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.’