#jiang cheng did nothing wrong

[thegreatgremlingang]

people hating on Jiang Cheng are actually insane

ALL HE DID WAS GET ANGRY LIKE A NORMAL HUMAN AND BE A LIL AWKWARD TO WWX (Who actually broke his promise first btw)

and before you say "ooooh but he committed war crimes" let me raise you with a "EVERYBODY WHO HAS PARTICIPATED IN SUNSHOT INCLUDING YOUR LOVELY POOKIES WWX AND LWJ HAS BLOOD ON THEIR HANDS OK"

He did nothing wrong. He was just acting like a normal human from actual real Earth instead of a righteous and polished fictional character. And he got verbally shat on ALL THE TIME for it.

I like both twin prides its just kinda wild to me how WWX is so loved but JC is so hated by a lot of fans even though neither of them did anything wrong

Thanks for coming to my Ted talk kids see you next time

[ookamikabu]

I'm going to come out and say that the more I re-read MDZS the more I actually HATE WWX.

I know he's a protag so everything is supposed to be about "poor me I've done nothing wrong" but I can't stand those types of people. He would be a person where if he existed in real life I would not be able to be around him.

I've actually become more of a Jiang Cheng apologist (actually, no, because that implies that he's ever done anything wrong).

I read through all the main points and here are a few things that piss me off. Please add on if I missed something:

WWX is obviously favored by JFM and if JC brings up this concern, all WWX says is: "no he doesn't lol you're so silly I'm not his son" TBH WWX wasn't his child but JFM had a son and it wasn't JC

Golden Core transfer. Need I say less (and fuck you Wen Ning for saying JC didn't deserve the core and the power he had wasnt actually his. He cultivated it for YEARS to get it to where it is today. It is NOT WWXs core anymore. Fuck all yall)

WWX defecting from YMJ and going with the Wens when JC had NOTHING. No sect, no support, no family. He's a new sect leader and has no resources or money to do anything or go against anyone. And thanks WWX for defending the people that, you know, massacred his family but whatever. (I understand they were innocent but still, I can tell it would really hurt JC)

Along with the defecting, WWX and LWJ broke into Lotus Pier and BOWED TO MADAM YU AND JFM WITHOUT JCs APPROVAL. DISRESPECTFUL AS HELL I KNOW WHY JC WAS PISSED. WWX had NO RIGHT to be there after everything he had done.

WWX tells JC to leave everything in the past. As usual, he is running away and not accepting any consequences for the many, many, things he's done wrong. If I were JC, I would permanently ban him from Lotus Pier and kill on sight because if he wants to leave things in the past, then that includes WWX.

Lastly, WWX never once defends JC. Whether it be against LWJ, Wen Ning, or other people that say terrible shit to him because they're being petty. Not once does he come to his defense.

To end my rant, WWX is actually a very terrible person (and so is Lan Wangji. Fight me) with no sense and I finally realized it after re reading the book multiple times. Come at me if you want but this is my honest opinion and I get why JC is such an ass because BITCH ME TOO GET OUT OF MY HOUSE.

Hopefully I have some support here but I also know I'm going to get some hate.

[s2pdoktopus]

Knife shaped siblings and Al

[qiu-yan]

in MDZS the novel, the innkeeper in Yunping mentions that people are too scared to go petition Yunmeng Jiang for help because someone once walked in on Sect Leader Jiang whipping a guy in the main hall, supposedly because the guy was a demonic cultivator.

[miiokae]

So I made an edit for the first (and hopefully last) time....it's kind of a wip?? Might polish it might not but ANYWAYS- this show has given me SEVERE brainrot like I've never had before.

[writeitinsharpie]

actually the most relatable part of mdzs is that jiang cheng joins an inter-sect alliance against his brother

[lansplaining]

“Don’t you know why your uncle wanted to catch me?”

“I know. He suspects that you are Wei Wuxian.”

Wei Wuxian thought, It’s not just a suspicion, he’s got the right person. He then asked, “What about you? Don’t you suspect me?”

“It’s not the first time my uncle’s done such a thing. He’d rather catch an innocent person than let the real one slip past him."

I mean, along with JC thinking about doing it himself, JL is also under the impression that JC routinely hunts down demonic cultivators in case they're WWX. This would be a pretty fucked up thing to think if it wasn't true lol.

Idg why people have made this into such a big deal lol. It's very unhinged and sexy of him, is probably within his jurisdiction (if probably an abuse of power but that's hardly unique to him) and makes sense for his mental state at the time. It's fine!

I feel like there are a few things getting conflated, not to defend Jiang Cheng from having done some unhinged, sexy things. I mean, I guess we can assume that Jiang Cheng is torturing the people he captures, but he definitely does not torture Wei Wuxian except via dog exposure. Though maybe that's because he's so confident it's the real thing?

For another thing, Jin Ling is being pretty casual if the usual course of events is 'take the supposed Wei Wuxians to the torture dungeon, stat.' I get that he's an annoying teen who likes to downplay things, but I feel like he'd drop some sense of "we've gotta get out of here, you're about to get flayed" if that were the case. Maybe not!

Basically, I don't doubt Jiang Cheng has beaten people for information, perhaps including the potential Wei Wuxians, I do still doubt he has a torture dungeon under Lotus Pier.

[luobingmeis]

i love jiang cheng so fucking much im gonna start eating glass

[starpros-sunshine]

sometimes I check mdzs twitter and get reminded that there's apparently people who don't realize that ''a victim of circumstance'' is an option in discussing various questions of guilt regarding the characters

[lilnasxvevo]

character bingo: sangchengqing

Advertising the world’s best ot3 in the process of giving me something to do, I like the way you multitask

[grubus]

hmmm stalker aus...

TGCF: I think Xie Lian would very quickly realize he has a stalker. He has had a stalker before! Three times, even, though the other two were small ones compared to the big first one. He is, one might say, experienced in being stalked. However unlike the previous ones, this stalker is kind of.... nice.... kind of. Fun. Yes he keeps popping up where he shouldn't and Xie Lian definitely saw his own picture in the guy's wallet that one time, but he's very NICE and POLITE and honestly, the attention is nice. This is a good stalker. Xie Lian will lean into it to the horror of all his close ones. Xie Lian will encourage the stalker to stalk and meanwhile Hua Cheng thinks he's winning the Best Courtship Award, not knowing anyone more sane would have called the cops.

MDZS: Wei Wuxian would see Lan Wangji staring weirdly and acting weirdly one too many times and decide the man is stalking him. What a shame! He's so beautiful! Beautiful men aren't meant to be stalkers! Wei Wuxian's immediate decision to stalk right back is questionable at best and mostly impulsive. Several months after they end up together, it turns out Lan Wangji recognized Wei Ying from a Missing Child Poster and also from meeting as little kids, and all that staring was him trying to figure out if the Jiang family kidnapped him as a child. When Wei Ying decided to stalk him, Lan Wangji just thought the guy recognized him in turn and wanted to rekindle their childhood friendship.

SVSSS: Shen Yuan is not gay. He's not gay. However, lately, he keeps running into the most beautiful, handsome, gorgeous, hot, THE most perfect man he has ever SEEN. The guy is so charming and sweet and clearly having a rough time lately, CLEARLY he needs some support! Some encouragement! So what if Shen Yuan decides to dig up everything he can on the guy? That's normal! The dude seems to be HOMELESS, he needs help! Shen Yuan just needs all this information to make sure he can get Binghe the most fitting, best job. And besides, clearly they're meant to be (platonic) if they keep running into each other. He's so proud he made a friend and he's so proud he can help said friend. He ignores all the attic wife jokes from Airplane. There is nothing wrong with enjoying cleaning and cooking, dude! Binghe is very masculine. And he can leave whenever he wants!

Meanwhile Binghe, who knows stalking is bad but can't help it, can't help make sure to run into Shen Yuan every chance he gets, or memorize all that he likes and dislikes and- well, it's fine! Because it turns out that when he finally moves in with Shen Yuan, his boyfriend ALSO stalked him! Not that Shen Yuan will admit it, but Binghe sees the conspiracy board with all his info carefully mapped out, and he knows that his precious A-Yuan stalked him right back, doing it the digital way instead of on foot, like Binghe did.

It's very flattering.

[danmei-confessions]

ive slid too far down the jiang cheng stannery slope. when i first finished reading mo dao zu shi, i thought of him as a morally grey character and could admit that he'd made some major mistakes, but now im unironically willing to argue that my poor little meow meow did nothing wrong. your honor my client had zero political capital. your honor my client had no other choice. your honor my client should not be judged for not having all of the relevant information when he was actively being lied to. your honor have u considered that i love him.

anyways my controversial fave deserves nothing but quality time with jin ling, reconciliation with wei wuxian, 500 puppies, and 1000 years of prosperity for lotus pier and yunmeng region. oh and also some therapy because jesus fucking christ dude

.

[whetstonefires]

The reason I keep banging the Jiang Fengmian drum so hard is not that he did nothing wrong--he's definitely in contention for best parenting in this book but that bar is in the ground--but because most of the takes I see about him are so extremely bad.

If you want to slag him off for trying to make choices that would hurt no one, and winding up properly protecting no one as a result, that's valid! That's an interesting and text-based critique, which opens into his parallels with Lan Xichen!

If you want to blame him for being weirdly over-invested in Wei Wuxian and Jiang Cheng being bffs, that's fair, that definitely contributed to the weirdness between them. If you want to say he was a poor communicator, that he fundamentally misunderstood his son, that he failed to be emotionally available in a way his kids could get much use out of, even that he should have figured out a way to stop Yu Ziyuan from creating such a hostile environment, all of that is fair game!

If you want to tackle how the worst thing he did to his kids was die I am so interested in how Wei Wuxian went on to abandon A-Yuan by going to his death, and how that might be tied to how his primary adult role model tied him to a boat and went off to a fight he knew he was going to lose.

After his parents had already left him like that once before, presumably less intentionally.

But no, instead I keep seeing that Jiang Fengmian didn't care. That he never expressed affection. That he actively participated in Yu Ziyuan's fucky game of forcing proxy conflict onto the boys instead of constantly trying (and failing) to shut it down, or that he ignored her bad behavior because it didn't affect him, or that he fought with her constantly, or that he was too much of an unmanly coward to stand up to her when she wanted something.

All of which are directly in contradiction to every scene he's in, and several of which manage to invert or erase the actual conflicts between him and his wife that were the source of all that tension.

And which are really interesting, because some of the most intractable elements are ideological--Yu Ziyuan is fundamentally a conservative and Jiang Fengmian seems to want to be an egalitarian, which ofc matched poorly with his hereditary authority as patriarch of a large sect.

The fact that the bit where we get to actually see him failing to parent Jiang Cheng consists of him gently and firmly trying to correct Jiang Cheng's ethics when what was actually needed in that moment was reassurance for the well-founded insecurities that were causing him to be a little bitch, only for Yu Ziyuan to charge in and make everything fifty times worse, is so much more interesting than literally any version of this family dynamic I have seen in fic. It's to the point I'm relieved when writers kill Jiang Fengmian off, because it means they probably won't feel the need to character-assassinate him too badly.

The number of people I've seen come right out and say some variation of 'men can't be abused' is killing me here. No, Yu Ziyuan wanting to hurt her husband does not constitute sufficient proof that he abused her first and deserved it! That's not how anything works!

[acequinz]

I don't know why people are on the opposite spectrum only.

It's always either Jiang Cheng did nothing wrong or Jiang Cheng did everything wrong.

Did Jiang Cheng love Wei Wuxian? Yes.

Did he also in a way abandon Wei Wuxian? Yes.

Would Jiang Cheng die for Wei Wuxian? Yes.

Would Jiang Cheng prioritise something over Wei Wuxian? Also yes.

Why are people acting like him being angry and/or upset Wei Wuxian about literally anything he has done(and he has done a lot) negates the love he has for him?

Also about Wei Wuxian's morality, the author has said that Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji are morally good people, this does not mean they can't do something wrong. And having made a mistake doesn't make them bad people either, it's just that morally speaking Wei Wuxian was in the right to defend the Wens. But life doesn't fucking work on morals.

Hell Wei Wuxian holds too many regrets that even he won't admit that he's a perfect person because there're too many things he would want to do differently. But under no circumstances can you question his morals because they have always been in the right place. All his acts of purposeful cruelty were against people who hurt him first.

Jiang Cheng being unable to stand up with Wei Wuxian during the Wen situation is because he's young and has no support but it's still disappointing because Jiang Yanli still managed to stand with Wei Wuxian in a way and then we see Jiang Cheng be unable to, it's also because the scale is different and he prioritised his sect over Wei Wuxian.

Then the other part of Jiang Cheng lashing out on Jin Ling physically that I see many screenshots of it and it's always when Jiang Cheng is under high emotional distress situations. Which is not to say it's okay and should be allowed. But the world setting and situation also matters.

But guess what that also does not take away from the love Jiang Cheng has for Jin Ling.

There's too many connections in the story itself especially around Jin Ling and his uncle's.

Now of course a relationship can have all the love but unless it has active care and affection it means nothing.

Which is why Wei Wuxian and Jiang Cheng fall apart. They have the love, they even have the care but because they just can't share affection they fall apart immediately after Jiang Yanli because before she had been the bridge of affection between them.

With the final bridge down, their relationship could not stay afloat and just sank.

[shanastoryteller]

Happy Pride! Untamed please!

a continuation of 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46

 Lan Wangji is standing next to his brother as he makes small talk with Nie Mingjue – their closeness had never really recovered after the war, despite Xichen’s best efforts and Jin Guangyao’s lukewarm ones – when a Jin servant steps to his side and whispers, “Your wife is requesting your presence in Lady Jiang’s sitting room.”

Even as quietly as he’d spoken, Xichen and Nie Mingjue had obviously heard him. Xichen frowns. “Is she alright?”

Her injuries had been superficial and mostly healed. But Lan Wangji had seen the exhaustion that she didn’t want to admit to and said nothing, because they’d already gotten into one fight today and he understood pride well enough. Perhaps he should have insisted.

The servant lowers his eyes. “Apologies, Sect Leader Lan. I have only been instructed to escort Master Lan.”

“Excuse me,” he says, dipping his head to Nie Mingjue and falling into step with the servant. His pace is unhurried, which Lan Wangji tries to find reassuring. If something was wrong, surely they would be moving with more urgency.

He sees Jiang Cheng first and has to keep his lip from curling back in distaste. He’s ducked his head to speak with Jiang Yanli, the two of them standing outside of her rooms, but they both cut off their conversation when they see him. He bows shallowly to Jiang Yanli, ignoring Jiang Cheng completely. “Madame Jin. Is-“

“She’s fine,” she says, but the tension around her eyes and the strain in her smile tells a different story. “Please go in, Lan Wangji.”

He pushes the door open, closing it behind him, and at least he doesn’t have to look far for her. “Are you hurt?”

Xuanyu looks up at him, a faint redness in her eyes that speaks of tears. She’s dressed much like she was when he first met her, back in the Jin gold and cream and her hair turned sleek and pulled in hairstyle that’s half up in a braided bun on top of head and the rest of her hair flowing freely. It’s a Jiang hairstyle, one that Jiang Yanli used to wear when they were younger. The hair ornament in Xuanyu’s hair is Jiang Yanli’s as well.

The only Lan thing on her is her forehead ribbon, and it startles him with how out of place it looks, while Jiang and Jin seem to blend seamlessly. It causes something to twist uncomfortably in his chest, but he ignores it to repeat, “Are you hurt?”

“Sit down,” she says, gesturing to the place at the table across from her. He takes the seat next to her instead, looking her over for some sort of new injury or pain, but he can’t find anything amiss. “Ah, okay. Okay. So.”

He waits, but she just twists her hands together, occasionally reaching up to touch her hair and then realizing that with this new hair style it’s not where she expects it, and lowers her hands.

“Did something happen?” he asks.

She starts to shake her head then gives a jerky nod. “I – I – I’m. Yanli-jie’s healer came to see me.”

The stab of worry is almost becoming familiar when it comes to Xuanyu, but that doesn’t make it any more comfortable. “Are you ill? Have your injuries worsened?”

She shakes her head, and it should be a relief, but instead his worry just deepens. “No, no. It’s. Um. Not – I. It’s just that – well. You know. In the cold spring. And then the wall. And the bed.”

It takes him a moment but then heat flushes his cheeks. She is referring to when he became inebriated and took her. “Did I hurt you?”

She had said that it was not the type of hurt that was unwelcome or lingered and she’d never flinched away from him. But it was a first time for both of them and he barely remembers what he did and at the time he was significantly stronger than her and she was still injured from their spar. It’s entirely possible he harmed her in some way.

“No!” She bites her lip, staring at him with an intensity that he doesn’t understand. “Wangji, dammit, are you really going to make me say it?”

“If you wish me to understand, then you’re going to have to,” he says, worry and guilt pushing him to his own frustration.

Xuanyu blinks several times, and he’s about to apologize, but then she says, “I’m pregnant.”

He stares.

“From when we – you know – obviously,” she says. “So. Yeah.”

His eyes drop to her stomach. Several things snap into place at once but he can’t focus on any of them beyond the roar in his ears and the acid churning in his stomach.

He is no better than his father.

Xuanyu is his wife not by choice but circumstances out of her control and she had never wanted him and even if she enjoyed that night, he had lost his senses and demanded what she hadn’t offered freely, not even doing her the courtesy of taking the care to spill outside of her. Now his child grows inside her, pinning her in place and shackling her as his mother was shackled.

“Wangji?” she asks, voice concerningly high pitched. “Say something.”

“I’m sorry.”

She goes perfectly still except for where she’s gripping her robe above her knees. “Oh.”

“I never intended,” he starts but the lump in his throat makes it difficult to get anything else out. Instead he gets to his feet, bows to her, and is pushing out of the room as quickly as his feet can carry him.

Everything is too hot and too close and he can’t breathe. He needs to get outside. He needs to think.

“Hey!” Jiang Cheng shouts as he rushes past, but his voice softens as he says, “Oh, shit.”

It’s too bright and too close and too loud and he has no patience for Jiang Cheng even at his best and he just needs – he needs –

“Wangji?” Xichen grabs his elbow as he’s headed for the exit, eyes wide and concerned. “Is she – what’s wrong with Lady Xuanyu?”

“I,” he starts, and still can’t make himself speak. He pulls himself out of his grip and continues for the door. He hears his brother make his apologies to whoever he’d been speaking to and then his presense at his back, following him out.

He’ll probably be grateful for that when his head clears, but for now it’s too full of panic and shame and a bitter self hatred he hasn’t felt this intently since he’d lost Wei Wuxian.

“I know somewhere private,” Xichen says softly as soon as they’re outside, the lungful of fresh air not nearly as clarifying as he’d hoped it’d be. “Come.”

He follows his brother, focuses on breathing, and not why it feels like he can’t get enough air despite how greedily he sucks it in.