the untamed is so fucked up like what if you were the brother of all time but in a cursed way. first your brother-in-law dies because your big sister loves you so much. then your big sister dies because she loves you so much. then your new big sister and little brother die because they love you so much. the only reason your og little brother doesn’t die? because you died first. because you love him so much.
While I think Jiang Cheng’s reaction to the Jiang massacre and blaming Wei Wuxian was extreme and largely fueled by grief and trauma, I also think the fandom as a whole also goes too far in the other direction of calling it completely irrational and illogical. Acting as if there’s no logical reason at all for Jiang Cheng to ever for one little nanosecond even consider that Wei Wuxian’s behavior was a factor in their being targeted.
At the Tortoise of Slaughter cave, Wei Wuxian doesn’t just defend Mianmian the same way Lan Wangji and Jin Zixuan were doing. He goes out of his way to verbally eviscerate Wen Chao in a particularly humiliating way, laughing at him the whole time, and followed that up by directly threatening his life and holding him hostage at sword-point.
It wasn’t mere defiance. It wasn’t merely defending people. It was funny, it was clever, it was brave and dashing and all of the things Wei Wuxian can be. It was an awesome moment - for the reader, anyway - that perfectly crystalizes all the flair and personality he had.
But there was no way someone like Wen Chao was ever, ever going to let that go.
It simply does not matter how right Wei Wuxian was. It doesn’t matter how wrong Wen Chao was. The matter was never going to fade without serious retaliation. People with the sort of petty cruelty and pride of Wen Chao can tolerate nothing less than being laughed at.
Don’t get me wrong, it was effective. It achieved his goals in the moment perfectly: he did save LWJ and JZX and Mianmian - by redirecting Wen Chao’s anger, attention and the rage of a wounded pride onto himself. By so far eclipsing and outshining their defiance that they were nearly forgotten in the aftermath.
You can argue ‘till the cows come home about the hypotheticals of what might have happened if he’d done nothing (do they all just die? does Wen Chao’s plan that appears to be both cruel and stupid somehow work and only Mianmian gets the axe? seems unlikely), or perhaps if he’d merely stood with LWJ and JZX instead of wildly outshining them (do all three sects get annihilated as punishment instead of just the Jiang, making the Sunshot Campaign an impossibility?). I’m certainly not arguing that Wei Wuxian was inherently wrong for saving them, both in the specific action or in the possible outcomes.
But the truth is: Wei Wuxian did make himself a target, and even in-text he does not quite seem to realize the gravity of it, or at least avoids acknowledging it.
As Jiang Cheng slowly walked over, propping Wei WuXian up, they happened to hear the ‘without any food’ part of the conversation. Wei WuXian, “Jiang Cheng, there’s a piece of cooked meat here. You want to eat it?”
Jiang Cheng, “Get lost! You really haven’t learned your lesson, have you? Just what situation do you think we’re in? You don’t know how much I want to sew your lips together.”
– Ch. 53, ExR translation
This interaction pretty much sums up the entire ‘evil summer camp’ arc of the story. Throughout, it’s been Jiang Cheng worrying about the Wens and Wei Wuxian largely dismissing the seriousness of the situation, and it continues right on through their return to Lotus Pier. (Though of course Wei Wuxian also frequently deflects from serious situations with humor in general.)
That’s why when people insist that Jiang Cheng’s displacement of blame to Wei Wuxian is completely, wholly, and totally irrational, and Wei Wuxian never did a single thing wrong, well… they were in a situation with no winning solutions. But Wei Wuxian did hold Wen Chao hostage at sword-point and go out of his way to humiliate him.
Which leads us to the famous Blame Wei Wuxian For Everything scene:
Holding him on the ground, Jiang Cheng continued to roar, “Why did you save Lan WangJi?! Why did you have to speak up?! How many times have I told you not to stir up trouble! Not to strike! Do you really want to play the hero so much?! Have you seen what happened when you played the hero?! Huh?! Are you happy now?!
[…]
In his heart, Jiang Cheng knew clearly that back in the cave of the Xuanwu of Slaughter at Dusk-Creek Mountain, even if Wei WuXian hadn’t saved Lan WangJi, the Wen Sect would have found some reason to come over sooner or later. But he had always felt that, if the whole thing with Wei WuXian didn’t happen, maybe it wouldn’t have been so soon, maybe there would’ve been some way to turn things around.
It was this torturing thought that filled his heart with hatred and wrath. Unable to be let out, they cut up his innards.
People are certainly free to not really like ‘don’t be a hero’ as a character’s guiding philosophy, even if I personally find his approach realistic and refreshingly pragmatic. And it’s exactly the amount of doubt involved, the ambiguity of it all, the endless what-ifs and maybes, that makes it so incredibly painful. What makes it tragic and compelling is that nobody is completely wrong or completely right; there are no winners here. That sometimes doing the right thing isn’t enough to save you.
Anyway, all I’m saying is that I find it’s not entirely illogical to feel like ‘publicly humiliating and then threatening the life of tyrannical dictator’s son’ could in fact lead said son to hate and target them in particular, if only to accelerate the timeline. (As always, the real question is ‘wtf were the adults doing this whole time, why weren’t they more prepared’ but that’s not really the point right now.)
It almost goes without saying that Wei Wuxian was never the core problem - that was always the Wens. And even Jiang Cheng himself, in the midst of this extreme reaction, doesn’t actually say they wouldn’t have attacked, or that Wei Wuxian was morally wrong, or not a hero. Only that it wasn’t worth it, that he didn’t want to pay the price, that he’d rather people he doesn’t care about die than the people he loves.
Even in this scene, as harsh as his words and actions are, his thoughts are actually a lot more nuanced than a lot of fandom seems to give him credit for. In the midst of that sort of extreme loss, I just can’t blame him for feeling that way.
‘Do the right thing, no matter the consequences’ sounds great until losing everything and everyone you love are the consequences of someone else’s right thing.
to continue my tradition of mdzs height posting, another character besides mo xuanyu who is routinely and unjustly described as tiny: Wen Qing.
according to the officially released heights, she and jin guangyao are roughly the same size. about five and a half feet tall.
which is on the small side for a man even in china, though not in medieval china, and is ofc loads smaller than the ridiculous giants making up most of the cultivator elite, but is not actually a small person.
that’s statistically above average for a woman even in the modern US; in modern china it is often hard for women that height to find off-the-rack clothes. in a historical chinese setting she is mildly gargantuan. five foot six is a positively unmaidenly height.
wei wuxian (as i’ve previously discussed) is slightly over six feet tall at his original full growth, which is stupid tall even when you’re an aristocrat who didn’t starve as a child. wen qing is, in turn, too tall for wei wuxian to hook his chin over her head, even if he stands on his toes, unless she ducks.
he’s got maybe more than half a head on her. she could headbutt him in the nose from a standing start, as could most adult men because he’s a freak.
wen qing would walk among a group of normal-in-context women like a turkey among hens. she is not tiny.
i know cql kind of made her look that way, but in fairness their version of lan wangji is a stick of no great height also. and even on cql she’s not particularly small, just exceedingly pale and slim with big eyes. i truly do not know why it’s so popular to conceptualize her as teeny-tiny, except maybe for the contrast value. it’s not even hornyposting.
like a turkey among hens
I can’t help but think of this photo (Esther Yu and some other people)
I’d already started writing a JC post, so I wrapped that in to answer your question.
I follow a few JC fans so I see the backlash to the haters more than I see any haters, but apparently there’s some question in some people’s mind about whether Jiang Cheng loves Wei Wuxian, and I find that a little silly. That said, I think that to understand MDZS’s JC at all, you cannot just read the surface, so if you’re not thinking about him as a person or giving him any consideration beyond what other characters say and think of him, you’re not doing him justice. You’re also not going to see that he loves WWX and also loves several other people quite deeply, because a) JC’s never going to be affectionate in his dialogue, b) JC’s not going to even be affectionate in his body language or minor actions, and c) WWX, the main viewpoint character, is never once going to think about whether JC likes him or loves him.
Lots of posts have outlined better than I will how deeply loves not only WWX, but also his family, in particular JL. The short version is: JC’s his major flaws are all related to him loving his parents and getting shown very little affection in return—none at all from his father and only some in a backhanded way from his mother, usually in comparison to WWX.
As for Jin Ling, JC threatens him all the time, and even shoves him around a bit, but Jin Ling obviously adores JC and feels adored. JC is the one Jin Ling goes to when he’s crying; JC is also the one who leaps to JL’s side when JL is hurt. JL knows he’s in trouble with JC when JL does something unsafe, but JL knows that his own safety is the most important thing in JC’s life. Tellingly, JL rarely takes any of JC’s threats seriously, and even tells other people said threats are bogus.
Then there’s WWX. Even while JC is berating WWX endlessly for making their clan look bad, he is literally carrying around WWX on his back. He is protecting WWX with everything he has. He sacrifices himself to the Wens to WWX won’t get caught. After their falling out, after WWX lied to him for years and got their sister killed, JC still can’t even stop himself from protecting WWX when WWX might get hurt by JGY’s guqin string.
The guy is willing to throw himself on the fire for anyone he loves. Just heaven forbid he express any of it. But because he does not express love through speech, Wei Wuxian (who I will point out is a talker) doesn’t understand this about Jiang Cheng—and this is shown to be a consistent flaw that WWX has. He also does not understand that LWJ is in love with him, despite LWJ defying all of society to follow him around and lift him onto donkeys whenever WWX gets droopy.
But I’d add the pretty much no one, other than Jin Ling, understands this about Jiang Cheng. If the cultivation world had understood JC, they would not have believed that JC and WWX had actually had a falling out. Part of the reason people don’t know him is the same reason JC has such a terrible time with everything—WWX steals everyone’s attention, praise, and fear wherever they go. No one is really looking at JC to admire his devotion or his loyalty, because WWX is there, doing it better than him, always. Imagine LWJ+WWX hadn’t defeated the Tortoise of Slaughter and had just been holed up in that cave for six days. All anyone would’ve talked about was how deeply JC must love his shixiong to make it back in such record time. It would all be “heroic rescue” this “unflagging loyalty” that. But instead, LWJ+WWX had to really just steal the limelight.
In fact, the book is partly about the fact that people don’t analyze people’s actions too deeply. They believe what they hear. They believe what they want to believe. JC really can just say “I reject WWX” and they believe it. JGS can really just say “WWX is evil” and they believe it. Everybody says LWJ is perfect, so they believe he can’t be a cut-sleeve who is in love with WWX. And WWX, who knows better than anyone that rumors aren’t true, believes it too.
Even after WWX’s death, JC’s reputation is locked onto WWX. I do think this is JC’s own fault, given that he can’t accept his brother’s death and is obsessed with him but idk. Canon demonstrates that there’s a huge difference between what JC says he’ll do if he finds WWX and what JC actually does, and it’s not because LWJ is in the way. But no one really seems to pay attention to the difference between what JC says and what he actually does when the chips are down, except JL, so it’s no wonder everyone says he has torture dungeons, no matter how ludicrous that is.
I think what makes JC’s love for WWX particularly complex, and particularly incomprehensible in the eyes of the cultivation world, is WWX’s position in JC’s family. JC thought of WWX as a brother. He loved him like a brother. And yet JC was deeply aware that WWX wasn’t his brother. JC’s mom made sure that JC was deeply aware of that at all times, and you know what, so did his dad. And then, the rest of the cultivation world constantly talked about the fact that WWX was not a part of the family, that the Jiang Clan raised him like a son but he was really the son of a servant. MXTX expertly shows that this fact gets trotted out whenever WWX does something questionable–when WWX is brilliant, he’s a lauded member of the clan, but when he is bad, he is of low-birth and adopted through charity. The truth is, it’s an unusual relationship for a world in which there’s a pretty big different between your clan (blood relatives) and sect.
How can JC hold both of these truths in his head? What makes it bearable for JC is that when they grow up, JC will be the Sect Leader and WWX will be his right-hand man; they will do everything together; they will be brilliant together; they never have to worry about blood or debt then, because then it won’t matter whether they’re brothers or best friends; the difference won’t matter. They can both be the head of a family that they love. Except that doesn’t happen.
JC’s parents die, and WWX disappears. I will, at this point in my understanding and credit to Jiang Cheng, say that the part about JC I find hardest to swallow is that he partially blames his parents’ death on WWX. Yes, WWX stayed behind in the cave of the Tortoise of Slaughter to save LWJ, and yes, this meant that Wen Chao and WLJ have a particular grudge against him, which they use as partial excuse to attack Lotus Pier, but by god, that’s a stretch. Lotus Pier would have been attacked anyway, and the fact that JC even partly blames the attack on WWX has far more to do with what his mom said about WWX showing off for the glory and bringing down the wrath of the Wens than it has to do with reality. YZY is going to say anything she can about how WWX being a hero with the Tortoise of Slaughter was actually a bad thing, because it’s so fucking painful for her that WWX is a fucking legend when her son just … isn’t.
As JGY points out, they were in fact the strongest sect once WWX comes back from the Burial Mounds and fights the Sunshot Campaign with JC. They could have been the power couple of JC’s dreams, but just as YZY pits JC against WWX, the cultivation world after the war pitted WWX against themselves and by extension, JC, and JC buys into it. I find this super understandable, and I think it’s pretty unfair to expect JC to be more understanding of WWX, given that WWX is constantly lying to him. Similarly, I think it’s pretty understandable that he doesn’t understand the plight of the Wens, given that WWX doesn’t explain it to him at all. From JC’s POV, WWX just leaves, at a time when JC really needs him, and he does it on a crusade for unrelated people—as though he never considered himself part of the family in the first place.
And you know what, that may be WWX’s POV too. He loves the Jiang family like his own family, but he’s also deeply aware that he is not blood. MXTX makes it very clear in canon that WWX felt that he owed the Jiang Clan, and not in the way you owe a family. That is—he doesn’t owe them his existence, but he thinks he does owe them his core and his cultivation. And he gives it all to JC.
I outlined above that the relationship between JC and WWX is unusual in the cultivation world given that they each feel like the other is family but are consistently reminded of the fact, and pressured to believe, that they are only sect siblings and that WWX is actually a subordinate. I also haven’t found many relationships like this in other media—though I’ll point out once again that my experience is mainly with western media. I think the closest things I can think of are stories in which the parties are of a different class but are raised together for whatever reason—because they actually are somewhat related but one of them has low class relatives, or because they were not as well-supervised in their youth but one of them suddenly comes into money and is forced to leave his low-class BFF behind, etc.
Given that this relationship is unusual, you don’t see a lot of situations like WWX’s, in which WWX feels like he owes the Jiang family his golden core and then gives it to him. But there’s another element to this sacrifice that I’ve only seen in one other piece of media, and that’s the fact that WWX knows that JC can’t live without being special, and WWX thinks he can handle it.
There is so much in western media about brothers giving up their lives to protect their brothers (Supernatural), or even just giving up their dreams and ambitions so that their brother can follow his own dreams instead (It’s a Wonderful Life). But these sacrifices are always framed as “I love him so much,” or “It’s my duty” or “I couldn’t live with myself if he didn’t get what he wanted” and sometimes even, “I can handle the suffering and I don’t want him to live with it.” But there’s something about WWX’s “eh it’s not a big deal to me and it is to him” or his “bro’s kinda petty and can’t get over himself, whatchu gonna do” that feels stupidly singular.
WWX never says it isn’t a big deal. He never said that it didn’t hurt or that he didn’t make a sacrifice. He never said JC was pathetic or a loser or anything that diminishes JC or makes him less than he is. What he says is that JC is always competitive and comparing himself to others, which is true. But the other sacrifices in fiction that come close are a little more “I don’t want you to have to suffer” or even “I’m strong, and you’re weak, so I’ll take on this burden for you.” Meanwhile WWX doesn’t think JC is weak, and while WWX doesn’t want to suffer, he certainly doesn’t want to suffer himself. The sentiment feels closer to “you need to feel special so I’ll make that happen for you,” and there’s something about it that is a little condescending.
I mentioned that I’ve only seen this kind of thing one other time, and it was in a baseball anime called Touch that aired in Japan in the 1980s. Touch is a story about twins, one of whom is smart, talented, and works hard. The other twin, Tatsuya, is good in school and good at baseball, but at first seems like a lazy guy who only cares about joking around and having fun. Then you find out he’s a genius and a one-in-a-lifetime talent, but just never bothered to focus on anything because he’s so stupidly good at everything that he would just show his brother up, and his brother cares about excelling and Tatsuya doesn’t, so he just…was careful to never apply himself to anything.
WWX isn’t Tatsuya, in that when they’re on an even playing field, WWX doesn’t really seem to have any compunctions about showing off. But as soon as the playing field becomes uneven, he also has no compunctions about destroying himself so that JC’s competitive spirit is satisfied. There’s something about it that has a flavor of “I’m better than you,” even if it’s never what WWX meant to communicate. No wonder JC feels like a clown.
Like, in the end, WWX kind of did make a fool of JC, even though WWX did it out of both love and loyalty. I’m not sure I’ve ever read or seen anything else where such a sacrifice has such ambiguity, and it really makes the WWX+JC relationship one of the most complicated I’ve seen.
That is super cool meta.
I also love this addition:
Because yeah, that was also my feeling about WWX after the core transfer - he expected it to hurt less, because he was him.
(If JC assimilated the impression that he’ll never be good enough - then WWX assimilated the impression that he will always be the better one out of them two. Because that’s what they’ve been bombarded with throughout their formative years from every direction.)
Wei Wuxian made his decision in a moment of panic and self-assurance in his own skill of dealing with things - something he was always sure of, everyone knew he was skilled, everyone knew he was better at ‘coping’ than Jiang Cheng… He will be able to deal with the loss.
Because Wei Wuxian constantly masks his emotions, I suspect that even the “Jiang Cheng was always so competitive he won’t be able to live without a core” was just an excuse he used to hide from himself how much it hurt to have Jiang Cheng suffering and possibly dying as a common man. Not to mention the guilt of not saving him from that. Wei Wuxian cannot deal with hard/negativite emotions and routinely assigns other people’s emotional reactions some ridiculous reasonings just so he doesn’t have to engage with them on a deeper level.
Like, yes, JC was a competitive kid, but they both were - it wasn’t unusual in the kids their age. But I wonder if WWX didn’t exaggerate that competitiveness in his mind just so he wouldn’t have to notice and consider how the real issue was that JC’s efforts were constantly unacknowledged and how that was an actual underlying problem. Like how, even when JC spells it out for him - my father doesn’t like me - after a very obvious example of that - WWX still tries to wave it away. Still isn’t willing to acknowledge the truth and actual depth of Jiang Cheng’s hurt.
(JC says “It hurts me when my parents think I’m lesser than you” and WWX hears “It hurts that I don’t get the praise you get”.)
Jiang Cheng must be competitive and sensitive - otherwise there is an actual problem within the family.
Madame Yu just has an angry and antagonistic character - otherwise there is an actual reason for her anger.
Lan Zhan just wants to punish Wei Wuxian for breaking the rules - otherwise Wei Wuxian would have to acknowledge his own uncomfortable attraction to a man.
Etc, etc…
In the light of that the decision to transfer the golden core is an effect of a perfect storm that brought it all to head - Wei Wuxian feeling hurt and guilty for what happened to Jiang Cheng, but also unable to deal with that guilt for more than five minutes, with no way to redirect these feelings into something else.
So he constructed this whole scenario - Jiang Cheng being too competitive to live as a common man (as if that was even on JC’s mind at the moment). That was something that could be fixed - that Wei Wuxian could fix for him like he always did. Unlike, you know, the rest of the tragedythat befell them.
(As in: He could distract JC from his bruised ego - without addressing the actual problems underneath)
And the second part of that scenario - I can deal with it, it’s going to be fine. Because everything was always fine, consequences were for others to deal with, right? - instead turned out to not work as intended. But he already made that choice and regret was another hard emotion to deal with, that would open the gates to yet more hard emotions, so the only way forward was masking all the way to the grave.
The Wen Situation had to be godsent - something to distract him from the misery of his coreless existence, yet another thing he could 'fix’.
A terrible situation all-round for these two kids to be thrown out of childhood into a ruthless world that instantly disarmed their usual ways of dealing with hardships, and zeroed in on the exact ways their parents messed them up.
ALT
