#HOW DAAAAAARE YOOOOOOOUUUUUU

[viterbofangirllovestheuntamed]

#oh my god #oh my fucking god #his last words were jiang cheng #OP WHAT THE HELL #turn on your location I just wanna talk (via autumnslantern)

 — any last words ?

[viterbofangirllovestheuntamed]

#i am rattling the bars of my cage happily at this suffering #I’m sorry JC but you’re just so angstyyy #ahhhhhhhh#OKAY SO LILE #ON ONE HAND! #Chinese culture is all about being filial and JC has ALWAYS tried to do that even when he loses his temper or messes up #all he wants is to be a good son while his parents are alive and honor them when they’re dead #like he tries so hard to be a good sect heir and make his dad proud! #BUT #he’s also been a Sect Leader for almost as long as he lived with his parents #HE promised to protect his people HE promised to do whatever it took HE led them through war and gave them homes #HE made the oath#he needs to be the one to protect his people no matter the cost #but what if the coast is your own parents hatred anger disappointment and everything you spent the first half of your life craving being #tossed at your feet with a reminder that you’ll never be good enough for anything as grand as your fathers sect or heart? #but on a third thought wtf is he going to do go make another sect? then we’d have all the post war YMJ disciples holding him down so he #doesn’t drown himself or qi deviate out of stress and anxiety (via featherfur)

Also like, c’mon guys the angst of JC going to the past and the realizing that if he stops the war he effectively kills everyone born in YMJ in the last 13/16 years? JC realizing that if his entire home doesn’t die then he never has the loyalty of the family that he built and protected for almost two decades?? Can he kill them? They won’t know, but he will. Could he do it or would it drive him mad? Could he ever see a child of YMJ and not think about the ones who used to be underfoot? Could he train disciples without thinking about the ones he carried through war? Could he hear “Sect Leader” and not choke thinking of everyone he swore to protect after the war?

Do you realize how fully you could break him?? You could pin him between WWX and his sect again and make him cry!! Save WWX or kill his family? AGAIN!! Parallels!

Let one family burn or be the executioner of the other! Save the family you were born into or the one you carried through war and swore yourself too! Save your sister or the YMJ child you know was born to your second disciple! Save your mother or your right hand man! Save your father or the children you raised in your home! Save your brother or every person who looks to you for protection and supported you through war!

[viterbofangirllovestheuntamed]

jiang cheng thinking it's a two way street while wei wuxian does not OUCH god just- the extent to which wei wuxian thinks he can protect the people he loves by relieving them of the burden of his presence never stops fucking me up meanwhile in the background jiang cheng being all this is fine! you can just rip my soul in two and i will get mad about it because that's better than admitting i thought you wanted to stay with me the way i want to stay with you (via winepresswrath)

yunmeng bros feels anon here! the last ask you answered re yunmeng bros really got me thinking - those two really do try and protect each other, their whole lives. wwx does it by being the troublemaker, the target, the distraction - de-escalate, divert attention, make jc look good. but jc is trying to do it too by seeking to rein in wwx and curb his most extreme behaviour: he tries to protect him from negative attention, from punishment. as far as he's concerned, they're a package deal! 1/2

2/2 and they are... until the wens. jc says "if you do this, i can't protect you" and wwx says "then don't". to wwx, they are no longer a package deal. jc thought this was a two-way street - you protect me, i protect you - and it's suddenly become a one-way street: "i protect you, but you can't protect me". and he can't. it breaks my heart. anyway! sorry for the sudden essay in your inbox but i weep  over yunmeng bros every day

Yooooooo, I 1000% agree with what you describe on their differences in framing: JC believing it all two-directional and WWX not.  ಥ ೧ ಥ  I feel like WWX has always believed that he was living on borrowed time anyway and he’s already been given more than he ever deserved (a home, a brother, a sister), and for a whole bunch of years, too! And the best thing he could ever do with his life is to give it back, e.g., “I know this life was never meant for the likes of me and thank you for letting me have it long enough to have known my siblings.”  I do believe that one of the reasons he left with the Wens was to protect JC and their fragile sect from his inevitable, steadily progressing breakdown, though not the only reason, with a healthy side of, And anyway I’m not of any use to you anymore, so I won’t drag you down with what I’m assuming will be your guilt and growing resentment by forcing my presence on you and distracting you from the sect.

And I don’t think Jiang Cheng knows how to be alone, in the way I interpret his character, or even who he is as a person on his own merits. He’s always had at least one older sibling doing their best to look out for him (with varying degrees of success which is not their fault, they are also children, omfg), and he’s always been defined against other people - his brother, the Jiang Family Legacy, probably Jiang Fengmian himself because he’s JFM’s heir, the other sect heirs, probably literally anyone that passes by who Madam Yu thinks would make a Good Lesson in Emotional Abuse, etc. I think he kind of took WWX (if not Jiang Yanli, necessarily, they would’ve always known she’d eventually marry into another family) being at his side for granted because WWX always was at his side, and made lots of promises about it, and who else can Jiang Cheng trust if not his brother and sister? So then WWX leaving would be like tearing out the last, and probably the most solid, foundation of stability from beneath JC’s feet, that last bit of bedrock from childhood.

I’m obviously extrapolating a lot from the limited amounts we see of their lives, but they both remind me of some of the kids I’ve worked with from unhealthy homes:

The kid who protects himself by dodging, denial, distraction, the class clown, who’s so good at redirection that it takes a million years of trust-building to get glimpses of the authentic person underneath, and who will never get truly angry on his own behalf - only on other people’s - because he so sincerely believes he’s not worth being angry over and/or he deserves it; whose value isn’t innate but conditional based on what he can do for others;

The kid who protects himself by just...forcing his way through it, who will put his head down and just take it and take it and then blame himself when he falls apart under the assault, who will keep pushing himself and trying harder and harder until he just breaks down, and who also secretly believes he deserves it because he only has himself to blame for being Weak & Stupid, after all; whose value isn’t innate but conditional and his success is measured in whether or not his loved ones decide to put up with his company for a little longer.