#please please please ur not just first disciple and sect heir/leader ur brothers ur friends ur platonic soulmates

[sandu-zidian]

I'm having Yunmeng Shuangjie feelings I am losing it over the way these two idiots try to rationalize the decisions and emotions towards the other through duty and obligation.

Wei Wuxian attempts to rationalize the golden core transfer and his subsequent actions of secrecy and running away by trying to convince both himself and JC (and others) that he made those decisions out of duty, debt, and obligation: duty to JC, debt to Yunmeng Jiang, debt and obligation towards the Wen siblings. By doing so he hopes to mask the deep truth that his singular most important decision -- to transfer his own core to JC -- was done not out of duty, but out of love. If he admits to how love pushed him to try and fix JC, he would then have to grapple with the blatant truth that not only did the decision break the trust between himself and JC, but in fact did the opposite of fixing JC. The event only further breaks them apart. WWX refuses to acknowledge any feelings of regret he could possibly have about the golden core transfer -- either because did not understand how terrible living without a golden core could be, or because he knows that what he did to JC was agonizing -- by only accepting his actions as done by a servant for a master, as a disciple for his sect and sect leader.

Jiang Cheng also suffers from this rationalization. When WWX defects and later dies, JC attempts to reinforce his righteous anger and rage towards WWX by viewing his betrayal not as done by a close friend and brother, but as betrayal done by a sect member and first disciple. By publicly and internally deriding WWX as a traitor to Yunmeng Jiang, forgoing his duty and obligation to his sect leader and the sect that took him in, JC can delude himself into accepting the derision and gloating exalted by the rest of the cultivation world and reject the complex and often contradictory feelings of grief and loss he feels towards WWX that stem from the painful truth that WWX hurt him not because he was a trusted discple, but because he was a close confidante and an almost-brother. Such pitiful emotions are unacceptable for someone so hated as WWX. So, JC aligns his emotional turmoil with the rest of society by refusing to remember the whole truth of his relationship with WWX as not just a trusted disciple, but as a dear friend and an older brother. In doing so, JC's negative emotions are quite unfair (though in his defense it's not like JC knew the truth behind WWX's confounding actions) and also never allow JC any chance to actually come to terms with WWX's betrayal and painful downfall.

I think the best Yunmeng Shuangjie reconciliation stories are the ones where JC has to admit that his comtempt towards WWX during the 13 years that he was dead was unneccessarily unfair and allowed him no place to truly accept and grieve for the loss of his brother, and where WWX has to admit to himself the true reason for the golden core transfer and how he cannot run away from the reality of the pain such a decision caused both himself and his brother, and perhaps even admit that it wasn't really the right decision, if there even is a right decision for that scenario at all. I need JC to yell at WWX about how the whole golden core transfer just serves to prove that WWX never accepted himself as family to the Jiang siblings when JC and JYL both cared for him deeply as a brother, while WWX yells back at JC about how he could possibly dare to see JC as family when all he has done in the years since his resurrection was act as if WWX was nothing but a sect traitor and stranger not worthy of a truthful conversation.