Rent-Free Special Interest Thought of the Day:

1) Lan Wangji is autistic. (This theme invades my every thought about him. We love to see good, if possibly accidental, representation.)

2) He, like many of us autistics, does not take criticism well AT ALL except maybe from Lan Xichen or Lan Qiren. (He would take criticism from Wei Wuxian well, but Wei Wuxian thinks he's absolutely perfect, so it's a moot point.)

Anyway:

LQR: Wangji, this particular night hunt situation might go better if you try This next time. I encourage you to experiment and record your observations if you choose.

LWJ: Mn. (Translation: I will do that, because I love you. Not because I agree. We have a pattern of Teacher&Student behavior and share a relationship.)

Random Lan Elder: You should try it this way instead.

LWJ: Mn. (Translation: I will not be doing that. I will remember this moment for years and possibly forever. You have made an enemy for life. I will dwell on this in the dead of night, thinking about how wrong you are.)

But nobody outside of his family can tell the different between "Mn." and "Mn." So nobody really notices and Lan Xichen and Wei Wuxian think it's incredibly funny to watch crusty, dusty old cultivators think they got Lan Wangji to do something he doesn't want to do.

He's just like me fr

*sigh*

I want to be more circumspect about the tenor of posts I reblog on here because I don't want to get caught up in a "jiang cheng!! 😍🥰😘 never wrong! only uwu trauma!" bubble

However, it seems like very few people can have nuanced opinions on him, esp when it comes to negative opinions - I've never seen someone be like "yeah, I just don't really like him, he's not terribly likable" (which I 100% agree with haha). It's usually all, "he's really the worst and just terrible" often with an implicit or explicit side of "you are terrible/stupid/deluded if you do like him and all the rest of us who don't are talking about the *real, canon* character while the one you like is pure fanon" (which side is the more damaging tbh). It's the lack of respect that's the issue.

Having an opinion that he's just the worst because of stuff he's done and how he is I can respect! I might disagree but there's no problem with that whatsoever. We need differing opinions! But you tag it with c*non jiang cheng and ant* jiang cheng and gr*peh*te...that bleeds into the implicitly condescending territory. I've read valuable, good meta from ppl with negative opinions of JC that use these tags - and then I proceed to block them because I know that the more extreme actual haters will interact with that post too and I don't want to see that.

I saw a post recently I partially agreed with: they said (pardon me if I get this wrong I don't want to misquote them but I already blocked them and don't remember their tumblr handle): JC isn't traumatized (disagree: while he does self-victimize and interpet everything as a slight to him when often it's not even about him, he is literally also a victim of trauma...losing his *whole family* and becoming responsible for a whole sect at the ripe age of like y'know around 17); that his responses were not normal trauma responses (disagree with the caveat that's not my area so I can't tell you what "normal" trauma responses are but his responses are still very human - never said they were good! Just human); and that he is self-centered and self-victimizing (agree!).

The issue with this post was it used the canon jiang cheng tag and I'm like whyyyyy...doing that even if just so you know JC fans will not interact or will block creates as much of an echo chamber as the other way around! Bc this person said these things in a totally reasonable way without (IIRC) bashing people who do like him, and U would've liked to just have that moment without it being spoiled by a dumb tag.

Is JC self centered? Yes. Is he responsible for his actions? Yes. Is he traumatized? Big yes. Does his trauma excuse any of his actions that are bad/evil or his personality? No. But do his actions/personality deserve the SAME nuance and contextualization that we give to WWX, LWJ, LXC, JGY, NMJ, etc? You bet your ass they do. You can't contextualize characters and only refuse to do so for the one you don't like.

Do you have to like him? Not all. Please, dislike away! Just don't pretend that not liking him gives you some moral high ground.

That's what I get for clicking on the jiang cheng tag today. I don't want to make lots of posts like this. I don't want to be angry about discourse surrounding a damn fictional character. I want to keep this blog as nuanced and as positive as possible: not by never posting differing opinions or never posting criticism of JC, but by reblogging content that is respectful to both sides (which is hard to do when so many people who are more critical are also disrespectful!)

I'm sure I've erred on the side of disrespecting people who disagree with me, to an extent, and I want to mitigate that. But golly gee does this feel like the stupidest "us vs them" kind of fight.