#weird chinese family thingz

[sailormelanie]

Outing myself here as a Jiang Cheng apologist. By the end of this post, maybe I’ll even be a stan, who knows!

I was browsing MDZS fan discourse on the relationship between Jiang Cheng and Wei Wuxian and found some fans frustrated with fanfic portrayals of their relationship being more friendly than it is in canon.

I hard disagree on that, but I certainly get it. (spoilers for MDZS obvi, if for whatever reason you haven’t read it/finished reading it)

Or rather, I agree that Wei Wuxian and Jiang Cheng dislike each other (or parts of each other), but I contend that they still very much love each other. The problem is that, at least in canon, neither of them knows how to love the other in the right away. Their upbringing just complicates things a lot :/ Weird family shit. Weird BROTHER shit too, tbh.

All of their conversations, even during their teen years, don’t really feel “loving” (though I would still contend that their combative-ness is a form of love). Their interactions in general feel awkward at times, and words feel constantly loaded, with both of them leaving those interactions feeling relieved that it’s over. But all the actions they take on behalf of the other are surely indicative of some form of love (JC rushing without rest to save WWX from the Xuanwu of Slaughter cave; WWX GIVING HIS GOLDEN CORE TO JC; JC distracting the Wen soldiers from WWX; JC tirelessly searching for WWX when he’s presumed dead at the hands of the Wen; WWX cutting himself off from the Jiangs because while he can’t compromise on his ideals, he’s not willing to drag the sect down with him etc. etc. etc.).  By the end of canon, they may not be friends, but they’re certainly family :P Essentially, when it comes to these 2, the mantra seems to be, “I can’t love you with my words, but my actions should speak for me.”

Which like. Ugh. UGH. ACTIONS ARE ALSO GOOD, BUT PLEASE USE YOUR WORDS.

I don’t mean to speak for “The Community” (I’m an ABC), but this kind of dislike-love relationship feels pretty typical of a Chinese family dynamic.

Anyway, this is why I like reading fics (post-canon, AU or otherwise) in which they learn to communicate and/or they learn how to interpret the actions of the other, because although it’s definitely softer than what we see in canon, I like to hope that even the worst relationships can be remedied so long as love is at the baseline. Maybe I’m projecting a bit, but I think there’s enough textual evidence to at least support the basic idea.

#mdzs #fan discourse #fanfic #wei wuxian #jiang cheng #weird chinese family thingz #mxtx #i guess i'm a jiang cheng stan now but I didn't start out this way #wwx-jc reconciliation fics are my jam