#anti nie huaisang

[danmei-confessions]

I checked Mengi Shi's wiki page, and at the end, it's mentioned that Nie Huaisang hints he had her corpse destroyed terribly. I feel SO BAD for her. Meng Shi's only sin was being naive.

Unlike Nie Mingjue, I doubt she would be able to point to where the other pieces of her corpse were for multiple reasons. And considering Jin Guangyao, one of probably the only 2 people alive who actually cared about her and the only person that could do anything to find her corpse died before he could even start search for her I feel really bad for her. I really don't know what Nie Huaisang's end goal for Jin Guangyao was besides probably losing his titles as chief cultivator and Jin Sect leader as well as being disgraced but sullying the corpse of a woman whose only sin was being naive feels callous. Especially since there's no way that by the end of his scheme, Nie Huaisang would have left Jin Guangyao in a position to even look for his mother's corpse.

.

[adhdo5]

So you know how MDZS is a book about cycles

[waitineedaname]

I am not a nie brothers scholar nor a jgy scholar so idk how to properly put these thoughts together, but I think it's unfair to act like nie huaisang would've tried to break up nieyao. what makes the tragedy and betrayal so delicious is that meng yao was his friend. in cql, he's visibly really worried about him and is pacing outside while nmj decides to kick him out. in the novels, jgy was constantly showering nhs with gifts tailored to his interests. nie huaisang liked him and trusted him, and that ultimately makes what happens later far more interesting than if he had hated him the whole time

[naehja]

Prompt:

After WWx punched Zixuan during the Cloud Recesses studies, both Jiang Fengmian and Madam Yu came. Madam Yu is super pissed because of the break-up of engagement (+ maybe because of other events before coming) and when she sees Wei Wuxian, she is livid and throw Zidian at him to hit him.

Except.

Nie Huaisang was here, next to Wei Wuxian and Madam Yu has not correctly targered WWX. Zidian hits Huaisang brutally, making him fall on the ground, blood coming from a big wound of the chest and the left arm.

Wei Wuxian panicks because his friend is hurt (and Huaisang is less strong than him, Zidian could do a lot of damages).

Madam Yu says that the boy is weak and that if he had a better golden core, it would be nothing. She is not afraid of Mingjue because she sees him as a young man, younger than her.

Jiang Fengmian is sweating with panic because "ho my god, it's the precious little brother of the Nie Sect leader. It could give me so much problems and affect the relations between our sects!"

Lan Qiren wonders how he'll explain THAT to Mingjue. And that he'll have to be VERY diplomatic about it.

Lan Xichen is already near of Huaisang, giving him spiritual enery and saying him words of comfort.

Jin Guangshan thinks that really this women is crazy. Because even he knows that touching Huaisang is a big no no because Nie Mingjue is a very protective brother.

Nie Mingjue is....well he'll absolutely livid when he'll learn that.

Good thing that the Gusu Doctors are very good and that Huaisang will be totally alright after they take care of him, because if he didn't fully recover, Madam Yu would be dead.

[llycaons]

fanfic authors will put the most monogamous man in fiction into sex clubs to fulfil whatever fantasies they think are hot won't they....

[motivationisdead]

I will never get over how Nie Huaisang became the Chief Cultivator.

Nie Huaisang, with his low cultivation, deadass refusal to use a sword, and who flunked a year at the Cloud Recesses is the greatest authority and representative of the cultivation world. Like. If that isn’t irony idk what is.

[featherlight-whispers]

i love jiang cheng immensely, but when i first watched mdzs i despised him. he reminded me too much of my father when he has a bad day. too angry. too unstable. too cold.

but as the chapters went by, i started unearthing the character and more reasons why i didn’t like him. he was the result of an abusive, dysfunctional household. just like my father. just like i am going to be when i grow older. and just like that, he started to grow on me. i started seeing my own anger in his scowls and scathing comments

jiang cheng was made to pick up on enormous responsibilities at a horrifyingly young age. he needed a defense mechanism, and as a grumpy person, anger was probably the easiest one to pick up. it’s the one he’s most familiar with, too. hiding a papier-mâché heart under rage is surprisingly easy

his defense mechanism is the flashiest one, especially compared to characters like nie huaisang (who literally depends on being the opposite to that), wei wuxian, and lan wangji. they’re all more subdued than him

i like subdued. but what i think draws me to jiang cheng, and sangcheng, too, is precisely how different jiang cheng is to the rest of the cast, the contrast between the headshaker and a man with a famously bad temper. he’s what i can become. what i fear to become, while nie huaisang, a smart man, someone who wears his masks to his advantage, beyond survival, is someone i want to become

what i want to say with this is that jiang cheng may be an asshole, and you might hate him for the very reasons i just said. but he’s someone’s comfort because seeing anger in a complex, genuine character displayed like that can be like a balm. sometimes i read a scene with him and it’s like being told “rage is valid. it’s not pretty. it’s not healthy long-term. but it’s a valid option too.”

[thatswhatsushesaid]

well it's a good thing jin guangyao's antis are in the character tag literally every day to remind us illiterate troglodytes how objectively terrible and evil he is, actually, otherwise we might forget about how objectively terrible and evil he is, actually, for 5 minutes and just enjoy him as a complex antagonist with complex motivations that place him at odds with the principle cast. bullet dodged!

i think everyone forgets that jin guangyao tries to kill literally every single character during the second siege of the burial mounds, like if wwx and lwj hadn’t been there and the wen remnants hadn’t saved them, jgy would have successfully killed Everyone, including the juniors who had nothing to do with anything. like this is Evil evil of him 😭

[oh-dameron]

It's kind of fucked-up that Jin Guanyao and Jiang Cheng get so much vicious hate but everyone seems cool with Nie Huaisang. I guess his CQL actor isn't hot enough to make people go feral and antis don't care unless they have stans to rage against.

[danmei-confessions]

Quite frankly, that Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji happily swan off into the sunset with zero regard for the political mess they helped create--a political mess that will doubtlessly negatively impact the lives of thousands--makes me second-guess their moral characters.

They aren't exactly characters who know how to do politics. If Wei Wuxian knew how to do politics, I REALLY don't think the Wens he was protecting was dead. And Lan Wangji doesn't seem like someone who knows how to deal with politics.

They're more, for lack of a better word, unworldly than is acceptable for their world, but that doesn't make them immoral.

Especially considering Nie Huaisang, who was clever and a bit immoral knew them well was playing them like a fiddle.

Instead of doing political things and being unhelpful or possibly worsening the situation, they chose to help in a way they knew how - aka nighthunting

.

[minsarasarahair]

I do love the princess-like fan user stereotype characters in Danmei

This is only based on what I know/read so far so I'll definitely miss other characters, okay? From right to left > From goodest boys to someone morally questionable

Shi Qingxuan (Tian Guan Ci Fu) - Supporting character, Wind God, Younger Brother, Genderfluid, Righteous, Sheltered

Yan Zhengming (Liu Yao) - Gong, Spoiled, Peacock, Cultivator with great potential but Lazy, Dashixiong/Eldest Disciple, Sect Leader

Shi Qingxuan (SVSSS) - Shou, Transmigrator, Peak Lord, Look cold outside but panicking in his mind, Anti, Stallion novel reader, Use humor as he face horror situation, Obsessed in a fictional character, Teacher

Xie Jinglan (Du Zhu You Bing) - Gong, Scholar, Governor, Schemer, Tsundere, Bookworm, Clean freak, Neglected, Can martial arts

Shen Zechuan (Qiang Jin Jiu) - Shou, Schemer, Cunning, Avenger, Prince, Emperor, Wrongly Accused, Very Pretty, Can Be Ruthless, Look like he can't fight but actually know martial arts and can use swords, Wife

Nie Huaisang (Mo Dao Zu Shi) - Supporting character, Avenger, Schemer, Artist, Sect Leader, Younger Brother, Cunning, Pretends he don't know anything or a coward but actually know a lot

Lou Zhu (You Yao) - Gong, Transmigrator, Merchant, Landlord, Emperor's henchman, Rich, Schemer, Cunning, Drunkard, Has a carefree lazy facade but actually intimidating, Don't know any martial arts, Yearner

Wen Kexing (Tian Ya Ke) - Gong, Schemer, Mostly use his fan in Word of Honor Cdrama but I believe TYK Wen Kexing is all-around who can use different weapons even if he probably prefer barehands so some of TYK official arts illustrated him using fan, Malewife, Avenger, Cannibal, Leader of Exiled Murderers, Former Brothel Regular Costumer

[dani474]

Lotus Pier was destroyed, you illiterate motherfuckers. Not the buildings, the Wens just carved the nine-petal lotus out of them, but the Sect itself. There were no disciples, teachers, elders or even servants anymore. No riches either. Jiang Cheng had nothing but his gentry status that meant nothing without army. He DID rebuild his sect from ashes, he proved himself worthy of being a leader after fighting in the war. He, not Wei Wuxian or his golden core. YMJ sect had the smallest share out of the Wen sect's treasures yet he managed to make it rich as fuck once again. If you or me were in his place we would rather cry ourselves to death but he fought and won

[mxtxfanatic]

Was thinking about how often I see reactionary pro-Jiang Cheng content, and I just realized something: jc stans, just like their fav, believe that every good thing Wei Wuxian has—whether loved ones or good memories or admirable characteristics or character growth, whether canon or fanon—is actually the rightful property of Jiang Cheng that Wei Wuxian “stole” from him through the sin of existing, and it is their sworn duty to correct this “oversight” of canon.

Wei Wuxian gets his happily ever after with the love of his life, so jc stans give Jiang Cheng Lan Xichen and call Lan Wangji “second place.” Or they make Lan Wangji a cheater because “he actually likes Jiang Cheng more (who doesn’t, amiright?)” or Wei Wuxian a cheater because “he can never appreciate a good thing like Jiang Cheng can.” People point out how Wei Wuxian and Nie Huaisang seem to have had a closer relationship than Nie Huaisang and Jiang Cheng, so jc stans make the latter two a ship or make them the bestest friends ever that bond over being annoyed with Wei Wuxian. Wei Wuxian has a close relationship with the Wen siblings, so jc stans make Wen Qing spend all their time together saying that Jiang Cheng “was right” about him while Wen Ning is being “bullied” into being “anti-jc.”

Wei Wuxian is canonically smart and driven, so jc stans say that he is lazy while Jiang Cheng is hardworking. Wei Wuxian is canonically charismatic, so jc stans say that it was actually Jiang Cheng who was loved by all the disciples and is the sole reason the Jiang Clan of the present was able to pull in new disciples post-fall. Wei Wuxian loves to learn, so jc stans say that Jiang Cheng was actually a model student being sabotaged by the slovenly Wei Wuxian.

People imagine the Lan as accepting Wei Wuxian post-canon or imagine aus where the Lan adopt him as a child, so jc stans make Jiang Cheng the adopted Lan child, who Lan Qiren now likes better than his own nephews. People write Nie!wwx, so jc stans write about how “actually” Nie Mingjue sees Jiang Cheng as the brother he never had and views Wei Wuxian as an unwanted nuisance and competition. People make the most batshit ooc au where the QishanWen are actually good and adopt Wei Wuxian, and jc stans turn that into actually, the Jiang siblings are adopted while Wei Wuxian stays with the “totally horrible, abusive” father in Yunmeng. Fucking Baoshan Sanren descends from her mountain to look for her martial grandson, and jc stans will shove Jiang Cheng into the narrative as a disciple because “he’s just so lovable!” In all of these cases, some will still imagine that Wei Wuxian still gets left on the streets as a petty afterthought.

Shit, even some of the BAD things that happen to Wei Wuxian canonically are misappropriated by jc stans to give Jiang Cheng unearned sympathy. Wei Wuxian was whipped as a child? Now Jiang Cheng was too, but also his dad hates him. Wei Wuxian is an orphan who creates his own family in adulthood? Jiang Cheng is now disowned/an unloved runaway who later finds his people because who wouldn’t want him (amiright?). Wei Wuxian was at risk of losing his golden core completely in the transfer if it failed? Well Jiang Cheng was going to DIE! “See? Look how much harder Jiang Cheng’s life was than that pathetic attention whore Wei Wuxian! Doesn’t he deserve all the things Wei Wuxian has? Aren’t they rightfully his???”

And it’s like, you can’t even escape into fan content with this type of mentality, because look out how much I mentioned is popular fanon. Notice how ubiquitous these ideas are surrounding anything to do with Wei Wuxian and Jiang Cheng, even if only one of them is mentioned. No matter what anyone reads in the novel, no matter what individuals come up with in their own heads, no matter what tag or platform is used or not used to keep it out of their hands, jc stans will be there to create a reactionary counterpart to prove that nothing, nothing can ever just be Wei Wuxian’s. Because at the end of the day, the “oversight” that jc stans want to correct isn’t Jiang Cheng’s supposed depreciation by the author. The “oversight” was the author daring to say that Wei Wuxian deserves to be treated as his own person and not Jiang Cheng’s personal property. And every fandom interaction has been retaliation towards that fact.

The main character of the novel is relegated to mere a lightning rod that exists to attract all of Jiang Cheng’s bad qualities while injecting him with all of Wei Wuxian’s good, but jc stans wonder why people are upset.

[admirableadmiranda]

I keep seeing the idea that Jiang Cheng is disliked or hated for his actions because "Jiang Cheng Antis” refuse to acknowledge ugly reactions to trauma, or victims who aren’t perfect, basically citing that he should be forgiven more than we do because not everyone is going to react the same to pain and trauma and just because his reactions aren’t perfect doesn’t mean that he should be held accountable for his actions, any of them, and us calling his actions wrong or abuse is us in fact being terrible.

I want to refute this idea for a few reasons:

First off, while I can’t speak for everyone, I know that I and my friends don’t think that his initial reactions being kinda bad are necessarily damning. Nobody is going to be perfect, sometimes when we are stuck in the worst parts of our lives, we do things that we will later regret in the process of surviving those times. It doesn’t really make it okay and we should understand if the people who are around us in those times don’t want to be around us anymore after that, but it isn’t a death knell that he reacts really poorly after the initial fall of Lotus Pier and the death of his parents and everyone he’s grown up with. I have forgiven characters for doing worse, but proving that it was their worst and turning around after that.

The problem with that part is that he doesn’t turn anything around. He never apologizes for strangling Wei Wuxian, he continues to turn the blame for what happened on people who weren’t involved even after getting to kill Wen Zhuliu and torture Wen Chao to death, holding Wei Wuxian, Lan Wangji and, for a time, Jin Zixuan as also being responsible even though none of them were, even though he knows this and adjusts his opinion later to drop Jin Zixuan out of the blame, even though he later adds Wen Ning to his list of those to blame despite Wen Ning rescuing him from Lotus Pier and sheltering him. It isn’t a worst moment of his life, brought on by trauma and pain, it’s just the start of his sliding slope downward.

Second off is the idea that this should exonerate him of all of his actions. Look at him! He lost his parents and his clan to war by the Wens! He has suffered so much, becoming a clan leader so young in the fires of war!!!

Except... he’s not the only one, not by a long shot. Lan Wangji, Lan Xichen, Nie Mingjue and Nie Huaisang all have their fathers killed and their homes attacked by the Wens as well. Both Nie Mingjue and Lan Xichen also ascend at very young ages, no one was over twenty when they took up their positions, and at the end of the novel, Jin Ling is even younger when he takes on his own clan leader position. Also he isn’t the only one to go into war so young, Wei Wuxian is a whole five days older than he is, and the whole jianghu falls into war against the Wens, no doubt with other fighters who also lost their homes and families in the process.

It isn’t that it isn’t impressive that he manages to pull it together in the face of all that’s happening, it’s that he’s not the only person by any means to suffer this trauma. Wei Wuxian goes through the exact same journey that he does, but when this argument comes up, it’s always just for why Jiang Cheng shouldn’t be blamed, not about how their whole generation lost so much to a war that their parents left to them by refusing to do anything before even when they all saw the signs of what Wen Ruohan was doing.

The third part is that there’s apparently no limit or expiration date on how long people have to forgive him for doing whatever he wants to do. His trauma is a reason for him to treat people however he wants for as long as he wants, and they should just put up with it because he’s suffering and not all pain is beautiful.

But by the time Wei Wuxian comes back to life, it’s been almost twenty years. A whole generation, long enough for Jiang Cheng to watch his nephew grow to almost adulthood. The world as a whole is changed, he himself has transformed Lotus Pier into a whole new place; and it wasn’t because the Wens had destroyed everything, Wei Wuxian no longer recognizes it, meaning that this happened after he died. The general attitude that JC stans have towards Wei Wuxian is that he shouldn’t hold Jiang Cheng leading a siege against him because it’s been long enough, he should get over it by now. But Jiang Cheng apparently should still get to act without hesitation or consideration of others and their own pain because he is suffering, he is an imperfect victim. It doesn’t matter what else anyone else has gone through and it is unreasonable to hold him to task because he lost his family.

The whole point of poor trauma reactions is that they are moments, responses in time to events. It is one thing for Jiang Cheng to react poorly right after his family is killed and his home invaded. But he gets worse over the course of the story. The day of the attack, he strangles Wei Wuxian. That’s one thing. But three years later he turns on Wei Wuxian, declares him an enemy of the world, tells him to let the Wens be slaughtered even though they are no longer at war, later declares war on Wei Wuxian and personally leads a siege to kill him. In the interim, a time of peace in which supposedly all of his enemies are dead, he hunts down people who he claims to be demonic cultivators and people that Wei Wuxian is possessing and tortures them to death, all the while doing very little to help his people as he will only intervene once someone has already died to the problem. When Wei Wuxian returns to life thirteen years after he died, seventeen years after the war, when Jiang Cheng is literally double the age that this began, despite him deliberately trying to avoid Jiang Cheng, Jiang Cheng seeks him out multiple times specifically to hurt him, first trying to kill him with a whip that can destroy spirits possessing bodies, then tying him up and torturing him with a dog. Later he leads a second siege upon Wei Wuxian, who still has done nothing to him aside from try to avoid him before later attacking him and Lan Wangji by first demanding that they leave, then refusing to let them do so, driving Wei Wuxian to a qi deviation (which can be fatal, that’s how Nie Mingjue died) and attacking Lan Wangji and Wei Wuxian with Zidian while Wei Wuxian is unconcious before Wen Ning stops him. Even in the temple, he’s still demanding that Wei Wuxian play by his rules of debts, he’s upset because he knows that he has gone so much farther than anyone has any right to and he has nothing to hold over Wei Wuxian’s head anymore.

Fifteen years of hurting everyone around him isn’t a poor trauma response. That’s deliberate and chosen. That is what he wants to do. It is a clear line of events where in the end, the trauma is an excuse over anything else.

If it had ended at the beginning of this list, Jiang Cheng would be a very different character and Modaozushi would be a very different novel. If it were just a trauma reaction and he didn’t want to hurt anyone in the long run, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.

But you cannot exonerate everything with the fact that his parents died when he was seventeen. Especially not when we have so many other people who react in so many other ways to the same pain. It is frankly ridiculous that people think he is the only one to suffer in the story, even though it is clear that no one escapes the novel unscathed and a hell of a lot of people die. Sometimes even at his hands or by his orders.

Jiang Cheng is not unsympathetic. I can understand what hurts he feels, at least to an extent. But an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind and he just keeps doing it. And then his stans show up and claim that it’s fine for him to want to kill everyone who he hates (not necessarily everyone who’s even done him wrong, and they certainly like to ignore everything he does to them) because he’s an ugly trauma victim.

He may be that, at the start. But twenty years down the line, when he gets excited at the thought of getting to torture people, that isn’t a trauma reaction anymore.

That’s a choice.

[allthelittlecreepycrawlies]

This isn't exactly a fic, and it isn't exactly a concept, it is what it is.

----------

After Nie Huaisang’s first disastrous year at the Cloud Recesses, Nie Mingue decides to have Meng Yao go and study with his brother the second year. 

The lessons in politics and inter-sect etiquette will be good for his duties as an aide, it'll give him a chance to learn more about cultivation, and it'll give Nie Huaisang someone he already knows and likes so maybe he'll be less of a sullen anti-social brat about classes.

Then, on the very first day, Meng Yao meets Lan Xichen.

He can't help but be a little bit dazzled; who wouldn't? 

They make friends almost instantly, spending as much time together as classes, duties, and curfew will allow. The First Jade’s presence kills off the worst of the gossip, allowing Meng Yao to actually get the most he can out of the lectures and training rather than constantly fending off insulting rumors. 

He’s actually enjoying staying in the Recesses, for all he’d been worried about being thrown into a pit of spoiled gentry sons.

And then he overhears some assorted disciples gossiping instead about how Nie Huaisang is so pathetic he can't even keep the attention of someone paid to pay attention.

The realization that he's barely even seen Nie Huaisang other than in class makes his body go numb.

He finally finds his young master huddled in a ball in the back hills, staring blankly at a sheet of empty paper, brushes and inks untouched.

Pretty apologies and justifications stuck in his throat, he can only sit down and silently take hold of the other boy’s hand. 

Nie Huaisang doesn’t pull away, and even squeezes back, but never raises his head even as Meng Yao gathers him and his painting supplies up and guides him back to the students’ rooms.

—

Meng Yao passes the exams with ease and high marks.

Nie Huaisang doesn't.

He breaks down in tears at the fact that he's going to have to go through this again, and guilt gnaws at Meng Yao’s insides as he holds the other boy and pets his hair, unable to do anything else to ease his misery.

He wouldn’t be surprised if Nie Huaisang tells Nie Mingjue why his test results were so bad. 

He’d deserve it, even, for having failed at the one duty his sect leader had given him in return for his education.

But despite the dressing down that greets him on their arrival, Nie Huaisang puts on a blithely dismissive air and says nothing that would implicate him. Practically waves it all off.

He doesn’t understand, but he says no more about it either.

—

The next year, he is pleased to see Lan Xichen for more than the quick greetings passed as they bustled about sect meetings, but carefully maintains a little more objective distance. He doesn’t want to risk getting too caught up in the older boy’s orbit again, not after the harm it had ended up causing last time.

He won’t be staying this year anyway.

After the ceremony, which goes better than the previous one had -at least for the two of them- the head disciple for Yunmeng Jiang cheerily slings his arms around the necks of his shidi and Nie Huaisang and drags them off for mischief.

He should be pleased about that, too. Maybe with friends to back him up, Nie Huaisang will pass this year.

And yet he finds himself thinking-

'Oh. This is how it felt for him.'

—

The letters he gets are sparse and the emotions they contain are hard to piece together. Unsure of where they stand anymore, he carefully words his own replies to be as gently encouraging, but neutral as possible.

Nie Huaisang finally passes his exams and comes home.

Meng Yao doesn't go with Nie Mingjue to greet him, feeling it's no longer his place to do so. He stays in the study instead, keeping to his task list as a distraction from the uncomfortable snarl of emotions in his chest.

So he's more than a little surprised to find himself hugged from behind.

Nie Huaisang says nothing. 

No "I missed you," nor any other greeting of a similar vein. 

But there are unspoken volumes in that hug, in the way he tucks his face against Meng Yao’s neck, and Meng Yao closes his eyes, lets out the breath he's been holding for what seems like months, and tilts his head back into the other boy’s embrace, gladly accepting the forgiveness being offered.

[khattikeri]

my hot nie huaisang take is that he never particularly liked nieyao or nielan but especially stops liking lan xichen and jin guangyao after nie mingjue dies. he thinks they both failed his brother. 3zun's #1 anti.