it’s not weird to find fanfiction from 2021, or 2017, or 2014 that you’ve never read and actually taking your time to read it.
it’s not weird to love it and comment and leave kudos because the author will probably still see it someday and it will make them happy.
it’s not weird to like said author’s work so much that you want to go look for other fics from them.
it’s not weird to go through the authors profile and look for other fics from the ships you like (or maybe some that you’ll give a chance because you liked the author) and maybe bookmark them for later.
it’s not weird to read these other fics and like them too and comment on them because you actually like them and you want to let the author know.
it’s not weird to read fanfiction from 5, or 8, or 10 years ago and actually enjoy and engage with it because it’s perfectly normal to relate to something that’s less than a decade old!
let’s stop treating fanfiction like they’re instagram posts that stop being interesting in 24 hours! fanfiction is NOT social media, fanfiction is art!!! and art doesn’t get old in one day, one year, or even a decade!
read fanfiction! write fanfiction! comment on fanfiction! let’s not let fanculture die people!!!!!
I'm so tired of drawing clothes…I didn't think that drawing the background would be the easiest. I should learn how to write big text for posts…But after finishing the art, I can't think about anything.
I am very glad that people like my Shang Qinghua design…But I'm also confused.
A Couple of Helpful Resources for making Scum Villain Fanworks All in one Spot
Disclaimers - If your resource is here and you would like for me to remove it or change something related to it, just lmk and I will do so as soon as possible! I did as well as I could to make sure these resources are reliable, but if you notice something is off, please lmk! Feel free to add other resources in the reblogs :)
1. The Scum Villain's Self-Saving System Timeline by VagabondDawn on ao3
2. svsss canon log by allpiesforourown on Tumblr/Google Doc
3. [Guide] The Scum Villain's Self Saving System by Jin_Mitel on ao3
(^^ An Index of Jin_Mitel's other guides, many look useful for this purpose/others are scum villain focused! Find them at A Guide to Fictions)
4. Guide of Locations in Scum Villain Self-Saving System by misfitmonarchy and stardust_falling on ao3
5. A Partial Beastiary for Chinese Mythology and Folklore by PyrrhaIphis on ao3
6. Guide to Writing Scum Villain (or XianXia and XuanHuan in general) by velveteentuzhi on ao3
7. Stallion Novels: A Guide by ibex_ascendant on ao3
8. Chinese Names + Naming Resources by lingxhr on Tumblr (Useful for OCs!)
9. Chinese Naming Basics for Fanfiction Writers by miqqumi on ao3 (Danmei/SVSSS Specific! Useful for honorifics! Contains a long list of resources for this subject)
10. How to Name your Chinese Characters by drwcn on Tumblr (Useful for OCs!)
11. ziseviolet on Tumblr (For hanfu fashion history, explanations, and inspo! A lot of helpful history and cultural information/resources as well! Extremely helpful, see their masterposts on their blog to start)
Ziseviolet's masterposts one and two
12. peekofhistory on Tumblr (Really incredible history/arts/crafts/guqin making and lessons(!!)/culture resource! Highly recommend to check them out!)
Well, now that you have made me think about the existence of this blog again, you guys know I'm a big fan of transporting myself to the world of the book I'm currently reading with music. If any of you are planning to read any Chinese classic (or even a xianxia, wuxia, shenmo, etc), I would like to introduce you to MyNoise.net, if you don't already know. It's an online sound generator where you can create immersive ambiences with different sounds hosted in the website, but most importantly, there are already ambiences that you can manipulate to your taste. There's no AI involved.
The ones I recommend for the purposes of reading C-literature:
Three Friends of Winter: In the Eastern tradition, the Three Friends of Winter are the pine, bamboo, and plum tree. While many plants and trees begin to wither away or shed their leaves as the days become progressively colder, the pine, bamboo, and plum still display surprising signs of vitality and retain their green foliage throughout the winter. My favourite setting is the default one and 'The Great Wall'.
Buddhist ceremony: Mount Shigi is located close to the city of Nara, Japan. It is believed to be the place where the Buddhist deity Bishamonten — patron of warriors and protector of the righteous — first appeared. This soundscape combines varied chants sung during the early morning fire ceremony, and during the Daihannya-Sutra that takes place every day in the main temple. My favourite settings are 'Morning Fire Ceremony' and 'Pilgrims'. Obviously this is recorded in a Japanese temple, so it's not the same, but it's nice nonetheless.
Cinematic East: This soundscape overflows with contrasts - on one side, the loud drumming of giant taiko drums; on the other, the quiet breathing of the small shakuhachi flute and the subtle tones of the guqin. The only setting I like here is 'War Drums' but with the guqin, for action scenes.
Tibetan Spirit: Tibetan Buddhism regards music as an important mean to prepare the mind for spiritual enlightenment. During monastic rituals, chants are sung mostly in unison, accompanied by cymbals, bells, and drums. Sometimes other wind instruments join the ensemble too, such as the dungchen, the famous Tibetan long horn. Again, not Chinese Buddhism, but close enough :) I like all the settings here.
From India: Mainly a bhajan song, which already had existed during the Tang Dynasty and they are used in Indian Buddhism, so you can imagine our heroes hearing one on their arrival to India. The tanpura setting is also historically accurate, and the worship ritual one.
Medieval Village: If you turn off the 'Fire Bell' sound, it could sound like a Tang Dynasty village :)
another interesting tidbit of narration in mdzs. what makes it so fun is that it’s presented as omniscient narration fact, but it’s obviously positioned unfavorably toward jiang cheng. and as we keep reading, we can see how wei wuxian specifically would hold this opinion of jc—jc doesn’t want to break rules in cloud recesses, he doesn’t want to resist wen chao as a teenager, he doesn’t want to go against the cultivation clans after the war.
but the thing is, barely adult jc, alone, traumatized, inexperienced, was one of the renowned leaders of the sunshot campaign, when they were at a distinct disadvantage. he diverted the attention of the wen soldiers to save wwx, knowing he would get captured. he never stopped looking for wwx during his 3 months in the burial mounds, even after everyone else except for lwj had given up. he rebuilt lotus pier from nothing. he steps into guanyin temple at the end knowing very little of the situation inside to protect jin ling, and it’s clear that he couldn’t have won that fight alone. again and again, he has proven that when it’s time to fight, he will risk everything and give it his all even when victory is unlikely.
and that’s what i really enjoy about the narration style—it’s intentionally misleading the reader right from the start, and it’s not telling you that it’s coming from an unreliable narrator, but it shows you. and so many people just. insist on only reading what’s being told instead of seeing what’s shown.
you are very correct and i'm also just reminded of how jiang cheng acted during the second siege after his spiritual powers disappeared, the fierce corpses started closing in, and other people started evacuating into wei wuxian's demon-subduing cave.
“Jiujiu, come inside!” Jin Ling beckoned.
Jiang Cheng lunged at the horde with Sandu, which had completely lost its glare. “Shut up!” he snapped at him ferociously.
As he yelled, more blood poured from his nose and mouth. Jin Ling rushed down the steps, seized him, and started dragging him toward the Demon-Quelling Cave. Jiang Cheng’s spiritual powers were completely gone by now, and he was physically drained from grappling with the enemy for half a day, so Jin Ling was able to haul him over just like that. The Jiang Clan’s cultivators hurried to follow their sect leader.
MDZS Seven Seas translation, vol. 4, Core of the Truehearted
WWX: yeah jiang cheng hates fighting at a disadvantage lol
JC, spiritual power sealed, facing an entire army of fierce corpses: SQUARE UP. SQUARE THE FUCK UP. I'M GOING TO FUCKING PASTE YOU ALL JIN LING LET GO OF ME I'LL FIGHT A BILLION ZOMBIES BEFORE I GO INTO WEI WUXIAN'S STUPID CAVE
Jiang Cheng is my favorite character of all time, and I've spent the most time on him over the past five years, but for some reason I don't draw him very often. I'm fixing that!
they are martial siblings aka disciples of the same sect
they were not raised as family. wwx was jfm's favoured ward and grew close with the jiang siblings
while jyl DOES view wwx as her brother as evidenced by the phoenix mountain scene, jc interestlngly does not. he doesn't call wwx shixiong either, in the novel
the whole point of the relationship between jc and wwx is that is undefined. best friends and also sect brothers and also sect leader and disciple. they can be brothers, sure, if you want them to. but a romantic read on them is just as plausible. it depends on how you prefer to interpret the text. but they're not brothers in canon
I think it's worth mentioning that in Chinese culture, raised together as "martial siblings" is not at all synonymous with the modern western sense of "being raised as family" or "being adopted siblings".
This is because not only is it NOT taboo to marry a martial sibling, in fact, martial siblings are often seen as MORE marriageable. In popular cmedia, "martial sibling couples" as a trope is still considered romantic. It's highly adjacent to "childhood sweethearts" trope.
Furthermore, in some sects, martial siblings were strongly encouraged to marry one another. In extreme cases, you might even see sects that forbid marrying outside the sect to prevent leaking of martial techniques. Meaning you could only marry your martial sibling.
I feel that needs to be stressed — martial sibling romances are not only NOT taboo, they are often seen as romantic in CN culture and media.
I think newcomers to cmedia should come with an open mind and refrain from trying to project western norms onto chinese social structures. Most of the very first Chengxian / Xiancheng shippers in MDZS fandom were Chinese diaspora BECAUSE martial sibling romances are considered romantic in our culture. It's tiring when people keep coming in, asking us "don't you know they are siblings" and we have to keep on explaining this over and over.
sorry to be negative on the dash but..... y'all need to be nicer to fanfic writers. we all know interactions are decreasing, and even during the nine months i've been on here, i've noticed a decrease.
tell writers you like their works. comment on their works, reblog their works.
some of you act so entitled, and idk if you've noticed but you're literally making writers miserable. it makes me so sad to see my mutuals deactivate because the joy of writing has been taken away from them by ungrateful readers who are constantly demanding more, more, more, to the point where people are experiencing burnout and anxiety because they can't keep up with the constant unrealistic demands.
reminder that even though it takes you five minutes to read 1k words it might've taken the writer hours to get the words down, proofread, edit, and make the perfect fic layout.
some of you complain that there are no "good" fics anymore, yet you do nothing for the fandom, do nothing to support writers and just hide behind anon and blank blogs, complaining about every little thing till you've driven all writers off this site.
it's so tiring. please be kinder. we're all trying our best here.
if you still don’t think reblogs matter then look at this post. i didn’t tag this at all and it’s currently at 1.3k notes. because my mutuals and followers reblogged it. and then their mutuals and followers reblogged it. and so on.
the only reason this post reached so many people is because of reblogs. imagine if you did the same to fics.
I love my bloodthirsty princess of a cursed blade, and in my heart of hearts i am nothing but a sword nerd, so i've been extremely fascinated by Baxia and how we know frustratingly little about what she actually looks like!
I mean, look at bichen, right?
Bichen in the donghua:
Bichen in the drama:
They're clearly not exactly the same. The scabbards are different, and the guards have a different shape. But these are recognizably different iterations on one theme, right? Thin jian with a white grip silver guard, light blue tassel and silver mounting accents on the scabbard.
Now this is baxia in the donghua:
And baxia in the drama:
????????
THAT'S A COMPLTELY DIFFERENT WEAPON
it doesn't stop there either, the audio drama is kind enough to give us ANOTHER COMPLETELY DIFFERENT BAXIA
pretty! But how is that he same sword??
And when we go back to the novel, we get very little information on her appearance other than the fact that her blade is tinted red with all the blood she's absorbed. Which none of these designs incorporate.
This is not a dig on the designs itself, they're all quite gorgeous in their own right and i'm going to spend a while discussing all of them! Because isn't it fascinating how, since we know little about novel baxia beyond "saber" all of these designs ended up so different? What kinds of sabers are these, anyway?
So, a chinese aber, aka a "dao" (刀) just means a sword that has only one cutting side. As opposed to a jian, which has two.
You can see how that leaves a LOT of room for variaton.
I've actually seen some people get confused because Huaisang's saber in the untsmed is thin and quite straight, making it superficially resemble the jian more than drama!baxia, but it is still clearly a saber!
See? only one cutting blade!
This, to me looks a lot like a tang dynasty hengdao
credit to this blog for providing his image and being a great source for all this going forward.
TANGENT: during all this I found out the english wikipedia page for dao is WRONG! Ths is what they about the tang hengdao!
So that sounds like the hengdao was called that during the sui dynasty, but then, after that, started being called a peidao, right?
WRONG
I LOOKED AT THE SOURCE THEY USED AND IT SAYS THIS:
IT WAS CALLED THE PEIDOU UNTIL THE SUI DYNASTY, AT WHICH POINT IT WAS CALLED A HENGDAO. Which would carry over to the Tang dynasty. This was the source wikipedia linked! and it says something else than they say it does!
Anyone know how to edit a wikipedia article?
ANYWAY
BACK TO BAXIA
Since we're already at the drama, let's look at drama baxia: She's also straight! the general term for straight-backed saber is Zhibeidao, but that's a modern collector's term, and doesn't really say anything about which historical kind of saber baxia could be based on. Another meta i found on the drama nie sabers already went on some detail here.
I'm gonna expand on that a little: The kinds of historical straight-backed sabers we see resemble the hengdao a lot more than they do baxia. They don't go to their point as harsly as she does (she's basically a cleaver!) and they're all way skinnier.
No, my personal theory is that instead of being based on any kind of historical sword, drama!baxia is based on a Nandao.
I mean, come on, look at it!
Baxia!
The Nandao... isn't actually a historical sword. It was invented for Wushu forms. There's a really fascinating article about its conception, but that's why the swords in the images look a little thin and flimsy. Wushu swords are very flexible and light, they're dance props, not weapons to fight with. There are actual steel versions of Nandao, but they're recreations of the prop, not the other way around.
So That's one way in which Baxia differes from the Nandao: she's actually a real weapon. The other is that, as you can see above, the nandao has an S-shaped guard. Baxia doesn't. She's also much more elaborately decorated, of course. Because she's a princess.
Now: audio drama baxia!
This is much easier. with that flare at the tip?
Oh baby that's a niuweidao, all the way!
There are more sabers with that kind of curved handle, but the broad tip is really charcteristic of the niuweidao. The Niuweidao is also incredibly poplar in modern media, often portrayed as a historical sword, but it originated i nthe 19th century! And it was actually never used by the military!
That's right, the Niuweidao was pretty much exclusively a civilian weapon! That makes its use here anachronistic, but so is the nandao, and considering that the origin story of the Nie is that they use Dao intead of Jian because their ancestors were butchers, portraying them with a weapon historically reserved for rebels and common people instead of the imperial military is actually very on theme!
Finally, Donghua/Manhua baxia. These two designs are so similar I'm going to treat them as one and the same for now.
Unlike both previous baxias, The long handle makes it clear this baxia is a two-handed weapon, though Nie Mingjue is absolutely strong enough to wield her with one hand anyway. Normal rules don't count for cultivators.
Now, this is where things get tricky, because there are a lot of words for long two-handed sabers. And a lot of them are interchangable! This youtube video about the zhanmadao, one of the possible sabers this baxia could be based on, goes a little into just how confusing this can get. This kind of blade WAS actually in military use for many centuries, making it the most historically accurate of all the baxias. But because of that it also has several names and all of those names can also refer to different kinds of blades depending on what century we're in.
So here's our options: i'm going to dismiss the wodao and miandao, because these were explicitly based on japanese sword design, and as we can see manhua baxia has that very broad tip, so that won't work
(Example of a wodao. According to my sources Miaodao is really just the modern common term for the wodao, and the changdao, and certain kinds of zhanmadao... do you see how quickly this gets confusing?)
Next option: Zhanmadao.
Zhanmadao stands for "horse chopping saber" so... yeah they were anti-cavalry weapons. meant to be able to cut the legs and/or necks of horses. That definitely sounds like a weapon Nie Mingjue would wield. But if you watched that youtube video i linked above, you'll know the standardized Qing dinasty Zhanmadao looked very different from earlier versions. It was inspired by the japanese odachi, and more resembles the miandao than its ealrier heftier counteprarts.
Earlier Ming dynasty Zhanmadao on the other hand were... basically polearms. the great ming military blog spot, another wonderful source, says these are essentially a kind of podao/pudao (朴刀) which looked like this
Now that blade looks a lot like baxia, but the handle is honestly too long. Donghua!baxia straddles the line between sword an polearm a little, but while zhanmadao have been used to refer to both long-handled swords and polerarms, this was undeniably a polearm, not a sword.
If you want to know what researching this was like, I found a picture of this blade on pinterest-- labeled as a "two-handed scimitar"-- and the comment section was filled with people arguing about whether this was a Pudao, Wudao, Zhanmadao, Dadao, Guandao, or a japanese Nagita.
So... that's how it was going. This has kept me up until 2 AM multiple times.
However! Thanks to this article on the great ming military blog I found out there have historically been pudao blades with shorter handles!
Specifically, Ming dynasty military writer Cheng Ziyi created a modified version of the pudao to work with the Dan Fao Fa Xuan technixues-- aka technqiues for a two-handed saber, which would alter heavily influence Miaodao swordmanship-- thereby, as the article points out, essentially merging the cleaver-polearm type Zhanmadao with the later two-handed japanese-inspired design.
This is the illustration for the Wu Bei Yao Lue (武備要略) a Ming dynasty military manual
This blade shape in the illustration doesn't match Baxia exactly, but since it's a lengthened Pudao-like blade and we've seen above that those can match Donghua Baxia's shape, i'm gonna say that calling Baxia a Zhanmadao with a two-handed grip isn't all that innacurate!
However, because all of these terms are so intertwined, there are a dozen other things you could call her that would be about equally correct.
To show that, here's a lightning round of other potential Baxia candidates:
Dadao (大刀)
Which are generally one-handed and too short. However!
Another youtube video i found of someone training with a Zhanmadao that resembles baxia a little also calls it a "shuangshoudai dao" (雙手带 刀) shuangshou means two-handed, and while 雙手带 seems to refer to a longer handled weapon, when looking for a shuangshou dao or shuangshou dadao (双手大刀) we find a lot more baxia-resembling blades like here and here
I also found that, while the cleaver-like Dadao is strictly a product of the 20th centuy, since dadao just means big sword or big knife, it has been used to refer to loads of different weapons! Some people could've called the zhanmadao and pudao "dadao" during the Ming dynasty as well.
Another potential baxia candidate that mandarin mansion classifies as similar to the later dadao (though longer, as seen in the illustration below) is the "Kuanren Piandao"
Which piqued my interest because this diagram classifying different tpye of Dao:
Claims that a Kuanrenbiandao (diferent spelling, same sword) is the same as a modern day Zhanmadao.
(So once again, all of these terms are interchangable)
Another opton Is the Chuanmeidao/Chuanweidao (船尾刀) below you can see a diagram, based on the Qing dynasty green standard army regulation, of blades all officially classified as types of "pudao"
The top middle is the Kuanren Piandao, and bottom left is the Chuanweidao.
Both of these have a lot of baxia-like qualities.
So there you go! live action baxia is based on a Nandao, audio drama baxia is based on a Niuweidao, and Manhua/donghua baxia is some kind of two-handed Zhanmadao/Pudao/Dadao depending on how you want to look at it.
I'm honestly surprised no one has made the creative decision to portray Baxia as a Jiuhuandao, aka 9 ringed broadsword yet.
I mean look at it! Incredibly imposing. Would make for a great Baxia imo. (@ upcoming mdzs manga and mobile game: take notes!)
At the Barcelona GPF, Yuuri puts his heart and soul into his short program, attempting a quad flip in a way that seems to pay homage to Viktor’s own routines. During his free skate he quite clearly spells out that he wants to live up to Viktor, skating a routine with the same difficulty as he would’ve and managing to break his world record.
It’s clear that the shadow of Viktor Nikiforov, the legend, has fallen over Yuuri once more. This man has been his idol for the majority of his life, always a symbol of his aspirations and his greatest form of inspiration. And as Yuuri takes to the ice, he intends to finally reach these goals of his, putting forward his best possible work in attempts to bring home gold.
He finishes his short program, where he had a gold ring on his finger and the attention of his coach. And he falls to the ice, crumpling as he recalls his attempts at the quad flip — Viktor’s signature move.
He touched down. It had enough rotations, but it was not perfect. Even after all this time he has still failed to do what Viktor is able to do.
The ice he falls to takes on a certain color, reminiscent of Viktor’s Stammi Vicino costume. The very routine that started this all, the one Viktor skated at the GPF a year prior. It’s as if it haunts Yuuri, who had come too far and given too much to fail now.
Viktor, for all he has been humanized and removed from that mental pedestal Yuuri had placed him on long ago, is still a benchmark Yuuri must meet to be satisfied. The ice is tainted by his memories of the skater, his desperation to reach the heights Viktor has and prove himself worthy. When he looks at the rink, he sees the perfection of the Living Legend, the seemingly insurmountable task of raising himself to that level looking back at him.
For those wondering, the dance is based on a soul-switching scene from the movie Painted Skin II: The Resurrection and the music is Su Yunying’s Moment.
“Great, honourable Hanguang-Jun.” Jiang Cheng’s voice lost its sharpness for a few syllables. “Who did that to you?” (c) My Sombre Shelter by Limitbreaker on ao3
a scene from one of the greatest chengzhan fics out there drawn by @marshallmigraine. thank you for having me for the third time!
jiang cheng could have easily helped the wen remnants, he just didn't
jiang cheng forced jiang yanli to marry jin zixuan
jiang cheng should have protected wei wuxian from yu ziyuan
Voting ended onSep 2, 2024
haterisms beneath the cut
this hater poll brought to you by....a series of Bad Mcfucking Takes i had to read with my own eyeballs. seriously did we read the same book or not.
explanations:
"jiang cheng killed wei wuxian": jiang cheng did not kill wei wuxian in any version of the story. in mdzs wei wuxian died from backlash and in cql wei wuxin chose to let go of lan wangji after jiang cheng stabbed the cliff face. you can argue till the cows come home about how responsible jiang cheng is for wei wuxian's demise, but "jiang cheng killed wei wuxian" is just factually incorrect.
"jiang cheng abuses jin ling": jiang cheng does not abuse jin ling. first, the narration goes out of its way to establish that jiang cheng does not hit jin ling, specifically in a setting where hitting children is normalized and expected. in fact, wei wuxian says that jin ling is bratty specifically because he's never been hit. second, jin ling is also clearly comfortable talking back to jiang cheng and needling him in a way jiang cheng definitely was not with his own parents. even when jiang cheng is actively losing it when he captures wei wuxian in qinghe, jin ling remains completely unruffled - which speaks to how much jin ling takes for granted that he is safe with jiang cheng.
"jiang cheng could have easily helped the wen remnants, he just didn't": antis love to act like yunmeng jiang could have easily taken in the wemnants and jiang cheng simply chose not to because he was a hater/super jelly/various synonyms for ontologically evil. which is not the fucking case. learn to read. yunmeng jiang's own position post sunshot was very weak - they were a great sect in name only and were excluded from the alliance tying the three other great sects together - and jiang cheng could not politically afford to protect wei wuxian after wei wuxian alienated lanling jin. that's why jiang cheng says "if you insist on doing this, i can't protect you," and why wei wuxian then tells jiang cheng to let him go. because they both understand this. come on
"jiang cheng forced jiang yanli to marry jin zixuan": jiang yanli as a character makes so many sacrifices for her family and her brothers. her relationship with zixuan is like the one thing she chooses for herself. she loves him!! the tragedy in wei wuxian killing jin zixuan is that yanli genuinely loved zixuan!! ngl i think antis argue this purely to try to exonerate wei wuxian: if jiang yanli didn't love jin zixuan then wei wuxian donutting him isn't a problem anymore, apparently. this is the result of people thinking of jiang yanli as purely a thing for wei wuxian, rather than a human being in her own right.
"jiang cheng should have protected wei wuxian from yu ziyuan": this one is annoying because jiang cheng was also a child. when a child is abused, it is the fault of the abuser, not the fault of another child who is also subject to the whims of the abuser. come on.
Hey, out of curiosity, what version of the book did you read?
Your explanation of point two confuses me, as in the version I read (Exiled Rebels Scanlations) Jiang Cheng slapped Jin Ling to the ground twice.
Jiang Cheng immediately slapped him onto the ground, scolding, “You didn't?! Then I'll make you get hurt and teach you the lesson! You damn brat turning a deaf ear to my words?!”
Chapter 81: Loyalty—Part 3
Jiang Cheng slapped him onto the ground, “Let him come! Am I scared of him?!”
Chapter 102: Hatred—Part 5
Jin Ling also wasn't depicted as being entirely sure Jiang Cheng's leg breaking threats weren't genuine:
Ever since a few days ago, after Jin Ling lied to his uncle and let Wei WuXian go, he had been worried that this time Jiang Cheng would really break his legs, so he decided to sneak out and disappear for a few days, not appearing in front of Jiang Cheng until his anger subsided.
Chapter 35: Grasses—Part 3
And he was very cautious about going to Jiang Cheng at the second siege of the burial mounds:
These cultivators, including Jiang Cheng, all bathed in blood, their faces tired. All of the boys rushed outside the cave, shouting, “Dad!” “Mom!” “Brother!” They were embraced into the crowd. Jin Ling looked left and right, as though he still hadn't decided yet. Jiang Cheng's voice was harsh, “Jin Ling, why are you so slow? What are you taking your time for? Do you want to die?!”
Chapter 68: Tenderness—Part 6
As the slaps were in rather extreme circumstances (I don't think they're a usual thing), I'm ultimately in the "Jiang Cheng verbally abuses Jin Ling, the same way his mother verbally abused him," camp.
For point three, while I wasn't annoyed with Jiang Cheng for anything you mentioned (I definitely didn't expect the Jiang Clan to take in the Wen), I was rather miffed at him for not completing his explanation of his life debt:
Jiang Cheng's brows were knitted. He rubbed the vein that throbbed at his temple and soundlessly took in a deep breath, “… I apologize to all of the Sect Leaders. Everyone, I'm afraid you don't know that the Wen cultivator whom Wei WuXian wanted to save was called Wen Ning. We owe him and his sister Wen Qing gratitude for what happened during the Sunshot Campaign.”
Nie MingJue, “You owe them gratitude? Isn't the QishanWen Sect the ones who caused the YunmengJiang Sect's annihilation?”
Within these few years, Jiang Cheng insisted on working late into the night every day. That day, just as he decided to rest early, he had to rush to Koi Tower overnight because of the thundering news. He'd been suppressing some anger under his fatigue since the beginning. With his natural competitiveness, he was already quite agitated since he had to apologize to other people. When he heard Nie MingJue mention the incident of his sect again, hatred sprouted within him.
Chapter 73: Recklessness—Part 2
Even with Lan Xichen actually speaking in Wen Qing's favor after this (mentioning she didn't participate in any of the Wen's crimes, and that she wasn't actually in a position to stop Wen Ruohan herself), Jiang Cheng made no other attempt to speak in Wen Ning or Wen Qing's defense, nor did he elaborate on why exactly he owed them gratitude (the details of which would have nicely countered Nie Mingjue's statement that Wen Qing "responded with only silence and not opposition", since protecting Wei Wuxian and Jiang Cheng is very much opposition!)
I honestly don't know if Jiang Cheng could have made a difference in the end, even with Lan Xichen's help, but that he didn't even try is a thing that annoys me personally.
Again, this is the Exiled Rebels Scanlations version though, so I don't know if the scene went any differently in the official version (I'm not sure if the Exiled Rebels Scanlations version is pre-MXTX's edit, or post edit).
I'm also not happy with him for providing forces to the siege of the burial mounds, especially when he provided more then anyone else.
During the siege in Luanzang Hill, aside from Jiang Cheng, Jin GuangShan was the second-greatest contributor.
Chapter 7: Arrogance—Part 2
Washing his hands of the matter, or only providing a token force, are both things that he could have done instead.
Unfortunately Jiang Cheng, like his mother, runs on rage a lot of the time, and tends to blame Wei Wuxian for situations other people started.
(Blames Wei Wuxian for protecting Mian Mian, not Wen Chao for targeting her. Blames Wei Wuxian for saving the Wen, not the Jin for capturing non-combatant Wen to replace the enslaved prisoners of war they kept killing. Blames Wei Wuxian for 'killing his sister', not the sects openly planning an ambush, or the person who actually stabbed her.)
Points one, four, and five you are absolutely right on.
thanks for your reply! i read the official seven seas translation.
regarding point two:
first, some personal comments. these are not directed at you specifically, but are rather just my thoughts and feelings on the matter in general. feel free to skip it and scroll down to when i start discussing mdzs proper.
i myself am ethnically chinese. i was raised in a household by two chinese parents and grew up in a community with a lot of other chinese people. based on my experience, chinese parents in general are comparatively verbally harsh to their children and relatively reticent on offering verbal praise or affirmations; instead, they show their love through their actions.
of course, i do not speak for all chinese people, and it is entirely likely and acceptable that different chinese people come to different conclusions than me. but to me, the way jiang cheng speaks to jin ling reads not as verbal abuse (which it might to a more traditionally american audience), but rather as just the typical way in which most chinese parents speak to their children. again, i do not speak for all chinese people - but, to me, there is not much that particularly stands out to me as unusually abusive or unusually cruel in the way that jiang cheng treats jin ling. rather, the ways in which he nags and gripes at jin ling, the ways in which jin ling immediately talks back to him, and the ways in which he overprotectively helicopter-parents jin ling, all read to me as incredibly culturally familiar.
this is in contrast to how yu ziyuan's treatment of jiang yanli, jiang cheng, and wei wuxian reads to me. to me, both yu ziyuan and jiang fengmian's parenting does read as unusually problematic from a culturally chinese lens.
in all honesty, the reason why "jiang cheng abuses jin ling" discourse rubs me the wrong way is not just typical fandom beef, but also that it makes me feel as if my entire culture is being judged. while i cannot speak as to the exact demographics of the tumblr mdzs fandom in 2024, from what i've seen, many of the people claiming that jiang cheng is abusive to jin ling are in fact white americans. as a chinese person, i've already had my fair share of white americans claiming that certain aspects of chinese culture are inherently inferior, problematic, or abusive - therefore, to me, this insistence from many white americans that what largely reads to me as culturally ordinary parenting behavior is in fact abusive feels like an extension of this pattern. to put it in simpler words, it feels to me as if these discoursers are applying their own different cultural standards as the one and only possible truth to my culture, which i'm frankly quite sick of. i suspect that a lot of other chinese fans in the english-speaking fandom feel the same way, which is part of why people can get so defensive about this topic.
(i had similar feelings when book 4 of infinity train released and the tumblr tag filled with a lot of...how should i say it....white american takes on min-gi's parents.)
personal aside over! all of that was not directed at you specifically, but rather were just my personal feelings on the topic. feel free to ignore it. if you are also chinese, then i apologize.
now, onto discussion of the actual story we all care about!
first, it should be clarified that jiang cheng slapping jin ling to the ground in both those cases is not just "unusual" behavior, but rather completely new behavior. as jin ling himself states, jiang cheng does not hit him at all:
It was a while before Jin Ling slowly came to. He felt his neck, where a slight pain still lingered. He was so angry he leapt up and pulled his sword on the spot.
“You actually hit me! Not even my uncle has hit me before!”
Wei Wuxian was shocked. “Really? Didn’t he always say he was going to break your legs?”
“He’s all talk!” Jin Ling exclaimed furiously. “You damn cut-sleeve, what are you up to, I…”
Book 1, Chapter 6: The Malevolent
of course, one can always argue that jin ling is lying to “mo xuanyu” in the chapter 6 excerpt above. i personally find this to be such an asinine reading that it does not merit discussion. one can also argue that jin ling has a much narrower definition of “hit” than most people, such that he only includes severe blows in his definition of “hit,” which would therefore make it logically possible for jiang cheng to hit jin ling and also for jin ling to be telling the truth in the above excerpt.
to determine how jin ling defines “hit,” let’s consider the following excerpt, in which wei wuxian hits jin ling:
“Wei Wuxian was taken aback when he heard this, but then understanding hit him. Caught between laughter and tears, he raised a hand and smacked Jin Ling on the back of his head. “Talk sense!”
Jin Ling let loose an “Ow!” His forced composure finally cracked. The slap might not have hurt, but he felt as if he had suffered a great humiliation, which deepened even further when he heard the girlish giggle of the woman serving tea at the side.
Covering his head, he hollered, “Why did you hit me?!”
Book 5, Extra 5: The Iron Hook
from this excerpt, we can conclude that jin ling defines “hit” in the same way most ordinary people define the word. therefore, when jin ling says that “not even my uncle has hit me before,” the most reasonable conclusion is that jin ling means to say exactly what it sounds like he is saying: jiang cheng doesn’t hit him.
meanwhile, that jin ling knows that jiang cheng’s threat to break his legs is empty is also repeated elsewhere in the text as well:
[Jiang Cheng] meant that if Jin Ling didn’t come over that instant, he’d break his legs when they got home. But Jin Ling had heard him make that threat so many times now, and not once had it ever been carried out.
Book 4, Chapter 19: Core of the True-Hearted
from these excerpts, we can conclude that while jiang cheng regularly threatens to break jin ling’s legs and/or visit various other acts of violence upon his person (which tbf is not great), jin ling knows that these threats are empty. in fact, jiang cheng has never physically hurt him. to me, jin ling saying that “he had been worried that this time jiang cheng would really break his legs” reads quite similarly to what modern teenagers say when they’re worried their parents will catch them sneaking out at night: “this time, my mom might actually kill me.”
what's notable here is that mdzs is in fact set in a world where physically hitting children to discipline them is normal and expected. just take a look at the gusu lan sect, which physically beat wei wuxian when he was a student there for violating their rules. wei wuxian also hits jin ling at least one more time during the scene in which the above iron hook excerpt is set (two more times if you count “smacked” as a hit), which does seem to imply that slapping children on the head is just a normal thing in this society. however, even in such a setting, jiang cheng does not hit jin ling. and while jiang cheng not hitting jin ling is in fact the bare minimum in our modern world, by his own society's standards, in not hitting jin ling, jiang cheng has deviated quite a bit from the social norm already. i won't say more on the topic here, but i think this fact should factor into one's assessment of jiang cheng and jin ling's relationship.
i also feel the need to point out some more specific details regarding the two incidents of slapping you brought up (in the future, i would appreciate a bit more context, or just some more of the surrounding text, so i can more easily locate the quote in the original corpus; i am, after all, working off of the official seven seas translation, which uses a different chapter system. i'm assuming you found these quotes yourself or took these quotes from a post that fully explained the scenes the quotes were taken from, rather than merely copy/pasted them from someone else’s post without fully knowing the context they came from). the first slap you brought up was during the second siege of the burial mounds, during which jiang cheng hit jin ling after jin ling actively tried to fling himself into a life-or-death situation. if i tried to fling myself into battle and my mom hit me to stop me from doing so, i personally think that would be completely justified.
the second slap you brought up was during the confrontation at the yunping guanyin temple, in the specific scene in which jiang cheng confronts wei wuxian over the golden core transfer. jiang cheng tries to get up in wei wuxian's face, lan wangji seems like he's going to become violent with (an injured) jiang cheng again, jin ling steps between lan wangji and jiang cheng, and jiang cheng slaps him aside. while jiang cheng slapping jin ling is not justified here, it should still be acknowledged that jiang cheng is at his emotionally most devastated moment in the past thirteen years. as thus - as you yourself said - his behavior here cannot be considered representative of what he is like in general.
at the risk of this post becoming too long, i'll jump ahead to your final claim about point two: "Jiang Cheng verbally abuses Jin Ling, the same way his mother verbally abused him." i do not agree with this claim. while jiang cheng is obviously a flawed parental figure in many obvious ways, i do think that he is still doing a far better job with jin ling than yu ziyuan did with him or his siblings. i do also think that this is how mxtx intends for us to read the text.
throughout the text, jin ling repeatedly shows that he is comfortable talking back to jiang cheng and snarking at him in a way that jiang cheng never was with yu ziyuan. when jiang cheng nags at jin ling, criticizes him, yells at him, or even threatens him, jin ling immediately hits back with zingers of his own. to see what i mean, let’s first look at the following conversations between jin ling and jiang cheng, taken from the text. for the majority of the excerpts, i removed everything except for the dialogue itself in order to save on space; feel free to confirm for yourself that the dialogue is the same.
first, let’s consider the following conversation between jin ling and jiang cheng, which occurs jiang cheng finds jin ling after jin ling’s adventure in the nie saber tomb.
Jin Ling: Didn’t I already come back perfectly fine? Stop nagging me!
Jiang Cheng: Perfectly fine? You look like you rolled in the gutters, and you’re telling me ‘perfectly fine’? Aren’t you embarrassed, wearing your family’s uniform like this?! Hurry back and change this instant! Say it right now: What did you run into today?
Jin Ling: I already said I didn’t run into anything. I tripped and fell; this trek was a total waste of time. Ow! Don’t pinch me like that! I’m not three!
Jiang Cheng: Oh, so you think I can’t manage you anymore?! Let me tell you, even when you’re thirty, I can still pinch you. If you dare run off on your own without saying anything again, the whip will be ready!
Jin Ling: It’s precisely because I don’t want anyone’s help—that I don’t want anyone managing me—that I went alone.
Book 1, Chapter 6: The Malevolent
in this conversation, jiang cheng nags at jin ling, criticizes him, threatens him, and speaks rather harshly to him - and jin ling gives back as good as he gets. for every rebuke jiang cheng snaps at jin ling, jin ling has an immediate and equally snarky retort. not once does jin ling just quietly take it when jiang cheng dresses him down; as my mom would put it, 一句话有六句话顶回去.
now let’s look at the following conversation, in which jin ling interrupts jiang cheng’s interrogation of “mo xuanyu” with bogus information about wen ning in order to rescue “mo xuanyu.”
Jin Ling: Jiujiu!
Jiang Cheng: Didn’t I tell you to stay where you were? What are you doing here?!
Jin Ling: Jiujiu, I have something very important to tell you!
Jiang Cheng: What is so important that you have to say it right now, instead of when I was scolding you earlier?
Jin Ling: It’s because you kept scolding me earlier that I didn’t say anything! Do you want to listen or not? If not, then I’m not going to tell you anymore!
Jiang Cheng: Out with it, then scram!
Jin Ling: I actually did run into something really troublesome today. I think I ran into Wen Ning!
Jiang Cheng: When? Where?!
Jin Ling: This afternoon, about five kilometers from here, there’s a dilapidated house. I only went there because I heard there’d been unusual sightings. Who knew a fierce corpse was hidden inside?
Jiang Cheng: Why didn’t you say so sooner?!
Jin Ling: I wasn’t sure. The fierce corpse moved extremely fast; the moment I went over, it fled, and I only just caught a glimpse of its shadow before it got away. But back at Mount Dafan, I heard those chains that were on him, which was why I wondered if it might be him. If you didn’t yell at me so much, I would’ve told you the moment I got back. And now if he’s run off and you don’t manage to catch him, you’ll have to blame your own bad temper, not me.
Book 1, Chapter 6: The Malevolent
especially snarky jin ling comments bolded. this conversation follows the pattern established in the previous one: even when actively trying to give jiang cheng (bullshit) information, jin ling still has the room to also argue with jiang cheng and snipe at him. in addition, what’s interesting about this specific conversation is that jin ling has just seen jiang cheng at his arguably most emotionally unstable (so far) in jin ling’s entire life: jiang cheng, after all, has just finally gotten his hands on wei wuxian after thirteen whole years. and yet, despite seeing jiang cheng actively flipping his shit, jin ling still feels secure enough to snark at jiang cheng and give him lip.
from the above jin ling and jiang cheng conversations, we can easily conclude that jin ling feels comfortable talking back to jiang cheng. jiang cheng speaks harshly to jin ling, yes - he nags at him, criticizes him, yells at him - and jin ling gives back as good as he gets. for everything jiang cheng says to jin ling, jin ling pretty much always has an equally incendiary retort locked and loaded - and feels entirely comfortable saying it out loud to jiang cheng.
now, let’s contrast the jiang cheng and jin ling conversations with some conversations between yu ziyuan and jiang cheng himself. first, let’s consider the following conversation, in which yu ziyuan comes across a group of yunmeng jiang disciples, including jiang cheng and wei wuxian, shooting at kites.
Madam Yu sent a look at Jiang Cheng. “Horsing around again? Come, let me have a look at you.”
Jiang Cheng scurried over, and Madam Yu squeezed his arm with her slender fingers before giving him a sound slap on the shoulder.
“Not a bit of progress in your cultivation. You’re almost seventeen and still acting like an ignorant child! Running around with this lot, doing mischief all day—do you think you’re the same as them? Hell knows which gutters they’ll be crawling in the future, but you’ll be the leader of the Jiang Clan!”
Jiang Cheng staggered from the force of her slap. He hung his head, not daring to argue back.
Book 3, Chapter 11: Supreme Courage
as established above, when jiang cheng criticizes jin ling, jin ling immediately talks back and insults jiang cheng in turn. when jiang cheng tells jin ling to do something, jin ling regularly just ignores him. but here, when yu ziyuan tells jiang cheng to do something, he does it immediately without comment or complaint. and when yu ziyuan criticizes jiang cheng, jiang cheng does not dare argue back; instead, he remains silent.
now let’s look at another conversation, in which the jiang family discusses qishan wen’s mandatory indoctrination camp for sect heirs:
Jiang Cheng: Don’t be mad, Mom. Just me alone is enough.
Yu Ziyuan: Of course you’re the one going! As if your jiejie can go? Look at her, still peeling lotus seeds so cheerfully! A-Li, stop peeling. Who are you peeling them for?! You’re a lady, not someone’s servant!
Jiang Fengmian: San-Niang.
Yu Ziyuan: Am I mistaken? You don’t like the sound of that word, ‘servant’? Let me ask you, Jiang Fengmian. Do you plan on having him go?
Jiang Fengmian: It depends on what he wants. He can go if he wants to.
Wei Wuxian: I’ll go.
Yu Ziyuan: How lovely. Go if you want to, but you won’t be forced to if you don’t. Why is A-Cheng the one who has to go? Raising someone else’s son like this—Sect Leader Jiang, what a good, generous man you are!”
Jiang Fengmian: San-Niangzi, you’re tired. Why don’t you go back and rest?
Jiang Cheng: Mom…
Yu Ziyuan: What are you calling me for? Trying to be like your father and tell me to quiet down? You’re an idiot. I’ve already told you, you’ll never be able to compare to the one sitting next to you. You can’t compete with him when it comes to cultivation, to Night Hunts, not even shooting a kite! It can’t be helped. It’s not your fault your mom can’t compare to someone else’s mom, after all. If you’re no match for him, that’s just how it is. Your mom is simply indignant on your behalf. How many times have I told you not to hang around with him? And yet you speak up for him! How did I give birth to a son like you?!
Book 3, Chapter 11: Supreme Courage
two things here. first, what yu ziyuan says to jiang cheng in that last line of dialogue (“what are you calling me for…”) is straight up worse than literally anything jiang cheng says to jin ling in the entire story. it is one thing to criticize your child’s performance, to yell at them for throwing themself into dangerous situations, to tell them to go away when you’re in the middle of a dangerous task (and yes, these things are already questionable) - it is another thing entirely to directly tell your child that his father does not love him. it’s another thing entirely to directly tell your child that his father will never love him, simply by virtue of facts your child cannot change. yu ziyuan does not just criticize jiang cheng’s performance, as jiang cheng does do with jin ling - yu ziyuan insults and belittles jiang cheng’s entire personhood, as well as his relationships with other family members.
second, let’s look once again at how jiang cheng behaves here. he, along with all the other jiang children and also jiang fengmian himself, remains largely silent during yu ziyuan’s rant. were this a conversation between jiang cheng and jin ling (and any third parties), every other line of dialogue would belong to jin ling: as seen above, for every sentence jiang cheng said, jin ling has something to unabashedly hit back with. but in this conversation with yu ziyuan, jiang cheng (and everyone else) instead says as little as possible.
as seen in these two yu ziyuan excerpts, when yu ziyuan yells at jiang cheng, jiang cheng remains quiet and does not dare argue back. he only speaks up to weakly respond to yu ziyuan’s direct addresses towards him, to try and pacify yu ziyuan's anger, and to discourage wei wuxian from further angering yu ziyuan. this is very obviously not how jin ling behaves with jiang cheng. what, then, is the difference?
to me, the most noticeable difference is that jiang cheng is afraid of yu ziyuan in a way that jin ling is not afraid of jiang cheng. why is jin ling able to so freely talk back to jiang cheng, in a manner that is disproportionately disrespectful in a society that so heavily favors filial piety and respect of one's elders? is it not because he has never suffered real consequences from talking back to jiang cheng? that jin ling freely talks back to jiang cheng indicates to me that he is not afraid of jiang cheng - that he knows jiang cheng's threats are empty, and that that he can get away with hitting back at jiang cheng’s harsh comments with snipes of his own. such as blatantly snarky comments like “If you didn’t yell at me so much, I would’ve told you the moment I got back,” which i think many people would consider disrespectful even by modern standards.
this is not the case with yu ziyuan and jiang cheng himself! unlike jin ling, jiang cheng remains quiet because he does not have this same confidence - he cannot say for sure that yu ziyuan will not completely lose it if he talks back at all. he does not have the same security or sense of safety jin ling does. jiang cheng saying something like “you’ll have to blame your own bad temper, not me” directly to yu ziyuan is frankly unimaginable.
consider the following excerpt, in which jin ling starts crying on the way to lotus pier after the second siege of the burial mounds, directly after he confronts wen ning for the deaths of his parents:
“A voice suddenly rang out from across the river just then. “A-Ling!”
…The voice they heard was Jiang Cheng’s, and he stood at the ship’s railing.
The moment he saw his uncle through his teary eyes, Jin Ling wiped his face haphazardly and sniffled. He looked this way and that, then gritted his teeth before flying over on his sword and landing beside Jiang Cheng.
Jiang Cheng grabbed him. “What’s going on?” he demanded. “Who bullied you?!”
Book 4, Chapter 19: Core of the True-Hearted
jiang cheng’s initial reaction is to show concern for jin ling. meanwhile, it’s very difficult to imagine yu ziyuan saying something like “who bullied you?” in response to jiang cheng crying. instead, it seems far more likely that her initial reaction would be to shout at jiang cheng for crying in public, and that she would not budge from the position of shaming him for it afterwards.
to sum up a rather long subsection, jin ling does not behave around jiang cheng in the same way jiang cheng behaved around yu ziyuan. this much is obvious. jiang cheng was afraid of yu ziyuan in a way that jin ling is not afraid of jiang cheng - this alone proves that jin ling's relationship with jiang cheng is not the same as jiang cheng's relationship with yu ziyuan. jiang cheng is obviously not a perfect parent; however, to say that he treats jin ling in the same way that yu ziyuan treated him is false.
in addition, i do also think that mxtx intends for us to read jiang cheng as having done a better job with jin ling than yu ziyuan did with him. mdzs, despite all its tragedy, still ends on a highly idealistic note - specifically because of the juniors. the juniors, through their kindness, innocence, and willingness to believe in wei wuxian when the adults all castigate him - through specifically jin ling's willingness to forgive wei wuxian, wen ning, and jin guangyao at the end of the story - represent hope for the future.
mdzs establishes this hope through a related theme: the breaking of cycles. lan wangji, wei wuxian, and jiang cheng himself all did better by their children than their parents did by them. lan wangji himself was raised in a strict, repressed, and moral-absolutist sect that did not tolerate much dissidence - yet the juniors he teaches are happy, inquisitive, and willing to stand against convention for what they believe in. jiang cheng was raised by one of the most resentful women in the jianghu, and jiang cheng himself has similarly pickled in thirteen years' worth of resentment - yet the child he raised forgives wei wuxian at the end of the story. people are not born inherently anything; rather, they are the result of their upbringings, experiences, and decisions made based on said experiences. that the thirteen-year-old jin ling chooses forgiveness at the end of the story indicates the cycle is being broken.
you are of course free to read the events in mdzs and conclude for yourself that jiang cheng treats jin ling in the same way that yu ziyuan treated jiang cheng himself, that no progress was made on that front. but i firmly believe that mxtx instead wants us to conclude that there is hope for the future. that wei wuxian's generation is doing better by their children than their parents did by them, that the adults of the story are actively trying not to pass on the resentment and pain of the previous generation. that jiang cheng, despite all his flaws and all his shortcomings both as a person and as a parental figure, is still capable of breaking the cycle of pain and being there for jin ling in a way that yu ziyuan was never for him.
the idea that mxtx deliberately wrote the story to make jiang cheng yu ziyuan 2.0 undermines much of the hope she aims to put in the ending, and instead makes for a much bleaker ending.
regarding point three:
i agree that jiang cheng’s defense of the wen siblings was rather half-assed, and that nie mingjue successfully bulled over him immediately. you are also free to side-eye jiang cheng, a fictional character, for whatever you wish. such is your right.
however, i myself have a much more charitable assessment of jiang cheng’s actions in that scene. in my opinion, jiang cheng behaving as he did in that scene - only weakly defending the wen siblings before immediately getting overriden by nie mingjue - is at once understandable and the most realistic behavior for anyone in his position. let me explain why.
as a preamble, let us first establish jiang cheng’s moral responsibilities. there is a popular tendency in anti-jiang-cheng circles to act as if jiang cheng choosing not to support wei wuxian and the wen remnants was a decision he made purely for his own sake, with consideration to nothing but his own wellbeing. this is what people mean when they call jiang cheng “selfish.” to these people, then, it seems that yunmeng jiang is some sort of pretty bauble or ornament that brings jiang cheng personal fulfillment, rather than an organization made up of human beings.
however - unfortunately - yunmeng jiang is in fact an organization made up of human beings, and as yunmeng jiang's leader, jiang cheng has a moral obligation to put the wellbeing of his people first. this is basic social contract theory: in return for the people's deference to the leader, the leader is responsible for protecting the people and ensuring their wellbeing. while jiang cheng also bears other moral responsibilities as all human beings do, while jiang cheng does also bear the moral duty of reciprocity towards wen ning and wen qing, jiang cheng's moral duty to the people of yunmeng jiang who just went to war for him cannot be ignored, either. if jiang cheng deliberately undertook a course of action he knew would put yunmeng jiang in danger, then he has committed a moral wrongdoing: he has in fact violated one of his moral duties.
now that we have established the complex moral duties jiang cheng bears in this situation, let us assess jiang cheng’s actual choices in this scene.
first, we must remember that jiang cheng in this scene is a teenager with very little political experience. jiang cheng has just led the newly-constructed yunmeng jiang sect through the sunshot campaign, yes, but an allied force during wartime is different from a formerly allied force some time after the enemy has been defeated. in fact, the most dangerous time for a group of wartime allies is soon after the enemy has been overthrown: while the existence of a common enemy ensures a bond between the allies, the deposition of this enemy means the alliance may now splinter. will the postwar jianghu remain peaceful? will the various cultivation sects, great and small, remain in goodwill to each other? or, now that the old top dog is gone, will a new war break out?
jiang cheng at this point has no experience navigating delicate political positions, in which his actions will directly affect who becomes his ally and who becomes his enemy. the politics of the sunshot campaign must have been simpler, due to the extremeness of the situation and the existence of a common enemy. therefore, the politics of the postwar situation, in which this scene is set, are entirely new to him. he does not have any experience to fall back on. he does not even have that many teachings to fall back on, because he is a teenager and everyone in his sect died before his education as sect heir could be completed.
second. given the above moral duties we have established jiang cheng is carrying, what would i consider if i were in jiang cheng’s situation? what would be going through my mind? let’s look at the political situation again. high-profile members of three of the four great sects - the nie, the lan, the jin - have just sworn brotherhood with each other. they can be counted upon to have each other’s backs, even if they verbally disagree with each other; if one of the great sects (ie. the jin) decides to declare war against my sect, it is highly likely the other two sects will follow. then the political situation will become three of the four great sects standing against my sect alone - and my sect, unlike the other great sects, is much weaker, given that i had to rebuild it from nothing.
now, i am the sect leader of yunmeng jiang. as sect leader, i represent yunmeng jiang during meetings such as these; what i say is considered to be the will of yunmeng jiang as a whole. now, i have also been called to this meeting not as a neutral party, but specifically to answer for the actions of a high-profile subordinate of mine, wei wuxian. wei wuxian has just attacked a labor camp run by lanling jin, killed several lanling jin cultivators, and ran off with the prisoners considered to be under lanling jin’s jurisdiction in tow. this meeting has been called specifically because the rest of the cultivation world wishes to hold someone accountable for these actions - specifically, to hold me and my sect accountable for wei wuxian’s actions.
now, there are two possible explanations for wei wuxian’s actions in relation to my will as sect leader here:
wei wuxian is an out-of-control subordinate who, in alienating lanling jin, acted in defiance of my will.
wei wuxian, in alienating lanling jin, acted in accordance with my will.
both of these explanations are already not great. the first explanation makes me look like an incompetent sect leader, one who cannot keep his disciples under control. however, the first explanation is also the safer one. and the reason why everyone at the meeting defaults to the first explanation - saying to me that they know wei wuxian is out of control, that wei wuxian is undermining my authority instead of acting in accordance to it - is because everyone present understands that the alternative to the first explanation is far more dangerous. the alternative to the first explanation entails war.
because if it is not the case that wei wuxian is out of control, that wei wuxian defied my wishes when he attacked that jin labor camp, then it is instead the case that wei wuxian attacking that jin labor camp was my will. and while the unruly disciple of a sect acting on his own can be excused, a disciple of one sect attacking the holdings of another sect in accordance with the wishes of the disciple’s sect leader is a war-starting action. it means that i am not just an incompetent who cannot control my subordinate, but rather an active enemy: someone who has either actively made an attack on another sect myself, or is willing to accept my subordinate attacking another sect - someone who will not hold my subordinate accountable for attacking another sect.
i need to avoid the second explanation. i need people to believe that wei wuxian attacking the jin labor camp was not my will, because if it was my will, all of yunmeng jiang becomes lanling jin’s enemy, and that is not something i can afford. therefore, everything i do in this meeting must be first and foremost calibrated to confirm to the public that i do not condone wei wuxian’s actions.
in such a situation, what would more passionately defending wen ning and wen qing look like to the public? if i more clearly established wei wuxian’s and my own debt of gratitude to the wen siblings, would it not look like i was defending wei wuxian’s actions? would it not then look like, to a certain extent, i agreed with wei wuxian’s actions - that i am okay with wei wuxian, as a high-profile member of my sect, alienating lanling jin? in such a case, can wei wuxian still be called an unruly disciple who disregarded my wishes? if his actions are acceptable to me, does that not instead imply that his actions instead were my wishes?
and, as explained above, does that not in turn make me and my sect lanling jin's enemy?
an individual unruly disciple and his band of escaped prisoners alienating a sect is not the same thing as an entire sect alienating another sect. the latter situation is far more severe. thus, if yunmeng jiang as a whole alienates lanling jin, then there is a non-zero chance that lanling jin will declare war on yunmeng jiang in the near future. and, given the political situation, that then entails the rest of the world uniting against yunmeng jiang, something yunmeng jiang cannot survive. something the people who consist of yunmeng jiang cannot survive.
the point i am trying to make here is that if jiang cheng, as leader of yunmeng jiang, is perceived as being too accepting or permissive of wei wuxian’s actions, then all of yunmeng jiang is put into danger. and the fact is that too vociferously defending wen ning and wen qing to a room already determined to hate them will make it look exactly like jiang cheng is condoning wei wuxian’s actions, that jiang cheng will not hold wei wuxian accountable. there is indeed probably a balance that can be struck between acknowledging the debts owed to wen ning and wen qing and keeping yunmeng jiang out of the line of fire. but jiang cheng is a teenager with next to no intersect political experience - who is also operating on severe sleep deprivation, as the excerpt you included points out - and therefore does not have the knowledge or the experience necessary to strike this balance.
to fully stand by wei wuxian’s side in this meeting is to make lanling jin an enemy of yunmeng jiang. the reason why jiang cheng remains so conservative in this scene, perhaps to a degree beyond what is morally acceptable, is because he is afraid of this result and does not have the political experience necessary to defend wei wuxian and the wen siblings without incurring this result.
regarding the first siege of the burial mounds - to me, jiang cheng leading the first siege is indeed his single greatest moral failing.
regarding jiang cheng blaming wei wuxian - the degree to which jiang cheng blames wei wuxian for all of jiang cheng’s loved ones save one dying is not entirely fair to wei wuxian. but to say that wei wuxian is blameless for all of jiang cheng’s family members dying is not accurate either.
I love you, fics that take months to update. I click on the newest chapter and have no memory of this place and get to go back some chapters and rediscover how much i love everything about this story.
I love you, fics that take years to update. I think of you fondly, and know your names, go search for you and see an update from this year and scream, diving in uncaring of any missed details (i will finish the update and read you in reverse because this is a treat you have bestowed)
I love you, fics that probably will never update again. Thank you for being a roman empire for my mind, thank you for teaching me about the ephemeral fandom experience, for inspiring a thousand million what if-s, for being a comfort read and a nostalgia read and a reread.
I love you fic writers, who jump into projects and stories with enthusiasm. I love you when you succeed in pumping out those chapters and that love doesn't go away when you stop.
I love you fic writers who post and then get in your own head and never feel confident enough to update, whether it's at all or whether it's just that one story.
I love you fic writers, who have a fandom or media hurt you to the point of abandoning or having a hard time with their WIPs.
I love you fic writers, who lose interest or have life changes or illness or bad memory. Thank you for being part of the fandom, a core part of the fandom. Thank you for the time spent in the fandom.
I love you, fic writers who try out something new and then stop. You're so valid.
I love you, WIP fics that may or may not ever get finished. Thank you for brightening my day in the way only you could have.
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