Ch 43: Jin Ling continued, “My uncle grew up with him, my grandfather saw him as his own child, my grandmother wasn’t horrible to him either, but what did he do? He made Lotus Pier the lair of the Wen Sect, he wrecked the entire YunmengJiang Sect, he caused the deaths of both my parents and grandparents, and now my uncle is the only one left! He brought about his own death through the havoc he created and ended up leaving not even a whole corpse behind him! Just which part of the entire situation do you not understand? Just what excuses are you still making for him?!”

Holy shit?! The lies shoved down this poor kids throat? YZY was abusive to WWX but apparently thats not horrible? He apparently led the Wen to LP but that ignores the fact that they were attacking everyone. The Jiang is the only still exists because of WWX but thats apparently wrecking it. To fair on the last point if WWX didn't give JC his core then JC wouldn't have been sect leader and the Jiang mightve been led by JYL who is infinitely better at everything than JC.

Rereading this hits me like a truck because JC ensured that JL would unequivocally hate WWX even though many of it wasn't actually WWX's fault. How threatened was JC after WWX's death to lie even more to JL? Its as if he knew that JL would like WWX over him so he tried to ensure that JL didn't. The other thing is that JC is really spitting on the deaths of everyone mentioned and ignoring the sacrifices some of them made to ensure that JC and WWX lived.

I'm glad that at the end JL yells at JC and seems to stay far away from him. It must be so hard for JL to come to terms not only with the fact that JGY (the good uncle) actually orchestrated his fathers death. But also that his other uncle (JC) was also lying. That the one uncle that mightve fucked up but has since made up for it by protecting and teaching jim was the man that was supposed to be the world's greatest villain, WWX.

...Shit. I haven’t reread the novel in a while, so I’d mostly forgotten this bit, and... Shit.

JC has clearly been lying his ass off every time the topic of WWX came up, saying whatever was necessary to convince JL that WWX was pure evil. YZY whipped WWX over nothing, but JC taught JL that she wasn’t horrible to him. JFM cheerily sent WWX off to play bodyguard even if it meant he’d probably die, but he “saw him as his own child”. He “made Lotus Pier the lair of the Wen sect”, but the Wens did that without his aid and with him fighting against them having already taken over one great sect without even pretending to have an excuse, not to mention WLJ pretty much outright says that they were there to make Lotus Pier a supervisory office with punishing WWX as a lovely bonus. He brought about his own death, but it was the sects who backed him into a corner and gave him no other way out.

This passage on its own blows every argument that JC totally did love and mourn for WWX, because... well, look at it. WWX was dead, and that wasn’t enough for JC; no, he had to lie, to ensure that JL would never look on his uncle’s memory with anything but loathing. If he really did mourn for WWX and wish things had gone differently, he would’ve told JL about WWX’s courage and compassion, how he always fought to do the right thing, how he loved his family so much and always tried to help despite the way they treated him. But no; all JL knows about him is lies, almost certainly told to him directly by JC, given the way it’s phrased; at the absolute minimum JC clearly never told him the truth, and a lie by omission is still a lie. This is quite possibly one of the worst things JC does to WWX, because it is the complete desecration of WWX’s memory, a character assassination done to make sure a child wouldn’t hold a single positive thought towards his own uncle.

I wonder, now, how much of JL’s complete lack of any mention of JC in the extras comes from the realization of just how much of what JC taught him was lies. Did JC tell JL anything true about WWX? Because that passage suggests not. Can you imagine the betrayal JL must feel with every new discovery, every new investigation into WWX and JC’s past that ends with the realization that it’s just one more thing JC lied to him about? The one uncle he has left of the two he grew up with, and now he’s learning that JC betrayed him, kept the truth of everything related to WWX and his mother from him so that... what, he wouldn’t have to compete for “favourite maternal uncle”? So he could feel justified in his hate? He poisoned his nephew’s mind against a good man for the sake of his own hatred and now JL, still reeling from learning what JGY did, is having to come to terms with that. No wonder the poor kid doesn’t want to talk about him in the extras. 

And now I want fics that acknowledge that JC lied to JL about everything to do with WWX, and include JL’s rightful sense of betrayal over it. Preferably without any attempts from the narrative or not-JC characters to justify it, because you cannot justify lying to a child for years so that he’d hate your brother as much as you do.