#Jgy tag

[evilhasnever]

I keep seeing people start from the premise that "JGY is heartless" to read all of his actions in the worst possible light, or claim that he was, for example, incapable of loving Lan Xichen... Meanwhile a quick cause-effect analysis of his canonical actions shows that he often chooses mercy when it is NOT beneficial to him, that he repays kindness with kindness when he can, and that he is filial to a fault until he is pushed off the deep end by JGS.

Examples: he did not start playing the evil medley for NMJ until NMJ had actively tried to murder him three times! He did not kill SiSi upon realizing who she was, even though she was a very dangerous loose end. He did not mysteriously get rid of Qin Su or repudiate her, so as not to ruin her reputation. He delayed his departure to Dongying to dig up his mother's remains to take them with him! He waited way too long to kill that horrible father of his (poetic yet horrifying method aside). He got Jin Ling Fairy, and later Fairy led his enemies to Guanyin temple...

Every single one of these choices came back to bite him, and was literally instrumental to his undoing. If he'd been as ruthless as some people think, none of those people would have lived long enough to ruin him. tl;dr: it would have been far easier for Jin Guangyao to truly not have a heart, but alas.

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

The musical episode.

[First] Prev <–-> Next

[luanna801]

Oh so when Nie Huaisang tricks a guy into stabbing his best friend to death it's ""justified revenge"" and ""very girlboss of him"" but when I, Xue Yang--

[zelkam]

— chuck palahniuk, haunted

[labyrynth]

see also, if:

wei wuxian’s completely theoretical (and never-tested) soul sacrifice ritual simply Did Not Work

nie mingjue’s corpse (which canonically targets people related to jin guangyao) had killed the freshly resurrected wei wuxian in mo xuanyu’s body (who happens to be related to jin guangyao)

everyone: NHS is a MASTERMIND every single thing he did for 16 years was SO calculated

NHS's grand scheme: would have been irrevocably derailed if

wei wuxian hadn't run into jin ling on a random night hunt

lan wangji hadn't had a secret means of unquestionably recognizing wei wuxian (that nhs didn't know about)

lan xichen hadn't made a passing comment about wei wuxian messing up music

lan jingyi hadn't made a passing comment about su she messing up music

anyone else had found and destroyed one of the limbs before he got there

the second siege of the burial mounds or the conversation afterwards lasted an hour longer

[evilhasnever]

some pearls of wisdom from zzj about jgy (from here)

[benevolenterrancy]

Swords pining for each other's cultivator is my new favorite type of pining. Love your NieYao content! <3

I don't suppose we could get Baxia or Hensheng throwing a tantrum while Jin Guangyao / Nie Mingjue are away, leaving their owners to deal with the embarrassing aftermath?

Also, do you have any recs you'd recommend with these two?

this is the exact moment Nie Huaisang realised he was going to have to start meddling in his big brother's love life (con't: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5)

Hensheng, on the other hand, doesn't throw tantrums but WILL sulk...

[labyrynth]

i liked @poorlittleyaoyao’s tags

I cannot stress enough how MINOR of a petpeeve this is and how this is an interpretation that i'm comfortable with other people having even if i personally do not but I've noticed in a lot of 3zun fics, if jgy is holding smth back- generally his own feelings because his natural reaction to conflict is to make it Go Away and so if his emotional needs are the potential source conflict he will simply Not Look At Them.- That between nielan Xichen is the one who's worried and presses for comunication and Mingjue is like "Meng Yao is an adult if there was a problem he'd say so."

And I get why this is done, because nieyao's communication is generally atrocious and Xichen is the Gentle One who'd want to make sure a-yao is okay. So I get it. But. Canonically. The person going "I know a-yao, we trust each other, I don't need to ask him, he'll tell me on his own terms." is Lan Xichen and the one going "If Meng Yao doesn't want me to know something he WILL hide it from me and i'll have no idea because he's just that good at lying" is Nie Mingjue. And in a healthier nieyao dynamic, as these fics work under, that knowledge would not lead to automatic distrust but rather a desire to check in, to go: please remember that I value your honesty more than whatever you think you would burden me with by telling me what's going on.

Xichen also wants honesty and open communication ofc but his reaction to conflict is also to make it go away as fast as possible and he feels like saying it constantly feels accusatory so he wouldn't. If he asks if something is ok and a-yao smiles and goes of course er-ge checking again if it's really okay would be implying he was lying the first time!! He's showing his trust in him!! This is really refreshing if you're constantly assumed to be untrustworthy and meng yao appreciates it so much and it works really well 95% of the time but when it doesn't? Oh boy.

[3cosmicfrogs]

Guy on fire since 5 minutes old: "Stop complaining. Being on fire is fine actually. Why don't you just set yourself on fire."

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

All cards on the table.

[First] Prev <–-> Next

[khattikeri]

one of my favorite things about mdzs is that for how heavily its plot involves politics of classism and misogyny... even the characters most directly impacted by it can't and don't free themselves from it. literally the closest exception is mianmian.

meng yao being the "son of a whore" wasn't some sort of commie awakening for him that led him to wanting everyone to be socially equal. he played the political game, climbed the ladders, sucked up to and backstabbed and murdered people, including other prostitutes who actually had nothing to do with how he and his mother were treated at the brothel he grew up in.

he put in so much extra excessive effort for even a fraction of the same respect that members of gentry cultivation clans got. and he did deserve to be treated more humanely! but he feeds into the exact same system that created him, leading to his own undoing.

his efforts were for a fragile upward mobility that was never going to hold up. he never surpassed his origins nor did he empower others in similar stations, because the society he lives in is not one that would accept that.

the second he got caught and all those crimes exposed, he was scapegoated to hell and back, replacing wei wuxian as society's terrible one-sidedly evil boogeyman overnight.

speaking of not-quite male gentry, i think it's interesting that wei wuxian explicitly doesn't try to climb the ladders in BOTH lives, knowing full well that anything he does will be punished just for the sheer fact that he is wei wuxian.

wei wuxian is scolded for giving intelligent and correct answers in school. lan wangji does the same and is praised.

wei wuxian occasionally lounges around with fellow disciples and is punished. jiang cheng does the same and mostly escapes.

wei wuxian refuses to carry his sword around in public (after losing his golden core, which nobody knows) and is scorned as an arrogant upstart. nie huaisang has been doing the EXACT SAME THING for YEARS and nobody bats an eye.

unlike jin guangyao, wei wuxian knew subconsciously from the start that his acceptance was superficial and that he could be cast out any time. when he was 10 and recently taken in by the jiangs, he canonically would not eat or use "too much" food and water because he thought they'd find him a nuisance for "wasting their things" and kick him back out.

now away from just the classism, yu ziyuan is a proud and strong noblewoman in a society that belittles and derides women for everything they do. her strong cultivation doesn't matter. she's victim to the vicious rumors of her husband loving another woman who is strong like her but apparently had a more likeable personality.

it doesn't matter even if jiang fengmian didn't cheat or that wei wuxian is wei changze's son with cangse sanren; yu ziyuan can't bear with the humiliation of herself (and by extension her children) not being "good enough". she's ridiculed for "failing" in that one duty as a wife, mother, and woman.

she lashes out and takes out that anger on everyone present for years, giving her children lasting trauma and also being a key element in how the jiang family and yunmeng jiang sect are effectively wiped out at the hands of the wen clan.

madam jin doesn't even have a name outside of the fact that she's married to jin guangshan. i don't even remember reading anything that indicates if she's a strong or weak cultivator, or what, which in itself proves that to most people, it doesn't matter. she's "just" a woman.

of course she's angry at her husband's affairs and all the bastard children they bring in. but she also can't do anything about them, so she lashes out at the few people she can: servants. non-cultivators, probably. those very same bastard children.

shoutout to meng yao getting shoved down a flight of stairs at age fourteen, because if madam jin tried that move against her husband instead, it would make her lose even more face, which as a noblewoman she'd never do.

and that's not getting into how jiang yanli is consistently sidelined for being physically weak.

that's not getting into how mianmian was actually a good cultivator, but was mocked by everyone around her for trying to stand up for wei wuxian when everyone was turning on him. how everyone scoffed at luo qingyang's words as "just some lovesick woman" who "obviously wants to marry or bed him since he saved her".

luo qingyang is the only one of these characters who HASN'T died. she didn't play society's games like jin guangyao. she didn't dig her heels in confidence of her own abilities like wei wuxian.

she didn't bitterly lash out like yu ziyuan and madam jin. she didn't gently accept it like jiang yanli.

she just LEFT.

she married an ordinary merchant and cultivates separately from mainstream cultivation society, and therein found her own peace and happiness.

mxtx doesn't bother with particularly class conscious or feminist vocabulary to hand-hold readers into understanding these disparities, but that choice highlights them & the deeply entrenched politics of their society even more. i really love it.

[holy--milk]

my official ranking list of all JGY ships:

every JGY ship is the best ship on account of having JGY in it

[jinlin-at-the-moon]

i dont know how to Articulate my thoughts abt this but like. im deeply fucking surprised i haven't seen any 3zun fics where it would fully lean into jin guangyao's severe parental issues. like maybe im just too svssspilled (its totally me being too svssspilled thanks 'i wouldnt abort you' sqq) so the freudian angle analysis comes way too easily to me for it to be normal but like. someone else has gotta be seeing this shit right. rancid desire for approval meng yao couldn't get from his father specifically was already deeply seeped into his relationship with nie mingjue from the start. sideyes lan xichen and raises an eyebrow. "the child desires to kill its father for it is in competition for its mother's affection", huh? shit kind of writes itself and my primary reason for even considering this angle is that jin infamously committed actual incest and later also kicked out his half brother for trying to flirt with him guangyao would absolutely hate it

[labyrynth]

@deathbyoctopi I'll also throw out there that "Where in the world is Nie Mingjue?" was made specifically in response to claims that jgy entrusted xy with keeping part of nmj's body. xy did not possess any part, nor was any part hidden in yi city.

You may be thinking of the parts recovered in the altercations with su she (the "gravedigger")--one at the yueyang chang estate, and one that he himself brought to yi city.

hey jin guangyao enjoyers, let's play a game

next time the bad take harvest in the tags or on reddit or wherever is particularly bountiful, use this template to gamify your fandom experience! also if you get a bingo, i'll make you a funny meme of your choosing.

* oops yes i know jgs was never xiandu; i meant to write "as jin-zongzhu" in that square and forgot

[evilhasnever]

Some interpretations of “I never even thought of hurting you” seem to downplay the uniqueness of what Lan xichen is for JGY, at times, or to take it as situational/observational rather than (allow me the term) axiomatic for the way JGY sees himself and his core beliefs.

To me it’s especially important that in context he says the iconic phrase immediately after saying “I killed literally everyone, my wife, my son, my brother etc.” BUT, and here’s the point, never, ever considered hurting you. The emphasis of this juxtaposition seems more than just an observation that LXC was never in any danger from him - it is furious and resentful! He has always held LXC as a unique exception in his life, only to be in the end killed by him as if he were just another of his haters (lol).

Certainly LXC was always on his side, so not ever a threat to him or his well-being, but when he DID become a threat (stabbing him to death, notably) JGY still doesn’t take revenge (which he could, by dragging him with him to get killed by NMJ); he STILL saves him, as if to drive that point home with final clarity.

I guess the debate on whether JGY, whose survival is paramount, would ever kill LXC if LXC became clearly and openly his enemy, is a juicy one and one that doesn’t have an explicit answer in canon. (But! We do have an inkling in canon of what he would do: namely, take him hostage and seal his cultivation, without harming him.)

(also not to be that guy but I wrote a xiyao fic about it ft. Villainous friends if that’s more your speed? Definitely more complete than my meta)

[benevolenterrancy]

after yesterday's picture i realised that almost every time i draw jgy he looks like he's about 5 seconds away from a breakdown so i figured i should give him a nap for once