I saw “lwj doesn’t like jyl” in your wip list and I’m so intrigued, would you tell us a bit about it?
ah this ask is so old now, idk if you're still interested, but sure, i can talk about it.
so, fandom seems fairly set on the fact that lan wangji hates jiang cheng. like, i feel like no-one's arguing that fact. but i see a lot of lan wangji getting along really well with jiang yanli, which i think is... yeah, fair enough, but my brain was like, okay, let's explore a universe where he hates her too. why does he hate her? what does he hold against her? how justified is that hate? is it pettiness? or does he have a genuine grievance? how does he moderate this, given that wei wuxian definitely still loves her?
content warning under the cut for discussion of child abuse, in line with what we see of yzy's treatment of wwx in canon, but applied to a modern setting.
around the time i was musing on this, i read a modern au of mdzs that had wwx as the victim of horrific child abuse in the jiang household, and the fic was sort of about him reconnecting with jiang cheng and jiang yanli years down the line. (don't ask me which it was, because i do not recommend it.) and i was looking at that premise, and i was like, hmm. i could do something with this.
the more i worked on it, the more it started to feel like a jiang yanli character study, almost. her strengths and flaws and regrets became a central part of the fic. i really wasn't interested in doing the slash fic demonising women thing. i wanted to write her with depth and sympathy, whilst also demonstrating her flaws (that wei wuxian would be blind to).
here's a few bits:
the opening scene of the fic:
JIANG CONGLOMERATE STOCK PRICE REACHES TEN YEAR LOW FOLLOWING CONCLUSION OF LIBEL CASE
Read: After the Yunmeng People’s Court ruled today against Yu Ziyuan, wife to chairman Jiang Fengmian of the Jiang Conglomerate, stockholder confidence in the company dropped, leading to their lowest share price in nearly thirteen years.
TSINGHUA UNIVERSITY ISSUE APOLOGY TO WEI WUXIAN, SCHOLARSHIP AND ENROLMENT REINSTATED
Read: Tsinghua University has issued a written apology for the “hasty” sanctions they issued against post-graduate student Wei Wuxian, who has been the subject of a month-long libel case from his former family.
“I LIVED EVERY DAY BELIEVING I WOULD WAKE UP TO DISCOVER HE WAS DEAD.” – TESTIMONY FROM JIANG DEFAMATION CASE REVEALS HORRIFYING REALITY OF CHILD ABUSE IN HOUSEHOLD
Listen: Leaked audio from the Jiang Family’s defamation case details the horrific physical abuse inflicted upon the defendant, Wei Wuxian.
YU ZIYUAN ARRESTED FOR AGGRAVATED ASSAULT, ATTEMPTED MURDER; FACES UP TO TWENTY YEARS IN PRISON
In Photos: As Wei Wuxian attempts to escape the crowd following his decisive victory against the Jiang Family, Yu Ziyuan’s exit from the court is interrupted by Yunmeng Police.
--
Staring at the sky
When all of this started, I was so mad about what Wei Wuxian was doing. I was convinced he was a white-eyed wolf, and he was lying just to get back at a family he’d ended things badly with. I was right there with all my classmates, trending #expellweiwuxian all across weibo. Now that we know the truth, I’m so deeply ashamed. Wei-xiaozhang, I’m so sorry!!
Paralysed by the flow of time
I don’t think I’ve ever listened to something that made me quite as upset as Dr Wen’s testimony in the #JiangDefamationCase. To think about her as a young med student, stranded across the country from him, trying her best to keep him alive, yet knowing it could all be for nothing if Yu Ziyuan had a bad day and killed him… And the fact that it was her that kept records of his injuries and abuse – evidence that Wei Wuxian had thrown away himself – just in case he ever needed it… It makes complete sense that when he finally ran from the Jiangs, he ran to her. Wei Wuxian, marry that girl before someone else does!
Three for free and two for too
Fuck everyone in the Jiang Family who covered up the abuse that was happening. Fuck every single member of their staff who saw what was happening and stayed quiet to keep their job. And above all else, fuck Yu Ziyuan.
Three for free and two for too
Prison’s too good for that bitch.
--
Jiang Yanli thinks of her life in moments, most often.
Part of it, she knows, is due to the tumultuous nature of the household she grew up in. There was a thick tension that sat heavily over their house, even when A-Xian wasn’t mouthing off in front of their mother. There were so few moments of unabashed joy that Yanli clung to them all the harder – and just let the other memories slip away.
There was one, when she was seven: the day she met Jiang Wuxian. He’d been tiny and bright-eyed – untrusting but eager for affection. She’d loved him the moment she saw him.
Then, another, at eighteen: a little tipsy, hiding from the crowds at her parents’ Lunar New Year party, when Jin Zixuan looked at her like he finally saw her, and the caught her mid-laugh with an impulsive kiss.
Twenty, legs weak as she walked to the altar. Twenty-two, with Jin Ling in her arms for the first time, tiny and precious and utterly untainted.
The most important moment, though, the one that turned her life on its head, happened three days after her marriage to Jin Zixuan.
They were on their honeymoon. He’d taken her to dinner at an exorbitantly expensive restaurant – even after a year of dating Zixuan still liked to posture. The evening is dimmed somewhat by alcohol; Yanli is a consummate lightweight, and she and Zixuan had already split a bottle of champagne in their hotel room before surfacing for food. She can’t remember exactly what she said, but it’d been something like—
“If my mother knew I was ordering steak, she’d slap me.”
It wasn’t intended to be anything more than a careless remark. She’d said things like that before, and her friends had never made it seem like something terrible. At most, she expected a little light teasing about watching her figure. Maybe a shallow smile.
Zixuan gave her neither. “Is that why you always order a salad when we go out?”
Jiang Yanli had blinked. “Ah,” she said without meaning to. The deviation from the expected script threw her. “That is…” She didn’t want to misrepresent anything to Zixuan, but she couldn’t think of a way to explain herself without making his misunderstanding worse. “You know me. Kind of a glutton. My mother just—well, someone has to watch what I eat, or else I’d never have fit into my wedding dress.”
“Kind of a—” Zixuan cut himself off. “Yanli,” he said, “you’re—you’re tiny. You eat like a bird. I always—you should eat more. I don’t care if I have to buy you an entire store’s worth of new dresses. I just want you well.”
Yanli looked down at the dinner settings in front of them and felt her mouth go dry. She shouldn’t—Zixuan was being—perfect, as always. It was nice. But for some reason, his words made her feel—agitated. Uncomfortable. Like there was something treacherous to be found in his kindness.
“I am well,” she said, at length. “Please,” she reached across the table to lay one of her hands over Zixuan’s. “A-Xuan. It was just a joke. Forget I said anything.”
Jin Zixuan turned over his hand and laced their fingers. “If your mother were here,” he said, very serious, “her hand would never even get close to your face. Even if I had to take the blow for you. So order whatever you want.”
In retrospect, it was such a small thing. It shouldn’t have mattered. But it—struck something, deep and fundamental to her very being. Her hand would never even get close to your face, echoing around her head for days, weeks, afterwards. It was the first time she had ever thought to consider her mother as anything other than an absolute authority. It was the first time anyone had ever suggested that they might protect her from her.
She thinks about it a lot.
She thinks about it when she holds Jin Ling, and wonders if there will ever come a time when A-Xuan will have to protect their son from her. She thinks about it when she visits Jiang Cheng each year, on the anniversary of Wuxian’s disappearance. She thinks about it in quiet moments, when her hands are occupied with laundry or housework, and her brain is able to spiral out and play with words like abuse and childhood trauma.
And she’s thinking about it now, stood on the steps of Yunmeng’s People Court, watching A-Xian try to fight his way through a crowd of reporters. Her hand would never even get close to your face. Yanli’s father is collapsed on the ground beside her. Jiang Cheng is arguing with the police officers leading their mother away. Zixuan is back home with their child – a courtroom is no place for a toddler.
Her hand would never even get close to your face.
It had been so easy for Zixuan to make her feel safe. She wasn’t living at home anymore. She was married. Her husband was wealthy enough to take care of them without any help from her family.
She can’t imagine—
Her hand would never even get close to your face.
—how much more difficult it must be, to make Jiang Wuxian feel safe.
There’s a clatter behind them and Jiang Yanli turns her head slightly, to catch sight of a young woman rushing down the steps after A-Xian. Yanli recognises her. This is Wen Qing. She testified for A-Xian.
Yanli watches her place her tiny body between A-Xian and the press. Wen Qing stretches her arms out, forcing her way back, giving A-Xian space. She says something sharp and short to A-Xian. When he nods, she grasps his hand, and she forces her way through the crowd, A-Xian following in her wake.
Yanli watches them both until they’re completely swallowed by the mass of cameras and microphones.
“Jiejie, say something.”
Yanli’s attention snaps back to A-Cheng. Both her brother and two police officers are looking at her expectantly. “Oh,” she says after a beat. “I’m sorry. Could you repeat that?”
Jiang Cheng growls. “They’re saying we can’t follow them to the police station to talk to Mom,” he says. “And I said they’d be hearing from our lawyers.”
Oh, A-Cheng, Yanli sighs internally. Always so convinced of his own righteousness. “We should take Dad home before dealing with any of that,” she says gently. “Gentlemen, am I to presume you are members of the Yunmeng Police Precinct?”
“Yes, ma’am,” one of the officers says.
Ma’am. How ridiculous. I’m not even 30. “Then we know where to send our legal team,” she says easily. “A-Cheng, we can get Mom out of jail later. For now, can you help me with Dad?”
“They had no right to—”
“A-Cheng,” Yanli says, stronger this time. “I can’t lift him on my own.”
Jiang Cheng cuts himself off. He looks between their father and the police officers, hesitating, before he sighs, and kneels down to hook his hands under their father’s arms. “It’s okay, Dad,” he says. “Come on. We’ll get it sorted out.”
Yanli looks around them – at the teeming mass of reporters, barely held back by their security team, at the place where just moments ago, A-Xian had staggered out of the courthouse, victorious but no less wrecked for it, at the police car pulling away with their mother in handcuffs—
Yanli looks at it all, and can’t help but feel that this is the kind of mess that can’t really be sorted out.
and the little snippet that inspired the entire fic:
(cw for discussion of injury, and fairly horrific child abuse)
(context for this scene: wei wuxian is sick, and as such has to cancel on lunch with jiang yanli. when she hears he's sick, she makes him soup, and brings it by his apartment.)
“Oh,” Jiang Yanli says, looking at the kitchen. “This is…”
Lan Wangji follows her gaze, not entirely certain what she’s noticing in particular. He has chopping boards out, piled with vegetables he was in the middle of preparing, when Yanli arrived. There’s a pot of stock simmering on the stovetop, and a steamer that’s half-filled with dumplings.
Jiang Yanli smiles helplessly. “I guess I never expected either of you to be able to cook. A-Cheng’s hopeless, and the less said about my husband in the kitchen the better. And A-Xian… I guess I don’t know anymore. Does he cook?”
Wei Ying doesn’t so much cook as he attempts to kill his tastebuds – and his husband – with spice.
Jiang Yanli hovers inside the kitchen door. Lan Wangji watches her, quietly.
“I understand,” she says at length, “why you don’t like A-Cheng. He is rude to you. I—he hasn’t figured out yet, which parts of our mother’s teachings he wishes to keep. Please be patient with him.”
Lan Wangji’s fingers pause on the knife. He does not say what he is thinking, that he has little sympathy for the plight of Jiang Wanyin. That it is simple to him: a woman who beats a child under her care is not one who he would listen or obey in any circumstance.
It isn’t his place to say such things.
“So, I understand, why you avoid us,” Jiang Yanli goes on. “But – I am not my brother. I have no quarrel with your relationship with A-Xian. You have been – good for him. So I hope – I hope we can be friends. For A-Xian’s sake,” she adds, “if nothing else.”
Lan Wangji looks down at the knife in his hands. It is sharp, and expensive, and he should not be holding it for this conversation. He places it down on the table.
“Thank you for your care,” Lan Wangji says. “Wei Ying will appreciate the soup. But we cannot be friends.”
She blinks at him. “Why not?”
“I dislike you.”
His blunt statement seems to have staggered her. She blinks, again. Tilts her head. “I—what?”
“We cannot be friends,” Lan Wangji repeats, “because I dislike you.”
“Oh,” Jiang Yanli says. “Mr Lan, I’ve never – if I’ve done something to offend you—”
Lan Wangji’s eyes fall to the Tupperware in her hands. “It is not what you have done,” he says, “but what you have not.”
Jiang Yanli follows his eyes to the empty soup containers she’s holding. “I—I don’t understand,” she says.
“When Wei Ying was thirteen,” Lan Wangji says, “Yu Ziyuan flayed the skin from his back. Doctor Wen still has photos saved from the incident. I have seen them. It is no understatement to say that Wei Ying is lucky to have survived – had the wounds become infected, he would have likely died. You brought him soup.”
Left unsaid are the events that prevented that: that Wen Qing had stolen prescription antibiotics from the pharmacy where she worked, risking her job; that Wen Ning had spent every penny of his savings on a plane ticket across China and taped the blister packs of pills inside a hollowed out workbook, that was slipped to Wei Ying under the premise of make-up work; that Wei Ying himself had applied ointment to his wounds with a cotton pad taped to the end of a ruler, unable to reach the network of lacerations stretching across his entire back.
“I – I always have,” Jiang Yanli says. “It makes him feel better, when he’s sick.”
She doesn’t get it.
“Yu Ziyuan left him lying in the dirt,” Lan Wangji says. “He had to crawl up the stairs to his room because he could not stand up without passing out from the pain. He vomited when he reached for his first aid kit, because it had been placed on the top shelf of his wardrobe by a maid. And you brought him soup.”
Wei Ying loves her for it, even now. Jiang Yanli, his jie-jie, who always brought him soup when he was sad. She is untouchable in Wei Ying’s eyes.
Lan Wangji will never forgive her for it.
“You were in a position to help him, long before I even knew what was wrong,” Lan Wangji says. “You moved out, went to university, met your husband – and for four years, you never said a word. How many times did you come back home and make soup? How many times did you see your mother’s cruelty written across Wei Ying’s body – and how many times did you choose to do nothing?
“I saw signs I didn’t have the knowledge to interpret, and I hate myself for never speaking up. It is my greatest regret, that I didn’t have the courage to end Wei Ying’s suffering even – one year, one month, one day earlier. But you knew all along. And you made him soup.”
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