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fannish-karmiya · 3 years

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I'm honestly really uncomfortable with the way the Modao Zushi fandom talks about Jiang Yanli. She's either a literal goddess, the best sister ever, or the worst sister ever, a terrible person and how dare she just enjoy cooking and domestic tasks, she is plain and why would anyone like her...

It's like fandom has a Madonna/Whore complex going on!

She's not the best sister ever. She clearly does prioritise Jiang Cheng over Wei Wuxian and has a habit of viewing the way Jiang Cheng treats him through rose-coloured glasses. She really wants them to just be brothers bickering and for there to be nothing darker underneath it all.

To be fair, I do think Jiang Cheng probably hides the worst of it from her; for example, she was actually outside chatting with Wen Ning when the stab wound came up during the wedding dress visit, and I wouldn't be surprised if Jiang Cheng came home after the duel complaining about his broken arm and never mentioned that he stabbed Wei Wuxian in the guts.

She also did not visit the Burial Mounds during that visit; Jiang Cheng found an abandoned house in Yiling and they met him in the walled courtyard (so no one would see them together, ugh). So while she's certainly pretty ignorant about money and didn't make the connection that Wei Wuxian would, you know, be dealing with poverty after leaving the sect with nothing, she didn't see it for herself, either. In general it seems like cultivators from the great sects are pretty ignorant about money, and in particular Jiang Yanli is a sheltered upper class young woman. It's not surprising that she's clueless about all of this. Not her finest moment but it doesn't prove anything terrible about her.

(Also, I see her actions when Wei Wuxian was brought to Lotus Pier as a kid criticised a lot, but...she actually went looking for him when Jiang Cheng told her what happened, and told Jiang Cheng to go get an adult for help. Jiang Cheng is the one who disobeyed her because he didn't want to get in trouble.)

She's just...very sheltered and not very knowledgeable about the wider world. In some respects I feel like her character is a commentary on how unhealthy the habit of upper class families to shelter their daughters and hide them away from the world was.

There's also nothing wrong with a woman enjoying domestic tasks like cooking and sewing! She seems to have been pretty darn good at them, too. When she's a pre-teen and Wei Wuxian is first brought to Lotus Pier, she offers to fix his shoe which is too large; mending shoes is, ah, not easy. Even many years later Wei Wuxian still reflects fondly on her cooking and says it's better than the restaurant they're eating at in Yunmeng.

Honestly, the next time I see someone disparaging her for being 'nothing but soup' I'm going to scream. She doesn't have to be a skilled cultivator or politician if she doesn't want to be!

It does make her engagement to a future sect leader (and one of the great sects at that) rather awkward, true. But she grew up with that having been decided by her parents and just...accepted it and tried to make it work, and tried to like her fiancee. That doesn't...make her evil. Traditionally, Chinese marriages were decided by the parents. Jin Guangshan even says when Jiang Fengmian suggests breaking the engagement that it's not up to the kids! Jiang Fengmian breaking the engagement because Jin Zixuan doesn't like ehr and he wants the kids to be happy is really rather remarkable for their society. And she doesn't push herself on him after that; she delivered the soup in secret in Langya precisely because she didn't want to do that. She just wanted to do something nice for him because she still has fond feelings for him.

You don't have to like Jiang Yanli. Maybe an exploration of traditional feminine values and some of their pitfalls isn't your jam, and that's fine! But cut the girl some slack. She's not a monster, just an ordinary young woman in a patriarchal society.

(Do I need to do a full essay including every scene she's in, with quotes? Jiang Yanli: A Lukewarm Defense.)

#mdzs #mdzs meta #jiang yanli #please give the girl a break and let her make her soup in peace

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robininthelabyrinth · 3 years

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Targets - ao3

- Chapter 5 -

Lan Xichen had had an extremely weird day.

The beginning of the week had gone much as it always did – the daily routine of lessons and chores, classes and cultivation – and he had been helping his uncle with sect business, just basic copying or taking down dictation since he wasn’t old enough to do more than that. He’d thought the rest of the week would go just the same way, but then a messenger had arrived and his uncle had asked him to leave. It wasn’t that unusual, there was plenty of sect business his uncle didn’t care for him to know about yet, Lan Xichen being not quite yet fifteen, so he hadn’t thought much of it.

What was unusual was his uncle’s sudden tension afterwards, and the second messenger that arrived not long after, and his uncle’s abruptly announcement that Lan Xichen and Lan Wangji would be going to visit the Unclean Realm.

Lan Xichen had initially welcomed the news – he’d become friends with Nie Mingjue years before when the other boy had spent some time at the Cloud Recesses, and he’d always hoped to go pay a long visit in return, although that hope had been dashed when Nie Mingjue had been forced to become sect leader far too soon and it suddenly became inappropriate for him to spend so much time with a junior like Lan Xichen. But when his uncle told him to go pack and he realized that his uncle planned to send him right away…that was when he started to become alarmed.

He asked his uncle what the matter was, but his uncle refused to say, and so Lan Xichen had no idea why they had hurried so quickly to the Unclean Realm. He’d been asked to fly on his sword, and when he started faltering, one of the attending disciples allowed him to jump onto theirs to ride the rest of the way – they only rested a few times, at the mid-way points, and that was already pushing the boundaries of what they could do, even though they were all strong cultivators. After all, of the Great Sects, Gusu was the furthest away from Qinghe; it wasn’t an easy trip to make.

He thought that he’d ask Nie Mingjue to explain when he arrived, but Nie Mingjue wasn’t there. But the Unclean Realm’s protective shield was up, which he’d never seen, and they were searched and interrogated for a long while before being allowed inside. And even once they were, they were shown to certain courtyards and told not to leave.

“Brother?” Lan Wangji asked, and the mere fact that he’d broken his habitual silence to inquire that much told of his anxiety at everything that had happened.

“I’ll figure it out,” Lan Xichen promised him.

Only he really couldn’t figure out what to do next, and then Nie Mingjue returned with a positive gaggle of children, his face pale and almost visibly at the point of total qi exhaustion, and it hadn’t seemed like a good time to interrupt. Lan Wangji ended up getting swept up by the chattering children his age – the Yunmeng Jiang heir, Jiang Cheng, as well as the Yunmeng Jiang ward, Wei Wuxian, plus Nie Huaisang – and not long thereafter they were joined by Jin Zixuan, who poor Lan Wangji had ended up clinging to as the only other person not talking faster than the flapping of a hummingbird’s wings.

Poor Lan Wangji, Lan Xichen thought; it wasn’t his fault that Wei Wuxian had fixated on him, seemingly thinking that teasing and bullying were the only way to make friends – they’d tussled three times so far, and Lan Wangji was constantly turning bright red with either fury or elation or both.

For his own part, Lan Xichen had tried to make friends with the boy that was closer to his age – Meng Yao, apparently – but Meng Yao just stared at him wide-eyed and stuttered a lot and seemed very awkward, although he had explained some of what was happening: that the Wen sect had ordered the kidnapping of sect heirs, that his name had been on a list (he didn’t know why he himself had been included, especially as none of the other Jin sect bastards had been), that all the sects were preparing for war…

It had been a relief when Jiang Yanli stopped shepherding the smaller children and joined them, if only because Lan Xichen could stop feeling like he was tormenting poor Meng Yao. Who wasn’t even a cultivator, although he expressed an interest in becoming one – Nie Mingjue had apparently said that he could join the Nie sect if he wanted.

“You should,” Lan Xichen said enthusiastically. “It’s a good sect – a bit, uh, martially inclined, but very righteous, very upright. They’re good people. If you don’t think you’d enjoy cultivating the saber, maybe you might prefer the Lan sect – you said you played the guqin? We cultivate music.”

His face was certainly pretty enough to pass through Lan sect regulations, Lan Xichen thought, although of course there were other requirements.

“You would be a good fit in either,” Jiang Yanli said encouragingly. “My Jiang sect isn’t taking on new disciples right now without a recommendation, but if you start with the Nie sect and find it doesn’t suit, I’m sure you’d be welcome in any sect you chose.”

“Except Lanling Jin?” Meng Yao said, giving them both a look as they blushed and stuttered and averted their eyes. “Neither of you recommended that one.”

“Lanling Jin is a very strong sect, very powerful,” Jiang Yanli said delicately. “And, uh…Lan-gongzi?”

“I can’t,” Lan Xichen said. “There are rules in the Lan sect about talking behind people’s backs, especially maliciously.”

“Well, I certainly can’t say anything! He’s my future father-in-law!”

“That bad?” Meng Yao asked, though he didn’t look as surprised as Lan Xichen might’ve thought.

“My brother says Sect Leader Jin’s a useless whoremonger who doesn’t think of anything but wine, women, and corruption,” Nie Huaisang piped up. Lan Xichen hadn’t even noticed him walking over; he would have tried to change the subject of conversation if he had – he remembered very well what a little demon Nie Huaisang could be, always stirring up trouble. “That he’s got more bastards than fingers and toes, and that the women he gets with child are lucky if he remembers to pay them for it, assuming they weren’t forced to begin with. You’re better off with us, Meng-gege!”

Meng Yao looked at Lan Xichen and Jiang Yanli, who both shrugged because there really wasn’t much to be said there, and then over at Jin Zixuan, who had trailed along after Nie Huaisang along with the rest of their little gang.

“My father’s not useless,” he said, looking uncomfortable even as he kept shooting fascinated glances at Meng Yao – who was his brother, actually, now that Lan Xichen thought about it, putting two and two together. Jin Zixuan had probably never met one of the infamous Jin bastards before; none of them had. They’d only heard about them in rumors. “And he does think of – other things. Sect business. Sometimes. That part’s wrong.”

Jin Zixuan was a good boy, Lan Xichen reflected. Far too good to be the son of a snake-tongued politician like Jin Guangshan.

“You should probably just pick another sect, though,” Jin Zixuan said, shifting from one foot to the other. “My mom – she doesn’t like – listen, she’s said some really awful things about what she’d do if any of the bastards ever actually showed up, okay? And I’m pretty sure my father agrees with her. He promised he’d throw them down the tower steps.”

“There are a lot of steps in Jinlin Tower. It’d break someone’s bones! Or neck!” Jiang Cheng objected.

“I think that’s the point,” Wei Wuxian muttered. “Meng-gege, you won’t go, will you?”

“I won’t,” Meng Yao assured him. “My mother’s coming here, so I have to be here at least until she arrives. And I think we’re all going to be here for a while, at least until the war is over.”

“That’s definitely the case,” Nie Mingjue said from the door. He looked a little better – someone must have given him spiritual energy and possibly a stimulant, possibly multiple stimpulants – though he still seemed very tired. Lan Xichen abruptly saw the point of all of his uncle’s exhortations against over-doing things. “You’re all welcome to stay for as long as this takes. I’ve cleansed the Unclean Realm of spies, as best as I can; this place is as safe as can be while you’re being targeted.”

“What about you, Mingjue-xiong?” Lan Xichen asked, anxious, because he knew, as few others did, that Nie Mingjue wasn’t nearly as old as people thought he was. “Will you have to fight?”

Nie Mingjue didn’t respond, which was affirmation. It was a stupid question to ask; Nie Mingjue was a sect leader, of course he’d have to fight. Fight the man who murdered his father only a few years before.

“I want to help,” Lan Xichen said, and Nie Mingjue frowned.

“Xichen –”

“I want to help,” Lan Xichen insisted. “Even if it’s just cutting up cloth to make bandages, or passing along messages, or something like that – I want to help.”

“I want to help too!” Wei Wuxian exclaimed. “Da-ge, you have to let us help.”

“I –”

“They’re our sects, too,” Jin Zixuan said quietly, and Lan Xichen saw Jiang Yanli smile at him.

Lan Xichen felt a moment of satisfaction at how they were all uniting, all acting together – and then, abruptly, dissatisfaction. “Why does Wei-gongzi get to call you da-ge?” he asked, indignant. “I’ve known you for longer!”

“It was convenient!” Nie Mingjue protested. “You can call me that too, if you like!”

“Not if you like,” Nie Huaisang said. “Everyone has to call da-ge, da-ge. You’re in the Unclean Realm now, and I make the rules here, and those are the rules!”

There was a small group discussion, after which it was generally agreed that it would be far too awkward to live together for days and days – amended to weeks and weeks after seeing the expression on Nie Mingjue’s face – while maintaining appropriate formalities, so everyone was going to call each other -gege, -jiejie, and -xiong, as appropriate, and of course that Nie Mingjue, as the eldest of their generation, would be called da-ge.

“Wen Xu’s older than me, actually,” Nie Mingjue mumbled. “Wen Qing, too, I think –”

“They don’t count, they’re Wen,” Jiang Cheng said. “The Wen sect is evil.”

“Wasn’t Wen Qing their doctor?” Jiang Yanli asked. “She was at the last discussion conference, presenting on some of her medial research. She was nice, I thought…?”

“She’s Dafan Wen, not Qishan Wen,” Lan Xichen explained. “They’re only technically a branch family of the main Qishan Wen – they split off a few generations back, but there was an accident and their parents died, so I think her and her younger brother got adopted as wards by Sect Leader Wen.”

“How unfortunate for her,” Meng Yao murmured, and they all looked at him. “I mean, if he’s as bad as you all say he is…”

“Was it an accident?” Jin Zixuan asked, and everyone looked at him. “What? Everyone says that she’s the most talented member of the younger generation of Wen sect – well, they say that when Sect Leader Wen isn’t around, anyway. It seems really convenient that the cousin who could’ve outshone the main branch got brought in so that all the accolades could go to him.”

“And we all know that Wen Ruohan likes to kill parents,” Nie Huaisang mumbled, kicking at the floor.

A moment later, as if by unanimous unspoken agreement, they all turned to look at Nie Mingjue expectantly.

“…she’s a Wen!” he protested a few moments later when he realized what they were getting at. “Even if the circumstances of her parents' death might be – suspicious – it’s still her bloodline; they share the same ancestors, they’re the same clan! She's not going to be a target - well, by them, anyway - though I suppose by the rest of us - and - and I don’t know what exactly you’d want me to do about it, anyway!”

#mdzs #lan xichen #lan wangji #nie mingjue #meng yao #nie huaisang #wei wuxian #jiang cheng #jiang yanli #my fic #my fics #targets

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robininthelabyrinth · 3 years

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Could we have a fic of Jiāng Cheng naming a disciple as his heir, or if you think it wouldn’t work, would you mind just making a list of why, or of alternatives (because this is going with a aro/ace Jiāng Cheng)

Jiang Cheng was, in some ways, a terrible sect leader.

For once, it wasn’t just his insecurities talking; it was simply a fact of life.

He was skillful enough as a warrior to earn fame and fortune for his sect, a charismatic enough leader to gather cultivators beneath the Jiang sect banner for the war, a good enough general – or, well, maybe a lieutenant, since to his relief Nie Mingjue handled most of the overarching battle plans for all the sects, not merely his own – to keep most of them alive during the war. He was a miserable politician, but he was able to walk the tightrope between being too weak (and making his sect a target) and too arrogant (and making his sect a target), even if it cost him tears and blood and a brother.

His sect survived. More than survived, it thrived.

Jiang Cheng had not disappointed his ancestors, his parents. He had, for once, lived up to expectations.

But there was one thing he needed to do, but couldn’t bring himself to actually accomplish.

“Take it in steps,” Nie Mingjue advised him, when he forced himself to ask. The other man’s eyes were shadowed – empathetic rather than sympathetic, a sense of fellow feeling instead of pity – there was a reason he’d come to the Nie sect for this. “In my case, the line of inheritance was and is straightforward, if threatened by Huaisang’s weakness. In your case…”

Jiang Cheng swallowed.

That was the crux of it, really. That was the terrible thing that he needed to do, but couldn’t.

The Jiang sect needed an heir.

He didn’t want to give it to them.

“Start small,” Nie Mingjue said. His voice was not given to gentleness, but it was less harsh, perhaps, than it might have been. “Formally appoint your second-in-command.”

Jiang Cheng’s face burned. Even that small thing had not gone unnoticed, it seemed – it wasn’t that he didn’t have a second-in-command, if the role was defined in the sense of the person he leaned on for aid and advice, the person who he gave authority to when he was too busy, the person who he trusted to keep things running if he was asleep or unconscious…

It was just that – it was the wrong person.

(It should have been Wei Wuxian – but that had long ago become impossible, even before he’d died. It was only that it hurt him to remember it, to think of it, to put someone in his place –)

“Your staff is very competent,” Nie Mingjue said. “They will serve you well.”

The rush of pride helped ease the never-ending sting of Wei Wuxian’s absence.

“I’ll do that,” he promised, and Nie Mingjue nodded in satisfaction. “But there’s also – the long term.”

The Jin sect would like him not to appoint anyone, he knew. That would give Jin Ling a claim to the position, and his Jiang sect that he worked so hard to reestablish would be swallowed up in whole by Lanling Jin – impossible, unacceptable. He had cousins that he could name as heir, to pass the time until – until –

“You don’t have to marry,” Nie Mingjue told him, and Jiang Cheng started as if he’d been caught doing something wrong, suddenly naked beneath Nie Mingjue’s relentless gaze.

“What? I – no. I’ve gone to the matchmaker, it just hasn’t worked –”

“Jiang Wanyin. You don’t have to marry.”

“…now?”

“At all.”

Jiang Cheng had wanted to hear those words for so long that he was suspicious of hearing them now. “I don’t have an heir,” he pointed out. “I don’t – if I don’t have children, my parents’ bloodline will die with me. I don’t want –”

To disappoint them.

“Their inheritance to you is their sect, which you have preserved,” Nie Mingjue said. “If you had died in its defense, would they excoriate you? No.”

“But I’m not dead,” Jiang Cheng said. “And just because I find the idea of marriage to be – unattractive –”

He could say as much to Nie Mingjue, who was equally unmarried, equally resistant to the idea. It had been his father’s complaints about Nie Mingjue’s disinterest in men and women alike, a somewhat knotty political problem, that had first revealed to Jiang Cheng that such disinterest was even an option, that it wasn’t his own personal failing but a characteristic that other people shared with him.

“– doesn’t mean that I can’t do it. ‘Attempt the impossible’, remember?”

Nie Mingjue frowned at him. “Your sect’s motto does not overcome your duty as a cultivator or as a human being,” he said firmly. “Attempting the impossible does not mean that you should attempt to do evil, if evil is what is impossible.”

“Marriage isn’t evil.” Even if he sometimes thought of it as such.

“Not for others. But for you and I – it’s different for us. It’d be one thing if we could find someone to match us, someone who shared our disinterest or was willing to adapt to it...there are people like that out there, women and men alike, and if you want a partner with whom to share your life, I have no doubt that you can find one. But that’s not what’s being discussed.”

“It isn’t?”

“No. To marry someone blindly for the sake of marriage and children, to put politics over personal interest and wed someone who thought they would receive all the things that come with a marriage, all the things we do not wish to give? It would be an act of evil. An evil to whoever we wed, if we let them enter into marriage with us unknowing of what the future might hold – an evil to ourselves, if we tried to pretend, forcing ourselves into a life of bitterness, resentment, and misery. Worst of all, it would be an evil to our children, who would know.”

Jiang Cheng shuddered at that, revolted by the idea. It was true, too – he had always known that his parents’ marriage was unhappy, even back when he was younger and his mother still took pains to hide it from him, and then even more so later on. The bitterness of his mother’s unhappiness had eaten her alive, over time, and his father’s dissatisfaction had done the same for him…

Was that how he would be, if he forced himself to marry whatever girl agreed to take him, not telling her the truth? If he married just for the sake of the heirs they could have together, planning all the while to abandon her afterwards?

Yes.

After all, for better or worse, he was his parents’ son.

“Okay,” he said, and closed his eyes briefly as a great weight lifted from his shoulders. “You’re right.”

Nie Mingjue nodded in satisfaction. “Pick a nice cousin that you can bring to live with you, train them up early and make the reason clear,” he advised. “Establishing a line of succession early is the only way to avoid a giant clusterfuck.”

Jiang Cheng’s lips twitched. “Is that the technical term for it?”

“As far as I’m concerned it is.”

Jiang Cheng laughed.

#mdzs #jiang cheng #nie mingjue #my fic #my fics #Anonymous

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