#to be clear i am not a hater of this ship. ive read some very good fics for it and i think you can make it work.

[qiu-yan]

ok so i had this thought after reading other people's thoughts on the ship. but the amount of jiggy-bashing in postcanon xicheng fics makes absolutely no sense, just on a fundamental internal-consistency level?

arguably THE central thesis of postcanon xicheng is that lan xichen and jiang cheng have been through similar experiences: both trusted and were betrayed by a brother-figure, who was then persecuted and killed by the cultivation world, and who is now considered an evil monster by the cultivation world. both characters are credited with and praised for killing this brother figure by the general public, even though their actual feelings on the brother figure are incredibly complex.

regardless of whether you think this thesis is true or not, if you take this thesis to its logical conclusion, then the jiggy-bashing in postcanon xicheng fics makes no sense. jiang cheng rolls up and goes "rip dude your ex sucked shit" and that makes lan xichen happy? that helps lan xichen heal? if lan xichen really is where jiang cheng was after the first siege of the burial mounds 13 years ago, then no way. absolutely not.

after all, if someone had rolled up to jiang cheng during the 13-year timeskip and went "rip dude your ex sucked shit," that would not have made jiang cheng happy in the long run. that would not have helped him heal. jiang cheng was the one actively telling himself that his ex-whatever sucked shit, and it made him miserable. the entire cultivation world was telling jiang cheng that his ex-whatever sucked shit, and it made him miserable! so, if you want the central xicheng thesis of "their experiences parallel each other" to be true, the same reasoning has to also apply here to lan xichen - literally everyone else and their mom is already bashing jiggy, so additional jiggy-bashing is not going to make lan xichen happy in the long run.

in my opinion, you can absolutely make postcanon xicheng work. imo there is absolutely stuff to work with, even before getting into all the hilarious BIL drama. but a postcanon xicheng that heavily features jiggy bashing simply does not make sense.