#the fact that BOTH jiang cheng and lan xichen when the chips are down choose society over their respective halves of wangxian

[whetstonefires]

You know I'm realizing one reason you keep seeing mdzs modern AUs where the Jiang parents are alive mainly so they can dramatically fail and betray Wei Wuxian by cutting him off financially--defaulting on his college tuition or formally disowning him etc--isn't just that people want to translate the Burial Mounds II arc into modern terms while keeping Jiang Cheng clean of it.

(Despite the fact that the internal logic of Jiang Cheng's character is largely built around him being a person who would abandon someone he intensely cared about under these specific circumstances.)

It's because it's hard to set up a modern analogue for the way that Jiang Cheng is responsible for Wei Wuxian, as his Sect Leader.

We live in a highly individualistic society. People are trying to write Wei Wuxian Tragically Wronged, and because there's a normative expectation that people in the position of parents will provide you with resources, and certainly won't withdraw them without warning, but no such assumption that people in the position of siblings necessarily owe each other support, making this work in modern setting with Jiang Cheng in his canon role would require a lot of extra work, just to get a less readily resonant result.

But I keep thinking about it. Because something that's getting lost here is, not just the nuances of character and relationship, but like...it's sort of key to the story that cutting Wei Wuxian off was, in fact, Completely Socially Appropriate.

The level on which it was a betrayal is subtle, and deeply cutting. And intensely tied up in the very different opinions each of Jiang Cheng's parents had about what obligations existed in their family wrt Wei Wuxian, and what these meant.

The level on which it was the obvious, normal course of action is blatant. That is to a huge extent why it happens: because Jiang Cheng's instinct to conform is a survival instinct, reinforced by trauma, and Wei Wuxian's choices meant he had no coherently compelling reason not to obey it, and enormous peer pressure to do so.

The fact is that Jiang Cheng was making a reasonable choice, the actual thing 'anyone would do in that situation,' unlike Wei Wuxian and Jin Guangyao's respective wildly warped ideas about what that is.

Wei Wuxian wasn't betrayed by Jiang Sect like your foster parents cutting you off because you're disobedient. Wei Wuxian was betrayed by Jiang Sect like your brother refusing to drop fifty grand to bail you out of jail.

Of course Wei Wuxian tells him not to. And of course the fact that Jiang Cheng already chose in the moment not to pay a cent because Fuck You Wei Ying still stands there glaring, a precedent that can never be taken back.

And then later he's betrayed by Jiang Cheng like your brother cooperating with a police investigation into a manslaughter you really did commit, that's being handled like domestic terrorism. And then like your brother calling the cops on you. And then like your brother helping the cops find where you're hiding.

I'm personally fascinated by the way Jiang Cheng's lifelong resentment for the way Jiang Fengmian reliably bailed Wei Wuxian out of everything informed those decisions to do the normal thing, the way he's reacting against his dead father as well as against Wei Wuxian and the actual situation.

But even without that daddy issues angle, the fact that the person who made that choice was Jiang Cheng, and that it was simultaneously the reasonable appropriate normal upstanding citizen rational thing to do and so shitty Wei Wuxian would be entitled never to forgive it is sort of. The Point.

Of the scenario, and also to a considerable degree of the entire finely tuned narrative construct that is Jiang Cheng.

[youhideastar]

WujiWatch: CQL Rewatch Episode 12

So recently this meta about Jiang Cheng by @travelingneuritis rolled across my dash again, to my delight, and it made me think more deeply about the scene from this episode where, while Cloud Recesses is under attack, Lan Xichen tries to send Lan Qiren away with the Lan Sect’s books. As Lan Qiren correctly points out, though, that is not on: Lan Xichen is the sect leader, so even if no one else survives, he must, because otherwise, the sect itself will die. I assume this scene doesn’t exist in the book, because Lan Xichen is not the sect leader at the fall of Cloud Recesses there, so it’s interesting to think about why the writers included it in the drama. And since the meta linked above was fresh in my mind when I rewatched this episode, I couldn't escape the feeling that this scene is actually meant to reflect on Jiang Cheng. Hear me out!

You should read the whole thing, because it's excellent, but as relevant here, @travelingneuritis’s meta says: “Jiang Cheng’s willingness to lay down his life in Yiling to prevent Wei Wuxian’s capture was noble, loving, generous– but it was not proper for him to do because, as sect leader with no heir, his survival was more important than Wei Wuxian’s. His act of love was personal and therefore indulgent.” Framed like that, it's hard not to think of Lan Xichen’s attempt to sacrifice himself for Lan Qiren—another attempt by a sect leader to sacrifice himself for a loved one when annihilation of the sect is a very present threat—as somehow related. But how?

Well, first, the scene lays out precisely the in-universe rule the post references: straight from the mouth of Lan Qiren, Mr. Rules himself, we hear unequivocally that the sect leader’s job is to survive and that it is improper for him to instead prioritize his loved ones’ survival. But second, I think the fact that Lan Xichen tries to do the same darn thing in fact normalizes Jiang Cheng’s societally improper but loving decision. Lan Xichen is, especially in the pre-resurrection episodes, very much portrayed as both a Very Good Guy and a Responsible Grown-Up. In fact, in the Cloud Recesses Arc, being the Responsible Grown-Up whose presence means that nothing can be really all that wrong is like, his whole function (well, that, matchmaking, and delivering exposition). If Responsible Adult Lan Xichen, too, when the chips are down, chooses a person he loves over the future of his sect, then I think we’re meant to see that tendency as natural and, indeed, inevitable.

I can certainly see some counterarguments, however: first, there’s a filial piety aspect here that’s not present in Jiang Cheng’s decision, since Lan Qiren is Lan Xichen’s elder and the person who raised him; and second, uh, in the post-resurrection arc, letting his personal feelings get in the way of his better judgment and thus revealing himself to not be the Responsible Grown-Up is going to be Lan Xichen’s new whole thing. So arguably this scene is just foreshadowing, instead. (I don’t see a big difference based on the fact that Lan Xichen has Lan Wangji as his heir; as Lan Xichen and Lan Qiren acknowledge in this scene, they have no idea where he is at this point and he may already be dead, so relying on him to carry on the sect is at least as dubious as Jiang Cheng relying on his sickly sister or non-bloodline head disciple for the same.)

Of course, the other meaningful difference between Lan Xichen’s sacrifice and Jiang Cheng’s is that Lan Xichen tells the person he loves what he’s trying to do, thus giving Lan Qiren a chance to refuse that sacrifice—which he does.

Man, this got so long—I ran out of space to talk about Mianmian the Political Operative saving Jin Zixuan’s bacon! Hopefully there will be another opportunity.