Jiang Cheng and torture

[alnair_tair]

OG POST

OP sorry for hijacking with my own thoughts I just find your analysis interesting. Made me think >-<

Holy shit that last part hasn’t occured to me but yeah, it’s Jiang Cheng who then goes to accompany his shixiong in finishing the torturing of Wen Chao, something Wei Wuxian has been a time doing alongside all of the haunting (in the ghost sense too) of Wen soldiers. so he learnt that he could do that and liked it (in some way, for sure) because of/thanks to Wei Wuxian.  Uh.

Also it’s interesting bc Jiang Cheng hates the Wen as much or more than Wei Wuxian but he hadn’t thought of torture, contenting himself with straightforward killing and extermination. Not that’s much better but you know. Still not toying with someone psychologycally for months while personally killing their subordinates for maximum mindbreaking and making them eat themselves at the end and broking their minds. Like. There’s a reason Lan Wangji goes out that building where Jiang Cheng and Wei Wuxian do unspeakable things to Wen Chao and sits down thinking “the sun has fallen” re:wei wuxian and it’s not lovesick dramatics. Again, holy shit.

Of course later Wei Wuxian is like… Well no, actually, I don’t remember well the novel, it’s been sometime since I read it but was there actually any moment in which he regretted the absolute brutal way in which he treated the Wen soldiers and their corpses during the Sunshot Campain? Maybe he wouldn’t act that way anymore, and sees it as wrong, but do we see him repenting of it?

(I think nop, bc MDZS world is not a modern one.)

Seems to me it’s more like he considered it a deal done when their side won the war (and he and JC avenged Yummeng Jiang to their satisfaction) and so further represalies were unnedeed and unjust in WWX’s POV, and he ends up helping Wen Qing and Wen Ning because of the personal connection (once he remembers they exist when WQ suddenly appears) which then furthers to the rest of the Wen prisioners, clearly people who were on the perifery of the war or too old or too young to fight.

Like. Morality in general is just such a boring way of judging charas.

And also, with Xue Yang and Koi Tower as an example of what people was doing on the regular with demonic cultivation thinking they were following on the steps of the dreaded Yiling Patriarch (and Wei Wuxian had that reputation bc of something), are we absolutely sure Jiang Cheng tortured and killed (only) innocent people? Mo Xuanyu did, at the end, sacrifice himself for revenge on his family thinking they were gonna die brutally murdered by the cultivation world’s boggieman, we may assume, so… (he’s a complete narrative cipher we may infer whatevs and I find mxy more interesting in this light).

I mean Jin Ling helping “Mo Xuanyu” scape his uncle suggets that Jiang Cheng has a history of just going for the torture and dissapearing of demonic cultivators without corroborating much of anything, blinded by his own history and feels, so like. Sure. It’s probable he did. But it’s all in the air for people to do what they like with, and it’s hearsay and we know what history that has in MDZS.

And even if Jiang Cheng does torture demonic cultivators in the regular bc he’s chasing the ghost of Wei Wuxian and those final years of unhappines when his last family died bc of it… Sorry it makes him more interesting >-< Not a good guy but a super interesting chara worth exploring and liking by whoever. (Me. It’s me)