I'm new to this so forgive me if I'm wrong but....I just finished mdzs and over here and on reddit a lot of people treat Jiang Cheng as a villain. I just get the impression that narratively he is more of an antagonist who eventually (reluctantly) joins the party of heros. Like isn't the whole ending twist there for us to recontexualise his actions ? Although he is somewhat less moral than the protagonists, he isn't exactly evil. Him and wei wuxian do a lot of similar things in retrospect the only major difference being that wei wuxian is charming and jiang cheng has a shitty personality.
Like acc to seemingly popular opinion , when wei wuxian tortures his enemies graphically using all kinds of awful methods is OK because they are bad. When jiang cheng shows wei wuxian a dog after asking him to talk its bad?
Also I personally thought we were supposed to understand that jiang cheng was going in a negative spiral since resseruction and acting worse towards jin ling hence why he is increasing scared of a more unstable jiang cheng and why his statement about him not being hit before is true. Also note that this scene occurs after wei wuxian hits jin ling. Infact they both hit him after this too. And even at the end wei hits him while jiang cheng doesn't. Also lan than using silencing spells on children is fine?
When jiang cheng chokes wei wuxian after the lotus pier genocide it's awful (it obvi is). But wei wuxian hitting wen ning for killing jin zixuan is OK somehow?
The one thing wei wuxian was more right in is the wen situation, and I commend him for his anti genocide views.
But also is everyone gonna ignore the sexual assaults both the male leads commit? Like I know dub con is popular in the genre but are yall soo desensitised to it? Also wei wuxian is a bit of a creep in general ??? Like I can't get past the sexyal assaults.












