#and that therefore any reaction to it jc has that centers his insecurity
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Also the thing is, Jiang Cheng can't share how he threw himself out there as chum to cover Wei Wuxian, because it isn't a usefully reciprocal confession to the revelation about Wei Wuxian's core.
All it says is: there was a moment on the worst day of my life (up to that point) where I valued your life more than my own.
That's all. Arguably it says not even that, because Jiang Cheng is established as insecure enough that he very much cannot prove that this was an act driven primarily by affection and the will to protect, rather than guilt and shame and grief, and the desire to make a gesture that would prove his worth to himself, and let him opt out of the pain of having outlived the world he knew and almost everything he loved.
(after all, this self-sacrifice fairly directly followed an episode of 'strangling wei wuxian while blaming him for everything' and then being taken care of by wei wuxian like this hadn't even happened.
normally, jiang cheng is not someone who is physically violent. he is verbally violent all the time, but his physical violence is typically reserved for mortal enemies. that first time he came within throwing distance of murdering wei wuxian in a fit of grief-rage was almost certainly more traumatic for him than it was for wei wuxian, who is really good at compartmentalizing that kind of shit.
interesting element of mirroring there though, in that jiang cheng allowed wei wuxian to know about the murderous rage but not the self-destructive love, leading wei wuxian to misunderstand the exact shape of his place in jiang cheng's life and act on the basis of the rejection, in a way that encouraged relationship decay, just as wei wuxian's own secret-keeping would later lead jiang cheng to do in reply. vicious cycle!)
But the important thing is that this truth doesn't really explain anything.
Wei Wuxian's mute self-mutilation for Jiang Cheng's sake explained everything. All the withdrawal, the betrayal, what he thought was the rejection; the previously inexplicable decisions to abandon the teachings and home and allegiances that bound them in favor of death and the children of their enemies. Wen Ning's revelation explained it all, and recast it utterly.
It made the story different in a way that mattered a lot to the people in it.
What Jiang Cheng did...it shows he wasn't unworthy of that sacrifice in the way everything else about the narrative paints him. It's a grace note to his character.
It's not meaningless, exactly. It's just also not enough to actually change the weight of debt between them; it doesn't restructure the narrative.
It's not even, truly, new information.
Wei Wuxian knows Jiang Cheng loved him. Wanted to protect and keep him. He knows Jiang Cheng understood his abandonment as a betrayal, that Jiang Cheng felt he was owed better, and that this sense of being-entitled was a major impetus behind his increasing hostility.
Adding this little scrap of context for those reactions, for that rage--it's not enough. It gives Jiang Cheng a little more reason to have felt hard done by, validates a little of that wild resentment and makes it less of a spoiled young master reaction, lends it more dignity.
But your feelings being valid doesn't really go that far to justifying actions taken because of them. The hurt was already sympathetic; the choices aren't really changed by the context making it more so.
After all, he knew he'd lost his core protecting Wei Wuxian, but he also knew that Wei Wuxian risked his own life almost as foolishly extracting him again afterward, and 'knew' that Wei Wuxian freely gave away his only connection with his own dead mother and access to the help of an immortal for his sake; they were already square by rights in the world as he understood it, and he still acted the way he did.
And after all, Wei Wuxian's actions in his first life were always taking Jiang Cheng and Jiang Cheng's feelings into consideration, even when it didn't look like it; even when he fucked up, and Jiang Cheng paid for it. Right up until he lost his mind, and to an extent afterward.
'Consciously, on purpose choosing against someone out of spite' is something Wei Wuxian did not ever do to him, which he did do to Wei Wuxian. A lot. Escalating.
That doesn't become any less happened because at a prior time he did the opposite.
All the while not putting a lot of effort into worrying about Wei Wuxian's feelings, or how to spare them, because one of the norms of their relationship was that Jiang Cheng's feelings deserved to be privileged and handled gently, but Wei Wuxian was too tough to need that kind of consideration. Except about dogs.
That's a norm Jiang Cheng accepted and took for granted; it turned out to be the norm that broke their relationship, because Wei Wuxian treated 'protecting Jiang Cheng's delicate feelings' as such a mandatory task that he put it over things that logic would call much more important.
And so there's no way Jiang Cheng can talk about how he lost his core trying to die for Wei Wuxian without sounding like he's trying to justify himself, to wipe his deliberate-choice-to-harm off the record with a single act of goodness.
When Wei Wuxian has never once for a second tried to argue that his own goodness cancels out his crimes.
(He doesn't even argue that other people's crimes cancel out his crimes; the furthest he's gone is that since everyone involved did or abetted evil shit, it's inappropriate and bullshit to construct him as uniquely villainous and structure a concept of justice around that falsehood.)
So the only meaning that truth can carry now, after everything, coming from Jiang Cheng, is his saying: Please. I'm a better person than you think I am. I loved you more than you believe.
I was just as good as you, no matter what everyone always thought. I deserve for you to love me like you did before, in spite of everything, and I deserve not to have to say I'm sorry, and I deserve your respect, and and and--
And he is not gonna fucking say that.
#hoc est meum#jiang cheng#i love him he is born to be caught in hopeless double binds#this is a no-win situation but just for you specifically#because of who you are as a person#a different person with different weaknesses would be fine! sucks to be you! :DDDDD#that's the definition of tragedy#enjoy#mdzs#meta#character meta#baby cicada man#trauma and shit did cause a certain amount of arrested development#but he is in fact an adult#and he understands that his history of entitled behavior means#that there are *very* few ways he can reach out without humiliating himself somehow#even if he decides he wants to#and making that confession is *definitely* not one of them#just the fact that wwx catering to jc's insecurity#was the weak place and the breaking place for them#and that therefore any reaction to it jc has that centers his insecurity#wraps back around to if not validating wwx's choices#at least framing jc as complicit#as having asked for this#even though he never ever asked for this#love that#mwah
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#just the fact that wwx catering to jc's insecurity #was the weak place and the breaking place for them
#and that therefore any reaction to it jc has that centers his insecurity #wraps back around to if not validating wwx's choices #at least framing jc as complicit #as having asked for this #even though he never ever asked for this
Also the thing is, Jiang Cheng can't share how he threw himself out there as chum to cover Wei Wuxian, because it isn't a usefully reciprocal confession to the revelation about Wei Wuxian's core.
All it says is: there was a moment on the worst day of my life (up to that point) where I valued your life more than my own.
That's all. Arguably it says not even that, because Jiang Cheng is established as insecure enough that he very much cannot prove that this was an act driven primarily by affection and the will to protect, rather than guilt and shame and grief, and the desire to make a gesture that would prove his worth to himself, and let him opt out of the pain of having outlived the world he knew and almost everything he loved.
(after all, this self-sacrifice fairly directly followed an episode of 'strangling wei wuxian while blaming him for everything' and then being taken care of by wei wuxian like this hadn't even happened.
normally, jiang cheng is not someone who is physically violent. he is verbally violent all the time, but his physical violence is typically reserved for mortal enemies. that first time he came within throwing distance of murdering wei wuxian in a fit of grief-rage was almost certainly more traumatic for him than it was for wei wuxian, who is really good at compartmentalizing that kind of shit.
interesting element of mirroring there though, in that jiang cheng allowed wei wuxian to know about the murderous rage but not the self-destructive love, leading wei wuxian to misunderstand the exact shape of his place in jiang cheng's life and act on the basis of the rejection, in a way that encouraged relationship decay, just as wei wuxian's own secret-keeping would later lead jiang cheng to do in reply. vicious cycle!)
But the important thing is that this truth doesn't really explain anything.
Wei Wuxian's mute self-mutilation for Jiang Cheng's sake explained everything. All the withdrawal, the betrayal, what he thought was the rejection; the previously inexplicable decisions to abandon the teachings and home and allegiances that bound them in favor of death and the children of their enemies. Wen Ning's revelation explained it all, and recast it utterly.
It made the story different in a way that mattered a lot to the people in it.
What Jiang Cheng did...it shows he wasn't unworthy of that sacrifice in the way everything else about the narrative paints him. It's a grace note to his character.
It's not meaningless, exactly. It's just also not enough to actually change the weight of debt between them; it doesn't restructure the narrative.
It's not even, truly, new information.
Wei Wuxian knows Jiang Cheng loved him. Wanted to protect and keep him. He knows Jiang Cheng understood his abandonment as a betrayal, that Jiang Cheng felt he was owed better, and that this sense of being-entitled was a major impetus behind his increasing hostility.
Adding this little scrap of context for those reactions, for that rage--it's not enough. It gives Jiang Cheng a little more reason to have felt hard done by, validates a little of that wild resentment and makes it less of a spoiled young master reaction, lends it more dignity.
But your feelings being valid doesn't really go that far to justifying actions taken because of them. The hurt was already sympathetic; the choices aren't really changed by the context making it more so.
After all, he knew he'd lost his core protecting Wei Wuxian, but he also knew that Wei Wuxian risked his own life almost as foolishly extracting him again afterward, and 'knew' that Wei Wuxian freely gave away his only connection with his own dead mother and access to the help of an immortal for his sake; they were already square by rights in the world as he understood it, and he still acted the way he did.
And after all, Wei Wuxian's actions in his first life were always taking Jiang Cheng and Jiang Cheng's feelings into consideration, even when it didn't look like it; even when he fucked up, and Jiang Cheng paid for it. Right up until he lost his mind, and to an extent afterward.
'Consciously, on purpose choosing against someone out of spite' is something Wei Wuxian did not ever do to him, which he did do to Wei Wuxian. A lot. Escalating.
That doesn't become any less happened because at a prior time he did the opposite.
All the while not putting a lot of effort into worrying about Wei Wuxian's feelings, or how to spare them, because one of the norms of their relationship was that Jiang Cheng's feelings deserved to be privileged and handled gently, but Wei Wuxian was too tough to need that kind of consideration. Except about dogs.
That's a norm Jiang Cheng accepted and took for granted; it turned out to be the norm that broke their relationship, because Wei Wuxian treated 'protecting Jiang Cheng's delicate feelings' as such a mandatory task that he put it over things that logic would call much more important.
And so there's no way Jiang Cheng can talk about how he lost his core trying to die for Wei Wuxian without sounding like he's trying to justify himself, to wipe his deliberate-choice-to-harm off the record with a single act of goodness.
When Wei Wuxian has never once for a second tried to argue that his own goodness cancels out his crimes.
(He doesn't even argue that other people's crimes cancel out his crimes; the furthest he's gone is that since everyone involved did or abetted evil shit, it's inappropriate and bullshit to construct him as uniquely villainous and structure a concept of justice around that falsehood.)
So the only meaning that truth can carry now, after everything, coming from Jiang Cheng, is his saying: Please. I'm a better person than you think I am. I loved you more than you believe.
I was just as good as you, no matter what everyone always thought. I deserve for you to love me like you did before, in spite of everything, and I deserve not to have to say I'm sorry, and I deserve your respect, and and and--
And he is not gonna fucking say that.
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