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
in modern aus i see people having suibian and bichen as like pets, but what if it was just their laptops. wwx and jc have matching laptops and wen chao gets wen zhuliu to throw jc’s laptop in a river and wwx just like changes his password and wallpaper and is like dope i found your laptop. jc is like wow! i dont remember having so many memes on my laptop but my laptops back! lwj is on a quest to find out why wwx is doing his entire thesis in the notes app on his phone. wei ying come to the it department with me and all that.
hard to explain what i mean, but a lot of wangxian content (both canon content and fanwork) has jiang cheng residue in it.
in a sense, the text of mdzs itself makes jiang cheng’s existence essential for the wangxian ship dynamic. most immediately, he’s the conflict-generating minor villain who shows up and presents enough of a threat to drive wei wuxian into lan wangji’s arms. on a narrative level, he represents wei wuxian’s past: he’s the one surviving victim of wei wuxian’s various questionable life decisions who gets enough narrative attention to be vocally angry and hurt about it; he’s also the one surviving person from wei wuxian’s past who hurt wei wuxian the most. lan wangji, meanwhile, represents wei wuxian’s future: the one who will always stand by wei wuxian’s side, the one who will always unconditionally love wei wuxian, in a way the novel repeatedly states jiang cheng failed to achieve. part of the whole appeal of wangxian is that it gives wei wuxian a refuge from his past and allows him to move on. and if wangxian’s great thesis is that wei wuxian gets to move on from his past traumas and be happy, then on an existential level wangxian needs wei wuxian to have something to move on from to begin with.
or, to put it less abstractly. in mdzs novel canon, the wei wuxian who falls in love with lan wangji is also the wei wuxian who was betrayed by jiang cheng (and betrayed him in turn). the wei wuxian who follows lan wangji on this murder arm adventure mystery is also the wei wuxian studiously avoiding jiang cheng. and [the wei wuxian who was betrayed by jiang cheng] is not the same individual as [the wei wuxian lan wangji met at the cloud recesses]. especially since the time frame for the wangxian romance is so soon after wei wuxian’s resurrection, the marks left by wei wuxian’s epic-friendship-destruction with jiang cheng are still highly present in wei wuxian’s character and behavior, and thus affect the shape wangxian takes in canon as well.
in other words, there’s jiang cheng residue.
if you pruned jiang cheng out of the story somehow, or even if you made him disappear sometime during the 13 year timeskip–if you removed the residue, in other words–wangxian changes. of course, there are versions of wangxian that would not change (ie. the version in cql, since cql has wang and xian form a significant relationship before wei wuxian’s relationship with jiang cheng implodes), or would change less. but in terms of just the novel canon, a certain flavoring of “i’m better than your asshole ex-bestie” often feels necessary in order to maximize fidelity to original-article wangxian.
if jiang cheng and wei wuxian never had their epically destructive platonic divorce, wangxian…could probably still happen. but it would be a very different kind of wangxian.
My art for @mxtxfoodzine! Check out the FREE PDF with lots of great recipes ^w^ I collaborated with @tboesart to share this White Rabbit Milk Candy Pudding recipe and fic with LWJ, JC, and WWC
made the mistake of thinking about qin su for too long. she never did anything wrong and got one of the worst fates of anybody!! like what if you instantly fell in love with the guy who saved your life during the war and decide that you will marry him even though he’s so far below you in the social order he’s basically supposed to be off-limits. you don’t care about the stupid classism of your society you are going to marry FOR LOVE. and you DO. he’s a war hero now and he gets legitimized by his father and the two of you love each other and finally get permission to marry and you’re gonna have a baby and everything’s perfect except after you marry he becomes inexplicably terrified of being alone with you and refuses to sleep with you ever again. but he’s still as respectful and kind as possible to you. divorce is never threatened, no concubine is ever brought in to imperil your position or your son’s. what the fuck happened. you get to become jin-furen but then your baby is murdered. since your husband won’t sleep with you you’ll never have another. then after years of living what sometimes feels like the life you always dreamed of and at other times feels like a terrible mockery of it, you get a letter that reveals that your husband is your half-brother. and that he KNEW. he knew when he married you. did he know before? did he know when your baby was conceived? did he kill your baby to prevent anyone from knowing? when you confront him, instead of reassuring you on this count, he tries to tell you to not be upset, there’s GUESTS outside. was it all for the sake of his image? his position? do you know the man you’ve been married to for a decade? did you ever? and then he locks you in the magic mirror room so your breakdown can’t ruin the party. you spend that time thinking of what everyone will say about you when they know you fucked your brother. he brings a bunch of guests down to the magic mirror room so that he can defend himself from some OTHER terrible crime. how long can he keep it up? sooner or later everyone will know. you seize the first opportunity to kill yourself with a dagger. you’ll never have to hear what everyone says when the truth is revealed. he cries and holds you as you die, and you don’t know if he’s pretending. your soul gets trapped in the dagger forever. you still don’t know if he killed your baby. you never will.
another interesting tidbit of narration in mdzs. what makes it so fun is that it’s presented as omniscient narration fact, but it’s obviously positioned unfavorably toward jiang cheng. and as we keep reading, we can see how wei wuxian specifically would hold this opinion of jc—jc doesn’t want to break rules in cloud recesses, he doesn’t want to resist wen chao as a teenager, he doesn’t want to go against the cultivation clans after the war.
but the thing is, barely adult jc, alone, traumatized, inexperienced, was one of the renowned leaders of the sunshot campaign, when they were at a distinct disadvantage. he diverted the attention of the wen soldiers to save wwx, knowing he would get captured. he never stopped looking for wwx during his 3 months in the burial mounds, even after everyone else except for lwj had given up. he rebuilt lotus pier from nothing. he steps into guanyin temple at the end knowing very little of the situation inside to protect jin ling, and it’s clear that he couldn’t have won that fight alone. again and again, he has proven that when it’s time to fight, he will risk everything and give it his all even when victory is unlikely.
and that’s what i really enjoy about the narration style—it’s intentionally misleading the reader right from the start, and it’s not telling you that it’s coming from an unreliable narrator, but it shows you. and so many people just. insist on only reading what’s being told instead of seeing what’s shown.
Jin Zixuans’ lotus pond IS the best addition that CQL made to MDZS’ story and it’s because it’s a sign that someone is willing to take care of Jiang Yanli for a change. She was being a parent to her brothers from at least the moment Wei Wuxian moved in, and being both insulted and neglected by her mother and her father. And than the stupid rich boy builds her a lotus pond, gets his finely manicured hands dirty and he tells her he is willing to make her a new lotus pier, otherwise said he is willing to put in the work to make a new family for her, while previously she was the one keeping her family together. Someone is now willing to do that for HER! Not to mention mme. Jin treats her more like a daughter than her own mother ever did. GOD FORBID she wants to marry the stupid rich boy who says he wants to take care of her and has PROVEN IT (despite not being able to look her in the eye five seconds before she lets him hit lol) instead of going back to her brothers because they ‘need’ her. They’re adults, it’s time for shijie to be taken care of now
Forever convinced that no matter what, Jin Zixuan is in fact, the BEST man of all the mdzs men. This man started off being described as rich, spoilt, and uptight, as opposed to the Yunmeng boys and also possibly the Lans, and yet he is first punched for being a teenager and not wanting an arranged marriage with a girl he was pretty sure liked Wei Wuxian anyway, and then for standing up for a servant girl whose credit he (wrongly) believed was being stolen by a highborn woman, and he still manages to listen to his wife so much he is a) kept out of his father’s murder plans despite being the principle son and heir, b) invites the boy who punched him multiple times to his son’s celebration and delivers said invitation, and c) actually dies de-escalating something he needn’t even have bothered to involve himself in. For a story which appears to put selfless service to others above all, the spoilt rich boy sure does die doing so, because he had the good sense to appreciate a virtuous woman and it worked spectacularly for him. Jin Ling’s inherent goodness has very little to do with Wei Wuxian, and everything to do with the type of people his parents had been.
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
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