#peony bride JGY

[paradife-loft]

EXCELLENT, THANK YOU. i just feel like it would be really difficult for LXC as a duelist to be able to actually revolutionize the world. I keep comparing him to Miki, though that's more of a surface level "gentle, friendly, with an incredibly protective streak" reading, but I don't think he would necessarily fall into the same trap as Miki to see Jin Guangyao as something to be saved/hidden away. Where I do think he would get caught, though, is in the later arc duels. (Hitting word limit, 1/?)

The duels where part of what is being fought is the order of the world itself, the structure of power, and the way that power plays out in the duelist's lives. Because... what would it take to have LXC do what needs to be done to revolutionize the world? Would, hell *could* LXC recognize that the world needs to be revolutionized? that the system is broken? Would he bang on the coffin lid even after JGY slips the sword in his back, even after he knows what it would take to free JGY? We know LXC is willing to stay with JGY in a grave, but in this world would he try to drag JGY out of the grave? And... would Jin Guangyao even recognize that he is trapped? JUST. THINGS MY BRAIN KEEPS PLAYING.

YES, EXACTLY. Like that’s one of the things I really love about juxtaposing these two texts/relationships !! Lan Xichen, at least in canon, I would argue is not ever at a point of realising that it’s the world that needs to be revolutionised. Part of which is his place in its structure - I feel like the position of clan leader in that way, needing to be responsible for the well-being of this entire other set of people enmeshed within the existing social structure, essentially traps the thoughts and understandings that he’s even “able” to have, because to be effective (and to be honest and upright and good while doing so), he has to internalise and believe in the world’s rules.

But putting him in an AU context where he’s somewhat proximately removed from being literally responsible for an entire sect, where he functions as his own individual, influenced by e.g. the idea that out in the wider world he will eventually have to be that sect leader, but that’s not the set of concerns he’s immediately dealing with right now....? (Like. Ohtori Academy duelist AU, is what I mean here.)

I still think it would be... really difficult for him to come to understand that the whole thing needed to be overturned, for sure. His personality is so set in making compromises, trying to figure out something diplomatic that can work with multiple needs & desires; not tossing entire frameworks out wholesale. But at the same time... honestly I think his main issue with what Jin Guangyao did in canon, the reason he’s not trying to pull him back out of the mess even if he is willing to stay and die with him, is because what JGY did was terribly harmful to other people? Utena is hurt because of Anthy directly betraying her specifically, and chooses to forgive bc she understands that anyway - I feel like if that were the end of it for JGY and LXC, it’d be a much easier question, even partially if just because LXC values his own needs and hurt feelings so little compared to What Others Need From Him?

...on the other hand, the way RGU unfolds allows a lot more processing time on Utena’s part, for the way the various aspects of Anthy’s damage and harm unfold into her awareness, right. Lan Xichen is basically running on a few Really Horrible Days of Exponentially Increasing Fuckery, without any time to actually sit down and talk it over without the looming threat of death and disgrace hanging over Jin Guangyao’s head and whipping him into a panic-fueled murder spree. JGY does in the end realise that he is trapped, I think, but the question of whether he could get there without being literally pushed to the brink of death and losing everything...? Would LXC be able to take the raw material of what JGY explains to him, and not overlay his own (partially guilty, self-justifying) beliefs that JGY did have a choice and should have been able to get himself out of his metaphorical coffin? I mean, that’s the bit that I think time would help with, because I don’t think he’s capable of holding a grudge and insisting that JGY Should Have Known & Done Better And Therefore He’s Dead To Him, if he’s still hanging around, seeing Jin Guangyao in pain, realising his own complicity in what’s already happened and feeling the guilt of that, right.

So I guess I feel like, given the right set of circumstances, it could work out...? :’D And, like, in that context I guess the thing is that helping to pull JGY out would be the culminating symbolic act that does revolutionise the world, because that’s the storytelling language that Utena is working with (...and MDZS emphatically is not, which is why that feels weird to me)? But even if so, I’d think there would still be a whole lot of work for LXC to do on the broader societal applicability side of things once that part was done and they’d gotten out. Shit’s complicated!