Day 8: Heartbreak

I know similar themed drawings have been done before but- man. Jiang Cheng just makes me so sad sometimes. He was so young when everything went down I still kinda want to reach out and give him a hug and tell him that things will work out eventually.

And we're officially past the first week of inktober. It's- it's rough out there. The brain is starting to run dry.

Oh my god, anyone realise that for Jiang Cheng to have had the comb to give to Wen Qing after Lotus Pier fell, he must have had it on him on the day which means...he regularly carried it around. This teenage boy who knew full well after the Qishan Indoctrination that the Wen were The Enemy and he wouldn't ever be allowed to be with Wen Qing carried that comb around with him because he presumably couldn't bear to put aside that symbol of his feelings. Remember the day Lotus Pier was sacked started out the same as any other day - even if Jiang Cheng anticipated trouble from the Wen at some point following the fiasco in the Xuanwu Cave, there's no way he could have known that by nightfall he would have lost his home, his parents and his sect and be on the run with his siblings with nothing but the clothes on their backs and whatever they carried with them. And so he carried that comb around next to his heart everyday, just like afterwards he would carry his love for Wen Qing despite her clan massacring his, despite being so traumatised he flinched from her in the supervisory office. He carried that love through the months after the sacking until he offered it to her along with the comb when he found her in that cell. And much later, when she followed him down from the Burial Mounds and returned it to him because she couldn't accept his love and his protection, not when she would have to leave her family behind, the freaking devastation on his face as she gave it back and the way he took it so reluctantly as if it physically pained him because his feelings hadn't ebbed at all...man, that comb encompassed so much. And it was a crying shame that they couldn't be together, that the world wouldn't let them.

Can I also mention that combs and hair are also *marriage* related in Chinese tradition. Firstly, if your original wife (yuanpei also known as your jiefa/hair tying wife) dies young, tradition states that you break the comb you used during marriage/wedding night and keep the half with a few strands of her hair while the other half gets buried in with her in her coffin. (1.) There's also the jiefa ceremony, which iirc happens on the wedding night to your first wife where newly married couples each clip a lock of their hair to tie together to symbolize their union. Nowadays the term "jiefa fuqi/hair tied husband and wife" refers to a couple who knew each other and married when they were young.

There is ALSO a tradition for married couples to break apart a chai (double pronged hair stick) when they had to separate/one of them leaves on a long trip so that each of them has one half of the hair stick and the chai will be reunited when they reunite. (2.)

In some parts of china a comb is a betrothal present!! (pardon my exasperation I can find lots of modern sources re this comb betrothal present thing AND also about the hair combing ceremony but the historical sourcing I've been finding on this is vague, however this is not a vogue modern tradition so I think my search terms in chinese are just lacking)

The whole thing is a HIGH commitment symbol. They chose a COMB as a symbol of ChengQing's feelings towards each other for very highly specific cultural reasons and they have to do with what a comb symbolizes -- marriage, fortune, love, growing old together, romance, and most of all deep commitment.

1.) Baidu page about jiefa

2.) sourcing regarding the chai hair stick tradition

Thinking about cql!jc with donghua!jc’s haircut

Followers/mutuals pls tell me ur favorite thing about JC…

on a watsonian level: the way he's caught between love and duty. the way he, unlike wei wuxian, cannot afford to be idealistic and heroic and instead must be pragmatic, because the fate of his sect rides on his shoulders. the way he looks before he leaps. the way he singlehandedly brought his sect back from the brink of annihilation. the way in which he has always felt, whether justifiably or not, that he just isn't enough to be anyone's first choice, that no one would ever choose him first; the way in which, despite his fears of being abandoned, he doesn't want to force someone to stay with him if they don't want to stay with him. the way in which he's been pickling for 13 years over the question of why wei wuxian did what he did: did wei wuxian genuinely mean it when he promised they'd be the twin heroes of yunmeng; did wei wuxian ever actually really care about them, about him? the way in which, by drawing away the wen patrol to save wei wuxian, he betrayed every single one of his filial duties. the way in which he clearly loves jin ling, despite his flawed parenting; the way in which he does better by jin ling than yu ziyuan did by him.

also the way in which he's the funniest bitch in the story lmao

on a doylist level: i find it interesting how the narrative of MDZS deliberately misleads the reader about jiang cheng's character, right up until the reveal of how he actually lost his golden core. MDZS deliberately invokes and subverts several popular wuxia genre tropes, including but not limited to the Always Chaotic Evil demonic-cultivator final boss (wei wuxian, who in reality was only trying to protect the innocent and repay his debts) and the scheming villain who pulls out an evil scheme when he's cornered (jin guangyao, who in reality was only trying to retrieve his dead mother's remains before fleeing the country). jiang cheng himself is clearly meant to read as the common character trope of the "inferior brother jealous + resentful of his more successful brother." it's easy to read MDZS and conclude that jiang cheng is just another iteration of said trope: that he failed to stand with wei wuxian purely because of his inferiority complex, that he now genuinely hates wei wuxian because of wei wuxian's role in jiang yanli's death.

yet, once you get to the guanyin temple scene, you realize that there's more depth to jiang cheng's character than this mere trope suggests. while jiang cheng does have a massive chip on his shoulder about feeling inferior to wei wuxian, his thoughts and feelings towards wei wuxian are far more complicated than a mere inferiority complex. while jiang cheng does blame wei wuxian for jiang yanli's death, his deeply-held grievances against wei wuxian do not fall solely along those lines.

when jiang cheng started yelling at wei wuxian at the yunping guanyin temple, i fully expected him to scream at wei wuxian for causing the circumstances that led to jiang yanli's death and for playing a major role in orphaning jin ling. but jiang cheng did not do that. and it was only when jiang cheng defied my expectations and instead began to cry about broken promises, about how wei wuxian had promised him that the two of them would be the twin prides of yunmeng and that wei wuxian broke this promise by leaving him, that i realized i was wrong about this character. when i realized: ah, i never noticed. jiang cheng must too have once genuinely loved wei wuxian.

that was the exact moment i became a jiang cheng fan.

given that the reveal of how jiang cheng actually lost his golden core came right after this scene, i do think that how i reacted to jiang cheng is how MXTX intended for the readers to react to jiang cheng. once i reread the book, i realized that the narration went out of its way several times to obfuscate the fact that jiang cheng loved wei wuxian, even though in hindsight such a fact is obvious. when jiang cheng does something cruel or hateful, the narration can always spare a few extra lines describing how hateful jiang cheng is being - whether said line is about the rumors surrounding jiang cheng's torture hobby, wei wuxian's snarky internal commentary on how unreasonable jiang cheng is being, or a simple description of how dramatically jiang cheng sneers. yet, when jiang cheng does something kind - when he carries wei wuxian after wei wuxian gets beaten by the lan, when he runs for seven day straight to save wei wuxian and lan wangji from the cave of the xuanwu of slaughter, when he and jiang yanli secretly visit wei wuxian in yiling, when he runs back into the demon-subduing cave after a wei wuxian using himself as bait despite jiang cheng's spiritual powers still being sealed - the narration does not comment on said deed at all. it merely describes said deed before moving on immediately. almost as if we are meant to take for granted that jiang cheng once cared for wei wuxian. almost as if we aren't meant to notice at all, until the scene in the yunping guanyin temple.

You know the Canon Jiang Cheng tag was never made to be a "safe space" for JC antis when JC antis literally already had other tags for their posts that JC fans respectfully stay out of (Anti JC tag, JC critical tag, JC bashing tag etc).

You already had tags for your community. You made the Canon Jiang Cheng tag to demean Jiang Cheng fans and act as though your interpretations are gospel and you know it. Not only that, you use this tag to mock and insult us in the same breath.

Your community has been just as bad for jumping on fans for simply liking a character. Your community has even willingly entered JC fan spaces, screenshot our prompts, and fanfictions just to laugh at them with all your mates. So yes, actually. JC antis have been VERY vile towards other fans, too.

As someone who came in as a Wangxian fan first, I left that community and strayed away from the mainstream side towards the JC side because of all the bullying within the Wangxian community in general.

Your bullying doesn't even stop with JC fans. You've bullied JGY fans, BottomJi fans, Chengxian fans, and Xicheng fans alike. You have turned away so many people just because they're enjoying a work of fiction in the way you don't like. So stop acting like you're a victimised community. You are not. You are still able to enthuse about your favourite characters in the main tags without receiving hate for it. If we did that, we have to be prepared with the block button or risk facing a barrage of hate from the nasty side of the Wangxian community.

I'll stand here and condemn the misbehaviour of toxic JC fans who bully people. But I expect you JC antis to do the same with the people on your side of the fandom. The fact is, you never do. All I see on this tag is JC antis belittling fans, then playing victim the moment you are called out for your needless character and fan bashing.

Accept accountability and grow up.

The way he instantly swoops in to comfort Jin Ling the very moment he sees he is upset and hurting 😭😭

He doesn't tell him to "man up" or "suck it up." Instead, he's instantly rushing in to comfort him, to let him cry and ask who had hurt him.

Jiang Cheng went beyond the expected norms of a leader in an ancient time period. He allowed Jin Ling (the sect heir of a powerful sect) to express a moment of vulnerability and not once shamed him for it.

He allows Jin Ling to be a normal teenager, for that was robbed from him thanks to the actions of adults who were supposed to be making a brighter and happier future for the next generation. Jiang Cheng didn't want to make the same mistakes as his predecessors. He wanted a safe world that was free from war and terror, so his nephew could live a long and fulfilling life. He wanted to raise and nurture a boy his sister would be proud of 🥺

jiang cheng says "son of a prostitute" within earshot of jin guangyao, 20 dead, 44 wounded

Jiang Cheng ^^ Don’t remember if I’ve posted it here before…

not a day passes by where I don't think about the yunmeng brothers and their love, which despite its abundance haunts the other

"Sect Leader Jiang" keeps autocorrecting to "Sext Leader Jiang" and I know that we don't have a clear understanding of what he was doing in those 13-16 years but i can tell you right now that that man was not sexting

"JC should have defended WWX and the Wen remnants-" babe he has no political capital right now. He's rebuilding his sect from the ground up after a war. He's been locked out of the Venerated Triad. He's the youngest sect leader. How could he have defended them and not doomed himself and his sect all over again.

One of the things that I think about is how naïve people can be. Like there was nothing he could do not without betraying the people who he had pledged to keep safe. I work in education, and this kind of reminds me of what teachers are supposed to do if there’s an active shooter. First you look into the hallway and try and pull all the kids into your room that you can. Then you shut and lock it you don’t let anyone in unless they have a badge and they open the door with the master key. You are not open the door, regardless of who knocks and asks to come in. 

I can’t imagine being in that situation, but my priority has to be the kids who are in my room. I am responsible for them. I do know that if I was put in that position, the guilt would eat me up for the rest of my life regardless of what decision I made. I don’t let the people knocking in and they could die. I let them in and they could shoot up my entire classroom. 

I promise you that the teachers, who don’t let the people knocking in the room, want to help everybody. But you can’t help everyone and you don’t get everybody killed trying to save people that you don’t have the power to save.

what kind of stan is entirely up to you

keep in mind that the jiang cheng stans won the horniest stan poll

I picked Jiang Cheng because WWX meeting his stans is not having a terrible time, just a busy one as he kills them all without remorse or regret.

Jiang Cheng meeting his (horneee) stans is having a clusterfuck of emotions, including incredulity ("DO YOU PEOPLE NOT HAVE LIVES? GO TOUCH GRASS!"), fear ("oh no am I a role model?"), insecurity ("oh no I am a role model!"), mystification ("Wei Wuxian is right there why are you looking at me?"), and disgust ("You shame your ancestors, leave me out of it!").