#it died with NMJ

[lgbtlunaverse]

I'm a little bit insane about how in novel canon the whole xiyao ending where Jin Guangyao wants to die with Xichen, who accepts, which then makes jgy change his mind and pushes him away at the last second isn't actually explicit. A lot of adaptations chose to make it so but in the novel this is all VERY up for interpretation.

Here's what actually happens in the text: Lan xichen stabs jgy, jgy moves away from lan xichen, xichen follows him, wwx realizes jgy is about to open the coffin and calls "watch out!" to lan xichen. Jgy unseals nmj, pushes xichen away, nmj kills jgy and they are both dragged into the coffin which is sealed again.

Here's what wei wuxian, our narrator, thinks is happening: Jin Guangyao wanted to lead lan xichen to his death out of revenge for stabbing him. Lan Xichen, unaware, simply followed Jin Guangyao to try and stop him from getting away. Wei wuxian's warning came too late, but Jin Guangyao- for an unknown reason- changed his mind at the last second and pushed lan xichen out of danger before lan xichen had any idea of what was going on.

Here's what most fans as well as the teams behind several adpatations think is happening: Jin Guangyao leads Xichen to nmj's coffin to die with him, Xichen accepts, because of this acceptance, proof xichen still cares for him, Jin Guangyao pushes him out of harm's way. Wei Wuxian just doesn't get that gay people who aren't him or Lan Wangji exist.

Here's what ALSO MIGHT BE HAPPENING: Jin guangyao wants to die in a different way than he is currently dying. Maybe he's afraid of what'll happen to his body after his death like he was scared for his mother's, maybe he wants to confront nmj one last time now that there's nothing more for him to lose, maybe - if he can't take her body with him- he'd at least like his final resting place to be where he buried his mother. Lan Xichen thinks he's trying to get away and follows but Jin Guangyao, who despite everything doesn't want him to die, pushes him away. Xichen doesn't know what happened until it's already happened. What he would've wanted if he had known remains up in the air.

Or, alternatively: Jin Guangyao's reasons are as above, but unbeknowst to Wei Wuxian, Xichen DOES know what jgy is about to do and either misinterprets this as an invitation to all die together, or inidividually decides he, too, is done, and wants to join his sworn brothers in the grave. To Jin Guangyao this has nothing to do with Lan Xichen, and he still doesn't want him to die, so he pushes him away against Lan Xichen's wishes.

Every single one of these interpretations is unhinged and they are all supported by the original text. It's like a choose your own adventure of tragic gay endings.

[prince-liest]

some recent thoughts on Nie Mingjue and Jin Guangyao, and why even though I find Nie Mingjue very frustrating in the midst of his Baxia-induced anger issues, I think he’s also a pretty sympathetic character as a whole and it’s really understandable why he thinks the way he does

(as someone who ships 3zun and nieyao, and through the lens of “Jin Guangyao is my blorbo”)

I’ve seen a tendency to paint NMJ and JGY’s relationship in black and white in terms of who was fundamentally more in the right, which to be honest is not really the approach I take to fandom in general. to me the tragedy is that NMJ and JGY before JGY's casting-out had immense respect and perhaps even love (platonic, romantic, whatever) for each other. in the end, a lack of mutual understanding of each others' circumstances that could have otherwise eventually been overcome was driven, by bigotry, Jin Guangshan, and the Nie cultivation style, into becoming an insurmountable difference that eventually killed them both

NMJ definitely Did Not Get where JGY was coming from when JGY was making survival decisions and keeping secrets. he was simply not raised in a way where he ever even had to think about the types of choices that JGY has been forced to make since he was quite young. but at the same time, NMJ was a teenager raising his brother and his sect from a very young age and I think it's a disservice to his character to fail to acknowledge that his entire life he expected to die a young and horrific death, just like he watched his father die, and that this expectation deeply colors his approach to the world. JGY plays the long game. NMJ does not get to think about that, he just has to raise his brother, win a war, and try not to drive his sect into the ground before he kicks the bucket in a violent and gruesome manner. he does not have a choice about any of these things.

and said things are extremely difficult to do, especially as a teenager, which I think is a reflection of MDZS's whole thing where their entire generation is just traumatized by war and conflict and a dearth of genuine, honorable guidance and leadership, which leads to such fractures

but it's also a series of tasks that required the kind of attitude that Nie Mingjue develops, and that in combination with Baxia’s influence gives him this really immovable perspective on life that he just won't budge on with JGY. I think it’s really significant that when Jin Guangyao does regularly play Clarity for NMJ, they get along quite well. and I also think it's really understandable why NMJ is so stubborn and headstrong - he's had to fight his way through being sect leader and not take "no" for an answer, because what the hell else can a young, new leader do to avoid being taken advantage of? frankly even if he had taken up a bit of whatever guile Nie Huaisang didn’t hog from the Nie gene pool... why would he direct it towards self-preservation? he has no room for that kind of fear because he is going to be dead in a few years.

importantly as well, Nie Mingjue unjustly judges Jin Guangyao because he is unable to understand the context that JGY is coming from, but that same righteousness is the reason that he's the first person to have given Meng Yao a fair shake and rewarded his hard work and labor, and that matters a lot to Jin Guangyao and their relationship as a whole. you can’t really have one without the other unless you give Nie Mingjue time to grow up.

unfortunately, Nie Mingjue died his 20s, and was in his teens when the Sunshot Campaign began. look me in the eyes and explain to me what kind of behavior you expect from a 20-something with a magic rage sword.

[jin-zixun]

Reasons Nie Mingjue tries to kill Jin Guangyao:

JGY saved his life (while being unable to do the same for others)

He didn't think working as a spy to win the war would actually include having to do bad things (unlike the killings NMJ performs which are always 100% justified because NMJ is 100% moral and has the right to make that call)

JGY won't kill himself

JGY won't perform extrajudicial murder of his shidi, favored by his father (which would also get him killed)

JGY won't die

JGY talked back to him and won't just completely agree with his assessment (that JGY should just die)

It's the only way for them to have peace (says the guy who suffers from extensive murderous rages and came back as a corpse to continue killing people against the guy who oversaw the biggest public safety project and expansion we know of and kept the peace for over a decade)

JGY tells their mutual friend/sworn brother that he's concerned about NMJ suffering from said extensive murderous rages

JGY bought nice things for NHS

Reasons Jin Guangyao tries to kill Nie Mingjue

Doesn't want to be killed by Nie Mingjue who keeps trying to kill him

[poorlittleyaoyao]

curious to see if my hypothesis holds up

[mxtxfanatic]

I know wwx having too much power for the wider cultivation world's liking was part of his problem, but do you think there is a world where thru some deus ex machina or another he could gain enough power for the burrial mounds settlement to survive?

No, because the problem isn’t that he didn’t have enough power to survive, it’s that he was being schemed against by both enemies he didn’t know he had and enemies he didn’t know how to guard against. At the same time, the Burial Mounds were never sustainable. A group of 50+ people cannot permanently survive on badlands that only 2.5 people (Wen Ning and Wei Wuxian, plus A-Yuan sometimes) can ever leave for short periods of time to top off supplies. They were being hunted and everyone knew it, which is why they were more immediately accepting of their deaths than Wei Wuxian was.

[tavina-writes]

I am going to be rotating Xichen's recontextualization of NMJ's death and his part in NMJ's death and the fact that NMJ was murdered and how he was murdered and who murdered him and Xichen's own culpability in that after Guanyin Temple from now into the next century because it's just!

It's awful. It's horrible. It's unrecoverable brain disease.

HOW do you recover from that. Is there potential to recover from that. God. Anyway.

[labyrynth]

*deep sigh*

don’t make me tap the sign

[guqin-and-flute]

More Nie riding Yao/spiritual animal!Mountain Goats. For fun ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[winepresswrath]

trying to plot out a xichen/huaisang emma au solely for the purposes of slotting jin guangyao and nie mingjue into the already married siblings role. in theory this leaves us with no one to play emma's dad but no they're both emma's dad for maximum impact. and obviously jin guangyao is also the nanny. and it ends with huaisang vowing to be worse, actually.

[stiltonbasket]

nmj and jc absolutely have bro solidarity because they will both cry in the movie theater if the dog dies. someone (lxc and jyl) have to check the special website "does the dog die" before they go to the movies now.

Nie Mingjue and Jiang Cheng both cry in the theatre if a dog dies, but Nie Mingjue nopes out the second a spouse dies, and Jiang Cheng does the same when a sibling dies. The one time they go to a movie without telling LXC and JYL, they end up watching a film in which a dog, a husband, and a brother die; NMJ and JC spend the next week clinging to Lan Xichen & Jiang Yanli and Wei Wuxian, respectively.

[kuntya]

[adhdo5]

Bro why did JGY literally write the character guide

[3cosmicfrogs]

in the righteous fight for da-ge more facial hair, i tragically lost myself to the sauce and accidentally acquired a moustache of my own.

[jin-zixun]

I'm sorry but if you, as my friend, introduce me to one of your other friends and then your other friend tries to kill me and ends up killed by me, to avoid me being killed by them... I have not wronged you. If anything you have wronged me by introducing me to someone who tried to kill me.

Especially if you insisted it was a misunderstanding after having to stop them twice and then continued to push for reconciliation, between the two of us in private no less, without even acknowledging the possibility of a third time happening while your other friend is literally screaming about how they will definitely be attempting to do it a third time. Please don't be coming to me years later like "why didn't you say something I could've helped" because like. Seriously? Are you serious?

[poorlittleyaoyao]

wait so it's wen mao's fault that mingjue and jin ling are forced to be child kings?

APPARENTLY SO!!

Though like… this really is a case where they could stop doing that with some work. It’s unreasonable to ask Mingjue and Jin Ling themselves to break with centuries(?) of tradition, but if they don’t have it in enshrined in law somewhere that sect governance is a parent-to-child succession line with contingencies in the event that a sect leader dies without issue, reliable adults around them could help them transition back into a meritocracy or making it an elected position, if they didn’t want to be child kings. Or even a temporary elected position! It’s unclear what Mingjue’s situation was (and the saber curse complicates things a bit), but Jin Ling has Jiang Cheng, who is poised to break the succession trend anyway unless he cultivates to immortality or marries and has an heir of his own. He would likely be amenable to reforming Lanling Jin if would keep his nephew happier and safer!

[mxtxfanatic]

@transparent-internet-maker I feel bad about going back and forth on op’s post, especially since I can’t comment in the notes, so I’m just gonna make a new one. It’s come to my attention that idek if we’re discussing the same source material, so just to put it out there: I am discussing resentful energy as presented in the novel.

With that said: Wei Wuxian couldn’t have survived 3 months without food while heavily injured, but the Burial Mounds is never described as a land where no life can live. In fact, we at least know it’s wooded area. He very likely scavenged whatever edible (or at least non-fatal) plants he could find and hunted whatever meager animals may have wandered in. What he most definitely could not do, however, is survive off of resentful energy. In the novel, it is not conscious. It is not sentient. It’s not “deciding” to preserve him, and it’s not making any sort of contract with him like this is jjk, whether Wei Wuxian knows it or not. The overwhelming presence of resentment in the Burial Mounds would only have the power to make him feel terrible, and Wei Wuxian’s survival can be solely attributed to his life’s goal of living and living well without holding on to resentment, thus preventing the resentful energy from breaking him as it had likely done to others before him who may have initially survived their entrance into the cursed place. Resentful energy does not in any way, shape, or form benefit living beings when residing in them. That’s both the moral of the story and the physical mechanics of the world.