I do what it takes...

i've seen people contrast yunmeng shuangjie by arguing that, while wei wuxian comes across as a rebel and jiang cheng comes across as highly mindful of social norms, in reality their social abilities are the opposite: that, in reality, it is wei wuxian who is socially apt and jiang cheng who is socially incapable.

for some fans, this then translates into political ability. these fans argue that it is wei wuxian and not jiang cheng who is capable of making connections.

come on now. this makes no sense. in fact, i'd go as far as to say that the story of MDZS as it is written is only possible if jiang cheng is actually better at making long-term connections - political connections - than wei wuxian.

certainly, wei wuxian is more personable and fun to interact with than jiang cheng; certainly, if everyone was a kid on a school playground, then most of the other kids would probably prefer to play with wei wuxian over jiang cheng. and yet, the world of MDZS is a bit more complicated than a school playground. wei wuxian might be more friendly and social than jiang cheng, but in no way does this translate to actual political ability.

it is true that wei wuxian most likely made a large number of friends at the cloud recesses lectures (such as one nie huaisang), before he was expelled for punching jin zixuan. one might then want to call these friendships future political connections. based on this, one might then expect that, after leaving yunmeng jiang to protect the wen remnants, wei wuxian would have some connections to cash in on.

and yet, this did not happen. where were these supposed "connections" when wei wuxian left yunmeng jiang to defend the wen remnants? where were these "connections" when wei wuxian was living in the burial mounds with no one but a bunch of escaped POWs, all for the sake of what was just? and where were these supposed "connections" when the entire cultivation world showed up on wei wuxian's doorstep, calling for his head?

the whole point of the first chronological half of the story is that wei wuxian stood alone. when wei wuxian chose to do what was right over what was easy, he stood alone. when wei wuxian chose to protect the innocent, he did so alone. and when wei wuxian refused to give up on the wen remnants, severing his single strongest political tie in the process - he ended up standing alone against the rest of the cultivation world. no one came to save him. no one even came to stand by him. none of the connections he made before his downfall as the yiling patriarch - save for one, which only stepped up after he died once - actually ended up lasting.

therefore, one can only conclude that, for all his friendliness and inherent likability, wei wuxian actually isn't all that great at forming and maintaining useful political connections. no matter how much people might like him at first, for almost everyone, he's ultimately too politically inconvenient to stand up for.

(funnily enough, the fact that almost all of wei wuxian's connections save a handful were fair-weather friends is highlighted by wei wuxian himself, in the following exchange during the second siege:

One of the cultivators standing at the forefront of the formation said, with bitter grief, “Wei Ying, you truly disappoint me. To think I used to admire and look up to you! I even said that, if nothing else, you were a founder, someone who established the first generation of your own sect. It’s almost nauseating, in retrospect. From now on, you and I stand in opposition!” Wei Wuxian was taken aback by this speech at first but then burst into hysterical laughter. “Ha ha ha ha….” He laughed so hard he could barely breathe. “You admired me? You say that, but why did I never see you, back when you admired me? And when everyone began to bay for my blood, you popped up waving your little flag to cheer in support!”

MDZS Seven Seas translation, Book 4, Chapter 18: Night Flight)

meanwhile, the plot of MDZS is fully impossible if jiang cheng is bad at making political connections. first, consider what happened right after the massacre of lotus pier: the golden core transfer happened, wei wuxian was thrown into the burial mounds, and then three months later jiang cheng and lan wangji found him again. by that point, jiang cheng had already called enough new disciples to his banner that yunmeng jiang was considered a contributor to the sunshot campaign. given that jiang cheng had literally no one by his side after the fall of lotus pier save jiang yanli, it is highly unlikely that jiang cheng would have been able to recruit this many new disciples if he had no interpersonal skills.

(one could potentially make the case that jiang yanli recruited the new disciples, but i find this difficult to believe. people in this time period would assess the strength of a political organization - one asking them to do something as dangerous as go to war for them - by the quality of that organization's leader. not by the quality of the leader's sister who would have inevitably married out of the organization. sucks to suck but that was how things worked back then.)

furthermore, jiang cheng rebuilt lotus pier. jiang cheng rebuilt lotus pier from literally nothing. some jc antis like to argue that wei wuxian contributed more to the rebuilding of lotus pier than jiang cheng, but this is absurd: wei wuxian was only around during the postwar period for 1-2 years at most before he left for the wen remnants, and a few years after that he was dead. after wei wuxian's defection, and then in the 13-year time period between wei wuxian's death and his resurrection, who was left in lotus pier? was in charge of lotus pier? who was running lotus pier so efficiently that, by the time of wei wuxian's resurrection, yunmeng jiang had gone from what wang lingjiao called a joke to one of the strongest sects in the jianghu?

of course - none other than jiang cheng.

this level of political rebuilding, for an organization that was literally decimated less than 20 years ago, is only possible if the leader of said organization is highly politically capable. during the 13 year timeskip, jiang cheng as yunmeng jiang's leader would have had to deal with rival sect leaders, make alliances with other sects, strike deals with other sects, and keep a constant awareness of the political landscape. all of this is only possible if jiang cheng is capable of making useful political connections. frankly, i think fans are putting too much emphasis on jiang cheng's surface-level mannerisms (which he also is only showing because wei wuxian is around, lbr), and too little focus on simple logic. if jiang cheng did not have the ability to make political connections, then yunmeng jiang would have collapsed.

it's easy to read MDZS and conclude, based on a surface-level analysis, that wei wuxian is better at making connections than jiang cheng. yet this take is at best shallow and at worst actively misses all the main points of the novel. for all his charisma, sociability, and wittiness, wei wuxian is actually not that socially apt - if he were, he and the wen remnants would not have died. and - for all of his snappishness, grumpiness, and irritability - jiang cheng is actually not a social klutz - if he were, yunmeng jiang would not have survived to see wei wuxian's resurrection.

the socially-apt underdog you're thinking of is jin guangyao.

Because Wei Wuxian *is* socially adept. The reason he’s not politically adept is likely three fold- he’s the son of a servant who was kicked out of school, not the martyred last heir of a respected sect the way Jiang Cheng is. Wei Wuxian has been able to make rebellious and personal social actions in a way that Jiang Cheng hasn’t, because Wei Wuxian’s actions can so often be either dismissed as those of an unruly ward, someone who will not inherit power. Wei Wuxian’s actions of course do have political influence- in punching Jin Zixuan he inadvertently ends Jiang Yanli’s engagement. His choice to save Mian mian leads to Wen Ruohan targeting Lotus Pier as the first casualty of the war. In standing by the Wens, it has political ramifications for the Jiang sect that requires Jiang Cheng to fully distance himself from Wei Wuxian. In going to his nephew’s 100 day celebration, Wei Wuxian walks into an ambush and puts the Wens in a great deal of danger, ultimately leading to Wen Qing and Wen Ning needing to take responsibility with their lives. Wei Wuxian makes individual personal decisions that he doesn’t realize are political decisions until the consequences come due. He is someone who consistently underestimates is own power and influence.

Two, Wei Wuxian is coded as neurodivergent. He goes against the grain, can’t sit still, follows his curiosity into taboo, he talks too much for others’ taste, spends long hours fixating on new inventions, had a canonically terrible memory, and follows keenly held rules of justice -often to his and his family’s detriment. Whether this neurodivergence is simple genius, a complex reaction to the many traumas in his life, or ADHD, it’s hard to say, but it gets him into trouble and makes him a risky ally to side with, even if it makes him quite fun at parties. Three, he’s queer. Growing up queer and being queer in social spaces, even when closeted to oneself, presents itself in subtle ways that others somehow pick up on. It can be isolating and a point of othering that’s difficult to place. In being too ostentatious, too flirty or comfortable with the opposite sex, too *something* that others can’t quite put their fingers on. These othering traits often make Wei Wuxian a character to others- fun to watch, enrichment in the social landscape, but a risky ally to side with when the chips are down. Wei WuXian likely developed his charm, his friendliness, and his casual treatment of his own trauma in reaction to being so often othered and maligned from a young age. People enjoy being around someone funny and positive, and Wei Wuxian knows, as all humans do, that being alone is dangerous. But how many neurotypical people enjoy the “quirky” antics of their autistic or ADHD friend until it becomes inconvenient? How many straight women love their gay best friends until it’s time to march? How many of the sect leaders loved Wei Wuxian’s demonic cultivation until it wasn’t under their command?

And yes, while it shows political aptitude that Jiang Cheng rebuilt a decimated sect in under 20 years, he had resources. He likely pulled from the influx of sect refugees brought in by Lan Xichen, and paid for much or the rebuilding with resources looted from Wen Ruohan in the war (with Wei Wuxian being a major tool for that purpose). Jiang Cheng in later years is said to not be able to get a wife because of his temper (which, even under asexualJiangCheng headcannons, not having a wife as the sole heir to your recovering sect is… a bad political move) , he is notably the only sect leader of a great sect not included in the sworn brotherhood of the other great sects, and the people of Yunmeng won’t trust him to handle cultivation problems because of how frequently he kidnaps people to torture under suspect of being WWX. These are not necessarily the actions of someone politically or socially adept… though Jiang Cheng seems to rely mostly on intimidation, and this is a form of political aptitude I suppose.

the first reblogger's last paragraph is honestly very ???? because so much of it is just. how do i say. factually incorrect.

And yes, while it shows political aptitude that Jiang Cheng rebuilt a decimated sect in under 20 years, he had resources. He likely pulled from the influx of sect refugees brought in by Lan Xichen,

i'm sorry when did lan xichen bring into yunmeng jiang an influx of sect refugees???????? where in the text of the novel did this happen?????

and paid for much or the rebuilding with resources looted from Wen Ruohan in the war (with Wei Wuxian being a major tool for that purpose).

it is canon that, by the time wei wuxian rejoined jiang cheng during the sunshot campaign (3 months after he was dropped into the burial mounds by wen chao), jiang cheng had already gathered disciples to his banner. this was far before the fall of qishan wen, so jiang cheng would not have been able to pay them with "resources looted from wen ruohan," given that he is not a time traveler. [jiang cheng's ability to call disciples to his banner during wartime], thus, logically cannot have had any causal relationship with any resources looted from wen ruohan, and jiang cheng must have had the ability to call disciples to his banner without having these looted resources on hand.

Jiang Cheng in later years is said to not be able to get a wife because of his temper (which, even under asexualJiangCheng headcannons, not having a wife as the sole heir to your recovering sect is… a bad political move) ,

i'm going to be so fr right now none of the major named sect leader characters post-timeskip save for jin guangyao (married his sister) have wives. nie huaisang doesn't have a wife. lan xichen doesn't have a wife. so if this is a bad political move then everyone is flopping in the same way.

meanwhile, MXTX has directly stated in an interview that she dislikes naming female characters. i wonder if jiang cheng, lan xichen, and nie huaisang all being unmarried post-timeskip has anything to do with this preference.

and the people of Yunmeng won’t trust him to handle cultivation problems because of how frequently he kidnaps people to torture under suspect of being WWX.

the innkeeper of yunping won't trust yunmeng jiang to handle supernatural problems (not cultivation problems because the common people are not cultivators) because an acquaintance of an acquaintance had once walked in on jiang cheng whipping someone (for unknown reasons) in lotus pier, which had promptly scared them off. this feeds into the rumors that jiang cheng kidnaps people to torture under suspicion of being wei wuxian....in the same setting where it is "commonly known" by the public that wei wuxian ate children.

meanwhile, while not handling the supernatural problems faced by the general public is problematic morally, the text of MDZS in fact goes out of its way to establish that this poses no problem to a sect politically. canonically, sects are entirely able to ignore "normal" hauntings in favor of nighthunts that build personal clout because there are no political consequences for this behavior. the reason why lan wangji and later wei wuxian are remarkable for "going where the chaos is" and actually helping the common people with hauntings is remarkable is because there is no personal reward for doing so.

These are not necessarily the actions of someone politically or socially adept… though Jiang Cheng seems to rely mostly on intimidation, and this is a form of political aptitude I suppose.

"For decades, wolf researchers believed ravens followed wolf packs to find food. Every biologist who flew aerial surveys over Yellowstone saw the same thing.

Wolves moving across the snow with ravens overhead, black shapes trailing the pack like a shadow with wings. The assumption was simple. The ravens were following the wolves. The wolves would kill. The ravens would eat. A study published in March 2026 using GPS transmitters on wolves, cougars, and ravens in Yellowstone proved the assumption wrong.

The ravens were not following the wolves. They were remembering where kills had happened before and flying over those locations looking for new carcasses. The relationship between the two species is real. The mechanism is not what anyone thought it was.

Bernd Heinrich, a University of Vermont biologist who spent years studying ravens in Maine and Yellowstone, first documented the scale of the association. His data showed ravens present near wolf packs 99.7 percent of the time during winter in Yellowstone. Not occasionally. Not frequently. Essentially always. On Isle Royale, researcher John Vucetich observed the same pattern from the air.

Every wolf pack had ravens with it. The birds were just always there.

The numbers at kill sites are staggering. The average number of ravens documented at a Yellowstone wolf kill is thirty. The maximum recorded at a single carcass is 135.

A wolf pack brings down an elk in the Lamar Valley, and within hours over a hundred ravens have materialized from across the drainage to feed. They do not wait politely. They land on the carcass while the wolves are still eating. They grab chunks of meat and cache them in the snow and in tree crotches for later retrieval. Research estimates that ravens can consume up to forty percent of a carcass, which means a wolf pack that kills a seven-hundred-pound elk may lose nearly three hundred pounds of it to birds.

That loss is so significant that one study proposed a theory that reshapes how we think about wolf pack size entirely. If a pair of wolves can take down an elk, why do wolves hunt in packs of four, six, eight, or more? The per-capita meat return decreases with every additional mouth. A pair gets the most meat per wolf. The answer may be ravens. Two wolves cannot eat fast enough to outpace a hundred ravens stripping the carcass simultaneously. A larger pack can post guards, feed in shifts, and physically dominate the carcass long enough to retain a greater share of the kill. Wolves may hunt in packs not because they need more teeth to bring down prey, but because they need more bodies to defend the kill from birds.

The ravens pay for their meals. Heinrich documented in his book Mind of the Raven that ravens serve as an early warning system at kill sites. Ravens are more vigilant than wolves. They perch in trees overlooking the carcass and scan the horizon in every direction. When a grizzly bear approaches, or a rival wolf pack, or a mountain lion, the ravens see it first. Their alarm calls alert the feeding wolves to the incoming threat before the wolves' own senses detect it. The wolves get airborne sentries. The ravens get an animal with the jaw strength to open a frozen elk carcass that no raven beak can penetrate.

That is the core of the mutualism. The raven cannot open the hide. The wolf can. The wolf cannot see a threat approaching from a mile away while its head is buried in a rib cage. The raven can. Each species fills a gap in the other's capability, and the result is a partnership so consistent that L. David Mech, the most published wolf researcher in the world, wrote that each creature is rewarded in some way by the presence of the other and that each is fully aware of the other's capabilities.

The play behavior is the part that makes biologists uncomfortable because it implies something beyond transactional mutualism. Wolves and ravens play together. Not at kill sites. Not during feeding. During downtime. Yellowstone observers have documented ravens diving at resting wolves, pulling their tails, and flying away. Wolf pups chase ravens across meadows. Ravens steal sticks from pups and hold them just out of reach. The interactions look like the cross-species equivalent of two bored kids messing with each other because there is nothing else to do.

Doug Smith, the retired lead biologist of the Yellowstone Wolf Project, had watched this relationship from the air for decades. Wolf researchers have believed forever that ravens follow wolves, he wrote after the 2026 study was published. Every wolf researcher has seen it. I have seen it routinely from the plane while wolves are chasing an elk in Yellowstone Park, numerous times. Ravens are just always there. This is an age-old observation. But it has never been rigorously tested until now.

The 2026 study, which used 2.5 years of GPS data from transmitters on wolves, cougars, and ravens simultaneously, revealed that ravens were not tracking wolf movements in real time. They were patrolling known kill sites. A raven that fed at a wolf kill in a specific drainage in November would return to that drainage repeatedly over the following weeks and months, flying over the exact location where the carcass had been, checking whether a new kill had appeared. The ravens were not following the wolves. They were following the memory of where wolves had killed before.

That distinction matters because it changes the raven from a passive follower into an active strategist. A bird that follows a wolf pack is reacting. A bird that memorizes kill locations across an entire landscape and patrols them systematically is planning. The raven is not tagging along. It is running a surveillance network across hundreds of square miles of Yellowstone, checking sites where food has appeared before, and showing up fast enough when it appears again that every observer since the 1995 reintroduction assumed it had been following the wolves the whole time.

The wolf and the raven share almost identical geographic range across the Northern Hemisphere. Everywhere wolves live, ravens live. The association is not a Yellowstone novelty. It is a continental relationship between two of the most intelligent species in North American wildlife, running continuously across boreal forest, tundra, mountain, and prairie, built on meat, memory, and a mutual awareness that neither species has ever needed to be taught."

HELLO you are asking questions that literature and poetry THROUGHOUT the middle ages has asked, and it is from this questioning that we derive things like the Codes of Chivalry (which is not "how to treat a noble lady really nice" but is actually "how to be an ethical person when you're rich and you own a horse" and includes such things as "don't run people over with your horse")

In fact I daresay you already know instinctively just from cultural osmosis what a good boss -- a good liege lord -- is and does based on the tropes that have survived to the current day and the kinds of things that get Hugely Praised in things like legends of King Arthur.

A good boss (liege lord) is:

Merciful. He is not having his peasants killed for things like poaching rabbits during a famine. In fact, he is working to mitigate famine. During times of individual hardship, he might negotiate with a peasant for a payment plan on their annual rent.

Patient. He is not impulsive, he does not lose his temper.

Prudent. He makes choices that are thoughtful, considered, conservative (in the sense of not needlessly risky--he's not investing his entire fortune in having everyone plant an unproven crop). He is making sure local infrastructure like roads and public buildings are maintained and kept in good nick.

Gentle. He doesn't haul off and slap a servant or a tenant for breaking a dish or making a mistake. He doesn't abuse animals, his wife or children, or his employees. He doesn't rape the servants.

Generous (both in money and in spirit). He is not extorting the peasants for an amount of rent that is beyond their means, he is not raising taxes every year to cover his own lavish lifestyle. He is paying his servants a living wage (or, if wages are low, he's giving them room/board/clothing to make up the difference). If someone in a tenant's family dies, the lord is sending a gift of condolence, or helping to pay for the funeral, or possibly even ATTENDING the funeral and speaking a few kind words about the deceased, ESPECIALLY if they were a really upstanding and important member of the community. If one of his tenants is gravely sick, the lord is sending a basket of food or paying for a doctor. He is giving charitably (generally this will be, like, a bequest to the church so that they can run a hospital or an orphanage or a school for the local village children).

Pious. This classically means "goes to church, submits with humility to God" but to me this quality is subtextually standing in for "maintaining an ongoing sense of Perspective that HE'S not god, that there are higher powers he is Accountable to, that he too can be Judged, etc, so that he doesn't end up going on a weird fucked up power trip"

Humble. One of the most admiring things you hear about a lord doing in literature and epic poetry is, "He ate off of wooden plates while his followers ate off of gold and silver." Humility isn't about being meek, it's just about not thinking so much of yourself that you turn your nose up and sneer at what "lesser" people do. In other words: Don't be a fucking diva. If your carriage gets stuck in the mud, climb out and help everybody else push, you're not gonna die from getting mud on your shoes.

Condescending. This word has changed wildly in meaning/tone over the last couple centuries -- it's now a rude thing to do (because we've done away with legal social hierarchies, so someone acting like they're lowering themselves to your level IS insulting), but in older times, a high-ranking person "condescending" to a servant was worthy of praise and admiration: it means they were setting aside rank and privilege to speak to them with the easygoing, friendly respect and compassion they'd give a peer. This is things like... Treats those beneath him with courtesy and respect (ie: listens soberly and attentively when one of his servants or tenants comes to complain about a problem). Having a sense of humor and kindness about it when the lord and a servant both come around a corner at the same time and run into each other and the servant gets knocked to the ground and starts babbling apologies--the condescending (positive) lord helps them to their feet with his own hands and cracks a joke to show them that it's ok (as opposed to just walking off without a word or insulting/scolding them). This is also things like trusting a farmer, woodcutter, or artisan to speak with expertise about their own livelihood and taking their advice into consideration if they tell the lord that one of his ideas won't work.

Good boundaries. The ethical liege lord knows that it's normal for the staff to probably be softly bitching about him in private (even with a really good boss, we all grumble from time to time). He's not eavesdropping on them, he's not going into the staff areas where they should reasonably expect to have a degree of privacy, etc.

Righteous and protective of "the weak". The "weak" here doesn't necessarily mean physically weak, this is often used in the sense of someone politically or socially weak, aka The Marginalized -- the poor, the disabled, women, children, the elderly, etc. If a lord sees someone like this being mistreated or abused, he's supposed to step in and put a stop to that.

Committed to reciprocity. In a highly hierarchical system like feudalism, every person (from the lowest peasant all the way up to the crown prince) legally OWES their liege lord certain things (taxes, labor, service, loyalty, etc). A good liege remembers and takes very seriously the idea that this should be a balanced and reciprocal relationship -- in other words, he owes something BACK. Feudalism is modeled very strongly on the family system: If children owe their parents obedience and service, then parents owe their children care and protection. This still applies when the "child" is a farmer and the "parent" is a local baron. Or when the "child" is a duke and the "parent" is the king.

Basically, we get so caught up in the aesthetics of nobility that we forget that it literally is a managerial position that comes with responsibilities that were... very similar back in the day to the same ones we have now. Humans have not changed all that much. At the end of the day, a really good boss in the 1400s versus in one from the 2020s displays most of the same qualities of personality, even if the details of execution are different.

The next question is, of course, "well, but this theoretical liege lord is HIGHLY idealized -- how often did that actually HAPPEN? Wasn't it more likely that everyone was exploited all the time?" and to that I say: Well, maybe. But again, I don't think humans have changed all that much. Just like the bosses of today, there's a SPECTRUM: A really really good boss is rare and precious and one that you tell stories about for years after you've left that job, but a truly, genuinely, homicidally nightmarish boss is also pretty rare. Most bosses are sort of meh -- they have their good moments, they have their shitty moments, but they're tolerable and you can get along with them well enough to do your job, and then you roll your eyes at them behind their back. Generally, humans don't take outright exploitation lying down. Being a bad boss in the historical period is how you get peasant uprisings and revolts, and you know that to be true because your parents raised you with that knowledge, so unless you are very stupid or inbred or an egomaniac, there is literal personal incentive to at minimum be a Tolerable liege lord. And that means hitting at least SOME of the above bullet points.

TL;DR: In the words of Honore de Balzac, "Everything I have just told you can be summarized by an old word: noblesse oblige!"