#if he didn't owe wen qing and wen ning for helping him he probably wouldnt have even noticed or cared

[meanderfall]

#wheres the essay OP#OP wheres the essay#meander i cannot stress enough how willing i am to hear you go off on this topic

fjdlkgjdfljkgh okay! @fenrirsclaws if you really want to hear about this, i don't mind sharing! Because I really did write a whole-ass essay (or just rambled like a madman for several hours)!!!!

I do feel like I need to put in a disclaimer before I start copy and pasting (and editing a little) that this entire thing started bc i was talking with a friend about how fandom half-jokingly calls wwx a working class hero (when we both think he isnt), when jgy should probably be considered one for real, considering he clawed his way to the top and then created the watchtowers, a public good made to defend non-cultivators in remote areas.

And then we both found this meta, elaborating a little bit on the class dynamics in mdzs, and how the interpretation of wwx being incredibly class conscious isn't entirely accurate (and with some delicious jgy meta too and his place in the gentry/cultivation world), and since i've been reading svsss and 2ha, my brain went brrr and decided to compare and contrast.

SO!

gonna start with 2ha bc i think it's the simplest place to start AND since it's from a different author, the intent and themes are already way way different.

so to start off with, Mo Ran(the protagonist of 2ha)'s situation is the most similar to WWX's. Mo Ran also spent years on the street as an orphan before being taken in by a sect leader and his family. There is a stark difference in how it plays out, and why I think Mo Ran is way more class conscious than WWX is from this experience.

For starters, Mo Ran spent much, MUCH longer trying to survive on the streets than WWX did. I think Mo Ran's mom died when Mo Ran was around the same age was when WWX's parents died? But Mo Ran stayed on the streets until the age of 15, unlike WWX who got taken in a couple years in.

Second, where they start off from as orphans is even different? Like, WWX is the son of rogue cultivators, one of whom is in good standing with a sect leader, and the other was the disciple of the immortal Baoshen Sanren. As far as I know, Mo Ran only knows his mom who was just a regular every day working woman. Which kinda means that 1) people with means would be looking out for WWX (iirc Jiang Fengmian actually went looking for him, which is why he's found soon-ish) and 2) WWX's lineage isn't actually that bad. He gets called a "son of a servant" when he's acting out/breaching etiquette, but for the most part he is accepted by the cultivation world/gentry just fine. Mo Ran, however, is well-aware that other sects and cultivators would spit on him for being a nobody.

Third, even their experiences as orphans on the streets was night and day in that sense that like. WWX got chased by dogs and didn't have enough to eat, but I don't think we're given much more than that. It's enough to inform us of his trauma and why he thinks and acts in certain ways, but I don't think we get anything particularly pointed in regards to class. In contrast, Mo Ran's mom was busking on the streets by dancing on top of poles when some rich cunt stops by and is like "oh this isn't nearly impressive enough. i'll give you 10 gold pieces if you do it with shards of glass/knives beneath you." and his mom doesn't want to do it, but it's MONEY and her son is starving so she does and oh look at that she gets injured. And the rich bitch doesn't even give her the money she said she would. None of the bystanders rush her to medical care. One person offers her a single copper piece in "sympathy" from a bag full and clinking from coin. And now his mom can't even perform to get even the meager amount of coins they were getting already.

So Mo Ran starts begging on the streets too and there's one scene where he comes across this rich young master who's eating dumplings by just. munching the middle piece and throwing the wrappers/dough to his dog. And Mo Ran begs to have the wrappers instead and the rich young master refuses, makes fun of him, has him kicked and beaten away, and Mo Ran is viscerally aware in this moment that he is worth less than a dog.

Fourth! Mo Ran actually gets taken in the sect leader of Sisheng Peak by lying that he's his nephew. Technically the sect leader makes the assumption and Mo Ran just doesn't correct him, but he is aware that he is there under false pretenses and if he tells the truth, they might kick him out. WWX has a shaky and dysfunctional family dynamic with the Jiangs bc of his origins, but I don't think he thought he would ever get kicked out. He was head disciple! He was going to be Jiang Cheng's right hand man! None of that screams "if you do even one wrong move you will be kicked out", especially since he was always acting shamelessly? It's a well-known fact about him? If he was in danger of that, it probably would have happened a long time ago.

And we know that Mo Ran's insecurity of his place and position is still a big part of his life, since the curse Mo Ran is placed under in the story plays with this insecurity of his by making him think his shizun is looking down on him for being poor and illiterate and some mutt dragged in from the streets when that couldn't be FURTHER from the truth.

to move on to themes….. MDZS has some classism going on, but i don't think it's necessarily one of the points it's trying to make. The class dynamics are mostly there to inform on characters' backstories and motivations, but it's not really what it's talking about. If there was, it would probably something along the lines of "The rich and powerful decides what's fair to whoever, including the other gentry. They will twist your reputation to suit their ends." Because MDZS very much a story centered around the struggles of cultivators and their sects, not around what non-cultivators and regular people are going through, and thus it's rich and powerful in-squabbling. No one is immune. A Bad Reputation can RUIN you, and it can be very VERY easy to manipulate people and the general populace to believe a certain thing. (If anything, MDZS is almost more of a cautionary tale against believing rumours, and a quiet urge to be willing to show people grace and empathy, bc people are in fucked up situations, making impossible choices.)

2ha on the other hand, actually DOES focus a LOT, or at least a lot more, on the struggles of non-cultivators. There's the Lower Cultivation Realm and the Upper Cultivation Realm, and the Upper Realm obvs has the more powerful sects and stronger cultivators but they work on "commission". The peasants have to pay them in order for them to show up and help. Sisheng Peak is a Lower Realm sect and actually isn't all that wealthy bc they make it a point to redistribute that wealth to EVERYONE, even the non-cultivators. You will be fed and sheltered and taken care of in its area. Chu Wanning, Mo Ran's shizun, is from the Upper Cultivation Realm and he LEFT bc he believed in what the Upper Realm preached and was so disappointed and angry that they didn't actually follow through and wanted to help. And he DOES. he CARES. he creates these automatons for villagers to use that will protect them from demons and other ghoulies and hands them out for FREE (or for very little? It's been a while since i read the first book). There's a mission in the actual book where he speaks with a ghost and finds out this poor girl was taken advantage of by this rich merchant family and murdered so their son could further their standing by marrying someone else, and he's so fucking pissed at them that he starts WHIPPING them for their cruelty, while calling them out for how awful they are. And he does it even though he knows he's breaking the sect rules, and calmly marches himself to the punishment hall because even if it was for a good cause, he knows he broke the rules and needs to be punished for it. (If we're going to call ANY cultivator the hero of the common folk it should be CHU WANNING.)

I don't know if you care about getting spoilers for 2ha (though lmao already kind of late for that), and I don't know the complete story since the story isn't fully translated and released yet, and finding fan translations is kind of difficult, so im mostly working off of the wiki and spoilers from fic, but I'm pretty sure the reason why the cruelty and callousness of the rich (from both cultivators and non-cultivators) gets a lot more focus in 2ha than mdzs, is bc it's an actual plot point. Like. A major fucking plot point. As is Chu Wanning's unexpected kindness.

OK NOW SVSSS.

So Luo Binghe vs WWX. Tbh he has a similar sort of start to Mo Ran too, in that he had an adoptive mom, but then died when he was young still, and he survived on the streets until he finally made his way to Cang Qiong Mountain and joined the sect. In contrast to both of them though, he was mercilessly bullied by his peers and his shizun (at least in the original story Shang Qinghua, AKA Airplane Shooting Towards the Sky (his username online) wrote).

I was mostly thinking about him in contrast with WWX bc like. WWX is a well-known part of the gentry, y'know? He was an outcast when he tried to defend the Wen, but if he renounced them, he probably would've been accepted back. And people were against him for doing necromancy and desecrated graves and loved ones dead bodies. Luo Binghe was just a kid, who wasn't accepted bc he was poor and not One of Them. (though his original Shizun did have more complex reasons, but well. 1) 'Twas lost with the outline, so the only one who knows is Airplane. And 2) i think the reason boiled down to "I also went through hell being poor and a slave and came out a bitter, cynical man, how the FUCK are you still so happy and hopeful?" which like. not great. Cycle of abuse continues.)

The last straw was when his shizun pushed him into the Endless Abyss for being half heavenly demon, something he has no control over, and he came back stronger than ever and pissed and just. Razed everything to the ground. All the rich and powerful sects who don't give a fuck, and are horrible and abused him and ruined his life. And became Emperor of the Demon Realm.

There isn't much point to this section beyond the fact that I think it kind of highlights that WWX wasn't nearly as much of an outcast as some parts of the fandom like to think and any alienation he faced was through his own making. And to be clear!!! I do think that even if WWX tried to play by the rules and be a good little cultivator, JGS and by extension JGY, would have found SOME way to smear his reputation to get him killed or take the Tiger Seal from him, because they wanted his power. But the point is that he didn't. He was arrogant enough to think he could control resentful energy with no consequences to himself or others, and selfless to the point of isolating himself from anyone who could've helped him. WWX is tragic and compelling to watch bc there were both forces moving against him, and his own flaws made it so, so easy for them to ruin him.

still, I can't think of the OG!Luo Binghe without thinking of Airplane (Shang Qinghua, and i will now be using those names interchangeably), and also just how similar they are in some respects to JGY.

Because OG!Luo Binghe was Airplane's power fantasy, and this world he crafted came from some way he viewed the world, and I think JGY and Airplane are rather similar.

To elaborate a little, Airplane was not abused by his parents, but was rather neglected. His parents weren't happy with each other and didn't pay much attention to him, and once they did divorce and remarried, they were much happier with their new lives and they never said anything to Airplane in specific but he felt very unwelcome. And then he went to university and his dad was supposed to send him money to pay for tuition, rent, food, etc, and eventually his dad just… forgot. and kept forgetting. So Airplane turned to writing a webnovel to make money to survive, but his outline got fried with his laptop but he needs money and he's paid every 100 character so he writes what he knows. Churns out suffering and a dog-eat-dog world and how sweet being powerful and getting revenge would be and pads out the word count with shitty porn. I don't remember if it was in a post or a fic I read, but there's one line someone wrote from Airplane's pov about how he wrote Luo Binghe's suffering so gratuitously so that no one could ever say his revenge wasn't deserved and i literally cannot ever forget that. The thought of Airplane enduring and hurting and any complaints get brushed aside as nothing.

And even when he gets transmigrated into the novel he wrote, he's just cannon fodder, destined to die by another character's hand for being a traitor, in charge of the logistics of the entire sect and doing all the goddamn work and looked down upon for being useless, and he has to follow along with the story bc otherwise he will die, killed by the System.

And I think about how in that meta post, op wrote that JGY fears, he is always always aware just how fragile his position is, how it can be taken away, and I think in a very similar way, Airplane survives. he is in a constant state of survival. He'll do the shitty work, he'll get no respect from anyone, he'll betray his sect, he'll beg and plead and whimper for his life and get seen as a dirty useless coward, and none of that matters as long as he gets to keep living, and I think about that, and just how true to life that feels as a working poor. How we'll go into work and sell hours of our lives away, our health and good mood, pieces of ourselves if we're making art, just for the sake of getting to eat and have access to water and having a roof over our head, and i'm like you know what. of all the characters in MDZS and SVSSS, Airplane is the real working class rep people are looking for.

(This last section turned more into Airplane meta than anything else, but this guy makes me so fucking sad. Fuck man, even JGY has dreams and ambitions!!! Airplane only thinks wistfully of people not sneering down at him all the time and maybe getting a little vacation, from what i recall. how fucked up is that.

also low-key glad svsss isn't popular enough for the dumb parts of fandom to get their hands on airplane bc man! I don't think Airplane is a bad person. I also don't think he's a good person. He's just… selfish. And thinks everyone else is too. Everyone's looking out for themselves in this world, so you can't expect goodness. Easily reflected in the world he crafted for his story bc the characters in his original story were just. not good people. at all.)

anyway. TL;DR wwx knows nothing about how non-cultivators and peasants live, he was a farmer for like two months and spent that time in a cave, inventing things. and i will die on the hill that fans that focus a bit too much on class in MDZS, esp in regards to WWX, are not Understanding the material. Class was NOT the point or the theme of the story MXTX was trying to write, especially not THIS one.

Me: yeah I can't fucking concentrate, nothing interests me

Also me: