#i wanted to write a jian lan x fx fic for fxweek

[taihua]

Your Jian Lan and Mu Qing post. Yes absolutely!!! I love these two characters so much but it definitely grinds my gear when people are seriously trying to make some forced similarites.

I also think that fx and jl werent an argumentative bickering couple too! At least thats not the gist i get from the books. I figured they were one of those kind of lovey dovey couple escaping in their own little world. So i dont think they ever fought before until when the times got really hard and their relationship got tested and… well thats where it all fell apart. Also one of the reason why i think Jian Lan doesnt want to rekindle other than not wanting to be a burden and bringing down his reputation. How different do you think human Jian Lan and ghost Jian Lan acts? The constant thing about her is definitely that pridefulness and her tenacious spirit.

I think Ghost Jian Lan actually isn't all that different from her human days! There's a line in the updated version that of course I can't find now that I want to reference it, but Jian Lan was known for being "spirited" or something similar. Then during the Xianle War when she's kidnapped and assaulted by a Yong'an refugee, her response is to go lead a huge protest in the streets and has to be dragged away by her own servants:

That young woman wouldn’t yield, yelling, “I’m not afraid! I’ve nothing to be embarrassed about, I wasn’t in the wrong!”

So she was definitely always willing to be loud and outspoken.

Then you've got her working at the brothel, where it's possible she was in the aggressive group of women that yelled at Feng Xin for ruining their sign. At the very least, she's surrounded by other women who aren't afraid to be a little rowdy when they speak up for themselves.

I don't know that I see them as mutually lovey-dovey; Feng Xin for sure is the type to be head-over-heels in love after one date, but I imagine Jian Lan went from being exasperated by this weirdo who keeps showing up to talk to her to being reluctantly fond of him, and struggling between caring about him and telling herself that he's no different from any of the other men who pay for her time. She also implies that Feng Xin would vent about his struggles during Book 4, which makes sense because he had no one else to talk to or confide in, but I think that ultimately ends up feeding into her insecurity that he'll get sick of her and resent having to care for her the longer they stay together. Overall I just think she'd have a more realistic mindset and realize that the dream of Feng Xin buying her freedom so they could run away together would never actually work, so when the feelings started to catch despite everything, she decided to push him away before it hurt both of them worse.

Anyway, I think Jian Lan is a bit like Wei Wuxian as Mo Xuanyu at the start of MDZS. Sure, it's acting crazy for a specific reason, but the real person behind those actions has a bit of that outlandish personality to begin with.