It will be forever amusing people will continue to go on how Wei Wuxian and Jiang Cheng are totally like brothers and think of each other like brothers... and we have two scenes where Wei Wuxian confirms he would nebulously support Jiang Cheng as a sect leader when they're seventeen, and Jiang Cheng having a tantrum that Wei Wuxian wasn't his forever subordinate once more when they're thirty-five.

As well as the plot making it a point that their relationship was a master/servant dynamic and neither of them, not once, try to correct that perception. For Wei Wuxian that would be impertinence in a very classist society, and for Jiang Cheng he does view Wei Wuxian as lesser than him and is jealous a servant is that talented and gets attention due to that talent.

Where Jiang Yanli says insulting Wei Wuxian as a servant is insulting her as his sister (not a martial sister but an all but blood family member) and demands an apology for him, Jiang Cheng stands by while his fellow leaders insult and gossip about Wei Wuxian, not just one time but multiple on page instances of this, not once thinking of defending Wei Wuxian from being slandered but how put out he is that Wei Wuxian garners attention even with his lesser position as a servant.

There was always a barrier of classism between them that took precedence. What friendship that had was flimsy enough to be exploited because of Jiang Cheng's hate and jealousy, neither rooted in Wei Wuxian being a "talented older brother" but in the audacity he always saw Wei Wuxian having against his place as a loyal Jiang servant that would continue to follow his directive after Jiang Fengmian was gone.

Wei Wuxian had far more faith in Jiang Cheng being morally upright than Jiang Cheng ever exhibited, this lack of morality is why Wei Wuxian is able to walk away from Jiang Cheng in their final interaction. They no longer have anything between them they can understand or want to understand about the other.

Kind characters are not boring; in fact, due to the vast amount of people who hold that opinion, kind characters are as edgy as it gets. In this essay I will

You know what, I’m not done! I think that the whole concept that kind characters are uninteresting and vanilla is such a broad generalization and takes kindness to mean lawful or goody-two-shoes, when there are so many ways for someone to a character to be kind.

Kindness does not require passivity or social grace. Kind characters can stick to their guns and stand up for what they believe in. They can yell and scream and curse. Kind characters can be angry and disappointed when others do not show them the same compassion they show others. Kind characters can be tactless, oblivious. They may be rough around the edges (but have a heart of gold).

Kind characters often value justice and strive to stay connected to their humanity, even when the things they must do threaten to strip it away from them. Kind characters sometimes have to make difficult choices. Sometimes, kind characters even behave in a way that is unkind.

Kindness is complex, and it’s only a single solitairy characteristic that contributes to a character’s personality. While it can absolutely present as soft-spoken, honest, and open-hearted (my personal FAVE), it certainly doesn’t have to be.

TL;DR Kindness is not boring

One thing I adore about Wei Wuxian is that he looks at the younger generation with SO MUCH HOPE, tenderness and faith. While the rest of the cultivation world projects its own hatred, selfishness and anger onto them, wwx sees their potential with so much clarity and warmth.

I think it is imperative for children to wholeheartedly believe that the adults in their lives actually think good of them.

Honestly, I understand why people (JC stans) keep making posts which supposedly analyses and compares WWX and JC’s actions regarding the Wen remnants. And try to make them equal or justify JC’s behavior somehow.

It is undeniably clear that Wei Wuxian was saving human lives. The scene at the prison camp opens with this

An old woman who can barely walk and can’t see or hear well. And a literal toddler. Forced to carry a flag that attracts evil spirits i.e. act as bait. These are the ‘evil wen dogs’ being collectively punished and anyone with the barest hint of human decency would recognize this for the abomination it is. And then we find out exactly what was happening to the people in these camps, humiliation, violence, death, piles of corpses and being branded

And this was the reality for people simply being born Wen like A-Yuan, ‘not human’.

So.

When Wei Wuxian saves these lives, it is an undeniable heroic act and the truly righteous thing to do.

And when JC stands in clear opposition, neither honouring the debts he owes on behalf of himself and his parents, actively trying to kill Wen Ning, demanding Wei Wuxian put back these people back in camps where they would suffer and die, after even seeing a toddler there

The JC stans have to come up with some way so that Jiang Cheng doesn’t look like the cruel and selfish man he is.

Hence all the made up meta about ‘protecting his sect and family’. All of which is blatantly false and also contradictory to their own fanon-verse.

On one hand, there are never ending posts about the ‘brothers’ weeping at their broken bonds and how close they were and how much JC loved him etc. While also outrage that WWX was not just a bad brother for disagreeing with JC (since when is blind obedience to family good?), but also as a subordinate for not blindly following his leader.

So Wei Wuxian holds this nebulous brother-family-right-hand-man status for the sake of Jiang Cheng focused angst, and yet when it came to life or death, none of it held up.

So let’s take the JC did everything for ‘family and sect’ till WWX’s death and break it down:

-> Jiang Yanli

Offered to be married off to Jin Zixuan before Jin Zixuan made public amends or gave any indication that he sincerely liked Jiang Yanli. In fact, the last time they met, JZX publicly accused and humiliated Jiang Yanli in front of the war effort and allies where she was crying so hard she couldn’t speak. And Jiang Cheng agrees to set them up and praises Jin Zixuan in the most classist way possible

This is how he treats his blood related sister, agreeing to have her meet a man who had already harmed her. And then he puts the onus on JYL, claiming she likes him so it can’t be helped when in fact, she is completely cool and dismissive towards JZX at this point and has zero desire to meet him.

-> Wei Wuxian

Jiang Cheng does not ever refer to Wei Wuxian as a brother, nor is WWX adopted like some fans think. Wei Wuxian is a subordinate to JC and not family like JYL. However, Wei Wuxian is the only other survivor after the Lotus Pier massacre and is JC’s childhood companion. And since JC stans and much of the fanbase insists on putting a brother hat on them, let’s actually see.

Does JC protect and defend WWX like a brother? No.

He doesn’t even protect him as a sect leader. Jiang Cheng isn’t a regular sect leader. He is one of THE main Sect leaders of the most powerful Great Clans. His voice has weight. He has actual power through his status and tradition. But even though others are constantly disparaging WWX and mocking him as a ‘son of a servant’, Jiang Cheng is never seen defending Wei Wuxian. Even Lan Wangji calls out Jin Guangshan for lying and saying Wei Wuxian disrespected Jiang Cheng publicly, but JC himself never does.

Instead, he makes things worse by claiming that Wei Wuxian has declared himself an Enemy of the Sects which was a lie and made Wei Wuxian an even bigger target.

Jiang Yanli dies saving Wei Wuxian but Jiang Cheng tramples over that sacrifice too by bringing an army directly to kill Wei Wuxian. And the Wens that had dared to exist were all massacred and had their bodies desecrated. But WWX wasn’t family right? If he was family he should’ve been protected under stan logic. If he wasn’t, then the excuse is that JC was just protecting his sect.

-> Sect

The bitter truth is that there is no Yunmeng Jiang sect without Wei Wuxian. And I don’t just mean the golden core transfer.

At its roots, it doesn’t matter what the truth was, Jiang Cheng got his core back because of Wei Wuxian. He lost it while trying to save WWX, (and it’s just weird to blame someone for a decision you chose to make) but either way, it’s done. He lost his golden core. He got it back. He lost his cultivation because of a choice he made. He got his cultivation back because of a choice Wei Wuxian made. The exchange is over.

But for the sect, the Wens took over Lotus Pier and killed all the disciples. The buildings were not destroyed and sect burned to the ground unlike the donghua or CQL. They were taken over by then Wens and turned into their Wen Supervision station.

It was mainly Wei Wuxian’s cultivation, his hunting of the Wen stations, which allowed Jiang Cheng to actually get his land back. It was also because of Wei Wuxian that so many joined the sect because they were attracted by his strength.

Sure, now JC will have to do the job of a Sect Leader as he steps into the role, but the sect itself? Was reborn because of Wei Wuxian’s direct contribution. Jiang Cheng is a cultivator because Wei Wuxian gave back to Jiang Cheng a golden core. Jiang Cheng was able to have revenge and take back lands during the war because of Wei Wuxian’s efforts.

But when those JC defense posts talk about Jiang Cheng and his ‘difficult decision’ to ‘protect his sect and family’ over the Wens, somehow Wei Wuxian comes under neither.

They say Jiang Cheng was protecting his ‘family’ but Wei Wuxian isn’t considered part of it when WWX was isolated on a death mountain and hated by the world nor was he considered that when Jiang Cheng brought an army to kill him.

They say that Jiang Cheng was protecting his ‘sect’, but despite being the only surviving disciple of the original sect and the one he fought in a war with, the one who he rebuilt his sect with, Wei Wuxian is somehow not part of the sect or his protection.

By all means, Jiang Cheng should’ve been rabidly protective of Wei Wuxian as his last and only true friend, instead he agrees to cast him out, offers no aid or support the entire time WWX lives on a miasma ridden mountain of corpses, agrees with the public mocking and that WWX is out of control, smears his name even further and then tries to kill him and becoming renowned for it.

The simple fact is that WWX died for a righteous cause and saving people and Jiang Cheng was the antagonist who stood against him. And since it is unbearable for stans to acknowledge that their favorite character was canonically a selfish and cruel man who let his worst self rule him and his actions, they keep trying to come up with false equivalences to defend him, which also keep changing upon debate. They have to make Jiang Cheng equally good with equally difficult choices while simultaneously take away his agency to somehow justify him. Even though it is built from contradictory fanon and metas built from fanfiction and fanart rather then the actual book and actual canon events.

wei wuxian is so misunderstood it's painful. "he's a remorseless mass murderer" yall. he canonically does feel bad about it. not to mention that imo guilt (as an emotion) is overly valorized. but more importantly, the discourse's emphasis on condemning wwx for situations literally out of his control undermines the novel's abolitionist themes. like the protagonist himself practically spells it out for you

they can ambush him, try to execute him. they can pledge to murder him and the wen survivors. but he cant defend himself? -> is he just supposed to accept that? when they condemn him for fighting back, the implication is that they expect unflinching, self-sacrificing obedience; that their violence is legitimized; that by delegitimizing the violence he did in self-defense, they can absolve themselves of responsibility. but how can he be at fault, for refusing to lay down his life? when the oppressed take up arms to save themselves, destabilizing the authority of the ruling class, and extreme violence erupts, who is ultimately responsible?

their admiration and contempt are insignificant. + he doesnt expect people to forgive him -> he has no interest in their approval. how can the cultivation world have the moral authority to blame or exonerate wwx, when they are responsible for the injustice done to him and still sanctimoniously monopolize claims to innocence and victimhood? what would punishing him even achieve? it doesnt do anything to transform the conditions that led to all those deaths. it doesnt challenge the institutions that forced him to be their enemy in the first place. and it's just viciously oppressive to hold a survivor accountable for patterns of violence he didnt perpetrate

like at the end of the day i think people are just mad that wwx refuses to be a conveniently pacifistic, self-flagellating target lmao. he understands what's going on, the politics of violence and underlying systems of power. he doesnt give a shit about respecting them. militant abolitionist characters my beloved

exactly

it also doesn't mean "everything is happy and easy between us all the time" or "none of us can have sex with each other"

cruelty is so easy. youre not special for choosing it

"The trouble is that we have a bad habit, encouraged by pedants and sophisticates, of considering happiness as something rather stupid. Only pain is intellectual, only evil interesting. This is the treason of the artist; a refusal to admit the banality of evil and the terrible boredom of pain."

-Ursula K. LeGuin, The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas

"Evil is boring. Right? I kinda believe in the banality and mundaneness of evil. Evil is just selfish impulses, which at the end of the day are really easy to understand. It’s easy to understand why people do bad things. It’s like “yeah, ok, you’re selfish and scared and cruel, I get it”. Being good is complex and beautiful and hard." - Brennan Lee Mulligan

Not gonna lie I kinda hate the compulsion in fandom to shove every relationship into rigid definition boxes. Every relationship is either parent-child, siblings or romantic. Come on. Relationships are so much more complex than that. Do you at least have friends.

they don't want you to know this but rereading books is not a waste of time and is actually even more fun than the first time around

What a wonderful piece of media! Surely the fandom will be literate and normal

Posts that read like a scrap of paper found clutched in a skeleton's hand found post apocalypse.

Can’t properly explain it, but “I like this character”, “I like how this character is written” and “I care about this character” are 3 very different things which may or may not overlap.

listen, sometimes it's more powerful for a fictional relationship to be a friendship precisely because friendship is devalued in comparison to romance. anyone can sacrifice themself for the love of their life. but for a friend? if anything, that kind of devotion can be even more moving than if the relationship is romantic. there's a real dramatic power to prioritising friendship in your narratives sometimes.

idk why alot of people underestimate the maturity and composure of wei wuxian’s character but to reduce his personality to his mo xuanyu lunatic persona is a total disservice to his character. i get that the first impression we have of him is a pretty memorable one and his behaviour IS volatile and quirky (completely on purpose) for the better part of the volume one but what baffles me is that we are clearly shown how his outward behaviour is in stark contrast to his internal monologue. his thoughts offset his actions and root them solidly in stone-cold logic.

from my perspective at least, wei wuxian’s reaction to discovering that he’s reincarnated is hilariously understated—it’s a grumbly “meh” and straight to business right after. he coolly assesses his surroundings, the marks on his arm and ways to get rid of them. THAT is wei wuxian’s true personality—the ability to obfuscate his intelligence and insight by acting unpredictably.

also people forget that time did not pass by normally for wei wuxian in those thirteen years that he was dead. after reincarnation, he was mentally still the age he died at—ik there is some debate here but none that has convinced me otherwise—only, he was rid of all the cumulative intense mental pressure and immediate guilt that he was harbouring in the past. the wei wuxian that is the mentor for the juniors, the voice of reason and the pool of trivia and knowledge that guides them calmly through the chaos is not a wisened and more experienced wei wuxian than how he was when he died. thirteen years for him passed in a limbo. as such, the maturity we clearly see from him after the timeskip is actually what he carried in the original timeline! his demeanour is just more... chill, because he is not fighting for his life and defending a group of innocent wens with every fibre of his being against the entire of horde of cultivators waiting for one misstep on his part to pounce and wipe him out.

the difference between past wei wuxian and future wei wuxian isn’t time-gained maturity but the loss of devastatingly heavy responsibilities and continuous emotional turmoil. their mindsets, moral code, logical reasoning are still largely the same.

yes, there are differences between the two versions of wei wuxian but i think they come majorly from how the stakes have changed for him. when wei wuxian is able to slow down and is allowed to have a support system, he can solve things without risking his emotions getting the better of him (which he is actually quite good at regulating) and is also able to look back and reflect on his past mistakes with an objective lens. that is why, when wei wuxian does muse about his “younger” self, it is not so much about him outgrowing his youth through passed time but through sheer richness of lived experience. his childhood had already forced him to mature before his time and it continued till the end of his first life—where the kind of stance he took ensured that he would have to keep up emotionally, physically and mentally with not just his peers but with the elders of the cultivation world.

that’s why, after reincarnation, we never feel like wei wuxian has to play catch up with his older peers—he had already attained the emotional maturity for it in his first life and if anyone was playing catch up, it was his peers.

knowing this, it does irk me when these aspects of him are buried under a portrayal of unrestrained chaos, constant gremlin-like energy, inconsideration and incompetence—wei wuxian is the antithesis of these values. he is joyous, playful, extroverted, sometimes loudmouthed but also deeply thoughtful, adaptive, resourceful, caring, kind and mature.

this brings me to my first point—

this aspect of wei wuxian is shown to us in the first few pages of mdzs: he doesn’t act like a lunatic because he’s an agent of indiscriminate chaos but because his logic dictates so, because he must play the part of mo xuanyu and exact revenge on his behalf. his actions always have a reason behind them—they are very rarely impulsive. it’s just more and more, i see people fall for the act and disregard wei wuxian’s layered (and frankly, far more interesting) personality in favour of replacing it with a surface-level veneer that outright betrays his original characterisation.

Please let's be normal about this we're just having a little fun and I'm not bashing your hc

Half of these are fanon as well you go with too so...

Sizhui calling Wangxian his parents

Not to mention, toddler A-Yuan literally calling LWJ Dad and WWX mom. Or him running up and hugging Wangxian. Or going on a night hunt specifically with only Wangxian in night hunts and being referred to as the ‘little one’ when WWX is reminiscing about his own travels with his parents. Ah yes what a horrible ‘worse’ fanon to truly be on top of the list.

Jiang only seeing WWX as a servant.

Well Jiang Yanli called WWX her brother publicly. Jiang Cheng never does and till the end demanded that WWX act as his subordinate and well WWX was definitely not family or equal for YZY. JFM also wanted WWX to be for his son what his dad was to him, which is why he brought him back, a friend and also a trusted subordinate. So entire Jiang family treating him as a servant isn’t true. But the idea that he was an equal or like a son or whatever sure isn’t either.

LWJ playing Inquiry/believed WWX would return

Yeah that’s fanon, mostly coming from CQL I believe. LWJ didn’t play Inquiry for 11/13 years and he didn’t think WWX would come back. There’s no proof of this other then people just wanting angst and wanting LWJ to obsessively play for WWX to return.

Lan Qiren was in love with Cangse Sanren

Also fanon. Their relationship in the book is portrayed antagonistically but a lot of people like to headcanon that LQR had a crush on CSSR hence his aggressiveness as a tsundere trope. There’s no proof of it, especially since he treats her teenager son as someone to be stomped out and calls him the greatest evil or something equally stupid during the CR lecture arc. Dude is beefing with a teenager which doesn’t add up if he supposedly loved the mom.

None of the Wen Refugees were cultivators

If I’m reading this correctly, it means that all the when people WWX saved were cultivators in canon? In which case, A-Yuan was a 3 year old toddler. And not a cultivator. Not to mention granny Wen who didn’t seem like it either. Frankly I’m not sure what horrible fanon this is supposed to be other then proclaiming it’s okay to massacre people because they were ‘probably’ evil despite the novel telling that people like Wen Ning and the team he led did not take part in the fighting. Not to mention Wen Qing who was a DOCTOR and a refugee and cultivator didn’t either. Because cultivation doesnt just mean fighting and the novel is clear that the Sects vowing they won’t do anything if WN and WQ give themselves up and then had a ‘Let’s Murder Everyone Anyway’ party makes them the bad guys. Not the people who ran from being put in death camps and were not harming anybody.

Jiang Cheng abused Jin Ling

You don’t have to twist yourself into a pretzel to justify a 30+ year old man beating his 14 year old nephew to the ground multiple times in the book and claim it’s totally not abuse. Or that his curse and verbal threats didn’t matter when the book narrates Jin Ling running away afraid that JC would really break his legs. Did JC love Jin Ling? Yes and he would die for him. That however doesn’t negate or magically make okay his physical violence or verbal abuse.

I’ve already made a giant post compiling all the excuses so I’m not doing it again.

Jin Guangyao killed his son

This is annoying because it completely ignores the entire scene with Qin Su confronting JGY. In the whole scene she constantly demands for JGY to give her a straight answer and he doesn’t. He twists his words and emotionally manipulates and gaslights by twisting the situation onto her, asking her how she could think of such a thing, if she believes he’s that kind of person, how could she believe rumours and so on. That entire scene is chilling and showcases JGY at his finest, as his wife conveniently dies and and he uses the situation to immediately benefit himself and cast off doubt.

And he admits his entire list of crimes himself to justify himself to LXC in an attempt to manipulate him later too. It’s not ‘JGY lies so he’s lying about this too’. Its ‘context matters’.

JYL forgave WWX for JZX’s death

This is kind of a nothing burger of a statement. Because JYL neither forgave him nor hated him. Saying that her forgiving is fanon implies that she didn’t actually forgive him but that’s not true either: she never actually got the chance to do anything either way.

What she did do was run out to a battlefield when she found out WWX was there, not be overcome with rage, not say anything hateful or that she won’t forgive him, and still call him her brother.

And then in the next scene she sees someone trying to sneak attack WWX and immediately saves his life by pushing him out of the way with ‘explosive strength’.

Her instinct was to protect Wei Wuxian so this fanon is frankly ridiculous and anyone thinking that Jiang Yanli will rage and hate Wei Wuxian and wish upon him a thousand deaths has no idea of her character and nature and is confusing her with the other Jiang purple guy.

I don’t think I missed anything so that’s about it. It was very funny to come across a list where fanon and canon is so mixed up. And somehow the WORST fanon is Lan Sizhui treating Wangxian like his parents??? as if the entire novel doesnt have them like a pseudo-family anyway. You don’t need to have a PSA of ‘I love you I think of you as my fathe.’ ‘Oh I love you too son’ so blatantly written when the little things matter and make you a family anyway.

Uhm, I think OP doesn't even know which one is canon or fanon. What do you even mean Jiang Cheng abusing Jin Ling is fanon 😭💀. You've got to be deep into fanon Jiang Cheng to be able to believe that. I've already compiled some of the fanon takes into three different lists (Wei Wuxian, Lan Wangji, and Jiang Cheng), so OP can check them out. Or OP could also just read the novel to find out.

some of you think ‘nuanced’ only means ‘morally grey’ and I’m here to tell you that actually straight up good characters can still be nuanced and unapologetically evil characters can still be nuanced. the character doesn’t have to be an anti hero or morally dubious to have depth. they don’t even have to feel sorry about their crimes to have depth.