now that it's out there, but this does nothing to reduce the tension. It just deflects it again.

I think Wei Wuxian's response to Jiang Cheng's questions was to focus on what he thought was most important. Duty, debt to the Yunmeng Jiang. It was a deflection from what was really wrong. He didn't want to address his own complicated feeling, much less try to untangle whether Jiang Cheng hates him or loves him, so he doesn't.

Whatever broke between them wasn't about duty of any kind. It was about sacrifice, and the pain of carrying its burden alone. It was about loving someone enough to do something so drastic and never being able to say it.

Jiang Cheng hearing that the transfer was out of duty hurts him deeply, because he doesn't know that Wei Wuxian loves him. But Wei Wuxian doesn't know that's what Jiang Cheng is looking for. He hears the first part of their confrontation and responds to that.

Not, "Why did you never tell me?" But 'Did the Yunmeng Jiang mean nothing to you?'

Those are two different questions.

Wei Wuxian is trying to tell Jiang Cheng that it did mean something. That Lotus Pier's destruction, the Jiang parents and Yanli's deaths mattered to him. He's trying to release Jiang Cheng's burden without realizing that, by saying it had nothing to do with him, he's saying that Jiang Cheng didn't matter enough.

This is not how Wei Wuxian feels, we know this. But, again, Jiang Cheng doesn't.

They're talking right past each other, and because of all their other issues, they not only don't realize it, but might never be able to truly address it. They're so used to keeping their feelings hidden from each other that they can't even see how much they, as individuals, matter to each other.

TL;DR.

Both of them love each other and couldn't say it because of their complicated. Well, everything. Instead, their misconceptions cause them both to focus on the wrong things at the wrong time. By asking about what the Yunmeng Jiang meant to Wei Wuxian, it hides what Jiang Cheng really wants to know: if it was done out of love and protectiveness as his sacrifice had been. By focusing on this deflection, Wei Wuxian hides his own feelings by placing duty to the Jiang sect in highest importance. He gives the answer that he thinks Jiang Cheng wants to hear.

So, no, I don't think Wei Wuxian wasn't telling the truth (or at least not the full truth) either.

In the end, this is not what either of them actually wanted from the confrontation and does very little to address their actual emotional issues. All it really does is open the door for something to change in the future.

#asks #mdzs #wei wuixan #jiang cheng #golden core reveal #meta #my post #mine.txt

[amorphousgenderlesscryptid]

Something something Jiang Cheng and Nie Huaisang both losing their entire families to horrible violence and betrayal

Something something Jiang Cheng and Nie Huaisang both having the responsibility of leading a clan thrust on them before they were ready

Something something Jiang Cheng and Nie Huaisang both devoting their adult lives to revenge and looking down the barrel of their futures after Guanyin Temple, not knowing who they are without their anger

Something something Jiang Cheng and Nie Huaisang being the only people who can truly understand each other

#the untamed #chen qing ling #cql #mo dao su zhi #mdzs #jiang cheng #jiang wanyin #nie huaisang #sangcheng #untamed meta

[nutcasewithaknife]

Wen Qing is just So Much. She's a leader doing her damned best to protect her people. She's a sister desperately trying to protect her brother. She never managed to kill her heart, risking it all over and over out of kindness. She is so impossibly kind. She is so horribly guilty. She cannot bear to ask for help. She can't do anything but ask for help to save her people, her brother. She can never forgive herself for letting wwx throw himself into the whole mess. She can barely live with the knowledge of what she turned her brother into out of a selfish desire to have him by her side. She is helpless and detests it. She's the best doctor in the land. She takes Jiang Cheng’s comb and keeps it till she thinks she's lost the heart and hope it gave her forever. She understands only too well what it means to give everything to protect those you're in charge of. She looks at the brother she gained, whose home she plucked out of him along with his core, and understands only too well what it means to give everything to protect those you're in charge of. She still loathes what she let him do, what she did for them; instead of culling her guilt, it only increased it tenfold. She is so tired of fighting, because the cost is no longer her; everyone who tries to pull her out gets sucked in as well. Her hope is so tattered at the end that she walks towards death with her people following and her brother's hand in hers. She smiles at the end, still fighting, still hoping that she can protect at least one of the people she cared for. How can one person carry all that and not buckle under its weight? Just. She!!!

#im rotating her in the blorbo microwave all the time nowadays help #wen qing #the untamed #cql #meta #wen sibs #burial mounds #wei wuxian #wen ning #jiang cheng #mdzs

[viterbofangirllovestheuntamed]

So.

According to @demiace-wen-ning​‘s iconic post, every MXTX novel has:

A red/black, morally ambiguous, all-powerful bastard man

A fan wielder who is much more than meets the eye

And a fucking Jiang Cheng

Now we, as a collective fandom, have decided with our communal braincell that in SVSSS, the “fucking Jiang Cheng”™ character is Liu Qingge. And on the surface, this seems Right and Good:

HOWEVER! I posit that these aspects are only the most superficial and external aspects of the vast and multi-layered Dagwood sandwich that is fundamental “fucking Jiang Cheng”™yness. “fucking Jiang Cheng”™ has LAYERS. And for all that I love Liu Qingge, I love him in the same way I love the Sonic franchise’s Knuckles the Echidna:

This is emphatically NOT how I love Jiang Cheng. Furthermore, this is demonstrably NOT the sort of character that a fandom becomes viciously divisive about. This is the sort of character you either like or dislike and move on with your life because he is not deep and complex enough to Die On This Hill for defending. (This is a Feng Xin or Nie Mingjue sort of character.)

So what makes for a “fucking Jiang Cheng”™ character? What are the quintessential “fucking Jiang Cheng”™ characteristics that result in a complex and divisive character? I propose:

ambiguous/unexplained actions

refusal to explain motives

canon selfless actions missed or negatively interpreted

socially over-conscious while still socially detested

harsh and contemptuous outward behavior

honestly, naturally is an asshole, but holds back just enough to get away with it

hard-working but overshadowed by upstart prodigy

childhood trauma that fundamentally affected behavioral patterns

aggressively focused on their cultivation and consequent social status

secretly heartbroken about a perceived betrayal regarding the protagonist

yay, war crimes!

These attributes all describe Jiang Cheng. All but the last one describe Mu Qing, with the second-to-last applying in a way where HE is perceived as the betrayer. None of these attributes describe Liu Qingge. But you know who they DO describe in SVSSS?

Shen Jiu.

The ORIGINAL Shen Qingqiu.

An undeniable asshole who nevertheless gets punished for every good deed he ever did, who clawed and scraped his way to the top of the cultivation world and ensured he stayed there no matter how many bridges he had to burn or enemies he had to make along the way, who acts like a bitter tsundere to the person who matters most to him because said person broke their promise and never explained why, whose childhood was a never-ending parade of trauma and abuse that molded him into a harsh and suspicious individual, who (though we don’t find out until the extras) shows no sexual interest in anyone, whose own path to cultivation was so difficult and traumatic that they could not stop themselves from jealously lashing out at the heaven-blessed prodigy standing right next to them.

Shen Jiu is the TRUE “fucking Jiang Cheng”™ of SVSSS, and I cordially invite any haters to bring it on because this is My Hill and I am ready to fight for it.

#jiang cheng #liu qingge #mu qing #shen jiu #original shen qingqiu #svsss #mdzs #tgcf #comparisons #parallels #mxtx #meta post #MOD'S STUFF #NOT coincidentally this is exactly why shen jiu is my svsss fave after shen yuan's SQQ who is such a hilariously snarky marshmallow

[wutheringskies]

it's funny how everyone wants wei wuxian and lan wangji to solve each of their problems. jin guangyao died? jin ling, lan xichen and jiang cheng must be so sad. how can wangxian run away leaving them alone? all of these three just saw how wei wuxian's first life ended manipulated by the jin sect, and so far in his second life, he's already been faced with a seige.

people are like: wei wuxian only shows big displays of love? hah! who was the one who kept encouraging, protecting and defending jin ling? who fought jiang cheng's own insecurities for him, and wiped his tears? who let lan xichen talk and talk and not take up the slightest grudge, even withholding information that will break him? which brother was hurt the most by his sect, and which brother maintained a caring relationship towards his sibling? which guy was constantly blamed for the fall of a sect he wasn't even in and disrespected by jiang cheng? which guy did jiang cheng try to ridicule by insinuating he had sexual relations with mo xuanyu?

lan xichen never investigated into jin guangyao's crimes! jiang cheng never investigated into xue yang despite his hatred of demonic cultivators! he never called anything out. poor jin ling spent all his life, surrounded by utter filthy people.

should wei wuxian and lan wangji now stay to give him a talk? what can they say? lan qiren literally planned to drag lan wangji back to gusu and put him into seclusion! you think wangxian will stay a second longer in the cultivation world and end up being blamed for more things they never did?

wei wuxian is a bad uncle ? yet, he's the only one we see caring and bonding. what place does he even have? he was jiang yanli's junior martial brother, and left the sect. how can his relationship to Jin ling be the same as what jiang cheng or jin guangyao is? how can he go and demand to be with Jin ling when he can literally do nothing?

what can Lan wangji do for his brother? tell him it wasn't his fault he never thought to check deeper into what he already knew? tell him it wasn't his fault for sharing everything about even lwj's personal life to an outsider?

should lwj leave wwx out on the fence for his brother? should wwx leave lwj for his not-nephew nephew and ex-martial brother?

did lxc ask lwj to stay? did jiang cheng ask wwx to stay?

nope!

then why aren't they allowed to leave? why is it such a crime that just like how everyone focuses on their lives ONLY, they now finally focus on each other.

#wangxian #canon wangxian #mo dao zu shi #mdzs #wei wuxian #lan wangji #canon jiang cheng #my meta #my thoughts