I am reading so much Untamed and MDZS meta and people are so... eager to trash on Lan Xichen and Jiang Cheng (and also Jin Ling for some reason?? He's a child who father WWX killed?? He should be allowed to stab WWX everyday and instead I find fics where he calls JZX peacock to his face???) as if their anger has no justification.
Lan Xichen literally has to handle a brother crippled from grief who lashed out at the very people he grew up with and who presumably taught him in an attempt to protect WWX. I can't imagine hitting out at 33 elders and simultaneously being the son of a woman who supposedly killed a Lan teacher would be solved by 33 lashes, even if it is incredibly painful but somehow that is what happened and LXC or Lan Qiren must have done something for the punishment not to be terminal seclusion or a death sentence with some nice cover-up. And when WWX comes back to life he trails after LWJ, and doesn't reciprocate his feelings in any obvious way even though LXC gave him that "speech" and a concert. He accuses JGY, leads LWJ on (from his perspective) even after knowing what LWJ did for him, and he reprimands WWX only once. Like. That man is a saint. I'm not sure I would have been half as gracious as he has been for even a fraction of the same.
Jiang Cheng is more abrasive but like... his sect was massacred in part because WWX decided to hold at swordpoint the arrogant son of the evil overlord and his dumbass of a father did not bother to mount any defence. Say what you will about "the wens would have come anyway" but Jiang Sect is decimated to the last man. There is no one away on night hunts because the Wen Sect forbade it. The only survivors are JC and JYL and WWX. The Lans on the other hand were forced to burn their libraries and had their leader killed. This is before the cave thing. There is no way a major sect would end up this dead if Wen Chao hadn't gone to daddy crying about it. Then JC's martial brother decides that actually he will go murder a bunch of guards without telling anyone anything and hole up on corpse mountain after spending months committing several social faux pas and fighting with another sect heir to support the clan that killed theirs. Then he KILLS Jin Zixuan while getting invited to his son's ceremony as a part of his social reintegration. And loses control over his powers and injures JYL. And then explodes into pieces when JC brings a seige at his doorstep. Discounting the core thing, and how utterly violating it must have been, JC has lots of reasons to be pissed at him. Wdym JC has an inferiority complex and can't stand WWX's talent/moral righteousness/whatever... that is not even the top ten reasons why he's mad at/resentful of WWX.
Neither of them have the full information, and in JC's case it's because WWX went out of his way to keep him in the dark.
(ALSO JIN LING??? YOU HATE JIN LING FOR STABBING WWX??? Please, it is a miracle he talked to the man after he found out who he was.
"JYL wouldn't have wanted it--" JYL is dead. As much as she was a bridge for her family - hello parentified daughter trope - she is, unfortunately, very much not here.)