#i also went on an lxc tangent but that's normal for me

[songofclarity]

Since I didn’t want to bog down the other post that brought up the topic of belts, I offer a different consideration on the matter: Meng Yao/Jin GuangYao’s belt aspired to be like the one worn by Jin GuangShan:

Circular metal centerpiece, edged pieces bracketing the center, and the circular end pieces all atop dark brown leather. This style choice makes sense since MengYao/Jin GuangYao’s primary aspiration is to be acknowledged by his father as his rightful son, with all the honors and inheritance attached to it.

Of course, the belt is similar-yet-different because Meng Yao isn’t accepted as a Jin as of yet--and never, truly, will be accepted so long as Jin GaungShan has any say on the matter. Meanwhile Jin ZiXuan and Jin ZiXun do get to all wear matching belts alongside Jin GuangShan like one big, happy family:

Meng Yao only starts wearing this similar-yet-different belt after he’s accepted into a prominent position. He becomes someone important, someone worthy of notice -- because it’s Nie MingJue, not the Jin, who honors Meng Yao as someone worth more than the nature of his birth.

Note when Meng Yao meets his father the first time and when he meets Nie MingJue the first time, he’s wearing a plain fabric belt:

Very humble. Several other Nie disciples, the same ones that had been mocking him, are wearing the same style in this scene, so my understanding is that there is nothing inherently bad or low-class about this. Lan Sect disciples, including Lan XiChen, are also seen wearing this style regularly. But once Meng Yao becomes a somebody of importance, he upgrades.

But he doesn’t copy Nie MingJue:

And his belt is entirely different in style, color, and material from the other prominent Nie disciple we meet:

And at no point, past or present, does he imitate Nie HuaiSang, despite wearing Nie HuaiSang’s childhood hairpiece while in the Nie Sect (not shown):

So Jin GuangYao does not pick a belt to identify with the Nie Sect.

He picks one which identifies him with his father and the Jin:

He wears it when he’s in the Nie Sect:

When he’s with the Wen Sect (and where he is actually, for the first time, wearing Nie MingJue-style robes, which is just kind of bizarre at this point when he’s been with the Wen as a spy for a novel-estimate of 1 - 2 years, but maybe it’s a clue-in for the viewer that he’s not actually with the Wen Sect, idk):

And when he’s with the Jin Sect, where he can match his dad as his accepted son in the public eye:

The belt stays, because it was always a Jin belt, but as we can see the robes and underbelt have changed to Jin pale yellow. Except we all know that nothing, least of all wardrobe, will help newly-named Jin GuangYao make his dead-beat dad accept him as his heir, so he ends up killing Jin GuangShan in the end. (RIP Nie MingJue and everyone from Yi City, who could have all been saved if Jin GuangYao had planned out his murders better by killing Jin GuangShan first.)

As to what happens to this belt after Nie MingJue’s death, which is the last scene it’s shown, is unclear. I would like to suggest that even though we don’t get a peek at Jin GuangYao’s waistline during his father’s rape-murder scene, that might have been the end of that belt. Jin ZiXuan and Jin ZiXun are dead so no happy family to match. No more Jin GuangShan to live up to means no more Jin GuangShan-style belt worth wearing.

So after the time skip back to the present, we see Sect Leader Jin and Chief Cultivator, Jin GuangYao, with a fancy new belt:

And it is fancy! But it’s a busy and heavy-looking thing, isn’t it? Still going with the circular motifs. Now it has several decorative pieces in green and red. Not one but TWO tassels. I appreciate the symmetry, but I don’t recall anyone else wearing two tassels, so that stands out to me.

Considering he was copying his dad for leverage, I’m led to wonder what gave him the idea for this new belt. My first thought was Lan XiChen, except:

Lan XiChen in the present is wearing a plain fabric belt again. In fact, Lan XiChen is always humble with his belts. Below is the belt we last see him wearing before the time skip to present, when he is having yet another miserable time at Koi Tower:

This belt is just a large, dark blue band and it almost looks like he’s forgotten the center piece. Compare it to the dark blue twist over the light blue band above, and the silver metal over the pale blue and white band below, worn when we first meet him during the Cloud Recesses School Arc:

Simple and elegant! I would also love to make a comment about the belt he wears after the Sunshot Campaign:

Except Lan XiChen’s Nie-style robe is too big and beautiful that it’s hard to capture a shot of his belt. More interesting than the belt, however, is that Shouyue is clearly decorated with two tassels.

Which leads me to consider this silly notion: Jin GuangYao’s two tassels are not imitating/honoring Lan XiChen, their honoring Shouyue, the sword that held Nie MingJue back when Jin GuangYao could have (rightfully) died. If that is true, it makes it all the more ironic that Shouyue stabs him in the end.

In any case, considering the circumstances when Lan XiChen wears that dark blue outfit with it’s plain, wide-blue belt, I have to wonder if the plainness is supposed to reflect an absence of power, not just for Meng Yao but also Lan XiChen. Lan XiChen’s belts are simple and humble, but the dark blue especially so. Lan XiChen put all his efforts into keeping Nie MingJue alive, not knowing Jin GuangYao was actively betraying and undermining his efforts. All the power Lan XiChen possessed was turned against him, and Jin GuangYao ended up with a nicer belt as he rode that wave of momentum to power.

(Although that dark blue belt nicely balances the decorative design of the outer robe itself.)

After Lan XiChen, my other thought was maybe Jin GuangYao was trying to copy or more likely compete Jiang Cheng, who has a spectacular wardrobe, and yet:

Both Jiang Cheng and Jin Ling’s belts are rather plain by comparison to Jin GuangYao’s. Their belts also look like belts while Jin GuangYao’s looks like decoration. We can also confirm that neither Jin GuangYao nor Jin Ling carry on the matching, happy-family tradition of Jin ZiXuan’s era.

Which brings me to this current conclusion: Jin GuangYao simply and finally has a belt all his own. There is no one else to live up to, no one else to win over, and no one else to stand in his way. Before Nie HuaiSang and Wei WuXian sweep in to ruin him without warning, Jin GuangYao is living his best life. That final belt stands out all on its own, which in turn says a lot about Jin GuangYao and his visions of grandeur: he wants to be seen and recognized. He did, after all, make a temple and slap his mother’s face onto the statue so that she could be worshiped as a goddess. Jin GuangYao utilizes pity as power, but his pride is so fierce that he kills people for ridiculing him.

So it’s really no surprise that he ends up wearing an extra fancy belt when he reaches the top of the cultivation wold. It’s only a wonder that he didn’t accentuate his robes to match, but that would have shown that he wasn’t at all as pitiful as he led the world to believe.