#like the yunmeng bros relationship is THE most interesting wwx relationship imo and it is the one my heart WISHES for closure on

[thatswhatsushesaid]

i think most of my wwx opinions are unpopular outside of my little patch in this fandom, but i genuinely do believe that post-canon wwx and jc are just better off being out of each other’s lives as much as possible, crossing paths only out of necessity for jin ling.

sometimes when the wounds cut deeply enough, even if none of those wounds were inflicted intentionally or maliciously, it doesn’t matter how much you loved your family member, how much you sacrificed for them, or how much they sacrificed for you. your presence in each other’s lives just aggravates those injuries and prevents them from healing, and maybe the kindest thing you can do for each other is to just leave each other alone.

[crossdressingdeath]

From my meta stash, a really great post (and foundational general JC meta imo as well) about the 3 poisons if you're still interested shinocchi(.)com(/)2020(/)03(/)15(/)a-reptiles-poison On the most general value of this kind of naming, I believe it can be either aspirational (like naming WWX Wuxian or LWJ Wangji, as an ideal to aim for) or more like a warning, such as the name of the Nie sect's place, the Unclean realm, which isn't supposed to mean that the Nie clan doesn't vacuum under the 1/6

furniture, but it's more like a memento mori of sorts, only centered on Buddhist beliefs that our current plane of existence, the world of flesh where the souls are incarnated in is an impure place where passions reign and prevent people from reaching enlightenment and so freedom from desire and from the reincarnation cycle, and I believe JC's title also belong to this category. But while NMJ was famous for holding no interest in the fleeting pleasures of this world, I really do not think2/6

that JC managed such a detachment regarding the three poisons he's named for and his title really feels like the author is trying to tell us something. On a side note, I have always hated the headcanons that put the weight of JC's current unhappiness on anyone other than him, not only because I think that they are mostly bullshit, but because I think that this is a very important story point explored by the contrast between JC and WWX, how one, no matter what catastrophes befell him, is always3

smiling with an incredible capacity to pick himself up and keep going and how the other is picking all the resentments, all the hurts, all the little grudges he can find and keeping them close and dear to his heart, which ends up slowly poisoning him and making him the bitter, lonely person he's at the end of the story, a sad prisoner of his past, which as some of us in the grapehate tag have noticed isn't even that tragic compared to others. My point is that while terrible things4/6

happened to him, as they did to many other characters in the story, his current unhappiness is purely his own, he could decide to be free from the weight of the past and move on, but he chooses not to, as we can see so clearly in his failing relationship post-resurrection with WWX where he can only speak of past debts, past promises while WWX gently reminds him that he already died once and it's the past now, not because WWX is flighty or he forgets hurts or debts easily but because he 5/6

lets go. If there is one thing that the changing fortunes of his lives taught WWX is that you can't live happy if you let the weight of the past chain your future.6/6

The tragedy of JC’s character is that he refuses to let go of the past. He puts the weight of his misery on everyone around him and believes that means he doesn’t have to work on improvement or moving forward because it’s their job, and so... he’s never going to escape the past. It’s one reason why people insisting it really is other people’s fault bothers me, because it definitely feels like they’re missing the point. JC is miserable because he blames other people for his misfortune, unlike WWX who has an incredible capacity for letting go and moving forward. It’s made very clear, for instance, that Yunmeng bros can’t reconcile at this point because JC refuses to move forward. He wants everyone else to pay the price and put in the effort for him, and that mean he will never escape the past, because it’s JC’s responsibility and JC’s responsibility alone to accept the past and move beyond it. I wish more people got that, instead of going for the surface-level “JC says his suffering is WWX’s fault so it’s WWX’s fault”.