#when people say the core sacrifice was only done in duty to the jiangs its like.... were you looking at wei wuxian? did you see his face?

[dani474]

Tell us your theory on why he says that PLEASE. I don’t think it’s true they have to fix things 😭

So, this post points out a huge flaw in Wei Wuxian's response and its discrepancy to what we know of their relationship in canon. The Golden Core transfer is one of MANY things they need to discuss to get past their estranged, brittle, slightly obsessive relationship.

When we take a close look at why Jiang Cheng is so angry and so hurt here, it's not just about his family or any debt Wei Wuxian might have had to his parents. Ultimately, it's about Wei Wuxian's promise to remain by Jiang Cheng's side. He lost his parents and their entire sect, then he lost his own core trying to protect Wei Wuxian (who doesn't know!) then his "martial brother/brother/best friend/whatever" not only goes missing for three months but returns with new powers and new issues he won't share with anyone. Not even Yanli.

Jiang Cheng wanted to protect Wei Wuxian but was unable to due to larger political circumstances and the fact that he didn't know about the transfer. He didn't know why Wei Wuxian was using demonic cultivation! He warns Wei Wuxian again and again that there are larger risks of his cultivation, and he turned out to be right. Trouble found Wei Wuxian even when he ran off and hid peacefully! And he never knew why.

To Jiang Cheng, Wei Wuxian asking to leave the sect -- regardless of whether or not it was to protect them from further scrutiny by the other sects -- is him asking to leave Jiang Cheng's side. To break their promise without any explanation. He already lost so much and all he can see here is losing another person he loves.

I want to drive that point in, really.

Any insecurity Jiang Cheng feels over Wei Wuxian's capabilities is often outweighed by his sense of responsibility towards rebuilding his sect and attempting to protect what remains of the family he had before the attack on Lotus Pier.

He didn't want to tell Wei Wuxian about why he lost his golden core for the same exact reason that Wei Wuxian kept the surgery a secret. They didn't want to hurt each other with the knowledge of such a great sacrifice. A sacrifice no one would have ever asked of either of them, no matter what was "owed." The Transfer was experimental and pretty much something no cultivator would even attempt. That's what made this choice so risky and so hard to account for.

Neither had any real way to weight the risks and consequences of this situation, and by never talking about it even during a tearful argument, we got canon events. (I've seen people talk about how Wei Wuxian's circumstances meant he had very little else to choose but survival, but this is true for Jiang Cheng too.)

And really. They both tried so hard to survive. And yet, when faced with terrible choices, they chose to protect each other. Putting their cultivation on the line to save each other's lives is not something anyone would normally do. Duty could have been a factor, but in my opinion, it wouldn't have taken Wei Wuxian that far. It wasn't even a factor in Jiang Cheng's.

And I think this is why people feel so put off by Wei Wuxian claiming it was done out of duty to the Yunmeng Jiang family. But it doesn't start with him. Their entire confrontation starts out with Jiang Cheng questioning what the sect meant to Wei Wuxian, if everything they gave him (everything they were to him) was worth nothing. This is almost entirely a projection of what Jiang Cheng asks when he cries. What he really feels is hidden in questions about martial duty.

"Why did you not tell me?"

For all his words, it was less about their sect and so much more about Jiang Cheng feeling like he was worth nothing to Wei Wuxian.

We know this. But Wei Wuxian doesn't.

I didn't notice it immediately, but Wei Wuxian's whole thing is deflection. It's about telling small truths and laughing things off or forcing himself to forget entirely. By the end of their confrontation, he does it again by asking Jiang Cheng to let it stay in the past, now that it's out there, but this does nothing to reduce the tension. It just deflects it again.

I think Wei Wuxian's response to Jiang Cheng's questions was to focus on what he thought was most important. Duty, debt to the Yunmeng Jiang. It was a deflection from what was really wrong. He didn't want to address his own complicated feeling, much less try to untangle whether Jiang Cheng hates him or loves him, so he doesn't.

Whatever broke between them wasn't about duty of any kind. It was about sacrifice, and the pain of carrying its burden alone. It was about loving someone enough to do something so drastic and never being able to say it.

Jiang Cheng hearing that the transfer was out of duty hurts him deeply, because he doesn't know that Wei Wuxian loves him. But Wei Wuxian doesn't know that's what Jiang Cheng is looking for. He hears the first part of their confrontation and responds to that.

Not, "Why did you never tell me?" But 'Did the Yunmeng Jiang mean nothing to you?'

Those are two different questions.

Wei Wuxian is trying to tell Jiang Cheng that it did mean something. That Lotus Pier's destruction, the Jiang parents and Yanli's deaths mattered to him. He's trying to release Jiang Cheng's burden without realizing that, by saying it had nothing to do with him, he's saying that Jiang Cheng didn't matter enough.

This is not how Wei Wuxian feels, we know this. But, again, Jiang Cheng doesn't.

They're talking right past each other, and because of all their other issues, they not only don't realize it, but might never be able to truly address it. They're so used to keeping their feelings hidden from each other that they can't even see how much they, as individuals, matter to each other.

TL;DR.

Both of them love each other and couldn't say it because of their complicated. Well, everything. Instead, their misconceptions cause them both to focus on the wrong things at the wrong time. By asking about what the Yunmeng Jiang meant to Wei Wuxian, it hides what Jiang Cheng really wants to know: if it was done out of love and protectiveness as his sacrifice had been. By focusing on this deflection, Wei Wuxian hides his own feelings by placing duty to the Jiang sect in highest importance. He gives the answer that he thinks Jiang Cheng wants to hear.

So, no, I don't think Wei Wuxian wasn't telling the truth (or at least not the full truth) either.

In the end, this is not what either of them actually wanted from the confrontation and does very little to address their actual emotional issues. All it really does is open the door for something to change in the future.

[trans-xianxian]

always in the back of my mind there's a little projector that just plays the scene after wei wuxian and wen ning rescue jiang cheng from lotus pier and they're all in the boat and wei wuxian is holding an unconscious jiang cheng in his arms looking absolutely horrified and broken and he just slowly lifts two shaking fingers up to jiang chengs face to check if he's even still breathing.... they were pretty fucked up for that one I've gotta say

[drwcn]

winepresswrath replied to your post: 

It is such a “the things I do for love” moment for me. objectively morally very bad, and also an act of love that wwx can’t really see his way around. I think if you pressed him on it in the second life he’d maybe acknowledge it wasn’t right to take Jiang Cheng’s choice but he’d still have 0 regrets about it. And at the time- well, Jiang Cheng would make a bad choice if they asked him. He already, from wwx’s perspective, made a very bad choice when he left the inn and got caught. Wwx can fix that. I do think he thinks he has a moral duty to save his brother that supersedes Jiang Cheng’s consent but he is wrong about that. 

And from WQ’s end I think she’s feeling guilty about what happened to lotus pier and projecting her own feelings about protecting WN onto WWX and Yanli wanting to protect JC. She’s already tolerating WR’s attempt at conquering the cultivation world to protect her brother and her people. One of the first things we learn about her is that she feels guilty about her inability to cure her brother, despite her skill. The core transfer is something she CAN do, something maybe only she can do. A way for her to reassert that she’s a doctor first, and WR doesn’t reflect on her. and if WN needed some great and terrible sacrifice from her to be ok, she wouldn’t stop and ask him for permission anyways and I think that that’s part of why she never calls that debt in with JC, even for her people and her brother. She doesn’t think he owes her for what he didn’t and wouldn’t have agreed to.

Very convenient for wwx that the greatest doctor of his generation was feeling guilty about both things done by her people to all of them and things done specifically to JC, and also very comfortable with the idea that you might do some Bad Things to save your brother and then just have to live with yourself but also. He was captured and tortured and that’s already what one might call a violation of his bodily integrity. Trying to fix that with noncon surgery is poetically awful even if I think it’s also very sympathetic, given what wwx has been through and his sincere belief that he’s going to lose his brother too if he can’t fix this and it’s all his fault. 

And then his cover story is “I’m contrary and don’t care about your feelings or my commitments” which. I have notes. Not even morally  just like. Some suggestions for how to not to arrive in a place u don’t wanna go. The setting does matter a lot for me in terms of how sympathetic I feel about WQ agreeing to it, but much like how blood feuds might be socially acceptable but they still suck probably if you know someone’s response to the consequences of you rummaging around their insides would be abject horror you should not. And I definitely don’t think JC would have agreed to it. There was a 50/50 shot of it not working and then what’s gonna happen to Yanli? I think he’d say no anyways, but there’s a 0% chance he agrees to those odds. Obviously I had a lot of thoughts! Sorry for the spam

Your commentary!! I love it and I think everyone should see it; I’ve pasted here I hope you don’t mind. 

Everything WWX did is... exactly what his character would’ve done: 1) his self-destructive tendencies, 2) his self-sacrificing tendencies, 3) his self sabotage tendencies. 

Asking him to choose differently would’ve been untrue to his character. That being being said, it doesn’t make it right. And i’m so sick of the fandom portraying wwx as a such a victim. Because he isn’t that. At all. Yes the evil doers took advantage, but everyone needs to be accountable for their own actions. And wwx’s action certainly had its consequences. 

A secret like that was not sustainable, and especially given his “I’ve changed, i’m dark and i don’t care about my promise” self-sabotaging strategy post war, sooner or later someone was going to take advantage of his dynamic with his brother and fuck both of them over. And that’s exactly what happened. Jin Guangyao’s logic was on-point when he dissected the political landscape for wwx and jc at the Guangyin temple. If not JGS, then someone else will. (He’s a villain, and that’s what villain’s do.)

As for Wen Qing, don’t even get me started. I’m too close to Wen Qing just from a personal/professional stand point, and every time i see anyone say a word against jc for “not being grateful”, I fucking lose it. You’re right; I think expecting Wen Qing to think Jiang Cheng owe her one is just... a gross misunderstanding of who she is. If anything, she owes him. I can say confidently that she knows perfectly that her actions led to the fall out between the brothers. It all started with the core transfer, but there was nothing she could do to take it back. 

And for JC, I don’t know what would’ve happened to him if wwx hadn’t given him his core. The narrative is told through wwx’s lens, he believed his brother couldn’t survive this. But god do we know that? We don’t. What we do know is that Jiang Cheng knew his odds were bad when he saw those soldiers on the street, and he still sacrificed himself. We can’t assume he knew everything about what could happen to himself, but he knew Wen Chao had Wen Zhuliu and he knew even his parents were no match for that level of cultivation. He knew the risks and he took it. At least that was an informed decision.