#ok im gonna go now. my word counter said this essay is 1377 words jesus christ

[qilingxiong]

also, follow up: please tell us ur thoughts on chengning. i am intrigued by their potential dynamic.

(i apologize if u’ve already done that, i’m relatively new here)

Consider This My Unofficial Chengning Manifesto

    I'm so sorry this is late, anon. I was in the middle of writing a much more in-depth post to answer this, but then real life got in the way and I'm not sure I'll finish it. I have a free moment now, though, so I'm going to do my best. It's probably going to be long, and rambling, and a slight mess. You have been Warned.

    So, Chengning. These two don't seem to make much sense together at first, considering that they've ended up on opposite sides of almost every conflict that involved them, but they actually share a lot of parallels and those combined with their differences make this ship so much fun to dig into. Jiang Cheng and Wen Ning are younger brothers whose older siblings would and did do everything in their power to protect them. They're the experiments of each other's sibling as a result of that protection (the first sentient fierce corpse and the first recipient of a golden core transfer). Both of them live in the shadows of their siblings' glory up until they become feared instead of admired, and both of them shared a connection with the other's sibling that ended in tragedy. For more Chengning comparisons, I will direct you to @elysean's gifset here.

    (To be honest, the things that tie the Yunmeng Shuangjie and the Wen siblings together could be an essay all on their own, but this is about Chengning, so I'll move on.)

    What separates these two didis is their choices, which we see throughout canon but I'll do a quick recap. Wen Ning endangered his clan for Wei Wuxian's sake again and again, but when the Dafan Wen needed help, Jiang Cheng didn't offer it. These two witnessed the destruction of each other's clans. Wen Ning killed Jin Zixuan. Jiang Cheng let both Wen Ning and Wen Qing march to their demise at Jinlintai. Skip to the present day, and Jiang Cheng becomes the only person Wen Ning loses his temper at while fully conscious, during the golden core transfer reveal. But a day later, Wen Ning saves Jin Ling and Jiang Cheng from Baxia, despite knowing how much Jiang Cheng hates him.

    By the end of canon, we're left with two people who are the last of their clans (save for nephews with different surnames), who share some very messy history and traumatic events, but also similarities and the potential to get to a better place. What can we do with that?

    Well, post-Guanyin Lan Sizhui and Jin Ling are going around night-hunting together, and it's canon that Wen Ning and Jiang Cheng follow their respective nephews around during hunts to make sure they don't get hurt. That's a lot of time around each other in forced proximity, where they have to be civil for the sake of the juniors. And possibly work together to defend said juniors from harm. At some point you have to go, Okay, you keep saving my nephew whether it was a deliberate choice or not, maybe you aren't completely terrible.

    Also, both sides of Chengning are removed from Wei Wuxian in this situation, who is someone who ties them together and exacerbates their problems with one another. There's a slightly better chance of open communication working out in the middle of the forest, away from the cultivation world and all the judgment and baggage that goes with it.

    I'm not saying these two work it out just like that, though. No, I'm of the belief that Chengning's first real step toward each other is hatesex, along the lines of Fuck you, you keep saving the only family I have left and you're good at it, and some mixture of unwilling attraction. Look, both Sandu Shengshou and the Ghost General are hot, single and lonely. In addition, I think it's hilarious to make Jiang Cheng have a very good time while regretting it more than most things in his entire life, and Wen Ning deserves to be mean in a fun way! Whether or not you want Chengning to acknowledge the things they have in common at this point is for your interpretation, but I think it adds to the pairing if their thoughts are somewhere around I hate you, but you're the only person who actually gets what I feel like.

    With Chengning as reluctant night-hunt chaperones and enemies-with-benefits, we have room for trust to form. An unconscious trust in each other to watch their nephews' backs in a fight, to watch out for each other, and while Chengning's lingering anger at one another is still counterproductive to where we want them to go, there's a twisted sense of trust to be found in that too. It provides them with a sense of agency- Wen Ning believes Jiang Cheng doesn't need to be shielded from secrets and told him the truth about his golden core, and Jiang Cheng has blamed Wen Ning specifically for his actions for a very long time. It's not exactly healthy, at least not at first. But having someone you can consistently rely on to view you as a person with flaws, who thinks you deserve to be held responsible for bad things and possess the autonomy to do so, is more than most have been willing to give Wen Ning or Jiang Cheng.

    Being able to trust someone's rage gives Chengning the open space to process their emotions, for Jiang Cheng to break down and Wen Ning to lash out. It's an outlet they both need, and these are two people who will be able to understand what the other person is going through regardless of what they think about it. There's something to be said for acknowledging the person across from you as a reflection of yourself, until you learn to see them not with hatred or anger, but something close to acceptance. Of them, and of yourself.

    From there, it's a journey for Chengning to be on the same side of something for once, and actively making that decision. It's about the slow unveiling of vulnerability! It's about healing yourself by doing the same for someone else! It’s about looking back at a fractured past and choosing to make the future something different! Everything I’ve said is just one example of how Chengning could go, of course, nothing is set in stone. But you asked specifically for my thoughts, so these are some of the broad points in a Chengning arc I like to see.

    The way I look at it, Chengning is not a soulmate story, it’s a story of two people who had to put in the immense, terrible effort of understanding and reconciling the other, and they got through those conflicts in the end. And once they’re actually together, Jiang Cheng and Wen Ning’s personalities actually go fairly well together. Their strengths are different, and they’re willing to confront in situations where the other withdraws. Wen Ning can soothe Jiang Cheng’s temper, Jiang Cheng can draw out more of the emotions Wen Ning keeps hidden. This already happens in canon, because Jiang Cheng has seen the anger Wen Ning didn’t show anyone else, and Wen Ning has seen Jiang Cheng at some of the most vulnerable points in his life. 

    And I have to mention this last point because we, the people sharing the one (1) Chengning braincell in this fandom have collectively lost our minds over this multiple times, but Wen Ning and Jiang Cheng each have sixteen years’ worth of touch starvation. To whoever’s bothered to read this far, if nothing else has convinced you to ship Chengning, imagine them cuddling. Imagine just a few of these touches, but reciprocated, and all the time. (If you want your fill of this, @gusu-emilu has been doing the gods’ work and writing fantastic Chengning cuddling for the few of us in the rarepair seats.)

    I could go on about Chengning for hours (and most definitely have on more than one occasion) but I think that covers the basics of this pairing. I’ll leave you to decide whether you ship it or not, though at the very least, I hope I provided you with a change in perspective. Thanks for the ask!