Rude About Xicheng

[x_los]

This is going to be some slight grousing about the vast popularity of Jiang Wanyin/Lan Xichen as a ship. This is just a personal judgement. If you like that pairing, no worries, feel free to skip. Beyond this mild opinion/reaction, other people’s preferences aren’t really my business or something I care greatly about.

***

excaliburedpan suggested that Lan Xichen and Jiang Cheng, considered together, have gay Tory energy: ‘basically like the vibe of Joe Pitt and Roy Cohn, from Angels in America’. I must concur: Xicheng keep whippets. Xicheng sent you a family christmas card: they're wearing matching jumpers, and so are their dogs.

I mentioned this to aralias, who asked whether, according to such a schema Jin Guangyao was a “Line of Beauty” Tory or just a psychopath? (Why not both?) (This is like aralias’s ‘Miss Hardbroom is a Tory’ bombshell that ruined Samira’s life.) excaliburedpan contested none of this, but maintains that the vibe of Xiyao is not in and of itself Tory.

Okay but actually, Xicheng just feels like some 'they are pretty/pair the spares/migratory dude slash’. It’s fairly inoffensive, just random. I want all my fic to be readings, the pairings malice aforethought rather than crimes of opportunity. Really there's nothing to dislike about Xicheng, other than that it's so popular? (And of course the logistics weirdness that is Sect Leader x Sect Leader.) But I occasionally see jokes like 'oh, Xichen will pay more attention to Jiang Cheng than his dad, uwu' and I'm casting my mind back to remember:

- a canonical time they spoke 

- that was not about Wei Wuxian.

I mean, the last thing Jiang Cheng needs is another person in his life who considers Wei Wuxian a more important part of the family than him.

Also ‘bros fuckin’ each others' bros’ feels too cutesey. No double wedding for me. I once had to listen to the whole Left Behind series in a car with my step-dad's super Born Again brother (he was worried about my soul, idk), and there was this bit where both couples were like ‘TEEHEE, BUT WOULD THE OTHER COUPLE *ALSO* WANT A DOUBLE WEDDING>!??!?!?!’ And I was like, ‘just. have. a. foursome. I am SO tired, are we in Denver yet?? It is hard to read my own book with NIKOLAI CARPATHIA!!!!!! talking at me. But that, to me, is the Xicheng vibe. ‘Oh i just don't knoooow if they! would want! a double-wedding!! too1!!!!!!!' 

It’s weird trying to cobble together secondary pairings in this canon when all the on-page pairings are so important, so not-casual. Epic, structurally ‘necessary’ romance versus ‘I guess I could see it.’

Comments

[momijizukamori]

Yeah, while I will read the occasional xicheng primary, and don't mind it as a secondary pairing, it has always felt very pair-the-spares to me, with a side of 'well all the better options for Xichen are dead' (I am here for the multitude of possibilities of 3zun, personally).

(two of my... great-great-aunts/uncles, I think? were a pair of sisters married to a pair of brothers. But this was also the generation where one of the siblings got killed over a card fight up a mountain in the middle of the night, so)

[x_los]

I guess it'd feel less ? if fic made an argument for it, but often in the back of Wangxian it's like and of course, also Xicheng. And I'm like, er, so how'd you arrive at that?

The fic: So you see, they're both alive.
Me: ...right.

...this feels strongly American to me. I was born there, and kind of similarly my great-great grandfather gold rushed and came back with his golddddd--and got shot and robbed on the train home, so. No gold. So I guess the secret is NOT to go prospecting, but just to like, wait around on the train. Saves time.

[momijizukamori]

Yeah, and I'm like 'may I interest you in this near-mint-condition Huaisang?' (I haven't gone digging for it, but I feel like Xisang would be a really interesting dynamic to explore. Even just as a platonic thing rather than romantic)

And haha, yes, this would have been in the Appalachians in the early 1900s, so. There's a family legend about gold hidden on one of the mountains in the area, too!

[allycat796]

Yeah, I don't get this ship either. My feelings about Xicheng as a potential romantic pairing are so tepid that I can't even imagine an obnoxious aesthetic for them, like, they give me no vibe at all. I guess that's better than the Tory whippet sweater thing?

It's interesting that you mentioned people comparing lxc to jfm re: treatment of jc, because when I think about it that's actually one of the main issues I can see coming up with this relationship? Lan Xichen sort of reminds me of jfm in the sense that he's pretty conflict avoidant, prefers to work things out civilly, and can sometimes let issues go unaddressed because of that. And Jiang Cheng, of course, is similar to yzy in that he has a pretty confrontational style of communication to the point of browbeating people...idk, I think Xicheng would be in danger of becoming a redux of yzy and jfm's rocky relationship. I just don't think their communication styles mesh well at all, and I can see jc, for example, mistaking lxc's attempts to keep things calm and civil for a lack of care, etc. And I guess this could be compelling if you wanted a story about them doing better than the previous generation (or not, for the angst)? But in my limited experience I haven't really seen it framed that way.

Another thing that kinda makes me ??? is that a lot of people who're invested in Jiang Cheng enough to actively ship him seem to really want him to be with someone who will reliably put him first. That's totally understandable, but like you said, logistical weirdness. In a canon setting, Lan Xichen will always have to put the Lan, and therefore not jc, first. And I also have a difficult time seeing Jiang Cheng with someone he can't rely on to share his priorities, like, I think that's a big part of why the "twin prides" fell apart. (Lxc I think would actually do ok with a relationship like this, and depending on how you interpret his relationship with jgy, maybe he already has.)

And then, I guess another problem I have is that I'm a very big proponent of jc and wwx having some space from each other post-canon (or even in canon-adjacent AUs), regardless of whether they reconcile or not? And dating within the same family is just not the way to do that! On top of any potential favoritism issues it just feels super, idk, claustrophobic and enmeshed and...icky to me. Not saying it couldn't work for any pair of friends/siblings; it's just these two guys where it gives me a pretty strong nope! reaction.

Lots of my active issues with the ship are based on a canon setting, so in AUs and stuff it's just kind of...there, I guess.

[x_los]

Yeah now you mention it, it does feel pretty Previous Generational in the built-in conflict. Xichen always reminds me a bit of Yanli--but then *Yanli* is like her dad! In many ways!

Xichen probably deserves s o m e o n e to share his fairly reasonable priorities, but he definitely put up with not getting it/'this is fine'd through whole years with Guangyao. Since JWY is like, MISTER 'gotta do it for Jiang', I do think he would need a partner--who is not the leader of their own sect. Which at this stage is like, OCs and children. And I don't care about Chengyi.

Weirdly I don't even think the super-close Lans would really seek or enjoy that kind of arrangement with another pair of close siblings, like Wangji never got at all close to Guangyao in a decade and I don't think that's necessarily just a mismatch of personalities or bad blood in a particular case. Like I could see Xichen and WWX becoming kind of close, but not really in this double-date!! fashion, because both Lans seem more compartmentalised about their partners and their family? It feels more possible for the Nies, I guess.

And then in AUs, yeah, I'm just turned off by the automatic assumptiveness of it more than anything.

[allycat796]

Yeah, lxc certainly deserves to have his loved ones stop running around doing crazy and/or morally dubious shit, at the very least. I do also just think compartmentalizing comes more naturally to him than it does someone like Jiang Cheng. I can see him separating his public and private lives enough that he can have, essentially, a work dispute with someone while keeping their private relationship harmonious. (Though I don't feel like I have a very good read on lxc so I am definitely just throwing stuff at the wall to see what sticks.)

Part of me does genuinely believe that the only way to get Jiang Cheng any kind of healthy adult relationship, romantic or platonic, post-canon is to bring in an oc. Preferably one who's never met wwx and wasn't involved in the whole post-Sunshot mess. (And no, Lan Jingyi does not count...)

[x_los]

Of ALL people, surely JWY is not ready to navigate the power issues and personal shit attendant on a significant age difference. Like. He needs a LOT more therapy first.

[allycat796]

I also just--Jin Ling. That is a kid Jin Ling's age. How does one get over the inherent weirdness of that?? (And now imagine ljy going on about how cool and awesome and good at stuff Hanguang-jun is all the time. How many blood vessels would jc pop, I wonder?)

[kiezh]

I am also completely baffled by this pairing, and especially by its vast popularity. I once went through a whole list of all the male main characters of that generation in MDZS/Untamed and concluded that Lan Xichen and Jiang Cheng both have more... everything with every single other person on the list than they do with each other, canonically. Love, hate, friendship, history of any kind, fraught conversations, sworn brotherhoods, betrayals, just... anything at all. Paying any attention to each other during group scenes. (Though come to think of it, Lan Xichen/Jin Zixuan would be about equally out-of-the-blue and nonsensical. I finally found one!)

Even if you pare down the list to "male characters of the same generation who are still alive at the end and not paired off," it seems to me that Nie Huaisang is a more obvious partner for either of them. You've got crunchy love-AND-betrayal stuff with LXC/NHS, you've got childhood friendship with NHS/JC... or, if you are somewhat relaxed with your definition of "alive" there's Wen Ning, who still has more potential energy with either of them than they have with each other. WN and LXC share a nephew, and also there is potentially crunchy stuff about the Lans participating in the persecution and slaughter of Wen Ning's family. I am not in favor of pairing Wen Ning with Jiang Cheng, because Wen Ning deserves better, but from WN saving JC's life to the golden core reveal, one can't deny they have History.

Anyway, yeah, it's weird, and back when I was still poking at it to try to figure it out (now I filter it out), I never found a fic that made an argument for why they would ever be in the same place or have any interesting conversations, much less fall in love. It was all just "they find each other overwhelmingly hot" (in modern AUs) or "two people who canonically are very insular and concerned with their clans suddenly... want to attach themselves to someone who does not share their priorities or loyalties? for some reason?"

I asked someone who shipped it what the appeal was, once, and IIRC she said it was the contrast in personalities - hot/cool, angry/peaceful. And the aesthetics. *shrug*

Obviously people should ship what they want and it doesn't have to make sense to me personally. For me, though, it's easier to ship people who have never met than people who have been in the same places and at the same events for decades without ever having any strong emotions about each other.

[x_los]

I feel like any time the answer is AESTHETICS!! or character tropes, I'm just--absolutely missing out, like I don't even consider it as an option. And even now you say it I'm like ?? if you SAY so, lady?

(Oh my god is THAT why there's so much SVSSS shit actively shipping SQQ with Liu Qingge, a man made of meat with 10 total lines? Like I get LQG has a bit of a crush, but he also has: 10 lines. I cannot fucking imagine what those two would do together as a couple, like SQQ would pour out tea and LQG would try to Impressively swallow the cup whole and refuse help when the near-boiling liquid burned him on the way down, and that would be their evening.)

It's SO much harder to believe them as a spare-pair because the fics just insistently position them as co-equal with Wangxian (rather than idk people feeling each other out), which is a lot to ask of any people not obsessed with each other for decades. And also kind of--idk it feels belittling almost, to be like look, same thing, they're both together because they're both attractive and alive!! Like in a canon era Wangxian fic, why would I want that. And over all, I don't really come to fic to build shit out of whole cloth so much as to do a readings, so I'm not *de facto* interested in--let's hook up Jiang Cheng with Toph from Avatar or something.

[kiezh]

It's SO much harder to believe them as a spare-pair because the fics just insistently position them as co-equal with Wangxian (rather than idk people feeling each other out), which is a lot to ask of any people not obsessed with each other for decades.

LOL, that's very true. Putting them next to Wangxian does not do Xicheng any favors at all.

The popular "it's the same thing!" fandom parallel that's been driving me nuts lately is Wangxian and Xiyao - I swear, I have seen multiple posts THIS WEEK giggling about "nice Lan boys and their gremlins" and saying they're basically the same pairing, which is... really flattening out ALL of the characters involved into paper dolls with less personality than WWX's paperman, argh, and also missing the point of how those pairings are FOILS.

Xiyao are not zhiji! They do not know each other truly, that is the whole point of them, they are never once on the same page in their entire relationship. JGY is always lying, and LXC is always closing his eyes. (They do tick the "obsessed with each other for decades" box, though! The intensity of the relationship is not laughable to compare with Wangxian, the way Xicheng is.)

There's that one scene where LXC is like, "Wangji, I trust A-Yao just like you trust WWX, you have to respect that!" and I feel like the point of that scene is that LXC is desperately stalling, suddenly evincing a concern for facts and due process that he has literally never before showed (and especially did not show regarding WWX and the Wen remnants) because he doesn't want to accept what LWJ and WWX are telling him. And fandom takes it at face value and says "yeah, LWJ trusts WWX just as blindly, it's the same thing!" when... no? LWJ never at any point takes WWX's word about things and stops investigating or questioning. They argue over the issue of demonic cultivation repeatedly in the flashbacks. LWJ saw the Wen remnants with his own eyes when they were ragged refugees in the rain, he didn't just handwave the prison break with "I'm sure Wei Ying had his reasons" the way LXC does with JGY killing the Nie guy or torturing people for WRH or making assurances about the Wen prisoners or, y'know, any of the other things LXC had no interest in knowing the facts about.

One of these pairings is built on blind trust misplaced, and one is built on "we are going to keep arguing about ethics until we are standing on the same ground and know each other's principles backwards and forwards." They are not the same!

Whoops, tangent rant. Uh, have some thoughts about Xiyao on your post about Xicheng? :D

[x_los]

Absolutely, re: foils. Guangyao is always positioned as a parallel figure to Wei Wuxian in different circumstances, with a somewhat different character in part due to these who made other choices, and people's shifting receptions of them both reinforce this. (Not fully a 'they're the same but for the grace of god' parallel, but like how Steerforth and Uriah Heep both represent aspects or sides of David Copperfield and paths he could take/relations to class and the world.)

I think fandom is in part nodding at Wangji's 'blind faith' because of how in MDZS demonic cultivation DOES in and of itself get out of control, but in CQL Wangji's decisions to trust WWX are the realisation of his morality, not at all 'you are more to me even than morality'.

I tend to read Xichen saying their trust is the same as Xichen honestly believing that, because Xichen hasn't fully turned 'nice is different than good' inside out in his head. To him, it matters that Guangyao performs and displays courtesy and does good work as a sect leader, making Jin less a corrupt mechanism to get the sect leader laid than it has been in decades. Guangyao's origins truly don't matter to Xichen, and he thinks others are that much less gentlemen for being crude about it. Guangyao talks the talk, and that MEANS something to Xichen, who values harmony, stability, the reparation of the cultivation world after the Wen conflict, the painstaking years-long work of running these institutions. Xichen is a GOOD liberal who does the work, and who's somewhat threatened by unseemly displays of challenging morality: things that don't look good, that involve interrogating the code he lives by rather than upholding it.

[cats_eyes]

t's SO much harder to believe them as a spare-pair because the fics just insistently position them as co-equal with Wangxian (rather than idk people feeling each other out), which is a lot to ask of any people not obsessed with each other for decades.

It's kind of lazy too, I think? Like, they didn't want to put in the work to explain why Xicheng work, so they set them up as a comparison to Wangxian and let *that* do most of the heavy lifting.

[cats_eyes]

Yeah, Xicheng is very *headtilt?* to me. I've seen some people say they ship it because they can help each other come to a place of personal healing, but I just can't really see that happening? I think Jiang Cheng would be way too in his own head to be able to empathize with anyone effectively.

I tend to have a hard time shipping Jiang Cheng with anyone, actually - part of my problem is that I have too hard a time connecting to fanon's portrayal of Jiang Cheng to bother connecting to his character much in fic. Even with Wen Qing/Jiang Cheng, which had some interesting dynamics in canon - Wen Qing's relationships with Wen Ning and Wei Wuxian are always going to be more important to me, so any situation where Jiang Cheng is her primary partner it reads false. I think the only time I've ever genuinely shipped Jiang Cheng with someone was that one time I accidentally incepted myself into shipping Jiang Cheng/Jin Guangyao in a modern AU scenario where they're rival event planners.

[x_los]

They are both fucked at the end, but yeah, not necessarily in a complimentary way? Xichen is a helper, but he needs help himself, and JWY--I don't think has ever been a Helper.

[ehyde]

I once saw someone (I don't remember who) theorize that it was a popular cn fandom pairing, and eng fandom latched onto it because of the amount of available fanart, assuming there would be more canon material, but... I'm not sure I buy that? First of all, then you're just shifting the question onto cn fandom, and second the ship continues to be popular with people who watched/read after the whole canon became available.

[x_los]

Yeah that WOULD be interesting to have harder data on, re timeline and popularity!

I honestly think it's--Something For Jiang Cheng.

[ehyde]

I've been wondering if there's a way to chart tags over time with data from ao3, not just for this but for other things too, but I'd need to ask someone who knows more about data than I do. I might look into it, although I don't think that would give much useful info about cfandom.
But yeah. Aesthetics and tropes, I think you're right.

[x_los]

Superborb on twitter was just telling me about Ao3, API and scraping (and why you can't do it) today.

[ehyde]

I was asking my husband about it last night and his response to the data that ao3 made available a few weeks ago was "it would be easy to work with but there's not a lot there."

[solo]

Sorry what is gay Tory energy? Despite their flaws, I wouldn't want to insult either of them by calling them Tory. Is this some cultural reference I don't understand?

I read a few fics where XiCheng are a secondary pairing and I just don't buy it. Xichen doesn't need a guy whose main mood is 'gonna break your legs'. Jiang Cheng doesn't need a pointedly serene... okay maybe not after Guanyin temple. But I still don't see what Xichen would have to offer him. Jiang Cheng needs a confident person to keep him grounded. Wen Qing could have been that if he wasn't much too immature for her. (And if she wasn't dead.)

Oh and I totally forgot the reason I started commenting:

- a canonical time they spoke
- that was not about Wei Wuxian.

This is the Untamed Bechdel test! :D

[x_los]

So we're joking, but basically I think it's--people who would be marginalised in some capacity, but their experience and outlook is primarily defined by the ways in which they are privileged. More interesting in obtaining personal comfort under regimes of normalcy they help uphold than altering the systems they benefit from to extend solidarity to others who share their marginalistions, but not their privileges. Political only in a NIMBY sense. The type of guy with 'no fats no femmes' on his Grindr profile, snapped either in front of a weight machine or at an Oxbridge alumni event (2 for 1 bonus for the Boat Races).

To be *honest* poor Xichen votes LibDem at worst, but the vibe is not 1:1 with voting record.

Yeah, I think they'd just stress each other out (and like, what common interests that we know of?).

[sallymn]

I've got nothing. To be fair, I'm anything by a Jiang Cheng fan anyway (don't hate him, just... his flaws are one that really get no sympathy from me, and he looks - and talks - and eyerolls - like a minor Dickensian semi-villain) and though I do like Xichen and find his flaws a bit more interesting, I look at the pairing and can't help thinking.... "Ancient China's most tepid pillow talk???" I guess because there's absolutely no there there, it makes it easy to just invent fluff? I dunno, I simply glaze over and skip it.

Maybe it's part of the "twin prides should have gotten back/JC is therefore owed by WWX/JC is equal in importance to Wangxian" thing? WWX got a Jade, so his brother is owed one too?

Xisang has way more meat as a pairing (I may be biased, of course) but is fraught and would be hard to pull off.

[x_los]

Yeah maybe it's for people who like, WANT there not to be a lot there in an active sense, bc that's an easier space to push fluff into?

Xisang feels tough yeah but like, more workable.