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khattikeri · 28 days

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maybe a controversial opinion but while i really love jiang cheng as a character he is deeply self-centered as a person. and seeing people fight tooth and nail claiming he isn't, or is just misunderstood, or that he has genuine valid reasons to be selfish when plenty of other characters make the difficult choice to forego status and opportunities for what they believe is genuinely right to do (read: wei wuxian, wen ning, wen qing, lan wangji, jiang yanli, mianmian, etc.)

it's just odd to me. especially if they're talking about the novels.

mxtx didn't give jiang cheng the name "sandu shengshou" as a quirky coincidence. there's a REASON she named him & his sword after the 3 poisons of Buddhism (specifically ignorance, greed, and hatred). it's crucial to the story that jiang cheng is NOT selfless and that wei wuxian IS.

it's important to accept that wei wuxian is, by their society's standards, not morally gray; he represents several Buddhist ideals in direct contrast of jiang cheng and multiple people attest to wei wuxian's strong moral character, which is a lot of why jiang cheng even feels bitter about him to begin with.

it's crucial, because by the end of the novel jiang cheng realizes the extent of this and begins to let go!

the twin prides thing wasn't jiang cheng wanting them to 100% mirror the twin jades. he does care about wei wuxian, but he wanted wei wuxian to stay his right hand man, in part the way wei changze was for jiang fengmian.

and if there's one thing you can notice about wei changze in the novels, it's that literally nobody talks about him. he is only ever mentioned when his cool mysterious mountain sect wife cangse-sanren is mentioned, or (even more rarely) when they discuss him as a servant to jiang fengmian. regardless of jiang fengmian's own feelings, wei changze was considered lesser to him and didn't seem to outdo him, since nobody's out there years later still waxing poetry about wei changze's skills.

it may not be the only thing jiang cheng wants out of a twin pride dynamic, but it is a big part of it. regardless of his parents' intentions in taking wei wuxian in and treating him certain ways, this twin pride right-hand man thing is what jiang cheng has felt owed since childhood. he gave up his dogs for wei wuxian, people gossip about his sect heir position with wei wuxian there... jiang cheng wants the reciprocation of what he views as personal sacrifices.

he is ignorant to the depth of what wei wuxian must've suffered for over 6 years as a malnourished orphan child on the streets. he hates how wei wuxian's intelligence, witty charm, and cultivation abilities are naturally stronger than his own. he does care about wei wuxian a lot and want them to be together as sort of-brothers, sort of-friends, sort of-young master and sect servant...

...but if it's between that unclear (yet still caring) relationship and being able to save himself just a little bit more, jiang cheng nearly always manages to clam up in the face of danger and choose the latter, which ultimately benefits himself most. maybe it's a stretch to call that sort of thing greed, but it certainly isn't selfless.

there are of course plenty of justifications for this. it's his duty as sect heir. his home and sect was severely damaged by the wen attack and subsequent war; he had to protect himself, etc.

but doesn't that prove the point?

wei wuxian may be charming, but in terms of pure social standing, he is lower and far more susceptible to being punished or placed in harm's way by people who have more power and money. to protect wei wuxian, yunmeng jiang's long-term head disciple and semi-family member, even in the face of backlash and public scrutiny would've been the selfless thing to do. this is what wei wuxian does for the wen remnants in the burial mounds.

jiang cheng does not choose this. it's not even an unreasonable choice for him to make! nobody else in the great clans is doing such a thing, stepping out of line to take on a burden that could weaken them in the long-run. wei wuxian himself doesn't hate jiang cheng for it; he lets go of these things and focuses on what good he can do in the present.

jiang cheng thinks further into the future - what would happen to him if he continued vouching for wei wuxian and taking his side? what about jiang cheng's face, his sect's face? would wei wuxian even care to reciprocate somehow? everyone expects him to cut off wei wuxian for being dangerous, for threatening his position, for...

do you see what i mean? to call jiang cheng selfless for falling in line with exactly what people expected him to do after the war is not only wrong, it's foolish.

"but they faked their falling-out!" okay. why fake it to begin with, except to protect jiang cheng and the jiang sect's own face? is that selfless? who does it ultimately serve to protect? wei wuxian canonically internalizes the idea that he stains all that he touches, including lan wangji, and agrees to the fake fight because he doesn't want to cause the jiang sect harm. regardless, it eventually slides into a true falling-out, and in the end jiang cheng is more or less unscathed reputation-wise while wei wuxian falls.

that isn't selfless. it's many things! it's respecting his clan and his ancestors, it's making a good plan for the future of his sect and cultivation... but it isn't a truly selfless in the interest of what's right rather than in the interest of duty and what's good for him and his family lineage.

that brings me to my next point: even though wei wuxian hid the truth of the golden core transfer, jiang cheng spent nearly 20 years believing that the golden core "renewal" he was given was a birthright gift of wei wuxian's from baoshan-sanren, an immortal sect teacher of wei wuxian's mother's and a martial elder to wei wuxian.

of course we all know that's a big fat lie, but jiang cheng believed that wei wuxian gave up a critical emergency use gift to him for decades! he was lied to, yes, but jiang cheng immediately agreed without even needing to be convinced. the light in his dead eyes came back with hope the moment wei wuxian even said baoshan-sanren's name. he accepted wei wuxian's offer to give that up to him and take it via identity theft without missing a beat.

with how mysterious and revered baoshan-sanren is, that's obviously not a light sacrifice to just give up to anyone, no matter how close they might be to you. pretending to be wei wuxian to take the gift could even be considered dangerous. what if she found out and got offended? could wei wuxian be hurt by that?

jiang cheng doesn't even hesitate. wei wuxian is the one who mentions that if jiang cheng doesn't pretend to be him, the immortal master could get angry and they'd both be goners. and funnily enough, the day they do go to "the mountain", jiang cheng is the one worried and suspiciously wondering if wei wuxian was lying to him or had misremembered.

of course they've both been traumatized like hell prior to this point. but still: it speaks to how broken he was at the moment as well as to his character overall.

i digress: jiang cheng "gets his golden core back" via what he believed was a gift that should've been wei wuxian's to use in serious emergencies. rather than use it for himself, wei wuxian risked his own safety and gave it to jiang cheng... and jiang cheng still ends up embittered and angry, believing that wei wuxian is arrogant and selfish.

if he truly views them as 100% brothers and equals with no caveats, why would he think that way? it's not like he needs to grovel before wei wuxian for doing that, or to reciprocate... but this is what i mean when i say jiang cheng feels he is owed things by wei wuxian. wei wuxian's actions hold a very different weight in jiang cheng's mind, and jiang cheng himself doesn't ever act the same way, except once.

is it wrong for him to feel like he is owed something? it depends. many asian cultures, including my own, feel that a person owes their family in ways that may not make sense to westerners. for example, it's considered normal for a child to owe their parents for giving birth to them, or to other caretakers for feeding, clothing, sheltering, educating them, etc.

however, something like verbally saying "thank you" or "i'm sorry" to family is considered crazy- why would you owe that? you're supposed to inconvenience your family; saying thank you or sorry is the sort of thing you say to a stranger or acquaintance. i get half-seriously lectured by my elders on this a lot even now, even though they know such phrases are just considered good manners in the US.

this muddies up the idea of wei wuxian being jiang cheng's family vs his family's charge or servant even more. jiang cheng wants wei wuxian to be close... but ultimately doesn't really choose to use what power he DOES have to protect wei wuxian. he considers himself still owed something that in his mind wei wuxian flagrantly never repays.

this isn't even getting into how despite spending a majority of his time with the yiling patriarch he never once noticed that wei wuxian stopped using any spiritual power-based cultivation. even lan wangji, who met them far more rarely, realized that something was wrong and that wei wuxian had taken some sort of spiritual damage, hence the "come with me to gusu".

of course manpain is fun and i'm not immune to the juicy idea of them reconciling and talking things out... but jiang cheng is deeply mired in his own desire to be "above" wei wuxian in multiple ways, and doesn't realize the extent of wei wuxian's actions, the intentions behind them, and the consequences wei wuxian knowingly faced for them.

to not recognize this about jiang cheng, especially in the novels, is really revisionist if you ask me. i reiterate that i really do like him a lot. he's flawed, angry, traumatized and has poor coping mechanisms, an overall fascinating character... but he is not selfless nor ideal, and i seriously draw the line at people saying he is.

wen ning shoves this all into his face at lotus pier to disastrous results. it is the reason why jiang cheng's a total mess at guanyin temple, and the reason jiang cheng ultimately doesn't tell wei wuxian about the fact that he ran towards the wens on purpose.

for that one last act of his to have really been selfless, he needs to not seek anything in return. he did it purely because it was right to do to protect someone else. if that means wei wuxian never finds out about it, so be it.

that moment that ended up causing jiang cheng irreversible harm is not a debt that wei wuxian owes him. it hurts, but no matter how bitter it is, that realization is so important to him changing in the future.

#keri chats #mdzs #mo dao zu shi #jiang cheng #long post #this is NOT anti/crit for him btw i like him a lot i just feel like nobody interprets him the way i perceive him #which even then my interpretation is p nebulous... worth saying i also heavily disagree w ppl who think of him as an evil shithead #he's upper class & steeped in jianghu politics/self preservation. flawed as hell human being but they're all war criminals lbr it's #Magical Genocide and War Crimes: The Novel #anyway this post is messy as fuck but if u read all of it: thank u. if u agree with me: ilu. i wish more ppl understood revenge ethics #as they stand in asian cultures and history vs in western (almost always culturally christian) cultures #it's unclear how far in the future the extras are but at one pt he's ''the same as ever'' which at best indicates slow emotional growth #and like. ykw? i don't think he'll be repressed bitter angry thinking abt his losses n pain forever. i think he can grow i believe in him #i have so many thoughts on this i could've made this post go on forever augh

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ohitslen · 5 months

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Wishing yall the best! <3

#the bg is from freepik btw I just searched. snowing.#I wanted to do some xmas art too but not enough brainjuice for something less cool than this #snow! It hasn't snowed yet where I live at (dk if it will snow at all this year) which kind of sucks but then I thought abt ww seeing snow #he would probably just be a little confused and then have sparkly eyes. bet he would be a menace if he somehow figured out snowfights #but isn't it more fun to think he would shoot the snow as it was falling down. imagine.#trigun #vash the stampede #nicholas d wolfwood #trigun stampede #vashwood #vash #wolfwood #nicholas trigun #trigun fanart #lenssi draws

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skunkes · 5 months

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i have soooo much more i cld say abt him, and have explored more thru other doodles, but quick summary of talon's whole deal, which is subject to change still as he's only almost 2 yrs old as an oc

#oc text #obvs sparse description of the events bc i dont mean for it to be gratuitous #even if i decided to explore it further in some medium the focus wouldnt be gratuitous ykwim #not that there werent awful stuff within that but my focus with talon is also more exploration of like #even stuff that isnt a big deal (which it wasnt at first) can effect someone greatly #and then once it does get a bit worse the focus is still more on the effects of how he views himself and the aftermath #AS WELL AS LIKE. well. did i do this to myself? i went back. do i deserve this?#he's a lot like me and the reason i like the self insert dynamic is bc he thinks of cheye as Me If It Didnt All Go Horribly #bc ive not gone thru the Extreme but i have had interactions with ppl who very enthusiastically thought i was ummmm underage!!!#while they were already being creepy toward me and making me nervous abt my safety !#so this isnt ''he's umm 400 but looks 12 bc i want to do weird shit with him 😏'' dude drawing him Fed makes me so sad sometimes...#we're also weird eating buddies <3 #and grief buddies <3 he actually further spawned out of my need to deal with a lot of family members passing away in such a short time #severe death phobia buddies...#i still dont know how he really feels about his Old Wrinkly Form btw all i know is he feels safe in it #as much as id love to sway toward ''he thinks he's hot like that. because he is.'' i also dont want to convey the wrong message wrt this #form being due to....disordered eating caused by Issues. ykwim #though! he can shapeshift quite well when he's fed and maybe he'd choose that form willingly if he ever got. Past everything #he does hate that he never gets to actually age...! he wishes he cld age normally like a mortal...(still scared of dying though)#but we cant knoww for certain yet ykwim. maybe he'll let me know soon.#my issue with talon other than i suck at plots is well he has too many of my issues. and. idk how to solve them.#he's growing with me.#oh and have we noticed he's mean to me when *im* being mean to me...MANY such metaphors #ok goodnite

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becauseplot · 7 months

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i feel i should preface this with saying that this relationship analysis "takes place" before qcellbit's emotional exhaustion and motivation crash---

---but i have been having SUCH crazy thoughts abt the archivists (qcellbit n qphilza). guy who needs evidence of Everything 🤝 guy who takes pictures of and hoards Everything. two-cars-passing-each-other meme whenever cellbit (practically nocturnal at this point) makes a late-night run to the Ordo to grab some notes he left there and bumps into phil (trouble sleeping ever since the birdhouse incident) who's sitting in one of the evidence rooms organizing a new backpack of photos to hand over to cellbit.

"oh. hey phil." "hi mate."

their conversations and interactions center mostly around cellbit's investigations---the ones cellbit lets the public know about, anyway---and whatever new info phil managed to scoop up since the last time they saw each other. theories are exchanged, and photos are passed between them as easily as pleasantries. "how're you doing?" "oh, doin' alright, doin' alright. you?" "eh. busy, you know?"

they don't talk about much else.

see, they both understand secrets. intimately. things you did you would much rather leave behind you, if you can, or thoughts, worries, doubts you would much rather keep to yourself for fear of speaking them into existence. sealed lips; a tight lid. they look at each other and know they're only seeing what the other wants them to see, but that's okay. they get it. sometimes, it's just easier to focus on what is directly in front of you. what you can see, what you can touch; what you know is true, what you know is real.

what you can do.

so cellbit generates and bounces his theories off of phil, and phil is more than happy to be a sounding board. phil fills up a backpack with photographs, and cellbit is more than happy to take it off his hands. they focus on The Work, on the spiderweb of red string and loose ends and grainy pictures and scrawled notes pinned to the wall, madness-incarnate sprawled out before them. they trust each other's judgement, and they trust each other's skills, and they trust each other, and neither asks too many questions. they both appreciate it.

#like seriously most of their conversations thus far have been about everything and everyone BESIDES themselves.#and that!! makes for such an interesting relationship!! bc they trust each other despite it!!#btw i rly tried to format this so that the concepts/ideas touched on this relationship study usually came in pairs-#-the first of each pair being mostly and cellbit and the second being mostly about phil-#-with the exception of the bolded sentence which is supposed to have different meanings depending on whose perspective-#-you read it from. idk i had a lot of fun formatting this. me when parallels me when mirror images <33 #dont mind me im just rambling #qsmp philza #qsmp cellbit #q!philza #q!cellbit #also phil acting as cellbit's rubber duck is so important to me actually.#shout out to every friend of mine who has put up with my wall of texts abt an au or writing idea or incoherent mess of disjointed thoughts.#shout out to every friend of mine who's been there hanging out or on call with me as i lose my mind on a problem im whiteboarding.#u keep me sane and u help me more than u know. ily.#archivists #archivist duo

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fatuifucker · 19 days

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tw SA mention

tbh i would rather have minors read my work rather than those coquette smut blogs (not targeting anyone specifically, just in general) that write really ooc drabbles and topics that are basically SA. sometimes it's even blatant SA it's wild that you'd have the reader basically crying and begging the character to stop but the post's theme is just (˶˃ ᵕ ˂˶)

#i definitely could have done better in writing consent and aftercare in my past fics though #urgh i wish i could churn out safer smut content but burnout and depression sucks #a little unrelated but a few months ago i was talking abt first times with my friends who lost their virginities #btw these people mentioned all are all over the age of 18 but they lost their virginities at 16 #which is the age of consent for minors in my country #and they all said that they felt the age of consent was too low because sex is such an intimidate and vulnerable experience #and when you're an uneducated 16 year old who is getting into their first serious or not serious relationship #its really a lot to focus on your partner to remember safety to trust them etc etc #anyway end of yap reply with your thoughts if you wanna #tw sa mention #tw sa #tw sex assault

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sergle · 9 months

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Now I’m curious, what breeds are on your list?

✨Golden Retrievers✨ Pomeranians Samoyeds Rottweilers Irish red setters German Shepherd (I like the black ones) Rough Collies and Shelties Great Pyrenees Bernese Mountain Dogs Cocker Spaniels St. Bernards Borzois and probably more that I forgot to list!! These are all dogs that I Especially want to cry when I see them, and that I could see myself loving / being able to meet the particular needs of their breed. I've expanded my Range a little in the two years since I brought Hugo home, since he's taught me a lot about dogs, and I could potentially take care of a baby with very different needs from the ones that he had. I'm still by no means a dog expert but. Yanno. You learn small things over time! In the end, when I was searching for a dog a few years ago, I had a few qualifications I didn't want to budge on. I needed a dog that's trainable, but not stubborn, a dog that's gentle and considerate with my cats and my niblings, a dog that's not too reactive, a dog with soft fur, and a dog that is affectionate. So... Hugo is all of those things!!! He picks up skills quickly and listens (I gotta work on his Recall though), he takes extreme care around the cats and is so careful that he can be left alone with kittens and baby chicks, so being sat on / bothered / tugged on by small kids isn't even a challenge. He has never growled at anyone or anything in Irritation in his life. He's never bared his teeth. He doesn't bark at strangers or at odd noises, he doesn't snap as a response to being surprised. He's extremely pillowy soft, and his fur doesn't irritate my skin or pierce my clothes. He is extremely, extremely sweet and loving, frankly to the point that he would easily fall in love with a new owner if he was kidnapped lmao. You can maybe see why I like goldens so much. I got REALLY close to adopting a Pomeranian, which I'll continue to Think About, basically forever... but as someone with a predisposition for migraines, I don't want to set the dog up for failure if I'm not ready to hear bark bark bark bark bark bark bark all day. That's the ONLY downside. Maybe I invest in some noise cancelling headphones? They're beautiful dogs though, I love an animal that looks like a little rat. You ever see one of them after a bath? My god.

#they're comically small.#but YEAH that's the list as well as I can remember it off the top of my head!!!#sorry you asked me about dogs so I'm gonna Talk About Dogs. I have too many paragraphs of thoughts.#sergle.txt #sergle answers #I spent a lot of time looking at the Stats on the AKC website? for dog breeds #which is amazingly helpful actually. to just give a sliding scale on all the general breed traits #I also like mixes and mutts and everything btw. I love a good shelter dog. but.#I wanted to be able to predict what I was in for with this dog. hence Hugo. He's very much breed standard #with a random puppy you don't know exactly what traits they'll be predisposed to have #and again there were some very important things I needed.#but yeah I spent a lot of time looking at Stats and for First Dog.. I wanted to veer away from #the Loud dogs and from the ones that have high exercise needs. like LOTS AND LOTS of activity #Bc I wasn't prepared to deal with too much barking and I wasn't prepared to go on 5 hikes a day. yk.#Idk! it's all fun. there's something pokemon like to me abt dog breeds #it's fun the way that they're all so so different

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