yu-ziyuan

[yu-ziyuan]

the thing about mxtx is that her novels have such fascinating themes about gender and gender performance, but at the same time she does not seem interested in writing women and her female characters rarely get narrative attention. the curse of doing gender analysis through BL novels.

[yu-ziyuan]

but would jc have given up his core for wwx? I don't think so

Jiang Cheng loves Wei Wuxian just as much, but no I don't think he does. There are many reasons for this, but it basically boils down to JC having more faith in WWX's ability to take care of himself and also it just being a terrible plan? Like first of all we have to exist in CQL or at least a Comb frankencanon because I don't think Jiang Cheng is willing to let some random Wen dog he just met get her hands on his golden core. Even if he is in love with Wen Qing, he's a very cautious, risk adverse person who is not thrilled about experimental surgery with no clinical trials that the greatest doctor in the world thinks only has a 50% chance of working. THEN he would have to come up with some cover story as to how Wen Qing was able to restore WWX's core without letting him know about his brother's sacrifice, and Jiang Cheng doesn't have the Baoshan Sanren excuse. Even with as much faith JC had in WWX he was still skeptical about BSSR being able to restore his core, how the hell is he going to convince WWX that no, really, nothing shady here just trust him. Then he has to hide this somehow?? It's not like JC can play it off like oh he just doesn't feel like working, he's too dutiful for anyone to buy it. Like this just isn't going to work. Wei Wuxian only pulled it off as long as he did because he moved to the Burial Mounds and then died. This is a bad plan.

Aside from that, again Jiang Cheng believes in WWX, he didn't start doubting in canon until Zixuan died. WWX reacts differently to trauma than JC does, and while WWX can't play this one off no matter how much he determinedly talks about talismans, Jiang Cheng doesn't feel like he has the right to make choices for him to the same extent. WWX gets carefully swaddled in cotton and stashed in Meishan even if he's figuring out demon flutes but JC isn't going to consider noncon body modification as a reasonable solution.

Also it's a really fucking awful plan.

[yu-ziyuan]

Look I love unconditional devotion love stories as much as the next person, but there's really something so deliciously raw about conditional devotion.

I have served you and I have loved you for decades, but I will not give up my principles for you. You cut out part of my heart and took it with you down that path that you insist on walking, but you walk it alone. Even when the bleeding, gaping hole you left in my chest kills me, I will not follow you.

[yu-ziyuan]

[yu-ziyuan]

partly out of spite because of the dumb comment I got one time and partly out of Jiang Cheng-induced brain poisoning, I increasingly feel Jiang Cheng would have eventually pulled himself together and made a life for himself if he’d really lost his golden core

[yu-ziyuan]

partly out of spite because of the dumb comment I got one time and partly out of Jiang Cheng-induced brain poisoning, I increasingly feel Jiang Cheng would have eventually pulled himself together and made a life for himself if he’d really lost his golden core

[yu-ziyuan]

partly out of spite because of the dumb comment I got one time and partly out of Jiang Cheng-induced brain poisoning, I increasingly feel Jiang Cheng would have eventually pulled himself together and made a life for himself if he’d really lost his golden core

[yu-ziyuan]

partly out of spite because of the dumb comment I got one time and partly out of Jiang Cheng-induced brain poisoning, I increasingly feel Jiang Cheng would have eventually pulled himself together and made a life for himself if he’d really lost his golden core

[yu-ziyuan]

partly out of spite because of the dumb comment I got one time and partly out of Jiang Cheng-induced brain poisoning, I increasingly feel Jiang Cheng would have eventually pulled himself together and made a life for himself if he’d really lost his golden core

[yu-ziyuan]

partly out of spite because of the dumb comment I got one time and partly out of Jiang Cheng-induced brain poisoning, I increasingly feel Jiang Cheng would have eventually pulled himself together and made a life for himself if he’d really lost his golden core

[yu-ziyuan]

partly out of spite because of the dumb comment I got one time and partly out of Jiang Cheng-induced brain poisoning, I increasingly feel Jiang Cheng would have eventually pulled himself together and made a life for himself if he’d really lost his golden core

[yu-ziyuan]

partly out of spite because of the dumb comment I got one time and partly out of Jiang Cheng-induced brain poisoning, I increasingly feel Jiang Cheng would have eventually pulled himself together and made a life for himself if he’d really lost his golden core

[yu-ziyuan]

[yu-ziyuan]

thinking about cx wrestling turning into frotting and sloppy kissing with tongue btw. and then not talking about it afterwards <3

[yu-ziyuan]

[ID: Sketch of Yue Qingyuan from Scum Villain. With his hands folded behind his back, he's smiling blankly and looking at a spinner wheel that's has one large section and one very thin slice. The arrow is mid-spin. Behind the wheel is a poster that labels it: Wheel Of How I Am Going To Feel Today. The key indicates the thin slice is "sliver of joy" and the large section making up most of the wheel is "wishing I was allowed to kill myself". /end ID]

posting shitty yqy doodle before i have to leave the house AND POST

[yu-ziyuan]

don’t talk to ME about gay yearning. in 2020 during lockdown i lived alone on a boat for three months. i went ashore once a day to work in a marine bio lab. we all had to access the lab at different times so we were never together & risking infection. i was alone all day every day, from my boat to the lab and back to my boat. one day a woman anchored her boat beside mine. we passed each other ashore just once at the harbor and she hit on me and invited me back to her boat. i told her i’d love nothing more but i could not risk exposure because of my weak immune system. she said it was a shame but that she understood. that night i was watering my vegetable garden i grew in 5 gallon buckets up on my roof and playing music on my speaker. “american pie” came on and she climbed up on her roof and shouted all the lyrics to every verse at me across the water and we danced together on our respective roofs. she raised anchor and moved on a few days later.

so yeah i know what it is to die a thousand deaths in an instant while your heart beats on.

[yu-ziyuan]

Underrated element of where Jiang Cheng is re: wwx after everything is that they always had a sort of dual relationship. Two different relationship premises, superimposed on one another.

There's the one where they grew up together, as close as brothers, beating each other up and complaining and being one another's closest companions, sharing a bedroom as kids and eating at the same family dinner table, actively encouraged by Jiang Fengmian to interact as equals.

And then there's the one where Wei Wuxian was in service to Jiang Cheng's family. Not as a servant--Jiang Fengmian absolutely refused to do that, even if he couldn't adopt him. But as a disciple of Jiang Cheng's father and recipient of his charity, as Jiang Cheng's future right hand and most trusted subordinate.

It's a vertical relationship, intimate in its own way but with very strict expectations about what obligations flow in what directions; they are not identical and reciprocal as between friends and equals.

(It's my opinion that Jiang Fengmian's core deal was a deep-seated discontent with the hierarchies he was at the top of, without access to any way to actually deconstruct them or even coherently articulate his opposition. Wei Changze was his dear friend, and no one thinks that's a good enough reason for him to treat Wei Changze's son like his own, because Wei Changze was also his servant, and you can't make that circle square. That's not a way you're allowed to love.)

Jiang Cheng and Wei Wuxian were like brothers; Wei Wuxian served Jiang Cheng.

The personal relationship was always the most important one. To them, in their hearts. But it was the other one that was real, that had weight in the world.

And it's important to understand that neither can be held up as more factual than the other, even though they conflict. Both relationships existed, and had power.

So then when Jiang Cheng chose to hate Wei Wuxian and articulate his grudge against him, he chose to do it in the language of fealty. Because as far as he knew, his case there was secure, watertight, and it wouldn't expose him emotionally or politically.

And those are the terms in which he's been condemning him all this time: for abandoning the Sect, for ingratitude, for lack of loyalty.

For fuckups, too, and poor judgment, but some of that now turns out to have been justified and some of it was mostly the fault of enemies behaving badly, or even Jiang Cheng himself allowing himself to be pushed into making unworthy choices.

And it was all for his sake.

The thing, the thing in my opinion, about what Wei Wuxian did, about the core transfer and his silent self-destruction around keeping it secret, is that that is a hideous thing to have done between two people who love each other, as an act of love. Beautiful, but awful. As the man who was like a brother to him, Jiang Cheng has a great deal of standing to object to it.

But as an act of vassalage, it's basically perfect.

If Wei Wuxian were only what he formally was to Jiang Cheng, if he is interpreted through a lens of fealty and obligation, he did exactly what he should have done, and went beyond what duty actually required. And went to his death silently, allowing himself to be judged, taking all the burden on himself rather than let harm come to his lord.

Like, obviously Jiang Cheng was harmed by the part where Jin Zixuan got manslaughtered and Jiang Yanli walked into the line of fire in situations where Wei Wuxian was resorting to violence and probably shouldn't have, but those are one step removed from the core issue. In terms of Wei Wuxian's intentional choices around Jiang Cheng himself, at the times he was feeling betrayed and abandoned Wei Wuxian was in fact being impossibly, poetically loyal, an absolute cliche about it.

But only in terms of the hierarchical form of their relationship.

Which means that even though Jiang Cheng has a lot of reasons to still be mad at Wei Wuxian, his actual complaints that he's centered for thirteen years are basically wiped out by the revelation of Wei Wuxian's sacrifice.

Wei Wuxian was in fact doing the tragic hero loyal vassal thing, which very much includes being misunderstood and slandered by the world. (Chenqing as a name choice absolutely references this expectation, and the idea that Jiang Cheng specifically will never understand that Wei Wuxian was trying to help him first and foremost all along; he is not subtle.)

The debts Jiang Cheng has been spitefully calling in and considering defaulted were already long paid.

So if at this point Jiang Cheng keeps pursuing that same line of rhetorical attack, now that he knows, he'll be putting himself morally in the wrong, and he knows it. But if he pivots to something else, he'll both be signalling the shape of that secret to the entire world and looking like a prize idiot.

Which is already how he feels.

To actually address the remaining grievances between them, which are considerable, would require releasing those safe, open grudges to Wei Wuxian's face and then reclaiming him as a loved one. Which is, one could fairly say, more than anyone could expect.

Which is why Wei Wuxian told him he didn't have to.

Which leaves Jiang Cheng at something of an impasse.