It's been a while, but I'm still drawing. Not fan art this time but those days will come back again. I was working on a huge project and I finally finished it. So, for the Stranger Things fans: Here's a little Steve for ya :)
you've talked a bit in the past about when and how the golden core reveal couldve gone better. when and how would you place it to be the worst it could possibly be? (i know wen ning gave this very question his best effort, but im sure with creativity we can do better)
I love this question as I love all opportunities to make Jiang Cheng suffer, but I agree that Wen Ning does an outstanding job making everything about the reveal terrible for Jiang Cheng personally. It’s going to be difficult to improve on his vision, but there are a few different elements that go into making the reveal as emotionally devastating as it possibly can be and I think we can make at least some of them worse:
1) Timing! The first life makes things too easy. With Yanli around to smooth things over there’s a decent chance that Jiang Cheng solving the Mystery of the Absentee Alcoholic Brother actually improves their relationship and perhaps even moves the plot in a happier direction.
If he finds out during the 13/16 years it’s excruciating, because he’s still gotta handle all the guilt and misery over what he might have done differently if he’d known, but he has no real way to ask Wei Wuxian why he did it and why he wouldn’t tell him. These questions will haunt him in a very persistent and potentially ruinous way. On the other hand I don’t think Jiang Cheng ever really believes Wei Wuxian is gone for good, which means he gets to hold out hope he’ll have the chance to loudly express his opinions about self sacrificial lying to his brother at some point in the future. And it does provide him with some degree of closure. It’s a little easier to understand Wei Wuxian’s choices, and he gets to interpret those choices through a lens of Wei Wuxian giving a shit, which is devastatingly painful but probably better than the alternatives. I’m sticking with second life. Point to Wen Ning.
2) Public spectacle. We can definitely improve on this one. It sucks for Jiang Cheng that Wen Ning and Lan Wangji are there but why limit ourselves? If we hijack Lan Wangji’s big romantic declaration on the stairs of Carp Tower the entire cultivation world can have front row seats to Jiang Cheng’s private family drama and learn all about his personal medical affairs at the same time he does! We all know how much he loves that! On the timing front Wei Wuxian is still public enemy #1, which makes everything a little more awkward, so we’re technically pulling ahead on two fronts.
3) Messenger! This is a big one and don’t think we’re going to be able to do better than Wen Ning. Jiang Cheng actively wants Wei Wuxian to explain himself, and is pretty obviously hurt by his refusal to engage with him. His brother deciding to take fifteen minutes to acknowledge that he had a right to understand what happened between them and maybe answer some follow up questions softens the blow. A mysteriously alive Wen Qing would be pretty bad, but I don’t think she’s got quite the same impulse to totally wreck him Wen Ning does. She hesitates a lot more about lying to him in the first place, and she had multiple chances to tell him and rub his face in it when it might have actually done her and hers some good but chose not to. I also don’t think she feels the same degree of obligation to accede to Wei Wuxian’s wishes Wen Ning does. If she wanted to hurt him with this she’d already have done it.
4) Special guests! What’s the point of getting publicly roasted by your zombie replacement if people you actually care about aren’t in the audience. Let’s invite the nephews. If we’re setting this at Carp Tower Jin Ling will obviously have a front row seat, but I think we can come up with a reason for Sizhui to be there too. Jiang Cheng doesn’t know he cares about him yet, but he will, and it will give him a fun memory to look back on. And Wen Qing! Who is definitely alive, and can support her little brother in verbally disemboweling Jiang Cheng even if it’s not something she feels called to do personally.
5) Making Wei Wuxian’s lack of a golden core very relevant. For maximum pain Wei Wuxian needs to be hurt in a way that he would recover from relatively easily with a core, but possibly have a hard time coming back from without one.
So I’m going to say the worst possible way for this to go down is at Carp Tower shortly after Wei Wuxian is unmasked. Jiang Cheng spots Jin Ling in the crowd a little sooner and flies towards him, which means that when Jin Ling stabs Wei Wuxian he’s close enough to lunge for them. Lan Wangji, not unreasonably, interprets this as aggression and pulls his sword on him. The drama! The pathos! The chance to just absolutely go apeshit on each other like they’ve clearly been dying to do for over a decade. Anyway, the book says they’re evenly matched at this point and I need Lan Wangji to lose this one, so let’s say he assumes Jiang Cheng is trying to attack Wei Wuxian when Jiang Cheng is actually just trying to beat the shit out of his unfavourite in-law while kind of hoping that Wei Wuxian will take the hint and make a run for it. Consequently Jiang Cheng is trying to take the fight away from Wei Wuxian while Lan Wangji thinks he’s trying to get closer, and as a result of this misunderstanding Hanguang-Jun goes left when he should have dodged right and Jiang Cheng knocks him down the stairs. He needs to be a damsel for this to work, so let’s say Jiang Cheng hit him pretty hard with Zidian and between that and knocking his head on every step he can hit on the way down he’s out cold. Sect Leader Yao is narrating this whole thing because the entire cultivation world has gotten out of bed to witness their family drama.
Wei Wuxian, recently stabbed, sees Lan Wangji go still at the bottom of the stairs and goes ballistic. He summons Wen Ning (for maximum pain Wen Ning brings Sizhui and Wen Qing with him because they were having an early reunion; if you want to keep it canon plausible, he doesn’t). Jiang Cheng is hurt the way he’s always hurt when he thinks Wei Wuxian is choosing Lan Wangji, but there’s a particularly intense feeling of fury and disgust about Wei Wuxian bringing the Ghost General to a fight happening right in front of their nephew (in his home!) on his boyfriend’s account. Jiggy has made popcorn, but discreetly because Xichen is extremely distraught about his little brother and he kind of knows he’s going to have to flee the country at this point. Huaisang is very disappointed in everyone and they’re probably going to suffer for that later.
Anyway, Jiang Cheng and Wei Wuxian are at this point both furious enough to start the kind of fight with each other they absolutely should not be having in a crowded courtyard, but it’s a proxy fight with Jiang Cheng attacking Wen Ning and Wei Wuxian backing him up on the angry goth flute. Wei Wuxian is in pretty bad shape, what with the stress and the stabbing. If Wen Qing is there she’s trying to patch him up, until, overcome by his wound, Wei Wuxian faints. Wen Ning stumbles a bit at the loss of connection. If Sizhui is there he jumps into the fight to defend Wen Ning, and that’s when Wen Ning says something to the effect of “you’re not going to hurt him like you hurt everyone else” and continues, as he did in canon, to explain exactly where the spiritual power Jiang Cheng is using to attack them is coming from in the meanest way possible.
Sect Leader Yao keeps narrating through Jiang Cheng’s breakdown.
