Staunchen - Yeah. 28. Idk Whats Happening

Hiii! I've read your tags about how wwx wouldn't probably do the core's transfer with lz because in his mind they are equals. So, do you think in some way wwx thinks less of jc? I am just very curious because it seems an interesting interpretation!

I mean, yeah, kinda, he does! He loves Jiang Cheng immensely, but there is absolutely a dynamic between them where Wei Wuxian considers it his job to protect Jiang Cheng from all forms of harm, whether Jiang Cheng wants to be protected or not. It’s complicated, and I think it’s kind of multifaceted. There’s an Older Sibling element to it (although it is canonically unclear exactly what the age difference is between them, and it’s not more than a year at most), there’s a your-father-took-me-in-and-I-owe-him element to it, and there’s the part where WWX has always been a step ahead of JC in all their mutual accomplishments (never mind that JC’s own accomplishments are very impressive! The view looks different from inside a sibling relationship, trust me on this one).

And also, I think there’s also the three-way mutual awareness between him, JC, and Jiang Yanli of how much emotional harm the Jiang parents are managing to inflict on each of them, and a deliberate effort on each of their parts to try to shield one another from that harm—but of the three of them, JC shows those emotional wounds the most overtly, because WWX and JYL repress their unhappiness (out of the shared, destructive belief that showing negative emotions to your loved ones is bad) while JC channels his into anger, yells, stomps off and openly sulks about it, etc, which is more recognizable as unhappiness. I suspect WWX has spent a lot of time doing what he does leading up to the Twin Prides speech/promise to be JC’s right hand man when he’s the sect leader: running after a JC whose feelings have been hurt, and giving him a hug or otherwise trying to cheer him up, because he can’t stand the sight of Jiang Cheng’s open unhappiness, and has to try to fix it.

The core transfer was objectively an insane extreme—so insane no one suspected it, because there was no precedent for it!—and one WWX was driven to not just by fear for JC, but also the overwhelming guilt from the belief that he was responsible for bringing the Wen to Lotus Pier in the first place (wrongly, of course, but Madame Yu spent her final words explicitly blaming him for it, JC repeated those words when he was having his own grief breakdown immediately after seeing his parents’ dead bodies, and then JYL dodged the question when WWX asked her if it was true, so you can understand where WWX’s head’s at at that point), and then guilt that he’d failed Jiang Fengmian and Yu Ziyuan in their explicit command to him to protect Jiang Cheng, by letting JC run off all headstrong and get caught by the Wen. The core transfer is both a OTT gesture to Fix Jiang Cheng, The One Who Must Always Be Protected, and a way for WWX to punish himself for failing to protect JC leading up to this moment (getting JC’s family slaughtered and home burned, letting JC get captured and tortured and maimed, because obviously the only person with any agency or control in this situation is Wei Wuxian himself!). There’s really no other character in the whole narrative that could push all the right buttons to get WWX to do something as extreme as the core transfer, not even Jiang Yanli (who on paper is physically softer and squishier than JC, but who is also clearly someone WWX views first and foremost as a caretaker) because Jiang Cheng is the only person he loves that much AND fundamentally insists on viewing as unable to take care of himself.

(In contrast to all this, five minutes after WWX meets Lan Wangji, he’s excitedly declaring that he’s finally met his equal in life. It’ll be a while before Wangxian get to developing the big swoony romantic feelings, but right from the start, WWX affords LWJ a level of personal respect he never shows to Jiang Cheng, Baby Brother.)

I will also add that Jiang Cheng is clearly aware that WWX sees him this way, and it drives him up a fucking wall. He obviously loves WWX and he absolutely wants him around, but I think he also wants an equality in their relationship that WWX consistently denies him, and that that is definitely part of his angst over the core transfer when he finds out—to him, it’s kind of the ultimate statement that WWX thinks JC is too weak to make it without him.

I do think there’s hope for them, post-canon, since they’re now alive and their relationship has the chance to continue to mature! But it’s going to require WWX to take JC out of that mental box he’s constructed for him marked “Fragile: Handle With Care” and to learn to respect JC’s choices and autonomy. Recognizing that JC managed to survive without him and continued to build the Jiang back up from nothing to being a great sect again will probably help!

Jayce is a real homie, doing some massage to Viktor to ease his pain

Full pic on ❌and 🦋

More content brought to you courtesy of chronic insomnia: lately I have been banging the drum that actually I think Wei Wuxian needs to know about “take care”. It would be good for him, once he stopping having an epic meltdown about it and what it signified for his relationship with Jiang Cheng, The One Whom Must Be Protected Always, and it’s critical to the evolution of said relationship. The big problem here is that do we think Jiang Cheng is likely to bring up this incredibly pertinent fact now? After sixteen years of never feeling that it was worth mentioning that he let himself be captured by his family’s murderers specifically to distract them from Wei Wuxian? Do we think he’s going to bring this up now, when he knows that the golden core that replaced the one he lost to the Wens came from Wei Wuxian, who suffered immense harm from it, thus rendering Jiang Cheng’s own sacrifice meaningless (he probably feels)? Besties, we do not.

The question, therefore, is how can someone find out, and pass this information on to Wei Wuxian, ideally in some relatively blithe way that is not remotely going to prepare him for the emotional shock of it. So far I have:

Jiang Cheng and Lan Wangji end up on a night hunt together and get idk briefly trapped in a haunted cave that plays out visions of emotionally significant past events. Lan Wangji thinks very little about the revelation that Jiang Cheng once risked his life to save Wei Ying. It’s no less than Wei Ying deserved, after all. If anything, he’s thinking about how embarrassing it is that Jiang Wanyin just saw his teenage library sex fantasies. It takes awhile before the subject of oh, so that’s how Jiang Wanyin lost his core comes up between him and Wei Ying, and he’s confused when WWX hightails it outta the Cloud Recesses on his way to Lotus Pier so fast he leaves one of those little cartoon dust clouds.

Jiang Cheng mumbled something about it to Wen Ning while Wen Ning was rescuing him from Lotus Pier. He has no memory of this. Wen Ning didn’t think it mattered at the time, and never mentioned it. If it’s occurred to him since that actually, this would be a pretty big deal to Wei-gongzi, he’s currently withholding it out of spite because ugh, fuck Jiang Wanyin, actually. He’ll only bring it up if there’s an opportunity to do so in a way that’s insulting to him, and oops, he did know this might bother Wei-gongzi a little bit, but he wasn’t expecting the BSOD—Wei-gongzi, maybe I shouldn’t have said that, Wei-gongzi, are you all right—

Jin Ling weaseled it out of Jiang Cheng years ago, long before Wei Wuxian came back. He gets that Jiujiu doesn’t like to talk about any of this shit, though, so it’s only months or years after Da-jiu comes into Jin Ling’s life that the subject comes up. He’s just matter-of-factly correcting the record, after Wei Wuxian mentions that Jiang Cheng was captured by the Wen trying to retrieve his parent’s bodies from Lotus Pier. (He was just trying to explain what a big deal family is to Jiang Cheng! I mean it was a bad idea, but it was very filial of him.) WWX is like what the fuck who told you that that can’t be right, and Jin Ling says Jiujiu told me, who else? Excuse me, waisheng, I need to go scream at your jiujiu for several hours I can’t believe how stupid he is why would he do that for me oh my god oh my god oh my god, and Jin Ling has to get him a paper bag to breathe into.

High school students joking about snapping their fingers to summon lightning after school during a thunderstorm

Cnetizens:

only you.

You know, that bit about "If you offend someone, make sure it's not Yunmeng Jiang and not their Leader specifically!" is just so fascinating to me.

Because - what happened?

What the hell happened to solidify the Jiang as the "find out" of Jianghu??

Like, sure, Sandu Sengshou "killed Yiling Laozu" so you probably don't want to mess with the guy - but a whole sect?? "Don't mess with them or they'll clap back" is a bit of a different fame than "he's torturing demonic cultivators!" - that former is an experience-based life advice.

So, what happened? Did JC punch someone square in the face during a sect conference? Called Sect Leader Yao for a duel and kicked his ass? Fucked up a bunch of trade representatives when they tried to take advantage of the fledgeling Jiang sect??? Took Jin Guangyao's hat and held it out of his reach????

And exactly how trigger-happy are the Jiang disciples to be known as the people you don't fuck with???

I need to know what the hell happened!

from the fic the line is covered in jellyfish by @yunuen

Post canon jayvik yearning in a hot spring, inspired by the lovely fic The Line is Covered in Jellyfish by @yunuen

Jason calls Tim by nicknames (babybird, doll, some variation of Tim's name) because when he says Tim's name, it comes out sounding so sweet and loving that anyone would know how smitten Jason actually is

💙