#jiang cheng

autumnslantern:

incarnadinedreams:

I’ve seen it mentioned a few times recently on twitter that there’s a talking point floating around about how in the novel, Jiang Cheng murders anyone whose surname is Wen, even if they’re not part of the Wen clan.

Friendly reminder: that’s… not what actually happens.

I think the source of this claim is this part of the novel:

The owner, “Also, I’ve heard of another person who was scared away.”

Wei WuXian, “Scared away by what?” It couldn’t have been when Jiang Cheng was whipping someone again, could it? Just how often did Jiang Cheng capture people and whip them?

The owner, “No, no. It was his misfortune. The person’s surname was Wen, and that Sect Leader Jiang’s archenemy happened to have the surname of Wen as well. He’s hating on everyone in this world whose surname is Wen. Whenever he sees one, he’d grind his teeth in hatred, wanting to skin them alive. How could he give a single friendly look to…”

Wei WuXian looked down and pinched the center of his brows. He didn’t say anything. The good thing was that he didn’t need to say anything. After rambling for so long, the owner was satisfied as well, “I’ve delayed your dinner with all this chatter, haven’t I? I’ll go down and disturb you no longer. Please tell me if there’s anything else you need.”

– Ch. 92 of the ExR translation

The big dramatic reveal of this story is that… the guy rolls up to Lotus Pier and gets scared off because Jiang Cheng made a bitchy face at him. The whole point is that it’s supposed to be “but wait, there’s more..!” and then… it’s nothing. The dude wasn’tkilled because his surname was Wen, he just… left because Jiang Cheng looked grumpy.

It’s a letdown of our expectations of what horrible thing we’re about to hear about Jiang Cheng next. After all that buildup in that scene, in the final story she tells, nothing actually happened, and that’s… kind of the point. The whole scene is about making you think about the veracity of what you’ve just heard, about rumors vs. reality.

(The other point is that it’s just funny and that point of the novel needed some humor to lighten the mood in between the Ancestral Hall and Guanyin Temple scenes.)

I do think it’s funny that this passage was misinterpreted and turned into a far juicier rumor in fandom than what actually exists in the novel, though. Incredibly fitting, actually, that it’s then being repeated several times on different platforms without anyone apparently checking the source…

I definitely think this is meant to make us question the other rumors, both in what a letdown it is, and also just the speaker’s reliability in general? For as much attention as Jiang Cheng torturing demonic cultivators gets, it’s honestly barely in the book and what is there is extremely vague. Before this we just hear the “captures them and doesn’t let them go” from background extras that Jin Ling later parrots, but he doesn’t seem to know any details because at the very least he is not old enough for the non-existant torture dungeons. Jiang Cheng’s own internal thoughts are that he has his ways to get answers that he’s used countless times in the past, and then he shows Wei Wuxian a dog. This innkeeper is the one who finally gives us some details on Jiang Cheng’s much whispered about reputation, and her stories are as follows:

1. The Jiang don’t make non-malignant hauntings a priority, something that Wei Wuxian has noted more than once is standard policy because there aren’t enough cultivators to go around.

2. Her friend went to Lotus Pier once to get help for his haunting and witnessed JC whipping a guy bloody and his disciples said it was because he was in a bad mood because he caught the wrong person again.

3. If you have the last name Wen Jiang Cheng will make a really mean face at you.

Truly, tremble in fear of the unspeakably evil villain that is Sandu Shengshou.

yilingbaby:

I’ve been seeing a lot of Jiang Cheng slander by people with poor reading comprehension and I’m here to clear it out, once and for all.

Jiang Cheng was raised by parents who were too busy sorting out their personal skirmishes to tend to their kid, an inferiorty complex that gnawed upon him day by day. He only knew the compassion and love of his shijie. He lost his whole family when he was just a teenager. And then he lost his brother too, the one who promised to stay together by his side forever. He built his whole sect anew out of ruins, he saved it from being forgotten as a part of history, he did that with nobody to pat his back on the most exhausting nights, all alone. He carried the grief and trauma for years but did not succumb to it. He raised Jin Ling with more love than his body could hold. Of course he was the strict jiujiu but never forget how he ran to save Jin Ling without giving a flying fuck about his own life when he was captured by Jin Guangyao. Despite never receiving proper attention and care from his parents himself, he made sure that none of these atrocities touched Jin Ling in the slightest. He’s the only one in mdzs whose secret remained hidden within him. That he didn’t run because he was overcome with vengeance, that he ran to save Wei Ying, his only brother, that he ran ahead to distract the soldiers from capturing Wei Ying.

He had his flaws, like everybody else, flaws that made him human. And I’m not letting anyone talk shit about my son on my watch.

Jiang Cheng: I’m a normal, well-adjusted Jiujiu

Wei Wuxian:…you have kept every single one of Jin Ling’s baby teeth, you cry over his baby shoes, you keep a tiny portrait of Jin Ling in your robes, and when you get drunk, you grab random people on the street and shove the portrait in their faces like ‘look at my nephew’, you cry about missing his baby smell, you-

Jiang Cheng: -you’re saying a lot of things, yet none of it sounds like a point

thefandomcache:

Not another god damned post about how lwj chose wwx over his clan (i.e this is the good and right thing to do) whereas jc didn’t, and how jc chose society (and his mother’s ideals… right bcuz it’s his mother that he was thinking of, not literally all the ppl he’s now responsible for) over wwx like flipping heck i am so tired of this damn fandom.

JC choosing the people whose lives he is responsible for over ONE person is not a bad thing. LWJ was friggin free to choose wwx bcuz he wasn’t responsible for a goddamn soul on the planet except his own.

And news flash, lwj going to see wwx at the BM and at qionqi pass is not him choosing wwx over his clan, if he chose wwx over his clan then he would have helped him and stayed with him what shit are you on? the only moment he chose wwx over his clan was at the end when he attacked his clan elders, and not before it, and what he did was unfilial (something OP of that post doesn’t place any importance in even tho chinese culture at least in that time places high importance on this). Not only was he unfilial but it’s essentially treason to side with wwx while attacking his elders and he’s lucky he was only whipped and not killed or banished for it.

I hate this narrative that everyone who didn’t drop everything for wwx is bad and in the wrong and clearly didn’t care for him.

I wonder how hard it was for Jiang Cheng to grow up having a mom that he just knew at least 70% of the ymj disciples would sleep with if she asked. Same thing with Jin Ling. I like to imagine that every time Jin Ling hears someone say ‘gosh, I wish Sandu Shengshou would whip ME with Zidian’, he gets a little closer to just straight up ending it all.