swan // she/her // currently into: genshin impact, honkai star rail, naruto (i do not control when i re-enter naruto hell etc etc), whatever i'm currently reading or watching
the fact that this was the angle wei wuxian, wen ning’s main source of information about jiang cheng, used to convince wen qing to do the golden core surgery, explains a lot, actually
wwx: i swear i’ll be FINE, i can totally handle everything without a golden core, unlike jiang cheng who is sooo competitive and insecure he’ll shrivel up and die if we don’t cut my life’s achievement out of me and put it in him and lie to him so that he could still be obsessed with his cultivation [wen ning will remember that] hey what was that. anyway, trust me, it’s the only way to make him happy
the golden core transfer is such a fascinating mess to think about, because there are so many different reasons and motivations at play! and i mean, of course the golden core was important to jiang cheng, of course he was proud of something he worked so hard to achieve and of course he was upset when he lost it, but i would argue that the wei wuxian- (and reader-)percieved insecurity is not a major reason for his behavior?
after jiang cheng’s golden core is destroyed, he’s not screaming that he would rather die than be mediocre in a vacuum, he’s screaming because without his cultivation he can’t reclaim lotus pier and avenge his parents. which is a different reason to be upset about than pride or vanity! it’s wei wuxian who immediately jumps on the “jiang cheng is so competitive, his life will be over” train of thought!
in the guanyin temple, jiang cheng is crying because he hated wei wuxian for betraying their sect for 13 years, and suddenly had that rug pulled out from under him, suddenly realized that wei wuxian had sacrificed for the jiang sect more than he could imagine, and lied to him, and died because of it, and jiang cheng is feeling like he’s guilty of something he didn’t even know about and is expected to let go of the hatred that he was clinging onto for dear life, he’s somehow simultaneously mad at wei wuxian for not letting him hate anymore and horrified at how wei wuxian decided to suffer for him when it was the last thing jiang cheng wanted - and yeah, some of it is about how wei wuxian one-upped him again like a shining hero and proved his parents right while jiang cheng is left looking like a fool! but it’s wei wuxian who is thinking about how competitive jiang cheng is and how he must be devastated to learn that his achievements were gained thanks to someone else, which i personally feel is like. the least of jiang cheng’s problems at the moment.
and i totally get why wei wuxian kept the golden core transfer from jiang cheng, because imagine if he gave him a choice! imagine the cruelty!! imagine telling jiang cheng “you can rebuild your sect and avenge your parents, but for that i need to get mutilated”, imagine jiang cheng refusing it but forever feeling like he betrayed his legacy and duty to his family and doomed himself to be useless for wei wuxian’s sake! wei wuxian taking away jiang cheng’s agency and shouldering all the pain alone was an act of mercy
…and then wei wuxian got a taste of his own medicine when he had the choice of “surrender the wen sect leaders and the jin sect will leave you alone, or else” mercifully taken away from him, and helplessly watched wen qing and wen ning go to their deaths for him, and didn’t like it at all :’)
WWX sacrificing himself for his loved ones against their wishes: haha WWX when his loved ones sacrifice themselves for him against his wishes: Oh No
um anyway does anybody else ever think about how jiang cheng especially in the later flashbacks is like painfully aware of the narrative being woven around wei wuxian and chooses to play a particular role in it but then ends up so locked into that character that he forgets who wei wuxian really was to him
like hes so aware of the politics of every situation hes in like even though people like meng yao and nie huaisang are much Much better at manipulating the situations hes always reading them, you see it at the nightless city banquet when he freezes up abt the yanli/zixuan engagement bc he fully understands the stakes, the weight of the choice, how much its going to affect how hes percieved as a leader, but he doesnt know yet what kind of leader he wants to be percieved as. i think that uncertainty is part of why he stays quiet and relatively passive about the yiling wen situation, but even then he has the awareness to stage the fight between him and wei wuxian and to keep yanlis visit secret, and once he fakes killing his own brother he has absolutely sealed his future reputation for ruthlessness
bc thats the thing he doesnt play the role of “hero slaying the villain to save the day” thats way too close to what HE THINKS!!!! wei wuxian was always trying to be and he sees where that led him and also. im so sure his inferiority complex wouldnt let him. no bitch hes playing the bad guy. like he loves jin ling to death obviously but hes the harsh strict uncle who threatens to break his legs for misbehaving, people believe that he hunts down and tortures demonic cultivators which is an awfully convenient story if you want to dissuade people from doing the stupid shit that killed your siblings, he constantly portrays himself as a cruel and violent person all because in order to get away with what must have been an act of mercy (letting wei wuxian take his own way out of a world with no place left for him) he needed people to believe that it was out of hatred. so he forever has to seem like the person who could do that.
and i genuinely think he thought that the truth and the story could be kept separate. like when wei wuxian is still alive he tries to secretly keep him involved with the family and he never Actually hurts wei wuxian aside from that staged battle, even after he thinks he killed yanli, even when hes allegedly killing him he doesnt touch him. and i think thats part of why he targets the future demonic cultivators, bc he thinks if he can annihilate every last trace of Wei Wuxian, Yiling Patriarch then all that will be left is the memory of his brother and he can finally mourn. unfortunately he has to keep playing the character of himself forever and ever and the false version of wei wuxian is central to that narrative so he ends up cannibalised by his own story. fucked!
you know that scene that introduces us to jiang cheng in present time with jin ling and lan wangji, where we’re kind of lead to think ‘god what a dick’? yeah listen, say whatever you want but he’s actually way calmer and more diplomatic than i ever would be. if i had a kid and a dude made him shut up like that i’d deck him, no hesitation
jiang cheng: a-ling you listen to me you listen to me right now. if a boy promises to stay by your side and support you no matter what then he is lying to you. a-ling listen to me. he is a lying bastard and he will leave you. a-ling are you listening right now
ok so jin ling is. not a well-adjusted child at all and is incredibly spoiled.
Which means that Jiang Cheng and Jin Guangyao didn’t do a very good job on the parenting their nephew front. We see enough of Jiang Cheng’s approach, and Jin Ling tells us flat out that Jiang Cheng yells at and threatens him all the time, but then gives him whatever he wants. So he’s combining his parents’ parenting styles in a really fun and bad way.
The only thing we see of Jin Guangyao is him urging Jiang Cheng to go easy on Jin Ling and not be too harsh with him, and the general consensus is that Jin Guangyao is overly permissive and coddles Jin Ling. There’s a theory that this is so he can stay in power longer, and while he wouldn’t complain about that, I don’t think I buy it, and I do buy that he expects Jin Ling to be the next leader of the Jin sect. Otherwise, Jin Guangyao would have to produce an heir, which either means a) accidental incest baby 2! or, b) kill Qin Su and remarry. And since he hasn’t gotten around to that in the 10 or so years they’ve been married, I think it’s because he doesn’t want to, and so has decided to be ok with not having dynastic ambitions.
But! Back to Jin Guangyao’s parenting! I don’t think it’s because he wants Jin Ling to be weak and easily lead. Jin Guangyao didn’t get a real childhood. He was put to work young, and was exposed to the worst parts of the adult world from day one. He probably doesn’t remember a time when he didn’t know what sex was, he’s probably very confused to learn about children who didn’t have a list of chores as long as their arm at age 5. He learned his addition and multiplication tables by helping his mom calculate how many customers she’d have to take to pay for his school or pay off her debt or keep him from being sold. The concept of being a kid is probably something he is desperately jealous he never got to have. And when he gets to Qinghe, he’s given a very adult job as a teen. He and Huaisang are very close in age. Huaisang is a child. Meng Yao is not.
So I think his permissiveness reads more similar to when my mom got. Way. Too. Into. me going to prom (i didn’t really care. i was just there for the chocolate fountain) because she didn’t get to go to hers. Jin Guangyao gets to vicariously have the childhood he believes he would have gotten if his dad had just paid his mom’s contract and brought them to live at Koi Tower like he should have through Jin Ling. So of course he showers him with expensive gifts and wonder-dogs, cultivation training, free time, opportunities to go night-hunting. Of course he lets him play and have an extended childhood instead of enforcing discipline and giving him the sort of duties and responsibilities of a sect heir. On top of that, Jiang Cheng likes to yell and threaten to break Jin Ling’s legs, tell him to not bother coming home if he fucks up, etc, even though he doesn’t mean it. Jin Guangyao has been raised and trained to be a peacemaker, to talk down very angry men in positions of power, and to mediate between them and weaker others. This is the role he fulfilled between Nie Mingjue and Nie Huaisang (”Please don’t make your brother angry. I won’t be able to protect you anymore.”). So I don’t think he’s undermining Jiang Cheng, at least not consciously. He’s falling back into a role he’s been put into again and again and again. Is this good? No. Is it nefarious? Also no.
adding OP’s tags because AHHHHHH
i agree w parts of this but tbh def not all of it.
On Sunday night I finished beading the first lotus and forgot to post about it.
I definitely think I’m going to try starting the beading differently, so that the petals that are “behind” the others actually look like they extend behind the others.
I didn’t have the energy/motivation/spoons to actually work on the blackwork until this evening.
I’m pretty happy with it. Since this one will probably not end up on the final trim, I might try putting beads in the center of each square. We’ll see how I feel when I finish the blackwork.
I have ordered some sew-on flat-backed pearls from Etsy. I’m hoping they’ll look good covering the messy ends at the center. They’ll probably show up some time in the next week.
my controversial jiang cheng take that nobody asked for and i may have voiced before is that i don’t care for the reveal of how he lost his core. to me, that reveal, especially the way it’s framed and the point in the narrative where we learn it, suggests that it’s a necessary “twist” to redeem his character, and i simply don’t think he needs to be redeemed. i think his motivations throughout the narrative are perfectly clear and reasonable, and his actions are morally neutral at worst (and morally correct most of the time), considering the resources he had and the information he had been given. in short, jiang cheng did nothing wrong, and this redemption point is pointless.
still, i don’t mind it, because it is juicy in two aspects:
it shows us his mental state even before he lost his core. for the first and only time in his entire life, he doesn’t put his sect above his own desires (because there is no sect! but it still counts, because afterward he makes his whole life’s mission to rebirth the Jiang sect for his parents.) by basically giving up, by saying, hey you know what, maybe i should just die. which shows us that he’s fucking suicidal already. and also because it clearly demonstrates that he knows (knows…) that wwx is better than him in every way and better capable of protecting jiang yanli. which i think gives him an acceptable excuse to basically allow himself to be killed. (he has miscalculated.)
just thinking about how he must spend 13 years regretting that decision. both jiang yanli and wei wuxian died anyway! what if he just hadn’t stepped in? what if he had let wei wuxian die? would jiang yanli still be here? would jin ling still have his parents? would his life be colored by a massive loss, sure, but not entirely cast in shadow and guilt and shame? what if? you know, girly things.
Jiang Cheng would have exactly one major crash out at an inter sect meeting during the time skip and all the youths of Yunmeng would make tiktok crash out edits to Ride Of The Valkyries with the caption “Sect Leader Jiang Core 💜” and interweave clips of him zoning out in the background of other sect leader’s speeches and that one time he fell off a pier by accident.
ALT
