#but when wwx calls him out on how his ‘deesculation’ puts wwx in danger

[mxtxfanatic]

@oneeyedoctogod omg this is such a good point! The way jzxuan’s actions are usually framed is that he is acting “in defense of” someone, but really, his priority is to “attack” the person he doesn’t like and just so happens to view as the perpetrator of a wrong, whether he is correct in that assumption or not. He is obviously correct in the Mianmian vs. Wen Chao situation but not in the Jiang Yanli vs. Jin servant situation despite acting on similar feelings of dislike for the “perpetrators.”

Random Thought #33: Idk how to say this without sounding like I’m tryna diminish Jin Zixuan’s one moment of unambiguous good, but I don’t think Jin Zixuan defending Mianmian would ever have happened if he had to do something more proactive than just…ignoring the words of a man he had been building a simmering hatred for over the course of a few weeks.

Jin Zixuan is shown (and explicitly said) to side with people he considers “his people.” While they are all hostages of the Wen during the indoctrination camp, outside of that shared victimhood, Mianmian is simply a stranger to Jin Zixuan, while his “defense” of her is simply refusing to move out of the way when Wen Chao—the man who had been targeting him for harassment every day for weeks on end—ordered him to. This is a very passive resistance. And not to say that this wasn’t a good deed or any less of a powerful moment, but if Wen Chao hadn’t singled out Jin Zixuan for bullying, would he have still ignored the former’s words to move out of the way? If Jin Zixuan hadn’t happened to be standing by Lan Wangji and Mianmian hid behind only the Lan, instead, would he have said anything in her defense? Would he have even physically moved to shield her? Is any of that in-character with the behavior we are shown of his throughout any of the rest of the novel?