go on, make me the villain

Today's featured song is: "Political Bú Zhèngquè" by Yukinsnow & Yu Jiang feat. YANHE & Xin Hua! (warning: video contains epileptic content)

Yunmeng Jiang Clan 🪷

Don't Wormy About Me.

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delete it later

If Jiang Fengmian has a hundred haters, I'm one of them if Jiang Fengmian has zero haters, I'm dead

imo reducing the jiang clan dynamics to "wei wuxian was only a servant, never family" undermines the tragic reality that he was both. his position was a dubious, unclear thing, complicated by his debts and the jiangs' varying intentions.

jiang yanli had called him her brother and treated him like one in direct defiance of their class differences and her mother's words. jiang fengmian had seen wwx as a replacement for his parents, not a son, as evident in his passive refusal to defend wwx and his prioritization of his actual son's life. yu ziyuan had seen him as an arrogant servant transgressing class norms and threatening her son's position, and she had consequently scapegoated him at every turn. jiang cheng, the youngest, inherited all of their sentiments in one way or another.

the love was there, it was not enough. so mdzs concludes the jiang clan sub-plots by having jc let wwx leave. that's important. he chose to let to go of the yunmeng shuangjie promise, the oath of fealty. because wwx's position with the jiangs — a brother, yet also a servant, an outsider, never an equal, certainly never a son, bound by duty — made a mockery of love. i think that's more tragic than him being solely a servant and nothing more.

and not to make this lan wangji (actually, everything is always about lan wangji), but that's why it's so important that wwx found a home in him, in a relationship that has no need for debts like "thank you" and "sorry."

Thinking about an AU where Jiang Yanli's "weak / mediocre cultivation" was caused by a horrific training accident when she was pretty young, in part to explore the tragedy and disability of it all and in part for the humorous "older relative casually drops wild personal lore that changes your entire perception of them" angle.

Like, Jiang Fengmian and Yu Ziyuan's firstborn child is a girl, which is not ideal in this deeply sexist world, but the sect motto is "attempt the impossible", right? It's not unheard of for female cultivators to lead sects and Yu Ziyuan wants her daughter to be the first female Jiang sect leader, to show up the cultivation world, and Jiang Fengmian isn't against the idea and wants the best for his daughter (although he probably doesn't want her to be a copy of his wife). So Jiang Yanli starts her cultivation training pretty early. There's a lot of intense pressure, a lot of expectation and projection and some arguments, and it all culminates in this poor child getting badly injured, with permanent damage to both her body and to her cultivation. It's a "no one's fault and everyone's fault" thing.

Jiang Fengmian and Yu Ziyuan quietly drop their plans for Yanli to become the sect leader and focus on a very young Jiang Cheng instead, which is easy in part because everyone expects the son to inherit anyway. A young Jiang Yanli is betrothed to the heir of the Jin Sect and this is basically never talked about ever again. General perception is that Jiang Yanli is a mediocre cultivator at best because she was born that way (she's a WOMAN, after all) and/or because her disposition is just too sweet and agreeable, and OF COURSE the son became the heir as soon as the Jiangs had a son. That's just how things work!

So, in an AU where Jiang Yanli (and Jin Zixuan?) lives and teenage Jin Ling is freaking out about some embarrassing and/or dangerous mistake on a night hunt...

Jiang Yanli, patting her son's shoulder: "It's going to be okay. You know, when I was a young child, I permanently injured myself in a training accident and could no longer become the Jiang sect leader, and it felt like the end of the world, letting everyone down, but it all worked out in the end!"

Jin Ling, whose entire 15-year-old worldview just got flipped upside-down: "...Mother?! What?!?!"

Legacy

Nothing wrong happened there!

they've got life sorted out

I need a fic where the war never happened because I like to imagine that when wangxian starts dating (but only jc, yanli and lxc knows and the rest of the cultivation world think they hate esch other), wwx jokes that if lwj wants to marry him he has to ask first to jiang fengmian and madam yu.

But lwj, bless his heart, actually does it. Also this is the time when yanli and jzx broke their engagement so when people start to talk about the lan clan going to yunmeng with the intention to marry a jiang, everyone thinks that it's yanli and jzx starts to panic.

So, lwj gets to yunmeng, madam yu is looking at him like she's about to kill him if he does something wrong, jfm is at his wife's side but we all know she's the one who takes the decisions.

Madam yu: so, you want my daughter's hand in marriage. Well, you're not jzx, but the second jade of lan is not...

Lwj: sorry, but I'm here to ask for Wei Ying's hand.

Wwx can't take it anymore and starts laughing.

Wwx: LAN ZHAN! I wasn't being serious!! I can't believe you actually did it!!!

Jfm and madam yu are confused, yanli feels sorry for them but at the same time this is too funny, and jc wants to die.

Because holy shit??? What do you mean that lwj, the amazing lwj, wants to marry wwx????? Madam yu and jfm are in shock. They obviously accept but they're like. So confused. Didn't they hate each other???

It gets worse, because a few days later jzx arrives to yunmeng and suddenly yells: "PLEASE LET ME MARRY YOUR DAUGHTER I REALLY LOVE HER PLEASE DON'T MARRY LAN WANGJI" or something like that.

It's pathetic. Jzx is there with only jgy and its obvious that he spent the last days flying as fast as he could to yunmeng, because he looks like shit.

But yanli finds it adorable, and jgy convinces madam yu to accept jzx terrible proposal.

FLEABAG — season two, episode four + jiang cheng, his family, and jin ling

requested by @spriteofmushrooms - insp

No time to play. You are being sent away.

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Hilarious thing that just occurred to me: The Jiangs wearing purple robes is honestly just as gaudy and ostentatious as the Jin putting gold on everything

Even if we assume that only the inner clan members wear robes dyed actual purple, and everybody else does robes that have been dyed red and then blue, that's still an insane amount of money and effort. Historically, true purple dye was so crazy rare and expensive that in most places it was reserved for actual royalty, and double-dyed fabrics had to be done with extreme care and skill or they would be splotchy and uneven -- more blue in some places, more red in others, the purple different shades.

It's funny to think about WWX and JC being like "ugh the peacock" as if their lowest disciples don't wear robes that only the most skilled master dyers could achieve. Like the inner members of the Jiang Clan aren't walking around in several layers of true purple silk. Jiang Cheng's underwear could feed a village through winter and Wei Wuxian has the gall to act like the Jin are too showy about their wealth.