#im not sure if id quantify myself as a jgy apologist in a serious manner but i get so frustrated

[sandupommelfrog]

im not insane ab jgy the way i am ab jc but this conflict keeps me spinning him around in my brain like an ant in a microwave. this is sort of rambly but is the most succinct summation of my little yao-yao thoughts.

i feel like jgy believes that the ends justify the means, and that’s a core of his character. but, when human life is involved and u really start thinking ab it, it becomes a possibly fundamentally unanswerable moral question. we ofc hv the power of hindsight and knowing the end and chain of events of the story as readers but even still, it’s a large knot to untangle!

for example, Qin Su! in cql canon, jgy learns ab That Whole Deal before they have get married or conceive so it becomes a choice he has to make instead of life kicking him down another (emotional) flight of stairs. if he breaks off the engagment and explains why, all chances of his aspirations and filial piety are dead in the water. if he breaks it off and doesn’t explain, slightly less dead in the water but pretty shot. if he tells Qin Su, she’ll surely want to go with that option. if he keeps it secret and doesn’t tell Qin Su, he spares her anguish and can follow his aspirations. and he does save a lot of lives with the watchtower project!

but that then begs the question, does what the good he has done justify what he did t Qin Su? are those countless lives worth her suffering? especially when that good was just an abstract potential when he made that decision?

as others have pointed out, Jin Guangyao couldve had her killed to tie up that loose end, but he doesnt and that contributes to his downfall, so he does care about her on some level, even if that ends up hurting her deeply.

i believe Jin Guangyao has to believe his ends justify the means or otherwise compartmentalize what he’s done to be able to live with himself and still have the capacity to care. and what your answer to the question ‘does his ends justify the means?’ is fundamentally tied up in ‘is jgy amoral?’ he has his dreams or his morals, and before Meng Shi died, freeing her was part of his dreams!

also, i feel like in the ways we see jgy enact (or allow) violence onto women, sex workers, etc, people who he once shared circumstances with but feels no solidarity towards (which he does hv reasons for wrt how other sex workers treated his mother but i digress) speaks to how he wants to be at the top of the crab pile-- escape from the bucket-- rather than dismantle the bucket.

we love to see some class consciousness but i dont think mdzs is the kind of story where revolution happens nor does it need to be. i think it’s worthwhile to explore personal and structural violence in a story like jgy’s. i also think it makes him a v interesting character, esp contrasted with Wei Wuxian who despite being of similar birth status, is given more tools for success (by virtue of jfm p much adopting him), but is still torn down by society when the winds blowing the right way.

this is a very half-formed thought I’m mostly throwing out in hopes someone else will grab it, but… is Jin Guangyao fundamentally amoral? I know that’s the go-to fanon characterization, especially for comedy purposes, but I think he both knows perfectly well what it takes to be a “good person” by his society’s standards, and wants very badly to live up to that– he just also feels he’s continually trapped in circumstances that prevent him from living up to that ideal.

I guess you could argue that a deeply good/moral person wouldn’t make the choices JGY makes, but… idk! I don’t think it’s that he doesn’t feel a pull to do good– he isn’t Xue Yang– it’s just that he has trained himself to take other factors into account.