#every day i write an incoherent screaming essay about yunmeng bros

[amedetoiles]

i just finished the drama and i'm having severe emotions about jiang cheng's sacrifice, i am begging for any thoughts you have on this!!

@ first anon: I’m so sorry, and we welcome you to this hell. But also, hey, how did you know to come to my humble blog like this? Has my vocal incoherent crying become this famous across the vast MDZS tumblr spaces? XD I’m extremely amused by this development.

BUT DO I HAVE THOUGHTS ABOUT JIANG CHENG’S SACRIFICE YOU BOTH ASK? OF COURSE I HAVE THOUGHTS LMAO!

Every single day I cry about this. For the majority of the story, we have Wei Wuxian’s sacrifice, downward spiral, and vilification at the forefront. This makes sense. He is the narrator. The main character. The one whom this story is about. We don’t learn about Jiang Cheng’s sacrifice until the very end. Until the moment we, the audience, think all the pieces of Wei Wuxian’s story have finally been neatly picked up and tucked away and Wei Wuxian gets the happy ending he most assuredly deserves at long last, we discover that one of the driving catalysts of Wei Wuxian’s entire story is actually because of this singular moment right here:

A little brother who loved his shixiong so fucking much. A little brother who, in the wake of losing his home, his parents, and his entire clan down to his very last shidi, consumed by grief and anguish and vengeance, with the burden and responsibility of rebuilding the honor and memory of his family’s sect now on his shoulders, looked at his brother in danger and chose his brother. He fucking chose him!

The haters of this fandom can argue again and again that Jiang Cheng did not choose or stand by Wei Wuxian “when it mattered” or whatever cockamamey logic drives the anti-grape agenda, but the fact of the matter is, Jiang Cheng absolutely did. He absolutely unquestioningly fucking did. Despite society, despite his awful parents, despite his insecurities telling him that they are not brothers, that they are not blood, Jiang Cheng decided Wei Wuxian was his anyway. Jiang Cheng looked at his brother and decided getting hurt, losing his core, and dying, hurt far less than watching Wei Wuxian get hurt. Just look at this fucking face! The grief. The sadness. The concern for his brother’s life. The resolve when he comes to his decision. The realization of what he is about to do. The fact that he can’t say goodbye to either his brother or his sister and neither of them will ever know why. The fact that he knows he will die and that is okay because his siblings will live. Take care, he says. I’m sorry and thank you and I love you.

Fuck it all to hell. The greatest and worst things Jiang Cheng and Wei Wuxian do to each other were out of love. And Jiang Cheng never fucking tells him. It pisses me off so much that he never tells Wei Wuxian, but it also breaks my heart into thousands of suffering pieces. Because even at Jiang Cheng’s angriest, at his most cruel, even in the face of Wei Wuxian’s most hurtful words and moments and actions, Jiang Cheng never once holds this moment against Wei Wuxian. A man known to say the absolute worst things at the absolute worst times buries this secret so deeply in his heart and doesn’t say a goddamn thing ever. And Wei Wuxian never tells him about the golden core transfer. Granted Wei Wuxian’s secrets are by far the most detrimental, but GOD THEY’RE SO STUPID YOU GUYS! SO SO STUPID.

And I get why Jiang Cheng doesn’t tell Wei Wuxian. I do! There’s so many factors to his decision to keep this secret, the fact that he wants Wei Wuxian to choose him for him instead of out of some guilty obligation notwithstanding! And @howdydowdy wrote an extraordinary meta about it all. BUT HEY, you dumb ass grape, I think maybe your equally bruised and insecure brother would also very much like to know how much you loved him! That it would also help him understand even if it hurts, even it paints the back end of your entire first lives together in a terribly excruciatingly painful light. Even if he gets extremely pissed off at you! Hey, maybe it would do some good for you both if the roles are reversed and Wei Wuxian gets mad at your reckless disregard for your life. Huge, huge, absolute losers, and I love these idiots so much.

Basically, everything is Jiang Cheng and everything hurts. MXTX/MDZS/CQL was like, hey, here’s a wonderfully complex story about an idealistic chaotic kindhearted little gremlin who would dig his own heart out of his chest for the people he loves and how he finds the love of his life, but spoiler alert, you’re actually going to spend most of your foreseeable days crying about his extremely well-dressed and prickly purple grape little brother instead! SURPRISE!

Anyway tl;dr Jiang Cheng loves Wei Wuxian so fucking much, pass it on.