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ineedtorantaboutjiangcheng · 1 year

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Fuck, I'm here again. Goddammit. I've been doing well. I've been keeping Jiang Cheng off my mind (and my computer screen). Things have been peaceful.

And then today happened.

Again, a fic. Again, not naming names, both because that's rude and also because this issue is hardly specific to one fic alone. I've seen it many times.

But I've been pacing for half an hour, too agitated to keep reading, so I'm just gonna get this off my chest, and then skim through the fic 'til it stops talking about it.

I need to talk about the golden core reveal.

Specifically, I need to talk about an attitude I've seen cropping up recently in a lot of fics. (By recently, I don't mean it's only recent fics that do it, just that I've only noticed it recently.)

So it'll be a fic, usually canon divergent, but prior to the golden core reveal. Wen Ning or Wen Qing will often be involved (though I can think of a few times it was Lan Wangji). And the character, who knows the truth about the golden core transfer, will urge Wei Wuxian to tell Jiang Cheng.

They'll say "you have to tell him". They'll say "he'll find out eventually". They'll say "he deserves to know".

And... the fic will support this.

Will frame Wei Wuxian as irrational, paranoid even, to keep it secret.

Will sometimes even punish him, narratively, for his "failure" to disclose such a thing.

And I am... completely baffled.

Where the fuck is this coming from?

I suppose, if I'm being generous, I can kind of see why an individual sympathising with Jiang Cheng might have a knee-jerk reaction to this. If you see them as being essentially family, the idea that a family member that you love deeply, keeping what amounts to both a huge sacrifice and a massive disability from you would be extremely painful. You might feel hurt, that they didn't tell you. Angry, at the implied lack of trust.

I get it, as an emotional response you might have in the moment. I don't find it particularly relatable, but I can follow the thought process.

But like... that's an emotional response. Surely, at some point, logic has to kick in, right?

Because the thing is. Okay, there's two aspects to the secret, right? One, is that a medical procedure was done to Jiang Cheng, sort of like an organ transplant, I suppose, but he wasn't told that the organ was donated by Wei Wuxian. And the other is that Wei Wuxian made this huge sacrifice for Jiang Cheng, and didn't tell him.

But thinking about this for even five minutes should tell you that... neither of those things are actually Wei Wuxian's responsibility to deal with?

The first one is the by far the more common argument I've seen. I've read fics where Wen Ning and Wen Qing are tortured with guilt over having performed the procedure without telling Jiang Cheng all the details. I've even seen people have them blame Wei Wuxian, for demanding they keep it secret, had them secretly resent him for it. He's portrayed as deeply selfish, for keeping the truth of Jiang Cheng's operation from him.

But the thing is... if you're going to apply modern medical ethics to the situation... Wei Wuxian was in the right? They all were?

Under modern medical ethics, you have no right to know the identity of your organ donor. That can feel a little weird (it's probably why people often have a knee-jerk reaction that demands the opposite); after all, it's my body, shouldn't I have a right to know where the organ that goes in it comes from? What if it has cooties?

But according to medical ethics, the donor's right to medical privacy is more protected that the recipient's right to that information. Right to medical privacy is pretty highly valued; it kind of ties into body autonomy, which is kind of the keystone of... most modern ethics. You have a right to control what happens to your body, and that includes controlling whether or not people know about any medical conditions/procedures. So you might have an emotional response, thinking Jiang Cheng is valid for being upset that his golden core came from Wei Wuxian without him knowing, but... ethically, Wei Wuxian has the right to withhold that information.

But! some scarecrow says, If a person has the right to control what procedures happen to their body, surely that means Jiang Cheng has a right to control what happens to his own body! Therefore, the procedure was still unethical, because he didn't know everything!

And I say, well... not really. The reality is, we don't actually know how much Jiang Cheng was told. He was told to walk up a mountain, lie to the person he encountered about his identity, and ask for a golden core. And he left that mountain with said golden core... but we don't know how much Wen Qing told him when he reached the top. We know he believed Wen Qing was the Baoshan Sanren. We know he received a fully developed core, not just the ability to form a new one. Was he told that the core was from someone else? Were there signs of the transfer? Did he know the chance of success/failure? Did he not find any of the situation dubious?

(Did he really spend two and a half years fighting a war alongside, and then running a sect for a year with, someone and not realise they didn't use orthodox cultivation even once?)

The truth is, a doctor is required to inform a patient of risks, and answer any questions they ask. Wen Qing may well have disclosed the risk (if there was any to Jiang Cheng, other than potentially the transfer failing) prior to the surgery, we just don't know. We don't have any evidence that Jiang Cheng asked any questions, and from what we see in the novel, it seems likely that he simply didn't want to know. He got a core, his life was somewhat back on track; we never see any evidence of curiosity or confusion in him as to the specifics of how that happened.

The only lie we are sure that he was told was the identity of the person who he met on the mountain, who "gave" him the core. I could be petty and point out that as he was also lying about his identity, it kind of cancels out, but that would be a bit ridiculous, and unnecessary besides. The truth is, ethically, Wen Qing could have knocked him out and performed the surgery from the comfort of her own office. Because one of, if not the main reason you can ethically violate someone's body autonomy... is to save a life. And Jiang Cheng, after losing first his family and sect, and then his golden core, displayed clear suicidal ideation. He indicated, repeatedly, that he wanted to die. He refused food. Wei Wuxian even doubled checked, before giving him hope of getting a new core, that he was serious! (Rereading that scene is horrible; Wei Wuxian's dread, and eventual resignation/resolve becomes very apparent once you know what's happening).

The characters around him, including a trained doctor, believed that if he didn't get a new core, he would give up and die. Under those circumstances, a doctor has authority to make medical decisions, without a patients consent, if they believe it is a medical emergency. Wen Qing was an unquestionably brilliant doctor; if she believed doing the surgery was the right/necessary decision, who the hell are we to dispute her?

So, to be clear, under modern medical ethics (which seems to be what is being applied in these claims), Wen Qing has the right to do whatever surgery she feels necessary to save the life of her patient, no consent needed, and Wei Wuxian has the right to keep his identity as the donor a secret, since that's his own private medical history. Modern medical ethics (a bit ridiculous, when talking about magic powers, but I've seen the argument) supports our protagonist.

Now, onto the other thing. This is a lot less... ethics discussion and a lot more feels-bad-so-wrong type thing. Wei Wuxian kept the loss of his golden core a secret.

Jiang Cheng being upset by this is understandable. Like I said, I can follow the emotion/logic. Someone keeping a big secret from you can be hurtful.

But just because it's hurtful to you, doesn't mean they're in the wrong to do it!

If someone I cared about kept a massive secret from me, and I found out, I'd be upset! But my first thought would be 'Why did they feel they couldn't tell me?' And the answer here is obvious; Wei Wuxian didn't think he could tell Jiang Cheng because he knew he'd be horrible about it! Wei Wuxian admits, after the reveal, that the process of losing his core was distressing, and that he wasn't as okay with it as he pretended to be. If something like that happens to you (not... that it can, but, you know, equivalent), and you're struggling to hold it together, the last thing you want is someone you care about yelling at you about it, insulting you, making you feel bad for what happened!

Wei Wuxian didn't tell Jiang Cheng because he knew Jiang Cheng would be awful to him because of it. Jiang Cheng's jealousy when they were young was something Wei Wuxian felt he had to manage*, and he knew Jiang Cheng would feel inadequate if he realised his accomplishments were made with Wei Wuxian's core. And he would then lash out at Wei Wuxian for it, at a time when Wei Wuxian was already feeling emotionally fragile. Hell, nearly twenty years later, Jiang Cheng getting up in his face was enough to cause a Qi deviation; I can't imagine it would have been better any sooner!

No one wants to think of the people they love keeping secrets from them. And sometimes, people who keep secrets are doing it for their own sake, because they're scared, or unsure, or guilty, or whatever. But sometimes, when a person keeps a secret, the reason is not internal. If someone acts horribly to you when you tell them things, you're going to stop telling them things. And the person responsible for that gap in communication is them; all you're doing is protecting yourself.

And before anyone thinks that I'm assigning reasoning to Wei Wuxian that he doesn't have; he essentially admits it. After the reveal, Wei Wuxian states that he knew Jiang Cheng would react badly (though he didn't expect it to be quite so bad). Wei Wuxian is shown to have been managing Jiang Cheng's moods since they were young**, it's probably not the first secret he's kept. But that's kind of just... how that works; if a king kills every person who brings him bad news, eventually, all his advisors will only ever bring him good news. And he has no one to blame when his kingdom falls but himself.

SO. tl;dr. Modern medical ethics supports Wen Qing performing the golden core transfer, and Wei Wuxian keeping his identity as the donor a secret. Jiang Cheng can be upset at Wei Wuxian for not telling him that he no longer has a core, but it's not unethical, or selfish, and the nature of their relationship, with Jiang Cheng lashing out with impunity and Wei Wuxian trying to manage his moods, meant that secrets like that were pretty much inevitable. Unhealthy relationships are unhealthy. Truly, newsworthy take.

And one final note, on Wei Wuxian keeping secrets from Jiang Cheng and being portrayed as selfish for doing so; I have yet to see a. single. fic. that says Wei Wuxian keeping his sacrifice secret is wrong, but then goes on hold Jiang Cheng equally accountable for keeping his sacrifice secret. Not. One. Jiang Cheng often tells Wei Wuxian afterwards, that he deliberately got the Wens attention, but he's never framed as selfish for keeping that secret. Not. Once.

* see post-Xuanwu argument, when Wei Wuxian drags himself out of his sick bed, having just woken up from a coma, to reassure Jiang Cheng that he's no threat to his birthright. Because Jiang Cheng was jealous that his father acknowledged Wei Wuxian's skill in surviving, under horrendous circumstances. -_-

** childhood flashback; after arriving in a new place, having a massive change in lifestyle and meeting many new people (and, it seems, trying to make a good impression), Wei Wuxian took the blame for his broken leg, despite it being because Jiang Cheng locked him out of his room and threatened to sic dogs on him. Entirely because he knew one of them would get blamed, and he wanted to keep Jiang Cheng happy. People who grow up with aggressive/abusive family/people around often end up learning to juggle mood changes.

#mdzs #mo dao zu shi #canon jiang cheng #urgh #i didn't mean for this to be so long #or so lecture-y #look i just feel very strongly about body autonomy #and the ethics around privacy #so i get really really angry when people act like wwx was in the wrong here #you have a right to medical privacy!#its IMPORTANT #(but also sorry)

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poorly-drawn-mdzs · 9 months

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There's nothing he can't do. Yet.

(Thank you to everyone who participated in the poll!)

#poorly drawn mdzs #mdzs #wei wuxian #lan wangji #bonus comic #This whole poll and comic is very inspired by a convo I had with qourmet in one of their art streams.#namely that the Art Of Grilling is a powerful skill separate from cooking.#I've also been inspired by said convo to try and learn how to grill. What's the point of having a garden if I can't grill my summer squash?#Anyways. I hope this appeases the crowd that has been in arms about the prev prev poll.#I don't think teenji can cook. I think lan wangji is just very good at dedicating himself to whatever craft he needs to pick up.#give him a day and he will be a grill dad #the most powerful beast of the summer lawn biome.#Until then he will lie awake at night. Haunted by this inadequacy. He's just like me for real (chronic perfectionist).#I think this is the first domestic wangxian post i've made. God I'm so sorry wangxian fans.#wwx could not care *less* abt lwj having flaws. I think thats the beauty of this relationship. they *know* about each other's flaws FIRST.#Love each people *because* of the flaws - not despite them (thats my unsolicited advice for the day).#also if you noticed my medium gray marker slowly giving out...today it finally died on me....

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sonik-kun · 3 months

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"Jiang Cheng would have been involved in the attack on the Burial Mounds even without the death of sister"

For context, this all takes place AFTER JZX was killed. From JC's pov that was all 100% WWX's fault (bear in mind, WWX does have some culpability with his death. He lost control because of his unrestrained resentment for JZX. Sooo).

Was JC not supposed to do anything? Just sit there and twiddle his thumbs? Object to the siege entirely, perhaps? How do you think that would have looked to the rest of the CW? It would have been very suspicious if he didn't take part in eliminating a potential threat to the CW. Especially when said threat was once a part of his sect and KILLED his brother in law. Wouldn't they think it is strange that he refused to take part and get revenge on behalf of his sister??

If he did object or refused to take part, the rest of the CW would have grown even more suspicious of him. And the Jiang sect would have had a huuuuuuge target on their backs next. Especially giving how power hungry the Jins were becoming.

It was a very difficult situation he was put in. Not one he could easily talk his way out of. We've seen him try to numerous times even before things escalated to vouch for WWX and even once for the Wen siblings. And we all saw how that went down. Do you seriously think he could talk his way out of this one? After a sect heir had been slaughtered by his former SiC? Come on now.

All of this is why we see JC desparing so much because he is watching his brother spiral and spiral, and all he can do is watch on helplessly, for it is beyond his power to save him.

WWX kept so much from JC. He sided with the sect that almost wiped out his own and then goes on to inadvertently kill his brother in law. How do you think that must have looked to JC? How JC must have felt?? Let's be real here and look at things from his pov. Because I feel as though some of yall are failing to do so.

To JC, WWX had become unhinged and out of control. But even after the death of JZX, JC still seemed to desperately hold onto hope for his brother. He exclaims when he's holding his dying sister in his arms, "I thought you said you could control it?!"

That says to me that JC had faith in his brother that he could fix all this up until JYL was caught up in it all.

If you look at things from JC's pov, you'll see how bad things looked for WWX. How culpable he appeared throughout it all. And when you take that into consideration and realise that JC doesn't have all the information we as the reader are privileged to have, we can easily see why he came to such a conclusion.

It was either WWX or the lives of hundreds in his sect. JC chose to protect the many. And that doesn't make him a terrible person. Nor does it make him a terrible brother. He did all he could for WWX. But to him, WWX had made his bed, and so he should lay in it.

#canon jiang cheng #jiang cheng #jiang wanyin #mxtx mdzs #mo dao zu shi #mdzs #the untamed #to be clear im not bashing wwx here #i obviously know he isnt 100% culpabale and was a victim in all this too #but failing to see jc as a victim in the whole mess is just failing to understand him and the plot im sorry #his pov is very important because it explains all of his reactions towards wwx when he returns from the dead #these highly crtical jc posts always seem to lack any context on regards to his character #and i think it's very disingenuous to withold the details in his character assessments #plus its doing the character a huge disservice #jc loved wwx and wwx loved jc #thats why the events in the book destroyed them so much and why jc found it difficult to let wwx go #stop taking away all these facts away from him just to spread your anti jc agenda #it's annoying and disingenuous af

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piosplayhouse · 8 months

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the fact that people are still out there aggressively arguing over whether or not wwx is bi or gay using the most outdated pseudoscience reasoning possible is proof that hell is real and mdzs fandom lives in it

#sorry i have to complain because yesterday i saw a tweet saying.#'ive been called biphobic by my mutuals but idc if wwx is canonically bi HES MY GAY TWINK!!!'#I WAS SO FLABBERGASTED #I THINK IF EVEN YOUR MUTUALS ARE CALLING YOU BIPHOBIC . THERES PROBABLY SOMETHING WRONG WITH YOU #and this is less egregious but why do people feel the need to simultaneously shit on bi people while claiming theyre not biphobic in the #same breath whenever they talk about headcanoning wwx as gay. Like no one with good intentions and more than 2 braincells would call you #biphobic for saying you personally headcanon him as gay. thats just you saying that. why are you obsessed with other people thinking he #might be bi #i promise bi wwx headcanoners arent obsessing over you. weirdos #and then when theyre also acephobic too like oh i see what you believe gay people are. mask off huh #sorry i glimpsed a horrific scene yesterday and i cannot leave my thoughts unreleased

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tenmastrousers · 1 year

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#tenmastrousers #say aaaahhh!! :)#mdzs #core transfer #mdzs spoilers #yunmeng bros #(implied???)#mdzs core transfer #modaozushi #modao zushi #mo dao zu shi #mxtx #the grandmaster of demonic cultivation #wei wuxian #wwx #im so sorry jiang cheng #danmei #cnovel

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winepresswrath · 5 months

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hi! i always love your MDZS/CQL takes; can i ask what are the questions you think CQL is asking, as compared to MDZS?

I haven't actually revisited either canon in ages, which is making me nervous. what questions the novel is interested in can be pretty contentious all on its own! @mikkeneko has an excellent answer in the notes here which I reccomend to everyone. My own thoughts are honestly pretty scattered- I keep on deleting things and going hm, that's not quite right.

So, for the obvious-to-me example, people reasonably zero in on the creation of innocent doctors/radish farmers who Wen Ruohan is holding hostage. In CQL it's easy to infer that Wen Qing and Wen Ning are maybe the only cultivators and almost certainly the only combatants among the Wen remnants, and their status is much more ambiguous in the novel, which I personally think is asking, essentially, "and so what? were they wrong to run, when they had a chance? Do they deserve what Jin Guangshan will do to them if they go back? Aren't they just people, actually?" Whereas the question that CQL is asking is more to the effect of "What does Wen Qing owe these people, when she is their only defence? What is she entitled to do to save them, at other people's expense? If she fucks up that moral calculus, what then? Does it matter if she's personally fond of some of the outsiders who are going to get hurt? If one of them saved her brother? Later, this question will flip to what Wei Wuxian and Jiang Cheng, and the parallel to Jiang Cheng's situation in particular is, I think, genuinely pretty fun. You're giving up the Wen as soldiers who've laid down their arms in exchange for Wen Qing also grappling with leadership and the question of how many horrors she can stand to look the other way on to protect her own people. one reason I keep deleting so much is that a lot cql's changes were motivated at least in part by censorship, which I think we mostly share a general and justified distaste for! but I also think that within the bounds of that censorship the creative team put a lot of work into actually doing something interesting with those changes. Or, for another example- nieyao! There's a much greater emphasis on the nmj-jgy relationship, it's unambiguously very close and they are clearly extremely important to one another, and I think that's because the cql team has a lot to say about love, trust, power, and the ways those things interact, and that reflects back on all of the other relationships in play, including Wangxian. Almost every time, when CQL chooses change a relationship they make the characters in question closer- that's true for Jiang Cheng and Lan Wangji, for Wen Qing and the Yunmeng contingent, for Zixuan and Mianmian, and Huaisang and Meng Yao. It's even true for Lan Wangji and Wei Wuxian, who have a close and trusting relationship in first life! CQL puts a much greater emphasis on "all right, so you care, what next?" How do you choose someone and then choose to be good to them? What if there's a massive power disparity between you? What if you seriously disagree about your priorities and morals? How do you trust someone who's betrayed you? When is it a stupid choice to trust at all? How do you have faith that you know someone well enough for that trust to be meaningful?

for legal reasons i would like to specify that it's not that mdzs isn't interested in these problems. i do remember wangxian's literal trust fall. cql is asking these questions all the time about everyone. also for legal purposes i'm not suggesting that cql lwj and jc love each other. but! they establish a three month wartime partnership looking for wwx and then jc immediately drops him on wwx's say-so despite apparently having a positive enough opinion of him to tell wwx he thinks they should make up twice. lan wangji will later tell wwx he thinks he should loop jc in on the second flautist! these are people trying to navigate some kind of relationship/shared interest/community, as opposed to a hateful void. cql wants to say hey, how do you go about this? while I'm here and rambling cql also puts a lot of emphasis on wwx's connection to yunmeng and changes things up so instead of feeling alienated right before he leaves our last glimpse of him there is happily picking lotuses and playing with a kid! in both stories the narrative is asking who do you protect? who do you leave behind? can you ever get it back? but the angles are very different.

#why are there so many people who simultaneously argue that cql dumbs down mdzs and also that mdzs is the slow reveal of how wwx is a #perfect angel who has never done anything wrong in his life #being let down by everyone around him #surely you have to pick an option #but lan wangji and wei wuxian being close friends in the first life really does change everything #i have seen people (reasonably) be annoyed with this as an adaptation choice #but! i like this change a lot and i think they do interesting things with it #There's still a lot of emphasis on what makes them so particularly perfect for each other but imo moving Lan Wangji into the category of #people wwx loved in the first life #shifts the focus from #when will they get together #to #What it would take and what would they have to do for these people to have to do to have a successful partnership?#If loving someone is the first step what comes next? Who do I want to be to the people around me?#i love the focus on wwx's trust issues as trust issues! problems that he's had with lwj specifically before!#and the solution isn't just oh well lwj is perfectly trustworthy #though that's obviously part of it #wwx has to like. decide for himself to do some things differently this time around in order to reap the rewards of being really in it with #someone. and lwj does too! it's a journey they're on together #i have simply rambled in all directions i'm sorry anon

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