#they'd be a disaster but what isn't in mdzs

[gusu-emilu]

I’ve talked with @eldritch-elrics and @qi-ling about Sangchengning several times (thank you for your thoughts) and I think the ship has a lot of potential.

It starts with the parallels. They are each a youngest brother left behind. They each value family yet are left alone for different reasons, “othered” by the world. They each care too much, love too hard, know grief too intimately. They are also some of the few people left who know who Wei Wuxian really is.

They each know anger deeply and feel it deeply, but express it in different ways ranging from NHS’s cold, quiet manipulation to JC’s heated outbursts to WN’s bottled-up resentment. They have each seen the consequences of how their anger has affected the world, with varying degrees of responsibility. They each have complicated relationships with betrayal and consent, sometimes as perpetrators, sometimes as victims (elaborating on this mess would really need its own post). All of these could be possible connecting points between them--opportunities for healing, for making sense of the past, for figuring out where to go from here.

I do think it would be a bit difficult for the ship to actually work out. Personally I think JC’s inferiority complex might get in the way of poly-ness (although I am 100% here for JC getting extra love), there’s the question of who reaches out first when tie-lines feel so frigid and distant and maybe aren’t even visible, and JC and WN have a lot of issues obstructing an amicable relationship between them...but still.

NHS is the link, the starting point. I think he would be looking for someone to connect with post-canon, somewhere he can let down his mask. JC and WN would probably like apologies for their nephews being put in danger and would be suspicious of him, but would also sympathize with him. From there, NHS could make a very good mediator between JC and WN, who are more similar to each other than they realize.

Bonus points for added backstories to deepen the narrative--it’s fair game for any of them to have been childhood friends/lovers during the Cloud Recesses study arc, and NHS and JC could have had some history during the timeskip. If we’re getting creative, WN could also enter the picture during the timeskip (i.e. NHS helps him escape from Jinlintai and keeps him somewhere safe, visits him often and forms a friendship toeing the line of romantic, one day JC discovers him--I cannot express how badly I need fanfic of this concept).

Plus their personalities are just fun to put together! There’s a lot of potential for humor and fluff, too. They can each bring out different types of expressiveness in the other: WN and NHS can bring out the softness in JC, JC can bring out a more vocal side of NHS and WN, NHS can bring out the troll in WN, and JC and WN would both definitely indulge NHS on his whimsy. They each are impulsive in some ways and steady in others. They’d complement each other well.

It would take work for Sangchengning to happen, but the intentionality of forming something new and whole out of broken pieces is all part of the charm :)