#Jiang Fengmian

[bishy437]

what’s left behind

[whumpbby]

That's why I am absolutely less forgiving towards JFM than I am towards any other character in mdzs. Including fucking Jin Guangshan. The man had all the cards in his hands - and decided to use none to solve the problems in his own home that he was causing.

Sure, YZY was loud and accusing, but what I see here is a woman at the end of her rope, trying to deal with a man that just...doesn't seem to care. Before WWX even came to LP, JFM was already an absent father, and later on? We know he can show affection - he showed it to WWX right off the bat and then kept at it. We know he didn't do as much as pick up his own little kid - which is...yeah, it tells you so much about the type of a person he was.

What sort of "misunderstanding" can exist between an adult man and a child? JC couldn't misunderstand his father's intentions - because we are never shown they were anything else than what JC thought they were. Forever optimist Wei Wuxian himself tacitly agrees that JFM wouldn't do stuff for JC that he would for him.

And then his last scene with the kids - a point people often use to say "See? He loved them, he tells WWX to protect them!" Did he, though? Did he love them? Because the only person he spoke to, the only person he seemed to pay attention to, in this last moment together, was Wei Wuxian. From my pov, this scene reads like anything else JFM did - he turns to the only one of his kids he thought had a chance at fighting the Wen, and tells him to act. He could have looked at JC and told him to protect Yanli and himself, to survive. He doesn't. He dismisses JC's prowess and skill like usual. JC and Yanli are things Wei Wuxian has to take care of.

And yeah, YZU gives the same order to WWX, but that scene has a completely different read - she's focused on JC throughout it all. We is a guard that will protect her son, not the other way around.

I find the parallels of these both scenes fascinating - especially in a way they diverge.

As it was mentioned above - for all her loud voice and aggression, YZY actually has little power in her marriage, JFM can subvert her decisions without thinking, without discussion. He holds all the cards and he is the only one that can end the strife in his family by simply speaking out. Showing care to his children. The simplest actions one can take.

And he chooses not to.

Thinking about the parallels set up between Wei Wuxian and Mo Xuanyu, and how actually most of them are oddly specious.

The sketch of the backstory lines up, but on close examination they're mirror images.

Wei Wuxian wasn't kicked out of his sect, he left it. Wei Wuxian didn't hate the house he grew up in, he loved it, and getting the people there killed was the absolute last purpose for which his dark powers were ever intended.

Jiang Cheng was no Mo Ziyuan--his jealousy was a complicated thing all twisted up with love, and while he would lash out at Wei Wuxian both as a casual means of shit communication and more damagingly in moments of high tension, he had neither the desire nor the ability to bully him, and in general respected his boundaries almost too well.

When Wei Wuxian destroyed himself about Jiang Cheng, it was to give him cultivation, and protect his life and happiness. He would never have killed him.

Madam Yu was a domineering aunt-like figure, who hated Wei Wuxian for reasons of reputation, and because she had resented his dead mother, but she crucially did not have the power to actually disrupt his lifestyle to any significant extent.

Mo Xuanyu was shut up in a small room to rot; Wei Wuxian didn't even attend classes unless he wanted to. Mo Xuanyu was weak and disliked; Wei Wuxian was brilliant and popular.

Mo Xuanyu's uncle is a cipher of a figure, without character or agency, a nonentity who is resented to death apparently mostly for what he didn't do; in theory he is the master of the house, but he certainly never protected his wife and son's punching bag from them.

And this is what got me thinking along this track: because people keep interpreting Jiang Fengmian as this, as exactly like Mo Xuanyu's nameless uncle, a nonentity who lets his wife make all the decisions, and is contemptible therefore.

He shows up in fic characterized this way all the time, handled narratively as a gap rather than a person, an absence where there should have been a parent, and it's...totally inaccurate? The man only has a few scenes but the things that are most firmly established about him are:

he regularly goes out of his way to protect Wei Wuxian

he's extremely fond of Wei Wuxian

he cares a lot about ethical behavior

he's conflict-avoidant and gentle

he can and will overrule Yu Ziyuan when he's made up his mind, and there's nothing she can do about it

his communication skills are mediocre at best

he doesn't understand jiang cheng

he has a dumb sense of humor

Now almost none of this made it into cql besides point 4 and maybe 6, 5 is technically there but buried by the cinematic framing, so I totally get why the fandom on the whole struggles to characterize him well, and it's easier to write him off.

But it keeps bugging me to see him and Yu Ziyuan squashed into the mold of the Mo, because not only is that boring and reductive and kind-of-missing-the-point, it's like. Wei Wuxian and Jiang Cheng's characterization suffers a lot when you alter the environment and take away the influence exerted by their shared father figure.

Jiang Fengmian was Wei Wuxian's primary adult role model and it shows.

Jiang Cheng's relationship to his own sense of ethics is fraught because 'teaching him good ethics' was his dad's number one parenting goal, but they misunderstood each other so badly (partly because Yu Ziyuan kept loudly misinterpreting them to each other, which is so realistic I can't get over it, that's exactly how it works good lord) that Jiang Cheng has a direct association between the concept of 'doing the right thing even when it's hard' and a feeling of personal inadequacy.

The fact that Wei Wuxian got their dad-person's approval for being exactly himself and Jiang Cheng not only couldn't do that, he couldn't even get that same level of approval when he really pushed himself to rise to expectations, because Jiang Fengmian did not intend that warmth as a 'reward,' and so never realized he was withholding it, and therefore misunderstood Jiang Cheng's visible jealousy as a dangerous sense of personal entitlement that had to be carefully restrained, which reinforced his distrust of Jiang-Cheng-the-person and fed into a shitty loop where they were less and less able to relate to one another--that's fantastic. That's so human! I love it so much.

Both their failures are their own but at the same time it would never have gotten so bad if Yu Ziyuan hadn't been interjecting herself in there, in the middle of their relationship, fucking it up. That's family, baby.

I would ofc like if there was more fic engaging with the subtleties of all this because it's so good, mxtx did such elegant work here and it is not sufficiently appreciated. But it's the kind of thing that's hard to write good fic about; I am struggling with it myself.

So mostly I wish there was just more fic that didn't impose Mo Xuanyu's cliche angst backstory on Wei Wuxian, who has a whole different thing going on.

[batbusiness-schooldropout]

Au where Jiang Fengmian decides that the only way to appease his wife after taking Wei Ying in, is to double down and get her an orphan to raise as well. To the shock of everyone, this works!

JFM: Dearest, this is Xue Yang. He loves candy and biting people. He'll be living with us from now on

Madam Yu: I understand the appeal of taking in a child now. He's delightful

Wei Ying: Uncle, A-Yang bit me

Madam Yu: You shouldn't have been close enough to be bitten

[red-garden]

what r ur thoughts on who’s the worst dad (based on that poll)

Points Against Qi Rong: his care often left Guzi sick and hungry, he killed and replaced Guzi’s bio dad, he speaks to guzi crassly, he doesn’t provide an environment conducive to nurturing a child

Points against Jiang Fengmian: shows clear favoritism to WWX, doesn’t stop his wife from emotionally/physically abusing thier kids, brought back a child without the consent of his wife, emotionally neglects his children

Points against Tianlang Jun: didn’t even know he had a son for years. Tried to set up LBH’s sweetheart with ZZL. Fucked in the head, like actually this man could not take care of a child. Do not let him reproduce again.

All together, I voted JFM as worst dad because I think he has the most active malice in his heart for his children. QR actively tries to take care of Guzi. TLJ was trapped under a mountain. Meanwhile JFM actually just doesn’t like his biological children. He made the choice for years to be distant to them, to never support them, even though he had the means and opportunities to do so. (Also I think being absent was the best move for LBH’s developmental health TLJ could have made. An act of mercy actually)

[soursoppi]

collection of work doodles featuring the MDZS parent gen haha....

for more yammerings on my HCs for them:

My HCs for QHJ and Mdm Lan | The QHJ/JGS situationship | Mdm Lan's Name | Mdm Jin's Name | My HCs for WCZ / JFM

[incorrectuntamedmodaozushiquotes]

[As kids] Wei Wuxian: If you get in trouble, I'm gonna be like... a lawyer to you. Ok?  Jiang Cheng: Okay.  *later*  Jiang Fengmian: Jiang Cheng! Sit down on the chair, you're in trouble.  Wei Wuxian, whispering: Deny everything.  Jiang Cheng, loudly: That isn't a chair.

[tossawary]

Thinking about an AU where Jiang Yanli's "weak / mediocre cultivation" was caused by a horrific training accident when she was pretty young, in part to explore the tragedy and disability of it all and in part for the humorous "older relative casually drops wild personal lore that changes your entire perception of them" angle.

Like, Jiang Fengmian and Yu Ziyuan's firstborn child is a girl, which is not ideal in this deeply sexist world, but the sect motto is "attempt the impossible", right? It's not unheard of for female cultivators to lead sects and Yu Ziyuan wants her daughter to be the first female Jiang sect leader, to show up the cultivation world, and Jiang Fengmian isn't against the idea and wants the best for his daughter (although he probably doesn't want her to be a copy of his wife). So Jiang Yanli starts her cultivation training pretty early. There's a lot of intense pressure, a lot of expectation and projection and some arguments, and it all culminates in this poor child getting badly injured, with permanent damage to both her body and to her cultivation. It's a "no one's fault and everyone's fault" thing.

Jiang Fengmian and Yu Ziyuan quietly drop their plans for Yanli to become the sect leader and focus on a very young Jiang Cheng instead, which is easy in part because everyone expects the son to inherit anyway. A young Jiang Yanli is betrothed to the heir of the Jin Sect and this is basically never talked about ever again. General perception is that Jiang Yanli is a mediocre cultivator at best because she was born that way (she's a WOMAN, after all) and/or because her disposition is just too sweet and agreeable, and OF COURSE the son became the heir as soon as the Jiangs had a son. That's just how things work!

So, in an AU where Jiang Yanli (and Jin Zixuan?) lives and teenage Jin Ling is freaking out about some embarrassing and/or dangerous mistake on a night hunt...

Jiang Yanli, patting her son's shoulder: "It's going to be okay. You know, when I was a young child, I permanently injured myself in a training accident and could no longer become the Jiang sect leader, and it felt like the end of the world, letting everyone down, but it all worked out in the end!"

Jin Ling, whose entire 15-year-old worldview just got flipped upside-down: "...Mother?! What?!?!"

[lewiscarrolatemybrain]

Hilarious thing that just occurred to me: The Jiangs wearing purple robes is honestly just as gaudy and ostentatious as the Jin putting gold on everything

Even if we assume that only the inner clan members wear robes dyed actual purple, and everybody else does robes that have been dyed red and then blue, that's still an insane amount of money and effort. Historically, true purple dye was so crazy rare and expensive that in most places it was reserved for actual royalty, and double-dyed fabrics had to be done with extreme care and skill or they would be splotchy and uneven -- more blue in some places, more red in others, the purple different shades.

It's funny to think about WWX and JC being like "ugh the peacock" as if their lowest disciples don't wear robes that only the most skilled master dyers could achieve. Like the inner members of the Jiang Clan aren't walking around in several layers of true purple silk. Jiang Cheng's underwear could feed a village through winter and Wei Wuxian has the gall to act like the Jin are too showy about their wealth.

[yustinamishka]

Father I had a dream That everything was well.

[scrivenger-grimgar]

Yunmeng Jiang is probably the Florida of the Jianghu

Like, they canonically fought water ghouls with their bare hands, regularly get into brawls with each other, have no concept of appropriate volume, hell they have a town down close to the worldly people with no height separation or massive stone walls or a comical amount of gold plating, if you didn’t know that they was a cult of martial sorcerers in that town you might just think “wow, wealthy trading family. The docks are nice!” and then just leave.

The sect leader has no spine and a vaguely homoerotic relationship with his dead best friend slash manservant, he adopted one is fucking insane and also a radical genius, and you’d expect him to be the outlier but no, the sister is just as fucking weird, she’s probably gone around in soaking wet clothes carry a child like a football because “he fell in, I couldn’t just leave him there!”

The son likes to pretend he’s sane but he’s such a chronic gossip that he probably needed an intervention, his sword was named after the three poisons, and he also spent 13 years thinking that his dead adopted brother would find a way to resurrect himself.

Even Madam Yu isn’t safe because she lashed a teenager with a lightning whip like 36 times in the middle of the fucking Spanish Inquisition. She has such an irrational hatred of this one guy that she starts shitting on anyone even remotely kind to him. Girl. Go to therapy, or go to jail.

[allpiesforourown]

thinking about the jiang family ... jiang fengmian being nice to wei ying because he was cangse-senren's son, and doing the opposite with jiang cheng. even wei wuxian said it was "difficult to rebut" when jiang cheng said his father doesn't like him because of madame yu

it's so sad. neither of them were treated like their own person, just an extension of their mothers

[lady-of-the-spirit]

At least Yu Ziyuan was a boss bitch AND a terrible parent. Jiang Fengmian is just a terrible parent.

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Lan Wangji Goes To Lotus Pier AU: Part 1: Dread on Arrival

(Part 2)

[hannigramislife]

You know what's truly devastating?

Jiang Cheng raised Jin Ling. Jiang Cheng doted on him and helped him and punished him and taught him and loved him–

Jiang Cheng loved him. He loved him so much that the boy may as well have been his own son. He loved him with a ferocity that burned brighter than Zidian's spark. He hovered over him constantly, he showed up on the boy's nighthunts.

He knows, now, what a parent's love feels like, because he feels it for Jin Ling with every breath he takes.

Jiang Cheng now also knows, really knows, that his father never loved him at all.

It's a bit of a surprise, even considering everything, but it's the truth. You couldn't be that indifferent to your child if you loved them. Jiang Cheng would never even consider treating Jin Ling the same way.

I wonder when, during the years he spent raising Jin Ling, did Jiang Cheng have that "oh" moment of realization.

[notoisstrange]

Yunmeng Jiang Clan 🪷