#there's just so much! | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

incarnadinedreams · 1 year

Note

What do you think about jc and wwx's relationship? And how sometimes it seems like wwx is not very kind(?) thinking about jc? I don't perceive him having a good opinion about jc (as he does with wn and lwj that he praises)

Oh, this is a tricky one for me! Thanks for the ask, it sparked a lot of thinking... probably too much, oops... and sorry it took so long to reply, there was a small tornado over the weekend so I've been busy picking up the yard for the last couple days...

I definitely agree that's the overall vibe. It's tough because I go back and forth on this and can probably be swayed in different directions depending on my mood or if I read a persuasive argument or something. (And if anyone has any thoughts on the topic I definitely welcome commentary or different perspectives! It's an interesting topic with a lot of different angles to explore, I think.) Or rather what I think the cause of it is, because I agree that he doesn't think of him in particularly nice ways, especially post-resurrection.

Because of the framing of the story, it's a little hard to tell if it's how he's thought about Jiang Cheng all along, or if it's his post-resurrection resentment coloring his recollections.

So then the question I waffle on is exactly how much of these opinions are from anger over everything that happened, how much stem from avoiding painful topics, and how much are from his ideas of Jiang Cheng that took root long before everything that happened? Or why not a little bit of all three!

(Cut for length. 'Challenge: Shut the Fuck Up and Have a Concise Point' has been a spectacular failure. Brevity is the soul of wit but these two make me stupid, so.)

As much as I do dearly love the most precious purple darling of my heart Jiang Cheng, from Wei Wuxian's perspective I can't really blame him for being at least a little bit peeved! There was a siege, after all, and it's not like Jiang Cheng is exactly nice to him either in the present timeline. So there's some 'turnabout is fair play' involved there. I might think he's simply objectively wrong in some of his evaluations of Jiang Cheng, but from an emotional perspective it makes sense and is probably on the mild side, all things considered.

In some ways, I think Wei Wuxian is somewhat invested in the idea of being someone that lets anything and everything go. Partially because it's true that he really does let go of a lot, perhaps to the point where the line is between a healthy amount of letting go and plain avoidance could be called into question, but also because it's what Jiang Yanli told him that's what he was like:

Jiang YanLi said that he was born with a smiling look. No matter what unfortunate thing happened, he wouldn't cling on to them; no matter what situation he was in, he would be happy.

-- Ch. 24, ExR translation

To some extent I think he wants to live up to that, to still be who his shijie said he is, back before everything horrible happened and he was trapped in a downward spiral. So he tries to suppress the greater part of both his anger and resentment, but it still sort of... leaks out, in all those small comments.

In some ways they're mirror opposites of each other: Jiang Cheng is aggressively bitter and angry to suppress how much he still cares about Wei Wuxian, and Wei Wuxian is comparatively civil and pleasant, considering the circumstances, to suppress the genuine pain and anger he feels.

And in some way, that response - the muted sort of civility - sets Jiang Cheng off even more, because it plays so strongly into his fears and insecurities that he cares more about Wei Wuxian than Wei Wuxian cares about him. The way their personalities and coping mechanisms and miscommunications all compound and echo off each other and create this awful swirling chasm between them is tragic but also rings so painfully true.

I think their first big confrontation after Jiang Cheng knows for sure that he was right, that it's really Wei Wuxian - in the inn after Jiang Cheng 'borrows' Fairy - really encapsulates that dynamic between them.

Although his face had always been clouded, marked with arrogance and satire, it seemed as if every corner of it had come alive. It was difficult to determine whether it was vengeful wrath, fathomless hatred, or raving ecstasy.

-- Ch. 23. Love or hate, that's... a lot of feelings going on right there on Jiang Cheng's side. And then (from his perspective) he gets a whole lot of bland nothing back.

For a moment, no one spoke a word. The cup of tea was still steaming hot. Without having a single sip of it, he hurled it onto the ground. Jiang Cheng pulled a curt smile on his face, "... Don't you have anything to say to me?" […] With a sincere tone, Wei WuXian replied: "I don't know what to say to you." Jiang Cheng whispered: "You really don't learn, do you?"

And then to add insult to injury, later in the scene what finally provokes a real response from Wei Wuxian is insulting Lan Wangji.

If I had to take a stab at it, I'd probably say that Jiang Cheng's terrible reaction to non-reactions probably has something to do with his father's vague non-confrontational disappointment and general apathy, on top of just being infuriating in general.

But it's the scene in ch. 32 where the random children are playing out the Sunshot campaign where we see that Wei Wuxian's really not so unbothered about what happened between them at all:

"Jiang Cheng", "Hmph, I can't be better than you? Do you remember how you died?" The light smile on Wei WuXian's face dissipated at once. It was as if he had suddenly been pricked by a poisonous needle. A faint, sharp pain came from all around his body.

Even though it's the situation as seen through third parties who only having rumors to go off of (and the novel reminds us over and over again how accurate that is, even following up in later chapters to have Wei Wuxian clarify), it's obvious that being reminded of the general situation actually is pretty painful for him even if the details aren't particularly accurate. It takes him by surprise and hits where it hurts.

I think this whole pattern between the two of them plays heavily into the lead-up to the Ancestral Hall confrontation, actually - which is also where Wei Wuxian's sourness and dismissiveness is at its peak, and so is Jiang Cheng's fury and bitterness at Wei Wuxian's flippant attitude.

From Jiang Cheng's perspective, he's having just how little Wei Wuxian cares about him shoved in his face right after he'd just been prepared to do something that looks vaguely like dying for him at the Second Siege. Meanwhile, I'm pretty sure Wei Wuxian doesn't know any of that preparing-to-sacrifice-himself stuff even happened, since he was a little busy turning himself into bait with spirit lure flags and all.

So, as usual, everything is horribly amplified by all the things each of them doesn't know about the other. All the things they don't know they don't know come to a head.

Unfortunately only Jiang Cheng comes out of that Ancestral Hall really knowing anything that he didn't know before.

For most of the novel, there's also just... less that he knows about Wen Ning and Lan Wangji. There's so much less baggage, less intensity.

Wen Ning, bless him, Wei Wuxian only knew as a living person for one afternoon at an archery tournament and then for three days at the Supervisory Office in Yiling. (Well, plus the time spent on the mountain for the golden core transfer but I don't think they were sitting around chatting over a nice cup of tea for that.) Of course some of what Wen Ning does really does deserve praise - he did help them at great personal danger to himself. But does Wei Wuxian even really know him? Wen Ning's suppressed resentment in life becomes a powerful tool for Wei Wuxian later, but how much does he really know about his hopes and fears and dreams? A significant chunk of time in the Burial Mounds is spent with no consciousness on Wen Ning's part, and once he regains consciousness there's still this sort of... lingering weird vibe with them until the very end of the novel when Wen Ning becomes more independent. There's genuine friendship, but there's also a sort of avoidance of ever really touching the topic of how Wen Ning feels about being used as his weapon, about being raised as a fierce corpse, about the possibility of being controlled by him, about the decisions Wei Wuxian made for him.

Wen Ning is also just... easy to like. He's sweet and polite -- and he never really pushes back or questions Wei Wuxian's decisions or hits him where it hurts the way Jiang Cheng does.

All he really knows about Lan Wangji for a good chunk of the novel is that he's the goody-two-shoes Lan from summer camp who condemns evil or whatever. Obviously that perception changes drastically throughout the story as more information is revealed and misunderstandings from the past are corrected, but he'd never really had any expectations in his past life for LWJ, and so it left far less room for disappointment, since he didn't realize how LWJ really felt. So what's not to praise?

Of course from a more meta standpoint LWJ is frequently used as a direct contrast to Jiang Cheng, often in ways that are intentionally deceptive on MXTX's part in service to the overall goal of trickle-truthing us about Jiang Cheng over the course of the novel. The setup is constantly reframing his character with tidbits of new information. For example the way Wei Wuxian reacts when seeing Lan Wangji's discipline whip scars in ch. 11 is clearly meant to lead us to believe Jiang Cheng committed some horrible transgression to recieve his own discipline whip scar... and then we find out actually it was from Wen Chao torturing him after the fall of the Jiang sect, because he foolishly, impulsively rushed back to recover his parents' bodies from Lotus Pier, forcing his long-suffering shixiong to sacrifice his own core... except oh wait, that's not what happened at all, except Wei Wuxian doesn't know that last part. So some of the early comparisons I think were also meant to serve that purpose.

But in terms of how Wei Wuxian uses this sort of dismissiveness to avoid confronting how much he's really lost, I think the way he regards Lotus Pier itself is pretty telling:

Although he had always dreamed of returning to Lotus Pier once more, he didn't want to go back to the tattered one nowadays!

Because isn't it just easier to think about how it's not that great anyway, so who cares if you've lost it?

#thinking too much about them again #yunmeng shuangjie feelings #I probably have more thoughts on this topic that I forgot before I wrote them down because really it can go on forever #there's just so much!#they're just so them!#they make me so stupid over them!#they keep me up at night thinking about tragic inevitability!

54 notes · View notes