Reblogged
Crazy that one of the underlying takeaways from MDZS is that you should be punished for believing what people show you.
Jiang Cheng was never told anything about wwx's actions and repeatedly watched him break all his promises to him and YMJ (even after he, JC, gave up himself and YMJ for wwx, he did not receive the same in return from his own knowledge pool.) Yet, he is very suddenly expected to be remorseful and grateful when Wen Ning reveals the core transfer. The world JC lived in had these truths: WWX isn't helping to rebuild our home, training our disciples. He has become a drunk and is actively undermining the sect and what little authority I've been able to cultivate, which is devastating enough when I am the only young war hero/sect leader excluded from the great sects' sworn brotherhood allyship. When I (JC) try to find out why he's doing this and stop him, he brushes me off and makes light of it. I continue to tolerate it anyway because he's wwx and I love him. Then, instead of putting in the work he should be to save our people he turns around and saves the Wens, at great expense and danger not only to our sect but himself, as one of the only people I still have left. When I tell him he cannot have both he chooses them. I still make sure he knows he's loved and belongs with the Jiang (by bringing our sister to see him before her wedding) even though, by all accounts, he has foresaken us on what feels like a series of whims. Then, he kills our brother in law (he never gives me an explanation or excuse.) Then, when I and everyone he's pissed off confront him, he gets our sister killed, goes crazy, and is torn apart by his own ghosts. Somehow 13 years later after picking up all the pieces he left behind and raising the nephew he orphaned and rebuilding the sect he abandoned (alone) I am simultaneously expected to be remorseful for not being grateful to him all these years for something I never asked him to do or knew about, and which I was actively tricked into and repeatedly lied to about. In the adaptations where I don't immediately fall on my sword and punish myself in the epilogue (seclusion in CQL the donghua) the fanbase determines I am a terrible horrible person for it.
This post is also tangentially about Lan Xichen taking the heat for JGY's actions even in MXTX's writing (abandoned by LWJ at the height of his pain, entering seclusion.)