#cql meta

let's start with Chinese Historical Customs: a married lady would have near total reliance on the backing and favor of her husband to have any power whatsoever within her household, or even be able to live comfortably -- without his backing and support, she'd be cut off from money, essential materials such as winter gear and heating fuel, even good food; the servants wouldn't bother listening to her (she'd have a few of her own brought from her first home, but not many); and being bullied (read: anything from humiliated to actually hurt) by her new family wouldn't be uncommon (and we all know what a pit of vipers the Jin Sect was even then).

doublespeak, face, and reputation, all meant that, intentionally or not, JZX was setting JYL up for a MISERABLE future life: by badmouthing her in public so everybody knows that her future husband thinks she's mediocre and unsatisfactory, he's saying he doesn't respect her (or her family! more on that in the next bullet point). if he doesn't respect her, he won't support her or help her if she needs him, because he doesn't care about her reputation, and therefore neither does he care about her comfort, or, well, about her... anything.

more Chinese Historical Customs, or, the Natal Family's Protection: a married lady's last backup defense is the fact that disrespecting her means disrespecting her family, who the husband has allied himself with by marrying her. the more they care about her, the more the natal family will respond to slights to her. they respond through retaliation -- by making the husband pay for disrespecting their daughter.

thus WWX's and JC's immediate answer of punching JZX for his remarks may have seemed disproportionate, but was actually not incorrect.

(They even gave JZX the chance to retract his words first!)

Stressors and Magnifiers: JZX isn't just being this dismissive in front of the two of them, which is already grounds for STRONG retaliation -- he's disrespecting their family's daughter right to their face!!! -- he's ALSO saying this to every single important peer they have, all of whom will go back home and tell that JZX, whose mother is dear friends with JYL's mother, and who visit each other all the time, and who thus must know her best... thinks she's so worthless, she can even be badmouthed in public. he's not only saying he will allow her to be disrespected by others, he's also drastically lowering her value to every other gentry prospect!!!

punching him was a brute and unrefined response, but it was a tradeoff: it traded away "face" for JYL's sake and protection. which she desperately needed right then. it sent the answer that disrespect towards JYL would be met by the strongest and most immediate retaliation the Jiang could possibly make;

and JFM agrees with the whole thing, because he finishes the move and breaks the engagement: "if you don't value her, then you don't get to have her".

(obligatory note that WWX was not expelled for his actions that day, and chose to return to Lotus Pier with JFM on his own... after finding out that LWJ had gone into seclusion and would no longer be around for him to tease.)

(obligatory note that it's extremely unlikely JZX was a malicious mastermind doing anything on purpose during this scene. we don't get a lot on him, but he was probably, honestly, just being a stupid teenager about a situation he was upset with. unfortunately, the above consequences still apply.)

I see JC going through a mix of less complicated emotions at first. After canon, where he scowls at WWX with anger at first, the underlying pain gains a new companion. A feeling of sadness that drives JC to avoid WWX in the same way that the latter’s pain and guilt drives him to avoid his shidi. WWX, on the other hand, would take the longest time to let himself feel more complex and contradictory emotions. He might even get stuck on that guilt and not let himself feel the anger, disappointment, and resentment towards JC that he has always buried deep inside if things at Cloud Recesses stay the same as ever and he and LWJ isolate themselves from everyone else while LXC withers away in his tormented seclusion.

(Here comes the important reminder that MDZS is full of parallelisms and as such, LWJ and LXC share the same complicated feelings that exist between the Yunmeng bros, even if the details of their relationships are different. I won't go further into the Twin Jades of Lan, cause they deserve their own post, but let it be known that their reconciliation is as unlikely as the Yunmeng Twin Heroes’. They’re totally related. Any advances in one of the pairs would positively reflect on the other and viceversa, that’s why it’s so difficult for them to avoid emotional stagnation.)

The key to WWX getting more in touch with his feelings would be in the changes brought forth by the juniors. LSZ and LJY would work through WWX's façade even better than LWJ does, cause WWX doesn't think them as biased. His two Lan ducklings would charge headlong into his emotional mess through gentle words (LZS) and earth-shattering remarks disguised as snark (LJY), and force help him through the mess of recognizing and sorting out those emotions.

Still, JC and WWX being aware of their feelings is not enough for them to solve things.

However, it might help them all to take a step forward and start acknowledging each other in a better manner. They’d go from having raw, more simple feelings preventing them to even wanting to hear each other’s name, to gradually being able to share the same space amicably. That doesn’t mean that looking at each other in the eyes or feeling each other’s gaze isn’t simply too much because it makes them spiral. This is the point where they’d yearn for this new, happier version of their brother, their emotions getting as complicated as I described at the beginning. But that's the most I can see them achieving on their own because they’re both so stubborn. They’re set in their own ways and it would take a huge external force for them to make the slightest changes (ie. golden-core transfer reveal and the little ducklings intervening to make WWX feel his feelings is what causes changes in their perspective).

Why do I feel like this? Am I allowed to feel this? How can I dare to want this when I can’t even forgive him? How could I ever forgive him? Would he ever forgive me? How is it possible that I still love him so much? Do I even deserve to have that with him after everything I did? And what about him? Am I ready to truly forgive him and trust him? Will I ever be? I can’t, I couldn’t even if I wanted to and it hurts SO MUCH! IT HURTS!

IT HURTS!ITHURTSITHURTSITHURTS IHATEHIMIHATEHIMIHATEHIM

WHYDIDHEDODTHAT!?!WHYDIDHEDOTHATTOME?! WHYDIDHENOTDOANYTHING?!

WHY DID HE LEAVE ME?!?!?

…

You see? After everything I’ve laid down, any of them could have this exact internal conflict anytime.

The thing is they are both more alike than they think. JL would see through their bullshit and be so frustrated with it all through the years. Already an adult and experienced sect leader, he’d understand but not completely, because he’d be the first to realize that nothing can compare to what they’ve gone through. And yet, he’d want them to talk and make up because he loves his maternal uncles so much. He won’t admit it to anyone, (LJY, LZS and OYZZ don’t need him to. it’s been years since WWX returned and JL’s already an open book to them), but he wants them to be happy around each other. To not feel so torn apart between them. He’d want an opportunity to have some semblance of the family that could’ve been and he will take any chance, as small as it might be, to achieve that.

Cue the junior-now-adult-quartet shenanigans. They’ve been seeing how every adult they love is miserable to some extent, and now that they’re adults too, they can and will do something about it. Cause hey, if they were able to bulldoze in and force WWX to actually feel his feelings, they can do this too! So now, their new goal is to get these two grown-ass adults to talk. Although technically, WWX is only a few years older, and a great deal more traumatized than them too. They’re aware of it. But they’d rather not think too much about it because they most definitely didn’t cry for hours on end after they got him to talk and started thinking about his life. And they most definitely didn’t attract attention when, weeks later, they finally grasped the scope of everything that their seniors had suffered when they had been even younger than they were at that moment.

LJY and OYZZ would be totally and completely over-invested in this. They’d scheme and help JL trace a plan for how and when to talk to each of them individually to subtly let them know how he felt. LSZ would use his power as heir and acting sect leader to stage the encounter among the three of them, securing LWJ’s reluctant approval after a great deal of convincing. And JL would trigger the conversation with a spontaneous outburst at his two uncles’ ridiculous yearning. They’d probably use a combination of WWX’s inventions and Lan techniques to lock them into a room, and force them to talk and have a truthful heart to heart, and they’d hope that after that, everything would be okay.

A LONG bout of silence later, they’d hear shouting and objects shattering and hitting the floor. They’d hear them fight, without sensing any spiritual or resentful energy of any kind, and LWJ would have to be stopped from dismantling the arrays and talismans in place just so he could go pounce on JC’s throat himself. The blows would soon be replaced with more silence, then soft murmurs. Sobbing. More yelling, and cracked voices. It’d be almost time for waking up the next morning when the arrays disappeared on their own. The doors opening to show the two brothers splayed on the floor next to each other, robes and hair disastrously askew. Holding their forearms over their eyes, barely covering the tear trails and reddened cheeks, their chests would be rising peacefully as they’d finally seem to sleep from exhaustion. LWJ’s eyes would get stuck on the way their fingertips touch ever so slightly. The ducklings don’t say a thing, but they’d totally stare too. JL would be the one to break the silence and tell everyone they should be going to sleep as well (and if LSZ and LJY see JL’s glassy eyes and a lone tear… no, they don’t).

Would that be it? Nope. Haven’t I said already it’s not easy? They’d have started talking and acknowledging that they both want the same thing, but it’s still not enough. They’d have to WORK for it. Hard. They would need to build a support system if they wanted to achieve the relationship they want to have. LWJ would have to start seeing JC as a person, and one that is able to give his Wei Ying the happiness he deserves, now that he’s at it. JC would have to start relying more on the other adults in his live. And it wouldn’t hurt WWX if he expanded his circle to include people other than his husband, his son, his son’s friends, and his undead cinnamon-roll of a friend.

In this way, they would be working on their respective issues to obtain each other’s forgiveness. They would face setbacks on more than one occasion, questioning whether it’s even worthwhile. This is the only way I see them regaining trust in each other.

The two of them mending their relationship without strong external factors would be OOC and unrealistic. It doesn’t matter if you’re going by MDZS or CQL canon. Although if we’re going by CQL canon, I don’t think they would ever go further than the ‘avoiding each other’ stage, and neither would any plot device help them do it. CQL WWX is very tame in the war-crime front and even though he’s just as ‘selflessly’ quick to put himself in harm’s way as in the novel, nobody can blame him for an attack that was clearly planned years before (most of the ‘facts’ stated on the novel turned out to be complete hearsay and/or senseless bullshit, this translates to CQL too even though if the censorship fucked a big part of this by drawing extreme caricatures of everyone). His misdeeds boil down to war crimes of varying moral weight, and not trusting people enough to include them in decisions they should’ve been included in, cause JZX and JYL’s deaths were caused by SMS.

And CQL JC is… not good. His decision to completely ignore the Wens even when he personally knew them and knew they had helped them repeatedly (first encounter in the Dafan Mountain and then, after the fall of Lotus Pier) meant he’s the only character to blatantly disregard a life debt, one he had to the Wen siblings. And on top of that, he still pulls the same shit that novel JC does after WWX returns, which makes him even worse.

Novel JC, on the other hand, took the right decision by not getting involved with the Wens. They were complete strangers, and he couldn’t risk the safety of the sect and the people of Yunmeng. He was powerless against the wishes and whims of the cultivational world cause that's how politics work. You’re forced to choose duty towards your people over your heart.

But let’s get back on track. I’ll make a full post on my view of JC as whole another time. The reason why it would be so complicated and they’d have to work so hard towards mending their relationship is that they would first have to realize that they cannot go back to how things were before. JC would need to recognize that WWX is not to blame for all his misfortunes and he’d have to apologize for all the fucked-up shit he does after WWX’s return. Psychologically torturing his 21-year-old brother with dogs while being a 34 year-old sect leader that has had 13 years to deal with his emotions was a dick-move of the highest category. And so it is the stunt he pulls right before the golden-core reveal at Lotus Pier. Yes, the golden-core transfer was sketchy but made complete sense. Yunmeng Jiang needed a leader and WWX was not fit for the role, not due to a lack of skills, but because it would’ve worked as badly as JGY given how the whole Jianghu cared only about birth status and nothing else.

This doesn’t mean that JC’s evil, WWX is the ultimate child-abuse victim, and that JC should never get close to WWX ever again (I’m looking at you, JC antis, though this whole post is also a call-out to JC apologists, cause he ain’t no innocent snowflake wronged by bad, evil /WWX/YLLZ). It simply means that JC has to claim responsibility. He also needs to see that just like WWX was abused, he and JYL were victims of the same abuse. They both need to come to terms with that fact and know that they had some sort of trauma-bond given that JC’s coping mechanism for enduring the abuse was reflecting that same abusive behavior on WWX. Yes, siblings who grow up abused often abuse each other as well, and/or end up enabling their abusers through a fawn response (this was JYL’s case).