#my standard disclaimer when discussing jiang cheng and jin ling's relationship is that we all bring

[winepresswrath]

baby boy jin ling

How I feel about this character

Unabashed adoration. He’s the best. I love a brat with a heart of gold, and I find his whole deal both hilarious and tragic, which is the exact right way to get me over invested. The only fic I’ve ever actually completed and posted in this fandom is about him. There’s this very fun and sad bait and switch the show pulls with him- he was such a loved and privileged baby. He was supposed to have everything. His parents, his uncles, even his shitty grandfather are just so over the moon about his existence. I could cry for days about how smug Jiang Cheng and Yanli are in the wedding clothes scene when they start talking about him, or how delighted and grateful Wei Wuxian is when believes he’s been granted the grace of getting the chance to be a part of Jin Ling’s life. The entire cultivation world basically comes together to throw parties celebrating his existence and gossip about how the Jin and the Jiang are pulling out all the stops for this kid who, at the age of one month is already “showing such promise” as a swordsman. There’s such hope associated with his birth. And then the adults fuck it up horribly for him and he grows up being co-parented by a sociopath who has complicated feelings about other people’s privilege and legitimacy and a traumatized teenager who, as a maternal uncle, probably had to fight pretty hard to be involved. And they are terrible at cooperating with each other and are also busy running different countries. I have endless feelings about how he’s always dressed in Jin colours but yelling for Jiang Cheng.

Jin Ling has clearly been fucked up by the experience of being Jin Ling but he’s also doing fine. He’s spent a lot of time being slapped down by life but there’s this optimism and vivacity to the way he throws himself into new situations that I find wildly endearing. I will forever love that he gets to break the cycle of vengeance and decide that he’s not going to hate anyone and also his uncle should stop being a pain and go talk to his brother. It’s great. He’s great. What a good kid.

All the people I ship romantically with this character

I don’t really ship him with anyone! I’m not opposed to Jin Ling dating but I’m also not very interested in it.

My non-romantic OTP for this character

Jin Ling and Jiang Cheng. It is absolutely horribly unfair that Jin Ling is stuck translating from Jiang Cheng to reasonable human being, but he’s very good at it and I am moved by that echo of Yanli and the way she always knew what he meant even if he couldn’t say it out loud. I find the idea of Jiang Cheng as a single parent both tragic and hilarious, which, again, is my jam. I’m glad Jin Ling has a person he trusts to love him unconditionally and protect him and put him first, even if that person is an emotionally constipated angry grape whose parenting report card has needs improvement scribbled on it at various key intervals. I am also just generally in my feels about how whatever else you can say about Jin Ling, he is very clearly Jiang Cheng’s baby. “You’re the one who loves him most,” indeed.  Hug your amazing nephew, Jiang Cheng! He deserves everything >:(

My unpopular opinion about this character

I do not blame him even a little bit for stabbing Wei Wuxian. He is a tragic orphan whose whole life is defined by being a tragic orphan. He lives in an honour culture where you are supposed to avenge your murdered family, and he thinks the monster who killed his parents tricked him into believing he was his friend for shits and giggles and consequently made him betray their memory. Not even Wei Wuxian, canonically very good at noticing when something about his culture is fucked up and bad, avoids the vengeance trap. I legit think Jin Ling is astoundingly forgiving and open minded. Wei Wuxian didn’t deserve to be stabbed (again) and I have many feelings about how it’s very tragic and awful for him that Jin Ling believes this horrible thing, but it’s not Jin Ling’s fault. Blame Jiggy. Or possibly honour cultures. Though honestly Jin Ling calling the cops on Wei Wuxian and tearfully explaining that his parents’ murderer has been stalking him in disguise because he’s a sick fuck who likes tormenting his victims and making them trust him before he strikes might actually be worse for him, emotionally, than a little light stabbing.

I guess I also think that while Jiang Cheng is not winning any parenting awards he has clearly surpassed his own shitty parents by a considerable degree. His parents were impressively shitty tho so i’m not telling anyone they should be impressed.

One thing I wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon.

A-Qing should have lived and he should have taken her back to Lanling Jin and made her his personal advisor so they could invent heelies and glowsticks together. They would have been such great friends. Zizhen could visit and pine dramatically for her.