#scared jiang cheng | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

oneeyedoctogod · 7 months

Text

I promised I'd share the notes I had on what happened after the end of my fic We'll Build A Dynasty (one the heavens can't shake) and since today is my birthday I thought it'd make a fun treat (for you and for me :P)

Under a read more because this is LONG. And I guess it has spoilers for the fic itself too, if that matters haha.

So here we go! These are the main "questions" I left unanswered on purpose.

Does Wei Wuxian ever let his practice of the ghost path become known again?

Yep. Honestly the way I see it, the only reason the sects had a problem with it in the first place was because Wei Wuxian was the son of a servant. They never had any problem reaping the benefits of his inventions (all of which were a result of his new cultivation) so since Wei Wuxian now has the legitimacy he lacked in his first life, they might grumble about it if they’re particularly uptight but he’ll never become the reviled Yiling Patriarch.

In any case I don’t see Wei Wuxian disregarding an entire path (and the very very useful things that come with it) just because he can use his sword again. He’ll just balance both because he is that good. The ghostly path will also seem a lot less powerful since Wei Wuxian doesn’t have a good reason to raise an entire army of the dead, and the Yin Tiger Tally never was created. So that's one less difficulty to face.

(there will always be rumors of course, but he’ll never confirm them one way or another and the Wen aren’t stupid enough to let such a secret out, both because it'll draw the ire of their new sect leader and because aside from a few stubborn Elders, they're not that confident they can win a war without Wen Ruohan around)

He might even take on thoroughly vetted disciples since it’ll attract less… questionable people (I'm not actually that sure on that point, it depends on the day.)

Do Jiang Yanli and Lan Xichen get married?

Yes they do. Sorry Jin Ling. </3 (although who knows, maybe the universe is nice enough to give them a son that for some reason will end up being a little prickly for a Lan and a love for dogs!)

I'm actually not overly fond of the Jin Zixuan/Jiang Yanli pairing and I liked the idea of Jiang Yanli and Wei Wuxian actually being related through their respective marriage. I hesitated with Nie Huaisang/Jiang Yanli at first but the Jiang Yanli/Lan Xichen really grew on me as I wrote the fic haha. They’re very very cute. Lan Xichen strikes me as an even bigger simp than Jin Zixuan ended up being in canon. He WILL talk to you about his wonderful wife if you let him.

What about Nie Huaisang and Wen Qing?

I'm not actually sure about those two. Maybe they get engaged and never marry, maybe they marry but only as friends, maybe they marry and fall in love (in that order, I don’t see Wen Qing falling in love at first sight), maybe they hate each other on sight and stay far, far away from each other, maybe they like each other just fine but don't marry anyway because Nie Huaisang is a romantic and wants to love his spouse romantically or because they know they’ll drive each other crazy within days, maybe they stay engaged because neither of them is interested in marriage and this helps them get their family off their back, maybe they marry and then Nie Huaisang gets a second wife they both fall in love with and they have a really healthy and happy polycule.

As you see, there are plenty of interesting possibilities. :P

Do Wangxian still adopt A-Yuan?

Yes. I’m not cruel enough to delete both Jin Ling and A-Yuan from existence. I’m not clear on what happens to A-Yuan’s birth parents (do they still die, do they give him up or is he adopted to be raised as a heir but they still participate in raising him? I am planning an extra with him in it so I'll have to decide soon but so far I HAVE NO IDEA haha), but yes, Wangxian get their son back, don’t worry.

What happens with Su She, Jin Zixun and Jin Guangshan?

Su She still eventually defects but since he doesn’t have Jin Guangyao sponsoring him, he never manages to become someone important enough to matter in the long run. He’s extremely bitter about it, like he’s bitter about everything else.

After his thorough public humiliation, Jin Zixun fancies himself the “rival” of Wei Wuxian once again. Wei Wuxian wouldn’t care except Wen Qing is very serious about any potential threats, even minor ones so she keeps him updated. They have fun about it. He might try something anyway but Jin Guangshan isn’t dumb enough to defend him so he just digs up his own grave and he eventually offends someone enough that he dies like a loser, like in canon.

As for Jin Guangshan… He’s a very serious threat, always was, but he lacks the political power he had in canon and this time Wei Wuxian has a much better support network who isn’t as easily manipulated into betraying him so things are much better on that front. Wei Wuxian never drops his guard obviously but he’s not vengeful enough to try and start his own conspiracy to get rid of him.

(Wen Qing, on the other hand, has absolutely no qualms about whispering some ideas in a few people’s ears. And because he is still a terrible person and quite a lot of his crimes haven't been erased by the time travel, Jin Guangshan dies quietly and painfully and though no one dares point fingers, Madam Jin looks just a little bit too smug while wearing the traditional white for it to be a coincidence and the family doctor mysteriously decides to retire right after the funeral).

What about Xue Yang, Jin Guangyao, etc.?

Honestly? Don’t know, don’t care. There’s no war so Meng Yao has no opportunity to get close to either Lan Xichen or Nie Mingjue. Maybe he still manages to join a sect as an outer disciple. If they meet, Nie Huaisang hates him on sight, though he can’t tell why. Because this is a kinder univser, both Meng Yao and Xue Yang probably get the opportunity to be better than they are in canon. Do they take that chance? Up to you. I haven’t thought about anyone else’s fate sorry but you can bet they probably have a much better life this time around (or, if they already had a happy life, then they get to be happy again).

And Jiang Cheng? Does he actually grow as a person? What about his mother?

Honestly, I like to think he does. I’m not a big fan of him but I think he’s still young enough here that he might choose differently, especially after being forced to face so many hard truths. At the very least, he never becomes the man willing to participate in a genocide or the serial killer he is in canon. He and Wei Wuxian will never be close again though — like in canon, Wei Wuxian is ready to let go of that relationship. But Jiang Cheng still has his sister and his father and both of them have had a pretty big hm… Wake-up call? I suppose?

Not in a bad way or anything like that but Wei Wuxian’s defection shook them both and since neither of them die anytime soon, they’re here to push Jiang Cheng to be better. It takes time and effort but who knows, maybe he does manage it (he tries at the very least, because if there’s one thing he craves, it’s his father’s approval).

AS FOR MADAM YU... She still blames Wei Wuxian for every little thing, she thinks it's his fault that her son's self-confidence visibly decreased after the lectures (L O L), she hates with a passion the fact that Jiang Fengmian accepted to let Lan Xichen court Jiang Yanli and didn't give yet another chance to Jin Zixuan... She started as a bitter woman and a bitter woman she'll stay.

How exactly did Wei Wuxian go back in time? Why does only Lan Wangji get to remember?

Because I wanted to. I don’t have a better explanation sorry. Maybe a mischievous god (me, the author) decided Wei Wuxian deserved to get a different second chance, that other people deserved to stay alive and so they did.

As for why only Lan Wangji got to remember, the romantic explanation is that they’re soulmates. The boring explanation is that I’m really bad at writing teenage Lan Wangji so I speedran his character development.

Why do some characters find themselves trusting Wei Wuxian when they just met him?

When it comes to Wen Qing and Wen Ning, it’s because they were dead and I like the idea that the dead have no concept of time so time travel doesn’t have an effect on them. Since in the new timeline Wen Qing and Wen Ning aren’t dead yet, they only have fragments of their memories (the dead of the Burial Mounds on the other hand, never forgot their Patriarch. It’s why it took so little time for Wei Wuxian to tame them this time. I expend on that a little more in the Wei Wuxian POV but since I have no idea if I’ll ever finish it, never mind publish it… You get the short explanation here haha). It's also why Wen Chao knew it was the dead of the Burial Mounds and why he was so scared. And Nie Huaisang… Maybe he just has really, really good instincts. Or maybe the “mischievous god” isn’t actually a god at all but him scheming behind the scenes like in canon. Who knows? Certainly not me. ;)

Oh dear, this got really long haha. I hope you enjoyed these explanations. If there are other things you'd like to know, hit me up with an ask, I'd love to talk some more about this universe hahaha.

#MDZS #MDZS fic #my writing #we'll build a dynasty wip #Wei Wuxian #Lan Wangji #Wangxian #Canon Jiang Cheng #Wen Qing #Lan Xichen #Nie Huaisang #Jiang Yanli #I'm always unsure of what to tag haha #And scared of spamming the tags #That should do it I think

34 notes · View notes

incarnadinedreams · 2 years

Text

Jiang Cheng was silent, as though he had finally become calmer. Wei WuXian put his hand on his shoulder again, "In the future, you'll be the sect leader, and I'll be your subordinate, like your father and my father. So what if the GusuLan Sect has its Two Jades? The Yunmeng Jiang Sect will have its Two Prides! So, shut up. Who said that you don't deserve to be the sect leader? Nobody can say this, even you can't either. If you do you're looking for a beating."

Jiang Cheng snorted, "You see how you are right now? Who can you beat up?"

-- Ch. 56, ExR translation

I've seen the take around that Wei Wuxian never broke any promises to Jiang Cheng, because in the 'Twin Heroes of Yunmeng' promise he said they would be like their fathers. Since Wei Changze left Yunmeng, then Wei Wuxian was never intending to actually be Jiang Cheng's right-hand man, and therefore no broken promises. Easy peasy.

And I personally just can't get behind that interpretation. I do think that in a more meta sense the parallel is interesting; that's part of the whole tragic irony of the situation. And that only works if Wei Wuxian didn't mean it that way, but it ended up becoming true anyway, in the most horrible and unpleasant ways. And I do think there can be some interesting exploration of the way promises can mean different things to different people without either of them really being wrong.

But I feel like it's doing a huge disservice to Wei Wuxian's character to run with the take that he actually meant to have some sort of loophole in there. It's very much a miss the forest for the trees kind of thing. Sure, you've successfully gotten him out of one broken promise... but what would that mean, if it were true?

I just don't think the line about their fathers was some sort of tricksy, cunning thing he inserted as a gotcha. He wasn't trying to legalese his way out of it, he wasn't trying to pull one over on Jiang Cheng. Viewing it that way kind of destroys what was, for me, one of the most emotionally poignant moments of the novel. If it were the case, he'd be rather shallow and manipulative for it, and that just doesn't resonate with me. Not to mention it doesn't make much sense to carefully insert a loophole into a promise he never needed to make in the first place.

As a Yunmeng Shuangjie Enjoyer, for me this scene is like the valiant last stand of innocence. Up to this point, our plucky protagonist and friends have escaped every trial largely unscathed. The comically evil villain has been resoundingly humiliated (for now), the big angry turtle of slaughter has been slaughtered, everyone made it home in one piece after a romantic(?) cave interlude, more or less. It was difficult, sure, but our heroes prevailed in the end. A few injuries, some scars, but nothing really bad - yet.

There's drama, there's strife, but at this point it's of a more personal, domestic nature: Jiang Cheng's sadness at what he feels is his father's dislike, his sense of inadequacy and being overlooked, his mother's scolding, the stress and discord within the household regarding rumors and Wei Wuxian's ambiguous role, and the pain of being pulled in between his parents. Painful, to be sure, just very limited in scope compared to what we know is coming.

But in the midst of that turmoil, this scene is Wei Wuxian giving Jiang Cheng hope for a future where he can forge his own path. That they can create something different but wonderful, with Wei Wuxian by his side, where it doesn't matter what rumors are going around or what mistakes their parents have made. It's an 'us against the world' moment; it's an outright declaration of a bond that had been, as far as we know, largely unspoken and assumed up to this point.

Whatever type of bond you read into them having, it solidifies something between them. It's putting into words his confidence in Jiang Cheng's potential when he believes his father doubts him. This is one of the few ways he is allowed to express unwavering support for Jiang Cheng in a sea of ambiguous ties and fraught relationships.

It's supposed to be tragic. It's supposed to be the shining light that gets snuffed out by the darkness and horrors that follow. The tragedy is that promises earnestly made sometimes must be broken, no matter how good the intentions were when they were made. The tragedy is that it's the enormity of their sacrifices for each other that, unknowingly, drive them apart. It's the secrets they keep to spare one another, it's the slow building of a death-spiral of conflicting priorities and duties, it's the very roles the promise was meant to bridge the gap between that makes this promise untenable, impossible to keep.

And I believe that's why we see, so much later, that this promise is the crux of Jiang Cheng's breakdown at Guanyin Temple, even after everything else that had happened.

Jiang Cheng cried soundlessly, but tears had already streaked across his face. To cry in such an unsightly way in front of others was almost impossible for him in the past. But every single moment that passed from now on, as long as the golden core remained in his body, as long as it could still revolve, he'd forever remember this feeling.

He choked, "... You said I'd be the sect leader and you'd be my subordinate, you said you'd help me your whole life, you said you'd never betray the YunmengJiang Sect... You said so yourself."

"..." After a moment of silence, Wei WuXian replied, "I'm sorry. I broke my promise."

-- Ch. 102

I believe what Jiang Cheng is really grieving is that bright-eyed, optimistic vision of the future they'd shared in that moment, us against the world, together, and there are so few ways they're allowed to express the weight of everything they mean to each other that he can only cling to a promise that represents the distillation of their ties to one another.

And if Wei Wuxian never really meant any of it, if he'd been planning an out from the beginning, if he'd never shared the dream too, that would just be kinda shitty and boring instead of compellingly tragic.

#thinking too much about jiang cheng yet again #jiang cheng #yunmeng shuangjie #anyway that's just my personal take on the whole thing #i'm too scared to use the character tags for any of the other characters lol

354 notes · View notes